Our free blackjack online brings Vegas to your desktop with the same rules and settings of a casino gambling table right on your computer screen. Take a gamble and throw down your virtual chips if you're feeling lucky. But don't get too greedy. When you play free blackjack online you gotta know when to take a hit and when to stand steady. When twenty-one was introduced in the United States, gambling houses offered bonus payouts to stimulate players' interest. One such bonus was a ten-to-one payout if the player's hand consisted of the ace of spades and a black jack (either the jack of clubs or the jack of spades). This hand was called a 'blackjack', and the name stuck to the.
Black Jack, p.1
Max BrandBLACK JACK
Max Brand
1922
CHAPTER 1
It was characteristic of the two that when the uproar broke out VanceCornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sisterElizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs.After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was aspeaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering away down thestreet.
A boy was stirring up the dust of the street, enjoying its heat with hisbare toes, and the same old man was bunched in his chair in front of thestore. During the two days Elizabeth had been in town on her cattle-buying trip, she had never see him alter his position. But she wasaccustomed to the West, and this advent of sleep in the town did notsatisfy her. A drowsy town, like a drowsy-looking cow-puncher, might becapable of unexpected things.
'Vance,' she said, 'there's trouble starting.'
'Somebody shooting at a target,' he answered.
As if to mock him, he had no sooner spoken than a dozen voices yelleddown the street in a wailing chorus cut short by the rapid chattering ofrevolvers. Vance ran to the window. Just below the hotel the street madean elbow-turn for no particular reason except that the original cattle-trail had made exactly the same turn before Garrison City was built.Toward the corner ran the hubbub at the pace of a running horse. Shouts,shrill, trailing curses, and the muffled beat of hoofs in the dust. Arider plunged into view now, his horse leaning far in to take the sharpangle, and the dust skidding out and away from his sliding hoofs. Therider gave easily and gracefully to the wrench of his mount.
And he seemed to have a perfect trust in his horse, for he rode with thereins hanging over the horns of his saddle. His hands were occupied by apair of revolvers, and he was turned in the saddle.
The head of the pursuing crowd lurched around the elbow-turn; fire spattwice from the mouth of each gun. Two men dropped, one rolling over andover in the dust, and the other sitting down and clasping his leg in aludicrous fashion. But the crowd was checked and fell back.
By this time the racing horse of the fugitive had carried him close tothe hotel, and now he faced the front, a handsome fellow with long blackhair blowing about his face. He wore a black silk shirt which accentuatedthe pallor of his face and the flaring crimson of his bandanna. And helaughed joyously, and the watchers from the hotel window heard him call:'Go it, Mary. Feed 'em dust, girl!'
The pursuers had apparently realized that it was useless to chase.Another gust of revolver shots barked from the turning of the street, andamong them a different and more sinister sound like the striking of twogreat hammers face on face, so that there was a cold ring of metal afterthe explosion--at least one man had brought a rifle to bear. Now, as thewild rider darted past the hotel, his hat was jerked from his head by aninvisible hand. He whirled again in the saddle and his guns raised. As heturned, Elizabeth Cornish saw something glint across the street. It wasthe gleam of light on the barrel of a rifle that was thrust out throughthe window of the store.
That long line of light wobbled, steadied, and fire jetted from the mouthof the gun. The black-haired rider spilled sidewise out of the saddle;his feet came clear of the stirrups, and his right leg caught on thecantle. He was flung rolling in the dust, his arms flying weirdly. Therifle disappeared from the window and a boy's set face looked out. Butbefore the limp body of the fugitive had stopped rolling, ElizabethCornish dropped into a chair, sick of face. Her brother turned his backon the mob that closed over the dead man and looked at Elizabeth inalarm.
It was not the first time he had seen the result of a gunplay, and forthat matter it was not the first time for Elizabeth. Her emotion upsethim more than the roar of a hundred guns. He managed to bring her a glassof water, but she brushed it away so that half of the contents spilled onthe red carpet of the room.
'He isn't dead, Vance. He isn't dead!' she kept saying.
'Dead before he left the saddle,' replied Vance, with his usual calm.'And if the bullet hadn't finished him, the fall would have broken hisneck. But--what in the world! Did you know the fellow?'
