by Jake Logan
“What are you . . .” Before he could form the entire question, Slocum got his answer.
Olivia lowered herself to her knees and took his cock in her hands. It was still slick with her own moisture, which made it slide easily within her grasp as she pumped her hand back and forth. Soon, her lips were wrapped around the tip of his penis and her tongue was flickering against the sensitive skin on its underside. Slocum reached back to grab on to the cupboard, but even that seemed like it might not be enough to steady him.
Her mouth glided up and down the entire length of his rod while her tongue slid along it from several different angles. When she had only his tip in her mouth, she swirled in fast circles before teasing him by running just the end of her tongue along his shaft. She looked up at him and smiled. When she closed her eyes and started sucking even harder, Slocum reached down to place his hands on either side of her head. That way, he could guide her to speed up or slow down. For the most part, he just let her work her magic.
Before long, his climax started to build. It rolled through him like a storm, causing him to tighten his grip on her and let out a slow, rumbling breath. Olivia slowed to a steady, solid pace. She pressed her tongue against his cock so it slid up and down his shaft with every move of her head. At just the right moment, she licked near the base of his shaft until he exploded in her mouth.
Slocum clenched his eyes shut and emptied into her. She swallowed every drop and even licked him a few more times for good measure. When she was through, she eased her head back and lifted one of her hands to him. Slocum accepted it and helped her to her feet.
“Now,” she said while dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Let’s get down to business.”
14
Olivia’s office was on the third floor. It was only about half the size of the kitchen, but felt larger because it wasn’t nearly as cluttered. The space was filled with a simple rolltop desk, two chairs, and a small wardrobe in a corner. Elegant wallpaper made the room feel like it was in an entirely different county than the bawdy cathouse they’d walked through to get upstairs. After the door was closed, Olivia invited Slocum to sit in one of the chairs and then walked around her desk to settle onto the other. Her movements were slow and slinky as if she was still feeling the effects of their time in the kitchen.
“Care for a cigar?” she asked.
“Do you still buy those fancy ones shipped all the way from China?”
“They’re not Chinese, but they are brought in from that part of the globe.”
“Wherever they come from, they’re worth the trip.”
She smiled graciously and extended a cigar box that was half as large as the normal variety. When she opened the lid, exotic fragrances drifted out from tobacco wrapped in papers flavored with oils blended to complement the dried leaves within. “Take only one, please. If you want more, you’ll have to earn them.” As soon as Slocum helped himself to a cigar, she playfully snapped the box shut as if she had just missed clipping off the tips of his fingers. “Now, what is this business that brings you all the way to the middle of the wilderness?”
“Wilderness? Sounds to me like you might not be happy here. This place seems to be doing pretty well.”
“This establishment is doing well, and it does look nice. That’s only because I made those things happen. Honestly, I’d rather make those same things happen somewhere else . . . like California or New York City.” As she spoke the names of those places, Olivia’s face took on a dreamy, blissful quality.
“Or San Antonio?”
Hearing the name of that place, on the other hand, brought her right back to the present. “You just had to mention San Antonio. For a man who’s told me countless times that we were even for that, you sure like to bring it up a lot.”
Slocum grinned around the cigar that was clenched between his teeth. Having already run it beneath his nose a few times, it was time to make the next step. Some cigars were smoked as a pleasant way to cap off a meal or a day. Ones like these were savored to the point that it almost seemed a shame to burn them. Once he struck a match and touched it to the end of his cigar, he changed that opinion. The flavors shifted as the tobacco was singed and the smoke that drifted through the air was unlike anything he’d smelled for quite a while.
“You’re a confident woman, Olivia, but every now and then it’s good to be brought down a notch.”
“Like when you were shooting your mouth off to that pistol salesman in Amarillo and were too drunk to hit any targets in the little shooting gallery he set up to demonstrate his goods?”
Slocum’s face darkened despite the fragrant smoke drifting around him. “That shooting gallery was rigged.”
“Right. Those little clay pigeons and paper circles were created to withstand the impact of a bullet.”
“Like you said, I was drunk.”
“Is that why you nearly blew your own head off trying to pull something from the end of that pistol? What was it? A rock?”
“Could have been. That would explain why I missed.”
Olivia was now grinning from ear to ear. “Too bad you had to bet everything in your pockets as well as the shirt off your back on hitting those targets. If you knew the gallery was rigged, perhaps you should have thought better of a plan like that.”
“I. Was. Drunk.”
“That’s right. So you probably don’t recall approaching the salesman’s daughter later that night while you were without a shirt or any money in your pockets.” Tapping her chin, Olivia asked, “Was it her or her father who knocked you on your ass?”
Slocum rolled his eyes, trying to enjoy the cigar since he knew it would be pointless to try and get her to let up on him. “It was both. First the daughter knocked me down, and when I got up, that cheating salesman finished me off.”
