Karen Mercury (13 page)

“Who
is
his sister, anyway? There’s no one here.”

“She’s the town schoolteacher, but her husband owns mines up in South Pass, so they spend a lot of time there. I guess school is out of session, so Liberty went up there.”

Spenser couldn’t read Fidelia’s expression. “So we’ll be alone in this house, then.”

He really hadn’t thought about it. “I imagine so, yes. Listen. I had an idea that might conjure up your brother’s ghost. Or get me killed. Either way, I think it’ll work.”

“Yes, yes,” Fidelia agreed passionately. “He only seems to manifest when I’m disturbed or bothered.” A guarded look came over her face. “What do you intend to do?”

Spenser really hadn’t planned this far ahead. He knew his goal, just not how to get there. He breathed down on the barmaid, and she stood just inches from him, all bushy-tailed, wondering what his plan was. The truth was, Chess had been correct about Spenser’s lack of experience where females were concerned. Chess was right—there
weren’t
any women on ranches, unless you counted the rancher’s stolid, broad wife or the Spanish women who assisted them. And since Spenser had been fired once for humping a stolid, broad rancher’s wife, he had avoided them, too. And the Spanish gals all had fathers with rusty old flintlocks. So yes, the sum of his experience with women had been on hog farms.

But he felt so powerfully strong about Fidelia Schiller, he knew exactly what he could do to rouse her. He took Fidelia’s chin between his fingers. Her look was open, waiting. “I know you were dallying with Chess in the Chinese pharmacy. And I know him well enough to know he didn’t bother satisfying you.”

She frowned quizzically. “Satisfy? Well, I think he was fairly satisfactory in that regard, Spenser. Not that I have any intention of repeating it. But from what little I can recall of intercourse, I’d say he was satisfactory.”

Spenser grinned sadly. He knew it. Chess had just banged her up against a wall till he’d achieved his only end—his own climax. Just as he had with Spenser three times now, Chess was only interested in his own gratification.
Poor Fidelia
. Maybe she didn’t know that wasn’t the only way. “That’s not what I meant, Fidelia. I meant, did he give
you
satisfaction?”

She still looked mystified. “Yes, I believe I am satisfied with his performance.”

Spenser was forced to clarify, clumsily. “I mean, did you achieve orgasm? That’s the holy grail for women.” Or so the practical rancher’s wife had told—and taught—him. “That’s the measure of a man who truly cares for a woman, whether or not he can bring her to climax.”

“Oh, climax!” Fidelia laughed nervously and looked away. “Who
cares
about that? That’s just a silly old fairy tale anyway, isn’t it?”

Spenser clutched her firmly by her upper arms. “Is it?” He walked her until she was backed up against the fireplace. “I’ll venture to say once you’ve experienced it, you’ll start caring.” Bending into her at the knees, he gathered her skirts in his hands, raising them until he could feel the tops of her stockings at her creamy thighs.

Her breathing quickened, and she put one hand flat against his chest, but she didn’t push very hard. Her pupils dilated and her lower jaw hung slack. “Climaxes are very dangerous for women. I should not wish to become with child!”

What?
What was she talking about? What did orgasms have to do with becoming pregnant? Spenser kissed her then so she couldn’t talk, and her delicious cinnamon-flavored lips were pliant under his, parting slightly. A surge of lust went straight to his prick, stiffening it against her lap, but he didn’t want to focus on himself, as Chess did. His fingers, accustomed to tying various reata knots, swiftly found the slit in her drawers. He was gratified when his two longest fingers easily slipped into her pussy, already drenched, perhaps oozing with Chess’s semen.

That his fingers slipped with the slime of Chess’s seed sent another rush of sensuality through his cock and balls. He withdrew his fingers, though, so he could diddle with her button. The prepuce was already slick and engorged, standing out like a tiny penis. Being thoroughly familiar with all methods of frigging a penis, Spenser relaxed into his stroking.