He blinked at her, his amazement growing. The capable hands of Elizabethwere pressed to her breast, and out of the thirty-five years ofspinsterhood which had starved her face he became aware of eyes young anddark, and full of spirit; by no means the keen, quiet eyes of ElizabethCornish.
'Do something,' she cried. 'Go down, and--if they've murdered him--'
He literally fled from the room.
All the time she was seeing nothing, but she would never forget what shehad seen, no matter how long she lived. Subconsciously she was fightingto keep the street voices out of her mind. They were saying things shedid not wish to hear, things she would not hear. Finally, she recoveredenough to stand up and shut the window. That brought her a terribletemptation to look down into the mass of men in the street--and women,too!
But she resisted and looked up. The forms of the street remainedobscurely in the bottom of her vision, and made her think of somethingshe had seen in the woods--a colony of ants around a dead beetle.Presently the door opened and Vance came back. He still seemed veryworried, but she forced herself to smile at him, and at once his concerndisappeared; it was plain that he had been troubled about her and not inthe slightest by the fate of the strange rider. She kept on smiling, butfor the first time in her life she really looked at Vance withoutsisterly prejudice in his favor. She saw a good-natured face, handsome,with the cheeks growing a bit blocky, though Vance was only twenty-five.He had a glorious forehead and fine eyes, but one would never look twiceat Vance in a crowd. She knew suddenly that her brother was simply awell-mannered mediocrity.
'Thank the Lord you're yourself again, Elizabeth,' her brother said firstof all. 'I thought for a moment--I don't know what!'
'Just the shock, Vance,' she said. Ordinarily she was well-nigh brutallyfrank. Now she found it easy to lie and keep on smiling. 'It was such ahorrible thing to see!'
'I suppose so. Caught you off balance. But I never knew you to lose yourgrip so easily. Well, do you know what you've seen?'
'He's dead, then?'
He locked sharply at her. It seemed to him that a tremor of unevennesshad come into her voice.
'Oh, dead as a doornail, Elizabeth. Very neat shot. Youngster thatdropped him; boy named Joe Minter. Six thousand dollars for Joe. Nicelittle nest egg to build a fortune on, eh?'
'Six thousand dollars! What do you mean, Vance?'
'The price on the head of Jack Hollis. That was Hollis, sis. Thecelebrated Black Jack.'
'But--this is only a boy, Vance. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old.'
'That's all.'
'But I've heard of him for ten years, very nearly. And always as a man-killer. It can't be Black Jack.'
'I said the same thing, but it's Black Jack, well enough. He started outwhen he was sixteen, they say, and he's been raising the devil eversince. You should have seen them pick him up--as if he were asleep, andnot dead. What a body! Lithe as a panther. No larger than I am, but theysay he was a giant with his hands.'
He was lighting his cigarette as he said this, and consequently he didnot see her eyes close tightly. A moment later she was able to make herexpression as calm as ever.
'Came into town to see his baby,' went on Vance through the smoke.'Little year-old beggar!'
'Think of the mother,' murmured Elizabeth Cornish. 'I want to dosomething for her.'
'You can't,' replied her brother, with unnecessary brutality. 'Becauseshe's dead. A little after the youngster was born. I believe Black Jackbroke her heart, and a very pleasant sort of girl she was, they tell me.'
'What will become of the baby?'
'It will live and grow up,' he said carelessly. 'They always do, somehow.Make ano
ther like his father, I suppose. A few years of fame in themountain saloons, and then a knife in the back.'
The meager body of Elizabeth stiffened. She was finding it less easy tomaintain her nonchalant smile.
'Why?'
'Why? Blood will out, like murder, sis.'
'Nonsense! All a matter of environment.'
'Have you ever read the story of the Jukes family?'
'An accident. Take a son out of the best family in the world and raisehim like a thief--he'll be a thief. And the thief's son can be raised toan honest manhood. I know it!'
She was seeing Black Jack, as he had raced down the street with the blackhair blowing about his face. Of such stuff, she felt, the knights ofanother age had been made. Vance was raising a forefinger in anauthoritative way he had.
'My dear, before that baby is twenty-five--that was his father'sage--he'll have shot a man. Bet you on it!'
'I'll take your bet!'
The retort came with such a ring of her voice that he was startled.Before he could recover, she went on: 'Go out and get that baby for me,Vance. I want it.'
He tossed his cigarette out of the window.
