He set it on the table next to the bed. As he slid between the sheets, he thought that he had made some mistakes on his first day in Kingman—some mistakes since arriving in the West. He’d almost gotten killed today, but thanks to Clint Adams, he was alive to enjoy tomorrow.
He had decided that afternoon that if he was to see any more tomorrows, he was going to have to make sure Clint Adams was around him for a long time. And he didn’t care how much it would cost him.
Across from the hotel both Breckens and Edwards stood in a store doorway, hidden by the shadows.
“We ain’t goin’ in tonight, are we?” Edwards asked.
“Not on your life,” Breckens said. “Not while Clint Adams is inside.”
“Then what are we doin’ here?”
“Watchin’,” Breckens said, “and thinkin’. But you know what? I don’t need you for either one.”
“So…”
“Go on back to the hotel and get some sleep,” Breckens told him. “I won’t be here much longer. I just got to figure some things out, and I can’t do it with you breathin’ down my neck.”
“I can go to sleep?”
“That’s what I said.”
He didn’t have to tell Edwards twice. The man quit the doorway and said he’d see Breckens in the morning.
Breckens waited until Edwards was out of sight, then left the doorway himself and went the other way, to the opposite end of town. He had a meeting and he was late.
“What took you?” the man demanded.
“I had to get rid of Edwards.” Breckens sat down at the table across from his employer. They were in the tiny Saloon No. 1, the first saloon to have opened in Kingman. Very few people ever patronized it now, and the owner didn’t much mind. He had other investments in town to be able to afford this conceit.
“So did he get to town?” the man asked.
“Got off the stage this afternoon.”
“And is he dead?”
“Not yet.”
The man sat back in his chair.
“I paid you to kill him.”
“I know.”
“And he’s not dead.”
“He will be.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
The man sat forward.
“I want it done tomorrow.”
“That may not be possible.”
“Why not? What’s the holdup?”
“There’s another player takin’ a hand in the game.”
The man raised his hand and said, “Save me your poker metaphors, Breckens.”
“What?”
The man sighed.
“Go ahead—and stop chewing that damn tobacco while you’re talking to me!”
Breckens stopped chewing, then spit the wad into his left hand. He looked around for someplace to put it, then simply dropped his hand down below table level. The thing sat in his hand like a hot turd. He’d pop it back into his mouth when he was done here. No use wasting good chaw.
“Now tell me,” his employer said. “who is this new man you’re talking about?”
TEN
Clint peeled the dress from Shannon’s body, doing it slowly and enjoying every inch of flesh that came into view. At the same time she removed his shirt and ran her hands over his chest.
When he had her naked on the bed, she suddenly seemed to get shy. It was probably because he wasn’t paying. If she was with a man who was paying, speed would be the operative word, and she wouldn’t have worried about how she looked—especially, as she’d explained to Clint earlier—if she was with a miner.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, kissing her shoulder and fondling one of her full, round breasts.
“I have all these…ugly freckles,” she said.
“Believe me,” he said, licking the freckles that dappled the slopes of her breasts, “they’re not ugly.”
He thumbed her pale pink nipples. Actually, the nipple itself was a darker pink than the areola surrounding it. He ducked his head and concentrated on sucking them both until they were as hard as pebbles. She moaned and held the back of his head gently.
He stood up then to remove his pants, and she helped him, tugging them down so that his erection sprang free. He kicked away the pants and underwear and moved closer to the bed. She rolled onto her stomach, reached beneath his penis to hold his testicles in one hand, and took him into her mouth. She sucked him wetly, moaning as he seemed to swell even larger in her mouth. She released him, used her tongue to just lick the tip, then that sensitive spot right underneath the tip, then slid the length of him back into her hot mouth. He moved his hips in unison with her sucking, then she abruptly released him, took hold of his cock and tugged him onto the bed with her…
“The Gunsmith,” Carl Breckens’s employer said. “You’re sure?”
“Positive,” Breckens said. “I heard the sheriff talkin’ to him, callin’ him by name.”
The other man sat back and rubbed the side of his head, as if he had a pain there.
“What is he doing in town?” he asked aloud.
“Says he’s passin’ through.”
“Could he be here working for Markstein?”
“The way it looked,” Breckens said, “it don’t seem like they knew each other before.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” the other man said. “Now it remains to be seen if they’ll forge a relationship.”
“Why would they?” Breckens asked. “What’s the Gunsmith got in common with some dandy from back East?”
“That dandy just might decide to hire himself a gun, Breckens,” the man said. “If he hires Adams, can you handle him?”
Breckens had already anticipated this question, and knew what his answer was going to be.
“For the right amount of money,” he said, “I could handle the ghost of Wild Bill Hickok.”
“Well,” his employer said, “I’m going to take you at your word, Breckens. No matter what happens, or who he hires, I want George Markstein dead.”
