The Railroad War Page 7

  “I’m not in any hurry. I’ll be glad to wait.”

  “You might as well have a beer on the house while you’re waiting,” Cheri said. As she started for the door, she called to the barkeep, “Mort, draw one for Ki.”

  Mort took Ki’s stein to the tap and refilled it. When he brought it back and set it in front of Ki, he said, “Cheri’s as curious as everybody else about how you put Jug down. I told her you wasn’t trying to sell her something. Hope I was right.”

  “You were.” Ki sipped from his stein.

  “Are you going to tell Cheri?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “How you was able to put Jug down yesterday.”

  “Why are you so curious about that, Mort?”

  “Because Jug’s a hell of a big man, and you’re pretty skinny, no offense intended.”

  “I’m not offended. And I used a wrestling hold on Jug, there’s no secret about it.”

  “Well, you put him out of commission for a while. And the lady hurt Slip almost as bad.”

  “We did nothing to bother them. They accosted us.”

  “Oh, sure. Nobody but the two of them blames you.”

  Mort went back to his interrupted work, leaving Ki wondering whether Captain Tinker could be mistaken about the saloon having become a cartel headquarters, and whether Cheri had given the barkeep orders that Ki be made to feel secure while he waited. He was still wondering when Cheri returned. She gave Mort the canvas bag that she’d taken with her and came to where Ki sat.

  Looking at him with undisguised curiosity, she said, “Now. I’m free for a little while. What did you want to talk about?”

  Ki looked at Mort, then gestured to one of the tables at the opposite side of the room and said, “Suppose we sit over there?”

  Cheri’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Ki speculatively. She said, “If you want privacy, you won’t get any in here. The place starts coming to life about this time of the day.”

  Ki concealed the surprise and suspicion that flashed through his mind, and decided quickly that a chance to learn more outweighed the risk. He replied, “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “I live next door. We can talk there without anybody coming in to interrupt us.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. Lead the way, I’ll follow.” Ki followed Cheri to the back door by which she’d come in, and they went through it into a narrow hall where the scent of new lumber hung heavy. Small rooms, no more than ten-by-ten-foot cubicles, were being built on both sides of the wide back room, a narrow corridor between them. The work was still incomplete, and Ki examined the cubicles curiously as he followed Cheri out the back door into a narrow, bare yard enclosed by a high board fence, which was also new. Ki realized at once that he was at the back of the rooming house whose sign he’d seen from the street.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong,” Cheri said. “The owner says he’s got a crew of workmen coming in here for a job, and he’s fixing a place for them to sleep.”

  As he followed Cheri toward the door of the house, Ki framed a question to test her. He asked, “Suppose the owner brought in women instead of men, and turned those cubbyholes into a place to work. What would you—”

  Cheri did not let him finish. “I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. I’ve sold drinks in a lot of saloons, but that’s all I’ve sold. I don’t do anything I can’t live with, and whatever anybody else wants to do is their business.”

  They reached the house, and Cheri took a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. A steep, narrow stairway took them to the second floor, where Cheri unlocked a second door. Light streamed through the doorway when she opened the door. She stepped aside and motioned for Ki to go in.

  What he saw made Ki gasp. The room’s walls were draped with billowing folds of rosy silk, and white silk formed a canopy beneath the ceiling, from the center of which hung a crystal chandelier. A mellow blue Persian carpet covered the floor. Pillow-strewn divans faced each other at one end of the room, and easy chairs stood here and there, with low tables beside them. There were richly carved cabinets standing against two of the walls. Ki had stopped just inside the door. Cheri closed it and stepped up beside him.

  “I didn’t fix this place up,” she said. “It goes with the job, and it was like this when I moved in. I’m still not used to it, but I’m sure learning to enjoy it.” She indicated the divans, and Ki sat down on one of them. Cheri sat across from him. She went on, “Well, you wanted to talk, Ki. Go ahead.”

  “You haven’t been here long, have you, Cheri?”

  “A month or so. Mort told me you wanted to know where I came from, and now I want to know why you’re interested.”

