Longarm and the Dime Novelist Read Online Free PDF Page B

finally extracted his tool and staggered over to collapse on the bed.
    Delia dropped her feet from the stirrups and using her bare toes rocked herself back and forth, one hand caressing herself as she milked the last bit of pleasure from their union.
    â€œSo, Custis,” she said lazily as she turned to look at him. “What do you really think?”
    â€œI think you ought to stop writing dime novels and go into business manufacturing those contraptions.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œI’m serious. You could make a fortune.”
    â€œOh, someone in China or someplace where they consider lovemaking an art probably invented something very much like this centuries ago. I read that the Chinese have documented eighty-six unique positions for a man and a woman to couple. I’ve seen most of them with graphic pictures in books.”
    â€œNo! Eighty-six?
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, if a man and woman tried to do it all those ways they no doubt died of pleasure.”
    â€œNot a bad way to go,” Delia said with a laugh before she climbed out of the chair swing and came to lie by his side. “I’m so glad you liked my design.”
    â€œThat would be a huge understatement.” Longarm glanced over his shoulders. “The wonder is that we didn’t tear the bolts out of the ceiling and crash to the floor.”
    â€œThose bolts are six inches long; just a bit shorter than what you screwed me with.”
    â€œIf you don’t mind and you haven’t patented the thing, I may make one and put it into my bedroom.”
    â€œWhy bother when we have this one we can use anytime?”
    Longarm grinned. “Yeah, why bother?”
    â€œI need to have a glass of milk,” Delia said, rising from the bed. “Or maybe I’ll brew a cup of good, hot coffee.”
    Longarm stood up and consulted his pocket watch. “It’s eleven thirty. Perhaps I ought to go back home and get some sleep.”
    â€œThat’s up to you,” Delia told him. “I don’t have to get up early, but I suppose that you have to be at the office by a certain time.”
    â€œI don’t,” Longarm told her. “Billy expects me in around nine o’clock, but if I’m late he doesn’t usually care. He knows that I don’t like to sit around waiting for something to happen at the office. I like to be out and about, doing something important, and I hate paperwork.”
    â€œI’m sure you do.” Delia found a bathrobe and went into the kitchen. “Are you staying or leaving? I’m making the coffee and need to know.”
    â€œI’ll stick around for a while,” Longarm decided, staring at the curve of her hips and breasts pushed up against the fabric of her silk gown. He pulled on his pants and shirt, then went out into her living room and made his way into her study and library. There, he looked over a stack of dime novels, some written under her pseudonym, Dakota Walker, and at least twenty others written by the most popular dime novelist of them all, Erastus Flavel Beadle. Longarm knew that Beadle’s Deadwood Dick series
had made the author . . . who had never even come to the West . . . fame and fortune. The main character in the series, Deadwood Dick, was an outlaw who had been grievously wronged by powerful, corrupt and wealthy men supported by the law. In dime novel after dime novel Deadwood Dick always fought for justice even if he was a wanted man and he was admired for his generosity and for helping poor ladies in distress. He was a frontier Robin Hood, a man of great intellect and courage. Longarm remembered hearing that these dime novels were particularly popular in the East where people had romantic illusions about western heroes.
    Other novels that Longarm picked up and looked at included plenty of stories about early frontiersmen who could shoot with deadly accuracy and cool courage. There were pictures of men