“That’s right! Amarillo. What a beautiful town. Such delightful memories.”
“Your point’s made, Olivia.”
“Good thing I was there to get you out of that jail cell,” she continued. “If you weren’t such a good lover, I might not have bothered looking around to find out why you didn’t show up to meet me afterward.” Folding her hands on top of her desk and grinning at him in a way that was annoying but still very pretty, she said, “You’re right. It is good to bring someone down a notch.”
“Can we get back to business now?”
“I suppose.”
“You still keep abreast on who wanders through your territory?” Slocum asked.
She raised her eyebrows and steepled her fingers. “My territory? You’re giving me a lot of credit.”
“I don’t mean Montana. I mean your . . . what did you call it back in Texas? That’s right. Your sphere of influence. Do you still keep abreast of who crosses into your sphere of influence?”
“I was a bad girl when you found me, John.”
“And judging by what we cooked up in that kitchen downstairs, you’re still a bad girl.”
“I help manage the girls here and balance the books,” she said. “If a fellow who fancies himself a lawman comes around trying to clean up this town, I’m the first one to greet him.”
“People have come to clean up this town?” Slocum asked.
“They’ve tried. If I can’t convince them otherwise . . . well . . . bad things happen to them. I don’t have anything to do with that, of course,” she quickly added. “This town is full of violent men.”
“Which brings me back to my first question. Back in Texas, you made certain to get a good feel for the comings and goings of violent men.” Slocum took a puff of his cigar and sent some of the exotic smoke toward the ceiling.
“Not just violent men,” she corrected. “Also rich ones.”
“That’s right. You sold information to bounty hunters, saloon owners, men who ran big card games, anyone who might pay for
that sort of knowledge. Quite a good way to make a lot of money. Plenty of people looking for those types of men.”
“Also a good way to get run out of Texas.”
“That’s right,” Slocum said in a tone that wasn’t at all meant to rub her nose in the misfortunes of her past. “Even so, you had quite an operation going. I’d be surprised to find out you chucked it all so you could work in this wild territory as nothing more than a madam.”
Letting out a tired sigh, Olivia reached for the cigar box and helped herself to one. She took a match from a small metal container, lit it, and then indulged in a long puff. Even though she wasn’t trying to entice him, Slocum couldn’t help admiring the way her lips wrapped around that cigar.
“I had a good idea, and yes, I had a good operation going,” she told him. “But that was because I had a lot of friends in Texas, including a lot of saloon keepers as well as a few federal marshals who owed me a whole lot of favors. I spread some money around, paid for information, and got paid more for it by men who knew they could trust me to be discreet and not let anyone know they’d been discovered or try to sell out the ones who’d bought my information in the first place. It was a tangled web that took a lot of time to weave. I don’t have that kind of thing going here.”
“But you’re still Olivia Caster.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slocum puffed his cigar and blew the smoke to one side. “It means you’re a talented and capable woman who made some good money providing a very popular service.”
She exhaled as well, her smoke blending with what Slocum had contributed a few seconds ago. “You could say that about the job I’ve got now.”
“You’re also a smart woman, Olivia. Too smart to ditch a good thing so you can watch over a cathouse. You being you, I’m thinking you’ve already made some influential friends or started gathering valuable information. After all, this is just the sort of place where men might say things they wouldn’t say anywhere else or part with information while trying to impress a pretty woman.”
“Do men seriously try to impress whores?” she asked. “After all, what’s the point?”
“There is no point, but yes. Men still do try to impress a woman even if she is bought and paid for. It’s a reflex.”
Olivia grinned in a way that showed she was a little surprised that he had such insight into the failings of his own gender. “All right. So what if I have been making a few friends since I’ve been in this territory?”
“Then you might be able to help me. I’m looking for a man named Ferril Abernathy.”
“Far Eye Abernathy?”
“That’s the one.”
She chuckled and kicked her feet up onto the corner of her desk. “You should have said so at the start. We could have avoided all of this cat-and-mouse nonsense.”
“You guard your sources carefully, Olivia. After all we’ve done for each other . . . all we’ve done to each other . . . you still haven’t told me any specific places where you get your information. I guessed you might even try to play off this move to Montana as some sort of fresh start.”
“It is.” With a shrug, she added, “Of a sort.”
“Right. You got to disappear from whoever was looking for you after finding out you’d pointed someone in their direction and can start fresh with a bunch of mountain men and trappers who will keep their eyes and ears open for you because you’re the pretty new lady in town. Am I close?”
“Maybe, but you still didn’t have to go through so much trouble to hear anything about Far Eye Abernathy. He’s a legend.”
“Then why haven’t I heard of him?”
“I’ll bet you have and don’t even know it.” Before Slocum could protest, Olivia held up a hand and said, “He started off doing displays for a few circuses that traveled from California all the way out to the Dakota Territories. Made a name for himself doing trick shots and then one day someone comes in to steal the money from the till.”