  Ki replied with an excuse he’d used before. “It’s part of my job to find out things about people.”

  “For that woman you work for?” When Ki didn’t reply, Cheri asked, “Why should she want to know about me?”

  “When she doesn’t confide in me, I don’t ask questions.”

  “We’re in the same boat, aren’t we, Ki? I don’t ask my boss any questions, either. I don’t know him all that well. He was a regular customer at the saloon where I worked in Virginia City, and when he offered me this job, the money was too good to turn down. Not many bar girls get a chance like this, without a lot of strings being tied to it.”

  “And you don’t have any strings?”

  “None that I don’t tie my own knots in. And that’s what the women of my people do, tie their own knots.”

  Ki was already pretty sure, but he guessed, “Hawaii?”

  Cheri nodded. “Maui. But I left the islands ten years ago. What about you, Ki? You’re part Japanese, I can see that. What’s the other part?”

  “My mother was Japanese, my father American.”

  “That’s enough for us to be some kind of half-cousins, and keep us honest with each other. What about your strings?”

  “I don’t have any, if you’re thinking about Jessie. I work for her, like you work for your boss.” Ki stood up. “And if you can’t tell me anything about him, I’m going to have to find someone else who might be able to.”

  “You don’t have to go, you know,” Cheri said quietly, her eyes fixed intently on Ki.

  He returned her stare with equal intensity, and asked, “Are you thinking about tying knots?”

  “I told you, that’s the woman’s privilege among my people. A very loose knot, though Ki. And only if you’re interested.”

  Ki’s first thought was that while the knot might be a snare, there was a possibility that having Cheri tie one could prove to be to his advantage. He also trusted his ability to break any string that she might try to wind around him, and from the moment she’d walked into the saloon, he’d been fully aware of her attractions.

  “I’m interested,” he admitted.

  “I thought you might be.”

  Cheri stood up. She stepped over to Ki, and for the first time he was close enough to her to be aware of the scent of her perfume, delicate but sensuous. His eyes were drawn to the deep cleft of her breasts. Bending forward, Ki pressed his face into the warm, narrow valley. He caressed the smooth skin of her ripe bulges with his lips and tongue, and Cheri sighed softly. Ki felt her hands moving up his thighs, and the warmth of her fingers at his crotch. Her breath fanned his cheek softly.

  “I like what I’m finding,” she whispered. “Let’s go where we can be more comfortable.”

  Taking his hand, Cheri led Ki to a pleat in the silken wall drapery, and pulled it aside to reveal an open door. He followed her into a room that was unlighted except for the warm, rosy glow filtering through the almost transparent silk that fell back over the doorway after they’d entered. There was enough light for Ki to see that the room’s principal piece of furniture was a massive double bed.

  As soon as they entered the room, Cheri’s hands went to her back and she started unbuttoning her dress. The dress began to slip over the globes of her breasts. She sped its crumplin
g slide to the floor, and removed her pantalettes with one quick sweep of her hands down her thighs.

  Ki kept his eyes fixed on Cheri as she undressed in the soft translucent light, while he untied the surushin he’d wrapped around his waist in place of a belt, and let his trousers and breechclout fall to the floor, then shed his black leather vest. He shook off his slippers and moved to where Cheri was standing, her lush, nude body bathed in the soft, filtered glow. The rosettes of her swelling breasts had budded in anticipation, and their dark, rosy nipples drew Ki’s lips to them.

  Cheri shuddered as Ki’s tongue explored the firm tips, his mouth moving from one to the other. Her soft hands made a warm cradle for his erection as she pressed her hips to him and parted her thighs. Ki felt the soft rasping of her sparse pubic hair as Cheri guided him into her, then suddenly he was supporting the full weight of her body when she clasped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips and pulled him deeply into her.

  “I couldn’t wait,” she said, her mouth close to Ki’s ear. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a man like you inside me!”

  Ki did not answer, but sought her lips. Cheri’s tongue darted to seek his. As their tongues entwined sinuously, Ki clasped his hands beneath Cheri’s buttocks and lifted her, then buried himself deeper in her.

