Nan Ryan Read Free Page A

and drink his whiskey. His intent, at the moment, was to finish his bottle of bourbon and then sleep it off in the redhead’s bed.
    There was no doubt in Virgil Black’s mind that he could, and would, do both. He didn’t consider himself to be arrogant. Quite the contrary. To him it had always been a bit of a mystery why women fell so easily into his arms. All women. Not just the kind he found in saloons, but those who were supposedly respectable.
    He could only surmise that all the accommodating women he had known would have behaved exactly the same way with any other man. To his way of thinking there was nothing special about him, yet females of all ages couldn’t wait to give themselves to him. He had yet to desire a woman who had turned him down.
    So Virgil Black was not the least bit surprised when after the show, the shapely, ginger-haired Queen of the Silver Dollar fought her way to his table through the mobs of men shouting to her, wearing an inviting smile on her scarlet-painted lips.
    “I’ve heard about you, Herr Kapitan Black,” she said in a distinctive, perhaps affected, foreign accent and saucily sat down on his lap.
    A faint, half-mocking smile touching his hard mouth, Virgil Black poured the last of the whiskey into his glass, leisurely downed it, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and asked, “Just what have you heard?”
    She smiled flirtatiously and said, “That you’re lightning fast on the draw with that big gun on your hip, but—” she paused, leaned down, placed her gleaming red lips close to his ear, and whispered, “you can keep that awesome weapon in your trousers aimed, cocked, and ready to fire all night long.”
    “Want to find out?” was his cool reply.
    She squealed and giggled and instantly shot up off his lap. Reaching for his hand, she said, “Come upstairs with me, Kapitan Black. We’ll have us a real good time.”
    Virgil Black rose to his feet. At six foot three, he towered over the five-foot-five-inch Queen of the Silver Dollar. She tipped her head back, looked up at him, possessively clasped red-nailed fingers around his hard biceps, and said, “My goodness, you’re so tall. So big.” She fluttered her long eyelashes and licked her red lips. “Is everything about you … big?”
    Virgil slowly raised a lean, dark hand, wrapped long fingers loosely around the back of her bare neck, and staring directly at her full-lipped mouth, said, “Everything’s in proportion.” His icy blue eyes flashed dangerously then, and he added, “Or will be once you get your hands on it.”
    “Oh, Kapitan !”
    Anxious to get this big, handsome Ranger upstairs to the privacy of her room, the red-haired entertainer took his lean brown hand and led him hurriedly through the crowded saloon to the staircase on the far left side of the room. At the base of the stairs, she stopped him, took a couple of steps up, and turned to face him.
    “Carry me?” she asked coquettishly.
    “Why not?” was the Ranger’s flat reply.
    He slid his strong fingers around her small waist, and she immediately put her hands atop his broad shoulders. Effortlessly, he lifted her up in front of him, and she eagerly wrapped her stockinged legs around his trim waist. Virgil Black locked his hands beneath her shapely bottom and ascended the stairs. While she laughed with joy, hisses and boos and shouts of jealousy followed them from below.
    Once inside her gaudily decorated room, Black lowered her to her feet and reached for the low-riding bodice of her tight green dress.
    “No, wait,” she scolded, smiling as she slapped his hand away. “Let us change roles, vat do you say? Instead of you undressing me, I first undress you.”
    “Suit yourself, Red,” Black drawled as he shrugged wide shoulders. “So long as we both wind up naked.”
    “Oh, we will. I promise.”
    With that, her hands went to the buckle of his gun belt. Before she could get it undone, the ever-cautious Texas Ranger removed the heavy