Tabor Evans - Longarm on the Border

"After daybreak, we'll make better time," Longarm pointed out. "I'd say to stop at the first good place we come to, and start out fresh with first light."

"If you're worrying about me," Flo said, "I'm tired, but I'll sure keep on going as long as you men want to. Don't do me any favors just because I'm a woman."

"We ain't," Webster assured her. "It wouldn't be any different if you weren't along, Miss Flo."

They pushed on, moving more slowly now, until they came to a brush-covered slope over which a handful of tall ocote pines towered, their night-black limbs breaking the deep blue sky. Longarm called for the others to stop and urged Tordo into the fringe of the brush that surrounded the frees. The dapple pushed through the shrubs without hesitating. Longarm leaned down to feel the vegetation and found that the stalks of the bushes and their leaves were smooth and free of thorns. He reined Tordo lightly, to turn him, but the animal resisted, wanting to go ahead. Longarm let him. The gray broke into a clearing, and moved faster. Then he stopped. Longarm heard the splash of running water, and then saw the little pool made by a spring reflecting the stars. He let Tordo drink sparingly and went back to tell the others.

"Damn horse had more sense than me, for once. I ought to've known when I felt them huisache leaves that there'd be water, they're thirsty plants. If everybody agrees, this is as good a place to rest as we're likely to find."

There was no dissent. They pushed into the clearing and dismounted. After all of them had drunk and wiped the cool, faintly salt-tasting water over their dusty faces, they let the horses drink, and tethered them with slacked girths at the edge of the clearing.

Hill's military training showed. He asked, "Don't you think we ought to take turns at sentry duty? We don't really know that the rurales aren't on our trail right now."

"Makes sense to me," Webster nodded.

"Me, too," Longarm agreed.

"Since it was my idea, I'll take the first watch," Hill offered. "If we stand an hour each, that ought to take up what's left of the night."

Webster spoke up. "I'll relieve you, then, and the Marshal can stand the wake-up watch."

"What about me?" Flo asked. "I'll do my share, too."

"No need, Miss Flo," the Ranger said. "You've had a real hard day. You get what sleep you can."

"But~" Flo began.

Longarm interrupted her. "Listen to what Nate says. He's got a reason maybe you don't understand. It's not because you're a woman, but because you're a tenderfoot. All three of us'd know if we heard a horse or maybe a deer or goat in the dark. You wouldn't."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," she nodded. "All right, if that's your reason."

There was a brief time of settling down. Hill took his rifle and pushed through the brush, following the trail they'd broken on their way in. Webster, an old hand at impromptu bivouacs, found himself a patch of green weeds far enough from the spring to be on dry ground. He curled up and was snoring in two minutes. Without exchanging a word, Flo and Longarm threaded their way through a patch of brush to the base of one of the ocote pines. They sat down together.

"I wanted to~" she began.

Longarm put a finger across her lips. "No need to talk about it, Flo, honey. I wanted to, too. There's better things in life than just sleeping, ain't there?"

She turned her lips to him. They sank back on the short, curly growth that carpeted the ground where it was shaded by the ocote. Flo shrugged out of her jacket and Longarm began to rub her breasts.

"It was fine, back at the rurales' place, but it was over too quickly," she murmured into his ear.

Instead of answering, Longarm began kissing her. His hands wandered over her body and hers were exploring his. She broke their embrace long enough to slide her short silk knickers off, and he ran his hand along her smooth, tapered thighs. Flo began working at freeing Longarm's erection; feeling it grow in quick pulses set her to breathing faster. She stirred, rolled on her side, and pulled him to her. She took him between her thighs, squeezing him tightly, pushing against him, until the moist heat spreading upward from his groin and the incessant movement of Flo's tongue in his mouth brought Longarm up full and swollen.

"Let me in you now," he told her, and Flo obeyed.

"But slow," she whispered in his ear. "I love the feeling of you going in. I want to enjoy it as long as I can."

Longarm penetrated her as she'd asked him to, slowly and deliberately, and for what seemed a very long time they lay simply enjoying the sensation of their intermingled bodies. Flo began to contract her inner muscles in a gentle rhythm that brought Longarm to an orgasm that was as quick as it was unexpected. There'd been few women he'd known before who'd mastered use of the muscles Flo was employing. She didn't stop her inner contractions while Longarm rested, still hard inside her, and she teased him with gentle nips of her sharp teeth on his neck and ears and lips.

Longarm recovered quickly and rolled on top of Flo. She was as eager now as he was, and opened her thighs to let his slim hips drop between them to sink into her more deeply. He began rocking slowly, feeling her hips roll beneath him. Soft birdlike cries escaped Flo's lips. Longarm read the signal she was giving him and began thrusting faster to meet her growing frenzy. Time stopped for both of them for a while; they were aware of nothing but sensation.

"Faster, now!" she urged him. Her head began rolling, loosening the bun in which she'd caught her hair, and her long blond locks spread over the dark ground.

Longarm began driving, his arms encircling Flo's neck, holding her mouth hard to his while they exchanged tongue caresses. Her hips were bouncing frantically now, but she still controlled her motions, just as Longarm did his. They didn't need to exchange words. Instinct joined experience to guide their movements, hips drawing apart and coming together in unison, in perfect mutual rhythm, to send each of his strokes fully into her depths.

Then the moment came when Longarm felt his control slipping away. He speeded his thrusts, and Flo matched his downward plunges, as they rushed together toward those few final seconds when their desire could no longer be denied and the climactic shuddering began that brought them both pressing together, passing through the little death that left them sprawled inert, helpless and almost senseless.

Panting, they rolled apart. Longarm said, "Damn! You really got it, Flo. If I wasn't a broad-minded man, I'd be jealous of anybody that ever got in you before me."

"Don't be, Custis. The first few didn't get much. Neither did I, for that matter. But I can't remember any man who had more than you've got, or knew how to use it better."

"I guess we've both had about the same amount of practice. I'll give you this, Flo: You know what you want, and don't let anything stop you from taking it."

"I needed somebody like you, after Ramos. He was so little and so damned fat that all he could do was make me want a real man. Besides, I enjoy giving, but I don't like being taken." Flo turned her head suddenly and spat, somehow making the unladylike action a maidenly gesture of utter contempt. "Ramos! Paugh!"

"Talking about Ramos, if we don't do more sleeping and less fucking, we're not going to be much good later on."

"I feel like sleeping, now. I didn't before." She stretched like an animal. Longarm could almost see the muscles under her silken skin rippling in the starlight. What he couldn't see, he imagined.

"You move like that another time, I'm going to be all over you again," he warned her.

"Come on. Any time." When he didn't move, she asked, "Sleepy?"

"Some. A mite tuckered, too. And beginning to think about what might happen tomorrow. If I'm feeling drawn-out, you must be, too."