Blood Wedding

12

Her horse’s reins were tied to a tree limb, and Angel stood there, her hands on her hips. She was wearing only her shirt, and it hung down just far enough to cover the part of her body that Fargo automatically looked for. Her legs were slim and white, tapering to trim ankles. The sunlight fell through the leaves and dappled her dark hair.

“I thought maybe I’d lost you,” she said.

“That’s not as easy to do as you think,” Fargo told her, halting the Ovaro. “Aren’t you afraid you might get the grippe, dressed like that?”

Angel gave him a languorous smile and said, “You mean undressed, don’t you?”

“I guess I do.”

“The weather’s still warm. I don’t think I’ll get sick. Why don’t you get down off that horse so we can talk. I don’t like looking up at you. It hurts my neck.”

Fargo slid off the Ovaro, led it over to a nearby tree, and looped the reins over a branch.

“I knew you’d follow me,” Angel said. “So I thought I’d come somewhere we could have a little privacy.”

Fargo looked around. They were in a little clearing in the trees, with the only real opening being the narrow cut that he’d just ridden out of. He could hear some birds in the trees, and a squirrel chattered away somewhere nearby. But there was nothing else to hear, not even the sluggish flow of the creek. Fargo didn’t think there was much danger that anyone would find them there.

“You picked a good spot,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

For an answer Angel started to unbutton the shirt. She took her time about it, letting Fargo wonder a while about what he was going to see, but eventually she got it done. The shirt hung loosely on her, but she’d been careful not to let it gape open. Fargo could still see no more than he’d seen when he first arrived.

Angel smiled. “You remember what I said when you asked me if I was ready?”

Fargo nodded. “You said you were always ready.”

“That’s right, and now you’re about to find out just how ready I am.”

She took both hands and opened the shirt, holding it wide.

Fargo saw that her breasts were even bigger than he’d thought, standing high and proud, with their erect nipples pointing straight at him like bullets. Her waist was small enough for him to circle with his two hands and emphasized the curve of her hips. The crisp hair on her mound was as black as the hair on her head, and it was thickly tangled. The puckered red wound in her shoulder didn’t detract from her beauty at all.

“The question is,” Angel said, “are you ready, Fargo?”

“I’m as ready as anybody ever was,” Fargo said, which was the truth if he’d ever told it.

Angel let the shirt fall to the ground and walked to where a nearby tree shaded a pile of leaves that Fargo thought she must have gathered there while waiting for him to catch up with her. She lay down on the leaves, careful not to hurt her shoulder, and let his eyes take her in. As he watched, she spread her legs and let her fingers play with her dense pubic hair for a moment before allowing her middle finger to slip into the enticing crack between her legs. She let the finger remain motionless for a second or two before rubbing herself lightly. Her hips wiggled, her lips parted, and she moaned deep in her throat, letting her finger slip inside herself.

“What the hell are you waiting for, Fargo?” she said huskily after a moment had passed. “I don’t want to have to do this all by myself.”

Fargo didn’t want her to have to, but it occurred to him that she might have led him into some kind of trap. He didn’t see how that could be, though. She didn’t have a gun unless she’d found one hidden in the trees, which seemed highly doubtful. And there was no one else within miles as far as Fargo could tell. Just the birds and squirrel, and not even the squirrel was silent. Fargo shucked his clothes off as quickly as he could and joined her on the leaves.

She immediately moved her hand from herself to his erection, which was already standing at attention like a soldier on parade. Her fingers were wet and slick from the caresses she’d given herself. She slid them up and down the length of Fargo’s iron-hard shaft.

“You could use that for a club if you got in a brawl,” Angel said.

“It might not be as much like a club if I were in a fight,” Fargo said. “It needs a little encouragement.”

“Why don’t I give it some, then?”

Angel turned over on him and took him in her mouth. Its soft wet heat engulfed him, and she teased the tip of his pole with her tongue before taking him deeper and deeper. He looked at her through hooded eyes and saw that she had her hand busy between her legs.

“I can take care of that job for you,” he said, taking her hips in his hands and positioning her so that he could get to her dripping honey pot with his mouth and tongue. He let his tongue glide over her, and she shuddered in pleasure. He kept it up for a while and then quickly slipped his tongue into her. As soon as he did it, she jerked as if she’d been shot.

“Ohhhhhhhhhh!” she said. “My sweet Jesus! Ohhhhhhhhh!”

She collapsed on him and lay there for a while, breathing heavily. Finally she rose and got off him, lying back on the leaves.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Angel said. “Good Lord!”

Fargo didn’t say anything.

“It didn’t do you much good did it?” Angel said. She reached for him with her hand and found him as hard as ever. “When you say you’re ready, you really do mean it. I’m sorry it’s all over.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve, you know . . . finished. I didn’t mean for it to happen like that, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

She hadn’t had as much experience as Fargo thought she had. Either that, or the men she’d known hadn’t had much stamina. The fact that she’d finished only once was hardly a drawback to what was about to happen. Fargo was a little disappointed in Jed for just a second, but then he forgot all about him.

“You haven’t finished,” Fargo said. “You just think you have. I’ll show you.”

