The widow woman noticed and said, 'Good heavens, it is almost ten o'clock, and I'm not usually such a night owl myself. I suppose you must be anxious to get to bed, right?'
He allowed that was about the size of it as they both rose from the table. He started to help her move the dishes to the drain board of her modern wet-sink, but she told him they could wait till she felt more in the mood for housework. So he didn't argue as he started to follow her out of the kitchen, Winchester in hand.
As she moved just ahead with her candlestick, she laughed and asked if he always went to bed fully armed. He told her he hardly ever got all the way in bed without leaning the Winchester in a handy corner and hanging his gunbelt over a bedpost. He assumed she was leading him to some guest room. So he was mildly surprised when they wound up in a perfumed chamber with a lot of Irish lace draped around the big fourposter.
Ilsa set the candlestick on a nearby bed table and softly asked, 'Do you mind if I get undressed in the dark, Custis? I know it seems old-fashioned, but as I said before, I don't get to do this much anymore.'
He figured the safest answer called for simply pinching out the candle without saying anything as the room was plunged in darkness.
He leaned his Winchester against the wall behind the bed table as he heard the soft rustle of cloth coming off and that odor of lilac water and vinegar grew stronger. He waited for her to shyly suggest it was all right for him to come to bed before he shucked his own gun, boots, and duds as calmly as he felt able, rolled in under the covers, and took the warm cuddly nakedness he found there in his own bare arms. Then as she sobbed, 'Oh, Custis, I feel so low. Whatever must you think of me?'
He ran a friendly hand down her naked flank as he suggested he feel her somewhat lower, and then he kissed her firmly as she tried to cross her legs and say something dumb about what he was trying to do to a poor defenseless widow. Then he was doing it to her, and she was doing it back with considerable skill, as her poor embarrassed lips kept murmuring all sorts of accusations and excuses for what just came naturally at times like these.
He knew better than to say anything before he'd made her climax and allow she just might like it. So he tongued her ear and humped her hard, with her big bare breasts crushed against his naked chest and one hand under her tailbone as he helped her bounce in time with his thrusts. She suddenly wrapped both legs around his waist to hug him further into her as she sobbed, 'Oh, Custis, I'm really trying to respond to you, but it's been so long and you have to give a girl time to warm up!'
He told her to take all the time she wanted, since he wasn't going anywhere but in and out of her for the foreseeable future. But he still had to wonder, even as he came in her and just kept going with no need to change positions, what a gal this tigress was jealous of might be like in her own right!
But of course he never said so. For even as he was pleasuring her dog-style a good half hour later, old Ilsa was purring, as she arched her spine to take it deeper, that he was never going to get away from her now that she'd caught up with him at last.
She seemed to think he had just what it took to satisfy her hungry ring-dang-do. But he didn't see why. She felt tight as a schoolmarm as he just went on doing what came naturally in anybody that passionate.
He could only hope she was feeling natural as she suddenly shot off his erection, rolled over on her back, and pleaded with him to finish in her the more romantic way.
He felt mighty romantic as well, coming with her softer warm flesh crushed beneath his excited heaving body. But then she sort of spoiled the afterglow by murmuring, her lips against his bare shoulder and her hand clutching his balls right firmly, 'Oh, Custis, I'm so happy, and I can't wait to see how surprised everyone will be when we post the bans with Pastor Lindorm!'
He didn't answer. He sensed it could be considered impolite to tell a gal she was loca en la cabeza right after you'd come in her. There'd be plenty of cold gray dawn to go into why a man who packed a badge had no call marrying up with anybody young or old, for richer, poorer, or whatever, till Mister Death grinned that spoilsport grin at all concerned.
He was sure she'd follow his drift when he told her about those department funerals he had to go to all the time. A lot of gals had, and hell, some of them had been young enough to marry up with if a man was ready to do dumb things like that.
CHAPTER 14
It was a caution how some folks could think so smart with their heads and so dumb with their glands. But by the time she'd fed him a swell breakfast in bed, Longarm had convinced the hot-natured Ilsa it might be wiser to keep their understanding a secret until he found out who was gunning for him and how come.
It hadn't been easy. The strong-willed widow woman had said she'd be proud to share the fate of her new- found true love. She'd only given in after Longarm managed to convince her she was being downright sneaky in the name of the law. They said the glamorous Confederate spy, Miss Belle Siddons, had enjoyed the sneaky part of her services to the Southern cause even more than screwing all those Union officers half to death. Lots of men enjoyed it better sneaky too.
After breakfast, a tub bath, and a blow job, Longarm ambled over to the Western Union to see if anyone else was excited about him. He found some messages waiting for him there care of the telegraph office.
Durango and the South Ute agency were still working on just who that so-called Calvert Tyger they'd buried and the kid who'd gone off the trestle into the San Juan might have been. Longarm was even more certain someone ad been fibbing about that charred body registered as Tyger when he opened a message from his home office to discover his fellow deputies, Smiley and Dutch, had found two other rooming house registers that claimed, in different handwriting, Calvert Tyger had spent some recent nights in other parts of Denver at the same time, before somehow moving on alive and well as far as any fool records showed, So some damned body, for some damned reason, seemed to be going around checking in and out for the night under the assumed name of a wanted man. It made no sense to Longarm, but on the other hand, he wasn't the asshole doing it!
It got worse when he stopped by the nearby sheriff's office to ask if those other federal deputies from Saint Paul had by any chance arrived and asked for him the night before.
The same deputy sheriff he'd talked to before said nobody from Saint Paul had arrived at all. Then he handed Longarm a telegram they hadn't mentioned at the Western Union, since it had been addressed to other lawmen, and said, 'Looks as if all you federal men could be barking up the wrong tree here in Brown County.'
Longarm scanned the wire from the Texas Rangers, and heaved a vast sigh. For according to Texas, another of those recorded hundred-dollar treasury notes from the Fort Collins robbery had surfaced at a bank in Amarillo.
As he handed the message back, Longarm said, 'Try her this way. A bank in any part of the country would have
