Wild to the Bone (11 page)

The profile of a human-shaped shadow knelt beside the stream, head lowered. A slow ringing grew in Haskell's ears as he watched her cup water to her chest. Raven had removed the chemise. She opened her longhandles top, and he could see her breasts slant out from her chest as she crouched over the water and cupped water to them.

She froze. With a startled gasp, she whipped her head toward him, black hair winging out in the darkness. She closed the top across her breasts, and the starlight shone in her glaring eyes.

“Uh . . . sorry,” Bear said, and walked away in chagrin.

His ears warm and his cock aching, he returned to the camp and rolled himself up in his blankets. He sighed, smacked his lips, and closed his eyes.

He did not open them when he heard her return to the camp. There was a prolonged rustling, and then he jerked with a start when he felt her grind a toe against his ribs.

He lifted his head from his saddle and glared up at her. The fire was almost out, but he could still see that she was naked. She stared down at him, her hair a thick black curtain framing her face, tumbling down her shoulders and across her bare breasts, which were pale as cream in the darkness, the nipples in dark silhouette against them.

Her face was expressionless. She dug a bare toe into his ribs once more and said quietly, pouting, “Bear Haskell, I hate you. But if you don't fuck me, I am going to come unglued!”

12

H
askell let his gaze
wander up those long, sculpted legs, past the dark V beneath her belly, up past the full, round, uptilted breasts to her face, which was in mysterious, alluring shadow between the two black curtains of her tumbling hair.

Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed.

Bear cleared the knot from his throat and said through a growl, “Agent York, you'd best put somethin' on before you catch cold. Me, I'm goin' back to sleep.”

He snorted a low laugh. He couldn't help deviling her. She sure had deviled the hell out of him. But as he rolled onto his side and she said nothing, he began to think he might have outsmarted himself.

He'd just started to turn back to her, intending to grab her before she could get away, but then she dropped onto him, crushing the air out of his lungs with her knees and yelling, “Devil! Bear Haskell, you are a goddamn
devil
!”

And she started slapping him wildly about the head and shoulders, her hair dancing around her head. Haskell laughed and reached for her and pulled her down beside him, and then she was laughing, too, continuing to slap his head and shoulders while grinding her pussy against his crotch.

He grabbed her arms and pinned them to the ground on both sides of her head, her hair fanned out around her head and shoulders, and closed his mouth over hers. Instantly, her arms grew slack, and she opened her mouth for him, meeting his tongue with hers. He released her arms, and then, as he ran one hand down her side, she wrapped her arms around his neck and moved her pliant lips against his, entangling her tongue with his own.

At the same time, she folded one leg over one of his and ground her pussy against his crotch—he could feel the moist heat of it through the fly of his balbriggans. He felt himself growing hard, his cock curving up against his belly but impeded by his underwear. She must have felt the old trouser snake stirring, because she pulled her lips away from his and said through a smile, her eyes boring into his from only three inches away, “Pull that ax handle out and stick it inside of me, you shaggy-headed demon.”

“Hold on.”

He kissed her lips and then her chin, and then he slid his tongue down her long, gracefully curving neck to the deep hollow between her breasts. He sucked each nipple in turn, until she was groaning and cooing and writhing beneath him, brusquely pulling the thick curls of his hair, tugging at his ears.

When both her nipples were as hard as thimbles, he licked his way down her belly, spread her thighs wide apart with his hands, and poked his tongue through her silky black pubic hair and into the pink folds of her vagina.

“Ahh!” she grunted, tipping her head back. “Oh . . .
fuck
!”

He lapped her like a dog with a new bone, sticking his tongue deep inside her pussy, which was the temperature of a steaming hot spring, salty with her oozing honey. He drove his tongue out and in, like a cock, all the while rubbing her clit with his nose.

“Oh, God!” she cried, writhing under his face, hooking her arms around her legs and drawing her knees up to her chest but keeping them spread wide for him, granting the best access possible. “You . . . are . . . a very . . .
very
 . . . bad man, Agent . . . Haskell! Ohhhh, gawwwd!”

When he had her honey pot fairly boiling and she was no longer grunting but merely gurgling deep in her throat, he pulled his tongue out and stood, licking his lips. He loved how she tasted—rich and syrupy, slightly fruity, like fermenting plums. He quickly began peeling out of his longhandles.

“Oh, Christ,” she said, bounding onto her knees. “Let me help!”