'Don't drop into one of your headstrong moods, sis. This is nonsense.'
'That's why I want to do it. I'm tired of playing the man. I've hadenough to fill my mind. I want something to fill my arms and my heart.'
She drew up her hands with a peculiar gesture toward her shallow, barrenbosom, and then her brother found himself silenced. At the same time hewas a little irritated, for there was an imputation in her speech thatshe had been carrying the burden which his own shoulders should havesupported. Which was so true that he could not answer, and therefore hecast about for some way of stinging her.
'I thought you were going to escape the sentimental period, Elizabeth.But sooner or later I suppose a woman has to pass through it.'
A spot of color came in her sallow cheek.
'That's sufficiently disagreeable, Vance.'
A sense of his cowardice made him rise to conceal his confusion.
'I'm going to take you at your word, sis. I'm going out to get that baby.I suppose it can be bought--like a calf!'
He went deliberately to the door and laid his hand on the knob. He had arather vicious pleasure in calling her bluff, but to his amazement shedid not call him back. He opened the door slowly. Still she did notspeak. He slammed it behind him and stepped into the hall.
Black Jack.
Her hands fell from his hair to his shoulders, then the front of his T-shirt. Pulling, tugging, she dragged at the material until it came free of his jeans.
He shrugged his jacket away, allowing the cool leather to fall to the floor before his hands returned to push her denim jacket from her shoulders.
She wasn’t moving her arms. She wanted that shirt off his back. She wanted to feel his flesh, n**ed and hot, against her palms.
He tore off the t-shirt then returned to her jacket, forcing her arms down and pulling the denim over it to reveal the sleeveless camishirt she had on underneath.
The slender straps cleared her head as he jerked the material from her waist, up, baring her br**sts, and tossed the top aside. He filled his palms with the swollen curves, his thumbs raking over the hard tips of her ni**les and sending fingers of raw sensation to attack her womb, to heat her clit.
Lilly arched into the touch, a gasp passing her lips as her back met the wall, and her palm flattened against the bare skin of his chest.
Curling her fingers, Lilly raked them down his chest, just enough to feel the flex of muscles beneath, to relish the heat and hardness of his corded body.
Her fingers rasped to the band of his jeans where she found the snap and zipper of his pants and quickly released them.
She couldn’t touch him enough. She couldn’t get enough of his kiss. She wanted to feel all of him against her at once. She wanted all the pleasure at once. She wanted to feel alive, something she hadn’t felt for six months.
Alive. Living. A woman that had no part of her missing.
In Travis’s arms, there was only the woman, there was no past, no danger, and there was nothing to fear.
“God help me, I missed you,” he groaned as his lips tore from hers and moved to her jaw, her neck. “Missed seeing you, touching you.”
A moan echoed from her chest as her heart tightened in a realization that she had missed him as well; even though she hadn’t remembered him, she had missed him, achingly.
He was making up for whatever time they had lost though. His hands cupped her br**sts, lifted them. His head descended, his tongue licking over the tight thrust of her ni**les as shards of sensation began to tear over her nerve endings.
It was incredible. It was the fantasy that followed her when she slept, the one she awakened from, her body dampened with sweat.
This was Travis, and denying him wasn’t something she could allow herself to do. Not this pleasure. Not this incredible, blinding heat.
Her fingers stroked into his jeans and found bare flesh. No tighty-whiteys, no boxers, just the hard, thick thrust of his c**k pushing into her hand. The wide crest was hot to her touch, slightly damp. The heat of it sent a rush of pleasure flexing through her pu**y as she felt his hand smooth from her breast, down her stomach.
His fingers worked her jeans loose as her hands stroked and memorized the iron-hard width and length of his cock. The more she touched him, the more she wanted.
Looking down, Lilly lost her breath as she watched his cheeks draw in, watched him suckle at the hard tip of her nipple. His eyes were slitted, staring up at her, the spark of green in the golden brown more intense now, glittering in his dark face.
Her knees were getting weak. Standing wasn’t as easy as it had been when she first walked into the cabin, or when she had first seen him in Hagerstown. It made her wonder what she had felt when she had first met him, six years before.
Just when she doubted she could remain upright, his head lifted. He licked her nipple, first one, then the other. His expression was tight with hunger, with sensual pleasure, as he stared up at her, need glowing in his eyes.
