Denver Read Online Free PDF Page A

smooth and taut, her breasts jiggling with each step, her legs long, her bottom ample and enticing. His mouth went dry and his hesitation vanished. She wrapped a long robe around her, smiled at him, and disappeared into the hall.
    While he waited, he looked around at the small room. A square of red satin was hung over the one window, and the kerosene lantern shed yellow light. There were a washstand, a chair, the iron bed, a trunk with dresses spilling out of it, a table, and a cracked mirror on the wall. The plainness prevalent here was common in the small mining towns that had sprung up, different from the lavish decor of the bordellos of the cities. Dan gave little thought to the squalor, knowing it was better than the cribs, where the girls usually got paid two bits to a dollar. In minutes she returned. When the door opened, his hand flew to his revolver. He relaxed as she appeared with a steaming kettle, a large woman coming in behind her with a copper tub. Dulcie poured water from the kettle into the tub and gave the empty kettle to the woman.
    “She’ll be back with another kettle of water, and we can have a bath,” she said, hanging the robe on ahook, giving him a view of her bare backside that set him on fire.
    She smiled at him. “In the meantime, want a smoke?”
    She moved to a chiffonier to pick up two cheroots, crossing the room to hand him one. He stared at her, trying to get his gaze up to her eyes and away from breasts that were full, upthrusting, and conical, with rosy-brown nipples.
    “Honey,” she prompted in a voice filled with amusement, “want a smoke?”
    “Huh? Oh, yeah! Sure.” He pulled out a match and struck it, lighting hers first, fascinated as he watched her. She was the first female he had ever seen smoke, and she seemed to enjoy it as much as any male connoisseur. Dan inhaled without knowing what he was doing. He couldn’t keep his stare at her face—the pull was too great, and his gaze slid down slowly, setting him on fire.
    “Maybe we should forget that bath,” he whispered, and she laughed.
    “You’ll be glad you waited,” she said, moving away from him. In seconds she had smoothed over the bedcovers, pulling up a coverlet. She answered a knock on the door. Dan forgot about danger, his pursuer, and sat on the chair openly in view as the woman returned to add two more steaming kettles of water to the copper tub. Dulcie closed the door after the woman left.
    “Care to join me?” she asked.
    He stared while Dulcie moved to the tub and stepped in. “Yeah, oh, yeah!” he said, standing up and placing the cheroot in an ashtray. He crossed the room to the tub, gazing down at her body, which was slickly wet now, more appealing than ever.
    “I’m Dulcie.”
    “I’m Dan Castle,” he said, his voice husky.
    “Gonna bathe in all your clothes, Dan honey?” she drawled.
    Flushing, feeling young and foolish, he started yanking them off. “No. No, I’m not.”
    He stepped in with her, sinking down beside her,and all his hesitation vanished as he pulled her onto his lap.
    He told Silas about Dulcie, recalling every detail of her looks, until Silas leaned on a shovel, whistled, and grinned. “Dan, no woman is that marvelous—except Mary, of course.”
    Dan grinned and flushed. “Sorry. I have talked about her a lot, haven’t I?”
    “Yes. The only thing you haven’t mentioned is her age.”
    Silas said it lightly, but his eyes narrowed and Dan felt his face flush. Silas focused more intently on him. “How old is she?”
    “Well, it doesn’t matter.”
    Silas blinked. “I guess it doesn’t, at that.
    “She’s twenty-six.”
    Silas grinned. “And to someone of your young years, that’s damned ancient.”
    “She doesn’t look old,” Dan said. “And I’m not so young. I’m eighteen, and out west that isn’t young.”
    “That’s a little young for twenty-six.”
    “You’ll have to come to town with me some weekend.”
    Dan went to town each week, keeping a