Longarm and the Banker's Daughter (9781101613375) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Lacy insisted on doing the cooking while Longarm lazed back against his saddle with a cup of coffee liberally laced with Maryland rye, taking the rest she said he so richly deserved after springing her tender flesh from the trap of the Heck Gunn Bunch.

Of course, she hadn't called her flesh tender. That was Longarm's opinion, watching her crouch over the fire to fry the fish in his cast-iron skillet, shifting the fillets around with a fork.

He enjoyed the play of the fire's umber light in her honey-blond hair and how it shifted back and forth across her low-cut blouse, causing mysterious shadows to dip down into the crease between those magnificent orbs. He hadn't had a woman since he'd last left Denver chasing long-coulee riders in southern New Mexico, nigh on two months ago now! That might not have been a long time for some men, but for a man like Custis P. Long, for whom the soft flesh of a woman was almost as critical as food and water, that was damn near a lifetime.

He wished that Lacy would at least take the spare denim jacket he'd offered her, or wrap his blanket around her shoulders against the descending night chill. He needed some relief from the view. But she'd said the fire was all the warmth she needed. “For now,” she'd added, glancing at him from beneath her honey-colored brows.

That had sent another spear of unadulterated passion through his loins, causing his longhandles to grow tighter across his crotch and under his balls. He squeezed his steaming cup tighter in his hands and took a badly needed sip of the bracing toddy. He thought he heard her chuckling but when he looked at her again, she was adding another chunk of pine to the fire, straight-faced.

There was plenty of fish, and Longarm ate heartily. When they were finished, once again Lacy insisted on doing the chores. She poured Longarm a fresh cup of coffee, splashed some whiskey in after it, and trotted off to the creek to wash their dishes.

Damn fine woman, Longarm thought. Damn fine. Almost wish . . .

Nah. He wasn't the marrying kind. Besides, once you marry a woman, everything changes. He'd heard about that stark reality more than a few times. Still . . .

When Lacy came back to the fire, she gave a shiver, then wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She dragged her saddle over close to Longarm and lay back against it, and for the next forty-five minutes or so drank coffee spiced with the good rye whiskey and talked in a slow, leisurely way, sort of getting to know each other, enjoying the fire's warmth, pointing out shooting stars.

Finally, Lacy finished her coffee, set the cup down beside the fire to which she added several more branches, and proceeded to unbutton her blouse while staring down at Longarm. He stared up at her, one brow arched.

She didn't say anything until she'd tossed the blouse down on the ground near his crossed boots, had lifted the thin chemise up and over her head, and had tossed that down, as well. She had her back to the fire, so she was mostly in silhouette. But he could still see her naked, proudly upturned breasts rising and falling slowly as she breathed.

“Miss Lacy,” Longarm said, tossing back the last of his own coffee and rye, “I do believe you're going to catch your death of cold.”

She gave a shiver and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I would like to show my appreciation, Custis,” she said smokily, “in about the only way I know how. Call me wanton, if you wish. Even call me a whore. But I wouldn't offer what I'm offering you to just any man. Only one who so bravely risked his life for mine.”

She dropped to her knees beside him, leaned slowly forward, staring into his eyes, and lay her hands on his crotch, sliding them up and down his member that had begun hardening the moment she'd started unbuttoning her blouse. She flicked a finger across a fly button.

“May I?”

“Why not?”

Keeping her eyes on his, she unbuttoned his fly, then poked a hand inside his pants. She shoved it through the fly of his longhandles and wrapped her hand around his ever-hardening member. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, my! So . . .” She pumped it gently. “. . . Big!”

Longarm groaned.

She pulled it out of his pants and wrapped both hands around the base of it standing up now at full attention, firelight caressing the swollen head. He could feel his pulse pounding in it as she slid one of her hands very slowly up its length, gazing down at the fully engorged staff as though mesmerized. The night's cool air wrapped around it, relieved by the warmth of her hands. Her breasts sloped down against his right thigh, and then they mashed against it as she lowered her head, stuck out her tongue, which shone redly in the firelight, and touched it to the end of his cock.

He jerked at the thrill of her warm, wet tongue against his member and the pressure of her breasts against his thigh. Her hair shone radiantly in the fire's glow, as did her eyes, though most of her face was in mysterious, relentlessly alluring shadow. She rolled her green-silver eyes up to his coquettishly, still touching her tongue to the tip of his throbbing hard-on.

“Like that?”

Longarm grunted.

Her mouth stretched slightly as she smiled. “Bet you're gonna like this even more,” she said in a taunting singsong.

