Nola thrust a hand toward him, palm out. “You stay right there!” she ordered. “Whatever’s going on down there, I’ll handle it. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  There had been only the single gunshot, but Longarm didn’t know whether that was good or bad. He wanted to get out of the bed and go see what was happening, but he knew Nola was right. He was still in no shape for trouble, and besides, he didn’t even know where his pants were.

  He would have looked a sight, showing up at the top of the stairs naked as a jaybird except for the bandage around his midsection. People might have stopped what they were doing just to gawk at him, though, he thought dryly.

  “Go on,” he said to Nola. “I’ll be right here if you need me. Just be careful.”

  “I always am,” she told him. “That’s how I’ve stayed alive.”

  He could believe that. No woman ran a place like the Silver Slipper without being able to take care of herself.

  Nola slipped her hand into the cleverly concealed pocket of her dress as she left the room and started along the balcony toward the stairs. Her pistol was there, loaded and ready to use. As she approached the top of the broad staircase, she heard loud, angry voices coming from below.

  She paused at the head of the stairs and looked down at the big main room of the Silver Slipper spread out below her. It was brightly lit by gas chandeliers, the only such fixtures in Galena City. Like the huge mirrors behind the long mahogany bar, the bar itself, the gaming tables covered with green baize, the embossed wallpaper, and all the other ornate furnishings, the chandeliers had cost her a pretty penny. It was a fact of the saloon business, though, that customers tended to spend more when a place looked like the owner didn’t really need the money. Illusion was what really mattered the most.

  Just like the most important thing about being a whore was making the customer believe that he was different from all the other men who had shared your bed ...

  Nola put that thought out of her head and concentrated on the matter at hand. She saw a knot of men at the far end of the bar, near the front windows. Half a dozen of them wore silk vests and sleeve garters over spotless white shirts, and she identified them as her bartenders. They were surrounding four men in range clothes. One of the cowboys was bareheaded and was rubbing his jaw as if he had just been punched. That was probably what had happened, Nola decided, because his hat was on the floor at his feet where it would have fallen when it was knocked off his head.

  Everyone else in the room was looking at the group at the end of the bar. Gambling had ceased, and so had drinking and laughing and fondling the gaudily clad young women who worked for Nola. That meant the money had stopped flowing for the moment, as well, and she couldn’t have that, Nola thought.

  “What’s going on here?” she said as she started down the stairs, her voice not overly loud but still ringing clearly throughout the room. Plenty of eyes turned to look at her as she descended the staircase, and she enjoyed the attention.

  One of the bartenders who had surrounded the cowboys swung around to face her as she approached. “Sorry for the disturbance, Miss Nola,” he said. “One of these gents got a little rowdy and decided to take a potshot at the chandeliers. We took the gun away from him before he could do any real harm.”

  “Them sons o’ bitches jumped me for no good reason at all!” blustered the cowboy. “I wasn’t goin’ to really hurt anything.”

  Nola’s man moved aside so that she got her first good look at the troublemaker and his companions. She tensed as she saw that they weren’t simple cowhands after all.

  They were some of Ben Mallory’s men.

  Nola had already been in Galena City and the Silver Slipper had been well established when Mallory’s gang had shown up a couple of months earlier and proceeded to run roughshod over the entire town. They had left the Silver Slipper alone for the most part because Mallory himself had sauntered in that first night, seen Nola, and decided that he wanted her. As soon as she had seen the raw wanting in his eyes, she had known that he had no real power over her. It was the other way around, in fact. And letting Mallory bed her was a small price to pay to protect her investment, as far as she was concerned. Ever since then, the outlaws had pretty much steered clear of the Silver Slipper, and when they did come in here, they usually behaved themselves.

  Tonight, though, these men must have gotten drunk somewhere else before coming here. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been so belligerent.

  Nola told herself to stay calm. She could handle this problem. With a smile, she said, “I think you boys have probably had enough celebrating for one night. Why don’t you come back again some other time?”

