“I will see you again!” Ki called after her. She did not answer. He watched until she’d disappeared among the trees.
She did not answer me, Ki thought as he walked down the opposite side of the hill, toward the gaslit streets and the nearby waterfront. But then again, she did not say no ...
Ki decided he would walk for a while. There was much for him to ponder. All his adult life, he had secretly loved Jessie. His love for her would continue, but it would always remain chaste.
Su-ling ... no woman had ever touched his heart the way she had. How he longed to make love to her! All my life I have been homeless and alone, Ki thought. There is the Starbuck ranch, and Jessie, but they are not my own.
Ki wandered slowly down the hill. Could it be, he wondered, that in Su-ling he would find his home?
Chapter 9
Jordan Moore did not want Jessie’s name to appear in the papers. He escorted her to his well-kept, four-room apartment on Clay Street before returning to the site of the murder, to wait with Shanks’s body until the police arrived.
Jessie made coffee in the small kitchen, and then, despite the only moderate coolness of the evening, stoked a fire in the living room’s hearth. She wanted the light and cheerful crackling of the flames for companionship, not warmth.
She sat staring into the fire for about an hour before she heard Moore’s key in the lock. The slightly built detective looked haggard and worn. His tie was loosened, and his shirt front was spotted with Shanks’s blood.
“How did it all go?” Jessie asked him quietly.
“About as poorly as possible,” Moore said, wincing. “They kept asking me what he—and I—had been doing there, and all I kept saying was that Shanks was there on his own time, and that I’d received a message that my partner was in trouble at that address.”
“Did they believe you?” Jessie’s tone was worried.
“Oh, sure.” Moore laughed humorlessly. “And then I explained to them how if they were good, Saint Nick would bring them some clues for Christmas.” He shrugged off his suit jacket. “Excuse me while I slip into something a little less blood-stained ...”
Jessie watched the man trudge wearily into the bedroom. “The most ironic part,” Moore called through the partly open bedroom door, “is that I really don’t know for sure who killed him. I mean, obviously it was one of Chang’s bodyguards, but Shanks was run clear through. Chang’s men would have broken Shanks’s neck, or chopped him with a hatchet. They don’t have much use for swords.”
“It wasn’t Chang, or his men,” Jessie said.
“What?” Moore came out wearing a thick velvet robe. “What do you mean? Of course it was. Shanks was following them and got careless—”
“Greta Kahr killed him.” Jessie noticed that Moore’s legs were bare between his slippers and the knee-length hem of the robe. Was the rest of him bare, as well? What a time to think about that! Jessie scolded herself, at the same time fingering the netsuke carving on the black ribbon around her neck.
“Now, why do you think it was Greta Kahr?” Moore asked her. “Wait, I’m going to fetch some of that coffee.” He returned with a mug of the brew on a tray, along with two small glasses, and a bottle of sour-mash bourbon. “I have no brandy,” he apologized. “Or rather, it’s all gone. I had breakfast at home today, you see.”
“Oh, stop,” Jessie chided him, laughing. “You don’t really drink all that much, do you?”
“I used to,” Moore grinned, pouring them each a bourbon. “Before I left my old profession for this line of work.”
“What did you do before?”
“I was a journalist, a police reporter, actually.” Moore sat down next to Jessie on the couch, setting their whiskey on a small table nearby. “After a few years of scribbling accounts of crimes, I realized that what I hankered to do was to solve them. I thought of joining the force. Shanks was on the force then, and he advised me against signing up. Told me I wasn’t the type to take orders, told me to open up a private agency, and that he’d throw some work my way.” Moore shook his head sadly. “I sort of loved that man, Jessie. Big and dumb as he was ... there was no question that he’d become my partner once he’d retired from the department ...”
“I am so very sorry,” Jessie murmured.
Moore nodded. He took a big swallow of his drink, and kicked off his slippers, to wiggle his bare toes before the warming flames. “My dear woman, I do hope I have not offended you?” he teased. “I mean, my feet being unclothed, or unshod, as it were ...”
