Working the Lode (6 page)

He flipped her over onto her back! What was he doing? They were kissing, smacking on each other’s mouths while she stimulated his penis with her riding abilities, when suddenly he gave a low, guttural grunt and flipped her, pinning her to the ticking with dexterous hips, engulfing her torso in his long arms, laying thick sucking kisses against the side of her throat. She was wide open as the sky above, feet hitched to the backs of his thighs.

“Cormack,” she whispered hoarsely, “please take me. Fuck me now.”

“Zelnora,” he rasped back, “the bullfrog has croaked it. I want your dewy pussy clamped down around my prick.”

As she waited for him to say “but,” suddenly the warmth of his torso against hers vanished, and in her dizzy desire, she had no idea where he’d gotten to—the canvas ceiling of her cabin was spinning wildly, and she gripped the edges of the straw mattress with claw-like hands. Then she felt him, down between her outspread thighs—how mortifying to be seen so promiscuous like that, her drawers on view for such a savage man! But he was no doubt accustomed to much worse—and he was slathering giant, lascivious kisses to the inside of her knee—her
knee!

No one had ever paid attention to any part of her anatomy lower than her quim before, and it was oddly erotic the way Cormack licked such wanton sucking kisses up the inside of her thigh, nipping little beaver bites at her flesh, sending shivery waves directly into her clitoris.
Oh, hurry, please hurry,
Zelnora’s inner voice screamed, until she realized she had moaned it aloud.

The lips of her quim exposed to the air through the slit in her drawers, soon Zelnora felt the hot puffs he snorted against the very length of her clitoris. Oddly, it seemed to elongate and engorge with juice like a man’s penis. Mindlessly, she clutched the back of his skull when he bit the fatty part of her inner thigh—oh, when would he jump on top of her and just fuck her like the animal she knew he was?

Good Lord! He licked so close to her quim, he surely must smell that awful odor women emitted, no matter how clean, that made them smell like a fishwife! Yet the sensation was so erotic, the inner walls of her channel shivered and clenched, sending additional waves of agonizing ecstasy into her uterus. Now yanking a handful of his hair to bring him back to his proper place mounting her, the tip of his nose touched her clitoris, and she cried out, “
Cormack!
What are you doing?”

He dove in so heartily that Zelnora gasped loud enough to be heard down at the store. One, two, three tremendous strokes of his proficient tongue the entire length of her clitoris. He slurped unashamed like a cow in a lake, as though her quim were the most ambrosial trough of sauterne imaginable. Was this some strange Indian thing? It was unbelievably shameful yet arousing to have his beautiful pointed nose buried in her sex, lapping away like a mountain cat. It almost seemed as though he were attempting to give her pleasure, though how could that be possible? Women were for the pleasure of men; why would he be seemingly attempting to bring her to the climax she had only before given herself…and with his mouth? Was that even poss—

Rational thought evaporated from her brain as all sensation got sucked down into her clitoris. A rapturous groundswell squeezed her, traveling down her inner channel, centering on her clitoris, where he licked harder, yet slower. She crested again and again, her entire body convulsing like an epileptic, toes clenched inward, and then outward. She didn’t realize until much later she must have been grasping fistfuls of his beautifully glossy hair, and disconcertingly, it felt as though she even gushed liquid against his face.

As Cormack slowed his slurping, minute after minute passed before the convulsions had almost completely ebbed away. The ecstasy was almost painful by then, and she languidly shoved him away from her. Her knees collapsed on top of each other as she rolled to one side, her rib cage heaving, her fingers scrabbling listlessly against the cotton ticking.

She may have fallen asleep, she wasn’t certain. But when she finally dragged herself to a sitting position, Cormack was there at the foot of the bed, knees drawn up to support his wrists, leaning against the chintz siding. He had removed his moccasins, perhaps politely not wanting to dirty her worn cotton ticking. He looked down his nose at her, and if his smile could become any slyer, well…hard doings when it came to that, as mountain men were fond of saying.

Wiping the curls from her face, Zelnora blinked at him. He really had beautiful feet, too. Realization swept over her then…he’d had his face buried in her quim! And she only knew what his hands and feet looked like! She covered her face with her hand, but he said happily, “You sure do shine in the biggest kind of crowd, Miss Sparks. You taste like cinnamon, and you smell like roses. Are we recognized courters? Because I’d like to be recognized courters. Why are we hiding from Brannagh if he’s only your employer?”

How many questions was that? And not one of them was “Why does your quim taste like dead bloated fish?” Well, Zelnora was glad that, to Cormack, slathering his face between a woman’s legs was just another of life’s daily chores. She finally dared to look him in the face. “I’d like to be your flame. I’m very sweet on you.”
I love you,
she wanted to say. But it was apparent Cormack only wanted her for fucking. This was reasonable, as long as they didn’t endanger the protection Brannagh offered.

The smile that lit up his face melted her, and she crawled over to put her head on his shoulder. Wrapping one hot hand around his foot, she continued, “And it’s best not to rile Brannagh. I wouldn’t want to lose my position. It’s difficult—impossible—for me to say no to him.”

His entire body stiffened like a rattlesnake about to strike. He pulled away from her. “And I’m supposed to sit still and take it like some damned corncracker? It’s as plain as beaver sign what his intentions are. Lies tumble out of his mouth like entrails out of a buffalo’s stomach! I have no respect for a man who tithes ten percent of everyone’s income for work he never laid eyes on.”

“Everything you say is very true. But you must understand…my position here at the store…this cabin might not seem like much to you, and I’m sure you have grander plans for yourself, but as for myself, why…a divorced woman…”

Cormack looked at her sharply. “Divorced?”

