Page 27 of Sure as Shooting

“I have no idea, Whit! Look, now he’s going up that rock formation!”

Like a darting lynx, the buckskin-clad mountain man sprang across a deep channel in the granite rock and almost directly up a rock wall. The rock face gave evidence to the terrific force of nature where a glacier had moved in ages past, and Huntley scrambled up like a spider. He continually looked back at them over his shoulder, so they had no choice but to make a running leap across the chasm too. Whit’s skills as a woodsman were already being tried, and as he scurried up the cliff he became angry with Huntley.

Huntley had done this on purpose, obviously to test Whit’s endurance. Huntley had probably imagined that Belle would follow him, Whit would fall behind, and Huntley would have Belle alone. Huntley climbed toward a mountaintop crowned by a cone of light gray granite, and Whit slowed his pace. As hoped, Belle reduced her climbing speed and soon was clinging to the rock face, reaching out a hand for Whit to clasp.

Giggling and red-faced with exuberance, Belle pulled Whit into a grotto in the juncture of two rock slabs. A sheltered nook populated with delicate ferns and brilliant lichens, over their heads plunged a noisy waterfall, a wall of comet-like streamers that sheltered them from view like a curtain. The ledge was comfortable and secluded, and Belle sat cross-legged, having chosen to wear a new deerskin skirt for this expedition.

“He wanted only me to follow!” she cried.

“I noticed that.” Whit sat behind Belle and enveloped her in his thighs. He embraced her, her bearskin robe so thick it was like hugging—well, a giant fluffy dog.

She craned her neck to talk to him. “Why do you think he did that? We’ve already determined where the village is. We don’t need to march up this cliff to reach it.”

Whit propped his chin on her furry shoulder. The flying waters not ten feet from them cast mutating rainbows on the interior of their cave, lighting it up angelically. “He wanted to be alone with you. I’ve noticed he’s jealous of the closeness you and I share.”

“Oh.” Belle seemed to like that, the dimples deepening in her cheeks, and she settled her head back against his collarbone. She had even braided her long tresses in a myriad of braids to keep it out of her eyes. She so much resembled an Indian and she was so indispensible to the campaign, it was determined to keep her far from the battle. “But why? He seems to view me as just some savage maid, at best.”

“He views you as more than that,” Whit assured her. “I do believe he intends to fight me in some manner for you. Although I don’t know if it’ll come down to a bout of bare-knuckle boxing.”

“Fight for what? To see whose chamber pot I’ll empty first?”

Whit chuckled. His warm breath seemed to be melting the ice in her braids. Crystalline droplets rolled harmlessly down the bear’s fur. “Not exactly. He seemed aware of our activities of the other night, and he was intensely jealous.”

“Jealous—why? He wishes he was a doctor, too?”

Could Belle possibly be that oblivious? Then again, she hadn’t known what a female orgasm was—that a woman was even capable of such heights of bliss. She had argued that it didn’t serve a biological purpose, as an orgasm did in a man, so was still stubbornly insisting it must be something other than an orgasm. “No. He wishes he was the one with a hand between your thighs, coaxing you to orgasm.”

“Oh.” Belle snorted skeptically. “Whit, tell me. Your technique with your hand. Are there any other methods a man could use to bring about the same result?”

“Why, yes, of course. Although I confess, I’m not terribly experienced in the other method that comes to mind. But I imagine it’d be much the same as the manual method.”

“Using…what implement?”

They stared at each other, Belle’s face so close it became fuzzy and unfocused. Whit petted the velvety side of her face with the backs of his gloved fingers.

Then he kissed her.

Oh, he knew absolutely beans about kissing a woman. He may have kissed a girl when he was a lad, but that was another foggy and dubious memory. However, he doubted that men kissed very differently from women. More forcefully perhaps, and when in the throes of a driving fuck, maybe even viciously. So Whit just toned down the aggression, assuming the mechanics were all the same, although women might not see the finer aspects to having their mouths plundered with a tongue.

