feathered by the straitlaced crowd for sinning.”
The button finally came loose, but there was another under it. Fargo inwardly swore.
“A man told me once, a professor from back east, that in the old days, in a country called Greece, there were ladies who gave lessons in love. His exact words. They taught others how to do it. Can you imagine?”
“Were they any good at sewing mouths shut?” Saucy’s eyebrows pinched together. “How can you kiss someone if your mouth is sewn shut?”
“There’s more to kiss than the mouth.” Fargo had one button to go, but it resisted his every tug.
“That makes no kind of sense whatsoever,” Saucy told him. “What is taking so long? If you don’t hurry, you’re apt to spoil the mood, and we’ll have to start all over.”
Growing testy, Fargo sank onto his knees between her legs. If he couldn’t shut her up one way, he would do it another. Gripping the hem of her dress, he suddenly peeled the lower half up over her hips and her waist.
“What are you up to down there?”
Fargo’s hands were between her legs. It took only a few seconds to part her undergarments. Before she could guess his intent, he fused his lips to her nether mound and slid his tongue along her moist slit.
“Oh, God! Oh, Fargo, yes, yes!” Saucy came up off the bed, arched in a taut bow. Her lips parted and her eyelids fluttered and she hung there as if suspended by invisible wires. Then she cried out and sank back, thrashing her head from side to side.
Fargo applied the tip of his tongue to her swollen knob.
“Like that! Like that! There! There! Oh! What you are doing to me!” Again Saucy launched herself off the bed, and it was a wonder she did not send Fargo flying. Again she collapsed, but this time she clamped her thighs like a vise to his head and entwined her fingers in his hair. “Don’t you stop!” she moaned huskily. “Don’t you dare by God stop!”
A flick of Fargo’s tongue was all it took. Saucy’s bottom rose like the prow of a ship in storm-tossed waters. In a frenzy she ground her muff against him while cooing like a lovebird in the throes of delirium. “Harder!” she urged. “Suck me harder! Suck me until I scream!”
Fargo did as she wanted. He did not care that those in adjoining rooms could hear her. He did not care that the customers in the saloon below were probably listening and smirking. He cared only about the satiny feel of her thighs and the sugary nectar that he could never get enough of.
“Fargo! Oh, Fargo!”
Holding on to her hips, Fargo stroked his tongue deep into her womanhood, inciting her to ever higher peaks of arousal. He ran the tip of his tongue across her knob, and she nearly tore his hair out by the roots.
Fargo rose onto his elbows, then on his knees. He undid his belt and his buckskin pants. As he slid them down, her hooded eyes regarded him hungrily.
“Oh, my. I have a stallion on my hands.” Saucy grinned. “If I were standing up, I would be weak at the knees.” She impishly wrapped her hand around his member and lightly squeezed.
Fargo thought he would explode.
“Like that, do you?” Saucy taunted. She slowly moved her hand up and down, then cupped him below. “Boulders and a redwood. Who would have guessed what was hidden under those britches?” Laughing lightly, she spread her legs wide. “Don’t keep me waiting, handsome.”
Fargo didn’t. He inserted the tip, placed his hands under her backside, and levered up into her the full length of his shaft. Her head snapped back and her mouth opened, but no sound came out. For an instant she froze. Then she buried her fingernails in his shoulders and pulled him down so her bosom cushioned his chest, her nipples like tacks against his skin.
“Ohhhhhh.” The moan hung in the air, enveloping them with sound even as Saucy’s arms and legs enveloped Fargo in velvet. “You are so hard! I want you! God, how I want you!”
Fargo stroked, almost out, then in. He settled into a rhythm. She matched him, thrust for thrust, tit for tat, her urgency rising as his did. Her cries of wanting mingled with his lustful grunts. Limbs interwoven, they moved faster and faster. The bed under them and the walls around them blurred.
Then came the deluge. Fargo felt Saucy’s inner walls contract, and a second later she spurted, drenching his pole. He held his own explosion in, but not for long. All it took was for her to fondle him and he was over the brink. Again and again he drove into her, so hard he thought the bed would break.
Afterward, Saucy’s rapid breathing slowed to normal and her lush body stilled. She lay totally spent, beautiful in her nakedness. Fargo placed his cheek on her chest and was lulled by the gentle rise and fall into dozing off. When next he opened his eyes and glanced at the small clock that served as the table’s centerpiece, it was almost three in the morning.
Fargo had agreed to meet Arthur Draypool at the hotel at seven. Plenty of time yet. He would catch up on his sleep and start the new day alert and refreshed.
Saucy mumbled in her sleep and smacked her lips. Contentedly nestling her head against his shoulder, she was the portrait of a living angel.
About to doze off again, Fargo could not resist running his fingers through her lustrous red hair.
The crowing of a rooster outside the window woke Fargo up at the crack of daybreak. He dressed swiftly and tiptoed out so as not to awaken Saucy. He had already told her he was leaving, so there would be no hard feelings.
The street was nearly deserted at that early hour. A few neglected horses dozed at the rail in front of the saloon as Fargo bent his steps toward the livery. A cantankerous old cuss brought the Ovaro from its stall while Fargo fetched his saddle, saddle blanket, and bridle from the tack room. Within fifteen minutes Fargo was trotting down the street toward the Sunflower.
Dawn was Fargo’s favorite time of the day. The golden crown on the horizon, the brisk chill in the air, the sense of a world astir—all were ripe with the promise of new possibilities. The feeling was similar to that which he experienced whenever he crested a ridge or a pass high in the Rockies and beheld unexplored country.
Arthur Draypool was not waiting outside the hotel as he had promised. Fargo was not surprised. City folk tended to oversleep. He left the Ovaro at the hitch rail and ambled inside, thinking he would go up the stairs to the second floor and pound on Draypool’s door. But the clerk had other ideas.
“Mr. Fargo, isn’t it? Mr. Draypool left this envelope for you.”
It was sealed. Puzzled, Fargo slid a nail along the seam and removed a single sheet of folded paper. The note was short and to the point:
Fargo thought it odd of Draypool not to mention that his associates, as Draypool kept calling them, were in Kansas City. More of the secrecy that Draypool insisted was necessary to ensure that rumors of the effort to end the Sangamon River Monster’s murderous spree did not reach the killer’s ears.
To Fargo the precautions seemed more than a trifle silly. They were hundreds of miles from the Monster’s haunts. The odds of the killer’s learning what Draypool was up to were extremely slim.
Still, Arthur Draypool was paying good money, a lot of good money, and for ten thousand dollars Fargo could put up with a lot of silliness.
What harm could it do?
5
Arthur Draypool was a man of his word. He was waiting for Fargo two miles out of Kansas City on the road to Richmond. The road was not as frequently used as others that linked Kansas City to points east, but Fargo assumed it was more of Draypool’s precious secrecy. It did not surprise him that Draypool chose it. What
Both spotted Fargo long before he reached them. They were dressed enough alike to be twins: black hats, black frock coats, black pants, and black boots. That was as far as the similarities went. One man stood over six feet, the other barely five. The tall one had curly hair the color of corn and blue eyes. His short companion had