“I am scandalized,” Jessie pretended to huff. “But as this is 1880, and as we are in San Francisco, I suppose I will have to make allowances ...” She burst into giggles, picked up her glass, and knocked back her dram of bourbon.
“Damn, woman! You keep drinking like that, and next time you can just bring your own bottle!” Moore said, and drained his own glass. “Just to stay even,” he grimaced, and poured them both another. “Now tell me why you think Greta Kahr murdered Shanks,” he said.
“This afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, I suppose it is now,” Jessie said distractedly. “I mean, it must be after midnight...”
“The witching hour, but that can wait,” Moore replied. “Go on with your story.” He got up to walk over to the fireplace mantle, and extracted one of his cigars from a humidor.
“Well, I got the drop on Shanks, as I told you,” Jessie continued. “I teased him about it, telling him to be more careful. I distinctly remember saying, ‘Women are the more deadly of the species...’
Moore stood at the mantle, his unlit cigar forgotten in his fingers. “That explains what Shanks’s dying words were all about,” he mused. “That stuff about how you were right, and that phrase, ‘... more deadly. ”’ He took a match from a canister next to the humidor, lit his smoke, and then returned to his place on the couch. “Greta Kahr...” he grumbled, puffing angrily upon his cigar. “Oh, I can just see Shanks falling for her line, letting her get close to him ... too close ...”
“One of the Tong bodyguards must have been carrying her weapon,” Jessie mused.
“Sure!” Moore sneered. “A European-style rapier, it all makes sense. Poor Shanks!”
“That is a Prussian’s sort of weapon,” Jessie agreed. She glanced at Moore, who was glowering into his drink. “One thing I’d like to know,” Jessie began tentatively. “Why didn’t you tell the police of your suspicions concerning the Tong bodyguards? Was it because of me?” she softly added.
Moore looked at Jessie. Slowly his dark expression brightened into a smile. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I’m a fool for not lying to you, but you were only partially why I told the police nothing. You see, with no witnesses to the murder, it would be our word against Kahr’s and Chang’s. Both of them have enough contacts in the city government to be able to walk away from that kind of accusation. You would have revealed yourself to your enemies for nothing.”
“So you did do it for me!”
“Only partially, as I said,” Moore frowned. “You see, Jessie, I intend to kill both Kahr and Chang.”
“Oh, no, Jordan,” Jessie began.
“Quiet! You don’t understand,” the detective cut her off fiercely. “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. That was the first thing Shanks taught me, Jessie.”
“But what good can possibly come of risking your own life to avenge—” Moore’s burst of laughter stopped her. “What’s so funny?” she demanded, her green eyes flashing fire.
“Of all the people to lecture me about taking the law into my own hands,” Moore gasped.
“Oh! Yes ... I see ...” Jessie blushed. “Well, just remember, you’re not alone against them. You have Ki, and myself...” Once again she felt warmth suffusing her cheeks.
“My, what a pretty shade of pink you are,” Moore teased.
“It‘s—the fire, of course,” she stammered distractedly as Moore sidled closer to her end of the couch.
“I do co
mpliment you on the way you pieced it together that it was Greta Kahr who did the killing,” he murmured, sliding his arm around Jessie’s shoulders. “Maybe”—he began to peck cool, light kisses upon her lips—“you... ought ... to become ... my new... partner ...”
Jessie leaned back against the arm of the couch. She ran idle fingers through Moore’s thick black hair. “Whatever kind of partner do you mean, Mr. Moore?” she asked wide-eyed.
Moore slipped the top of her low-cut gown down past her shoulders. He stopped, amazed at his good fortune as Jessie’s lush, lovely breasts jiggled free. “My word!” he gasped. “You’re not wearing any ... underthings!”
“I don’t always like them,” she remarked shyly. “Sometimes—well, they get in the way.”
“What a sensible woman,” Moore remarked heartily. He watched the twin alabaster globes of Jessie’s breasts rise as she reached up to remove the pins from her hair. Her coppery tresses fell about her shoulders like a shimmering curtain, reflecting the flickering glow of the hearth’s flames.
