Tabor Evans (29 page)

"You got a head start on me," he said when they broke off their kiss. "Give me a little time to get off my clothes."

"We don't have to rush. But don't dawdle, either."

Longarm made quick work of undressing. He saw her pull her dress over her head, to show her body glimmering in the bluish glow that filled the cabin. It was as he'd thought: a woman's body, wide-hipped, full-breasted, with swelling thighs.

Jessibee moved to him. He said, "Those bunks are too narrow for us to be comfortable, Jessibee. Wait just a minute." He dragged his bedroll off and spread it on the floor. "Now. It won't be a featherbed, but we'll at least have room to lay down together."

Jessibee folded her legs under her and sat down in a single graceful sweep. Her arms were slender white columns raised to invite him. Longarm knelt beside her. Jessibee's hands were warm on his erection, which was beginning to throb to fullness.

"I was wondering if the light was fooling my eyes," she told him. "I didn't really believe them." She squeezed gently, both hands wrapped around him. "But I believe what I'm holding now."

Longarm found Jessibee's full, soft breasts and felt her nipples grow firm and lift to tautness as he rubbed and kneaded them with his calloused fingers. They stood out like small rough fingertips as he bent to kiss them and caress them with his tongue.

Jessibee leaned back and pulled him with her. She whispered gustily, "Come into me like a stallion, Custis. But then make love to me like I'm a woman."

Longarm moved his fingers to Jessibee's thighs, to spread them. She twisted her body on the rough blanket that topped the bedroll to bring herself closer to him. Her hands were holding his shaft tightly now. She rubbed its tip over her moist warmth and whispered, "Now, Custis! Go in now!"

Longarm buried himself in her hot depths. She rolled her hips from side to side as he entered, and sighed contentedly when he filled her. Longarm raised himself, almost leaving her, but Jessibee brought up her legs and wrapped them around his lower ribs and levered her hips upward to keep him in place. He thrust hard, a series of deep, swift strokes, then slowed to a more deliberate rhythm as Jessibee gripped him hard with her thighs.

"Don't hurry!" she whispered urgently. "I haven't had a man for a while, and I don't want to let go too soon."

"Let go whenever you feel like it," Longarm said. "I'll hold out for as long as you need me to."

"If you're sure you can hold out until I'm ready again."

"I'm sure. Go on. Enjoy yourself all you want."

Jessibee took him at his word. Longarm continued to go into her smoothly and steadily, with a hard, deep thrust now and then to bring her along more quickly. Jessibee's eyes closed as he continued his paced stroking, and he felt her body tensing. Longarm moved faster now, and thrust deeper.

Jessibee began to tremble, and when Longarm stopped for a moment, buried in her as deeply as he could thrust, she gasped, "Oh, not now!

Don't stop now! Go faster, Custis, faster!"

Now Longarm started stroking with an intensity that set Jessibee panting and quivering tumultuously. He was buried in her to the hilt when she unlocked her legs from around him, spread her thighs wide, and began to gulp in a series of soft, sobbing cries. Longarm raised himself and then pounded into Jessibee with a succession of long strokes which he maintained until she shrieked deep in her throat and he felt her body heave convulsively and then go limp in a wave of relaxing shudders. He stopped thrusting then, and lay still, filling her.

Jessibee sighed. "Brandy and whiskey mixed, Custis. It's a combination I don't often find."

"We'll rest," he said. "Unless I'm too heavy for you."

"No. Don't get up. Stay in Me. Now, especially. I haven't felt this filled for a long time."

Jessibee sighed and pulled Longarm's head down for a kiss. Their tongues met and slid together. Jessibee stirred. "Can you stay hard for a while?"

"Sure. As long as it takes. But if you're ready to start again, so am I."

"You don't need to hurry, if you want to rest some more."

