Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance

Chapter 26

Longarm looked toward the door.

It was too dark in the shack for him to see much of anything, but he detected an inky movement against the darkness. The floorboards squawked under Haven’s tread. There was a sibilant rustle as she removed whatever wrap she’d worn out here and let it drop to the floor.

Then he saw the pale blur of her naked body before him.

He smelled the unmistakable fragrance of woman. His cock throbbed.

“Hold on.”

He tossed the covers away, dropped his feet to the floor and quickly shucked out of his underwear.

He lay back on the cot and she was on him like a duck on a june bug, breathing hard and fast. She lowered her head to his, kissed him hungrily, almost painfully, grunting and sighing, and then pulled her head away.

“Christ, if I didn’t know better,” he said, chuckling, her saliva hot on his lips, “I’d say we hadn’t cavorted like two randy Northwoods bears just last night!”

She whipped around on top of him, and suddenly, her hot mouth was closing over his cock while her silky-haired snatch was pasted over his face. Her knees were splayed across his shoulders. He could smell the warm musk of her, and that coupled with the eager way she lapped him, gently kneading his balls with her hands, heightened his desire.

He lifted his hands to her round, tender ass, used his thumbs to spread her pussy wide until he could see the pale pink nubbin of her honeypot just off the end of his nose. He rammed his nose up hard inside it, and she withdrew her mouth from his cock and groaned.

He gave a devilish smile when he felt her knees tighten against his shoulders, and she shivered as though chilled. Sticking his tongue straight out, holding it rigid but curling the tip, he raked his thick mustache and his lips up and down her quivering slit.

She groaned louder, shivering and kneading his balls while sucking his cock wildly, sliding her mouth up and down and lapping the head before sliding it down once more.

The wet sucking sounds engorged him. When she’d brought him with her lips and tongue and hot breath to the edge of his precipice, he withdrew his tongue from her wet pussy and rolled out from under her.

She gave a groan of protest, but when he knelt atop the cot and shoved her down against it, she giggled. It wasn’t a raspy giggle but a high squeal. He grinned—she was loosening up more than usual—and brusquely positioned her sideways, her head near the foot of the cot. He lifted one of her long, creamy legs up and wedged her foot against his shoulder.

Reaching down, he found the sopping hair of her love nest, and used his hand to guide his cock through those wide-open, petal-soft doors.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! Ahhhh. Uhnnahhh-gawhhh!”

He rammed himself deep into her. He’d prepared her for this, so she shouldn’t be as tight as she was, but he enjoyed the slow in-and-out work as he slowly pried open her womb once more for the full width and length of him.

A pale blur in the darkness, sprawled in a half twist before him, she sighed and panted and nodded her head slowly, grinding her hands into the cot, bunching his blankets in her fists. When she’d become more malleable, he worked faster, and soon her head was bobbing wildly on her shoulders while he fucked her long and hard, feeling the cot leap around on the floor beneath him.

Her foot beat against his shoulder, increasing his desire. Her toes flexed and curled.

“Fu-uck!” she said through a long, ululating sob. “Oh…oh…oh, fuck meeee!”

When his blood started to boil, his cock seemed to grow even larger inside her. He rose up high on his knees and thrust against her harder, harder, his hips slapping her ass loudly.

Her cunt was like a warm, wet, furry creature gently nibbling his rock-hard manhood. She grunted loudly, until he was afraid she’d awaken Mrs. Azrael and Stretch and Vonda. But when he began to explode inside her, she grew suddenly, almost eerily silent.

She tensed every muscle in her body and bowed her head as though in prayer.

Her pussy expanded and contracted as his cock fired its seed deep into her boiling womb. She ground her little foot into his shoulder.

Slowly, his spasming abated. He held her foot against him, and stopped thrusting, leaving his cock halfway inside her. Her threw his head and shoulders back, gulping deep draughts of the fresh air pushing through the open windows.

He lifted her foot to his lips, kissed the little toe.

He held the foot in front of his face, feeling a scowl carve deep lines across his forehead. The foot he held before him was smaller and plumper than the one he’d kissed last night. He looked down the length of creamy leg angling up from the cot in front of him.

Too creamy, and not long enough to belong to Haven Delacroix…

Then he saw the blond head atop the pale shoulders. Vaguely, he’d noticed the paleness of her before and thought it a trick of the moonlight. But there was no moon tonight.

