by Evans, Tabor
He drew open the screen door and was about to knock on the inside door when he heard the crunch of a weed and the ratcheting click of a gun hammer to the left. A snarling voice said, “Best say your prayers, you bastard, because you’re about to be blown to hell!”
Chapter 9
Longarm slowly lowered his right hand as he turned his head to the left, where a figure stood in the yard aiming a pistol at him over the porch rail. Starlight shone in long, blond hair and on the gun’s blue barrel.
“I haven’t said a prayer in a month of Sundays,” he said. “Perhaps you could teach me one . . . uh . . . Miss Todd . . . ?”
The girl was mostly in silhouette, wearing some kind of bulky coat, but he could see her nostrils flaring as she spat out, “Who the fuck are you, and just what in the fuck do you think you’re doing—skulking around out here in the middle of the night. Be quick about it. I just love the sound of a gun’s roar!”
“Is this quick enough for you? I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long out of Denver. So if you trigger that smoke wagon, you’ll just be doin’ it to hear it roar, but you’ll be killing a federal lawman in the bargain. That’s a hanging offense. And, pardon me, but did you say ‘fuck’?”
The girl didn’t say anything.
She depressed the pistol’s hammer with a click.
She giggled as she lowered the pistol, and starlight glimmered off her white teeth and her eyes as she smiled. “You won’t tell anyone, will you, Marshal? I save the farm talk for men skulking around my house of a night when my pa, the good Reverend, isn’t here.”
“They do that often, do they?”
“Often enough that I keep Pa’s pistol loaded and on my night table with my Bible. Well, well, I’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?”
“Oh, yeah. Word travels fast in Nowhere.” She ducked under the railing and stepped up onto the porch. When she straightened, the coat she was wearing—an old, molting buffalo robe—flapped open slightly. Longarm caught a glimpse of creamy, jostling flesh. Lightning forked in his loins automatically.
But he couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d seen. The preacher’s daughter couldn’t be naked beneath her robe. But then he hadn’t expected a minister’s daughter to curse like a muleskinner, either.
“Whoops!” She folded the robe closed across her breasts, and giggled once more. “Yes, I’ve been expecting you,” she said, sidling past him, opening the screen door and pushing through the inside one. Around her was the faint odor of liquor. “Come on in. If anyone slipped inside while I was prowling around looking for whoever knocked over a stack of wood behind the house, no doubt trying to get a look through my bedroom window, you can shoot them for me in the name of the law.”
“All right—I’ll do that.”
He went in and closed the door behind him. The house was small but neat. A lamp burned on the wall that divided the small kitchen to the right from a living area to the left. Stairs rising to the second story split the house in two.
The living room was dominated by a large hearth in which the coals of a recent fire glowed umber. The sparse furnishings included a rocking chair near the fireplace, with a small table beside it, and a horsehide sofa against the wall to Longarm’s left, facing the chair and the hearth. There were a few bookshelves and oval-framed daguerreotypes. The air smelled of old pipe tobacco and coffee, and another scent—light cherry perfume, talcum, and brandy—that grew stronger as the girl passed him and strode into the room. She turned up a small, green-shaded lamp on the table and then plopped casually down on the sofa, lounging on her side and drawing her bare knees up toward her belly. When the coat had slid open, he thought he’d been given—accidentally, of course—a brief glimpse of the darker triangular area between her thighs and beneath her belly button.
The light shone golden in her blond hair, which hung in a sexy tangle about her fair, plump cheeks and green eyes. Her small, pink feet were perfectly proportioned.
“Have a seat, Marshal.” Her voice was as light and sonorous as glass chimes.
Longarm doffed his hat and crossed the room to the rocking chair. “Miss Todd, I presume?”
“You presume correct, sir,” she said with a slightly jeering, teasing air. “Call me Beth.” She rolled her sparkling green eyes up and down his long, lean, broad-shouldered frame. “Damn, you’re tall!”
“The farm talk again.”