Jessie leaned back and closed her eyes as Moore stretched out alongside her. She felt her nipples tighten and rise, as if to meet Moore’s darting tongue.
“What a strange-looking cameo,” Moore said, fingering the ornament at her throat.
Jessie’s eyes flew open. “The netsuke!” she said distractedly, and then she laughed. She’d totally forgotten her amusing little vow to make Moore notice the emblem before they would make love ... or maybe she had only partly forgotten. Something had made her position herself so that Moore’s nose was poking into it!
“It seems to be a carving of a kneeling woman, playing a flute,” Moore said.
Jessie kissed the top of his head. “Do you know what a geisha is?” she asked him, at the same time settling her hands on his buttocks, tight and muscular beneath the plush velvet of his robe.
“It’s getting a little hard to think,” Moore began. “Actually, it’s also getting a little hard to talk—”
“I think it’s getting a little hard, period!” Jessie snickered, wiggling her gowned lap against what was fast thickening and beginning to peek between the two halves of Moore’s loosely tied robe.
“Why don’t you just explain to me what a geisha is while I take your dress off,” Moore suggested brightly.
Jessie arched her back to allow the detective to begin unhooking her gown’s buttons. “The word geisha best translates as ‘artist,’” Jessie murmured. “A geisha is taught all through her childhood to be skilled in music, art, literature, the preparation and serving of fine food, and finally, when she is old enough, and if she had proven herself worthy, she is taught the skills and techniques of love—oh, God!” Jessie sighed, as Moore’s nimble fingers danced the length of her now totally bare spine, coming to rest at the warm cleft of her gently undulating backside. “These techniques of lovemaking are the keys to a man‘s—and a woman’s—soul...”
Jessie lifted her legs to allow Moore to slide her gown off. Now she was completely nude before him. The detective stared down at her small waist, and the way it contrasted with the smooth flare and curve of her hips. Her firm, shapely legs were without flaw.
“Jessie,” he said in awe. “You are the most beautiful woman—”
Jessie sighed with pleasure. “I am also a geisha, my love. That’s a sort of priestess, as well as artist. It is said that through a geisha’s body, a man can experience enlightenment. For the brief time a man spends with a geisha, they are both one with the universe.”
“Is all of this symbolized by that likeness of the kneeling woman playing a flute?” Moore asked.
“It is,” Jessie replied, and then moaned, as Moore began to slide his tongue down the slope of her flat belly. Downward, ever downward his tongue skated, until at last he had reached her first tendrils of fragrant golden softness. He paused to kiss and suck at the warm. downy fur, before his tongue flicked deep between her thighs, to lap at the moist sweetness cradled there.
Jessie’s fingers caressed Moore’s cheek. He looked up at her lovingly, his eyes bright.
“Jordan,” she whispered. “Would you like me to play the flute for you?” Now it was her eyes that glinted with a mischievous sparkle.
Moore frowned. “Now?”
“Uh-huh ...”
“Well ...” Moore said, doing his best to remain polite. “But you didn’t bring your flute!” he exclaimed with relief.
Jessie sat up, pushing Moore into an upright position along with her. “You silly man,” she teased. “I play the flute, but you supply it!”
She plucked at the bow of his robe’s sash. It quickly came undone. Her eyes widened in amazement as Moore’s hardness bounded up toward her.
“Myobu was wrong, for once in her life!” Jessie laughed.
“Whatever are you talking about?” Moore sighed happily as Jessie’s fingers tickled and played along the full length of his gently throbbing erection.
Jessie quickly related what her tutor had taught her concerning the supposed correspondence in size of the various parts of a man’s body.
“I see,” Moore chuckled. “And because I’m less than six feet tall, and rather thin, you thought that my—ohhhh!” Moore’s mind blanked of everything but the marvelous feel of Jessie’s lips upon him.
Now it was his turn to moan, as Jessie ran her lips up and down his shaft. She watched Moore’s face; his head was thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut, his expression a grimace of ecstasy. After a few moments he twisted away. Jessie tried to hold him down, but she found that the slender detective was too strong for her. As a matter of fact, she found that he was as physically strong as any man she had ever been with.
