Longarm and the Diamondback Widow (4 page)

Longarm's ears warmed as the naked beauty continued to laugh at him.

He curled his lip at the squirrel, who seemed to be laughing at him, too. He looked at the girl again, who kicked her feet in the water and gazed at him over her the swollen mounds of her upthrust breasts. She did nothing to cover herself. In fact, she didn't seem to mind exposing herself to him at all.

A tease, that one. As pretty as she was, she couldn't be too bright, swimming naked out here with a strange man sipping coffee nearby. This was rough country. How did she know he wasn't the sort to walk out there and force himself on her?

Of course, he wasn't that sort. Longarm, good with women, had never had to resort to such crude tactics as rape.

But how did this girl know that?

“You really oughta be more careful, Miss Whoever You Are!” he yelled now as he picked up his coffee cup and gained his feet, anger mixing with his embarrassment. Then, under his breath: “Frolicking naked around a stranger. Who in the hell raised this she-cat—wolves?”

He kept his eyes off of her, still embarrassed, and brushed his glove across his wet pant leg. His thigh was tender from the scalding coffee, though fortunately most of the hot liquid had landed on the ground and not on his leg.

A rumbling sounded. He lifted his head and tipped his hat brim back off his forehead to peer at the sky.

Gray-bellied clouds were closing over the valley. In the far east, lightning forked down from a massive, anvil-shaped storm cloud. The leaves around Longarm rustled as a chill breeze lifted.

Shit, a storm was moving in. He should have kept pushing up the trail to Diamondback, still nearly a day's ride away. Instead, he'd pulled up here to get laughed at by a squirrel and a girl who didn't know any better than to swim naked in front of strangers . . .

His regret at not having kept moving on toward the scene of his next assignment was tempered by the girl, whom he could hear splashing in the stream. She was damn compelling, he had to admit. But then, most naked girls were compelling to any man with blood in his veins.

Not all that sorry that he'd have to wait here until the storm passed, he unsaddled his horse and used his tarpaulin and rope to fashion a lean-to angling off a tree near the fire. Then he scrounged for a couple more armfuls of wood, to get him through the storm, and brewed another pot of coffee.

He continued to keep his senses attuned to his surroundings, always wary of an ambush. He kept them attuned as well to the girl, who, after about twenty minutes of playing like a baby beaver in the flashing water, walked up on the bank, glanced at Longarm coyly, and then stepped behind the pine, which did little to screen her, and began dressing.

Longarm was sitting on his log under the tarpaulin as the first cold raindrops began to slant down out of the leaden sky and the girl walked her horse over to his fire. She stopped just beyond the fire and began unsaddling the mount—moving quickly and sure-handedly, with no wasted motions. This was a girl who'd grown up in the saddle, though judging by how she'd looked naked, she was about as full-grown as they came.

Leaving the horse free to roam, she turned to Longarm, her hair hanging down over one side of her face, lending her a wry, dubious look. One green eye blazed against her pretty, suntanned face.

“Share your fire?”

Longarm hiked a shoulder. His pride kept him from wanting to look too eager, though he would have been crestfallen if the girl had climbed on her horse and ridden away. He'd halfway built the lean-to for her, figuring she'd need a place to get in out of the rain. He hadn't seen any signs of a ranch or a miner's cabin in many miles.

She ducked under the tarpaulin and sat on the log in front of the fire, about three feet to Longarm's right. He filled his extra cup with the smoking brew and handed it to her, aiming the handle toward her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You always do that?”

“Do what?” she asked as Longarm made himself comfortable on the log once more.

“Swim naked in front of strange men.”

“Did you like it?”

Longarm looked at her. Her hair had come down to hide the other half of her face now, exposing the left side and the left blazing green eye that had an almost unsettling depth to it.

“My swimming in front of you?”

Longarm's cheeks and ears warmed. “Young lady, there ain't no man on this earth that don't like to see a pretty girl naked. But that don't mean it's right for said pretty girl to go swimming naked in front of one. Especially way out here in the middle of nowhere. If I'd wanted to take you, there'd have been damn little you could have done about it. And damn few people around to hear your screams for help.”

