Slocum and the Big Timber Belles Page 5

  “What do you drink?” she asked.

  “Kentucky bourbon,” Slocum said. “Straight and at least a week old.”

  Velva smiled.

  “I like your sense of humor, John.”

  “I think what I said was more wry than humorous, but thanks.”

  She looked up when the barmaid approached. She was an older woman, with gray hair tucked up in a bun. She looked like a former glitter gal with too much rouge on her cheeks, too much lipstick, and too much mascara on her eyelashes. She was chewing something that might have been chicle or tobacco. Her teeth were yellowed from smoking and she reeked of cheap perfume.

  “Something for the gent?” she said. Her eyes fixed on Slocum as if she were recalling a youth that had long since fled.

  “Kentucky bourbon, for the gentleman,” Velva said. “Four fingers, neat.”

  “I’ll see if we have any. My name’s Gilda.”

  “Of course it is,” Velva said, a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

  “You want a refill?” she said to Velva. “Old Taylor, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was, but no, I’m fine.”

  “That’ll be four bits,” Gilda said.

  “When you bring the gentleman his drink, I’ll give you fifty cents, Gilda.”

  Gilda let out a huff of a breath and whirled to prance back to the bar, her hefty hips asway as if she were already two sheets to the wind.

  Slocum noticed a door on the back wall. As he looked at it, two men came through it and sidled up to the bar.

  “Where does that door lead?” he asked Velva.

  “That’s the outside entrance,” she said. “For those who don’t want to come through the hotel lobby. There’s a passageway between the hotel and the newspaper office next door. Those are two of the pressmen that just came in. They probably got out an extra about the murders and need some fortification.”

  “What’s the name of the paper? I’d like to see their headlines on the ambush.”

  “The Big Timber Gazette. You can bet the headline and story will be lurid.”

  “It’s all hearsay at this point. Not much of a story.”

  “I saw a reporter speaking to the Lorraines and their manager. I’ll bet he got an earful.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Heavens, no. I don’t want my name in the paper. Not in that one anyway.”

  Gilda brought Slocum his drink. He held the glass up and stared at the amber liquid when he moved it so that lamplight beamed through it.

  “Thank you, Gilda,” he said.

  “Four bits, ma’ am,” Gilda said.

  Velva dropped a fifty-cent piece on the table. Gilda snatched it up and hurried back to the bar.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked Slocum.

  “If this whiskey is rotgut,” he said, “there will be little bits of stuff floating in it.”

  “Oh. Anything there?”

  He set the glass down in front of him.

  “Looks like pure Kentucky bourbon to me.”

  “You’re a connoisseur,” she said.

  “In some quarters maybe.”

  “Women?” she said.

  “That would be one of the quarters,” he said with a smile. He held the glass up in front of her. “Here’s to you, Velva. My first drink in Big Timber. Thanks.”

  She raised her glass and clinked it against his.

  The two sipped from their glasses.

  “I have Kentucky bourbon at my house,” she said. “You can read the labels on the bottles. Some of them have not been opened.”

  “You have good taste,” he said.

  “In some quarters,” she replied, her mouth curving in a seductive smile.

  “Men?”

  “That would be one of the quarters, John.”

  They both laughed together.

  They drank and gazed at each other, talked about their lives in general, noncommittal terms. John did not ask any questions about Velva’s late husband, and she didn’t question him about his past life, beyond discovering that he was from Georgia and that he had fought for the South during the War.

  From the lobby, they heard the plaintive strains of two guitars, then the close harmony of Jasmine and Lydia singing an old-time hymn.

  “They’re really good, aren’t they?” Velva said.

  “Yes. Their voices are pure and their harmony is excellent.”

  “Are you going back in there to listen?” she said as she drank the last of her drink.

  “Still too many people for me.”

  “We can leave by that side door and go to my house,” she said. “I can fix you a meal. You can drink some good bourbon.”

  “I accept your invitation,” he said. He downed the last of his drink and she marveled that it had no effect on him. His eyes did not water, nor did he gasp for breath.

  “Our horses are out front, but we’ll leave through that side door. We’ll scarcely be noticed.” She glanced at the door.

  He got up and took her hand, helped her out of her chair. She smiled and walked to the side door in regal fashion. John’s stovepipe boots rang on the hardwood floor. They were outside before Gilda even noticed that they had left.

  They rode to Velva’s house near Spring Creek.

  “Just tie your horse to the hitchrail. I have a stable boy who’ll take care of our horses.”

  “I didn’t see him when we were here before,” Slocum said.

  “He was in Livingston. But I see that he’s back. He’ll know what to do.”

  John looked around, but saw no one. They walked up the steps and she opened the door. A woman greeted them. She took Slocum’s hat and bowed slightly to Velva.

  “This is Clarissa Holmes, my maid and companion,” Velva said. “Clarissa, this is Mr. Slocum. He’ll be dining with me this evening.”

