She ran through the abbreviation in her head. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to –
“Hey!” Rafe had barred his arm across below her breasts to hold her against the building so she wouldn’t be trampled. Or so she had thought. His hand was doing some extra feeling. “Stop that.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m a little deprived.” He gave her boob a last squeeze then stepped away to peer down the street. “Damn bandits. They’re robbing the bank. It’s clear all the way.”
“To?”
“The whorehouse. Where else?”
They sneaked forward.
“Peckerwood Grand Parade.” He swept his arm out, indicating the length of what seemed to be the widest street in the town.
Guns began firing. People screamed. Horses galloped up and down the main street, churning up dust. To her left, some of the invaders mounted their horses and turned them. Bank was written across the building beyond. A woman lay draped across one man’s saddle.
As they whipped their horses into a gallop, heading straight for her and Rafe, townsmen appeared. From rooftops, doorways, and windows they aimed at the bandits. Guns blazed, sparks flowering from the muzzles, showing bright in the gathering darkness.
“Excuse me!” A grey-whiskered man led a horse with cart attached across the end of their street, blocking the exit. At the last second, Rafe dashed through the gap.
“Be seeing you Miss Pretty!” He ran off. “The whores are calling me!” Ducking and rolling, he headed across the bullet-laced street toward a two story building with fancy red curtains and fancy music spilling into the air. Even from where she stood, the smell of sex was heavy and the whorehouse seemed to pulse like a giant timber heart.
There was a sign out the front, all in pink.
THE FURRY TACO
Okay. Fine. She was in the middle of a gun battle. Hot lead was flying. Men were presumably dying, from the body that had just rolled off a roof to land with a great splash in a horse trough. And her advisor had escaped.
If this was modern day USA she’d eat a grilled gopher with mayo on a cactus sandwich.
Dayum.
Virginia stuck a knuckle in her mouth and bit down. “Ow! How am I supposed to get back to my own...time?”
Bleep.
Find a power source to repower me fully and I will return you.
“Oh. Cool.”
Well, that was good to know.
But first you must complete your mission.
“Mission. What mission?”
To find a cure for Karl’s disease.
“Seriously?”
Seriously.
She was going to kill Karl.
“Don’t mind me.” The old man crawled under the cart, pulled out a bottle, and gulped down several swigs. His burp sizzled the air, and the inside of her nose, sterilizing everything in its cloudy path. Cross-eyed, she watched a large dirt-smeared pig trot up, grunting. It squirmed under the cart and nosed the man.
“Ermitrude!” He patted her as she wriggled even closer.
The gun battle battled on.
Peeyow. Spang. Boom. Etcetera etcetera.
No one seemed to be dying at the moment, as the bandits had dismounted and hidden behind various things that when she thought real hard about them, could never ever stop a bullet more powerful than a sneeze.
Dammit, would someone please die? She yawned.
A strange jangling sound, like spurs being used as a musical instrument, made her look to the left. The building she was using for cover, the one they’d leaned against, was the Dracula mansion. On the porch was a rocking chair. A man sat in the chair, slumped, rocking slowly, with a Mexican blanket draped across him. His eyes were shut, and a black hat was pulled low at the front.
He was asleep, in the middle of all this?”
Rat-at-tat-at-ta-at-tat. Totally not a machine gun sound.
More bullets zinged about, also missing everyone, though a little old lady had an apparent heart attack and spun into the street clutching her chest.
As if making sure no one had missed the significance of her illness, she gasped out, “My heart!”
A paper bag dropped from her hand. When it hit the ground, popcorn flew.
“Oh my.” She went to run out, only a young boy was already there, dragging the woman to safety.
“Don’t worry about her. She just likes the attention.” The old man added, in a hushed voice. “That there, on the porch, it’s John.”
“John Beastwood?”
“Uh huh. Best get under here with me.”
She cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at him. “With you?”
“And the pig. Erma gets nasty when people push her about.”
“You are?”
“Ornery Ol’ Bastard.”
