Longarm put his notebook away with a weary smile, saying, “I never treat friend or foe that way with my badge, Miss Irena. Even if I did, it wouldn’t get anybody out of prison. It would only make it a mite tougher for me to put ‘em there. Judges and juries frown upon the arresting officers taking advantage of prisoner gals, or using what they say in bed as evidence.” She said she wasn’t sure what he meant. So he told her to just not tell him about anything crooked she was planning for north of the border.
She sighed, reached up to trim the lamp, and as the engine room was plunged into a romantic darkness, save for the faint blue glow from under the boiler, leaned against Longarm with her arms around his damp shirt and husked, “Bese me con ferocidad and do not ask about any other sins I may have in mind then!”
Longarm kissed her. It seemed only polite. Then it felt swell. But he had to question her common sense, if not her motives, when she reached down between them to unbutton his fly and reach inside his pants for what was only acting natural.
As her rope-calloused hand grasped his turgid organ-grinder, he removed his lips from hers long enough to quietly ask if she’d lost track of where they were at the moment.
She squeezed harder and softly replied, “I bolted the door after us as we came down the ladder. Would make my crew feel left out if I took you to the cabin I have claimed from los federales. Better we rage together down here, no?”
Longarm winced and pleaded, “Not so hard. My poor old ring-dang-doo is only flesh and bone right now. I follow your drift about your cabin, but that floor underfoot is not only wet but duckboarded. I wouldn’t want your own fair flesh bruised with stripes, like I’d had you up against a picket fence!”
She let go of his erection to unbutton her bell-bottoms as she demurely replied, “Is good thing I got long legs and we have a ladder for to hang on to. For why are you not taking off your gun belt and pants at least?”
As if to answer for him, the hatchway at the top of the ladder was rattled by someone trying to open it as a voice that sounded like old Bajo called, “Are you down there, Dandolo? Monakai wishes for to know if you know we are steaming at full speed across a calm sea!”
The gal who was obviously used to being in charge dropped her bell-bottoms all the way and stepped out of them in her zapatas while she called back in a voice of authority, “I would not have shoved this throttle to full speed if I wished for to be becalmed with the marina federale searching for us under steam! Tell Monakai to steer north- northwest for that delta until I have further instructions for him. At the moment we are adjusting the machinery. Is very delicate work and we do not wish for to be disturbed!”
She laughed softly as her crew member went away. Longarm had to chuckle. But he warned her, “That old boy is sure to gossip about all this adjusting behind a bolted hatchway in the dark.”
He could just make out her stark-naked form, edged in blue light, as she moved over to lean her back against the ladder and calmly ask him, “Como cofio lo quires?”
So, seeing he’d been not only invited but urged to take her any way he wanted, Longarm just stepped up to her in his wet duds and gun rig to take her chilled firm flesh in his arms some more.
She started to protest the wet cloth and chilly belt buckle against her bare breasts and belly. Then she hugged him closer with an amused remark about novelty, and hooked one of her naked thighs over the grips of his six-gun as she pleaded, “No me friegues!”
So, seeing she seemed to feel he was fooling around too long, he guided the raging tip between her twitching love-lips and thrust up into the warmest place in the engine room, next to the engine.
“Dios mio! Is too big!” she gasped, even as she lifted the other thigh to make room for all he could offer. It worked better once he’d grabbed hold of the ladder with one of her knees hooked over either elbow. She hung on to a step above their heads for leverage as she moved her hips in unconscious time with the hissing and sucking sounds of the nearby steam engine. Then they came together fast.
Longarm had been braced all the while for another knock on the door right above them. But as nobody came but them, he figured it was just possible he wasn’t the first passenger Irena might have adjusted her machinery with. So he was game when she suggested they do it a tad friendlier. He hung his hat and gun on handy valve handles, and draped his wet duds over the boiler as they tried it on the duckboards with her on top. He said he didn’t care if he wound up with a purple stripe or so up his back, and there was a lot to be said for letting a gal who’d been climbing the rigging since childhood squat over your partly satisfied privates to bring them back to full attention with a friendly game of stoop tag.
In the end they wound up dog style with the blue burner light on her firm young nalgas reminding Longarm of another gal he’d had this way by moonlight. It sure beat all how gals who got more exercise aboard most anything that bucked wound up with the same shapely behinds, be they blond or brunette. As he thrust in and out of Irena, he wondered idly who was doing this to the young Widow Stover this same moonlit night. For somebody had to be, damn his liver and lights. Old Kim had been a lot like this pretty little crook when it came to country customs, and damn it, the best ones always seemed to be the ones a man just had no business messing with.
Kim had been a rich widow out to marry up with him and settle him down, while this one seemed anxious to lead him and his badge down the primrose path to perdition. And so, in that friendly conversational tone that dog style seemed to inspire, he warned her, “I’m fixing to come in you again. But please don’t tell me what you were planning to do with this boat, or that Gatling gun, north of the border!”
She arched her spine to take it deeper as she sobbed a promise not to let him in on any crimes she had planned for the near future. So a fine time was had by all, and less than an hour later they got dressed and went back on deck, where Irena ordered yet another crew member to go below and keep an eye on the dials Longarm had marked with his pencil. Longarm assumed she was unaware or didn’t care that the smell of sweaty screwing hung in the air in an unventilated room for a spell.
Seeing she was yelling other orders, as if to make up for lost time, Longarm moved up in the bows to get out of the way and enjoy a smoke without being rude. He only had a few of those cigars El Gato had given him, and he didn’t want to have to offer.
The full moon was shining over his left shoulder, painting his shadow across the deck as he lit up facing north. So even though he was lighting a claro, he still spotted the other shadow of some sneak moving up behind him.
Longarm shook out the match and exhaled a cloud of unsuspicious smoke as the other one made his move. His aim, it seemed, had been to shove Longarm overboard. But things turned out the other way when the intended victim grabbed a stay to crab sideways, trip the murderous son of a bitch, and rabbit-punch him as he lunged with outstretched arms through the space where Longarm had been standing.
As his moonlight attacker dove headfirst over the rail with a yell, cut off by a splash nobody else seemed to