Clint spread Shannon’s pale thighs, pressed his face to her rust-colored pubic bush and proceeded to feast on her. She sighed and moaned as he used his tongue and lips to give her more pleasure than she’d felt in a long time. When she had sex, her own pleasure was the furthest thing from the mind of either participant. The man only wanted what he wanted, and she wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
With Clint Adams she felt as if she were floating, and she wanted the feeling to go on forever. He seemed to care more for her pleasure than his own, which amazed her.
He slid his hands beneath her to cup her buttocks and lift her to his face so he could press his tongue deeper into her. As he licked and sucked her he moaned, and it was the sexiest sound she’d ever heard from a man. Just the sound of it made her even wetter.
“Don’t stop,” she implored him, reaching down to cup his head, “don’t ever stop…”
Carl Breckens left Saloon No. 1 with some more of his employer’s money in his pocket.
“If you need to hire somebody else to help you, then do it,” the man had told him, pressing the money into his hands. “I need that man to be dead as soon as possible.”
“I’m on it,” Breckens promised him.
Now, as he left the saloon, he wondered what he should do about Clint Adams. He sure as hell would never face the man head-on. If—as his employer predicted—Markstein hired Adams, then the Gunsmith was going to face the same kind of death Wild Bill Hickok did years ago: a bullet in the back of the head.
All Carl Breckens had to decide was who was going to actually pull the trigger.
ELEVEN
Clint had Shannon on all fours, and was enjoying the line of her back and the curve of her buttocks. He laid his rigid penis along the crack between her butt cheeks, then slid it down and around until he was nestled between her thighs. He poked further, found the moistness of her vagina and poked in. She gasped as he entered her slowly and then she began to move back and forth, taking him in an
d letting him out.
He took hold of her hips and worked her that way for while, then reached out one hand and took hold of her hair. She arched her back, her breath coming roughly as he increased the tempo. He reached around to touch her, run his hand over her, and she growled with the pleasure of it.
He was getting some pleasure himself, though. As he slid in and out of her, she’d tighten her thighs so that he was also getting some friction from there as well.
“Ooh, God,” she said, “I’ve never been treated like this by a man in my life before.”
He ran one hand along her back, then slapped one of her ass cheeks and said, “You’ve been with the wrong men, then.”
“Mmm, you can say that again.”
He continued to fuck her from behind, long, slow strokes, making her catch her breath each time he drove himself home. Eventually she went from being on her knees to having her face buried in a pillow, her ass lifted up high, her cries muffled, and when her orgasm came her entire body shook and vibrated and then she went completely slack beneath him.
“Jesus,” she said, turning her head to the side so she wouldn’t suffocate, “I really have been with the wrong men.”
Later, after they had dozed for a while, Clint woke to the wonderful sensations of being in Shannon’s hands and mouth. She was stroking him and licking him until he was fully erect. When she knew he was awake she slid her hands beneath his buttocks—as he had done to her—and lifted him, but instead of taking him into her mouth she aimed lower, and began licking his testicles and underneath his testicles. She avidly worked on him, wetting him, licking him dry, wetting him again, and then worked her way up the shaft of his thick penis until she reached the spongy head. Once there she licked all around it, took just the head into her mouth, wetting it thoroughly, and then finally engulfed his entire length. The sensation was so good that he lifted his butt off the bed and caught his breath. He felt her throat contracting on him, felt as if she were squeezing him again and again, milking him that way until he was almost ready to explode and then—as if sensing this—releasing him.
His penis came out glistening with her saliva. She used one hand to stroke him while the other fondled his balls, stroking, tickling them with her long, graceful fingers.
“Come up here,” he said, reaching for her.
“Oh no,” she said, pushing his hands away, “this time it’s all about you. Just lie there and enjoy.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. Clint enjoyed giving pleasure to women, but the by-product of that act was that women wanted to give it back. If most men knew this, he was sure they’d treat women—their sweethearts, wives, even whores—a lot better.
She went back to work on him, using her hands, her mouth, her tongue and, at times, her teeth. She would bring him to the brink of orgasm and then skillfully hold off, only to once again take him to those heights. He’d never before had a woman do that to him, take him up and down like that, until he was at the point where he needed the release so bad he thought his entire body would explode.
She sensed this and, at that point, climbed up on top of him, took hold of him and guided him into her steamy depths. She began to ride him that way, slowly at first, and then faster. It may have been about him but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it, too. Soon they were both moaning and crying out and—as his release overcame him—Clint lifted his butt off the bed, taking her weight with him as his body went as taut as a bow and then…suddenly…let go…
Carl Breckens took himself back to the doorway across from the hotel where Clint Adams and George Markstein were staying. He was sharing a room with Aaron Edwards, and did not want to go back and listen to his partner snore. There was no way he’d get any thinking done that way.
He settled into the dark doorway, seating himself, and stared at the hotel. What were the chances, he wondered, of sneaking up there and killing Markstein tonight? Probably not good. After what had happened earlier in the day, even the desk clerk would have a heightened sense of alertness. And Markstein’s room was down the hall from Clint Adams’s. Breckens knew that the red-haired saloon girl had gone to his room with him, so the chances that he’d be asleep were slim. Breckens knew that if he had a girl like that in his room, he wouldn’t get much sleep, either.