  “What about my gun?” the bareheaded outlaw demanded, pointing to the revolver being held by one of the bartenders.

  “You can drop by any time tomorrow and pick it up,” Nola told him.

  The man shook his head. “I want it back now,” he said stubbornly.

  It wasn’t worth arguing over, Nola decided after a moment’s thought. The man certainly wasn’t going to try to cause any more trouble, not when he and his friends were surrounded by Nola’s bartenders, all of whom were large and tough. She nodded to the one with the gun and said, “Give it back to him.” To the outlaw, she added, “But you’ll have to leave now.”

  The man snatched his gun out of the bartender’s hand. “Soon as I’m damned good and ready,” he snarled. “You can’t treat Ben Mallory’s boys like shit!”

  He spun around, jerked the gun up, and started pulling the trigger.

  Men dove out of the way of the shots, but the outlaw wasn’t really directing the bullets at anyone in particular. Instead, he was firing at the shelves of the backbar, where dozens of bottles of liquor stood under the big mirrors. Bottles shattered in a shower of glass splinters and whiskey. Several of Nola’s men gathered themselves to leap at the crazed outlaw, but Nola stopped them by shouting, “No!” If her men jumped him, he might turn and kill one of them.

  Instead, she slipped the pistol from her pocket and shot him in the back.

  The other outlaws grabbed for their guns as Nola’s bullet drove the man against the bar. Before they could draw their weapons, however, the bartenders lunged at them. A couple of the outlaws went down under hard-fisted blows, while the final one was laid out by a chair that was busted over his head. The melee was over almost before it had a chance to get started.

  The man Nola had shot had dropped his gun and was clawing at the bar in an effort to hold himself up. He slid down to the sawdust-littered floor, moaning in pain. Nola had shot him high on the left side, possibly breaking his shoulder blade but not doing any more damage than that.

  “Your friend will live,” Nola said coldly to the other outlaws when they had been disarmed. “Get him out of here, and don’t come back.”

  “You can’t throw us out!” said one of the men. “Don’t you know who we are?”

  Nola lifted her pistol and eared back the hammer as she pointed it at the bridge of the man’s nose. The gun was a small caliber, but from that angle, the barrel must have looked as big around as a cannon. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” Nola told him. “If you don’t do what I told you, in another minute you’ll just be one more dead son of a bitch.”

  The outlaw paled, swallowed hard, and jerked his head toward the door. “Grab hold of Brewster there,” he told his companions. “Let’s get out of here. We ain’t stayin’ where we ain’t wanted!”

  “I suppose that eliminates practically the entire world, then,” murmured Nola.

  The outlaws didn’t seem to have heard the acerbic comment. They gathered up their fallen comrade and half carried, half dragged him out of the saloon. Nola put her gun away and turned to the other customers with a brilliant smile. “That concludes our little impromptu entertainment,” she said. “Now you good people can go back to enjoying your evening.”

  All eyes were still on her as she crossed the room and went back up the stairs. The music, the laughter, and the talking didn’t really get under way again until she was gone, but by the time she reached the door of Longarm’s room, everything sounded like it was back to normal.

  Longarm’s hands had clenched into fists when he heard the rattle of gunfire downstairs erupt once more. He was afraid for Nola, afraid that somehow Ben Mallory had found out he was here and had come to take revenge on Nola for helping him. He threw back the covers and stood up, moving stiffly, then hobbled toward a tall wardrobe on the other side of the room next to the dressing table. Sure enough, when he opened the door of the wardrobe, he found his clothes hanging in there. The shirt still had a bullet hole in the front and back, but the blood had been washed out of it as much as possible, leaving only a faint stain.

  At the moment, he was more interested in retrieving his pants—and the gunbelt that was hanging on a peg on the side of the chifforobe.

