Free High and Wild by Peter Brandvold Page A

to sweep her tangled black hair from her face. She kept her other hand wrapped proprietarily around his big, slackening cock.
    â€œBear?” she said, her voice raspy, her cheeks flushed from fulfillment.
    â€œYou’re an animal,” he told her, only just now catching his breath.
    â€œYou have to leave now.”
    â€œHmmm?”
    â€œYou have to leave now.”
    She rolled to the other side of the bed. She grabbed something off of the nightstand and then sat up against the oak headboard. There was a clicking sound. He looked over at her to see a silver-plated, pearl-gripped over-and-under derringer clenched in her right fist.
    She aimed it at him, her eyes desperate, determined. “ Now ! ”
    Haskell jerked his head up, ran a hand across his face, and blinked, for half a second wondering if he’d nodded off and was dreaming. “Hold on, now, Raven.”
    â€œGet dressed and get out,” she demanded, wagging the gun at the door. She kept her voice low and taut with menace. “I mean it, Bear. I’ll shoot if you don’t. And it’s Miss York . You are not ever to address me by my given name. I am a professional, and I do not—will not ever again—succumb to the lust of a brutish man. Especially not one who is my colleague.”
    She aimed the gun at his broad chest. “I am a professional .”
    Her voice cracked a little on that last, and a tear rolled out from the corner of her right eye to dribble down along her long, fine nose.
    Haskell studied her, incredulous. Her hair hung down along the sides of her pale, perfectly shaped breasts still slightly red from the chafing of his beard and his callused hands.
    â€œGet out!” she snarled, gritting her teeth and tossing her beautiful head at the door.
    â€œAll right, all right,” Haskell said, crawling down off the bed and holding his hands shoulder-high, palms out. “You mind if I get dressed first?”
    â€œYes, I do mind. Take your clothes and go!” She aimed the gun straight out from her shoulder, narrowing her right eye as she sighted down the barrel, drawing a bead on his heart.
    Haskell gave a startled grunt. He’d be damned if she didn’t look serious.
    He hot-footed around the room, gathering his clothes from where she’d tossed them after practically tearing them off his body after he’d removed her widow’s weeds with effort, and glanced at her once more, holding the duds and his spurred black boots against his chest.
    She was still aiming the gun at him, biting down hard on her lower lip. The look in her eyes, the view of her soft breasts through her tangled tresses, started to give him another hard-on. At the same time, he was touched with apprehension. She was holding the pistol steadily in her clenched fist, keeping that bead tight against his ticker.
    He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a hard and fast, “Out, Agent Haskell!”
    He fumbled with the doorknob, got the door open, and stumbled into the hall. He pressed his back to the door, blinked, and stared through his own tangled hair hanging in his eyes. “I’ll be damned,” Haskell said, a wistful grin stretching his lips. “The girl fancies me.”

8

    E arly the next afternoon, Haskell blew a long plume of cigar smoke into the wind rushing by the platform between coach cars. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe flyer he’d hopped, headed for Colorado Springs, was sashaying around the tracks, tapping over the seams, squawking and belching as it chugged up a steep grade in the bright afternoon sunshine.
    They’d just taken on water at Castle Rock, and Haskell had gotten off with his saddlebags and rifle to wet his whistle at the little saloon next to the water tank. He’d looked around for his comely partner, but although there’d been only four coach cars on this particular combination, plus one parlor car for drinking and gambling, he