She lurched forward on the bed. Longarm, gasping for breath, fell on top of her.

  Chapter 17

  For several moments the room was silent except for the sound of their harsh breathing. At last Ilioana sighed deeply and raised herself on one elbow to look at him.

  “You liked the way I pleasured you?” she asked.

  “I told you, what you liked, I’d like too.” Longarm hesitated before adding, “But it sounded to me like I was hurting you.”

  “Ah, but that is the point, Longarm! Without some pain, there is no really great pleasure!”

  “I ain’t so sure I agree with you, Ilioana. Seems to me the only pleasure I ever got out of being hurt was getting well.”

  “Reach your hand out to me,” Ilioana said. She took the hand he stretched out and put it on her soft breast. “Now, squeeze.”

  Longarm did as she requested.

  “Harder!” she commanded.

  He applied extra pressure.

  “Harder yet!” she urged him.

  Longarm tried, but could not bring himself to use all his strength. He looked at her breast, his fingers sunk so deeply into its softness that mounds of flesh bulged up between them. He shook his head. “It ain’t any use. I can’t enjoy it when I know I’m hurting somebody.”

  “But I was enjoying feeling your strength spent on me. Still, it is a feeling common to only a few.” She stretched out and sat up. “We should drink again. I would not like to think our evening has ended so soon.”

  “If I ain’t too old-fashioned to suit you, I’m still good for some more. And a drink would go down pretty good right now.”

  Longarm watched her as she walked naked across the room. She did not go directly to the table where the liquor was, but to the bureau, where she poured perfume from a crystal vial into her cupped hand and rubbed the scent into her body. She stroked herself sensuously, massaging the perfume into her breasts, her armpits, her abdomen.

  The aroma of the perfume was heavy in the small room. As he watched her rub the liquid into her pubic mound and between her thighs, Longarm felt himself stirring into another erection. He was still flaccid, though, when she came back to the bed, carrying filled glasses for each of them. This time she did not offer a toast, but merely raised her glass before tilting it to her lips. Longarm followed her example.

  His eyes kept wandering to the smooth delta of skin between her thighs. When she put her glass down and reached to take his, he caught her arm and pulled her to him. She dropped the glass to the floor and came to him readily. Leaning with her back on his chest, she guided his hands to her breasts. He cupped them, gently at first then harder, until they were as flat as he could press them. Ilioana inhaled deeply and sighed with a tiny grating sound, like the purring of a cat, deep in her throat. She began rubbing her bare back against his chest.

  Longarm could not keep his hands still. He ran them down over her stomach, down to her groin, which he’d found so fascinating. Ilioana spread her legs apart, as though to encourage him. Her hands crept behind her, between their bodies, and found him, still only partly erect. He began to knead the soft, wet lips that she’d opened to his fingers. Ilioana squirmed and brought his hardening erection up between her legs, and now their fingers began to touch and intertwine. He grew hard quickly.

  “Look!” she whispered to him.

  Longarm had been nibbling at her neck and shoulders. He raised his head, wondering what there was to look at. His eyes traveled the room, and stopped at the bureau. The big rectangular pier glass that had been hung over the bureau’s own tarnished mirror had been carefully placed so that it reflected the bed. In the mirror he saw Ilioana sprawled at full length, her legs spread wide, his rigid shaft between them, his fingers buried in the wet pink crevice between her thighs. She moved his fingers aside while he looked, and guided his erection into the spot they had occupied.

  She leaned forward slowly, deliberately, to let him slide into her. Longarm watched the mirror. It was his introduction to this refinement, though he’d heard men who patronized whorehouses talk about mirror rooms. He saw Ilioana’s breasts in outline as she bent still farther forward, and reached for them. The dangling white globes were just beyond his fingertips, and now Ilioana’s body hid their fleshly connection from view. Longarm was aroused enough, though. He lifted Ilioana bodily, lowered her to the bed on her back, and plunged into her once more.