  He took the pants down and stepped into them carefully. A wave of dizziness hit him while he had one foot off the floor, and he almost fell. He would have if he hadn’t reached out quickly and grabbed the chifforobe door. When he felt steadier, he finished pulling on his pants and then reached for the gun. He had just slipped the Colt out of the holster and turned toward the door of Nola’s bedroom when it opened.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” she demanded as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “I heard more shots,” Longarm said gruffly. “Figured I’d better get ready for trouble.”

  “It was nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said. “Now put that gun away, take those pants off, and get back into bed.”

  “What happened?” demanded Longarm, ignoring her orders.

  “Some of Mallory’s men decided to raise a little hell,” she said offhandedly. “One of them shot a few bottles of whiskey, but that was all the damage. I shot him before he could hurt anything else.”

  “You shot him,” repeated Longarm with a frown.

  “I just wounded him.”

  It was starting to look like Nola Sutton was a dangerous woman. She had practically admitted that she had killed the man who had abused Mickey, and now she talked about shooting a troublemaking owlhoot like it was nothing more than swatting a fly. Maybe he had better do what she told him, he thought, before she took a gun to him.

  But he had a stubborn streak, so he said, “I’ve been lying in that bed for quite a while now. Feels pretty good to be up and about.”

  “It’ll feel even better when you’ve got more of your strength back.” She came closer to him and tipped her head back so that she could look at his face as she laid a hand on his bare chest. “I’ll bet you don’t often refuse when a lady asks you to take your clothes off and get into her bed.”

  “That’s because she’s usually planning on shedding her duds and getting into bed, too,” he said.

  That brought a smile and a laugh from her. Her hands went to the buttons of his trousers. “I suppose that can be arranged. But you first.”

  Longarm let her unfasten the buttons and push the trousers down around his bare ankles. He stepped out of them, and as he did, his stiffening manhood bobbed near her hand. She reached out, as natural as could be, and closed her fingers warmly around the thick pole of male flesh.

  She massaged him sensuously, and the idea of standing there practically naked while she was fully dressed and caressing him finished bringing him to full arousal. Considering how weak he still was, his shaft throbbed with surprising strength.

  “You promised you’d lie down,” whispered Nola.

  Longarm’s voice was husky as he replied, “You promised you’d take your clothes off and join me.”

  “All in good time.” She leaned over, and her lips trailed kisses across his chest, moving from nipple to nipple through the thick mat of brown hair.

  Longarm let her steer him over to the bed. He lay back and watched with great pleasure as she slowly stripped for him. Each layer of clothing that came off and joined the pile on the floor revealed more of her body, until finally she slid a silky shift down over her hips and stepped out of it to stand before him, fully, resplendently nude. Her skin was creamy and dotted with an occasional freckle, and her fairness made the triangle of fine-spun auburn hair between her legs seem that much darker. Her breasts rode high and proud on her chest, each of them crowned with a dark red nipple.

  “You’re going to have to let me do all the work,” she told him as she approached the bed. “I don’t want you exerting yourself.”

  Longarm began, “I ain’t in the habit of just lying back—”

  “That’s what you’re going to do this time,” Nola said firmly. She sat down on the bed beside Longarm and reached over to grasp him.

  The groan that came from his throat was one of pleasure, not pain, as her hand enfolded his shaft and began to slowly pump it. Her touch was expert, and he tried not to think about all the other men she had doubtless held this way. Sliding, gliding up and down along the pole of flesh, her fingers quickly brought him to a fever-pitch.

  Just when he thought he was about to spend himself in her hand, she stopped and gripped him tightly around the base of the stalk for a moment. Then she leaned over farther, cupped her right breast in her hand, and used the hard, pebbled nipple to tease the slit at the head of his shaft. Again Longarm groaned.

  All his instincts told him to grab her, roll her onto her back, and plant himself inside her. With an effort, he controlled that urge and let her continue working her magic on him. She knelt above him and pressed her breasts together, trapping his manhood between the soft globes in an embrace that was searing. He was practically trembling now with the need for release.