Her hands fumbled with the fly of his balbriggans. She was breathing fast and hard, bouncing up and down on her knees as though her pussy couldn't take another second without something of his person inside it. She reached through his fly and wrapped her right hand around his cock, squeezing it until it ached wonderfully.

Haskell closed his eyes and groaned.

She laughed huskily and then gently pulled his long, throbbing member out of his longhandles and released it. It stood tall before her, the bulging purple head angling up toward his belly button and nodding like an old man about to doze. But there was no dozing in the long, thick wedge of manhood quivering just six inches in front of her face.

She moaned and wrapped her arms around his waist. She placed her hands on his buttocks, pressing her fingertips just inside his butt crack, and, rolling her eyes up to meet his, stuck her tongue out. He watched, heart thudding, as she slowly leaned her head forward until the very tip of her tongue was just barely touching the very tip of his staff.

Her tongue felt at once icy and hot. Just that little bit of contact sent javelins of fire bolting through his loins.

“Christ,” he rasped, rocking back on his heels.

“Does that feel good?” she asked throatily, looking up at him.

“Don't tease me, you bitch,” he said, leaning forward so that his dong pressed against her tongue.

She laughed and pulled her head back, keeping her tongue a quarter-inch away from the nodding head of his penis. She slid her head forward, touched her tongue to the head of his organ again, and began slathering the entire purple mushroom.

She ran her tongue back and forth and around it, like a mother cat washing her young.

Haskell ground his heels into the sand and wedged his fists against his hips, sucking short, sharp breaths through gritted teeth, enduring the girl's ministrations like the most exquisite and devious torture imaginable. And then, suddenly, he felt the wet warmth of her mouth sliding down him, engulfing him, until the head of his cock was pressed firmly down the narrow tunnel of her throat.

Her throat was hot and wet, and he could feel her vocal cords contracting against him.

She held him there, torturing him, for as long as she could hold her breath, and then, as she started to gag, she slid her mouth back off of him. She sucked a sharp breath as though she'd lifted her head above the surface of a lake for air, and gasped, “Gawd, you're big!”

She reached for him again, and he said, “Nuh-uh.”

Sweat dribbling down his cheeks, he dropped to his knees before her. He gently shoved her back against his saddle and hooked his hands under her thighs, spreading her legs wide. Doing so, his fingertips touched the sopping edges of her snatch.

“Mmm,” she said.

The petal-like pink folds of her pussy separated inside the nest of silky black fur. He sat down on his butt between her spread legs, wrapped his arms around her waist, and drew her up onto his thighs, so that she straddled him, wrapping her arms around his back and staring deeply into his eyes from only a few inches away.

Her gaze was as erotic as everything else about her. Her almond-shaped, cobalt-blue eyes were like smoldering coals in the aftermath of a raging wildfire.

Or, in this case, before . . .

“Put it inside me, Bear,” she whispered, smiling serenely, although her heaving breasts and soaking snatch betrayed her untethered need. “Please”—she swallowed and looked down between them—“put it inside me.”

“You sure you want me to?”

She glared at him, her eyes almost crossing.

He laughed throatily and grabbed his cock in his right hand. He hoisted her up above him slightly with his thighs and slid her onto the bulging head.

He lowered her ass with his legs and thrust up against her with his hips, driving himself up, in, until she was sitting flat atop his crotch and taking a deep breath very slowly through her half-open mouth, her eyes staring blankly at the middle of his forehead.

Haskell wrapped his hands around her breasts from the sides, squeezed the tips into cones. The nipples jutted like buds about to open. He kissed each one in turn.

At the same time, she wrapped her legs around his back and dug her heels into his hips. His cock remained tight inside her. She groaned and jerked against him with her need. He lowered his hands to her hips and slid her back slightly, slowly, until the head of his cock was just outside her snatch.

Her could feel the wet fur pricking against its head, raking and tickling.

He pulled her toward him, burying his cock again, and then slid her back out to the end. She groaned, ground her heels into his back, just above his ass, and slid back down on his cock, pressing her lips tightly against his forehead. He slid her back to the end, and she plunged down his cock once more, harder, her breath coming quicker, raspier, her breasts mashing against his face.

Back and forth they went.

It was sort of like being on a seesaw on some playground in warm, gauzy clouds of carnal bliss. As they toiled together, they grew hotter and sweatier, her pussy slicker, until he could feel her cunt grabbing at him desperately. It was as though there were a tiny, desperate hand inside him, grabbing at him.