Longarm responded by lifting himself and thrusting hard again. Jessibee drew a quivering breath when she felt his deep penetration, and raised her hips to meet him. The hot flood that he'd felt surrounding him when Jessibee climaxed had aroused Longarm. He wanted to feel himself sinking repeatedly into her ready body, and stroked with steadily increasing vigor. He was still holding back, and continued to do so until Jessibee began to grow taut again. He was building quickly now, but she was responding faster, too.

There was a time of suspended feeling as Longarm held himself above Jessibee, looking down at her face in the strange, filtered moonlight, watching her lips twitching, her head rolling from side to side. When she grabbed him and pulled him to her for a long kiss, he knew the time was close. He let go his control, pounding hard, while Jessibee rolled and thrust up to meet him with a wildness that set him to trembling. He reached the point of no return and felt himself draining in a series of spasms while Jessibee's throat pulsed with deep, sobbing moans. Then her body went soft and Longarm fell forward, growing soft inside her. Jessibee sighed. "I've been without a man for such a long time! You've done me more good than I can tell you, Custis."

"You're a real pretty woman. Seems like you'd have a lot of men chasing after you."

"I don't let just anybody catch me. I do the choosing, not them."

"Like you chose me?"

"Exactly. I didn't see any way that you could come looking for me. And I wasn't sure you would, or even if you wanted to. So I came to you."

"You're a right strong-minded lady."

"Most Cherokee women are. We run the families, you know. If we have a husband who doesn't live up to what we think he should, we divorce him. You whites haven't gotten that far yet."

"Are you a full-blooded Cherokee, Jessibee?" Longarm asked.

She chuckled throatily. "As much as any Cherokee is. We've always been tolerant, maybe too tolerant for our own good."

Jessibee stirred under him, and as much as Longarm was enjoying feeling her wet heat around him, he rolled off to lie beside her.

"Do you have enough cheroots so you can spare me another one?" she asked.

"Sure. You lay still. I'll get one for each of us." Longarm padded over to the table, where his vest hung on a chair, and took out two cheroots and a match. He asked, "How'd you get a taste for these, anyhow, Jessibee?"

"That's an easy story to tell."

"You might as well tell it to me," Longarm said, "unless you're figuring on going back to your kinfolks real soon. I hope that ain't in your mind, though."

"It's not. I know you can't stay hard forever, though, so we might as well talk while we're resting. But don't worry about me wanting to leave. As far as I'm concerned, I'm settling down for a very enjoyable night."

"I'll do my best to keep you full," Longarm promised. "And I aim to enjoy it as much as you do. But go on, Jessibee. Tell me how it was you started smoking cigars."

"I didn't start out with cigars. It was cigarettes at first. That was when I was going to Mills College. I don't suppose you've ever heard of Mills?"

"Can't say I have. Whereabouts is it?"

"In California, across the bay from San Francisco. It's a college that teaches young women such as I was then to keep just a little bit ahead of the times. It's what they all are becoming, advanced thinkers."

Jessibee sighed. "That was quite a while ago. Just thinking back on it makes me feel old."

"As long as you don't look old, which you sure don't--you're pretty as any woman I've ever seen--and as long as you don't act old, then you ain't old," Longarm said seriously.

"That's a very nice compliment, Custis. But when I see all the changes that are taking place-" She shook her head. "I'm getting off the subject. Smoking was one of the advanced things I learned at college. Cigarettes, of course. But when I came back home, I found out that the storekeepers here don't balk at selling cigars or chewing tobacco or snuff, but they look on cigarettes as the work of the devil. So I switched to cigars. It's just as simple as that."

"Your folks must've been well-fixed, if they could send you all that way to school," Longarm suggested.

"They were. Are, I should say. My family got a head start here in the Nation, you see."

"Oh? How's that?"

"We're what the tribe calls West Cherokees." Jessibee caught the question before Longarm asked it, and added hurriedly, "That hasn't anything to do with the West family. I suppose you've never heard of Tahlonteskea?" He shook his head. She went on, "He was a Cherokee chief, many years ago. He saw that you whites were determined to take our homelands in Georgia, so he didn't wait for it to happen. He led a group of our people to resettle on the Arkansas River back in 1809 or 1810. So my family's been here for three generations. We were here long before the East Cherokees were resettled."