  “Yes’ m, Miss Velva. I have a roast prepared, but—”

  “That will be fine, Clarissa,” she said with a look at Slocum, who nodded his agreement.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Slocum. She half curtsied and touched a hand to her bonnet, which held up dangling locks of silver-gray hair. She wore a small apron over her flowered print dress with its high round collar. Clarissa hung his hat on a coat tree and evaporated into the bowels of the house. Velva led him into a front room that was finely furnished with gleaming wood tables and comfortable Louis XIV chairs, bookcases, a globe, some Currier & Ives wood-cuts in mahogany frames on the wall, a fireplace with a finely wrought flintlock from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, its stock of curly maple polished to a high sheen. It was a man’s room, but there were signs of a strong woman’s touch, too, with paintings by Degas, Renoir, and Monet hanging in between the bookshelves. There was a large divan and two stuffed easy chairs, and in the center of the floor, a magnificent bear rug that was at least seven or eight feet in length.

  “Grizzly,” Velva said when Slocum looked at the rug in admiration. “I shot it, up in the Crazies.”

  “I’m impressed,” he said.

  She walked to a liquor cabinet and small bar. She opened it and took out a bottle of Kentucky bourbon that had not been opened. She held it up so that John could read the label.

  “That’s fine,” he said.

  “One of my favorites. Albert didn’t drink much, but he liked his sherry. Have a seat, John. If you take the divan, we can be closer.”

  He sat on the divan and she poured two drinks in cut crystal tumblers. She bought them over, set them on the small table in front of the divan, and sat next to him.

  “There,” she said. “You seem to fit this room.”

  “It’s a man’s room mostly,” he said as he looked around.

  “Albert didn’t care for it. He seldom came here. He sat on the back porch or on a stump out in the yard.”

  “So, the furnishings are all . . . you,” he said.

  “Yes. I’ve been to Paris and London. To Italy. Many of the books are ones I bought on the continent.”

  “You are full
of surprises, Velva.”

  She lifted both glasses and handed him one. She touched her glass to his.

  “Welcome to my lair,” she said, and her voice was husky as if her words were stroked by a hand wearing a velvet glove.

  “You sound like a vixen,” he said as their glasses clinked together. “Your lair.”

  She laughed, and the sound was chromatic and soft, pleasing to his ear.

  “Maybe I am a vixen,” she said. “Maybe I lured you to my lair in order to devour you.”

  He looked at the bear rug.

  “That’s a nice soft rug,” he said.

  “Upstairs I have a large soft bed.”

  “A woman with two lairs?”

  She laughed.

  “One for seduction,” she said. “The other for pleasure.”

  “Maybe I should be seducing you, Velva.”

  “Or we could seduce each other. If you’re not terribly hungry, we could explore each other’s passions and dine at dusk when the sky is soft and painted with pastels and we can have candlelight and wine.”

  “That’s very seductive,” he said, feeling that he and Velva were playing a kind of game, testing each other’s desire with words instead of with groping hands.

  “I would like to see more of your home,” he said. “If you want me to.”

  “Will you spend the night?”

  “It depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “On where I’ll sleep.”

  “If you sleep, John.”

  He laughed at her finely tuned sense of humor.

  “I’m not as tired as I probably look,” he said.

  She reached out and traced a fingernail down the side of his cheek then along his jawline on the left side. It was a very sensual touch and he felt a tingle race up his spine as if a hairy-legged spider had crawled its length.

  “You don’t look tired at all,” she said. “We can take our drinks upstairs if you like. I have another bar in my bedroom.”

  “If you think we’d be more comfortable . . .”

  “Oh, it’s a large, spacious room, a combination sitting room and boudoir, such as I saw in Paris. I could live up there. There are bookshelves and paintings by Pissaro and Sisley, Manet, and Cezanne.”

  “I accept your kind invitation,” he said. He stood up, with his drink in his hand. She picked hers up and took his arm.

  “Follow me,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Lead the way,” he said, and they strolled into the foyer, arm in arm, and ascended the stairs. She held on to him and the curving banister, their footfalls soft on the carpeted steps.

  At the end of a long hall, she opened a door and led him inside a spacious bedroom. There was a large, canopied four-poster against the wall, with a fluffy comforter draped over it and silk-encased pillows. The room was faintly perfumed with scented furniture polish and rose petals floating in a large goblet half-filled with water. As Slocum looked around, he saw a bar and a liquor cabinet, and off to the side, there was a small sitting room with bookshelves and framed paintings bought in Paris and London. The rug under his feet was finely woven with intricate detail, and might have come from Persia.

  “Welcome to my other lair,” she said, standing on tiptoe to breathe into his ear.

  Slocum felt his knees turn to a gelatinous mass and give way. She took his drink and set it with hers atop the bar. Then she walked back, closed the bedroom door, and turned a key in the lock.

  She looked down at him, below his belt buckle.

  “My,” she said, “we’ve got to get you out of those trousers before you bust all your buttons.”

  In seconds, he was unbuckling his gun belt, and Velva was sitting on a chair, removing her boots.

  The house was silent but for their breathing, and the bedroom seemed like something transplanted from a foreign land where all sorts of delights awaited the eager visitor.

