Wild to the Bone by Peter Brandvold Page A

he remembered that ass! Round and firm and pale as porcelain, covered with a thin sheen of sweat that grew hotter and hotter and began to dribble down the backs of her slender legs as Haskell had rammed her over and over again from behind.
    He set the chair to the left of hers. She didn’t look at him but merely crossed her long, coltish legs and smoothed her skirt over her thigh, leaned forward, and clasped her hands around her knee. She was giving their boss her complete attention.
    Well, good for her , Haskell thought, finding himself only slightly miffed by her curt dismissal of him. To be haughty and dismissive was just her way. Downright arrogant. But you’d think she could at least meet his gaze directly in an acknowledgment of sorts of all the down-and-dirty things they’d done to each other—and, despite her snooty attitude, were bound to do again.
    Maybe she was reading his mind, knowing that he was remembering her sucking his cock with abandon or lying naked on her back in that bed in the hotel in Wendigo, her supple legs wrapped around his waist, bucking up against him as he’d fucked her.
    He almost snickered as he sagged into the second visitor’s chair.
    â€œNow, then,” Pinkerton said, picking up a small wooden pointer and turning to a tripod set up to the right of and slightly behind his chair. A framed map of Wyoming and Dakota Territory was displayed on the tripod. “Your next assignment will take you here,” he said, pointing to an area up along Wyoming’s border with Dakota, north of the Belle Fourche River. With the pointer, he drew an invisible line roughly the size of Haskell’s hand. “The Hatch and Shirley Stage Line that serves this desert country along the Wyoming and Dakota border has been having a miserable time of late with stage robbers. Since their strongbox shipments from a certain gold mine are insured by Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo is sending us up to remedy the problem.”
    â€œNot more stage robbers,” Haskell groaned, still bruised and sore from his recent ride aboard the runaway.
    â€œIndeed,” Pinkerton said. “The main reason I want you on this job, Bear, is that you were so effective with that bit of stage-line trouble up on the Western Slope.”
    â€œ Bit of trouble? Allan, I damn near—”
    â€œOh, quit complaining, Agent Haskell,” Pinkerton scolded him, chuckling. And then he glanced at Miss York and winked. “Especially not in front of the lady. We wouldn’t want Agent York to think she was working with a Nancy boy, now, would we?”
    â€œNancy boy?” Haskell chuffed.
    Raven turned her head toward him, and he thought they were going to make eye contact at last. But before their glances could meet, she turned away from him with a faint, caustic sigh and gave those pretty cobalt-blues back to their boss. Her thick tresses hung down to hide the near side of her patrician face, with its long, pale, slender nose.
    â€œHow many stage robbers are we dealing with here, Mr. Pinkerton?” she asked. “I would think that this matter would concern the local lawmen and/or, perhaps, the U.S. Marshals?”
    â€œIt would. And it has. The trouble is, the local lawman, the town marshal of Spotted Horse, was shot dead when he led a posse out after the robbers, after they held up a stage between Spotted Horse and another, smaller town called Recluse. Both robberies happened in the Pumpkin Buttes, between those two towns. Two deputy United States Marshals were called in to investigate the killings and the robberies in that neck of the Wyoming desert, and they found nothing. While they were there, the robberies stopped. The gang of cutthroats preying on the line made not a single appearance. The Marshals didn’t find so much as a warm horse apple!”
    Pinkerton sighed and scratched his age-spotted right temple with the wooden pointer. “So, unable to find any clue whatever to