"What you're hinting at is that your folks got here first and sort of skimmed the gravy?"

"You could put it that way. My grandfather was an attorney. So is my father. Very good ones. They made a lot of money."

"So they could send you to a college where you learned to like cigarettes," Longarm said. "And being a pretty girl, you had beaus there, too. They took you to fancy restaurants like the ones I saw when I was in San Francisco one time, and you learned how to drink liquor like a lady, too."

"Yes. And even if it's not considered ladylike, I learned to like what we just did, too. That's very important."

"At least you're honest and open about it," Longarm said. "Most women ain't. They act like they're just putting up with a man."

"I was open enough to come in here and practically tell you what I wanted," Jessibee said. "Why not? I knew you wouldn't come to me, not with my relatives up at the house. At least I've learned that if I want something, it's up to me to go after it."

She turned on her side and Longarm felt her hands surrounding his flaccid shaft. "Is it too soon for you to get hard again? Maybe if I helped a little bit?"

"You won't have to help a lot."

Jessibee began to squeeze and release him, her hand opening and closing in slow pulsations. "I like the feel of a man," she confided. "It does something to me for a man to swell up and get hard in my hands."

"It's doing something for me too," Longarm admitted. Then, as Jessibee massaged his beginning erection by rolling it between the palms of her hands, he added, "Especially when you do that."

"I like to feel a man's hands on me, too," she reminded him.

Longarm grasped one of her breasts in each hand and bent over to close his teeth gently on her stiffening nipples, moving from one breast to the other.

"It's not too soon, is it?" Jessibee whispered. She lifted a thigh high across his stomach and massaged herself with his soft tip. He could feel the moisture that still clung to her, and the tantalizing roughness of her pubic hair. She invited him, "Come into me, now. You'll get really hard when you do."

Longarm turned to her and Jessibee slid her other leg under him. She brought her knees high, up to his chest. Longarm felt her opening to him. Jessibee pulled his face to hers, and her mouth found his while her other lips were drawing him into her more deeply. He grasped her buttocks and pulled them to him. He was fully erect now, buried deeply inside her. She sighed contentedly and rotated her hips with slow, studied sensuality.

"I can lie this way for hours," she said softly. "Will you stay with me, Custis?"

"As long as I can," he promised.

Time seemed unimportant as they lay interlocked. Jessibee moved occasionally to rub herself on Longarm's impaling member; her movements were slow and gentle. Now and then he pushed hard against her for a few seconds, and as time passed, she sought his lips or he found hers in a long, tongue-twining kiss. Jessibee lifted her shoulders from time to time to rub the pebbled tips of her breasts against the roughness of Longarm's chest hair. Once or twice, as their joining grew more prolonged, she slipped her fingers between their bodies to trace them around the tender flesh where they were joined, and brought herself to a small orgasmic shuddering. Longarm grew even more engorged and was thinking about thrusting when Jessibee's body suddenly began to tremble.

"Take me off," she urged. "Now! I can't hold back any longer!"

Longarm rose to his knees, with Jessibee's legs over his shoulders, her ankles locked behind his neck. He cradled her buttocks in his hands and held her body suspended; only her shoulders rested on the blanket. He drew out, then thrust deeply and felt her tighten around him when their hips met.

Jessibee moaned, "Quicker, Custis! Deep and fast!"

He was building quickly, but Jessibee was building faster. She writhed, her hips twisting, her full breasts rolling, her head thrown back. Longarm drove faster with each long stroke until he began to tremble too. Jessibee was whimpering now, a whimper that became a laughing sob and then a shrill cry as her muscles stiffened under his stroking and she shook with spasm after spasm, her taut muscles rippling. He could go no faster nor penetrate any deeper. He thrust again and again until his own orgasm began, and kept pounding until his strength drained away. He let Jessibee's limp body down, then dropped beside her and lay still until his rasping breathing slowed and he was able to move again.