She ground against him extra hard, lifted her chin, groaned, and came with a series of hard shudders. He came at the same time, spending his seed deep inside her, groaning and grunting and burying his bearded face between her sweat-slick breasts.

Slowly, their spasms dwindled. Haskell lifted his hands from her hips to her breasts and squeezed her breasts again from the sides so that only her areolas and nipples shone between his thumbs and index fingers and licked each nipple. She leaned forward, pressed her lips to his left temple, and hugged him so hard that she squeezed the air out of his lungs.

She ran her hands through his wild hair, tugging gently on his ears. She kissed his other temple and then pulled her face back from his. She placed her hands against his jaws, tilted his head back until their gazes met.

She gave a weary half-smile and kissed him, gently nibbling his lips.

Again, she pulled her face away from his and frowned at him, lines cutting across her otherwise smooth forehead. “You really are a bastard, you know that, Bear?”

He chuckled and reached up to smooth her sweat-damp hair away from her temples, tucking it behind her ears. Even in the darkness, he could see the beautiful flush in her high, tapering cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”

He lay back, and she sprawled on top of him, one hand playing with his cock, the other twisting the thick hair matting his chest. When she had him hard as a hammerhead again, she lowered her hand to heft his heavy balls and said, “We can't do this again. It's too distracting, not to mention unprofessional.”

He smiled as he stared at the stars, grunting softly as she played with his balls and walked her fingers up his jutting shaft. “Yeah, OK.”

“We'd best go to sleep. We still have a hard ride ahead of us tomorrow. A job to do.”

“Yep.”

“But first . . .” She sat up, straddling his waist, and kissed him. Her eyes flashed devilishly in the starlight as she jerked her chin to indicate something at the edge of the camp. “I'd like you to bend me over that rock over there!”

13

A
fter bending Raven over
the rock at the edge of the camp and hammering away at her for nearly fifteen minutes, Bear slept like a dead man. He assumed Raven did the same, curled up in her blankets on the other side of the cold fire ring.

The next morning, they were merely partners again, the female operative's cool demeanor telling him in no uncertain terms that she wanted no mention made of the sexual roughhousing of the night before. In fact, she didn't say more than five words to him until they'd had their breakfast of warmed-over beans and side pork and fresh, hot coffee.

As they were saddling their mounts, she looked over at him to ask, “How much farther?”

Her gaze was flat, matter-of-fact, almost reproving, as though she were silently admonishing herself and him for having gone at it like a couple of feisty barnyard curs. As physical as the pretty gal was by night, by day she turned into the parson's frigid wife's spinster sister.

Inwardly, Bear gave an ironic snort and restrained himself from rolling his eyes—that would only get her neck in a hump—and said as he tightened his latigo strap, “We should ride into Spotted Horse just after noon.” He glanced at high, gunmetal-gray pancake clouds rolling in from the west. “As long as there's no storms in that front.”

She glanced at the clouds as she finished strapping her bedroll to her saddle.

By way of trying to make conversation, he said, “How's your hand?”

“Fine,” was her only response.

She took up the
pinto
's reins, shook her hair behind her shoulders, and stepped into the leather. She jerked her hat brim down low on her forehead. “Let's get a move on, then,” she said crisply. “It's not getting any earlier.”

With that, she touched spurs to the
pinto
's flanks and rode through the rocks and brush, toward the main trail they'd been following. Haskell shoved his rifle into its scabbard and watched her ride away, shaking his head. He had a brief, remembered image of her bent before him the night before, shaking her head from side to side like a mare in season as he rammed away at her from behind, and winced at the primordial tug in his worn-out dick.

I'll never figure her out.

The buckskin turned to look at him and twitch its ears, as if to corroborate its rider's estimation. Haskell chuckled and stepped into the saddle. He clucked the horse into motion and caught up with his stoic partner a ways up the trail.

As they rode through the early morning, neither of them speaking, Haskell kept an eye on the storm front sliding over them. About two hours after they'd pulled out of their camp, the wind picked up, blowing dust and grit. It continued to build, howling and moaning and darkening the sky with the chalklike dirt and sand it was scooping up and hurling every which way. It wasn't what Haskell would have called a bona fide gale, making traveling in it impossible, but it was damn close.

