She shut the door, and he heard her climb into the hammock on the front porch. Longarm went over to the bunk, trying not to think about how Claudette's grandfather had likely died there, and sat down to pull off his boots. He took off his gunbelt as well, coiling it and placing it on the floor beside the bunk within easy reach. He had already tossed his hat onto the table. That left his tie and his shirt, because he intended to keep his pants on. He undid the tie, shrugged out of the shirt, and placed both of them on the table beside his hat. The light in the room was just about gone by the time he stretched out on the bunk, feeling the ropes underneath the straw mattress sag a little.
Longarm didn't expect to go to sleep right away, but he surprised himself by dozing off almost immediately. He slept lightly, though, so he was instantly awake when he heard the soft scrape of the door opening sometime later. He was unsure exactly how much time had passed, but it was pitch dark in the cabin.
Quiet footsteps came across the room toward him. From the confidence with which the person was moving in the darkness, Longarm felt fairly sure it was Claudette. He wasn't sure why she was sneaking around like this; if she had wanted to harm him, she'd had ample opportunity before now. But he reached down and silently wrapped his fingers around the butt of his holstered Colt anyway.
He could hear her breathing as she knelt on the other side of the bed. Suddenly, something touched his chest, light as a butterfly, and he realized she was stroking him with her fingertips. She trailed her fingers through the thick dark hair that curled on his chest, moving them ever lower. She reached his waist and then moved even lower, flattening her hand to press the palm of it against the rapidly rising bulge at his groin. Through the fabric of his trousers, her fingers closed around his hardening shaft.
"Custis, I know you got to be awake," she whispered as she squeezed him lightly. "Either awake or dead, you."
"I ain't dead," he told her, his voice sounding strangely hoarse in his ears.
She squeezed harder. "Good, 'cause I need a live man tonight, me."
Longarm let go of his Colt and reached up toward her. His hand encountered soft, yielding flesh and closed around it. He could feel the pebbled ring of her nipple prodding against his palm. He squeezed her breast for a moment, then ran his thumb over the erect nub of flesh, plucking at it like a guitar string and drawing a low note of pleasure from her throat.
"Afraid you got a shameless hussy here, you be Custis," she said. She unbuckled his belt, and then he felt her fingers go to work on the buttons of his trousers.
"That's just fine with me," he told her, reaching up to cup her other breast.
She finished with the last button and reached inside his trousers to free his shaft. As it bobbed up, she wrapped her hand around it and began sliding her palm up and down.
"Oh, you be plenty-plenty big," she said, breathless with anticipation. "Goin' to feel so good inside me."
He slid his hands from her breasts along her flanks. As he had thought, she was naked, having shed the old dress she had been wearing earlier. He reached down and moved his hand between her thighs. He probed her with a finger, and found her hot and wet. She moaned and pressed her pelvis against him as he explored her slick femaleness.
Then she leaned over and planted a kiss on his chest. She tongued each of his nipples for a moment, then moved down his torso, her lips and tongue leaving a fiery trail of sensation behind them. She lifted herself over him so that she could reach his manhood, and a second later, her lips closed around the tip of the throbbing pole of flesh.
Longarm's hips wanted to surge up off the bed and drive his shaft deeper into her mouth, but he controlled the urge and let Claudette set the pace. Her tongue swirled around the head and toyed with the slit at the very tip, licking up the moisture that welled from it. After a few maddening moments of that, she moved on down the shaft, kissing and licking until she had it wet all over. It was all Longarm could do not to explode in her mouth.
He caught hold of her hips and pulled her onto the bunk with him so that she lay with her thighs straddling his head. As she took his manhood into her mouth again, sucking it deeper this time, he reached down and tangled his hands in her thick dark hair. The musky scent of her femininity filled his nostrils as he lifted his head and thrust his tongue into her. She groaned around his shaft and clenched her thighs on his ears.
There was a limit to how much of this Longarm could stand without losing control, and he reached it after a few minutes. Claudette seemed to be totally willing to move on to the next step too, as he pulled her around so that she faced him. She reached down to guide the long, thick rod of flesh into her, and they were both so wet that he slid inside with no trouble. Claudette put her hands on his chest and pushed herself upright so that she was sitting on him, so stuffed with his manhood that they both felt it hit bottom. Or top, as the case might be. Claudette gasped and began to rock her hips back and forth.
"Oh, fill me up so good, you, Custis!" she cried.
He held her hips to steady her as he began thrusting up from the bunk, meeting her movements with his own. Urgency crept over him, making him drive into her harder and faster. She was caught up in the grip of passion just as he was, and she said, "Oh!... Oh!... Oh!" as he made love to her. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside the shack by now, and in the faint glow of moonlight and starlight that filtered through the trees and into the cabin, he could see her throwing her head back and forth, her hair whipping around it. Her fingers dug into his chest, holding on for dear life.
Finally, arching his back, Longarm drove the bar of flesh that was both velvet and iron as deeply into her as it would go, and held it there as his climax exploded from him. Spurt after spurt of the thick seed boiled from his manhood and filled her to the brim. Her own climax burst at the same time in a series of shudders that rolled through her. Longarm threw his head back and groaned through clenched teeth as the last of his juices welled out of him.
Claudette collapsed on top of him, her breasts flattening against his chest. Both of them were breathing heavily, their bodies slicked with sweat from the humid heat of the bayou country--and the heat of their lovemaking. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder for a moment. Then Longarm cupped her chin and turned her toward him so that he could kiss her. His lips brushed hers with a tenderness that might not have been possible had he not already been sated. In fact, as he tasted the sweet, hot wetness of her mouth, another throb went through his shaft, which was still buried within her. The reaction made her give a throaty little noise almost like the purr of a cat.
"I am so happy--happy I find you in that marsh, Custis," she whispered.
"You and me both, Claudette," he told her. "You and me both."
CHAPTER 8
As Claudette had predicted, Longarm was able to hitch a ride into New Orleans the next morning with a farmer who was taking a load of produce into town to the market near the docks. That put Longarm close to Gallatin Street too, so he was able to walk to the Brass Pelican. The door of the gambling club was locked when he got there, however, so he pounded on the panel and waited to see if anyone was going to open it.
His thoughts went back to Claudette. She had awakened him that morning when dawn was just beginning to gray the sky, and a mighty nice way of waking up it had been. She had been kneeling beside the bunk, her head bobbing up and down over his groin as she sucked on his manhood. He had caught hold of her shoulder and tried to pull her up onto the bunk with him, but her lips and tongue had ceased what they were doing long enough for her to say, "No! You leave him where he is. That what I want, me."