Sliphammer

“Why don’t we all sit down together and play a little game of strip poker for fun? Everybody know the rules?” She was glaring at Holliday with challenge in her eyes.

Josie had been startled by the idea. Then, looking at Wyatt Earp, she began to feel intrigued. Texas Jack roared in his prairie twang: “I thank thet sounds lak a hell of a good thang to do, honey!” Morg, high-spirited and youthfully wild, gathered them all around the table-all except Virgil, who grunted something in his resonant, strait-laced voice and left the place, probably going home to his wife…

Josie remembered looking at Wyatt, then, seeing how he watched her, with his sleepy half smile; his frank scrutiny made her flush with sensation. He looked wholly self-assured, completely masculine: it was inconceivable he had ever stammered awkwardly to a girl, the way most men did at first meeting. He just sat there and watched Josie, the hint of a smile under the droop of his mustache, and it made her feel between her legs the tingle of excitement, the birth of an overwhelming appetite that was her response to the monolithic thrust of masculinity he radiated like musk.

She had never met a man like him; there never was anyone like him. They all sat down around the table. Morg and one or two of the girls were giggling nervously. Doc Holliday dealt the cards with suitable sarcasms. Holliday was a scrawny little runt, redolent of a distillery; he seemed sexless, but something about the game must have appealed to his warped sense of absurdities.

Josie had come straight out after the last show. It was late at night and she hadn’t troubled to festoon herself with all the fashionable undergarments dictated by the customs of the day. She wore only shoes and a dress. She had a good body and she wanted Wyatt to see it-but perversely the cards fell against her: by some trick of the cynical fates the big-breasted girl who liked Holliday was the first to lose all her clothes, and Holliday himself was soon stripped naked. He seemed indifferent to it. The girl reached out and tried to stimulate him and Holliday pushed her hand away to deal the cards. He concentrated on the cards with the grim gravity of a single-minded gambler in a no-limit game against seven high-rolling millionaires. His chest was hollow, caved in; his ribs showed and he v had no hair, on his chest or arms. His skin was as pallid as the underbelly of a fish. His sickly little-boy body was oddly in contrast with the killer’s face, etched with the tracks of lifelong pain, shaped into a habitual, sardonically satanic expression. With the table between them, Josie could not see Holliday below the waist, and did not particularly care to. Holliday dealt the cards and she watched them with tight concentration.

Beside her, Wyatt put his big hand on her thigh. The shock made her heart jump. The others were all drunk, laughing, paying no attention. She turned her head slowly, tingling with arousal, yet afraid; when her eyes reached his face he was smiling with unmistakable insinuation.

She hesitated; she smiled back, and presently moved her chair closer to his. After a moment, when everyone was watching Texas Jack get up and hobble desperately on one foot to get his pants off, she pushed her soft breast against Wyatt’s arm and reached over to touch him under the table. Her mouth was slack; her eyes had gone loose and half-lidded. She felt the marks of Wyatt’s fingers on the flesh of her leg like hot iron brands.

Wyatt got up from his chair and reached for her hand. He watched her unblinkingly, paying utterly no attention to the others. Someone-Morg-roared a raucous obscenity. Josie had kicked her shoes off; her naked feet reached for them and she got into them, got upright with her ankles wobbling, and went with him. Morg and Texas Jack spoke derisively. Josie was afraid to look back at them; Wyatt ignored them. He led her outside and walked her up the street.

She had difficulty getting full breaths into her lungs. Wyatt set the pace and it was up to her to keep up. Dark in the small hours, the streets of Tombstone were empty; dust hung in the cool air.

Wyatt reached a corner and stopped to wait. She ran right against him, tugged his head down and kissed him with passionate violence. Hurry up, she pleaded silently-I may explode if you don’t, I’ve got to have you quick!

He pressed his swollen manhood against her through the cloth of his pants. She” moaned, rubbed herself against him, and heard his deep chuckle before he picked her up and carried her around the corner into a narrow street. His room was right there: he took her inside. Her temples thudded with a hot crimson pulsebeat; her eyes were unfocused. She squeezed him, climbed tight against him. Her eyes closed. “Oh, hurry up, God damn you!”

Here and now, with the drone of the mining bosses’ voices in her ears, she remembered that first night with vivid intensity. The memory flushed her with the same excitement over again. It was always that way, sometimes frighteningly out of control.

She turned to look at Wyatt. He sat listening to the rich men speak; he sat lazy, at his ease, but always coiled like a primitive volatile animal ready to ex-’ plode-like a natural force, radiating tangible lines of taut energy, held precariously in check. She had learned that first night that nature had endowed him with a massive organ and the appetite to go with it: he had hurt her but even the pain had made her want him more.

The mining bosses argued among themselves. Abruptly Wyatt, momentarily left out of the discussion, turned to look at her, his eyes burning with gemlike brilliance. Her mouth softened and parted; her long breath lifted her breasts.

Wyatt stood up. He said something to Cardiff-some remark that was courteous and yet left no room for question or dispute. Overcome by sensual lust Josie did not hear the words. The hot bodily urge drove her to her feet. She walked across the room like a mechanism, her back rigid, long lithe legs striding crisply, feeling her i

Her body felt full, swollen, ready to burst. The sight of herself in the mirror surprised her: slim and taut with a dancer’s hard grace. She looked lean, long-waisted, high-breasted; she felt small, loose, heavy-a hot softness of weighted flesh, singing with painful anticipation. Her skin was flushed to a scarlet and burgundy rash.

She turned around. He was stripping off his underwear. His great muscles rippled: he was bigger, more solid, more massive and powerful than he appeared when he had his clothes on. His body was a steel engine. His shoulder-holstered guns were on the chair. She stood mute, feeling short of breath, relishing the exquisite pain of a sensitiveness so taut that she felt certain she would burst into flame at the touch of his finger. The flow of her soft hair across her bare shoulders felt like the scrape of a red-hot iron file.

He came toward her. She climbed rushing against him, put her hands on his shoulders, spreading her thighs. He kissed her lightly, teasing her, and her throat made a breaking groan: her fingers bit deep, pulling him hard against her with crazy hunger. Her tingling rubber-hard nipples crushed against his chest. Her legs felt weak and she panted against his mouth.

His big hands cupped her swelling buttocks. She squirmed against him, her hand sliding down his stomach to the great veined ivory pole of his rigid organ. He laughed at her, twisted his body and rubbed and stroked her breast. She closed her eyes and cried out softly, arching her back. With a thunderclap of booming laughter he thrust her back onto the bed-she fell back splayed, squirming, moaning her panicky eagerness; she reached for his great stiff column and felt his throbbings alive in her hand.