Fidelia, however, nearly drew blood with her fingernails, that’s how tightly she clenched his shoulder. Almost immediately she broke their kiss. With eyes squeezed shut, her head banged against the wall next to the photograph of the irate saloon patron. “
Oh!
” She even assisted Spenser by lifting one slipper and balancing herself on the fireplace grate, angling her hips toward him.

He nuzzled the crook of her neck, vastly pleased with his talents at finding her sensitive spot so swiftly. “Now, isn’t this nice?” he murmured. “You’re so captivating, Fidelia. You’re just a cunning wench. Let me pleasure you.”

However, his concentration was shaken by the ghastly, violent thrumming of a few guitar chords very close to them in the room. Both he and Fidelia gasped loudly, and Spenser’s fingers stilled while he whipped his head to look around the room. No one. But the dissonant chords came again, like a child banging angrily with no tonality at all.

“
Du Hundsfott!
” Fidelia shrieked, digging her nails in deeper into Spenser’s shoulder. She jutted her hips to indicate what she wanted. “Don’t stop, goddamnit!”

Spenser had no idea what a
Hundsfott
was, but she appeared to be shrieking it in the direction of her brother’s guitar chords, so he resumed his fiddling with her bulging clitoris.

“Ah, yes…” she hissed like a teapot, and calmed once more into his petting. “
D
as ist
angenehm...
” A little smile even flitted over her beautiful face, and Spenser knew he had her.

But a few more violent guitar chords clanged so close to his head Spenser looked around again, this time not breaking in his task at hand. Where
was
that son of a bitch, anyway? He wasn’t even singing this time.

Then Spenser saw it. The guitar, by itself. It seemed three-dimensional enough, not like the clown advertisement that Ulrich had resembled earlier. Yet it just hung there in the air, the strings vibrating with each angry chord.

Fidelia shook Spenser’s shoulder to get his attention. He renewed his concentration on her slippery button but was further distracted when a figure appeared in the room. Tall, wide, brawny.

Chess was grinning lasciviously. And he held a butter dish in his hand.

Fidelia barely noticed the arrival of Chess Hudson. Spenser was building up to the most massive crescendo she had ever dreamed imaginable, and all at the tips of his dexterous fingers!

She had touched her muff before, of course. But she had never followed through with it—it scared her. Wolfgang had petted her muff but not for long. He must not have had the skills and know-how to elicit this glorious swell of lust that washed over her.

Strange, overwhelming passion flooded her entire pelvis. She found her senses shutting down. The edges of the parlor blurred and darkened. She wasn’t aware until much later that she had Spenser’s blood under her fingernails. His expert toying at her clitoris was coaxing from her something strange, frightening, but altogether impossible to cast aside and ignore.

Even her brother’s damned flailing at his damned guitar wasn’t enough to break her concentration. She saw the guitar hovering in the middle of the room, but she just wanted to fling a fireplace poker at it. All Fidelia was aware of was Spenser’s cowhide scent, the insistent pressing of his enormous erection against her hipbone, and his fiddling with her muff.

“Don’t stop!” she cried like a madwoman.

Was this an orgasm? How long did it last? She didn’t care if Spenser had to continue until his arm fell off. He was right. Chess had withheld this little secret from her.

And now here was Chess, holding…something, she didn’t know what, didn’t care what. Chess wedged himself between her and the wall. She would rip the head off anyone who tried to stop Spenser’s diddling.

“I see the guitar,” Chess murmured near her ear. “But no person. The guitar sounds angry. It’s not even playing a proper song.”

“Yes, he’s getting in a lather,” said Spenser. “I’ll work him up even more. This bodacious gal’s about to erupt.”

“
Mein Gott!
” Fidelia spat. “Will you
Hundsfott
men just
shut the hell up?
”

At this, the guitar leapt into a lively Spanish fandango, as though Ulrich strummed twenty strings at once. Fidelia had often heard him playing frantically like this when she was upset over something. But neither man reacted to the hovering guitar. In fact, Chess hitched his fingertips inside the
U
-shaped neckline of both her bodice and chemise and yanked them down. Her ample breasts popped out and bobbed there as though full of water, the areolas broad, the nipples jutting like tiny gems.

