by Jake Logan
For the first time in his life, Warren was speechless with a woman. Her grip was so firm as she grabbed his cock that he was afraid to move. Within seconds, she lowered herself onto him and eased her wet pussy all the way down to the base of his shaft. Belle braced both hands against his chest and arched her back as she rode him. Every muscle in her body strained and she tossed her blond hair back while hitting her stride.
“Go on,” she moaned. “Tell me what a bad man you are.”
Warren couldn’t catch a deep enough breath to form the words.
“Call me a whore.”
No matter how good she felt, he simply couldn’t figure out how to react. Finally, it seemed the only thing he could do was what he was being told.
“Come on, whore,” he said unconvincingly. “Is that all you got?”
She smiled without opening her eyes to look at him. Her hips bucked even harder and she rode his cock as if she was angry at him for a wrong he’d committed. When Warren stirred beneath her, she leaned with all of her weight resting on the palms of her hands to hold him down. Warren held on to her hips, which was like trying to wrangle a wild bronco without the benefit of a rope.
After ripping open his shirt, Belle moved her hands to his stomach. She straightened to sit almost perfectly upright on top of him. Her hips weren’t moving as quickly, but had taken to thrusting in shorter, stronger motions. When he started breathing heavier, Belle slapped her hands against his bare skin and said, “You better not think you’re done yet, boy.”
Warren didn’t like being called that no matter who was doing the talking. He tried to sit up and put her in her place, but Belle shoved his back flat upon the mattress and then ground her hips in a slow circle. The easier pace and smooth glide of her pussy along his cock took the fire from his eyes. After lowering herself down so he was as far inside her as he could get, she wriggled her hips back and forth until her eyelids began to flutter.
“That’s the spot,” she sighed.
In all the times he’d been with a woman, he’d never seen one look as blissful as when Belle pulled in a sharp breath and pumped her hips one more time. Her pussy tightened around him and her next exhale turned into a lingering laugh. “Now,” she said while easing off him, “it’s your turn.”
From Warren’s perspective, it seemed as if Belle had slid down between his legs and completely off the bed. Her hands remained on his chest and moved along the front of his body to come to a rest on his legs. When he sat up, he could see that she was kneeling on the floor beside the bed. She smiled up at him while tugging his legs to get him to scoot closer to her. As soon as he’d gone far enough, she took hold of his cock and wrapped her lips around its tip.
Her mouth was warm and wet as it enveloped him. She moaned softly while easing her head down, and when she moved it up, she let her tongue graze along the bottom of his shaft. Very quickly, she picked up her pace until her head was bobbing between his legs. Her tongue moved so fast that he could barely tell what it was doing. She was making him feel so good, however, that Warren just leaned back and enjoyed himself.
Belle’s hands moved up and down along his hips and then stretched up to rub his stomach. As she sucked him, her hair brushed his skin to add another layer of sensation to what was already rolling through him. Once he’d caught his breath, Warren reached down to place both hands on the back of her head and guide her as he pleased.
In stark contrast to how she’d been earlier, Belle responded to every one of his unspoken requests. When he wanted her to go faster, she sucked him hard enough to make his toes curl. And when he wanted her to stay still, she kept her head in place as he pumped into her mouth. As soon as he drew a single breath that was sharper than the others, she took the reins back.
Placing her hands on his hips, she grabbed hold and held on tight as she sucked him. Her fingernails raked against his skin as her mouth worked vigorously. All the while, she moved him back until he was once more lying in the middle of the bed. She crawled on top of him like a predatory cat, licking his legs, thighs, stomach, and penis. Although Warren had wanted to direct her again, he quickly found it was better to let her do her work. She licked his cock like it was the tastiest stick of candy ever made, and when she moaned softly while he was still in her mouth, the pleasure was too much to bear.
He felt his knees go weak and his shoulders rise up from the mattress as he exploded in her mouth. Belle kept her lips wrapped around him, moaning softly until he was too spent to stay upright. After letting him fall from her mouth, she gave him a gentle shove, which was more than enough to drop him to his back on the bed.
“Sweet mother of God,” he moaned.
“Aren’t you glad you paid for that instead of dealing with Jersey just to look out a window?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Now, about that payment.”
As he lay there, Warren felt the room spinning. When he closed his eyes, he swore he could feel not only the room but the entire world turning beneath him. Belle placed her hand on his chest and tapped him insistently, but he wasn’t about to open his eyes and break the peaceful spell he was under.
“Get out of here,” Belle said.
Judging by the creak of the door hinges and floorboards, Warren knew she wasn’t talking to him. It looked like he would get to meet Jersey after all. Fortunately, he was feeling good enough to take that bull by the horns. He snapped his eyes open, craned his neck, and looked at the door.
Instead of some grumbling brothel owner, Warren saw Slocum looking down at him over the top of his Navy Colt.
“You heard the woman,” Slocum said. “Maybe it’s time we talked about payment.”
20
Warren rolled onto his side and then sat up so he could get to where his gun belt was piled on the floor near the back of the room. In the time it took for him to pull up his britches, Slocum had already stormed inside, circled around the bed, and cut him off.