Slocum snapped his fingers. “I heard something along those lines once! The robber was Dave Corcoran, wasn’t it? He’d been tearing through a bunch of towns leaving bodies piled all over the place and so he told that trick shot artist to go to hell. The artist stands his ground, Corcoran turns his gun on him, and the artist burns him down. That was Abernathy?”
With a single nod, Olivia said, “About ten years ago. What about that gang from New Mexico that was holed up in the town without a sheriff? Maybe you heard that one, too. Once the gang was there, nobody could get anyone to pick up a badge and defend the place and nobody was allowed to leave to get help.”
“And there was one man who walked into town,” Slocum said. “Called them all out and shot them down like he was knocking cans off the top rail of a fence. That’s another legend. You can’t walk into any saloon in New Mex without hearing someone tell that old tale.”
“Well, it’s true and Abernathy was the man who strode into town.”
“There’s no way you could know that,” Slocum scoffed.
“When you’re in my line of work, listening to stories is part of the job. You learn how to separate the truth from everything else and get a knack for putting a picture together when enough pieces fall into place. I’ve been hearing things like this for years. Anyone running a saloon in Texas did. After a while, enough pieces came together for me to believe some of the things about Abernathy. Also,” she added while tapping the ash from her cigar, “it didn’t hurt that he strutted around like a cock of the walk wherever he went and never really stopped performing his craft.”
“You mean gunning people down?”
“I saw him silence a man with a big mouth who thought he was calling Far Eye’s bluff. It was some of the best shooting I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s a killer.”
Olivia shook her head. “Not that day. The man and one of his friends called Far Eye out in front of half the town, swearing up a storm until all that was left to do was fight. Far Eye waited for them to draw first and then emptied his pistol into them. One bullet into each of their feet and one for each of their gun hands. Each shot, dead center. Even the sheriff had to applaud when he arrived to clean up the mess.”
Slocum let the smoke roll around in his mouth as he put together some pieces of his own. The more he thought about those stories, the more familiar they seemed. “You know . . . I heard tell of a man who collected a bounty by waiting outside of a bank and picking off the robbers one by one. There were four robbers and the man who picked them off did his waiting a hundred and fifty yards away from the bank. One or two from that distance isn’t too bad, but four in a row when they must have scattered in separate directions is quite the feat.”
“Where did that happen?” she asked.
“New Mexico.”
“See? You just added one more story to the legend of Far Eye Abernathy.”
“I forgot all about that one until you got me thinking. May not even be Abernathy.”
Olivia grinned and placed her cigar between her lips. “Part of my job is getting the wheels turning. Next time someone asks about that bank display, I’ll have something to tell them.”
“Which could get more wheels turning?” Slocum asked.
She merely shrugged and grinned.
“So you do know something about Abernathy?” he asked.
“Just a whole lot of stories.”
“Not those. I mean something more current. Like where I might be able to find him.”
After thinking for a second, Olivia told him, “I heard he broke someone out of a jail not too far from here. One of those little camps in the mountains.”
“More current than that.”
When she heard that sentence, Olivia leaned forward ever so slightly and her eyes genuinely seemed to sparkle with a light of their own. “So you already kno
w about the jail break?”
“A lot of people must know about it by now.”
“You were there.”
Since she told him that without even coming close to it being a question, Slocum’s first reaction was to say, “Yes, and you’re right. It was some of the finest shooting I’ve ever seen.”
“So Far Eye still has the touch. That’s good to know.”
“Christ Almighty. How much else did you pull out of me from what I’ve said in this room?”
“Nothing that will come back to bite you,” she said with a wink. “And don’t feel too badly if you said something you didn’t mean to say. I’ve cracked much tougher men than you with a whole lot less. As for where to find Far Eye now, if that really was him who broke that man out of jail, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone who’s heard or seen something since then.”
“So you weren’t even sure that was him behind the jail break?”
“Not until you confirmed it. Like I said. It’s all part of my job.”
Raising his cigar as if it were a wineglass, Slocum said, “Then here’s to a job well done.”
“Are you in town all by yourself?”
“What? You didn’t think to ask that earlier?”
Olivia’s cheeks flushed with some color that fell just short of being a true blush. “I guess I pounced on you pretty quickly downstairs, didn’t I? Well, it’s been a long time, and seeing you was a surprise. Someone in my line of work doesn’t get surprised very often.”
“I’ll try to do it again. I’m not in town alone. I’m riding with a man named Haresh. Ever heard of him?”
“Haresh? What is that?”
“I think it’s East Indian.”
“No,” she snapped. “First or last name?”
Slocum furrowed his brow and admitted, “I’m not quite sure. It’s always just been . . . Haresh.”
“What’s he look like?”
He gave her a detailed description of the big man, and Olivia listened as if she was absorbing every syllable of every word. He followed up by telling her everything else he knew about Haresh. It didn’t take long.
