In Danger's Shadow: Cassandra Wilde Western Adventure (Half Breed Haven Book 2)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  He began to mumble some incoherent words in his sleep as Cassie’s hand continued to roam up and down his erect cock. Her movements were precise as her lips curled into a vixen-like grin as his mumbling gave way to a soft-moan that escaped her handsome partner’s lips while his face was crunching up slightly. She chuckled, her other hand busying itself in playing with the messy hair on top of his head. “Wake up.” she whispered, her mouth close to his neck. As if coaxed by her spell, his eyes finally fluttered open. The haze of dreaminess was quickly replaced by pure lust as his vision took in the blonde beauty working on him, especially enjoying the gentle swing on her large breasts.

  “‘Morning. Not to sound like my school marm sister with her big words and all but you're an insatiable one, aren't you?” he whispered back, voice deeper than she recalled from the night before. Cassie grinned as she too had a sister that was forever showing off her vocabulary much to her other sister Catalina’s annoyance as she didn’t always get their meaning. Pushing thoughts of Honor Elizabeth and Cattie aside she curled her lips into a smile.

  “Seems so,” she breathed, before challenging him. “We don't have much time, I have places to be. Are you game?”

  “I’ve got to catch the stage for Mexico so you're not alone but let’s do this!” he enthused as Cassie lowered herself down, and with her golden hair spread on either side of his thighs, she took almost the entire length of his cock in and she began to suck him gently while one hand remained on his muscular chest, her fingers enjoying the feel of the expanse of thick hair that adorned it. His eyes widened and the upturned corners of his mouth signaled the delight written on his face.

  The miner gazed at her beholding the voluptuous figure of the woman giving him pleasure. His eyes were still foggy as a result of the whiskey he’d downed the night before and he contented himself to lay there enjoying the waves of pleasure that was flooding his entire being. The feeling of the soft wet walls of her mouth and the saliva lubricating the glans of his penis sent ripples of sensations into his brain, and he sat up in bed as and slipped his hands into her mussed up golden hair, gently grasping the sides of her head.

  He began to thrust deeply into her mouth and she squirmed with the pleasure his good size cock was bringing her. It was mutual as the sight of her big breasts and hard nipples dangling between his legs made him want to fuck her desperately. He removed his dick from her mouth and in one swift movement he turned her with her back lying on the bed with her face staring up at him in anticipation. She looked so sexy and beautiful with her huge breasts, narrow waist giving way to curvy hips and her pussy with its lush tangle of hair resembling spun gold from that fairy tale he had heard as child in Boulder,

  With one hand, he began to knead one of her breasts and his free hand was running down her side, teasing her as it gripped her smooth thigh.” He was unbearably slow, but somewhat still attentive as he listened to all of those breathless whimpers of need that escaped her. He kissed her bare skin, nibbling on her neck as his fingers finally entered her hotness. With a certain amount of cheer, he asked her. “Just how long have you been ready for me, hm? Have you been playing alone?”

  She shook her head, as her eyes crinkled with mirth because he had no idea that attending to herself was seldom something she nor any of her sisters for that matter often needed to do given the frequency of their love ‘em and leave ‘em escapades with the willing men of the west. When it came to the Wildes their allure had the effect of rendering men color blind to their different races without fail. All that was forgotten within moments as he slowly removed his fingers and began probing her with the tip of his engorged pleasure maker. Her toes curled, and her hands gripped his back as he did so.

  With a lick of his lips he entered her wet pussy with one long thrust and their tongues locked in a frantic kiss as they moaned hungrily in lust for each other. Cassie using her palms on the mattress to propel her pelvis towards him began to receive his cock vigorously. He reached down with one hand while the other continued to prop him up and grabbed one of her rocking breasts; the weight of it filling his hands He began to squeeze firmly as he angled his cock to every corner of her pussy. They were a sweaty mess of lust and passion as their bodies worked on reaching heaven once more.

