It was damned dark underneath that buffalo robe, but Longarm could smell the musk of her core as it moistened in anticipation. He reached out, touched the smooth flesh of her thighs. They parted, allowing him to run his fingertips over the even softer inner surfaces, moving closer and closer to the center of her. He felt her breath against his shaft, and her lips closed over the tip of the iron-hard rod at the same time as his fingers found the wet, fiery velvet of her slit. He slid two fingers into her, her muscles gripping them and pulling them deeper.
What she was doing to him with her lips and tongue was more than a solo on the French horn; it was a whole damned symphony. Longarm groaned as she opened her mouth even wider and took in more of him. She cupped his sac with one hand and rolled the tender little orbs back and forth, then used a fingertip to trace the little ridge of flesh beyond it. Longarm wanted to repay the oral favor she was bestowing on him. He leaned closer to her, parted her lower lips with his fingers, and began kissing and licking her, throwing in an occasional thrust into her with his tongue that rapidly became maddening to her. Lucy’s hips pumped back and forth, and he could feel her hot breath coming more quickly on his shaft as she laved it with her tongue.
He wasn’t sure how long the two of them drove each other crazy that way, but a fella couldn’t go on like that all night. Finally, when he knew he couldn’t stand much more, he reached for her shoulders and pulled her around so that they were facing each other again, even though they couldn’t see each other in the dark. Longarm felt a sharp sensation of loss when she took her mouth away from his groin, but it was worth it when she began kissing him. Her legs straddled him, and neither one of them had to reach around and tuck him into her. It went in as natural as you please, as if it was meant to be there. Lucy settled back, filling herself with him, and she gasped against his mouth as the tip of his shaft butted against the very end of her passage. He was as deep in her as anyone could possibly go.
Her hips began to pump again. His organ slid in and out of her, and though she had been wet to start with, in a few moments she was well and truly drenched. She was breathing rapidly, and Longarm’s pulse was pounding a mile a minute too. He lifted his head and found one of her nipples with his mouth. The nub of flesh was extremely erect. Longarm sucked it between his lips and ran his tongue along the corona of pebbled flesh surrounding it. Lucy gave a soft little cry.
She grabbed his shoulders as if she was holding on for dear life when her climax gripped her a moment later. Maybe she was afraid that otherwise the power of it would wash her away. Her spasming set Longarm off, and he lifted his hips from the buffalo robe to drive himself all the way into her again. Shudder after shudder shook him as he emptied himself into her in scalding bursts. Seconds drew out into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days.
“The little death,” Longarm had heard it called. It would sure as hell do until the real thing came along.
He slumped back after his final convulsion had seized him. Every muscle in his body—well, nearly every muscle—was limp. Lucy seemed to be pretty much the same way. She had collapsed on his chest, and he could feel her heart thudding against him. She took in great breaths of air. Longarm knew how she felt. It seemed like a month since he’d had any air in his lungs.
After a few minutes, Longarm was able to speak again. “Reckon we’re gonna live?” he asked.
“I … I don’t know. I reckon I could … die happy … right about now … ‘cept for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We wouldn’t be able to … do it again.”
Longarm laughed. He stroked his hand down the smooth line of her back to the swell of her hips, then caressed her bottom, kneading the firm globes. She snuggled against him.
“I’m sure glad I met you, Custis Long.”
“So’m I.”
“You’re better’n any ol’ Brazos Devil.”
That comment brought Longarm back at least part of the way to reality. And as it did, something bothered him, some nagging little annoyance that he couldn’t quite grasp.
Before he could think about it anymore, Lucy bent her head and started tonguing his nipples, which was more than a little distracting. Longarm couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stop just so he could think about things for a while, so he told himself to worry about it later. For the time being, he was content to enjoy what she was doing to him. He reveled in the languorous contentment that washed over him.
Then it all went away when he realized what he had heard earlier. He had little or no conscious memory of it now, but while they had been making love, a part of his brain that stayed alert had taken note of a particular noise in the night. Obviously, the sound hadn’t represented an immediate danger; otherwise that facility of his—a sixth sense, he supposed you could call it for lack of a better term—would have warned him, no matter what he was doing. But still, it had been filed away in his brain, and now he recalled it.
The rapid hoofbeats of a galloping horse, heading west out of Cottonwood Springs.
Who would ride out of the settlement in the middle of the night, especially going hell-for-leather like that, with practically the entire countryside afraid of the Brazos Devil? Longarm knew he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he found out the answer to that question.
“It ain’t like I want to do this,” he said to Lucy as he took hold of her head and tilted it up toward him, “but I got to get back to town.”
“But Custis-” she began.
He kissed her, finding her lips with his in the dark. “Like it or not, we both have other reasons for being in this part of the country, Lucy, so we’d best get on about them. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, since we’ll all be scouting around in the same area looking for that critter.”
“All right,” Lucy said grudgingly. “But this better not be the only time you and me get to have some fun on a buffalo robe.”
“I think I can promise,” said Longarm, “that it sure won’t.”
Chapter 10
Catamount Jack was still sleeping undisturbed; Longarm could tell that by the loud snores issuing from the old mountain man’s mouth. He left Lucy at the campsite with a warning not to let the fire burn down too far during the night, then walked briskly back toward Cottonwood Springs.
He wished he had brought one of the horses out here. He could have covered the distance to town much more quickly if he had. As it was, it took him several minutes to reach the town, and the time seemed longer than it really was. Longarm had never thought of himself as the nervous type, but tonight he kept hearing noises that made him look over his shoulder. He had never known himself to be so spooked, especially not by the notion of a critter that might not even exist.
He found the town in an uproar. Groups of men stood around in front of the buildings, talking loudly. Longarm heard the words “prisoner” and “jail” as he walked past some of the men, and he stopped to grasp the arm of one of the townies.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What’s got everybody in such a state?”
The man pulled loose from Longarm’s grip, then looked more closely at him in the light that spilled through the windows of a nearby building. “You’re that federal marshal, aren’t you?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Longarm said.
“And you haven’t heard about what happened?”
Longarm reined in his impatience. “If I’d heard, I wouldn’t be asking,” he said reasonably.