She smiled, her lips shoving a few strands of her hair aside. “How do you know I would have screamed for help? Maybe I would have enjoyed it.”

Longarm studied her, incredulous. His pants were growing tighter, pinching his stiffening mast. He looked at the fire, trying to clear his mind of his wild imaginings. “Got a handle?”

“Connie,” she said just as a pitch knot popped, sounding like a derringer. She glanced at the cinders climbing skyward. “What's yours?”

“Custis Long. Most folks call me Longarm.”

“You're a lawman.”

He looked at her again, narrowing one eye. “How did you know that?”

Connie hiked a shoulder. Her left green eye continued blazing into him. So did the right one, from behind the thin screen of her auburn hair. “I guessed it. Something about how strong you look, and the integrity and honesty in your eyes. Even when you're lusting after a girl, imagining rutting around between her legs, sticking your mast in her pussy, you're still of a pure heart. I like that about you, Longarm. I sensed it in you right off. I know good men from bad ones. I've had plenty of experience with the latter, which is why I'm always on the scout for the former. That's why, when I saw you sitting here by my swimming hole, I stayed.”

Longarm's voice was thick. “You from around here?”

Connie sipped her coffee and looked out at the rain. “Not going home anytime soon. The arroyos up by my folks' place are gonna be flooded. But doesn't this cool rain feel good?”

She reached forward to let the rain sluicing off the top of the lean-to splash against her hand. She brought the water to her face. She cupped another handful and pressed it to her neck, running the hand down her chest and into her shirt.

Longarm watched her hand. The moisture dribbled down her shirt and pasted it against her breasts. Longarm sipped his coffee and told himself that she was young and a little touched. He wouldn't go near this girl with a ten-foot pole.

This was a bad place for young girls. Too isolated. When their sap started to run, there wasn't much they could do with it. It drove them crazy, like an in-season mare without a stallion to satisfy her body's natural demands. No, this girl was young, and she probably had a pa following from not too far back with a double-barreled shotgun loaded with double-ought buck.

But then those thoughts slithered away like baby snakes in the rain as the girl set her empty cup down on the log, stood, and faced him. She raised her hands and swept her hair back behind her head. The movement caused her shirt to draw back tightly against the twin cones of her breasts, which jutted toward him.

Her eyes blazed down at him as she tied her hair in a loose knot. Feeling jittery and heavy in the belly and loins, Longarm forgot his resolution of only a few seconds ago. He tossed his own cup down and rose and placed his hands on her breasts.

She smiled as she lowered her arms, her hair knotted beguilingly atop her head. A few light freckles were sprayed across the edges of her temples.

She placed her hands on his. They looked like creamy silk against the callused, scarred saddle leather of his thick, brown paws. She caressed his knuckles with her fingertips, dipping her chin toward her chest, smiling down at their hands pressed together atop her breasts.

Longarm pressed the heels of his hands against her shirt, felt her shirt slide across them. Her breasts moved beneath his manipulations, rising and falling as he caressed them. She wore only a thin garment beneath the shirt. He could feel her nipples beneath his thumbs.

The girl lifted her gaze to his and drew a long, deep breath. Color touched the nubs of her cheeks. Slowly, she moved her hands away from his to press them against his chest. She slid them just as slowly down across his belly and over his cartridge belt to his crotch.

She pressed her fingers against his hard-on angling down against his right leg. Pressing gently, she slid her hand from the base of his cock to the bulging head. He drew a sharp breath at the fire that the touch started in his cock, making it feel as if the rock-hard mast were going to tear through his tight, tweed trousers.

She unbuckled his cartridge belt.

Longarm took the belt and set it across the log behind him, not so far gone with lust that he wouldn't keep the .44 near to hand. He still wasn't sure he hadn't walked into a trap, but as he watched the girl expertly unbutton his trousers and slide them down his legs and then reach into the fly of balbriggans, he thought, oh, what a sweet trap it was.

A man wouldn't mind dying in a trap such as this . . .