She feigned a gasp and closed her hand over her mouth. “Oh, what the hell—you already heard me curse. Would you like a drink? Don’t tell anyone, but I tend to tipple when Daddy’s away, and he’s away tonight. All night. Edna Thomas’s funeral is tomorrow out at the Triple 8 Ranch, and he decided to travel as far as the Spring Creek Ranch to cut his travel tomorrow in half. I’m not allowed to have boys over—as if there were any boys around Nowhere I’d deign to have over—so you’re technically not allowed to be here. But since you’re a lawman and all, I’m probably safe. You reckon?”
Longarm let his gaze drift up from her bare feet to her knees. Then it scuttled up the robe to where it was open just enough across her chest to reveal the inside curves of her creamy breasts. He looked at her face. She blinked slowly, obviously knowing exactly what she was doing to him.
“You bet,” he said, easing down into the leather-padded rocking chair. “But I’ll forgo the drink. I’m here about the saddlebags that Laughing Lyle May was toting when you and your father picked him up on the trail out yonder.”
She arched a brow and stuck the tip of her tongue between her pouting lips. “Would you like to search me?” She smiled and wagged a knee.
Longarm bit back a hunger pang. It wasn’t a hunger for food, however. His throat was a little dry. He cleared it, and put some steel in his voice as he said, “Miss Todd, the money is nothing to fool about. It was stolen from a bank in Stoneville, Kansas. After Laughing Lyle’s bunch stole it, they locked up the employees and patrons in the bank and burned it down. That money belongs to their families and to the town of Stoneville, and I aim to get it back to them.”
She sat up and dropped her feet to the floor. Her expression was suddenly serious, sad, and she didn’t say anything for nearly half a minute before: “That’s just awful.”
Her sudden change of demeanor caught Longarm off-guard. It seemed genuine. He said, “Yes, it is.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about any saddlebags. Father and I only saw Laughing Lyle himself layin’ there in the trail. His horse was nearby, grazing, but it was only wearing a bridle, saddle, and blanket. Lyle must have hid the bank money somewhere before he passed out.”
Longarm stared at her—just her eyes this time, though the robe was still partly open and her legs were still nearly bare, of course. Only a hardened outlaw could manufacture an expression as genuine and honest-looking as the one Miss Bethany Todd was wearing right now.
Longarm sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I do hope you find the money, Marshal Long.”
She rolled her eyes toward the neatly but sparsely outfitted kitchen, dominated by a black range and a square table covered with a green gingham oilcloth. There weren’t many dishes on the shelves. The only wall hanging was an oil painting of Christ praying at a small, rough-hewn table. “Before my intruder disturbed me, I was enjoying a bottle of brandy. If you promise not tell anyone of my vices”—she mashed one of her sexy little feet down atop the other and let the robe fall open a little farther—“I’ll share some with you.”
Longarm felt his throat swell. The lamplight shone on her beautifully, highlighting every other strand in her blond hair, flashing in her green eyes that appeared speckled with copper. Her face was heart-shaped, with a slender nose and rich, red lips. Her chin jutted just far enough, and there was a dimple in it, with a very small mole beside it and a quarter inch below.
Longarm let his eyes
travel down the robe once more, and swallowed. It was an almost painful maneuver because of that hard cork in his throat. “Miss Todd, I believe I’d best leave now.”
She smiled knowingly, her eyes glinting jeeringly again. “All right. Go, then.” It was like a challenge.
Longarm sat like a dead, throbbing weight in the chair that he supposed was mostly used by the girl’s father. He stared at her, trying to press his hands down on the chair’s worn arms and hoist himself to his feet.
But he couldn’t do it.
“You must get lonely here in Nowhere, Miss Bethany.”
“Don’t I know!”
“You must have plenty of suitors.”
“There aren’t many young men my age around. Oh, a few from the ranches come in with a spray of wildflowers from time to time, but it’s hard to enjoy a man’s company when everyone, including my own father, keeps such a sharp on eye me. I’ve never gotten that interested in any one man to invite him over, like you’re here with me now.”
