“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Intimacy crept into her tone, and she touched his arm. “Only to be happy about,” she continued in a sultry purr, her other hand pulling the towel aside. “You want me. After all, I’m a woman and you’re a man...”
His tongue licked his lips to moisten them, as he stared quivering at her delicately molded thighs and golden-fleeced loins. Desire stirred within him, despite his best intentions. Jessica was not for him to take, he told himself; she was offering her love in a moment of anguish, out of grief and hysteria over the loss of her friend Ki, as a desperate effort to forget and drive out her torment. He would not be the cause of her further suffering—he could not be, and live with himself.
“But Jessica, you ... you’re an angel ...”
“I’m also a beast,” she murmured tauntingly, reaching down to unbuckle his belt. “Let me prove it, prove both of us are.”
And then Daryl found himself moving, his body responding of its own volition. His fingers fumbled with the buttons, his hips trembling as he rose to slide his pants down, his flesh aching as Jessica ran her hands around his chest and thighs while helping him rid himself of his clothing. Then he was as naked as she, tanned and muscular and admirably masculine.
Daryl joined her on the bed, his mouth coming down on hers. He kissed her and she kissed back, and fire was in their lips. Awkward with passion, he tried to push her flat and enter her from above, but the press of the covers against her wound was too painful for her to accept. Daryl was a solid man, she realized, without a great deal of imagination or experience, and was probably only familiar with the standard position. Well, that was definitely out of the question tonight.
“Daryl,” she whispered, “my back.”
He reared as if scalded. “Jesus, I’m sorry, we can‘t—”
“We can.” She drew away slightly, just enough so she could turn and crouch on her knees and elbows with her buttocks thrusting up. It was a submissive position many women dislike, the cow-hitch posture, but what with one thing and another, it seemed exceptionally appropriate for the occasion. She stifled an urge to moo, saying, “This is how beasts do it, isn’t it?”
Daryl was eagerly game to try playing the beast. He slid behind her on his knees and took her gently, his hands gliding along her sides and up around to fondle her breasts. He moved deep within her, and Jessica felt him clearly, with a joy that surged through her. It was this elation that made her anchor her feet against the bed, raising her hips to press up and back to match his passionate thrusts. The world spun in a rainbow of colors, but in reality there was no world for Jessica just then—there was only this throbbing, this pulsing rhythm inside her gripping belly. Together they worked in frenzied ecstasy, until at last they reached sweet release, and he spilled his passion deep inside her while she squeezed around him, shuddering.
Daryl sprawled beside her on the cramped bed, his erection fading, his breathing trembling in her ear. But greater indeed was the fulfillment inside Jessica, the effervescent sensation of contentment and satiation. Stirring, she eased from the bed, reaching back with one hand to retrieve the blanket.
“No,” Daryl said, smiling up at her. “No blanket.”
“But Daryl,” she teased, standing naked beside the bed, “what about your modesty that you were so worried about?”
He laughed. “Too late for that, little heifer.”
She sashayed to the doorway, standing there in the warmth from the kitchen stove, feeling no embarrassment at all. She felt pleased and natural, basking in his adoring gaze, admiring in return his openly displayed, handsome body.
He rose on an elbow. “You’ve got me going in circles, y‘know.”
“About what?”
“You. Us. This.”
Smiling, she parried, “You mean about us having sex?”
“Yeah, in a way. I guess I just won’t ever figure women out. A man, now, is pretty straightforward. I like a drink when I’m thirsty, and a steak when I’m hollow inside. I’ve never been much for the notion that there’s just one woman in the world for a man, but all the other women I’ve met up with before don’t seem to agree.”
“Then it’s simple, Daryl. You’ve merely met up with a woman who’s as straightforward as you, and agrees with you.” She crossed to the bed and knelt beside him, and as he put out his hand to caress one of her distended nipples, she whispered: “Have you ever studied sex, the art of making love?”
“In Eucher Butte? I’d be tarred and feathered.”
“Well, I’ve tried to avoid living in the Eucher Buttes of this world. I’ve lived in a lot of other places, and studied and learned.”