In fact, the local whorehouse did have a redhead. Not one that looked like the one from the saloon, but she was long and lean, the way Breckens liked his women, and she had a talented mouth.
A bed at the whorehouse, with that redhead, sure sounded better than sitting in this dark doorway. And he had the money to pay for the whole night. So after he was done with the whore, he could relax and give the situation all the thought it deserved.
He only had to weigh the two options for a few seconds before quitting the doorway and heading for the redhead and the bed.
TWELVE
Clint woke the next morning with Shannon’s weight on his right arm. It annoyed him, not because she was there, but because he had allowed her to fall asleep with his gun hand pinned beneath her. If someone had broken into the room with bad intentions, he’d be dead. As it was, the arm was numb when he pulled it from beneath her without waking her. He spent the next few minutes flexing and unflexing the hand and gritting his teeth against the pins-and-needles feeling that was shooting through it.
He sat up and swung his legs around, planting his bare feet on the wooden floor. He didn’t know what Shannon had planned for the day, but all he had was supper with George Markstein to talk about the man’s “business,” and probably field a proposition for employment. If the man was looking to hire his gun, he was going to be out of luck.
He thought about waking Shannon, but she was a hardworking girl and could use her sleep. That was obvious from how soundly she was still sleeping. And if he woke her and they had sex one more time, he was sure that his penis would simply fall off. He was just happy he was able to stay with her as long as he had.
He stood up, got dressed and strapped on his gun belt. Breakfast was the first order of the day—finding a place that had a good one, and then consuming it. And coffee, lots of hot, black, strong coffee.
He looked at Shannon O’Doyle once again. The sheet had slipped down and was only covering her legs and half of her butt, which was really a pretty fetching pose. He had to talk himself out of getting back into bed with her, and forced himself to walk out the door.
He asked the desk clerk to recommend a place for breakfast and then followed the man’s directions to a busy restaurant down the street. It was housed in a fairly new building with big plateglass windows in front with the name Hopper House emblazoned on the glass.
“Best food in town,” the clerk had assured him. “Mr. Hopper makes sure of that.”
“He the cook?”
“The owner,” the man said. “But he hires the cook. Tell him we sent you over.”
Clint assured the man he would do that.
As he entered, he was approached by a man in shirt-sleeves and a string tie.
“Are you alone? I hope you’re alone, because all I have is a small table—”
Clint cut him off. “I’m alone.”
“Ah, wonderful. Uh, it’s in a corner, is that a problem?”
“I prefer a corner,” Clint said, truthfully.
“Perfect! Come this way.”
The man led him to a table that was exactly what he said it was—small, and in a corner.
“Are you my waiter?” Clint asked.
“No, sir, I’m the owner,” the man said. “My name is Sam Hopper. I’ll send your waiter right over, sir.”
“Uh, thanks. I’m sorry, I meant no offense. I’m a stranger in town.”
“That’s all right,” the man said. “No offense taken. Can I start you with some coffee?”
“Yes, the blacker and stronger it is, the better.”
“I’ll have a pot made especially for you,” Hopper said. “We have to treat our guests in town well.”
“I appreciate t
hat.” Clint extended his hand. “My name’s Clint Adams.”
“Glad to know you, Mr. Adams,” Hopper said, and went off to arrange for the coffee. But part of the way across the room he suddenly stopped and hunched his shoulders, then continued. Clint knew that he’d suddenly recognized the name.
He wasn’t above using his name to make sure he got a good breakfast. After all, his name had to be good for something.
“Wake up!”
Aaron Edwards jerked awake, eyes wide, and stared at Carl Breckens, who was standing at the foot of his bed.
“What the—”
“Time to get up, damn it!” Breckens bellowed. “Why do I always have to shout in the morning to get your attention?”
Edwards rubbed his face vigorously, then looked at Breckens and said, “Huh?”
“Fuck it,” Breckens said. “Just get dressed and meet me downstairs in the lobby.”
Edwards looked over at Breckens’s bed, which was still made and had not been slept in.
“What the—you were up all night, watching that hotel?”
Breckens almost told Edward that he’d spent the night in a whorehouse underneath a naked redhead, but then decided to let the man think what he liked.
“Somebody’s got to do some work around here,” he said.
Edwards stared at his partner. Damn, he already had his breakfast chaw in.
“Are you hearin’ me, Aaron?” Breckens asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, right, down in the lobby.”
“Ten minutes!” Breckens bellowed so it would penetrate the fog, and then left, slamming the door for good measure.
THIRTEEN
Clint was in the middle of his breakfast when the sheriff walked into the place. He was greeted immediately by the owner, Hopper, who spoke rapidly and then pointed toward Clint. He wondered if, once the owner knew who Clint was, he’d actually sent for the lawman.
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