  9

  Slocum gazed at Velva with a sense of wonder. She stood by the bed, divested of all her clothing, a study in feminine beauty. The delicate lines of her body seemed to draw light and shadow to her contours as if she were a model posing for a portrait in some artist’s studio. She was beautiful, but she was also mysterious, the way she posed for him, with one leg close to the other, angled so as to partially preserve her modesty, while exposing the curve of her hips, the flat plane of her tummy, the slim ankles, and perky breasts, the breasts of a young woman in her prime.

  “Are you just going to stare at me, John?” she asked in that purring tone of hers that was at once kittenish and, at the same time, alluring.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Velva. Pleasing to the eye.”

  He walked toward her, his rigid staff swaying like a magical wand that drew her gaze to his loins.

  “And,” she said, husky-voiced with desire, “you are like a dark-haired Apollo, a Greek statue come to life.”

  He felt desire surge through his loins. He took her in his arms. They kissed with their lips, and then he found places on her neck and behind her ears where his lips touched her so that she quivered all over and arched her back.

  They fell upon the bed in slow motion, their bodies locked together as if they were two halves of a single person. Her mouth opened and he felt her hot breath on his face. Her hands grasped his hips and drew him to an even tighter embrace.

  “I want you,” she whispered. “I want you so much, John Slocum.”

  “I want you, too, Velva,” he said.

  They roamed each other’s bodies with their hands, and kissed with fire burning their lips, fire that fueled their desire for one another. He touched her firm breasts and twirled his fingers around the aureoles of her nipples. They hardened like young acorns and he kissed them, drew their nubs into his steaming mouth while Velva writhed in ecstasy.

  “Now, now,” she said, her voice almost hoarse.

  “Not yet,” he said, and traveled down her chest with his tongue blazing a hot trail to her tummy, and lower until his head was burrowed into her loins. Her back arched as if she were being pulled in two directions, from her head and her feet. She squirmed as his tongue plied the cleft of her vagina and laved the small clit that was the fountainhead of her passion.

  Velva screamed softly as her fingernails clawed furrows in his back. Her body bucked as she surrendered to a sudden orgasmic spasm. She screamed and she sobbed with pleasure as he withdrew and covered her body with his.

  She grasped his hard cock and pulled it to her portal. She spread her legs wide to receive him, and when the mushroomed crown of his cock entered her, she screamed again, softly, and mouthed a series of “oh, oh, ohs,” as he plunged deeper into the steaming pudding of her cunt.

  “You’re so big,” she breathed, and her body bucked once more as he pulled out and plunged inside her again with a thrust that took the breath from her lungs and incited her senses to a high-octave pitch. Feverishly, she moved her loins up and down, matching his thrusts with pelvic movements that took him so deep, his cock touched the wall of her womb and she spasmed with a series of rapid orgasms that oiled her lean body with sweat.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she exclaimed and Slocum increased the rapidity of his plunging strokes, his tumescence stretching the skin of his member until it was as taut as a drumhead.

  His thrusts took her to dizzying heights of ecstasy. She screamed softly each time she climaxed, and there seemed no end to her pleasure. She pulled on his buttocks and thrust her loins into his so that they were in perfect rhythm. He held back his own pleasure, wanting to please her, taking satisfaction that she was satisfied with him, with his vigorous way of making love.

  “Oh, John, oh, John,” she exclaimed. “It’s so good, so gooood.”

  He slowed his strokes and let her languish on that rosy cloud floating above the earth. Then he gradually increased the speed of his pistoning thrusts until her eyes glazed, her mouth opened, and she gasped as a series of orgasms raked her senses, rippling through her lithe body
like jolts of soft lightning. She slid her hands up to his back and dug her fingernails into his flesh. Her body bucked and thrashed beneath him.

  “Now, now,” she cooed.

  Slocum drove into her. He felt the rush of pleasure course through his swollen, blood-engorged cock, and then, there was that moment when all his senses were blotted out. Velva screamed and his seed spurted into her womb, jetting warm and milky against the farthest wall of her vagina, splashing millions of seeds into every crevice in a steady stream.

  John felt himself floating high above her, as if he had reached into the highest corner of the heavens where he experienced the thrill of creation itself, as if he had become a god in that one brilliant instant, no longer earthbound, but on some invisible summit where nothing mortal could touch him, a place where only angels dwelled.

  She squeezed him tight against her and sighed a long sigh of deep satisfaction. They floated back to earth together, like two leaves in autumn, drifting down from dizzying peaks in a languorous lassitude that was as peaceful as a mountain glade in shadow.

  “Ah,” she said, “John, you man you. You took me places where I’ve never been.”

  “It was sweet, Velva,” he said. “Very sweet.”

  “Oh, you don’t know. You just don’t know. You can’t know.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Only a woman could know,” she said.

  “I took pleasure in your pleasure,” he said, his voice deep and husky.

  He rolled off her and kissed one of her breasts. She reached down and grasped his softening manhood, held his organ gently in her hands.

  Their bodies were oiled with sweat and her musk mingled with his manly scent, deepening their pleasure in the afterglow of their lovemaking.

  “I suppose,” she said after a time, when her breath had returned and they were both luxuriating in her bed, their bodies just touching, “you’d like to smoke.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Don’t all men desire a smoke after they’ve made love to a woman?”