  She did not respond to Longarm’s first plunges, but as he continued the furious thrusting, her body grew tense. He slowed to a more deliberate tempo, sliding into her gradually, almost gently, and holding his hips pressed hard against her for several seconds at the end of his penetration. Ilioana began to squeeze with her inner muscles to hold him in, and he timed his easy strokes to her contraction and release. She pulled his head down and offered him her lips. He met them and they began a long, deep kiss that soon set her to trembling and brought Longarm close to orgasm.

  He sped up, bit by bit, until he was driving into her with full, pistonlike strokes. Her body began to writhe. The writhing became heaving as she brought her hips up to meet his; their bodies collided with soft, fleshy smacks until Ilioana wailed into his ear. Longarm relaxed his control and pounded home a few quick, final thrusts before his relaxing body covered hers and they lay still, bathed in the heady, warm waves of musk that rose from their drained and still-joined bodies.

  Below him, Longarm felt Ilioana stir. He moved to relieve her of his weight, and she sat up. The careful outlines of her rouged lips were blurred, and the lips themselves were swollen. Longarm looked from the woman beside him to her image and his, reflected in the pier glass. When she stood up and stretched, the play of the lamplight on her breasts and hips and on the bare vee of skin at the junction of her thighs still fascinated him, but he felt no arousal as he watched her go to the bureau and get fresh glasses. She padded on bare feet to the table and poured them drinks, then came back to the bed and handed him the glass she’d filled with Maryland rye.

  “We will talk now?” she suggested, sitting down beside him on the bed.

  “Sure, if you want to,” Longarm stood up, went to the chair where his vest and coat lay folded across the back, and found a cigar. He took a match from the bundle in his coat pocket and lighted the cheroot. Back at the bed, he asked her, “What’s on your mind for us to talk about, Ilioana?”

  “What we were talking about before we stopped for pleasure. My poor countrymen, and how I can best help them.”

  “I ain’t so sure they’re going to need your help. Now that the trouble between them and the ranchers has been patched up, they’ll likely go on and make a pretty good wheat crop.”

  “How can they? The snows have started; their wheat will be ruined,” she said.

  “Maybe not. There’s always a few short flurries that come in fast and move on, before the real winter sets in,” he told her. “They’ll have plenty of time to do their reaping and threshing before the weather gets too bad.”

  “Even if they do, they have no buyer for their grain, now that the wheat broker has gone,” Ilioana said thoughtfully, more to herself than to Longarm.

  “Oren Stone?” he asked. “How’d you find out about him?”

  “Why, Gregor told me that—” she stopped short. “Gregor heard some gossip that he repeated to me.”

  Longarm’s lips tightened. What Ilioana had just let slip was all he’d needed to be sure that she and her servant were the Russian secret agents Mordka Danilov had suspected them to be. Thinking of Mordka reminded him of something else. He tallied the days in his mind and realized that this was the evening he’d promised to attend the service at the Brethren’s church, at which the group would offer prayers for a good harvest.

  “You sure take a lot of interest in things that don t have anything to do with finding that brother you came here to look for,” Longarm observed. “Where was it you said your servant had gone to look for a new lead?”

  Ilioana had made a quick recovery. “I do not think I mentioned his destination. It is of no importance.”

  She looked at Longarm, who caught her eyes and stared her down. Nervously she got up from the bed, filled her glass with vodka, and drained it. Then she picked up her negligee from the floor and busied herself with putting it on. She kept her back to Longarm until the black chiffon was wrapped around her body. When she turned to face him, Ilioana had regained her composure.

  “We have pleasured ourselves almost too much, have we not?” She smiled and indicated Longarm’s flaccidity. “I know that I am exhausted.”

  “Maybe I don’t look like it now, but I’ll be good as new after I rest a little while,” Longarm smiled. He wanted Ilioana to dismiss him, instead of having to walk away from her as he had before.