“And practiced,” Daryl added, his mouth closing around her breast, suckling it as if he were an infant seeking milk.
“Japan, the Far East, Arabia, Europe, ahh ...” she sighed dreamily. “And I’ve found that passion and desire never made anyone feel sick or guilty. Only the hate and destructiveness that can be hidden in them will produce sickness and bitter regrets.”
Daryl’s lips left her breast, and he helped lift her back onto the bed. He was ready again to sample her talents, his erection reviving hard and strong as she stretched out beside him, snuggling affectionately, her legs slightly parted.
“Make it as good as the last time,” she whispered.
Daryl ran his hand over the mounds of her breasts and down across her smooth belly to the soft, pulsing warmth below. Jessica moaned, her flesh coming alive to his caresses, and her voice sighed in his ear, urging him to quench the fires kindling in her loins.
He kissed her lips, her cheeks, the tender hollow of her neck. Slipping lower, he darted his tongue across her hardened nipples, then moved it wetly along her abdomen, feeling the satiny skin ripple under his tauntings. Then still lower, his lips probing and exploring as she cried out in ecstatic pleasure. She rolled from side to side while he licked at her inner lips; she whimpered deliriously as her throbbing arousal increased, her fingers entangled in his hair.
The splayed thighs beneath his mouth arched and swiveled. Daryl gave them room. Jessica again stretched out alongside him, but now facing the foot of the bed, her legs still spread wide on either side of his bobbing head. Daryl could feel her hands move from his hair and down along his body, clutching his buttocks, pulling him toward her face. Her tongue began teasing him, dancing like a waterbug on the crown of his erection. Daryl pressed her loins harder against his sucking mouth, and a deep animal sound escaped from his nibbling lips.
From below, between his own wide-stretched legs, Jessica dipped further, licking along his rigid shaft, and then plunging her mouth voraciously on it, swallowing it in a soft clinging pressure. Daryl felt his hips writhing, stirring, swaying, his entire lower body seeming to swim in a vast sea of tense sensation.
Jessica’s seemingly disembodied lips, her mouth, her throat were eating him, trying to draw the whole of him into her yearning flesh. Daryl could distinguish no external detail of touch. Doubtless her teeth were there, nipping gently; her tongue was there, licking and twining; her lips were there, pressing and sucking ... but no detail was clear, only the combining vacuum of suction drawing all of his vital juices down to his groin.
And in response to her own urgent yearnings, Jessica was pressing her naked body full-length against him, undulating back and forth, around and up, so that the potent force of his own tongue was being drawn deep up inside her sensitive flesh. His head was hot, his mouth working, gasping, and a tumultous eruption was growing, growing in his scrotum ... and from the way Jessica was reacting, he thought she might also be on the verge of climaxing.
Too soon, he thought, too soon ...
On the verge, on the very crest of his orgasm, Daryl felt Jessica pull away slightly, perfectly timing and tapering off, no more ready to end their ecstasy than he. For a long moment longer her mouth lightly suckled his thickened shaft, her tongue dancing teasingly on its bulbous tip. Then she pivoted up, squatting over him, astride him, knees on t
he bed on either side of his hips.
She gazed down at him with eyes filmed with passion, and then impaled herself on his spearing erection, contracting her strong inner thighs, her muscular action clamping her moist passage tightly around his shaft. “This one, a knowing Frenchman would call monde renverse. You like?”
“I like,” Daryl groaned, clenching his buttocks, thrusting his hips up off the covers in greedy response. “Oh, I like ...”
Jessica splayed her kneeling legs, settling down until she contained all of his rigid, lust-hardened shaft within her. Slowly at first, then with increasing fierceness, she began sliding up and down. This was a posture more to her liking, allowing her to be the dominant partner, freeing her to control the pace and stimulation. Her head sagged, then tautened again in arousal, a vein standing out at the side of her throat with the fury of her pumping exertion. Her mouth opened and closed in mute testimony to the exquisite sensations plundering her loins, her long blonde hair swaying and brushing down over her shoulders and across his chest.