He and Raven had stopped to swab the grit from their horses' eyes with handkerchiefs dampened from their canteens when Haskell heard hoof thuds. As the buckskin gave a warning whinny, Bear swung away from the buckskin, instinctively palming his Russian .44 and clicking the hammer back. He eased the tension in his trigger finger when he saw another horse walk up out of the sagebrush and juniper sporadically lining the north side of the trail.

The horse stopped and replied to the buckskin's whinny with one of its own, shaking its head. Both the buckskin and Raven's
pinto
turned to look at the newcomer, which stood nodding its head and chomping the bit in its teeth.

It was a copper-eyed brindle
grulla
with a white-speckled snout.

“Where do you suppose he came from?” Raven asked above the wind.

Haskell kept the Russian cocked and raised, looking around for the horse's rider. The horse could be a trap of some kind. It was relatively open country around them, though, and despite the wind throwing grit and bouncing tumbleweeds across the rolling, chalky prairie, he could see no one. The horse seemed to be alone.

Which was odd, since it was saddled and trailing its bridle reins.

Haskell walked up to it, and the
grulla
sniffed the canteen in his hand.

“He's thirsty,” Bear said.

Continuing to look around for its rider, he removed his hat, poured a couple of inches of water into it, and held it out to the horse. It dipped its snout and drank thirstily. When it had drawn all the water out of the hat, Haskell poured out another couple of inches.

“He hasn't watered in a while.”

When the horse had finished drinking, Bear donned his refreshingly wet hat, sheathed the Russian, and inspected the stray mount carefully, noticing chafe marks around its latigo and seeds and burrs clinging to its hocks. Its tail was a mess of the same stuff, part of a sage branch so badly entangled that only a clippers and a curry comb would remove it.

“It's been on the loose, saddled, for a couple of days,” Haskell said.

“Must be a ranch pony,” Raven opined, narrowing her eyes against the wind as she continued looking around. “Maybe threw its rider. He could be lying out here injured somewhere.”

“No tellin' where, though.” Haskell touched a gloved finger to the small circled 8 with a tilted W emblazoned on the
grulla
's left wither. “Maybe someone in Spotted Horse will recognize that brand,” he said, taking up the horse's reins.

He hung the canteen from his saddlehorn, heaved himself into the leather, and touched steel to the buckskin's flanks. He and Raven continued along the trail that ran up and down the juniper-tufted, chalky buttes. They kept their heads down against the wind that threatened to rip off their hats and send them sailing off with the tumbleweeds. The horses snorted and shook their heads but continued moving despite the battering they were taking.

They'd ridden another twenty minutes when a badly leaning sign appeared along the trail's right side, near where the trail forked and a tine angled off to the northeast. The sign was low and so badly weathered that Haskell could just barely make out “DEVIL'S CREEK STAGE RELAY STATION.”

The trail he and Raven were following had been a stage route at one time, although Haskell didn't think it was used any longer. The relay station was likely abandoned, but it might still offer water and shelter from the wind. Haskell glanced at Raven, who, thinking the same thing, nodded. They swung all three horses onto the intersecting trail, Bear jerking the
grulla
along behind him.

The trail wound through some low buttes and across a dry wash. The trail continued for several more yards, until the old stage station appeared ahead, through the windblown sand and dust. There was a long, low, brush-roofed cabin with a barn and corral to its right. Fronting the cabin and to the left, near what appeared to be a wagon shed and blacksmith shop, was a windmill and a stone stock tank.

The windmill's wooden blades spun wildly, lifting a low clatter. Tumbleweeds blew across the broad, hard-packed yard, shepherded along by thin curtains of blowing grit.

Behind Haskell and the buckskin, the
grulla
whickered nervously. Bear and Raven both looked back at the animal, who held its head up despite the wind. The mount's copper eyes were bright with anxiety as it stared toward the swing station yard, its nose working as though it were scenting something it didn't like.

Raven glanced at Bear. “What do you suppose has him riled?”

Haskell tossed her the
grulla
's reins and touched spurs to the buckskin's flanks. “Stay here. I'll check it out.”

He walked the buckskin the last few yards ahead and into the yard, which was surrounded by the low, pale buttes stippled with prickly pear and sage that were part and parcel of this parched, short-grass prairie. Just inside the yard, he stopped the buckskin and reached forward to slide his Winchester from its scabbard. He cocked the weapon one-handed, holding his reins in his left.

