bluff in a poker game. No man with a hard-on had ever been able to bluff any woman who'd ever seen one, and what the hell, the evening would still be young by the time he'd finished his Eye-talian almond cakes on his own.
Alexandria Henderson could see that in his amiable but independent eyes of gun-muzzle gray. For she gaily declared, "Romano's sounds fine, now that I've forgiven you for being so silly that time. But I'll have to go home and change first. Don't tell anyone, but I confess I'm only wearing my unmentionables under this heavy smock."
He agreed the weather had been warm for a Denver autumn, and asked if she'd like him to carry her on home or meet her someplace after she'd had time to gussy up.
She dimpled coyly and allowed it might save time if he escorted her to her nearby digs and waited out front while she hosed down and dressed herself up. He'd been hoping she'd say that. He didn't get upset when she sternly added that he'd better not get ideas, just because she'd been a big silly the last time she'd invited him in for a drink. A woman who wanted it couldn't bluff a grown man worth spit either.
So they never did wind up in any fancy restaurant that evening, because the stem little gal seemed to feel a man who didn't get ideas on his own could use some inspiration.
As he helped her lock up and walked her down to her quarters on Lincoln Street, Sandy somehow steered their conversation, more than once, to the topic of screwing positions.
She called it anthropology because it seemed less sassy when you used scientific-sounding words to describe what less cultivated folk were said to do.
When Longarm allowed he hadn't noticed Indians acting all that unusual, she managed to sound detached as a sawbones peeking at a herd of germs through a microscope as she asked if he was speaking from intimate experience. That was what gals with college degrees called squaw-fucking, intimate experience.
By this time they'd made it to her rooms over the carriage house of a once-grand brownstone mansion, now divided up into less grand furnished digs. Since the fall afternoons were now so short he thumbnailed a match-head alight for the wall lamp just inside her door as he evaded her direct question by suggesting in as scientific a tone, "I meant it only stands to reason your Quill Indian still bedding down on Mother Earth, atop no more than a few thicknesses of hide or blankets, would be sore-put to go at it just the way Queen Victoria and Prince Albert might have deemed proper."
She sounded sincerely shocked as she warned him not to speak so disrespectfully of Her Majesty. So Longarm insisted, "I ain't out to low-rate the Widow of Windsor. I'm only using a high-tone white lady who managed to give birth to nine kids before her man died young as an example of formal fornication aboard fancy furniture. It was your notion to ask, just now, how come ladies sleeping less luxuriously in tipis or even pueblos tend to spare their bones some bruises by, ah, elevating their tailbones off the ground a mite."
She somehow managed to keep her tone stem as she led him into her combined sitting room and bed chamber. 'That was not the proper way to describe even an Indian woman's coccyx. But are you suggesting the notoriously bestial coition of the plains culture might be inspired by no more than a dearth of proper bedding?"
He got rid of his hat but left his gun rig on as the two of them sat down on the trick sofa she could fold out into a double bed if a man played his cards right. For all he knew she'd meant what she'd said, coming down the hill, about changing her duds to dine at Romano's that evening. It was his turn to say something. So as she somehow wound up sitting closer than he'd expected, he told her, "I never met any Indian gals with cocks myself. But I have spent a night or more bedded down in a tipi, and speaking from that experience alone, I can tell you
that prairie sod with a blanket or more spread atop it feels proper enough for sleeping after a hard day's ride. But, well, as soon as two or more sleepers get a mite less sleepy, I reckon the results could get rough on even a white queen's tailbone. So sooner or later she'd likely ask her Prince Albert whether he'd mind too much if they finished up in a less dignified position, see?"
She didn't seem to understand, as it seemed to be getting a mite dark in there to read one another's faces. He unbuckled his gun rig to make himself more to home as he quietly explained how tough it was for a less educated cuss to delve deeper into primitive customs without sounding primitive. When he said he'd be able to show her better if only they had some Indian bedding on hand, she sprang up so suddenly he was sure he'd just shot it with that passionate but proddy little gal.
Then Sandy opened a chest in a far comer to haul out two Hudson Bay blankets and a buffalo robe, asking him how an Arapaho or Shoshoni hostess might arrange them in a tipi.
He got rid of his coat and tie as well as his gun rig on his way to join her on the floor. Kneeling at her side, Longarm showed her how to fashion a fair sleeping pallet, although he put the furry buffalo robe on top, the way white gals seemed to prefer, before he gently rolled her on her back in that denim smock to assure her in a scientific tone he was only aiming to show her what it felt like, to your average Indian lady, in the position most approved of by your average missionary.
She naturally felt obligated to protest she'd never meant to research the mores of the plains culture quite so far. But just as he'd already been told, she wasn't wearing anything but a thin sateen shimmy under that denim smock, and while she'd naturally encased her lower limbs in high-button shoes and barber-pole cotton hose, she'd felt no call to don pantaloons for her stuffy sit-down chores up to the museum. So even as she was telling him she didn't
want to go all the way this time, he had it in so far she sighed and demanded he at least take down those scratchy old pants, and for a short swell spell it felt just fine on the floor with him on top and both of them half dressed. But as soon as she'd come and, like the last time, felt way more at ease and hence way more like busting loose, she suggested he get off long enough for them to get more comfortable.
So he did, and she was out of her duds, save for her high-buttons and striped socks, before he could shuck his boots, the way a poor old boy had to if he meant to take off his pants entirely. So while she was waiting for more, hot as a pistol and naked as a jay, she allowed that her coccyx, as she called her tailbone, had been hammered on the floor about as often as she liked, and then, without Longarm having to tell her how, she rolled over on her hands and knees to arch her back and shyly ask if this was the way an Arapaho hostess might receive a guest.
He assured her she looked even more tempting in that position, and meant it, as he got on his knees behind her to place a tanned hand firmly on either creamy hip. For in this romantic gloom of an autumn gloaming her sweet, shapely behind was clearly visible as a sort of disembodied ass, smiling up at him through the gathering dusk, and as he penetrated her that way with renewed inspiration Sandy gasped and declared, "Heavens! It didn't feel quite as long the other way, and I have to admit that whether this is bestial or not it certainly feels heavenly!"
So it took far less persuasion, after he'd had her dog-style, to get her to playing stoop tag, squatting over him with a high-heeled high-button planted on the buffalo robe to either side of his bare hips. She said she'd make them both some scrambled eggs in time but that in the meantime, she'd kill him if he dared to go soft on her right now! So he didn't.
Patrolman Colgan O'Hanlon of the Denver Police had just noticed something out of place as he was walking his beat
on the less fashionable side of Cherry Creek just after sundown.