Moore stood, to pick Jessie up and lightly stretch her out full length on the couch. Supporting himself on his hands and elbows, he pressed his muscle-ridged belly against her stomach, to blanket her with his warmth. He moved himself up, to slide his swollen erection into the sweat-damp cleavage of her breasts. Jessie used her hands to squeeze her breasts together, to caress and massage him between her satiny globes.
“I had so much more of my tune to play,” Jessie whispered.
“I don’t want you to play it.” Moore smiled down at her. “Woman, I aim to make you sing it!”
With that, he nimbly slid his sinewy body down Jessie’s silky length, until their tongues could intertwine, while his hardness teased and kissed the moist folds between her thighs. Jessie writhed beneath him. At the same time, her hands restlessly explored every inch of him. Her fingers stroked his erection, pressed and cradled his scrotum, and tickled their way along the crevice between his buttocks.
Moore’s soft grunts of pleasure were muffled as he buried his face in the warm valley between Jessie’s breasts. He inhaled her womanly fragrance as he licked, sucked, and then used his teeth to lightly rake her swollen nipples. Jessie’s pleasured purr rose to a sob of joy.
Her legs parted then, almost of their own volition, to draw him greedily into her. Moore’s initial stab downward seemed to reverberate within her. She whimpered and shuddered, and came at once, gyrating her bottom against the couch while her inner muscles squeezed his marble-like firmness.
Moore slowed his movements in order to give her time to recuperate. He pulled Jessie in tight against him, and slid his hand underneath her, to cup and stroke her trembling buttocks.
“Lord,” Jessie breathed. “That one got started the day we met! Now let’s start from scratch!”
She lifted her legs to lock them about his waist, and started her hips rolling and rising to meet his slow, deliberate thrusts. Moore kept her cradled in his arms as his hips swung up and down, each plunge taking them both deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of sensation. It went on like this for long minutes. Neither of them felt any desire to hurry. Moore slowed his own movements each time he felt his orgasm near, until he heard those tiny whimpers again start to build in Jessie’s throat. Then he clamped his hands on both of her hips, using them like handles to give
him better purchase as he went faster for a few tremendous lunges.
“Sing to me, Jessie,” Moore ordered, between lingering, wet kisses. “I want to hear that tune!”
Jessie, on fire with passion, could not help but oblige him. Her mouth opened wide, and her feline wails were music to Moore’s ears. Growling, he bucked and kicked to drive himself into her, as Jessie licked and bit at his nipples. Her nails raked down his shoulders and back. They dug as deep as a rider’s spurs into his buttocks.
Jessie knew they were both ready now. Her strong thighs lifted, to draw him in to the hilt. Clutched like that, Moore felt himself explode in a burst of blissful, molten sensation that left him sweat-drenched, breathless, and drained of energy.
“Jessie, you are wonderful,” Moore huffed as his breathing returned to normal. “To think of all those fools throwing away their money in that bordello run by the cartel, while there are women like you in the world ...”
“But I bet you’ll still go back there,” Jessie teasingly chided him.
“Well, I go there for business, not pleasure.” Moore grinned. “After all, that’s where I’ve been getting our information on the enemy. For instance, I found out that the cartel and the Tong are expecting a big shipment to arrive in port sometime during the next few days.”
“A big shipment?” Jessie repeated. “Of what, I wonder?”
Moore shrugged. “Opium, probably.”
Jessie nodded. “Maybe that shipment was tonight’s topic of discussion between Greta Kahr and Chang...”
“Right after they’d killed Shanks,” Moore agreed gruffly. “Well, once I learn the shipment’s arrival time, I can intercept it, and begin to avenge his death.”
“What are you planning?” Jessie asked in concern. “You know, it won’t help matters to go and get yourself killed.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Moore assured her. “I know how to handle myself.”
“Oh, you’ve proved that!” Jessie said languidly. Her fingers burrowed into his groin, to rouse his flagging erection. “But why handle yourself when I’m around?”
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