Including memories of the screaming fury she displayed when he told her it was time that he had to return to Denver and to his responsibilities.
Quick as she was with joy and passion, she was also quick to anger, as he learned that day.
His final memory of her was the raw, bitter sound of her curses. Until now.
“Been a long time, Maddy.” He reached out to take her into his arms.
He drew her to him and hugged her. There was a moment of resistance. For several long seconds she felt wooden in his embrace, no more responsive than a softly padded oak plank might have been. Then she made a small sound that seemed almost a whimper, and after that she relaxed to his touch. Her arms came around him and she pressed her cheek against his chest.
She was so small she came only as high as his sternum, but there was so much energy in her that her size was easy to forget because there always seemed to be so much of her.
“Do you remember the elk?” he asked, his voice a whisper directed into the rich, red hair on the top of her head. He felt her nod in response. “I’ve never forgot that day,” he told her.
“Me neither.” She paused for a moment. “Do you want me, Custis?”
“You know I do, Maddy. You know I can’t look at you without wanting you. Never could.” He smiled and tipped her chin up so he could kiss her, then said, “Reckon I never will.”
Her look was very serious for reasons he could not begin to guess at.
Then she nodded and, stepping back away from him, began to remove her clothes.
Chapter 12
Maddy’s body had changed some since Longarm last saw her naked. Her breasts were fuller, heavier somehow. Her nipples were larger and somewhat darker in color. And her belly, which used to be so unusually flat, was now rounded and slightly protruding, like the plump swell of a small melon.
She was still lovely to look at, though. Still so desirable she put a lump in Longarm’s throat just from looking at her.
And an even larger lump in his jeans from wanting her.
She saw that and, with a small, almost sad smile, said, “Yes, I remember the elk, Custis. I remember that too.” She gestured toward the erection that was fighting against the cloth that contained it. “We gave each other a lot of pleasure then, didn’t we?”
“Aye, Maddy, I’d say we did, you an’ me.”
“Then let me please you again, Custis.” She came to him and stood almost shyly before him while she reached down to caress and fondle the bulge behind his fly.
After a moment she sighed. And slowly sank to her knees. She pressed her face against him and he could feel the heat of her breath through the intervening layers of cloth.
She unbuttoned his fly and very gently disengaged his swollen erection from the nest of clothing that impeded him.
“This is every bit as handsome as I remember, Custis,” she said.
Then she tickled the underslope of the gleaming red head with the tip of her tongue.
That slight contact was enough to tantalize and to tease, enough to make his pecker bounce and throb in response. He remembered that that had been one of the things she enjoyed, a real source of amusement for her. She liked to tease his prick and make it jump with every slight lick or dart of her constantly inquisitive tongue.
She did it again now, and then for some reason frowned as she closed her eyes and sucked his head and foreskin into the moist, sweet heat of her pretty mouth.
Longarm groaned aloud. The sensations Maddy Williams gave him were exquisite. She could please a man more completely than damn near anyone else he’d ever known.
But always before she’d done so with a bright and bubbly abandon. Tonight she was solemn and quiet.
She held him inside her mouth and ran her tongue round and round the head of his cock, all the while continuing to suck so that her cheeks hollowed with the force of it.
Longarm loved looking at her while she held him in her mouth like that. She had always been at her prettiest at those moments, he thought.
The sensations she was giving him mounted and quickly grew. She slipped one hand inside his fly to cup his balls on her palm while her fingertips went unerringly to that extraordinarily sensitive flat between the base of his scrotum and his asshole. She lightly tickled him there while she continued to suck hard on his cock.
The feeling was so grand that for a moment Longarm forgot where he was and almost lost his balance as his legs relaxed a bit too much. He reeled back on his heels, righted himself, and regained his balance.
When he rocked back like that he pulled free of Maddy’s lips, and there was a loud, wet plop as the suction was broken.
Maddy reached up to grab Longarm’s shaft and steady him so she could take him back into her mouth.
Longarm was smiling down at her, enjoying the curve of her eyelashes stark against her cheek when seen from that particularly pleasurable angle.
Then a gleam of light reflecting off a bit of jewelry caught his eye, and he gaped.
A spear of remorse shot through him and his erection subsided, shriveling away even though his pecker was still inside Maddy’s sweet mouth.
“Custis? What’s wrong, dear?”
“I didn’t … Maddy, what the hell is that on your finger there?”
“Surely you know what a wedding band is, Custis.”
“But … jeez, Maddy. I mean …”
She frowned. “You said you wanted me, didn’t you?”
“I thought … I didn’t know you’d married, Maddy.”
“You didn’t?”
“How the hell could I’ve known a thing like that?”
“I guess … I guess I thought you would have read about it in the newspapers. It was in the Denver papers. I know. I’ve seen some of them.”
“Maddy, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“But I thought … I mean, I need a favor, Custis. I need the biggest favor anyone could ever ask of anybody else, and I guess I kind of thought that you wanted me to, you know, make it worth your while. Sort of.”
She was still naked. Still on her knees before him. His prick, soft now and withdrawn inside his trousers, still was slick with her spit. Longarm felt like the worst kind of son of a bitch.
First he’d gone and attacked her in the dark without warning. And then he’d made her get down on her knees and demean herself even though she was a married woman.
Longarm turned away and hastily buttoned up and resettled his clothing. He kept his back to her and said, “Put your clothes on, Maddy. Then we’ll talk.”
“Whatever you say, Custis. I will do … anything … to save my husband’s life. I mean that, Custis. Anything.”
He didn’t answer. Shit, he couldn’t. Not without saying something that would make him seem even more the fool than he already felt.
Chapter 13
They perched at opposite ends of one of the cots, the distance between them seeming much longer than it in truth was. But then the distance between them now was very, very great so far as Longarm was concerned.
“When I saw you at the restaurant earlier today I thought … I couldn’t help thinking that you came here for something to do with Gary. Then I talked to Tyler and he said no, I shouldn’t get my hopes up. He’d just come back from seeing the governor and there wouldn’t be any change. It will all …” She stopped, her voice breaking into choked-back sobs, then with great effort went on as if nothing had happened. “Monday,” she said. “It will all proceed according to schedule at dawn on Monday.”
Longarm kept his eyes averted from Maddy’s discomfort. He pulled a cheroot from his pocket and concentrated on trimming and moistening and lighting it, trying to build the perfect coal while beside him a young woman wept.
“You know, Maddy,” he said in a soft and gentle voice after several minutes had gone by, “I don’t really understand what it is that you’re trying to tell me about here.”