“How’d you find me?” Warren asked. “I saw you leave!”
“You’ve been following us and we’ve been following you,” Slocum replied. “The tracks were a bit harder to follow once they reached this town, but it wasn’t impossible. Some folks in a saloon told my partner there was a gunman holed up here and I circled back to have a look. Any more lessons in manhunting will cost you more than you already owe.”
“I don’t owe you anything!” Warren growled.
Slocum snapped a quick jab into Warren’s face and said, “There’s where you’re wrong.”
Already off balance, Warren flopped over the foot of the bed and slid off to land on all fours upon the dusty floor. When he hopped up, the first thing he saw was Belle with her legs curled against her chest and her shoulders pressed against the headboard doing her best to stay out of the fracas.
By the time Warren turned in Slocum’s direction, another punch was headed his way. It caught him in the jaw to snap his head to one side and send him straight down again. When the room spun around him this time, it wasn’t such a good thing.
“The way I see it,” Slocum said, “you owe me for all the trouble you’ve caused. Until you and your asshole partners came along, I just wanted to finish a job in New Orleans.”
Warren was getting tired of being knocked around. The frustration showed on his face even better than if it had been painted on him in bright colors. He did his best to get up while backing away, but that only caused him to stagger like a drunk into the chest of drawers against the wall. “Nobody asked you to do a damn thing.”
Slocum stayed on the other side of the bed. “True. To be honest, I barely even recall what the hell my job was supposed to be in New Orleans. See what a nuisance you are?”
Turning toward Belle, Warren asked, “Where the hell is this Jersey fella you were going on about?”
“If you mean the big man who owns this place,” Slocum said, “he’s still downstairs. Your name’s Belle?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That big man said you shou
ld go before you got hurt.”
Taking only a moment to look at Warren, she pulled her skirts down and climbed off the bed on the side that was closest to the door. She stopped short of the door, turned back around, and said, “You still owe me for the tumble we took.”
“How much money are you carrying?” Slocum asked.
Still trying to hike up his britches, Warren sputtered, “Are you joking?”
“From where I stand, she provided a service and you took it. Isn’t that right?”
“It sure as hell is,” Belle said.
Slocum was smirking at the younger man, but since he was doing it over a Colt Navy, he was making a good impact. Warren grumbled to himself, dug through his pockets, and threw some cash across the room.
“Don’t make me force you to pick that up,” Slocum warned.
But Belle had already stooped to collect it and seemed pleased with what she’d found. “It’s all right. There’s plenty here to cover what he owes.”
“You sure about that?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “And then some.”
“A gratuity on top of the fee,” Slocum mused. “Very civil. You’d best get out of here, ma’am. Do me a favor and make sure we’re not bothered for a little bit.”
Warren’s hopes for Jersey to be his guardian angel were dashed when she said, “That won’t be a problem. He just paid for the room for the next hour.”
Slocum nodded and circled around the bed to meet the younger man. “Very civil indeed.” After Belle had left and shut the door tightly behind her, he dropped his voice to something close to a growl and said, “Tell me where Cale is headed.”
“What the hell do you care? He ain’t after you.”
“Funny, but those shots that were fired at me tell a much different story.”
“He’s after Adam Weyland.”
“It’s gone well beyond that,” Slocum replied. “You saw to that when you killed Mia Weyland for no good reason other than to prove a point.”
Warren couldn’t figure out how to dispute that. Rather than try to talk his way out of the room, he began plotting to shoot his way out. Slocum deduced that much when the young man’s eyes darted toward the gun belt lying on the floor.
“You want to jump for that pistol?” Slocum asked. “It’s so close, you could probably get to it before I hit you.”
“You’d gun me down before I was even armed,” Warren spat.
“You think so?”
“Probably the only way you could take me on. Probably the way you killed most of the men everyone says you killed. Back-shooting son of a bitch, sneaking in on me when I’m dipping my wick.”
Slocum raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got a point there. Shooting an unarmed man does seem a might on the cowardly side.”
“It sure does.”
“What about shooting an unarmed woman? How’s that sit with you?”
Once again, Warren was at a loss for words.
Narrowing his eyes in a way that completely erased the easygoing manner he’d taken a moment ago, Slocum asked, “When Mia was killed, was she armed? And before you try to lie to me, you little piece of shit, remember that I’d been riding with her every step of the way since we left her house.”
“No, she wasn’t armed. It wasn’t me that shot her, though.”
“Who was it?”
“Cale,” Warren said without hesitation. “And he’d be the one to tell you that to your face if you bothered looking him in the eye.”
“I’m not the one that’s been running away before we get close enough for that meeting. Also, if you inch toward that gun one more time, I’ll drop you where you stand.”
Frustrated that he hadn’t been able to get any farther than a quarter of an inch toward his gun belt, Warren angrily stood up straight and pulled his jeans up. “Cale’s not even here!”
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t even know. He’s got a big enough lead on you by now that he could have changed course ten times already.”
“But he’s not looking to throw us off his trail, is he?”