  She sat up, straddling his legs, and began to massage his strong, muscular thighs. Occasionally one hand would stray to gently fondle the sac that hung just below his manhood. She bent over and nuzzled the sac with her lips, then parted them and drew first one and then the other orb into her mouth. Her other hand lifted his leg slightly so that her fingers could dig into the muscles that lay along the back of his thigh.

  Longarm’s pulse was hammering like thunder in his head by the time she finally shifted again and her lips closed over the head of his shaft. Her tongue darted around it, tracing wet circles that burned like fire. Her hand wrapped around the lower part of the shaft and began pumping again as she sucked. With his chest rising and falling as if he had just run a mile, Longarm reached out and tangled his fingers in her thick red hair, cupping the back of her head as she bobbed up and down above him. She took him deeper and deeper into the hot, wet cavern of her mouth.

  Longarm knew he couldn’t stand that sort of exquisite torment for very long, and sure enough, a few moments later he felt his climax beginning to boil up. He let go of Nola’s head in case she wanted to pull away, but instead she engulfed him even more. Her hips were thrusting back and forth now, and he knew that what she was doing to him was equally arousing to her. She reached underneath him and tightly gripped the cheeks of his ass as his seed began to pour out of him in scalding jets. Despite his efforts to remain still, Longarm’s back arched up off the bed.

  His climax seemed to last forever, spasm after spasm that totally drained him. Nola took it all, and she shook wildly as her own culmination gripped her.

  Finally, Longarm fell back, spent. Nola sagged against him, equally satiated. His softening manhood was still in her mouth, and she squeezed the last drops from it, lapping up his juices like a kitten with cream. Then she licked him clean, up and down, and gave his sac a final squeeze.

  She slid up alongside him on the bed and after a moment was able to ask breathlessly, “Are you all right?”

  “Yep,” said Longarm, just as breathless as she was. “I reckon I am.”

  Gingerly, she explored the bandages around his middle. “We don’t seem to have broken that wound open again. I’d hate to think that what we just did might wind up killing you.”

  Longarm put his arm around her and drew her close against him. The clean scent of her hair filled his senses. “I reckon there are a whole lot worse ways for a fella to die,” he said.

  “Yes, but I’m not through with you, Custis. Not by a long shot.”

  And just what, wondered Longarm, did she mean by that? He didn’t have long to ponder the question, because he fell asleep like that, with Nola wrapped snugly in his arms.

  Chapter 11

  Longarm had been told more than once by various sawbones who had patched him up that he had the constitution of an ox. Over the next couple of days, that quality demonstrated itself once again. Strength flowed back into his body, and the stiffness and soreness in his side where the bullet had ventilated him began to ease. He wasn’t ready to hop on the back of a bucking bronc, but he was sure starting to feel more like himself again.

  Nola had a lot to do with that, he knew. She watched over him like a hawk, making sure that he got plenty to eat and plenty of rest, too. And if she wasn’t around to tend to his every need, then Angie or Rafaela or Mickey were there with him. He could dress himself without too much trouble now, so he got up several times a day and walked around the room to keep his muscles limber.

  A couple of times a day, Nola made sure that one muscle in particular stayed good and limber. Longarm still had to lie on his back while she rode him, but that was all right—for now. Sooner or later, though, he vowed, he was going to climb on top of her and show her what he could do when he really got to going.

  Angie would have been glad to take over that duty from Nola, Longarm suspected, but the big blond always stopped at just flirting with him. He had a feeling that Nola had given Angie orders not to carry her nursemaiding too far.

  By the morning of the third day after the trouble downstairs, Longarm was getting edgy. He had come to Galena City to find Ben Mallory and put a stop to the silver robberies, after all, and he was no closer to that now than when he had ridden into the settlement. His mood grew even more tense when Mickey brought in his breakfast and he found a copy of this week’s Galena City Bugle lying next to his plate. The newspaper was folded, but Longarm could read several of the headlines. One of them announced, Stagecoach Robbery —Another Atrocity Committed—Killersat Large.