She blinked slowly, her twinkling jade gaze riveted on Longarm. She touched her tongue lightly to her upper lip before adding, “Alone.”
Longarm watched her bosoms rise and fall slowly behind the robe that now fully exposed her cleavage and almost the entire right breast except the nipple.
“You can’t tell me you haven’t . . .”
“Of course I have. A few times. But never to my satisfaction. Sometimes I find myself alone upstairs, just me and my brandy, and I start thinkin’ about what it would be like with a real man . . . a large man with experience . . . one who knew his way around a girl’s body . . .”
Color rose in her cheeks. She lifted her chin and drew a deep, calming breath, letting her gaze flick down lower on Longarm’s big frame. “. . . and I just get so damn horny I feel like I could go out and fuck one of the stallions in Humperdink’s back paddock.”
Longarm felt as though forked lightning had struck deep in his loins. He repressed a shudder. She smiled, knowing exactly the effect she was having. She wet her lips with her tongue and said very quietly, “Are you sure you wouldn’t reconsider having a drink with me?”
“Why not?” he managed to rake out. Even to his own ears, it sounded like someone else locked in the kitchen’s tiny pantry.
“I left the bottle upstairs in my room. Warmer up there; I have a fire burning.” Bethany rose from the sofa and strode gracefully toward the stairs, tossing her hair down one shoulder and giving him a devilishly coquettish look, her eyes flicking over his groin. “If you think you can manage it, I’ll meet you up there.”
Longarm watched her disappear up the stairs. The girl was right. His pants were getting tight across the crotch, so he had to sort of turn to one side before hoisting himself out of the chair. He adjusted the twill, trying to drag some slack up from his thighs, then tossed his hat down on the sofa and climbed the short, steep stairs.
He turned at the top. There were two doors, a stretch of pine-paneled wall between them, on which a single wooden crucifix hung. The door on the right was open. Longarm walked to it and stopped in the doorway.
Bethany stood in front of the small bed in the room, which wasn’t much larger than a sleeping compartment in a Pullman car. She faced him, the buffalo robe now hanging open. The girl lifted her shoulders, shook her creamy, pale body, and the coat dropped to the floor with a quiet, breathy whump.
Her body was delectable, arms and legs slender, belly slightly rounded like her thighs, full breasts standing up proudly on her chest, pink nipples pebbled. The light from a nearby coal brazier flickered like liquid bronze across her from the side, raking her and the wall on the opposite of her with curving shadows.
“You like what you see, Marshal?”
“What’s not to like?” Longarm shrugged out of his frock coat and kicked out of his boots, keeping his eyes on the delightful, blond-headed vixen with green, glowing eyes before him. Along with the smell of the coal smoke, he could smell the musky need of her. It seemed to radiate from her breasts and the thatch of glistening blond hair beneath her belly.
When he was naked, he walked to her. Her eyes widened, gained an almost apprehensive cast as she stared at the piston-hard shaft jutting at a forty-five degree angle above his belly, the mushroom head swollen and nodding.
“Oh, my . . . God!” she whispered, dropping to her knees as though in worship before him.
She stared at the raging hard-on, the light of the fire flickering in her wide eyes. Slowly, she raised her arms and wrapped her hands around him, then slid her head forward, stuck out her tongue, and touched it to the base of his organ. Even more slowly, she ran her tongue up the underside of his shaft to its head, which she kissed passionately, giving a little cry from down deep in her throat.
Holding the shaft in her hands, she looked up past it into his eyes. “Oh . . . my . . . !”
“Call me Longarm.”
She rose, pressed her hands against his broad chest, and ran them in a swirling motion down across his belly. Longarm drew her to him and kissed her.
They kissed for a long time, and he savored the sweetness of her little wet tongue flicking against his own teasingly, further stirring the fires inside him. He massaged her firm breasts, feeling the pebbled cherry nipples raking his palms. As he did, she rubbed her snatch against his cock, squirming and groaning.