Her gentle hands reached into his fly. She angled her left hand toward his right thigh, wrapped it around the long, thick gooseneck of his raging hard-on, and closing her upper teeth over her full lower lip and using her right hand to pull his balbriggans out away from his thighs, she gently slid the heavy snake from its hole.

The swollen purple head emerged and rose to angle back against his belly, free at last. It bobbed with each hammering thud of his heart.

She stared down at it. She swallowed.

Her nose only an inch away from the throbbing head, she looked up at him from beneath her brows, lifted her mouth corners, and blinked once, slowly. Her eyes were catlike, glinting in the firelight as the rain washed down around them and drummed loudly on the tarpaulin over their heads.

“That's some axe handle you got there, mister,” she said just loudly enough that he could hear her raspy voice above the rain. Still looking up at him, she held his cock by its base with one hand, cupped his heavy balls with her other hand, poked her tongue out of her mouth, and touched the tip to the end to his hard-on.

He gritted his teeth and rocked back on the heels of his boots.

She kept her eyes on him as she held her tongue against the tip of his cock for about ten more excruciating seconds. As though she was well aware of the torturous effect, her cheeks dimpled slightly. Very slowly, she swirled her tongue around the end of his dong until, after he thought his heart would explode in his chest, her cheeks dimpled deeply and then she closed her lips over the entire swollen head.

Her cheeks bulged; her lips compressed against the sides of his member.

Her mouth was hot and wet.

His loins thudded. His heart beat heavily, ramming itself against his sternum.

She slid his mouth down lower on his cock and then pulled it back. She slid it down again and pulled it back, enswathing its entire length with her hot, wet tongue.

Her head bobbed harder and harder in front of him. She slid her mouth off of him and rose until she stood before him. Longarm reached toward her and unbuttoned her blouse while she watched his hands. He tossed the shirt away and lifted her lace-edged chemise up over her head and tossed it over the log.

Her breasts jutted toward him, tan and full. She obviously spent a lot of time naked in the sun, because they were only slightly lighter than the rest of her. They were rich and full, cone-shaped, the pink nipples jutting slightly out to each side.

Longarm lowered his head and nuzzled them, licked them until the nipples stood out like April cottonwood buds about to burst. The girl groaned and sandwiched his head in her hands, grinding his face against her bosoms until she stepped back abruptly and kicked out of her boots.

Longarm kicked out of his low-heeled Cavalry stovepipes. He shrugged out of his coat, jerked the knot free of his string tie, and tossed the tie on the log with the coat.

The girl was faster than he at getting undressed. By the time he'd finally kicked free of his right balbriggan leg and stood naked by the fire, his cock standing up like a pump handle before him, the girl was already naked and had spread her clothes out on the ground by the fire.

She lay down quickly at his feet, spread her legs, and reached toward him, groaning, the folds of her snatch peeling back from the silky hair at her crotch and opening like a mouth, its tiny pink tongue extended.

Longarm took a cursory glance around to make sure no one was drawing a bead on him, and then dropped to his knees. He leaned forward between Connie's knees, and as she raised her legs high, opening herself wider for him, she grunted and groaned and reached down to grab his cock. She ground it against her pussy until she'd worked up a good lather, and then she slid the bulging head inside her.

“Oh, God!” she said, throwing her head back and hardening her jaws, squinting up at the tarpaulin roof as the rain continued to hammer it. “Oh, fuck me! Damn you, fuck me!”

Propped on his outstretched arms and his toes, Longarm slowly slid his cock into the girl's hot, sopping snatch. She groaned and cursed like an Irish sailor, and when he'd gotten all of his shaft that he could deep inside her, she ground her heels against his rump, wrapped her arms around his neck, and drew him even deeper.

He drew his butt up and down, sliding in and out of her, in and out, gradually building to a faster and faster rhythm until he was pistoning like a locomotive's drive shaft, and working up a hot sweat as he toiled. He could feel the girl's sweat ooze beneath him as their hips and bellies slapped together loudly, wildly.

When he came, it was like the rain hammering down around him and on the lean-to. He groaned and shuddered, propped on his arms and toes, seed jetting deep into the dark, boiling depths of her womb. She'd turned her head to one side and squealed as she bit down hard on the knuckles of her right hand.