Straight ahead, in front of the cabin, a man lay belly-down on the ground, arms and legs spread. Ahead of Haskell and to the right, the corral's unlatched gate was blowing back and forth in the wind, its hinges squawking raucously. Near the gate, another man sat on the ground, sagging back against the corral's peeled cottonwood poles, his shoulders tilted to the left.

The wind blew the gate back against him and then blew it out into the yard again.

Haskell held his right thumb on the Winchester's cocked hammer as he clucked to the horse, urging it slowly ahead, his eyes scrutinizing every nook and cranny of the station yard, including the cabin's open front door beyond the other dead man.

At least, Haskell assumed he was dead. He and the one by the corral sure looked dead from here.

Between the two men, Bear stopped the buckskin and swung down from the saddle. Continuing to look around anxiously, he stepped over to the man sagging against the corral.

He was middle-aged and stocky, with a thick soup-strainer mustache and a three-piece suit. His face was puffy from bloating. He wore no hat, and his thin sandy-blond hair blew around in the wind, revealing warts and moles on his pale scalp. His string tie danced around the bloody hole in the dead center of his chest, just left of the moon-and-star deputy U.S. Marshal's badge pinned to the left lapel of his brown tweed jacket.

Haskell walked slowly over to the man lying in front of the cabin, used his boot toe to turn the man onto his back. Bear winced as another moon-and-star copper badge winked up at him. This man was tall and slender, with a black mustache and two bullet holes in his chest. His blue eyes were half-open, lips stretched back from tobacco-brown teeth. His pallor was blue, and his lean face looked weird, swollen as it was from putrefaction.

Haskell took his rifle in both hands as he moved toward the cabin. The door was sliding back and forth across the narrow, sagging stoop whose floor was missing as many boards as remained.

As he gained the bottom of the three stone steps rising to the porch, Bear stopped and cast another cautious look across the yard behind him, narrowing his eyes against the blowing sand. Relatively sure no one was drawing a bead on him, he gave his back to the yard and stepped onto the porch.

He crossed it in one stride, pressed his left shoulder to the wall left of the door, and glanced inside. He couldn't see much amid the dingy shadows, but he could smell the sweetness of death. Using his rifle barrel to shove the door wide, he stepped into the cabin and leveled the Winchester, swinging it right to left and back again.

He doubted the killer or killers remained, but he hadn't gotten this deep into his thirties by taking stupid chances.

The cabin was earthen-floored, with a long table running left to right between the door and the tall black range. The windows had no glass in them, and tattered flour-sack curtains blew in the wind.

A man sat at the far right end of the table, on the opposite side from the door. He sat straight back in his chair, head tilted up, spade-shaped chin tufted with brown whiskers aimed at the ceiling.

As Haskell moved down the table, holding the Winchester straight out from his right hip, he saw that the man had a neat, round, dark hole in his forehead. His eyes were open, staring at the low ceiling crusted with grease and soot from the stove.

He wore a suit with a gold vest, and playing cards had been laid out on the table before him. A county sheriff
's five-pointed nickel-plated star was pinned to his shirt. The game he'd been playing was probably solitaire, but the wind had scattered most of the pasteboards except the dozen or so that remained clutched in his knobby, blue-veined right hand resting on the table.

A gold pinkie ring reflected sunlight washing through the open door and the kitchen's two small windows. The other hand had fallen down beneath the table.

Haskell moved through a curtained doorway to check out the rest of the cabin. There wasn't much, just a storage room and a sleeping area for stage passengers. Lots of mouse shit and even some coyote droppings.

When he pushed back through the curtain, a figure stood in the open doorway. He stopped and jerked the Winchester up, heart thudding. Then, seeing the curvy figure and long hair against the harsh light of the yard, he scowled at his comely partner and said, “God damn it, I thought I told you to wait out by the wash!”

Blandly ignoring him, Agent York jerked her chin at the dead man at the table. “Another dead federal?”

“No.” Haskell rested the rifle on his shoulder and looked at the dead man. “Keenan Price. County sheriff. My guess is them two deputy Marshals out yonder—one by the fence is Dave Huston, one near the cabin is Bladen Willis—was meetin' the sheriff here.”

“Spotted Horse is in Price's county?”

“Yep.”

“Whoever did this took these men by surprise,” Raven said, turning sideways to stare out into the yard. “The one by the corral was shot from a distance, and both his pistols are still in their holsters. Same for the one by the cabin, who was shot in the back while he was walking toward the cabin.”