Finally, she pulled away from him, turned, and dropped to her hands and knees on the bed. She slung her hair back across her neck and looked over her shoulder at him, sticking her naked ass toward him with the little furry pouch showing beneath it, glistening in the light from the brazier, waiting . . .
He walked over to her, grabbed her hips, and slid his cock slowly, gently inside her. Twenty minutes later, cupping her breasts in his hands as he hammered his hips against her ass, he gnashed his teeth against her high-pitched, keening cry of ecstasy.
Chapter 10
“Tell me about the marshal here in Nowhere,” Longarm said as, lounging abed with the preacher’s daughter, he sipped from his brandy glass. “Tell me about old Roscoe Butter.”
He sat with his back against the headboard, naked beneath the wash-worn sheets and one tattered quilt. Bethany lay against him, her own naked body warm and smooth, her head on his belly. With one hand, she was gently stroking his balls. He could feel the slight prickling of her still-damp crotch against his thigh.
“What would you like to know about him?”
He took another sip from his glass, then groaned at the magic her fingers were working beneath his belly. He drew a calming breath. “When we were supping in the hotel earlier, his deputy came in and fetched him. Said something about a widow needing his help with a fussy child.”
“Hetta Broken Bow,” Bethany said with a fateful sigh. “Everyone calls her the Widow since her husband, Early, got drunk and fell off his mule out front of the Nowhere Saloon. He hit his head on the stock trough, broke his neck. It’s common knowledge that, while Butter isn’t married to the woman, he fathered the Widow’s latest child. The Widow’s three children are all from different men.
“She’s a half-breed and lives up on the north side of town and raises those urchins with her mother, Rosa. Her mother’s sick most of the time, so she calls on Butter often to help with the kids. He goes because if he doesn’t, Hetta’ll come for him herself and raise holy hell in front of the whole town.”
“Nothin’ so scandalous in that, I reckon—aside from them not bein’ hitched.” Longarm was aware of many men who’d fathered children out of wedlock.
“Well, there wouldn’t be,” Bethany said, closing her rich lips over the side of Longarm’s glass, taking a sip, and swallowing, “if Butter wasn’t already married to a former percentage gal who isn’t all that happy about the setup and complains around town about it when she’s drunk on cheap whiskey.”
“Ah
, I see,” Longarm said, gently sliding a lock of honey-blond hair back from Bethany’s incredibly smooth cheek. As she resumed lightly running the tips of her fingers across his balls, he groaned and added, “Butter has himself wedged between a rock and a prickly pear cactus.”
“I feel sorry for him personally. Just an old cowpuncher off one of the ranches around here; came to town when he got too old to wrestle steers, and someone pinned that badge on his vest.” She looked up at him, hair sliding like silk across his belly. “Why do you ask, Longarm?”
He stared across the room, beyond the sphere of light being thrown by the lamp on the small table beside him. “Just tryin’ to figure out who has the most cause to run off with stolen bank money.”
“Honey, I told you,” Bethany said huskily, looking up at him in admonishment from beneath her brows, “Papa and I found no money on Laughing Lyle. If he ever had those saddlebags, he had to have buried them somewhere along the trail before we found him.”
Longarm looked down at her smiling up at him angelically, breasts sloping toward his chest, her nipples mashed against him. He could feel the heat in the delicious twin mounds. She was running her hand over the head of his cock, gently tickling, causing it to swell. Amid his growing desire, a question blossomed.
Was she telling the truth about the saddlebags, or was she toying with him? Had tonight been more about pleasing him physically and thereby distracting him from his suspicions of her and her father? Or was she really just an overly confined young lady badly in need of having her ashes hauled?
She must have been reading his mind. She pressed her lips to his belly, then scuttled up on top of him, straddling him and sliding her face up close to his, while gently tugging on his ears. “You don’t still think I have them, do you?”