  Holding her suspended, Cheri’s arms still enbracing him, Ki began stroking with quick, hard thrusts. Her body started quivering almost at once. She was writhing in midair, her hips jerking in a long, frantic spasm while Ki slowed his strokes and stopped them when her spasm ended and he felt her grow limp.

  Cheri’s lips left his with a sigh. She let her head sag and come to rest on his bare shoulder. When her gasping subsided, she whispered, “I’m sorry, Ki. I just couldn’t wait. I won’t be in such a hurry the next time.”

  Ki kissed Cheri’s soft shoulder and carried her to the bed, still buried deeply in her. Lowering her gently until she lay back full length, her thighs still spread by the weight of this body, Ki pushed Cheri’s knees down until they touched the bed at her sides. When he braced the soles of her feet on his chest and leaned down above her, Cheri’s eyes grew wide and her mouth opened in an O of astonishment.

  “You’re even bigger than you were before!” she gasped. “Is what I’m feeling real, Ki?”

  “Very real indeed. And so is this.”

  Ki raised his hips and began burying himself with a slow, measured pressure. Cheri tired to bring her hips up to meet him, but her legs were locked in place by the weight of Ki’s chest on her feet. Her back arched and she started rolling her hips in a side-to-side rotation as Ki sank into her, and when he lifted his own hips and began to drive deeply in a slow, sustained rhythm, a sighing moan began flowing from her throat.

  Cheri’s moans grew more and more frantic as Ki continued his leisurely plunging, and the rolling of her hips became wilder as she reached a climax. Ki did not slow down while her body jerked and her cries trailed off as she peaked and passed into motionless calm. He did not slow or stop when Cheri quickly went into another writhing spasm, this one prolonged for several minutes.

  “Don’t stop because I’m screaming, Ki!” she urged, her words coming in panting gusts. “I can’t bear what you’re doing to me, but I can’t stand for you to stop!”

  Ki did not stop, but the ecstasy and pain that mingled in Cheri’s cries as he contined thrusting were bringing him to a climax, and he had no wish to falter or stop until he could share it with Cheri.

  She was thrashing beneath him by now, each moment carrying her closer to another peak. Ki tightened his control and kept driving, his eyes closed now, as were Cheri’s. He felt her inner muscles beginning to tighten and grasp him, and he lunged with triphammer ferocity, his hips meeting Cheri’s unturned thighs with fleshy thwacks at the end of each hard thrust. She began the high-pitched screams that marked her final moments. Ki thrust again and again until he felt Cheri’s lush body heaving beneath him in her last quivering spasm.

  Then Ki let go, and his hips kept thrusting of their own volition as he fell forward on the cushion of warm, soft flesh beneath him, and with a sigh of contentment he closed his eyes while his taut, driven muscles grew softly relaxed. Cheri lay quietly, her eyes closed, the snowy globes of her breasts no longer heaving. Ki saw that she’d dropped off to sleep, and he closed his eyes and slept too.

  Chapter 7

  Ki woke with a start from a short, vivid dream in which he was wading waist-deep in the warm water of the Pacific Ocean, off the sandy shore of a tropical island. As always when he awoke, he was instantly aware of where he was and what had happened last before he slept, and even before he looked at Cheri, he was smiling. She was kneeling beside his hips, bending forward, her full lips closed around his beginning erection.

  Cheri straightened up, releasing him, and returned the smile. She said, “I didn’t know you were such a light sleeper, Ki. You woke up so fast that I didn’t have enough time to enjoy my favorite way of waking a man.”

  “Now that I am awake, I’ll share your enjoyment.”

  “That may be even better.”

  Cheri bent forward again, and Ki felt the moist tip of her tongue flicking him as lightly as the brushing of a butterfly‘s wings. To avoid depriving Cheri of her enjoyment, he allowed himself to become erect very slowly indeed, and to increase her share of the pleasure, he slid his hand between her thighs, found the small, pliant button nestled between her inner lips, and rubbed it gently with the tip of a finger.