So he kissed her gently, as he’d been known to do to the Miss Nancys of his acquaintance. Her plump lips were surprisingly pliable and soft, and she let her head fall back submissively. Whit smacked on her lips tenderly before he found the courage to slide the tip of his tongue into her mouth, and she didn’t flinch. No, she parted her lips almost eagerly, even twisting between his thighs so they faced each other, slinging her moccasins over him so she nearly sat in his lap. She gripped handfuls of his greatcoat lapels in her bare fists, but Whit had to clumsily take off his gloves, finger by finger, in order to touch her face and throat.

It was bracing to be huddled here, covered in the dancing prisms of rainbow light filtering through the racing waterfall. Hiding from Major Ashbury added another element of danger and thrill, to be sure. And just the idea that he was finally kissing the most desirable woman he’d ever known gave Whit a new, fresh sense of power. This was not medical massage or anything remotely clinical.

He withdrew slightly, rubbing his lips against hers. “The other method I was thinking of is a tongue.”

Her expression was delighted, although a bit confused. “A tongue can do what your fingers did?”

Whit grinned, too. “Certainly. Why not?”

Immediately he laid her back onto a bed of ferns. Pushing her knees apart, he raised fistfuls of her deerskin skirt, revealing her pristine new drawers. Belle folded her arms under her head so she could avidly observe Whit’s technique, as though they were still practicing medicine.

Whit had no idea what to do, but he knew female anatomy intimately, so he imagined he could puzzle it out. Having spent hundreds of pleasant moments with his face slurping between various male thighs, Whit now dove on in. He lifted Belle’s knees with his shoulders and found a comfortable position, wiggling his chest in the ferns until he could breathe freely. Finding her clitoris already swollen and quite extended, Whit stuck out his tongue and lapped.

He could do this. If not, he wouldn’t be “some kind of expert at pleasuring,” as Huntley had termed him. He had given thousands of women orgasms using only his fingers. A tongue should not be much different. And Belle was an eager student, having reached her crisis recently after a relatively short amount of time fingering her. In fact, she had been perhaps the most explosive woman he’d ever manipulated, coming in a constant stream of spasms for well over a minute. Most women whimpered a few times and opened their clear eyes with satisfaction and a wry smile. Not Belle. She had bucked and shuddered like a regular she-devil, the contractions appearing to wrench her entire uterus.

Now, as Whit lapped away at her clitoris, Belle gave vent to such vocalizations that he suspected he was performing correctly. Since they were in a mossy, freezing cave and not one of Huntley’s bedrooms, perhaps she felt free to let loose with some violent, expressive articulations of her own. As Whit lapped away rapidly at her, she humped his face with abandon. She nearly strangled him when she wrapped her thighs around his head, shutting out all sense of hearing, except for some loud but ladylike exclamations such as “Blue blazes!” and “Hellfire!”

With his expertise in the occupation of bringing women to orgasm, Whit could tell from her jerks and twitches that she was nearing climax. Her prepuce became so meaty and juicy, and he applied his tongue with vigor, lapping the entire length of it. He was rewarded for his efforts.

Belle came with a ferocious power, laying all other orgasms he’d witnessed in the shade. Again, she held her breath, as if to pant would be to allow her soul to leave her body. Whit was inspired to slide a middle finger, probably cold as an icicle, up her cunt in order to feel the power of her ejaculations. Indeed, her inner pussy walls clenched around his finger so tenaciously the circulation was nearly cut off.

And the juice flowed until it dripped from his chin and trickled down his wrist. Whit flicked his tongue until Belle began to pant and whimper. He slowed his supping then, withdrawing completely when Belle pressed on his shoulders, weakly entreating, “Please. Stop. No. More.”

Whit panted, too, and wiped his face on the back of his hand before drawing on his gloves. Belle lounged with her head weakly to one side, a relaxed smile on her face.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “That will work, too.”

Whit was about to laugh with her when suddenly she shot bolt upright. Her braids all in disarray around the bear fur, she stared fixedly at a spot beyond the waterfall.

“What is it?” Whit whispered. Although how she could have heard anything over the sound of the rushing water was a mystery.

Rapidly yanking her skirts down below her knees, Belle got to her feet, bent over under the cave’s low ceiling.

“Someone is there. Crunching in the snow.”

Whit whipped aside his greatcoat and fumbled at his gun belt for his revolver. Belle was swifter, shouldering her rifle, and they crept to the waterfall, hunched over like gnomes.