  As he kissed her long and slow, only to tear her head away to breathe when he finally hit her sweet spot. Cassandra keened in want as he continued his rhythm…fast and strong. Her lover like her, was panting and their moans echoed in the room. She grabbed at his neck French kissing him as his pace picked up even further. Only their sounds of pleasure could be heard, and maybe the creaking of the bed. She felt high, her whimpers grew louder as she neared her moment of release.

  “Fuck, you're tight.” he groaned before she finally came undone. All she saw was white as his face contorted with pleasure as her eyes rolled back in her head while his jammed shut. Pulling out all stops once more he increased the motion of his dick deep inside her and she knew she was teetering on the edge of a multiple orgasm as her vagina walls began to contract against his throbbing cock. Cassie’s arms shot away from her body, one knocking over an unlit fancy kerosene lantern on the night stand and it barely registered on her. Deep inside she could also feel the muscles of his cock contract and with a mighty show of self-control he pulled out and she watched breathlessly as he shot an impressive load all over her taut belly.

  They rode out the aftershock before crumbling on the bed in a sweaty, exhausted but satisfied mess. With a deep satisfied sigh, she thought how she was really going to have to bust ass now to draw another bath and still make it to her mission assignment on time.

  ***

  As they exited the front doors of the hotel the pair exchanged the briefest of kisses on the lips. They both had expressed their thanks for the wonderful time they had shared and went their separate ways. Cassie had glanced back over her shoulder in time to see him disappear into a crowd of people. On the way, down from the room the miner had extended her an invitation to see him if she was ever in Leadville.

  Cassie had used that as an opportunity to get his name without having to admit to him that despite spending the night together and being brought to multiple orgasms she had no idea what to call him. Cassie asked him to write down his full name and address so she would have no problem finding him. Stopping at the front desk he had secured a pen and slip of paper and did as she asked. As he wrote she tucked her still damp hair from her hasty bath up into the rounded flat brimmed hat all the sisters wore except Honor Elizabeth.

  Retrieving her horse, the Missouri Trotter she had named Lily, from the nearby livery Cassie continued on her way wondering why she hadn’t just outright asked him again what his name was when she had missed it due to the tray falling. Perhaps it was the part of her that enjoyed a little mystery. Lord knows she loved her detective work and the mysteries that came with it. Cassie relished in the undercover assignments she was given, because she took no small amount of pride at the success she had achieved in the man’s world of law enforcement. So many she had gone up against her had no clue what resided behind the facades she would employ such a pretending to be a brainless debutante or a simple school marm. They almost never suspected her and in the end, it had been many a bad man’s down fall as Cassie and her sisters liked to say, “A Wilde always gets her man one way or another.”

  Soon she was drawing close to where her uncle ran Arizona from a one-time Spanish mission that had been converted into his headquarters. The territory, with its shifting of the capital from Prescott to Tucson, had no official base of operations, and the legislature was even known to hold meetings in a saloon, but Nathanial Duvalier had long ago chosen the mission for his office. As she drew closer to the old church, she paused Lily for a moment and plucked the paper from her pocket.

  She thought of how in the unlikely event she ever was in Leadville she would look him up, but that was the only way they would ever meet again. Cassandra had made no return invitation for him to stop at Cedar Ledge. He
r father was well aware of his four-daughters’ sexual adventuring but it was not something to be discussed and only on the rarest occasion, out of respect for Judge William Henry “Whip” Wilde, would they ever bring one of their men into the grand two story “L” shaped ranch house they called home.

  Idly she caught sight of her destination and quickly unfolded and scanned the paper. So, her recent carnal bliss was courtesy of one Rory Russell. I thank you Rory Russell, she thought. Cassandra sincerely meant it, but as she brought her horse to a stop by a hitching post he was already fading from her mind like they always did. Would there ever be one that didn’t? That was her last thought on the matter as she swept it from her mind. The gears in her head were already turning towards the matter of the “Daylight Dandy” killer. She had been following the stories in the press and she had developed one prominent lead that she had identified as something to look into that so far, the authorities had probably missed.