Then he straightened to his full height, lifted her in his arms, and strode to the large bed with its old-fashioned quilt and large fluffy pillows.
Her head fell back on the pillow as Travis’s hand moved beneath her back and cupped her shoulders, pressing her br**sts firmly into the heat and hardness of his chest as his lips moved over her neck and br**sts in heated, nipping kisses.
Arching beneath him, Lilly felt her blood boiling as pleasure heated her flesh and left her trembling. Within seconds he was moving down her body, removing her boots, his own. He shed his jeans, then smoothed hers down her legs, leaving her dressed in nothing but the contour-hugging soft cotton panties she wore beneath the jeans.
Standing at the bottom of the bed, he let her look her fill. He stood before her as her gaze roamed his hard body and paused at the jutting length of his cock.
Before he could come down to her, Lilly was on her knees. She saw the surprise in his face, though how he could truly be surprised she couldn’t explain. Surely he felt the wildness rising inside her, the hunger burning deep and hot?
Travis watched as she came to her knees like a sensual, sexual little cat. Her back arched, her head lifted as she crawled to him, her green eyes narrowed as she licked her swollen, sexy lips.
She was the most exquisite sight he had ever seen. The sexiest thing he had ever known.
His breath caught as she came level with his dick, her tongue peeking out, stroking over the flared head with a hot, luscious lick.
“Fuck!” One hand buried itself in her hair as the other caught the base of his hard erection.
He saw it in her now, felt it in her. She was as wild as the wind, the sexy, sensual creature he had known existed inside her.
Holding her firmly, he restrained that fire, controlled it, and watched it burn brighter inside her as her lips opened over the thick crest and took it into the burning heat of her mouth.
Clenching his teeth, Travis only barely held back the groan of complete ecstasy as the inexperienced wonder on her face held him entranced.
Innocent though she might be, she knew how to drive him crazy. Her tongue stroked around the too-sensitive head as she sucked at his c**k hungrily. The heated licks were a hot counterpoint to the firm sucks, to the warm moisture he was delving into as she took as much of his dick as she could into the wet, velvet interior of her mouth.
“Hell yes.” He couldn’t hold back the growl, the hoarse rasp of complete pleasure that tore from his chest. “Damn you, Lilly. Your mouth is like pure pleasure.”
It was more than pleasure. There were no words that he could find for the exquisite sensations racing from his cock, to his balls, and up his spine. It was like being immersed in pure sensation, pure ecstasy. Undiluted with worry, danger, or upcoming missions. It was a pleasure that built upon itself, that intensified and filled him with a driving need for nothing but the pure heat of her body.
His thighs strained with the effort it took to hold back. He could feel perspiration building at his temple, on his shoulders. Heat surrounded him, burned through him. The effort it took to hold back, to allow her the time she needed . . .
“Fuck yes!” Her head lifted from his cock, slid down the shaft to the tight sac below where her tongue licked and stroked, played and wreaked havoc on his control.
Damn, she was making him crazy. Rapid-fire pulses of sensation raced through his dick, tightened through his balls, and tore across his nerve endings as he fought to enjoy it for a few more seconds.
Just another lick. Just another kiss of those satiny lips. Both his hands went to her head, his fingers threading through her hair. Short, agonizing strokes of his c**k past her lips tested that final limit of his control as he f**ked her sweet mouth, slow and easy.
He was on the edge. Holding back his release was nearly impossible but he had no intention of allowing it to end here. When he came, he had every intention of coming deep and hard inside her tight little pu**y rather than the suckling heat of her seductive little mouth.
Ignoring her startled mewl of protest, he forced himself to remove his c**k from the ecstatic grip she had on it.
“Not yet, minx,” he growled, as she gripped his thighs and attempted to pull the hardened flesh back to her honeyed lips.
Gripping her shoulders, he tried to ease her back onto the bed. That wicked feminine smile that drove him insane crossed her lips. She resisted him, refusing to ease back.
Travis’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m going to taste that sweet pu**y before this goes any further,” he informed her, his tone rougher than he intended. “I’m going to f**k you with my tongue, suck that hard little clit, and feel you unraveling to my mouth before I f**k you.”
Her gaze glittered, the green flaming as her face flushed with heightened arousal.