Oh, my Lord.
Since he appeared to know so much about Brannagh, Zelnora assumed he knew she was a divorced woman. Her mouth opened and closed, much like yet another beached fish, and fortunately, Mercy came to the canvas door and stuck her head inside, after knocking briefly on a wooden pole.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said in her feminine, soft voice. “But Henry Bigler is asking after you, Zel. He wants to know your opinion on the gold.”

Gold?
“Tell him I’ll be right there.”

Mercy’s head vanished, and Zelnora, glad for an excuse to forget the subject of Brannagh, got up from the bed, smoothing down her skirts and searching for her rebozo to cover her mussed hair. “What’s this about gold? Is that really why you came down here? To ask me about gold?”

Cormack hadn’t budged from the bed. He glowered up at her, the clarity of his oceanic eyes suddenly clouded by storms. “You’re lucky I’m enlightened.”

Chapter Six

Cormack swaggered down the hill with Zelnora on his arm.

He had nearly forced her to take his arm. He needed to prove there was no shame in their courtship. Knowing the gossipy ways of the settlements, sooner or later someone would squawk like an old hen to Brannagh anyway. Folk were half-froze for entertainment on the frontier.

He knew he beamed with satisfaction, though his cock was still at half-mast, for he had succeeded in pleasuring the woman in the most intimate way possible. He cared not, really, for his own gratification—he had just told Zelnora he wanted to fuck to avoid the even more vexing truth that he was a lovesick booby. The way her dark brown curls slid over his face and neck when she straddled him and bucked against his prick, why, he was gone beaver. And ho, boy, how her pussy tasted when she gushed against his face, like a sweet porridge of cinnamon and apples—he had never seen a woman come that long or strenuously. He’d been almost afraid she would suffer a seizure the way she bucked and snorted and convulsed. Was it possible no man had ever licked her pussy before? Cormack shuddered when the briefest imagining of Brannagh doing that crossed his mind. That fellow was of “bad medicine” notoriety.

“I’m awful fond of you,” he said lamely, holding her forearm close to his chest.

“Fond?” was all Zelnora said.

Bigler came racing forward before they even reached the store, brandishing the eagle feather quill in his hand. “Sister Sparks! I do believe I’ve found gold at the mill!”

“Keep your hollering down,” Cormack reminded him.

He was proud of the calm way Zelnora took this news. “Well, Brother Bigler, we’ll just have to do some investigation then, won’t we?”

She released his arm when they entered the store. Erskine, Quartus, and the redhead Miss Mercy Narrimore canoodled by the counter, drinking whiskey from the looks of it, and paying no mind to the gold as Zelnora marched into a back room and came back with some items that she slapped onto the counter.

“The Indians I’ve spoken to here at the fort have known about gold in these parts for many generations,” Zelnora said, accepting the eagle quill from Bigler. “The gold is supposed to be guarded by evil spirits. There’s a lake not far from here with plenty of gold, but there is a fearful animal, a sort of dragon who likes human flesh.” She poured the little nuggets onto a tray which she carried to the only window, turning it this way and that with one eye closed. Next, she took out an eyepiece to examine the crystals more closely.

Cormack and Bigler exchanged greedy looks. “Can you find out where this lake is located?” Cormack asked Zelnora.

“I sure can try.”

Bringing the tray back to the counter, she said, “I spoke to one of Sutter’s workers not long ago. From Hermosillo in Mexico. He told me we can find pounds of gold in quartz veins in the Sierra. One would only need a
batea,
which as far as I can tell is just a simple wooden bowl for washing the gold. He just kept saying
batea, batea
.”

“Can you locate this fellow?” Bigler asked tremulously.

Zelnora, eyes still affixed to the gold nuggets, blindly reached for Cormack’s bowie knife on his belt. He assisted by handing it to her. “I sure can try,” she said quietly, vaguely, holding one of the tiny nuggets on the counter and scratching its surface with the knife blade.

Quartus came wobbling over now, curious. “I can find gold with my divining rod!” he again declared, bolstered by a healthy application of “bug juice.” Fortunately, he fell silent then, fascinated by the doings of his wife. Her next step was to vigorously rub a nugget against the wooden countertop, then sniff it. The men became alarmed when she reached for a steel hammer and, with one bang, flattened a nugget on the tray.

Bigler cried, “What are you doing?”

A slow smile radiated across her face as she gradually stood to an upright position. Her eyes were fixed only on Cormack, however, when she said in a reverent tone, “This is gold.”

Bigler let out a walloping
yee-haw
to the heavens above while Quartus leaped up and down clapping his hands, twirling around in little circles chanting, “Gold! Gold! Gold!” to the same tune as the earlier song about Jake Herring thumping it. Even Erskine and Mercy ceased their canoodling and swiveled their heads with interest toward all the commotion.

Without tearing her shining wide eyes from Cormack, Zelnora came round the counter and grabbed the front of his shirt in her fists. She fairly stood on tiptoes in her zeal. She resembled a lovely Madonna with her round brown eyes, her gleaming curls escaping from the mantle of her rebozo. “Cormack,” she whispered. He could barely hear her under the ecclesiastical hollering of the two gold-crazed converts. Now even Erskine was clapping Bigler on the back as Mercy set out more tin cups for whiskey. “Gold.
Gold.
Do you know what this means? From the size and character of those specimens, that area seems to be much richer than the gold fields of Georgia! It must have washed down from the mountains during the recent torrents. Where descending waters meet an obstacle or projecting rock, in the riverbed and also the declivities, we can find pockets of gold.
Gold!
”