He watched as well as felt her mouth close over the mushroom head of his cock and then slide slowly, slowly down its iron-hard length. He threw his head back a little, grinding the heels of his hands into the ground on either side of him, the prickling of the pine needles and sand somehow enhancing the sweet, intoxicating caress of her hot lips sliding slowly down the length of him. When he felt the head of his shaft snugged tightly against her throat, he heard her gag very quietly from deep in her chest, her throat contracting sweetly against him, as she turned her head from side to side, as though enjoying the pressure of his cock snuggling fast against her tonsils.

Then she drew her mouth back and pulled her lips off the swollen head with a wet sucking sound. She laughed huskily as she drew several deep breaths, smiling up at him radiantly, then lowering her head again, thrusting his cock back against his belly and licking his balls.

“Ah, shit,” Longarm said, gazing up at the stars, only vaguely noticing one arcing across the sky, shedding sparks, while her warm, wet tongue slathered his balls before sliding up his cock once more.

Again, her mouth closed over him. His cock slid deep, deep down into her throat once more, but then she pulled her mouth back to the head quickly and lowered it again just as quickly. Her head bobbed over his crotch as she slid her mouth quickly up and down his cock, her lips like warm, damp silk. Gently, she turned her head from side to side as she blew him, and he ground his hands harder and harder against the ground, his eyes open wide, teeth gritted.

This was how he wanted to die, he thought. Just like this . . .

When she had his blood boiling, she stood and quickly shed her skirt. Kicking it away, she placed a bare foot on either side of him and dropped to her knees, straddling him, leaning forward, lowering her head, and reaching between her thighs to wrap a hand around his cock that was so hard he thought the skin would split like an overcooked sausage.

He wrapped his hand around each of her breasts sloping toward his chest. The areolae were large, the pink nipples hard. The orbs were every bit as firm as he thought they were, pointing slightly up and sideways—a generous handful each.

Longarm sucked a sharp breath as she slid the head of his cock against her crotch. He could feel the silky tickle of her pubic hair, the petal-soft folds of her snatch as she teased him against her, making her wetter and wetter until with a little grunt she leaned forward and ground her pelvis down on top of his.

His cock slid up deep inside her. She expanded and contracted around him, like a grasping hand, and then she rose up and fell back down.

Rose and fell.

Rose and fell.

Her hair slid across his face and his chest, tickling.

If I were to die tonight,
the lawman thought,
what a way to go!

But it wasn't his time. He just wasn't ready yet, he told himself sternly as he closed his hand over the Colt that lay holstered at his side, under the coil of his shell belt.

Hearing the brush snapping around him, he slid the pistol from the holster just as Lacy ground her pelvis against him once more, squirming and grunting and squeezing her knees against his ribs. It took an extreme force of will to do what he did next, just as the girl lifted her beautiful rump in the air, sliding her honey-moist pussy to the end of his cock.

Raising his Colt in his right hand, he planted his left hand on the girl's shoulder and heaved her aside with a great grunt and chuff of expelled air while at the same time he drew aim at the pair of wolflike red eyes showing from the other side of the fire and just beyond its sphere of dancing umber light. The man-wolf crouched there shouted, “He sees us!” as he jerked a rifle up.

Longarm's Colt roared, and the wolf eyes disappeared with a shriek. As Lacy yelled, “Not yet, you sons o' bitches!” Longarm jerked up to a sitting position and fired at two shadows jostling in the trees to his left.

Pow! Pow!

One man yelped. Another cursed.

Longarm fired two more times at the thrashing figures, then heaved himself to a crouching position and, cocked Colt extended straight out before him, turned his head quickly from right to left and back again, pivoting on his hips, scouring the camp's perimeter for a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

Something moved in the direction in which the wolf eyes had shone. Longarm walked over to see a short, hatless man in a short bear coat crawling off into the brush.

“Hold it,” Longarm said.

The figure stopped, flopped over on his butt. Blue steel winked in the starlight. Longarm's Colt roared. The slug tore through the middle of the man's forehead, basting the ground behind him with dark, white-speckled fluid. His head bobbed and then fell back along with the rest of him onto the ground.

Brush crackled to Longarm's left, in the direction of the creek. Boots thudded. A man wheezed and grunted, and then Longarm heard one of his bushwhackers wading into the stream.

Longarm glanced back toward the fire, saw Lacy stretched out on her back on his bedroll, propped on her arms. She was naked, sweat-slick skin glowing like brass in the firelight.

Longarm wagged his gun at her. “Stay put,” he said, edging his voice with steel.

She merely shrugged as she watched him.

