tongue run over her velvet skin. Slowly he worked his way down until his face was buried in the soft hair that grew on the soft little mound. He could smell and then taste the soft musk of her. She was beginning to groan. Her legs spread, growing wider and wider. Suddenly she reached up, took his head between her hands, and guided it as if it were an instrument to be used for her pleasure. In a moment, her hips were rising and falling rhythmically. Then she let out a low muffled shriek that suddenly rose louder and louder and louder, until it culminated in a sigh that descended and fell and descended some more.
For only a second was she relaxed. In an instant she had come up to him where he was kneeling on the side of the bed and taken him inside her mouth. With a pulsating motion of her head, she drew and extracted and drew and extracted from him until he felt as if he was being sucked into the vortex of a whirlpool.
Somehow, without knowing how exactly, they were intertwined and he was inside her and her legs were up around his shoulders wrapped around his neck. He brought her up, thrusting into her. Thrusting and thrusting harder and harder. She pulled him closer and closer to her. He felt her come up and come up until just at the pinnacle, he slowed. She dug her fingernails fiercely into his back. He brought her back up again, only this time he let her keep going until she exploded—writhing and contorting her body and trembling so that he could barely hold her. Her scream was loud and primordial. It went on and on and on. He didn’t know if he was screaming with her but suddenly, all that he could remember was that he was feeling totally spent.
He toppled off of her and lay exhausted beside her on the bed. For a long ten minutes, neither of them spoke or made a sound other than their breathing. Finally, Longarm shuddered and tried to sit up. She reached out a gentle hand and pushed him back down.
“Not yet,” she said softly.
A quarter of an hour passed and he was suddenly aware that she had slipped out of bed. A few moments later, she was back wearing some sort of loose wrap and carrying two glasses of brandy. She had a cigarette and a match for him. He sat up gratefully as she slid in the bed beside him. To his left was a nightstand table that held an ashtray. He lit the cigarette and took a deep inhale, blew out the smoke, and then set the cigarette carefully in the ashtray. After that, they lay side by side against the headboard of the bed and sipped brandy.
He said, “Wow!”
She reached up and kissed him gently. “I don’t want it very often, Longarm, but when I do, I want the best and I knew you were going to be the best.”
He half smiled. “You may not want it very often, but when you want it, you want a whole bunch of it.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Noooo … ma’am.” He reached out and got his cigarette and took a drag. “Right now, I’m not complaining about anything except that I wish that I was ten years younger so I could get this thing back up again.”
She laughed. “You know the best way to ruin a good thing?”
“Yeah, have too much of it at one time.”
“Exactly right.”
After a time, they slowly got up out of bed. Mabelle dressed in a simple silk lounging robe while Longarm was obliged to put on his clothes. He didn’t bother to strap on his gunbelt, just slung it over his shoulder when they walked back into the dining room parlor area. They sat apart from each other across the small table. Mabelle poured them another glass of brandy and they sat back in some contentment.
After they had grown mellow, Longarm lit another cigarette. He said, “Mabelle, I’m gonna save you the trouble of having to wait any longer than you have to to find out what I am going to do. I’m gonna tell you about it because I want your opinion. You’re a sagacious woman, you know this town, you know these people, you know where all the skeletons are, you know who is sleeping with who, and you know who is having to pay for it here because he ain’t getting it at home.”
Mabelle said, “I won’t deny that I’m in the ideal position to know what goes on.”
Longarm nodded slowly. “All that I can hope is that you’re the only one who recognized me.”
She shrugged so that the robe fell off one of her shoulders and bared half of her left breast. “I wouldn’t give that any thought,” she said. “Actually, I only had my suspicions when I first saw you in here the other night. I sent off a couple of telegrams to confirm what I thought to be the truth. No, I don’t think that you need have any doubts about that.”
“Well, after tomorrow—I’m hoping tomorrow—I don’t think that it will make any difference.”
“What do you mean, after tomorrow?”
He said, “I’m putting on the badge and I’m going after the Castles. What do you think of that?”
Mabelle Russell said slowly and with consideration, “I think that you are on shaky ground. I think that you better have all your facts. I think you better have the right bait on your hook. You don’t want to fool with the Castles, Longarm, unless you are real certain. They are rich and they have powerful friends. That’s a bad combination to go up against.”
“I know that, Mabelle, but I’ve got no better suspects for the murder of these soldiers than the Castles.”
She said impatiently, “I thought that we discussed that. Vernon Castle or even James Castle isn’t stupid enough to think that killing a few soldiers is going to get that garrison moved. I don’t know why they want the army out of here, but they do. But that still doesn’t mean they’re willing to kill soldiers one by one to do it. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
He looked up at her steadily. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s an insane thing to do. Right?”
She said, “Yes. You’d have to be simpleminded.”
“Do you know any of the Castles that are simpleminded?”
A frown suddenly creased the smooth skin between her eyes. She said, “Virgil?”
“Who else?”
