by A. J. Downey
“Stacking these bales, puttin’ ‘em away, what’s it look like I’m doing?”
“That’s not your job!” she snapped, “That’s the delivery company’s job. I pay them for that, though to tell you the truth I’m not sure what I’m paying you for right now… Jesus!”
“Whoa, easy, slow down,” I put down the hay hooks I was using and said, “Looks like your delivery guys got one over on the FNG, I didn’t know.”
“FNG?” she echoed.
“Fucking New Guy,” I supplied and she covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
“This isn’t the dude ranch you came from! You can’t talk like that where clients could potentially hear you!”
I raised my eyebrows amused and said “Darlin’, I’m pretty sure you know exactly who and what you hired on the day that you did it, and I’m tellin’ you,” I stepped into her personal space and dropped my voice real low so only she could hear, “if you wanna ride my dick again, all you have to do is ask. I’m not real fond of you ridin’ it any other way.”
She looked up at me stricken and a little horrified before the blush of her embarrassment had a chance to set in, which was a boner killer right there. Never quite had that reaction after I’d fucked a woman. Couldn’t say I much liked it. I stepped back and picked up the hooks and marched past her to the jumbled pile of bales the delivery company had just dropped in the middle of the barn haphazardly. I hooked a fresh one and walked it over to the neat stack against the wall I was making.
“I am your boss,” she was sputtering, “you can’t, you won’t, talk to me that way or I’ll fire your ass!”
Twice in one day, that’d be cute. I was surprised by how much I wanted this job. It was an opportunity to get back some of what I’d lost back when I’d had to go to prison. I hadn’t told her about how I’d been released early, partially for good behavior and partially due to overcrowding. By the same token, in my eyes and the eyes of the state of Arizona, I’d done my bid… even if a bunch of folks didn’t think it was fair. She hadn’t needed to know all of that. Probably wouldn’t have hired me if she’d known, so I’d kept my mouth shut. I’d wanted this fucking job, wanted it bad and now here it was the first week and I stood a chance of losing it because the little rich bitch didn’t think I could hack it.
No, because I was letting her get to me, and by extension, letting my mouth get ahead of me… Fuck.
No, again. I could eat some fuckin’ crow here. I opened my mouth to apologize, as much as I didn’t want to, because I really genuinely liked this place and the people left in it… present company excluded at the moment.
I never got the chance to say anything, though, because a ruckus went up outside. Bailey whipped around to face the barn doors and we both froze, listening for a moment.
“Bailey, wait!” I called out but she was closer and already striding that direction. I put down the hay hooks and picked up the baseball bat I’d been keeping around and handy while I worked. The other employees of the farm had been talking, and I’d been pretty much accepted as one of them already, once they saw I wasn’t afraid to work, so I’d heard the stories.
Men coming to their homes, local thugs, threatening them with deportation or violence if they went back to Blue Hills. Some of them had taken the threats seriously, some of ‘em didn’t, then there were guys like Renaldo who knew what loyalty was and whose whole lives revolved around this place. I liked the guy. He’d been born and raised here, a boy of seven kids born to immigrant parents who worked the fields. He’d somehow gotten into horses and had won the genetic lottery being a little dude. It made him perfect for the position of jockey and he was a fearless motherfucker.
I’d liked him instantly, when I figured out he was calling me the gringo because that’s what all his people called me. I also liked it that he took a hard line when any of them said something even remotely disrespectful behind Bailey’s back. He was always quick to remind them that her being Jefe was the only thing keeping the lot of ‘em employed, didn’t matter if they thought her becoming Jefe had turned her into a bitch.
So it was no surprise that he ended up being the primary target for any strong arm tactics to get people to move on from here. What was surprising was that they would do it in the middle of broad daylight, at the farm. I went out into chaos boiling over. Strong arm local thugs holding Bailey and the rest of the guys left working late, aside with sticks and batons. No guns that I could see, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any in play. I had mine, but I never brought it out unless I was ready to kill a motherfucker, which we weren’t quite to that point yet, especially considering Bailey was on her cell, and likely with the police while a couple of these assholes were whoopin’ the shit out of Renaldo.