Reloading his Colt, he strode toward the creek, but by the time he got to the edge of the water, a tall man in a black hat was pushing up onto the far bank. He was limping and cursing under his breath. Longarm extended the Colt, emptied it quickly.

Bam! Bam! Bam-Bam! Bam-Bam!

The man fell on the other side of the creek with a thud.

Longarm turned back to the fire.

Lacy lay as before, propped on her arms, legs spread. He moved toward her. He stopped and crouched over one of the two dead men, touched two fingers to the man's neck. Dead. Stepping over the carcass of the owlhoot he recognized as Jim Riley, one of the Heck Gunn's bunch, he continued to the fire and looked down at Lacy. The honey-blond stared up at him, her eyes coy.

“How did you?” she asked.

“How long you think I've been at this?”

She shrugged her shoulders. Her nipples pointed at him. She had done nothing whatever to cover herself, and it rankled him. “A few years, I reckon.”

“Hell, I spotted the mare's tail of dust on our back trail early this morning. When we stopped here, they pulled up behind the bluff on the other side of the creek. I heard every move they made. Knew you were only trying to keep me distracted so they could fill me with lead.”

He squatted beside the fire and filled his cup with piping hot coffee.

“These three might be dead,” Lacy said in a faintly jeering voice. “But there's plenty more where they came from, and in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a very valuable prize.” She spread her knees a little farther apart, until a pink circle, like a small rose blossom, shone in the darkness of her snatch. “Since there's really no hope for you, we might as well finish what we started, don't you think, Custis?”

Chapter 3

“No point in goin' to sleep frustrated,” Lacy added, wagging one knee and making that pink rose between her legs open its tender blossom still farther. She stuck the tip of her right thumb between her lips, and bit down on the nail.

Longarm stared at her. His heart began thudding again. Her long, slanted cat eyes glowed in the firelight. She wagged her knee. He looked around the camp. Except for the dead men, they were alone.

Obviously, Gunn and Cruz had sent only those three to retrieve their prize. Would they send more? If they did, they wouldn't likely show up till tomorrow. Maybe not ever, if the main gang decided to keep drifting without Lacy. After all, they had over thirty thousand in bank loot. That was enough to soothe the loss.

Longarm looked at Lacy again. His heart hammered his breastbone. He kicked out of his boots and shucked out of his clothes. As he did, he kept his Colt in his right hand. Naked, he followed his jutting member over to the girl and knelt down between her spread legs. Just then she reached above her head and pulled a pistol out from under his saddle. He smashed his own pistol down hard on the Remington.

“Damn you!” she screamed.

“You think I didn't notice that jake yonder didn't have a pistol on him?”

He tossed the Remington into the brush, set his Colt down just right of his naked right hip, and mounted her. She reached up and roughly raked her hands across the slabs of his hard chest, then ran them through his hair, snaking her legs around his waist and grinding her heels into his back.

“How did you know about me?” she said angrily, bucking up against him as he drove his shaft into her hard.

“That you were in with ole Heck from the start? I didn't know,” he said. “At least, I wasn't sure until you started throwing yourself at me. If you'd been a little more ladylike, you might have kept the wool over my eyes.”

He drove his cock into her again, slid it back, then pushed it inside her once more—slow, purposeful thrusts, feeling the heat in his loins building. She dug her heels into his ass harder, wrapped her arms around his neck, forced his face down to her tits, which he raked with his nose and bullhorn mustache as he fucked her.

“You bastard,” she said, grunting and groaning, bucking up against him. “Oh, you fucking bastard!”

“Not very nice talk coming from the banker's daughter.”

“You think I care? I was so goddamn tired of being tied to that house and that piano and my father's library, hardly able to venture out to the woodshed to stroke myself without Mother or one of the maids coming along to make sure I wasn't meeting a boy out there.”

“How'd you throw in with Heck?”

“Saturdays my mother and that nasty ole father of mine—you should see the way he looks at me sometimes, when I'm wearing something as low cut as that red blouse you couldn't take your eyes off of!—hop in their buggy for a ride in the country, paying social calls on bank patrons. Good business, you know, to make the simple farm and ranch folk think they're Daddy's personal friends.”

She chuckled and groaned as Longarm slid his cock in and out of her. “Oh, Jesus, you fuck good, you bastard! Your cock is twice the size of Heck's. Oh, shit, I hate you!”

She punched his shoulders as she writhed beneath him, sucking her lower lip.

“And . . . ?” he prodded.