The girl pulled her foot out of his hand and rose up on the cot before him. She pressed her bee-stung mouth to his and then pulled her face away, sandwiching his jaws between her hands. Vonda Azrael’s heart-shaped face smiled at him, her blue eyes narrowed to jeering slits.

“You just fucked a married woman, Marshal Long,” she said with mock castigation. “You just fucked Stretch’s woman, and she’s been needin’ it bad!”

She laughed like an evil child as she clambered up off the cot, stooped to grab the shift she’d worn into the shack, opened the door, and ran skipping into the night.

“Holy shit,” Longarm growled when he woke the next morning after a bad night’s sleep, “did I really fuck Stretch’s wife?”

He sat up on his elbows in the predawn, pearlescent darkness, and looked around the small stone shack. Last night all came back to him. Her mouth on his cock. Her pussy in his face. He smacked his lips. Her tang, like a freshly minted penny, was still on his tongue.

“Yep, that’s just what I done, all right.”

He’d been so sure that the woman who’d walked into his shack had been Haven, had been so intoxicated with the prospect, that it hadn’t occurred to him to make sure it was her.

Who would have thought he’d need to?

As he dropped his feet to the hard-packed floor and reached for his socks, he couldn’t help chuckling. There was only a little humor in it, however. Fucking the wife of the prime suspect in his current investigation could only complicate things further, and the details of this case were so complicated as they stood, and so damn befuddling, he might never get them all nailed down.

The very real prospect that he might have to head back to Denver with his tail between his legs and his hat in his hands to detail his failure at finding neither the killers nor the gold to Billy Vail sobered him right quick.

He couldn’t let that happen. He was the best lawdog in Billy’s stable, by God, and he wasn’t about to let the chief marshal down.

Remembering why he’d wanted to rise well before the sun—to follow whoever rode out of the ranch yard before first light, ostensibly to rendevous with someone else in the Double D’s conspiracy of killers—he quickly pulled on his socks and then gathered the rest of his clothes from where they hung from wall spikes.

He rinsed out his mouth with a mouthful of rye, which he swallowed because it was a sin to waste good Tom Moore. He donned his hat, adjusted the angle, and headed on out of the shack with his saddlebags draped over one shoulder, loaded Winchester resting on the other. He paused, adjusted his crotch with a wince. Vonda had chafed him good.

As he strode up past the main house toward the yard, he brushed his thumb across his right vest pocket. His double-barreled derringer was there, opposite the old, dented railroad watch to which it was attached with a gold-washed chain.

Out here, not knowing for certain sure that he had a target on his back, he’d needed every weapon close and ready.

The house was dark though a fire rose from a stone hearth over the kitchen. Longarm knew that the Mexican housekeeper was probably stoking the stove in preparation for breakfast and that she probably had coffee boiling. The thought made his stomach growl, but he ignored it. He didn’t have time for breakfast or even a cup of much-needed coffee.

He needed to find out who was riding out of the ranch yard this morning and follow him. The gent might just lead him to the man or men who’d killed the lawmen and even, possibly, to some answers concerning the fate of the stolen gold. It might just be that Stretch’s entire payroll was in on the killings, but Longarm needed some hard evidence before he started trying to arrest up to twenty curly wolves.

That Stretch was the “boss” mentioned by the two men he’d eavesdropped on last night, Longarm had little doubt. Mrs. Azrael might be in on it, too—she seemed rougher than a dry-wash floor bristling with coiled rattlers—but there was little doubt in Longarm’s mind that her son was the one in charge.

At the moment, whoever was due to ride out of the ranch yard was his first real lead to substantiation of his suspicions. He couldn’t let the man leave without shadowing him to see where he went and whom he visited. To make sure he didn’t miss him, he’d ride out first and keep an eye on the trail to the east, since east was where most of the mischief had been taking place.

“Sleep well?”

The female voice rose out of the shadows near the house’s west front corner. It stopped Longarm in his tracks, and he was about to drop his saddlebags and raise his Winchester, heart thudding, when he saw Haven’s slender, duster-clad figure walking gracefully toward him from his left. Her duster flaps were drawn back behind the handles of her matched LeMats, as though she was preparing to wield the savage blasters.

“Where’n the hell did you come from?” he asked through a growl. He didn’t like being spooked.

“Got up early, took a walk around. Never know what you’ll turn up if you keep your nose to the ground.” She stopped and stood with her boots spread wide, hands in her duster pockets. “I asked you if you slept well.”