He started by kissing her breasts, then flicking the nipples with his tongue before taking each one into his mouth in its turn. To what seemed like Angel’s surprise, her nipples grew hot and hard again, and her breasts engorged. Fargo let his own fingers get to work doing what Angel’s had been doing earlier. She moaned and sighed, and her hips wiggled on the bed of leaves that rustled beneath her.

Fargo rose up and parted her legs, positioning himself between them. His rampant erection jutted out in front of him like a spear, and Angel took it in both hands.

“You were right, Fargo. It’s not too late. This is what I need, and I need it now. Give it to me!”

Fargo needed no further invitation. Being careful of her shoulder, he buried himself in her right up to the limit.

“Ahhhhhhh!” Angel said, her head twisting to the side, her mouth wide and wanton.

Fargo held her pinned there for a while before starting to move. When he slid out, he went back in almost immediately. It was as if Angel had somehow pulled him back inside, and his strokes became faster and faster, with Angel thrashing beneath him as if she were having some kind of seizure.

Fargo was just at the point of explosion when Angel suddenly became still. He thought for an instant that he might have hurt her shoulder, but it wasn’t that. It was only the calm before the tornado struck. She bucked under him like an unbroken pony. She bounced him, jounced him, and nearly threw him off. And then she climaxed.

“Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh!”

Soon Fargo joined her. He felt entirely drained, and Angel couldn’t say a thing. They lay side by side and waited until their hearts stopped trying to beat through their chests.

After several minutes, Angel said, “It’s too bad you’re the kind of man you are, Fargo.”

“What kind of man is that?”

“The same kind that Jed was. Well, you’re certainly different in one way. But I’m not talking about that. He was stiff-necked and honest, and it got him killed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being honest,” Fargo said. “It’s the way most people are.”

“Not my people. We haven’t been that way for a long time. Not since my mother was killed.”

“What happened to her?”

“It happened a few years ago. My pa was a farmer, just like all these people around here. He probably would have stayed one if it hadn’t been for the free-staters and the slavery crowd.”

Fargo wondered what that had to do with anything, but he figured if he waited, Angel would tell him.

“My pa was like these farmers you’re staying with,” she went on. “He didn’t care one way or the other about slavery or what happened to other people. He just wanted to be left alone to get his crops in and take care of me and Paul and our mother.”

She didn’t look at Fargo when she mentioned Paul’s name. She was probably thinking about how he had died.

“One day, my mother went to town. Alice. Her name was Alice, but I never called her that. There was a fight there that day between the free-staters and some of the people who favored slavery. She got caught in the middle, for no reason. She was just there. But she got killed anyway.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Fargo said, meaning it. “But I don’t see what it has to do with your father’s war against the farmers here. Looks like his quarrel is with somebody else.”

“That’s not the way he sees it. He thinks people should have done something about my mother, but nobody ever did. She was just in the way, they said, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault that she died. That was the way people looked at it. Pa tried to do something, but nobody listened to him. He came home one night and told me and Paul that he was going to make people sorry they’d ever messed with the Murray family. He was going to get revenge on the ones responsible, and on everybody else besides. Nobody was ever going to cross the Murrays again. The world belonged to the strong and the violent, he said, and he was going to be as strong and as violent as anybody in it.”

“That’s not going to do a lot of good for your mother,” Fargo said.

“No, it’s not.” Angel sat up and then got to her feet. “It seems to do a lot for Pa, though, and Paul understood. Now Paul’s gone, and somebody’s going to have to pay for that.”

Fargo stood beside her. He thought he might as well try to explain things to her one more time, for all the good it would do.

“It was as much your father’s fault that Paul died as it was anybody’s,” he said. “If you hadn’t been out to get revenge on Jed, both of them would be alive, and quite a few others would, too. Sarah Johnson. Tom Talley. Just to name a couple of them.”

“You don’t understand,” Angel said. She began getting into her clothes. “There’s more to it than I’ve told you.”

Fargo started to get dressed as well. When he was finished, he said, “Why don’t you tell me what else there is about what’s going on around here.”

“That’s not for me to do. I’m not even sure I know exactly what it is. Pa doesn’t tell me everything, the way he did Paul. You’ve been fun, Fargo, but I have to keep some of my secrets, even though you’ve treated me better than any man ever has, even Jed. You know a few tricks he didn’t, and I appreciate it.”

“I’d say the pleasure was all mine,” Fargo told her, “but you and I both know better.”

Angel blushed and then smiled. “I guess we do, at that. I’m sorry it has to stop, but we won’t be seeing each other again. Not like this.”

She went over to her horse and untied the reins from the limb. Then she managed to get in the saddle again without Fargo’s help.

“I’m going to ask you a favor, Fargo. I know you’re a man of your word, so I’m going to ask you not to follow me. I think you owe me that.”

“All right,” Fargo said. “I won’t follow you.”

“Thank you for that. I don’t want to see you get killed, not this soon after we, well, you know.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” Fargo said. “I don’t want to get killed at all.”

“Then mind your own business and maybe you won’t,” Angel said, and rode off through the trees.

Fargo watched her go, and when she was out of sight, he got up on the Ovaro and went back to the Watkins farm. He thought about Angel and what she had said all the way.