  Cheri responded by lingeringly caressing his erection with the full width of her moist tongue before she took his rigid shaft entirely inside her mouth. For a few moments she held him deeply, her warm tongue slipping sinuously around, then she began bobbing her head slowly up and down.

  Ki felt the button he was fingering growing firm and slickly moist. Cheri’s thigh muscles began to quiver, and the rhythmic movements of her head faltered and stopped. She released him and straightened up, gazing at the glistening, moist cylinder that she had brought to life.

  “I’d love to carry you all the way, Ki,” she said. “Later I will. Right now I’m burning up, and all I can think about is getting you inside me again as quick as possible.”

  “Then do,” he invited. “What pleases you most will please me as well.”

  Before Ki had stopped speaking, Cheri was straddling his hips and lowering herself on his erection. She shivered as his penetration deepened, and began rocking back and forth on her knees, her budded breasts quivering. Ki caressed their tips with his fingers, and Cheri arched her back and brought her body erect to press down with greater force on the impaling flesh. Sharp, small sighs, like birdcalls, formed in her throat and bubbled from her taut lips, and her body began jerking spasmodically.

  “Deeper, Ki, deeper!” she cried. “You’re filling me wonderfully, but I still want more!”

  Ki grasped Cheri’s waist in both hands and pulled her down, holding her firmly against his hips while she trembled and twisted through her orgasm. When her tremors began fading and her panting lessened, he lifted her off his still rigid shaft, and with catlike quickness rolled away, leaving Cheri lying facedown on the bed.

  On his feet beside the bed, Ki clamped his muscular hands on Cheri’s upraised hips and went into her from behind. She cried out when his hips met her upraised buttocks at the end of his first, almost brutal penetration, but her cry was one of joy. Cheri kept screaming softly, her throaty ululations of pleasure shaded with pain, while Ki stroked faster and faster.

  She went into orgasm almost at once, her body trembling in waves. Ki carried her through its tide, and when he did not stop or slow his pounding thrusts, Cheri’s soft screams became frantic, mounting in intensity as Ki kept driving, controlling his own growing urge, and her cries grew to a peak as her spasm began shaking her.

  In the midst of Cheri’s wild bucking gyrations, Ki let loose with everything he had. He stood trembling gently, pulling Cheri’s soft buttocks hard against his belly, unti
l he had drained completely and she sagged limply on the bed. Then Ki released her, let himself fall on the bed, and stretched out beside her.

  For a long while they lay silently, then Cheri whispered, “I never thought a man could give me as much as you have, Ki. I’m sorry I had to stop when I was waking you up.”

  “My pleasure was as great as yours. We owe each other nothing, except more pleasure later.”

  Propping herself on an elbow, Cheri looked down at him and shook her head. “That’s not what I’m getting at. I’d like to have you stay around.”

  “I will, for a while. I can’t say exactly how long, but—”

  Cheri interrupted him. “Ki, I’m serious. What would it take to get you to quit this woman you’re working for, and stay here in Hidden Valley with me?”

  Ki shook his head. “What I do is much better than working in a saloon. I don’t think I’d care for that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the saloon,” Cheri told him. “From the way you handled yourself in that fight—well, it wasn’t much of a fight, from what I heard—but anyhow, you’d be worth a lot to my boss. If I told him—”

  “Who is your boss, Cheri?”

  “His name is Frank Jeffers. I’m afraid I really don’t know much about him, except that he’s got an awful lot of money. He owns mines or something in Virginia City.”

  “Might I have seen him around these parts?” Ki asked.

  Cheri smiled. “Hell, you’d know it if you did. He’s good-looking, and has the money to keep himself that way. Tall and real distinguished—gray hair and mustache, an embroidered vest, a fine pearl-gray derby hat, and a diamond stickpin. He’s real fond of that stickpin, always wears it. He’s a faro player. I was dealing at the New Ophir up in Virginia City, that’s how I met him. He knows how to charm a lady, that’s for sure.” She smiled, then shrugged. “I don’t guess I know much more about him than that.”

  “Those rooms he’s having built behind the saloon,” Ki said thoughtfully. “You said he was bringing a lot of men in here for some kind of work. What kind, Cheri?”