“Fine,” Warren snapped. “He’s headed across the border to the first town in Louisiana you’ll find along the trail out of here. Some little piss hole I never even heard of.”
“There’s plenty of towns, camps, and whatnot between here and the border. And there’s more than one trail that leads from here to Louisiana.”
Warren flapped his hands in front of him and let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know what the hell you want from me, Slocum. First you ask where Cale is headed, and when I tell you, all you can do is give me more hell for it!”
“That’s because I don’t want the answer that Cale wants me to hear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slocum kicked the bed with enough force to make it skid across the floor and knock into Warren’s shins. “Don’t give me that bullshit! You think you’re smarter than me, boy? You think you can feed me whatever you want and I’ll just swallow it down? Even the woman that just left this room would know better than that.”
Warren was unable to disguise the tremor in his voice when he asked, “What do you want to know?”
Silence filled the room like smoke until it became thick enough to cause a choking fit. “Maybe,” Slocum said in a cold tone that slithered through that smoke like a snake through shallow water, “I’ve been spending too much time with gamblers and card cheats. Something tells me you wouldn’t give me the truth right now even if your life depended on it, which I can guarantee you it does.”
“I know about you. I know how many men you killed.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me, kid,” Slocum growled.
Holding up his hands as if that would be enough to protect himself, Warren said, “I know you’re not just talking. I know my life depends on telling you the truth, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“No. You’re a tough-talking little asshole who thinks he’s got things rattling around in his head that us lesser men have never thought of before. All you’re trying to do is buy time until you can get to that gun. That’s why you’ve slid your stinking little foot another inch closer to it just now.”
No matter how futile the gesture was, Warren pulled his foot back.
“Tell you what, kid. You want a fair shot at me? You got it.” With that, Slocum turned his pistol sideways, opened his hand, and let it drop to the bed. It hit the blanket with a muffled thud, bounced once, and lay still. “Now we’ve both got to make a reach for our guns. That fair enough for you or do I have to drop my britches around my ankles?”
Warren’s face showed every bit of the anger that boiled inside him. His lips curled into a twisted line as he struggled to choke back one insult after another. Finally, when he looked down at the gun that Slocum had dropped, he decided he didn’t need to choke any longer. Rather than go the direction he’d been pointed, Warren lunged for Slocum’s Colt instead of dropping down for the .45 wrapped up in his own holster on the floor.
Using the same speed he would have utilized to grab his Colt from its holster, Slocum snapped his hand down to grab Warren by the wrist. From there, all it took was a quick twist and a pull to grind the younger man’s hand against its joint and shove him away from the bed. Slocum reached for his Colt and got to it, but didn’t get a chance to turn around before Warren was attacking him.
Favoring the hand that hadn’t been twisted the wrong way, Warren punched Slocum’s ribs in a desperate barrage. All Slocum could do was drive his elbow around and turn his body before any bones were broken. The elbow glanced off Warren’s arm and was followed by a clubbing blow from the Colt that thumped against his shoulder. When he twisted around to try and shield his head, Warren left his ribs open for a few chopping punches that stole the breath from his lungs.
Hearing Warren’s wheezing gasps, Slocum knew he had a chance to land a few more blows before the kid got some more wind in his sails. He delivered a clean uppercut
to Warren’s jaw, which sent him back to land on the edge of the bed. Rather than approach him there, Slocum dug his toe under the mattress and kicked it and Warren off the frame. By the time they hit the floor, Slocum had walked around to meet him.
“Tell me where the ambush is being set,” Slocum said. “And don’t give me any bullshit about a town in Louisiana.”
“That’s all I got for you. I swear!”
Since that story had been the first thing out of Warren’s mouth, Slocum knew it was the one that Cale wanted fed to him. Also, the kid had given it up too easily. That suited him just fine since beating on the younger man for a little while longer wasn’t an unattractive prospect.
One edge of the mattress was trapped beneath Warren and the other curled around him like the shell of a burrito. Slocum placed his boot onto the mattress and stomped the younger man as if he intended on knocking him through the floor. Even with the extra padding, he could tell his boots were making an impact.
“Stop it!” Warren shouted in a voice that was muffled by the mattress. “Let me catch my breath.”
Slocum squatted down and pushed the barrel of his Colt against the upper edge of the overturned mattress. “What’ve you got to say to me, Warren?”
“I swear! That town I told you about is—”
The thump of Slocum’s Colt cut him off as it sent its round into the mattress and out the other side amid a flurry of stuffing and feathers. “What was that about Louisiana?” he asked.
“I wasn’t lying about—”
The Colt barked again, this time punching a hole through the mattress that was close enough to Warren for him to feel its passing.
“Better reconsider quickly,” Slocum warned. “This mattress is about to burn.”
If Warren thought that was a bluff, he guessed again when he caught a whiff of burning material coming from the little fire that had been started by the gunshots.
Slocum watched the flames grow, ready to stomp them out if necessary, but not wanting to do it too soon. “The fire’s spreading,” he said. “I bet you’ll start to squeal once it gets to you.”