Daryl grasped her jiggling breasts, toying harshly with them until hoarse moans were drawn from her slackened lips. She bent for a brief moment with a whisper of a kiss, then arched up and back as she plunged deeper, faster, reaching behind to caress Daryl’s scrotum, massaging with delicately stroking fingernails. The backward angle made her body toss precariously on Daryl’s hips, her thighs descending with building force, only to reverse at the last instant and draw up again on his penetrating shaft.
Daryl, tensing upward, felt the gripping of her sheath tearing at his entrails. “God, Jessica, you’re like a vice,” he panted.
Her passage kept squeezing, squeezing, as she crooned above him, her mouth open, her eyes wide and sightless. The squeezing grew unbearable until, bursting, Daryl came again.
Jessica’s loins worked and sucked as if his juices were some invigorating tonic, to be ravenously swallowed in her belly, as her own face contorted and twisted with spasming climax.
Then, with the ebb of passion, Jessica crouched limp and satiated over Daryl. Slowly, sighing contentedly, she eased off his flaccid body and lay down on the bed alongside him. Daryl felt drugged, unable to move. He wanted to say something, but was at a loss for words. Instead, he silently cradled her in his arms and dozed off, their bodies remaining loosely entwined ...
Jessica awoke from a restless sleep.
Tensely, she remained quiet beside Daryl, listening to his easy breathing and watching the rhythmic rise and fall of his sweat-slick chest. Then, gradually, gently, she sat up and eased from his lax embrace, slipping noiselessly from the bed.
Cautiously, so as not to disturb him, she took the gauze, the roll of tape, and the pair of scissors, and padded into the kitchen. By the frail glow of the stove’s embers, she awkwardly patched her wound and began gathering her clothes. Her jeans and boots were still in fair shape, but her shirt and jacket were virtual rags. She went into the front room and snitched Daryl’s heavy cloth workshirt; it fit her like a tent, but at least it was in one whole piece. She wrapped it around her, tucking it in and rolling up the sleeves, then put her ripped jacket on over it. It would have to suffice.
Soundlessly she moved to the front door, boots in hand, and twisted the handle. The hinges squeaked. She hesitated, licking dry lips, glancing fretfully back toward the bedroom.
There was a sound of Daryl fidgeting, but his breathing continued guttural and even. She thought of the angular lines of his naked body stretched out on the covers, and was filled with the desire to strip again and climb back in bed next to him. She fought her temptation, furtively crossing the threshold and closing the door behind her, leaning against it for balance as she tugged on her boots.
It was just before dawn, and a cold, silvery light touched only the jagged rim of the distant hills. Spying the outline of the otherwise murky slopes just increased Jessica’s bitter resolve. Swiftly she crossed to the barn where her horse was stalled, and walking the bay out and safely away from the house, she stepped into the saddle and rode west toward the hills.
The dawn had evolved into an overcast morning of melancholy grayness by the time Jessica had retraced Daryl’s route back to the rocky gorge. She passed the spot where the Block-Two-Dot crew had been trampled, and saw that most of the men and horses had survived; there were only a few corpses dotted around. Even fewer steers were sprawled lifeless in a short line from there back up the gorge trail, the results of the crew’s panicked shooting.
When she located Ki’s dead bay, she dismounted and started her search. Ki was not anywhere in open view, which gave her hope—though he could just as readily have been thrown into the boulders, or been injured and crawled out of sight. To die.
“Ki!”
His name echoed mockingly. Grit and pebbles crunched under her boots as Jessica ran along both sides of the trail, calling for him over and over. When she failed to find him at first, she sought him a second and then a third time, up and down the edges, going farther than where they’d encountered the herd, and back to the mouth of the canyon, where she and Daryl had hid.
“Ki!” she continued crying out, her voice rising with growing alarm. Increasingly frantic, she stumbled over and over across the sharp stones, her breath coming short and hurting under her breast.
“Ki!”
There was no answer. Except for the scattered remains from the stampede, Jessica was utterly alone.
Chapter 10
Ki, thrown by his dying horse, had scrambled in a frantic dash for the bouldered side of the gorge. He’d whirled and leaped to keep from being trampled, and when he glimpsed Jessica and Daryl struggling to reach him, he had to strain his lungs to be heard. “Save yourselves ... or we’ll all die ...”