Virginia chuckled. “I meant your name.”
“That’s it.” After taking a swig from the bottle, he folded out a lapel of his vest to show a dull silver star pinned to his shirt. “Sheriff Ornery Ol’ Bastard, at your service, Miss...”
“Virginia Chaste. I’ll stay standing, thanks.” She’d had enough of being felt up by the men here, especially ones who cuddled up to pigs.
The music jangled again, with added gusto and trumpets. A wind blew tumbleweeds down the street. The firing ceased. The air grew chill.
“Brrr.” She really should’ve brought a sweater. Next time she time travelled, she’d pack.
Now...who was going to die?
With a jangly crescendo of trumpets, a huge horse leaped from the second story of the mansion. Flinging aside the blanket, John Beastwood stood. Immense, and tall of stature, he was a bare foot short of the ceiling. As he spun, his black coat flared open, revealing a glinting ammo belt and a whole damn arsenal of six-guns. While the horse trotted to a halt, snorting, she counted.
Six,” she whispered. “Six six-guns?”
The man, his jet black hair curled and whipped by the wind, turned his head and saw her.
Her throat squeezed in, as if held by one of his black gloved hands. Definite wardrobe color thing going on there.
Her thoughts jolted to an abrupt halt. Her inner voice gasped and fainted.
Wait. The girl was back? Where had she been? Oh yeah, she’d forgotten – holidays. Who’d have thought she’d miss her?
Her breath came in shudders too.
Oy! The man? Her inner voice insisted.
Nice man. Big man.
Her heartbeat did a swift pitter patter then went in reverse.
Was that even possible?
Those four extra-strong cups of coffee this morning had come back to haunt her.
This man, this John Beastwood, had glowing red eyes, a jaw strong enough to make a woman swoon, and a chest broad enough to make her want to lean her cheek on him and caress it while smiling and going yummm. Also possibly broad enough to ricochet cannon balls off of. That broad.
Schlong stats, schlong stats, screeched her revived brain.
Too dark, for the shadows had gathered in his groin. Lucky things.
He turned away from her and the magic of his presence lessened a smidge.
She prayed he’d do the flaring coat thing again so she could see his ass.
To the left, the far distant left, the bandits rose from their cover, guns lifting and pointing her way, at the very big and obvious target of John Beastwood.
“Oh no!” She covered her mouth with her hand.
Bleep.
Duck.
At the same time as the skateboard’s warning, the sheriff grabbed her leg and hauled her under the cart.
Chapter 3
Virginia had just enough time to wriggle out from under the cart and look up to see John Beastwood blur.
A threshing machine had nothing on him. A black wind seemed to cloak him, whirling, masking his movements, sending thick tendrils swishing. Gusts whisked her hair against her face, part blinding her. Dirt pattered the cart.
Six silver guns rose...well steel really but who was doing metallurgical an
alysis at this point in the story, right? All six of them fired, sending bullets raining down on the bandits.
No mere pee-yows, these went blam, blam, blam. Her ears rang. The pig cowered against her, nudging its snout under her armpit.
The sheriff had his fingers planted in his ears. Smart man. As the barrage continued, she did the same.
Just for the heck of it she counted. Six, seven...twenty-two...hundred and one. My, my, these six guns held a lot of bullets.
Bandits coughed, jerked, spun, and fell to the earth, expiring in most dramatic ways. Their boots twitched.
A few cried, “Ay carumba, you got me!”
The bank behind them slowly crumbled. First, the sign swung loose at one corner, then it toppled. The door sprouted a zillion holes, imitating Swiss cheese, and fell off.
Blood blossomed across the bandit’s shirts, gushed upward, spewed earthward, and blew in thick gobbety rain on the air.
The sheriff passed her some popcorn.
Considering there were no streetlights and it was dusk, she was seeing this terribly well. The carrots were paying off. By the time he stopped firing the townsfolk had lit a few lanterns and were sitting out on porches.
