Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance Read Online Free PDF

frothy beer mugs clutched in their ham-sized red paws, conversing on the boardwalks in nearly every language Longarm had ever heard, and more.
    The travel-worn federal lawman looped the roan’s reins around one of the several wrought-iron hitch racks fronting the Grand Hotel, unable to take his eyes off the well-named structure though he’d seen it once before. Built of red brick and trimmed in crisply painted white wood, with a mansard roof rising from its second story, sort of like a king’s crown, it resembled nothing so much as a lavish, triple-decker riverboat that plied the waters of the southern Mississippi.
    “Incredible, isn’t it?”
    Longarm turned to the woman standing on the broad, stone paving, between the hitch racks and their dozen or so tied horses, and the building itself. She was staring up at the hotel, as well, but also casting sidelong glances at Longarm. The tall, handsomely weathered lawman stared at her, andfor one of the very first times in his adult life, he was tongue-tied.
    He’d rarely laid eyes on such a rare and sumptuous creature as the ravishing brunette before him. Long-legged and cool as a snowmelt stream, she was a goddess sent from heaven to bless mere mortals with her presence while both captivating and torturing men with her beauty.
    She somehow had that air about her, too, with her thick, rich hair piled high and secured with a gold comb atop her patrician’s head. Her eyes were hazel, set wide apart and accentuating the long, gallant line of her nose. Those polished hazel orbs matched the brocade and taffeta of her lavishly but tastefully appointed dress that was trimmed with cream silk sleeves, a cream silk collar, and an understated, gold, obviously expensive cameo brooch.
    Her breasts were well concealed, as befitted a lady, but Longarm knew, as though he could see them through her dress and several layers of traditional under frillies, that they would be proud, firm, full, and perfectly shaped, with exquisitely jutting nipples.
    One look at them, and a man would come in his trousers without her even laying a hand on him.
    Quickly, realizing where his gaze had been, he jerked his eyes to her face. Too late. With a tolerant half smile, squinting those intoxicating hazel orbs and turning the beautifully clefted chin toward the hotel’s front doors, she said, “Excuse me.”
    Holding her skirts above her fine ankles and teal, side-button shoes, she climbed the wooden steps to the hotel’s broad oak doors.
    “Ah, shit,” Longarm said, the tips of his ears turning as warm as an overheated iron. “Fuckin’ fool…”
    He continued to scold himself while the girl’s image continued to float around inside his brain, as though it had been emblazoned forever on his retinas. Girl? Youngwoman, rather, though he doubted that she was much over twenty. No, not more than a year past that, he decided, remembering how smooth her skin had been around her eyes and across her finely tapering cheeks, how its perfection, only slightly suntanned, seemed to soften the long, firm, yet delicate line of her jaw.
    As he lifted his saddlebags off the roan’s back and slid his Winchester from its sheath, setting the long gun on his right shoulder, he realized he had a semi hard-on. Grimacing, he brushed his hand across his crotch, adjusting his whipcord trousers so not to cripple himself.
    He consciously wrestled the girl’s image from his mind and, only partly succeeding, stiffly stepped onto the stone paving, climbed the hotel’s entrance steps, and pushed through the heavy, giant, castle-like doors into the broad, high-ceilinged lobby.
    There she was, ahead of him, apparently picking up her room key at the block-long, horseshoe-shaped front desk of gleaming cherry trimmed with silver and with ornate mahogany inlays. Over the lobby and between ornate balconies with rails of the same material as the front desk, hung a crystal chandelier the size of a Concord stagecoach.
    Longarm only glanced at