Longarm lay back and let Flo take her pleasure. She prolonged it as much as possible, stopping her hip rotations more and more often for shorter and shorter periods as she fell into the urging of her mounting ecstasy. Then, her blond hair streaming down to enclose Longarm's head and shoulders in a golden tent, she rocked herself up and down until the flood of joy poured hot and wet. Longarm did not let her rest. While she was still limp and trembling, he pulled her higher on the bed and rolled on top of her.
"Not right away!" Flo protested. "I just came more than I ever did in my life before!"
"It ain't too soon. You'll like it better, now your edge is off."
He was already moving, thrusting with full, slow strokes, not hurrying, using only part of his weight and strength. For the first few minutes Flo could only lie quiet and receive him, panting from her own exertions of moments earlier. A little at a time she came to life. Longarm felt her inner muscles responding to his measured churning and began to move faster and drive harder. Flo's eyes were squeezed shut and her lips were opening and closing as little birdlike cries escaped them in rhythm with the movements of his rising and falling hips.
Longarm built to the final moments as fast as Flo did. The time came for him to let his body set its own rhythm, and he did. He pounded with fast, repeated drives until he could hear Flo's clear, small ululations only dimly as they became a single treble note. He could feel her body's pulsing as it drew him into her with force added to greater force until the gushing he could no longer hold back drained him and he dropped spent upon her.
When their breathing had quieted, Flo said with a sigh, "I didn't think anything could be better than last night. My God, was it only last night that we fucked under the frees?"
"That's when it was."
"Well, last night was good, but tonight's better."
"We didn't feel like taking our time then. Too many worries on our mind."
"Yes." Flo lay quietly for a moment. "You know, Custis," she confessed, "I like to think about fucking almost as much as I like to fuck. Especially when I'm around somebody like you."
"Most folks do, I guess. Only damned few of 'em are honest enough to admit it."
"People are such damned fools. Sometimes I think~"
Whatever it was Flo thought was lost in an insistent rapping on the door. Longarm glanced at his Colt to be sure it was in place before calling, "Who is it?"
"Is me, Coos-tees! Let me in! I got to find out is true, what I am hear!"
"What'd you hear, Lita?"
"I will tell you when you let me in!"
"Damn it, I can't. I'm busy."
"If is la rubia in there, I don' care, Coos-tees. Is you I wan' to talk to!" Lita said insistently.
"Oh, let her in," Flo told him. "I don't care if she sees what I've got; I've shown damn near as much on the stage. Might do her good to have something to compare herself to. And unless I'm a bad guesser, she's seen what you've got more than once."
Reluctantly and somewhat suspiciously, Longarm got off the bed, slipped his Colt from the holster, and opened the door just wide enough to let Lita enter. Her eyes widened when she saw Flo's pink and gold nakedness lying relaxed on the rumpled bed, but she ran to Longarm and grabbed him in a tight embrace.
"Is true, Coos-tees? Is true, this thing I hear?"
"You tell me what you heard and I'll tell you if it's true."
For the first time, Lita saw that he was holding his pistol. She cried out, "Is true, or else you don' got to be so careful not to let me in until you get la pistola! You think I bring somebody to shoot you, yes? Ay, Coos-tees! You don' trust me!"
"Sure I trust you, Lita. Now settle down. I let you in, didn't I? What did you hear that's got you so wrought up?"
"Down in the plaza, they talk about how you make the fight with el capitan rurale tomorrow, the fight with pistolas. Is true? You do this, Coos-tees?"
"Sure it's true. But that's not much to get worked up over."
"Maybe she's worked up because I'm here," Flo suggested.
"Is not so!" Lita objected. "I don' care if Coos-tees make chinga with you, rubia. But I rather he do it with me!"
"Come on to bed with us, then," Flo laughed. "He's man enough to handle both of us. And I want to find out more about this gunfight you've got set for tomorrow, Custis. You didn't say anything to me about it, any more than you did to Lita. Honey," she said to the girl, "it looks to me like we're in about the same boat. You might as well get off your clothes and enjoy the voyage."
"You mean this thing?" Lita asked. A corner of her mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile.
"Sure I do. We both want the same thing from the same man. No reason for us to fight, is there, when we can share?"
"Coos-tees?" Lita appealed to Longarm. "Is all right if I stay?"
"If you feel like you want to," he told her. He was thinking of the last time he'd shared a bed with two passionate women. That was in Cripple Creek, with the Stowers sisters. "If Flo says you're welcome, I sure do, too."
"Good! Then I stay!"
Lita's fingers flashed nimbly at the waistband of her skirt and it dropped to the floor at her feet. Longarm remembered that, like tonight, she'd worn nothing under it the night on the sandspit. She pulled at the neck-string of her low-cut blouse, shrugged it off her shoulders, and let it slip down her body to fall atop the skirt. She went to the bed and lay down beside Flo. Longarm felt himself getting hard just looking at them: Flo's soft white skin, pink breast rosettes and blond hair and bush; Lita's perfect contrast of smooth brown skin, her dark nipples budding in anticipation, her groin a mystery of midnight.
Flo looked at Longarm and started chuckling. "You see, Lita? I told you it'd be all right. He's thinking about you right now."
Lita was smiling, too. "Then come here, Coos-tees. Dame su grifo magnifico! Dame todo! Maybe I show you las triguenas tienen mas deluce como las rubias!"
Longarm didn't wait for her to ask a second time.
* * *
Darkness still filled the room when Longarm snapped awake. At once, his mind jumped ahead to the appointment that was waiting for him at daybreak. Then memories of the night came back, a confusion of warm, seeking mouths and hard-tipped breasts, of legs and thighs brown and white upraised and clamped around him, of clutching hands and wet inner recesses flowing hot while he strained to fill them. At some time, quite early, Lita had shed her anger and jealousy. She and Flo had become friends of a sort, joining together to please Longarm, lying side by side while he moved from one to the other, from brown to pink to brown and back to pink, sustaining their frenzy while increasing his, and never knowing who'd be partners during the instants of the final spasm.
While all three had lain exhausted for brief interludes of recovery, he'd told them of the duel that was to take place at dawn, and both had kissed him tenderly, their eyes shaded with a fear that all his calm assurances couldn't drive away. It had been Flo who'd ended the night, persuading Lita to leave when she did, so that Longarm could sleep. And when they'd left, he'd slept the deep, sound sleep of exhaustion after pleasure.
A light gray tinge was marking the window of Longarm's room. He held his hands up and studied them in silhouette against the faint light, watching for a twitch or tremor. They were both rock-steady. He stretched. He didn't feel tired, just pleasantly relaxed. He rolled out of bed and dressed quickly, wishing he had a fresh Prince Albert coat to put on. He took one wake-up sip out of the rye bottle, and savored its warmth and bite. Then he collected his possibles, distributing them in their accustomed pockets, and gave his Colt a final quick inspection after he'd adjusted his holster to the exact position where he wanted it to rest.