Then the stampede rampaged close and enveloped him. A hoof caught him in the shin and almost broke it; he swallowed the pain and plowed on through the churning, trampling herd. The boulders ... he could see the boulders ... an arm’s length away...
And then he saw the maddened longhom plunging straight for him, head down, horns rolling, nostrils leaving a stream of foam in the moonlight. There wasn’t any time to dive out of the way. He could only fling himself flat and let the steer leap over him. As he did so, the stampede and its thunder grew vague and gray, blending into a swirling black fog ...
Consciousness returned, along with a staggering headache. Ki lay where he was, propped on one elbow, his thoughts slowly clearing. The steer must have kicked him a glancing blow; luckily it had been a straggler, in the drag of the herd, or else he’d surely have been run over by others. Dazed, holding his head in his hands, Ki sat up and peered groggily around.
The gorge was quiet. Ther herd was gone, the only steers in sight the few dead ones the Block-Two-Dot crew had shot. But facing Ki in a haphazard semicircle were six men in range garb, dirty and sweat-streaked, their expressions hard. He would instantly have perceived them to be some of Ryker’s riders—perhaps the only uninjured survivors after their mauling by the herd—even if he hadn’t recognized one of them as the ranch ramrod, Volpes. The man was standing back, strangely poised, eyeing Ki as if he were a casual bystander; but the carbine nestled in the crook of Volpes’s arm didn’t look casual at all.
“Be up in a minute, I said, didn’t I?” Volpes grinned and spat. “Always said chinks have cast-iron skulls.”
Nobody confirmed or denied it.
“Okay,” Volpes said, “grab him and tie him up. The boss’ll want this smart turd alive.”
The five moved in with more relish than caution.
Ki scrambled upright, his face purposely fearful while he threw up both hands as if in entreaty. But what he expected didn’t happen; no shuriken sprang from his sleeves to appear in his hands. He flicked his wrists. Still nothing. Jammed! Somehow, with all the grit and banging around, the damned release mechanisms had broken!
Not that the five crewmen were aware of this, of how near to death they had all come, as they sprang for him. Seemingly trapped by t
heir swift convergence, Ki had time for only a kapalabhati cleansing breath before embracing their attack—nukishomen-uchi—drawing them and himself into the circular harmony of the universe.
Ki stunned the nearest man with a back-knuckled “ram’s head” jab between the eyes. Without turning, without apparently seeing his target, he stabbed the second with a left-handed thumb-and-forefinger thrust to the throat, constricting the flow of blood through both jugular veins and dropping the man unconscious. Meanwhile, he stopped the man tackling from the rear with a sideways snap-kick; his solar plexus paralyzed, the man sank to his knees, convinced he was dying. But the fourth man managed to come in butting from the other side, knocking Ki just enough off balance so he could gouge his knee in the small of Ki’s back and apply a full nelson.
“I got him now! Beat the shit outta him!”
“You betcha!” The fifth man grinned, plunging forward.
Using the man behind him for support, Ki bunched both legs in a flying upward thrust, his heels catching the fifth man square in the balls. The man doubled up, uttering short croaks of agony and confusion.
Then, planting his feet firmly on the ground again, Ki simply backed up. The man behind him, who had both arms and one foot engaged in the lock he had put on Ki, was thrown immediately off balance, and had to remove the knee he’d put in the small of Ki’s back, to keep himself from falling. So Ki just relaxed and bent his knees and dropped out from under the full nelson, turning as he did so to deliver an elbow-strike just beneath the fellow’s breastbone. The man went down, and Ki was just preparing to finish the job with a heel to the groin, when he felt the press of cold steel against his temple.
“You move,” Volpes said coldly, “and I’ll blow your fuckin’ pigtail brains out.”
Slowly, Ki lowered the foot he was planning to stomp with and stood motionless. His face became taut, expressionless, as the rifle continued to bore into his temple.
The five fallen men began stirring, crawling and gasping raggedly, then tottering upright, holding themselves, hacking and wheezing.
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