“The cot was a little hard,” he said, wobbling his head around. “Got a stiff neck.”

“Maybe that’s from wrestling with the little catamount known as Vonda Azrael. You know—Stretch’s wife?”

Longarm glowered at her.

Haven said, “I saw her heading back to the house after midnight. Skipping.”

Longarm gave a sidelong look. “You were keeping an eye on me.”

“Not a chance. Couldn’t sleep. Needed a little air.”

Longarm felt genuinely chagrined. His shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his saddlebags, his rifle, and his guilt. “I thought she was you.”

She wrinkled her brows skeptically, as though he’d just told her that he and Stretch’s wife had spent their time together reading Bible verses.

“That’s a steel-tight, copper-riveted fact,” he insisted, keeping his voice down. “Only, when we was done—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter. Congratulations. Another conquest. I’d just hoped you were smarter than to get yourself involved with the woman of the man we’re most likely…” She stopped and looked around at the dark house and shadowy yard, as though to make sure they were alone. “Most likely after,” she finished.

Her tone burned him. Who the hell did she think she was? His boss?

“It was after hours. She threw herself at me.” Longarm continued around the house’s garden wall, heading for the main yard and the barn. “You stay here today. I’m headin’ out alone.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

Longarm turned to her. “Lady, I always work alone. I shoulda come down here alone. Women are trouble. Always have been, always will be.”

“Only because you have a tendency to make us trouble.”

“I’d love to palaver, but…”

He started to turn away again, but she stopped him with: “What am I supposed to do?”

“What you do best, Agent Delacroix. Investigate. Watch your back, ’cause someone’s done etched a bull’s-eye on mine.” He continued striding toward the barn in which his horse was stabled. “Don’t wait up, hear?”

He continued on into the barn, where he found the hostler, a middle-aged man in suspenders, denim jacket, and floppy-brimmed black hat, forking hay to the stabled horses.

“You’re up early,” he muttered, giving Longarm the suspicious eye as he forked another bunch of hay from a pile beneath a door to the upper loft.

“Figured I’d give the roan a little run.”

“You think you’re gonna find that stolen gold,” the hostler said.

“Don’t you?”

The roan was enjoying breakfast, so Longarm decided to smoke a stogie and wait. The man wasn’t that old, but he had gnarled, arthritic fingers, which was why he’d likely been relegated to barn chores. “Nope. That gold ain’t there. If it ever was there, it’s gone by now.”

Longarm bit the end off his cigar. “How’re you so sure?”

“’Cause I ain’t an idjit. Santana didn’t have time to hide it that well. Them draws where the Apaches pinned him down done been scoured by every ranch hand who ever worked for the Double D. I for one have been out there…oh…a good fifty times or more. Every free day over the first couple of years after the holdup.”

The hostler chuckled as he scraped hay off his fork with a stall partition behind which two matched sorrels—likely buggy horses—ground their breakfast and snorted eagerly for more. Longarm’s roan was still munching oats from a trough and nudging the tin water vessel hanging from a nail, making tinny scraping sounds. The barn, in fact, was filled with the sounds of horses eating and switching their tails contentedly.

“If it was there, I’d have found it. Or one of the old desert rats who also scoured them draws.”

“I suppose you were going to turn it in for the reward money,” Longarm said, standing in the barn’s open doorway and looking out at the yard as he smoked. He smiled foxily over his shoulder at the hostler.

“Somethin’ like that,” the man said with another wry chuckle.

Longarm drew deep on his cigar and watched a couple of men stirring out front of the bunkhouse on his right. They were yawning and stretching. One was strapping his spurs on while another wrapped two holstered six-shooters around his waist.

Without looking at the hostler but keeping his gaze on the bunkhouse, Longarm said, “Who do you think killed the lawmen?”

“Mescins,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Banditos up from Mexico to haunt the stage trail. The stage line through there has suffered holdups for nigh on twenty years. Same for the freighting outfits. I don’t really see what keeps ’em in business. I guess just enough coaches get through between Las Cruces and Nogales or Tucson to make it worthwhile.”

“Well, I reckon I’ll just go out an have a sniff around, anyway, if you don’t mind.”

“Hell, I don’t give a shit. You ride out alone, though, you’ll likely end up as dead as them others.”

“Well, riding together didn’t do them a whole lot of good, did it?”

The hostler chuckled. “You got a point there, lawdog.”