“And Heck's bunch rode into our backyard one day. They were skirting town, on their way from a stagecoach robbery, and I found them winching up water from our well. Heck started sparking me, showed how much money his gang had taken from that Well's Fargo strongbox, and I told him I knew where he could get a whole lot more than that. And after he got it, my father wouldn't allow the Jawbone marshal to go after him . . . if he had me along . . . oh,
gawd, you're good with that thing
!”

“How were you so sure he wouldn't leave you high and dry?”

She smiled up at him devilishly as he thrust his engorged shaft into her harder and harder. “You know
exactly
why, you bastard!” She lifted her head and raked out an evil, echoing laugh.

After a few more minutes of their savage toil, she dropped her hands to the ground at her sides, lifted her chin, and arched her back. Longarm thrust against her and into her once more, rising up on his toes, and felt the sweet release of his seed jetting deep into her womb. At the same time, he closed a hand over her mouth to squelch her shriek.

When they'd finished spasming, he gave each one of her delicious breasts a brusque squeeze, then pulled his cock out of her and stood. Breathing hard, he tossed wood on the fire, then looked at her, lying there and hooking her hands around her ankles, rolling from side to side and staring up at him, moaning.

The fire brazed her beautifully.

Strange, he thought, for one so incredibly beautiful and beguilingly sexy to be as mean and nasty as a bobcat. He'd known bad women before. Plenty. But none that looked as pure and as purely ravishing as Miss Lacy Sackett.

“You won't tell Daddy, will you?” she said in a frightened little girl's voice, half pouting, keeping her legs spread for him, fiercely coquettish.

Longarm felt the perspiration from their heated coupling dribble down his back as the fire caressed the backs of his legs with its warmth. As he stared at her—Christ, his eyes couldn't get enough of her!—he pondered what he was indeed going to tell her daddy. What was he going to do with her? A girl like her could do some serious damage. She damn well needed to be put away. He had to report her to the Jawbone marshal.

But could he do it?

She crawled over to him, climbed to her knees, her head about a foot away from his crotch and his long, thick, drooping member. She leaned forward and kissed its head. He jerked as desire sparked in him once more.

“If what we did earlier didn't convince you that you really don't want to tell Daddy about what I did, I bet, given a little more time this evening, Custis, I can make it very plain and simple for you.” She blinked slowly and smiled up at him.

Longarm had to break himself out of the trance she'd put him in. Beginning to believe she was a witch, he stepped away from her and stooped to retrieve his balbriggans. “Enough of that,” he said. “I'm taking you back to Jawbone first thing in the morning.”

“You won't tell Daddy, will you?” she asked, still kneeling where he'd left her. “I mean, it's not like he'd believe you, anyway. No one in town would ever believe I'd be capable of such a thing.”

Stepping into his pants, Longarm looked at her. He didn't doubt that what she was saying was true. Hell, he hardly believed it himself and she'd confessed the whole thing to him! Or maybe it was just that he didn't want to believe it because of the obvious hold she had on him.

And if she had that hold on him, a stranger, what kind of hold did she have on dear ole Daddy and the Jawbone town marshal and every other red-blooded male in Jawbone? Longarm buttoned his fly and decided he'd have to sleep on what he was or was not going to tell the menfolk of Jawbone about the lovely but troubling Lacy Sackett.

In the meantime, he said, “Get dressed and get to sleep. You stay put. If you try runnin' out on me, I'll bind you hand and foot.” He went over and picked up the Remington he'd tossed in the brush. “And it'll be a long pull back to Jawbone draped belly down across a saddle. Got it?”

“Boy!” she said, cupping her breasts in her hands and looking indignant. “You sure are serious all of a sudden!”

Then she chuckled and started gathering her clothes.

Longarm tossed the Remington through the trees and heard it splash in the creek. When he'd wrapped his own cartridge belt and Colt around his waist, he retrieved the other guns from the two dead men lying at the perimeter of the firelight, then dragged both bodies upstream about fifty yards. The night predators could have them.

As he worked, he kept an eye on the camp. After dressing, Lacy had rolled into Longarm's blankets and was now curled on her side near the built-up fire and appeared to be sleeping. He walked over and stared down at her. She looked like a damn angel, sleeping with her left cheek resting atop her hands that were in turn resting atop his saddle.

Her cheek was smooth and creamy, silky hair sprayed across it. Her shoulders rose and fell slowly, regularly beneath the blankets.

Asleep, all right. In his blankets. He was about to lie with her again, but he was afraid of the hold she had on him. And getting caught with his pants literally down if Heck Gunn and Orlando Cruz came for her, with more men. Longarm knew they had a good dozen in their group—all gun-savvy desperadoes who looted all across western New Mexico and southern Colorado and then disappeared for long stretches of time either in the Colorado mountains or Arizona. Possibly Mexico.

