“Why not?” Fargo lowered her left hand to his pants.
“Ohhhhh.” Trembling, Darby closed her eyes. Her forehead dipped to his chest and she panted uncontrollably, caught in the throes of lust. “This isn’t how I wanted it to be.”
“Didn’t you?” Fargo wrapped his free arm around her waist and lifted. She did not weigh much, no more than a hundred and ten or so, and he easily raised her high enough. She looked at him quizzically, not divining his intent until she felt movement below their waists.
“What are you doing?” Darby jerked at the contact. “Not like this! Not standing up when there is a bed right there!”
“I like to stand,” Fargo teased, and did with his hips as he had been doing with his fingers.
“No! No! No!” Darby protested huskily, but her body was saying yes, yes, yes! She enfolded him like a sheath and held herself still, scarcely breathing. “I don’t think I like you very much,” she said in a tiny voice.
“I don’t like you much either,” Fargo responded, and rose up onto the tips of his toes.
A whine issued from Darby’s full lips, a whine of commingled need and frustration. She thrashed from side to side as if she were in pain, but her expression betrayed the carnal truth.
Suddenly turning, Fargo pressed her against the wall. They were inches from the open door, and the hallway. Anyone coming down it could not fail to notice them. “Maybe we’ll have an audience,” he said.
“You are the worst bastard I have ever met,” Darby growled. “I should claw your eyes out.”
“You’re welcome to try.” Fargo rammed up into her with all his might. She choked off a shriek as her body went into a paroxysm of rapture. Her legs hiked upward and wrapped tight around him.
“I will hate you for this.”
“I’ll try not to lose sleep over it,” was Fargo’s retort. He cupped her breasts and kneaded them like clay he was trying to rip apart.
“That hurts!” Darby mewed, her eyelids hooded, her chest heaving.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes! No! I mean—” Darby gasped. “I didn’t figure on this! I like tenderness. I like—Oh!” She shuddered, and at his next thrust, flung her arms around him and clung desperately to his shoulder. “No! Don’t stop! I want it! God help me, I want it, I want it, I want it.”
“Then you can have it.” Fargo unleashed the full power of his need, slamming repeatedly into her. His manhood and her womanhood were a fluid meld—his hard to her soft, his sword to her scabbard, his ram to her ewe. She no longer cared that the door was open, no longer cared that someone was secretly spying on them or that someone else might happen by. She was lost in the moment. He lost himself in it, too, giving himself entirely to his craving.
Fargo heard her whimper. Later she might harbor regrets, but he felt no prick of conscience. She had brought it on herself. He drove into her yet again and she sucked in a breath that seemed to have no end while quaking in the throes of raw abandon.
“I’m almost there!”
So was Fargo. His throat was constricted and his skin tingled. A tight sensation in his groin heralded his impending eruption, but he gritted his teeth and held off, thinking of the wall, the ceiling, the house, anything and everything except his body, and the throbbing.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Darby was at the pinnacle. Her eyes grew wide. She dug her nails in, and crested. Up and down, up and down, her body a lever, his the fulcrum. She gushed and gushed, and he did the same.
After a while Darby slowly disentangled herself and wearily stepped back. Her robe and undergarments were in disarray, her hair a mess. “I would like to put a bullet in your brain.”
Fargo adjusted his pants and his belt, and stepped aside. “Stop by anytime,” he said, and motioned at the doorway. Her hand was a blur, but he caught her wrist and held fast. “I don’t deserve that. You got what you came for.”
Tugging futilely to be free, Darby hissed, “I hate you! You’re a crude lout! A buffoon in buckskins!”
“Yet you made love to me.”
Darby’s features twisted into rage. She started to swing her other hand but thought better of it and with a visible effort of will, slowly relaxed, her venom subsiding but still there, just under the surface. “Let go of me, please. I would like to go to my room.”
Fargo did as she requested, but she stood there rubbing her wrist. “Do you want me to carry you?”
A sly smile came over her. “If you only knew what is in store, you would appreciate my gift.”
“I’m grateful for what you’ve done,” Fargo said, but he was referring to the slip of her tongue that confirmed his hunch about Priscilla and her.
Darby sidled past. She traced a finger across his jaw, saying, “When you are out there in the deep woods, think of me.” She paused to smooth her robe and fuss with her hair. “I will say one thing in your favor. If you track like you make love, then the man you are after is as good as snared.” She blew him a kiss and walked off.
Fargo watched her until she came to another door. It was open a crack. As she reached out, the door opened, and there was shadowy movement. She smiled at whoever was inside, said something, and went in.
Fargo shut his own door and plopped onto his back on the bed. The long day in the saddle, the meal, the interlude with Darby, all conspired to fill him with lassitude. He succumbed, drifting into a deep sleep.
He was unsure of exactly how much time had passed when he suddenly found himself awake, his eyes wide open. Something had snapped him out of dreamland. He probed with his senses, trying to identify the cause, and heard sounds from the front of the house.
Rising, he padded to the hall. Other doors were opening. From one stepped Arthur Draypool in an ankle-length nightshirt. From another came Garvey, wearing pants and nothing else. Darby emerged next, stifling a yawn and blinking in the glow of the hall lamp.
“What’s all the ruckus?” Garvey asked. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“I was having the most marvelous dream,” Draypool said. “I was back in South Carolina, revisiting the haunts of my youth.”
A loud, gruff voice rose to the rafters from downstairs. “Bring him in!” Judge Harding bawled. “I will speak with him immediately.”
Fargo followed the rest to the landing. At the foot of the stairs stood the judge in a bulky robe, Winifred at his side. The butler, Akuda, was hurrying down the entryway to the front door. There was a subdued exchange, and Akuda reappeared, leading a tall man in garb that marked him as a backwoodsman: a hat made from a raccoon pelt, including the tail, a buckskin shirt, and jeans. He removed his hat out of deference to Winifred.
“Bill Layton?” Judge Harding said. “What is the meaning of this outrageous disturbance at such an ungodly hour?”
Layton wrung his hat. “My apologies, Your Honor. Word is that you wanted to be informed right away if the Sangamon River Monster struck again. Any time of the day or night.” The man talked strangely, in a stilted cadence that suggested he was speaking by rote.
Fargo was puzzled, until it occurred to him that the whole incident had been concocted for his benefit.
Judge Harding was playing his part. “There has been an attack?” he asked, much more loudly than was warranted.
“Yes, sir. Early this evening a family of four was butchered on a farm ten miles north of Springfield. It’s terrible. Just terrible. Like all the rest of the Sangamon River Monster’s handiwork.”
“I’m sorry for the family, but the timing could not be more perfect,” Judge Harding said. “At last that madman has made a mistake we can capitalize on.”