  “Later, then. Much later, after I have slept. You do not mind?”

  “No. Not a bit. I’ve still got some work that I need to do.” He lifted his gunbelt off the headboard of the bed and went to the chair where his balbriggans and jeans lay in a crumpled heap. He separated them and began pulling his underwear on.

  “You’ll come back later, then? Or perhaps . . . tomorrow night?”

  “One or the other.” Longarm stepped into his boots and stamped them snugly on his feet. “There’s still a lot of things for us to talk about.”

  Ilioana did not answer, but lay looking at him. Longarm’s back was toward her, but watching her reflection in the pier glass, he saw a small frown form on her face. He finished dressing quickly and went to the door. “I’ll see you later then, Ilioana.”

  “Of course.” She forced a smile. “Later.”

  Walking through the falling snow to the livery stable, Longarm checked his watch to see if he had time to look in at the Ace High and Cattleman’s before going to the church. He was surprised to see the hands indicating just a few minutes past eight; it seemed to him that he’d been with Ilioana half the night. He decided he’d better not check the saloons now; chances were the church ceremony would be over in an hour at most. There would still be time for the saloons on his way back,

  * * *

  Keeping the roan at a walk, and his hat brim pulled low to shield his face from the swirling snow, Longarm wondered just what he’d let himself in for by keeping his promise to Mordka Danilov.

  You never were much of a churchgoing man, old son. Seems like preachers have a habit of mixing up something they think’s right with what’s set down in Holy Writ. But I guess it’s all in the way you look at it. Maybe the words in the Bible don’t say the same thing to me that they do to somebody like a preacher, who’s studied ’em a lot more careful than I ever did.

  Longarm had never been inside the little church the Brethren had built, though he’d seen it several times. The church stood just to one side of the broad cattle trail that ran north from the Santa Fe’s loading corrals; the trail divided the eastern group of homesteads from those on the west side of Junction. Glidden wire fences lined the trail for some distance north of the church, as far as the homesteads extended. The narrow lanes that provided access to the homesteads and their wheatfields ran off the broad cattle trail at right angles.

  No steeple rose above the church to set it apart from the dwellings, though it was larger than most of the homesteaders’ houses. Longarm had taken it for a house, until Fedor Petrovsky had pointed the church out to him when they had ridden past it on their way back from the Hawkins ranch. He’d had no chance to ask Fedor whether steeples were forbidden by the creed of the Brethren, or whether they just hadn’t taken time to erect a steeple, or lacked the spare cash.

  Lighted lanterns could still be seen bobbing along the narrow lanes leading to the trail, when Longarm reined in at the church. He was glad he wasn’t going to be the last one to arrive. He tethered his horse to the hitch rail; only a few other animals were tied up, and he realized that most of the Brethren had only a single work animal on their farms, so when a family went anywhere together, they went on foot. As he started for the church, Longarm heard the blatting of a few distant cattle, but thought nothing of it. There were cows on most of the farms, he’d noticed.

  Mordka Danilov was standing just inside the door, talking to Nicolai Belivev. He smiled when he saw Longarm, and said, “I was sure you would be here, my friend, so I waited to welcome you myself.”

  “That’s nice of you, Mordka. I’ll admit I don’t get inside a church more than once in a blue moon. Of course, with all that snow coming down outside tonight, a man can’t tell what color the moon might be, hid by the clouds. I hope the snow ain’t hurting your wheat.”

  “It will do the grain no harm,” Mordka assured him. “We will have a fine harvest. I have asked Nicolai to sit beside you. If there is anything that puzzles you about our service, he can explain.”

  “Why, you didn’t need to go to all that trouble,” Longarm said. “I don’t aim to get in the way or be any trouble to you.”

  Belivev said, “It will be pleasure, not trouble, for us to have you as guest, Marshal. Vhat Mordka means, I think, is to say our service is in our native tongue. He is vorking to make translation in English, so in year or two, ve have no more Russian talking among us.”