That's probably where they'd been headed when Longarm had caught up to them and snatched the girl away. The others were probably still heading south, Gunn having figured that the three he'd sent here were all that was needed to get his precious hostage back. Right now, the rest of the gang was probably well on their way to Mexico.

Longarm made another pot of coffee and sat on a log near the fire but stared into the darkness to save his night vision. He plucked a three-for-a-nickel cheroot from the pocket of his frock coat, fired it with a lucifer, and drank the coffee and smoked the cigar, pondering his situation.

He'd like to try to run down the Gunn and Cruz gang and retrieve the money they'd stolen from Alexander Sackett's bank in Jawbone. But the girl had thrown a wet blanket over that fire. He had to get her safely back to Jawbone. He had to get her locked up. If he didn't, he wouldn't be doing his job and he'd only be turning her loose to commit sins similar to those she'd already committed.

Or worse.

He wished he hadn't fucked her. That made things more complicated. Damn unprofessional, fucking your prisoner.

If only he'd been able to resist her. But she was no ordinary prisoner . . .

He turned his head to look at her sleeping there by the fire, her blond hair glowing as though from celestial light. He shook his head. What man could resist her?

He stared into the night and drank and smoked until his head was relatively clear. He decided that his first task was to get the lusty Lacy Sackett back to Jawbone, inform her father and the local law what she'd done and hope they believed him and not her. Then he'd send a telegraph message to Chief Marshal Billy Vail in Denver, recounting the trouble he'd incurred in Jawbone, and leave it up to his boss to tell him how to proceed from there.

That decided, he tossed the stub of his cheroot into the fire and, with his rifle on his arm, headed off to circle the camp a few times. Deeming the area free of predators—at least the human kind—he came back and shrugged into his heavy mackinaw. He looked down at the girl.

She'd rolled over in her sleep, and the blanket had fallen down her arm. He found himself lifting it back up to her chin automatically and chuckled. She looked as helpless as a newborn kitten, but in her heart of hearts lurked a dangerous wildcat.

“Thanks, Custis,” she said, squirming around and clutching the blanket close about her neck. She smacked her lips, settled herself against the saddle and the ground, and soon she was breathing deeply, evenly once more.

“Don't mention it,” Longarm said, giving a low growl.

He headed off to scour the trees for enough firewood to get him through the night. He couldn't sleep now, knowing that more desperadoes might be headed in Longarm's direction.

With the fire freshly stoked, he sat down against a tree at the edge of the firelight, rifle across his thighs, and sort of half dozed with his eyes open and his ears skinned. When the first light of dawn shone in the east, he rose, rebuilt the fire, then hunkered down against his tree again, waiting for the sun to rise. There was no point starting out until it was full light; he didn't want to risk injury to either of his two horses. Getting trapped afoot out here would make him easy pickings for Gunn and Cruz.

An hour later, when the sun was lifting above the eastern ridges, he rose, prodded Lacy awake with his boot toe, endured her cussing him a blue streak, then built up the fire. He ordered her to put some coffee on while he saddled the horses.

“Fuck you, you son of a bitch!” she fairly screamed at him.

“I made that mistake once,” he said, hauling their gear over to where the horses stood in the trees. “Ain't gonna do it again.”

She stepped into her black boots, grabbing the coffeepot and stomping off toward the creek. When she returned, he'd saddled his own horse and was working on her black.

“Longarm?” she said as she set the pot on the fire. Her tone had changed. It was almost polite, even demure. There'd been a sexy tinkle in it.

“Yes, Lacy?” he said with a wry snort.

“I've got a proposition for you.”

Longarm glanced at her over his shoulder. “I already told you I wouldn't be doin' that again, but thanks for askin'.”

“No—that's not what I meant,” she said, standing by the fire and wringing her hands together shyly.

“I don't care what you mean,” Longarm said. “Whatever it is, it's out of the question. You're headin' for the Jawbone town jail. We'll let a judge decide your fate.”

He noticed that the black seemed to be standing a little light on one hoof. When he'd adjusted Lacy's left saddle stirrup, he pried up the horse's hoof to inspect it. There appeared to be a small rock lodged beneath the shoe. Just as he was about to pull out his pocket knife, he heard running foot thuds and lifted his head in time to see Lacy running toward him like an enraged lioness, hair flying, face a mask of unadulterated fury.

She had a rock in her hand, and as she drew within ten feet of him, she gave an enraged shriek and hurled the rock with all her might at Longarm's head.