The last bullet sang down the street then, as if by magic, one bandit appeared from a side street, galloped for the cart she hid under, and launched his horse overhead, landing with a great ka-thumpitty on the other side, and galloping some more, into the sunset. Virginia frowned, didn’t the sunset used to be on the other side? She guessed this was more dramatic.
“That’s it!” Though swaying, the sheriff helped her out from under the cart.
“Thank you, Sheriff...”
“Just call me, Sheriff Bastard.” He yelled aside. “You missed one, John!”
“I know. I ran out of bullets.” The man on the porch turned and stepped down onto the dirt. His casual stride brought him to within a yard of Virginia. His huge stallion trotted over and whickered.
“I need you to get him for me.” John unsheathed a rifle from where it was strapped beside the saddle. It was long, with a golden buttplate, with some highly fandangled sight on top. “Catch.”
Jehosophat. He even smelled better than coffee.
Would it be presumptuous of her to bite that bicep through his coat sleeve, now that he’d leaned it on the cart strut sticking up beside her?
Distinctly panting, her inner voice butted in. Down girl, you’re spoken for.
Though he barely glanced at her, she felt as if John Beastwood was very aware of her presence, same as a mouse might know when a cat was playing and thinking of pouncing.
Pounce on me. Pounce.
Psst. Karl would not be happy.
Now she recalled why she’d let her inner voice go on holidays. The thing cramped her style. Yes, she was spoken for, but that was in the future. Karl did not exist in the here and now.
Cheating still.
She ignored her inner voice. Things were happening. The sheriff had been tossed the rifle and though he dropped it on his toe, he was now screwing another sight behind the one that was already attached.
“Gosh darnit, John. This is going to be a real doozie of a shot.”
“You can do it.” That baritone murmur coming from behind her, and barely a foot away, shook her all the way to her panties.
Her nipples peaked so hard they’d soon be digging their way through the cart timber she leaned on. If ever she’d gushed arousal, it was now. Her lady garden was getting a real good watering. Someone had possibly installed a new irrigation system.
Ew. Ew. Ewww.
“Shut up,” she hissed at her inner voice, accidentally saying it out loud.
“Excuse me?” He leaned in closer and placed his other hand on the cart to her other side.
Which meant he’d boxed her in. Fuuuck.
“Did you speak, Miss?”
“I was, uh, clearing my throat?”
“Hmmm. Sheriff, need anything?”
“Nothing you can get me. He’s over a half mile away now.” A squeaking sound came as he adjusted some doozywhatsit on the sight. Then he took out his bottle of liquor and gulped down a few swallows. “I just needed some of this, and Erma.”
His whistle brought the pig sauntering closer. Ermitrude flopped at his feet and the sheriff kneeled and propped the rifle on her side, aiming through the cart wheels toward the desert.
Whatever was he aiming at? A small black speck on the horizon was all she could see.
“Goood girl, Erma.” He blew on his hands, adjusted some more screws, threw a feather in the air, said an incantation, and settled his hands on the rifle like he was holding his lover. At the same time as he squeezed the trigger, John placed his hands over her ears.
The boom still made her ears ring like a church bell.
Sheriff Bastard counted quietly, “Five, four, three, two...”
In the distance, the black speck halted. Was that a geyser of red coloring the skyline?
“Bingo. This old gun is like a dangblasted cannon.”
“Told you, you could do it.” John clapped his shoulder. As he moved, his body squashed hers to the cart, until a second later, when he shifted away.
Virginia swallowed, trying desperately to ignore the throbbing in her downstairs orchard.
Why are you thinking in weird metaphors? Her inner voice whispered. It’s your pussy!
How the fuck should she know? All these cowboys must be warping her mind.
Maybe it was the leather? John had on an ample amount – leather gun belt, leather boots, leather pants belt...she sniffed and detected an underlying fragrance beneath his yummalicious essence of male cowboy...possibly leather underpants?
Ever so slowly, she turned, finding herself still framed either side by his arms. Fainting would be bad.
Just keep breathing, just keep breathing.