“
Mon Dieu
,” Chess whispered, “you’ve got superb full titties.”

Chess took his buttered fingers and smeared them all about her breasts. His touch was light, not brutal or forceful, as he’d been when they had fucked. Spenser raised a hand and claimed one breast, so Chess cupped the other, buttering it up.

“Come for me,” Spenser murmured. “Come, you saucy wench. You know you want to come all over my hand. Spread your thighs for me. Let me pleasure you.”

When Chess’s oily fingers clamped down on a nipple, it happened. The next thing Fidelia knew, there was a great clenching of her uterus, as though a giant hand squeezed it. She held her breath, overwhelmed by terror and euphoria at the same time. Unimaginable ecstasy poured down her inner channel and centered on her button, where Spenser diddled and whispered, “That’s it. That’s good. Keep coming. Let it overtake you. Let it flow.” She humped her muff against Spenser’s fingers and clung to him for dear life.

After what seemed like long minutes of incredible bliss wracking her entire body, Fidelia wondered,
Will this ever stop?
Will I break something
?

This seemed confirmed when behind her there was a loud crack, a flash of something long and shiny, and suddenly Chess’s hand wasn’t fondling her breast any longer. The crack was followed by a thud. Fidelia presumed the thud was Chess’s body hitting the floor, but she was still orgasming against Spenser’s wonderful fingers.

“That’s right…” Spenser continued to murmur, as though nothing had happened. “Keep coming…come for me, my captivating lass…”

It was the laughter of a woman that finally stopped the oblivious couple. Spenser’s fingers stilled in an instant, and it was just as well. Fidelia was discovering that if he continued any longer, her overly-sensitive clitoris would begin to pain her.

Twirling to face the parlor door, Fidelia yanked her bodice to cover up her titties. An absolutely stunning woman with exotic, outlined eyes and a bosom even more stupendous than her own stood there, shimmering in rust-colored satin. She looked Spanish with her long auburn hair that would have touched the shelf of her ass if she had not done it up, and she was laughing.

She pointed at Chess and laughed so thoroughly she seemed unable to breathe. Chess was sitting Indian fashion on the floor behind her, rubbing his head and holding a broken…
ski?
Sure enough, it looked like a finely polished alpine ski. Obviously, Ulrich had cracked him over the head with it.

“Chess!” the woman was finally able to say. “You let that ridiculous man hit you with one of Levi’s skis!” She came forward and picked up a piece of the broken ski, as though more concerned with the ski than with Chess. Fidelia presumed the woman was one of Chess’s sisters, to be acting that way. “Where did the funny man in the porkpie hat go?”

Fidelia gasped. Suddenly she forgot completely that she had been caught in the throes of orgasm—by a stranger. “Did you see him?” she asked urgently. “Did you see the fellow who hit Chess with the ski?”

The woman frowned. “Why, yes. He
was
standing right here, angrily bashing my brother, but suddenly I can’t find him. He didn’t pass me in the doorway. He—” An enlightened look came over her face. “Ah. I see. Chess! You are obviously one of us, one of the Hudson siblings. You have your very own spirit guide!”

Chess was finally getting to his feet. “I wouldn’t exactly call him a
guide
, especially since he seems to be doing more annoying and bashing than guiding.”

Fidelia held out her hand for the woman to shake. “I’m Fidelia Schiller. I’m afraid that ghost in the porkpie hat is my brother, Ulrich, dead almost a month now.”

“Alameda Spiro, Chess’s sister. This is remarkable!” She ruffled her brother’s hair. “We had our own spirit guide, too, Chess. Three years ago a fellow named Percy Tibbles—that is why we named our house Tibbles House—came to guide us out of a very big mess.”

“So you believe in ghosts, then?” asked Chess. “We were trying to conjure Ulrich by upsetting Fidelia’s emotional state. We need to ask him some more questions. But all that manifested was his damned guitar. Yet you saw the fellow himself.”

Spenser said, “I notice how he didn’t bash you with the guitar.”