  Cassandra eagerly tied up Lily outside the mission, paying no mind to the fancy carriage with the glass windows parked in front of the building. If she had she would have recognized it and been filled with apprehension. Instead she swept through the cathedral area, its pews long since removed and headed for the staircase that would take her to the second level where the Governor maintained his control over the expansive section of the Southwest of the United States known as the Arizona Territory. The oldest of the Wildes was ready to dive headlong into the matter of putting a killer out of business, but Cassandra had no idea that an hour later she would emerge from her meeting dejected.

  ***

  On the edge of town in the rear of what was once one of the finest homes in Tucson, the man known as the “Daylight Dandy” was hard at work preparing for his “outing” as he liked to call it. With calm, deliberate strokes, he brushed the hide of a midnight black mare that had allowed him to get away with his savagery. Casually he tossed the brush into a bucket on the ground and scooped up a handful of feed. With disinterest, he watched as the horse quickly chewed up the oats with its mouth twitching in a circular motion. By this time the horse seemed to know that if it performed well it could expect an extra-large portion after their run. He had paid a pretty penny for her back east in Saratoga, New York, but she had been worth every penny.

  With the grooming and feeding complete, the man hoisted the special saddle he had commissioned in the back country of Louisiana where no questions were asked, up on the animal’s back and secured it underneath its belly. Carefully he checked it and found everything was secure including the two special manacles that protruded from each side of the saddle, tethered by three strong links of chain. Satisfied, the man ran his fingers through his closely cropped blond hair before leaving the horse behind as it chuffed and stomped one of its hooves. He briefly paused to gaze into an old mirror he had hung on a support beam and fastidiously knotted his silk tie before he swung the door open and took in the view.

  The first thing he saw as always was the charred remains of the manor house as it had been known. Almost a decade ago it had been put to torch during a daring raid by the Yavapai renegade, Black Hawk, and his band of warriors known far and wide as The Omegas due to their vow to fight to the last man to rid Arizona of all white settlers. The man did not know if the warrior would ever achieve that goal but he had done a number on the Carlyle family that had lived here. The stories of their massacre were still routinely used to frighten the school children, he had heard. Black Hawk was still out there to this day, and it seemed as if none would ever be able to stop him.

  None of this mattered to the man of course. He was just thankful that house had been at the end of a long driveway and none ever ventured up it to the ruins. It had made the perfect hiding place from which to strike. He methods were always the same. Grab the girl, speed off to the edge of town leaving any who tried to pursue him in his wake, have his fun with the girl, her shrieks always giving him a release of pleasure that he could not begin to describe followed by the quick snap of her neck. That was unless the young woman proved exceptionally difficult to deal with. If she was, she would not have the mercy of a quick death as the cigarette burns on their bodies among other things would attest. So far five women had fallen victim to him, and now the time was ripe for the sixth.

  As he went about returning to the inside of the stable and leading the mare out, he thought about earlier after breakfast when he had been scouting the streets of Tucson looking for his next plaything. Just over an hour ago he had spotted a young woman on a street corner. A fetching thing she was. Long, lush brunette hair spilling out from underneath her bonnet that hung down over breasts that seemed to be ready to burst free from her dress. He had looked into her warm brown eyes as he collected the pamphlet from her. Drawing close he had inhaled her scent and felt the shifting movement below his waist as he thanked her with a smile. As he had walked away she called out to him to give her cause much consideration.

  Now as he closed the door to the stable he caught sight of the crumpled pamphlet laying on the planks where he had discarded it earlier. It had something to do with the plight of a community of Mexicans that had resettled to Arizona but were being forced off their land to make way for a spur line of the Trans-Southwestern Railroad. The killer didn’t give a damn about any of that; hell, his family held stock in the railroad. All that mattered was she was most likely going to still be there when he went boldly charging down the Tucson street and snatched her.