“Sounds like a rather tall order.” Still on her knees, still so tempting, so seductive and demanding, she blew his f**king mind.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Before she could evade him he had her on her back, struggling halfheartedly against him, a light, arousal-filled laugh leaving her lips as he forced his way between her thighs.
Before she could push him back, before she could distract him, he wedged her thighs farther apart, then laid his lips and tongue to the sweetest honeyed flesh he had ever known.
Her juices were slick and hot, like the finest syrup, glazing his lips and tongue as he bestowed kiss after kiss to the intimate folds. He sucked her cl*t into his mouth, tasted, laved it with his tongue, and lost himself in the intoxicating taste and heat of her.
Lilly stared at the ceiling, dazed, submerged in sensations that washed over her with the force of a tidal wave. Spreading her thighs wider, she tangled her fingers in his hair and lifted her head, watched and became mesmerized by the complete sexual absorption on his face.
This was paradise. It was pure ecstasy. His tongue licked around her clit, flicked the tender bud, causing her to jerk with an excess of sensations.
“Travis.” The little cry came unbidden from her lips as pleasure raced through her system.
It wasn’t confined to the area he was kissing so intimately. The pleasure tore across her nerve endings and invaded every cell of her body.
Perspiration sheened his flesh as well as hers, as her juices glazed his lips.
He parted the swollen folds with his fingers, and his tongue licked, laved, loved. It circled the clenched opening to her pussy, flicked inside only to retreat as her h*ps jerked closer in a silent plea for more. Always more. She could never get enough.
She arched beneath him, her h*ps lifting to his lips, watching as slowly, so slowly, he licked to the aching center of her pussy, then, slow and easy, pushed his tongue inside her.
A long desperate wail left her lips. Her fingers tightened in his hair, trying to force him closer as she felt his tongue inside her taking quick shallow licks that stroked and caressed nerve endings she hadn’t been aware she possessed.
It was incredible.
Heat surged inside her, built around her. White-hot, blinding pleasure exploded inside her with a force that had her arching tight and hard to his lips, her pu**y flexing around his tongue as she cried out his name, held on to him, relinquished control and gave herself to him.
She was still flying. Ecstasy still held her in its grip when she felt him move between her thighs and thrust inside her with a fierce, hard stroke.
The forceful, immediate stretching of tender muscles, the pleasure-pain that tore through her, brought her higher. Shock widened her eyes, rapture tightened her body, as he pulled back and began working inside the tight grip of her cl**axing pu**y with powerful strokes that pushed her deeper into ecstasy, flung her into a white-hot center of pure pulsing sensation that refused to release her.
Travis was dying. Sweat dripped down his face as he buried his c**k inside her to the hilt on the fourth stroke. The orgasm that held her in its grip tightened her pu**y to a near-painful snugness that had his release threatening to explode out of his control.
Black Jack online, free Games
Pushing inside her again, he stilled, grimaced, and fought not to come. Hell, he was going to come. His balls were so tight they were painful, the sensitivity in his c**k was near agonizing. He wanted to f**k her forever but he knew if he didn’t come soon he was going to die of a stroke.
Her pu**y rippled around him, the ultratight muscles clenched and gripping, milking him with ever-increasing little tremors that stole his mind.
Free Online Reads
He was lost in a world of such sensual pleasure that nothing mattered but the moment and the woman. He was bound to her, more than just physically, more than just his c**k buried inside the tightest, sweetest pu**y he had ever known. He was bound to her soul, and he knew there was no way to escape.
Read Black Butler online, free
| Recommended |
| » Under the Lights (The Field Party #2) read online » The Lunar Chronicles read online » Rush Too Far (Rosemary Beach #4) read online » Love series read online » Stephenie Meyer read online » With Me in Seattle series read online » Contours of the Heart Series read online » The Bitter Kingdom (Fire and Thorns #3) read online » Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades #3) read online » Neighbor from Hell series read online » Psy-Changeling series read online » Richelle Mead read online » The Demon Count (Demon Count #1) read online » Crossfire series read online » Black Arts (Jane Yellowrock #7) read online » Forever Too Far (Rosemary Beach #3) read online » Just One Day (Just One Day #1) read online » Moonshot read online » Throne of Glass series read online » Ellen Schreiber read online » Billionaires and Bridesmaids series read online » Billionaire Boys Club series read online » On Dublin Street series read online » The Anetakis Tycoons series read online » Sea Breeze series read online |