  Longarm nodded. “I see.”

  He looked around the church for the first time. The interior was simple to the point of being bare. There were sconces on the walls, some holding lanterns or kerosene lamps, others holding candles. In one corner, a big burner gave off waves of heat. Across the front of the building, a low platform, only a foot or so high, had been erected. There was no altar, just a lectern with a wooden cross on its front. The pews were backless wooden benches, set in tiers, with a narrow center aisle. The walls were unpainted, unornamented, and the boards of the floor were rugless.

  Longarm noticed that the women and children sat on one side of the building, the men on the other. Some of the women carried babies in their arms. All of them wore the plainest of clothing. The men, for the most part, had on butternut or black suits, and the women’s dresses were as devoid of bright colors as were the men’s suits. Although the men had removed their hats, the women all wore scarves on their heads. The children’s clothing reflected the somber hues of that worn by the adults.

  Nicolai Belivev saw Longarm inspecting the church and congregation. He said, “Is not for show, our church, like in Russia big cathedrals, gold vessels for Communion, robes on priests, incense. People say because bright colors and ornaments ve do not have, our lives, too, have no good cheer. Is not true, Marshal.”

  “No, I’ve never seen you folks when you weren’t smiling and happy,” Longarm agreed.

  “Is not our vay to show off in front of God,” Belivev explained. “Ve go to Him plain, like ve are born.”

  “I guess it doesn’t take a lot of fancy folderol, at that, to catch God’s eye,” Longarm said cautiously.

  “Da. You are say what Bratiya show each day by vay ve live,” Belivev agreed. “But is by Mordka to start vorship.”

  Danilov had stepped up on the platform and now stood in front of the lectern. Without raising his voice, he spoke briefly in Russian. When he stopped, one of the men in front of Longarm stood and spoke in the same language. He was followed by several others. None of them raised their voices.

  Longarm didn’t know whether they were praying or preaching, but he noticed that the congregation gave full attention to each speaker. Not a sound interrupted any of those who spoke; even the children gave them silent attention. Once or twice, in the hush that followed each speaker’s words, Longarm again heard cattle blatting outside the church. He frowned. The noises still came from a distance, but it seemed to him the sounds were louder than they had been when he’d heard them outside the church.

  A stillness settled over the congregation. Apparently, all those who had felt called upon to speak had delivered themselves of whatever was on their minds. Nicolai Belivev whispered, “Is no one man our preacher, you understand? Mordka our leader is, but anybody is vant to praise God is to do it.”

  Mordka Danilov cleared his throat and said a very few words. A stir ran along the benches. Men, women, and children were getting up. Belivev whispered, “Is now ve kneel down to pray each one.” He kneeled. After a look of startled surprise, Longarm did so too. The church was totally still for several minutes. Once again, the cattle could be heard, and this time, Longarm was sure they were much louder and more insistent.

  Must be a trail herd pushing on to get to the corrals, he thought. Snowstorm probably slowed ’em down, and they’ve got to be there tomorrow to dicker with the buyers and load out.

  He looked around covertly, but saw nothing except bowed heads and eyes tightly closed. There was no way that he could carry out his half-formed idea of stepping outside to investigate without disturbing the worshippers. He stayed on his knees.

  For several minutes, the silence was maintained. Then, one by one, the sounds of scattered voices rose, saying “Amin.” The word in Russian was close enough to its English counterpart so that Longarm needed no one to translate. He raised his head and looked around. People were beginning to stand; he rose to his feet with them.

  Belivev said, “Is now come near to end of worship. Only is one obryad ve do, to vash feet.”

  “To do what?” Longarm wasn’t sure he’d heard Nicolai correctly. The silence that had lasted so long had ended with the prayers, and now neighbors were talking with neighbors; laughter and the sound of children’s voices filled the small church.