  It was going to be a fine day for his proclivity, he thought. Later after his demons had been satisfied under the cover of darkness, he would return into Tucson and back to this stable and retrieve his everyday horse that had been in the stall next to the mare. How long before he would go after his next girl he did not know, all he cared about was the here and now and what pleasure he was going to have with the doe-eyed beauty once she was at his mercy. As he galloped away down the long drive way the one thing he could never have counted on when he had awoken that morning with murder on his mind was the arrival of one quarter of The Daughters of Half Breed Haven.

  ***

  For the second time that morning Cassie emerged from a building in the company of a man but in this instance, she had derived nary a bit of pleasure at being in his company. They turned and faced each other and Cassie had to look down at the short, rotund man with his ginger beard now more gray than anything else.

  Casper O’Connell was well known to her. The man had briefly headed up the Philadelphia Pinkerton office of which she had been employed before returning to Arizona when her father had suffered a near fatal accident at the hands of a pair of criminals out to plunder riches from the family’s sprawling five hundred square mile ranch.

  During that time, she had clashed with the man who felt women had no place in the Pinkertons and that had included Kate Warne who had been Cassie’s mentor. Unfortunately for O’Connell, to Allan Pinkerton the “Double W’s” he liked to call Warne and Wilde were two of his favorite and best agents, so there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it despite being a childhood friends from Pinkerton’s days as a youth in Scotland. To Cassie’s relief the man had left for the southwest to head up a branch Pinkerton had wanted to establish in Arizona.

  They had encountered each other a few times over the years and their interactions were always the same. Challenging tones, forced laughter, and enough arm-crossing to surpass even that of her sister Lijuan, an action that was her most notable tick. This meeting had been no different. The man’s eyes narrowed as he gave her a hard smile.

  “Don’t hold this against the governor … oh, I’m sorry … your uncle.” The man punctuated his final two words with a quick, disgusted snort. Cassie’s eyes narrowed into a harsh squint. She was well aware the man thought she would be unemployed without her family’s connections. Cassandra Wilde after all was a woman doing a man’s job according to what she had heard through the Pinkerton grapevine back in the day.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t. I know full well you
r presence here was foisted on him. It was clear that he wanted the best person on the job but he had little choice,” she shot back at him with a slight tilt to her head.

  It was true but that didn’t take the sting out of it she had to admit to herself. Upon arriving for the meeting with her uncle Nate she had been taken aback to find O’Connell in his office. After a one hundred times, more formal greeting than she usually received by Nathanial due to the Pinkerton’s presence, the governor had got down to explaining the situation.

  Cassandra had been right. He had called upon her to help with the brazen murders of women being snatched off the streets of Tucson in broad daylight only to be brutalized and found dead hours later. However last night a group of the Arizona territory legislators had convened with him unexpectedly. Ambushed was more like it she had thought when she found out why. The last victim had been the younger sister of one of the territory’s most prominent legislators. Vowing revenge, he wanted the Daylight Dandy caught and he and his fellow friends on the legislature had days earlier telegraphed Allan Pinkerton in Chicago to see if his agency would take the case since the local law had failed to make any headway. Pinkerton had dispatched his key man in the Southwest, O’Connell, to assume the investigation.

  From the way Nathaniel had kept his hands folded on his lap and his even tone of voice, she knew he was not a happy man about the situation. He knew Cassie’s skills better than anyone but even the Governor, it seemed, could be overruled when a cadre of men as powerful as the ones that wanted the Pinkertons were intent on calling the shots.

  He had tried to make it up to her with another assignment. It was an important one, she had been advised. Cassie agreed when she learned that a fellow undercover lawman had gone silent now for some time while investigating suspected illegal activities in a distant town. He needed Cassie to get over there right away and find out what had become of him. It was not a flashy high-profile case like the “Daylight Dandy,” but she cared nothing for that. Her concern was for the missing lawman; however, she couldn’t help resenting the smug presence of Casper O’Connell.