"Are you all right?" he asked.
Wordlessly, she nodded. The way she was beginning to clutch at him again and move her hips back and forth was really all the answer he needed. He began sliding in and out of her in a steady rhythm that was as timeless as the stars.
Faster and faster, Longarm thrust into her. His breath rasped in his throat. He was glad they weren't any higher on the mountain. If the air had been any thinner, they might have both passed out. He felt his climax building, and Molly seemed to be nearing her culmination too. She gasped into his mouth as he kissed her, her breath warm and sweet.
Longarm thrust one last time, his great goad prodding deep into her feminine recesses, and stayed there as his climax shook him. Shuddering, he spurted into her, time after time. His arms pressed her tightly against him as his fluids gushed into her, filling her chamber and spilling out around his buried manhood. He worried again that she would scream, but instead she let her breath out in a long, quavery sigh. Every muscle in her body seemed to go limp as he gave one final spasm.
After a moment, Longarm rolled off her and flopped onto his back beside her. Both of them were still breathing hard. Molly rolled toward him, snuggling against his side and throwing a leg over his thighs. She pillowed her head on his shoulder.
Longarm lifted his head and looked down into her face. "You should have told me the truth," he said.
"Would you have done it if I had?"
"Well... I reckon I might not have."
She closed her eyes and rested her head against him again. "Don't worry, Custis. I'm not expecting anything from you other than what you just gave me. It was the most wonderful moment of my life, and it's plenty ... for now."
"Meaning... ?"
"Meaning I know you have to move on when your job here is finished. I wouldn't ask you to stay, wouldn't expect you to. But now, when I settle down and get married, I'll know that whatever happens in the future, I've experienced the best lovemaking a woman could ever want."
Longarm didn't say anything. He figured she would find out soon enough that she was wrong. When she found the right man and decided to spend the rest of her life with him, it would be even better.
For now, he was content to lie there and enjoy her closeness. His fingertips played along her back and stroked the curve of her hip, then strayed back to the cleft of her bottom and toyed with it for a moment, long enough so that she was starting to breath harder again and rub her mound against his leg.
That was when they both heard the sound of a rider making his slow but steady way up the coulee toward the little high country valley.
CHAPTER 13
"Somebody's coming," said Longarm as he sat up sharply. Beside him, Molly gasped and rolled away from him, snatching up her clothes as she came to her feet.
Longarm was up too, pulling his pants on and stomping into his boots. He shrugged into his shirt but didn't bother buttoning it. Picking up his gunbelt and hat, he said to Molly, "Let's get behind these trees. Whoever that is, I'd just as soon he didn't see us."
Molly's face was red with embarrassment. "What if it's Joe?" she said. "Or my father?" Those words came out of her almost in a wail.
Under other circumstances, Longarm might have chuckled. It was nice to see that she wasn't quite the brazen hussy she liked to pretend she was, even after what they had just done. Now, though, he just caught hold of her arm and said, "Come on."
The trees here didn't grow densely enough to provide a hiding place, Longarm knew. He and Molly caught up the reins of their mounts and started toward the far end of the valley, moving quietly so that whoever was riding up the coulee wouldn't hear them. There was a jumble of large boulders there, and as Longarm and Molly led the horses among the rocks, they quickly lost sight of where they had been only a moment earlier. That was good, because it meant that whoever was coming wouldn't be able to see them either when he reached the valley.
Longarm handed his horse's reins to Molly and said, "Stay here." He turned back toward the valley.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I want to find a place where I can get a look at that fella, whoever he is. Maybe he was trailing us, maybe he wasn't. If he wasn't, then he has to have some other reason for riding up into this high country."
Molly's eyes widened. "Maybe he's one of the men you're looking for."
"Could be," said Longarm. "That's what I'm going to find out." He paused and added, "I mean it, Molly. Stay here. You go to blundering around, you could get us both killed."
She nodded, her face pale. "I understand, Custis."
He hoped she truly did. Leaving her there, he made his way back through the nest of boulders and found a tiny crack between a couple of them where he could watch the valley without being observed in turn.
The sound of hoofbeats was louder now. Whoever the rider was, he wasn't taking any pains to be quiet. Almost as if he belonged here and didn't expect anyone to challenge him.
Longarm saw the horse's head first as the newcomer crossed the valley. Then the rider himself came into view. He wore lace-up work boots, thick canvas trousers, and a woolen shirt under a corduroy jacket. A flat-crowned black hat was on his head. Longarm got a good look at his hawk-like profile and bushy gray eyebrows.
Jared Flint.
"Son of a bitch!" Longarm breathed, hissing the words almost inaudibly through his teeth. He felt like kicking himself. As the foreman of Aurora's logging operation, Flint was in a perfect position to cause trouble for her. Longarm knew he should have seen that before now. He might have, he realized, had he not been distracted first by the hostility between the loggers and the cowboys of the Diamond K, then by Ben Callahan's words and actions, which couldn't have been any more suspicious if Callahan had set out to make Longarm think he was behind the trouble.
With a grimace, Longarm reined in his wildly galloping thoughts. Maybe he was jumping to conclusions yet again, he reminded himself. Flint might have some legitimate reason for being up here. Maybe he was scouting out the timber, seeing if it would be worthwhile for the Mcentire Timber Company to extend their logging all the way to these upper slopes.
But that wasn't very likely, thought Longarm. An experienced man like Flint would know that this close to the timberline, it would be more trouble than the trees were worth to get them down to the sawmill. Longarm tried to think of some other reason for Flint to be here, but he couldn't come up with one.
Unless Flint was meeting with the killers he had hired to prod the loggers and the cattlemen into open warfare that would ultimately ruin both sides. Longarm didn't know what motive Flint might have for doing that, but it was looking more and more likely that that was exactly what had happened.
Longarm gave a little shake of his head. Flint had moved on out of Longarm's view by now. The lawman carefully edged around the boulder so that he could peer after the rider. Flint had crossed the valley and was climbing still higher now, taking a trail so faint that Longarm could barely see it. Longarm turned and hurried back to where he had left Molly and the horses.
"Who was it?" she asked anxiously when he reached her hiding place among the boulders.
"Nobody you know," Longarm told her. "A fella named Jared Flint. He's the foreman of the Mcentire logging operation."
She looked confused. "What would someone like that be doing up here?
There's not enough trees this high up to make it worthwhile for the loggers to cut them down."
Not only beautiful but smart too, thought Longarm. Molly was reaching the same conclusion he had, following the same line of logic. He saw awareness dawn in her eyes as she looked at him.