Wide-eyed she waited for him to quit staring down at her. The red in his eyes had faded to mere pinpricks of fire, here and there, in his dark irises.
“Well hello, beautiful. Would you happen to be one of my mail order brides?”
One of? “Uhh. No?”
“Not sure?” He smiled dangerously in the way a shark smiles as it opens its mouth to eat a little fish. His dark curls seemed to do more curling than mere hair tussled by the wind should ever do.
Shark repellant needed ASAP.
Chapter 4
“Perhaps you’d like to come to supper with me, tonight?” John raised her hand and kissed the back, and his focus varied not one iota from staring at her.
Bleep.
Danger. Danger.
She’d propped the skateboard on the cart’s wheel and could just read that warning without getting a cricked neck.
She had to say no. Didn’t she?
“No?”
“No? You seem so unsure about everything I ask you.”
“I mean, no. As in, no. Umm. No, no, and no. That clear enough?”
He kissed her knuckles again and smoothed his thumb over them. “I’ll tell you tomorrow after you wake up in my bed.”
A whisper of sensation made her look inward, dubiously registering...something, that may or may not have slithered under her dress to slide over her inner thigh, heading upwards.
Yikes.
She checked. Yes one of his hands was out of view...but the angle seemed impossible. Whatever was down there? Was there anything? Were there snakes in this desert? The feather-light touch sneaked under her panty elastic, brushed across her moist pussy lips, and snuggled inward a tad.
Her knees threatened to buckle.
Ohhh. Kerfuckitty.
If it was a snake and it bit her, leastways she could be sure Beastwood would suck the poison out.
“So.” His voice dropped so many octaves, so fast, it’d give an orchestra hernias trying to hit the note. “Are you coming?”
Mmm. Coming? Her clit was close to vibrating in tune with his voice. Whatever mystery thing was in her panties needed to leave ASAP before s
he did something embarrassing.
Change the subject. The price of eggs in China? How to knit cock warmers? Eep.
A frantic scramble through her thoughts had her spitting out, “Love your guns. Silver?”
“Platinum-plated silver and steel with diamond encrusted accessories.”
“Nice.” Go away thing in my panties. Did it just wriggle?
“I could buy half the territories and states of the US of A with the proceeds from their sale.”
Unfair! She panted, her eyes glazing over. Rich as well as handsome, sexy and menacing, and he boasted about his money? Someone had stacked the deck. She bit back a whimper.
For some reason her brain chose to ponder about his shooting prowess. How had he managed to fire six six-guns at once? Was he simply so fast, her eye hadn’t registered the movement?
Yes, that. Of course. And totally irrelevant to the now, so why had her mind gone there?
Her inner voice muttered something like can’t fix stupid and took up knitting cock warmers in a corner at the back of her mind.
She wrenched away her hand from his and tried to sidle out from under him, but he was leaning over her, like a mountain about to avalanche all over her body, about to wreak unnatural havoc on her breasts, about to kiss her like hot lava caressing a deforested slope. And boy, if he wanted to do some excavation and bore out her entrance, she’d hand him a mining contract.
Virginia clutched at the cart and croaked out, “Your question. Still no.”
The thing below, that she still wasn’t quite sure was there, slipped away, leaving her clit pulsing.
If she ground against him while he only watched, and had a teeny, tiny orgasm, would it be bad?
Yes!
Darn. Her inner voice needed tasering...again.
Tasers no longer exist, yet. Nyah. Nyah.
The mangled tense of that sentence made her squint with one eye and twitch.
John frowned and backed away. “Are you okay?”
Your chance! Take it. Run! “Ermm. My medications are overdue. I’m prone to conniptions and palpitations of the female kind.” She smiled, toothily.
He tsked and did more frowning. “Sounds infectious.”
“It is. Very.”
“Perhaps another time then.” He swept off his hat and bowed, then stalked away, to take the steps to his porch in one stride then enter his dwelling. The door shut. The whole town seemed emptier.
The Well-Hung Gun Page 2