I counted five, and I liked my odds with the bat. Still, it was time to nut up or shut up, and I was all about the former. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I waded in and cracked one of the fuckers kicking Renaldo who was down on the ground. I took one of his attackers out, bashing him in the side of the knee with a stroke that damn sure broke something. His buddy rounded on me just in time to get the blunt end of my bat in his guts.
His other buddies tried to come to the rescue, one of ‘em jumping on my back, an arm across my throat trying to ride me into the dirt. I heard Bailey screaming and yelling and my presence and willingness to go to bat, had woken a couple of the other farmhands up out of their stupor. They started to throw down with me, keeping the other two occupied enough for me to take care of the one trying to choke me out.
I flung him over my shoulders and slammed him into the ground. It helped that I hadn’t had a shirt on. It was too fuckin’ hot in the barn, which wasn’t air conditioned like the stables, but that was a whole different story for another time. Once I had the happy bastard on his back he scrambled to his feet. He had a pair of brass knuckles and he made a big show of sliding ‘em onto his hand. I quirked an eyebrow like really dude?
Bailey screamed something at me like look out, and the dude snarled at her, “Shut up, bitch!”
I told him, “Hey, she ain’t your mamma, boy.”
It was just the spur to his flank that he needed, because he snarled and lunged. I cracked him right in the fucking face with the bat. I know I broke the fucker’s jaw and I know that he lost teeth because at least three of them went flying. The one I’d gut checked scrambled to his feet and yelled, “Fuck man, he’s a Sacred Heart!” and my club’s reputation, as always around these parts, preceded us because the three of them jumped into one of the two pickups left in the driveway and took off without their unconscious buddies.
Renaldo groaned, and there was no way in hell it was a fair fight. He was just a little guy and these bastards were my size or better. The two farmhands knelt next to him where he groaned in the dirt and we waited for the distant sirens to get here.
Of course, first thing the cops did was put me in cuffs. I looked to Bailey as they led me past her to sit me down in the back of their patrol car and growled at her, “That’s what you hired me for.”
She blinked, bewildered while cops and medics swarmed around the farm’s drive and I waited for her to either get me out of this situation or to throw me under the bus. Wasn’t more than ten minutes before one of the boys in blue, er, brown as was the sheriff’s office’s uniform, was opening up the back of the patrol car saying, “You do realize you hired a felon, right Ms. Berling?”
“Yes, I believe in second chances. Don’t you?” she shot back.
“Still, I can’t guarantee these men won’t press charges.”
I snorted, “Been there before,” I muttered as the officer unhooked the cuffs. My shoulders creaked as I brought my hands in front of me and rubbed at my wrists. I sniffed and walked a few paces away to go talk to our guys who were falling over themselves to ask if I was alright. The doors clapped shut on the back of one of the medic busses and I called out to the paramedic going for the driver’s seat, “Take him to Mercy General, when you hit the E
R, ask for Doc Sim.”
“Yeah, I know Doc Sim, he’s one of the best. We’ll make sure your friend is taken care of.”
“Alright man, thanks.”
The paramedic shut his door, chirped his siren, and pulled out. Renaldo didn’t look good. Unconscious and bleeding from his head… fuck, I should have heard the shit going down sooner.
“Where are you going?” Bailey demanded sharply.
“Back to work,” I called back. “Straw ain’t gonna put its self away.”
I left her standing by one of the deputies who told her to let me go, that they’d come find me in the barn if they had any other questions. As soon as I got in there, I hid my gun. Didn’t want to be a felon caught carrying, and I was fuckin’ lucky that they hadn’t had the chance to pat me down to find it in the top of my shitkicker on my right side. I stashed it deep in the hay bales I’d yet to put away and went back to work.
The sharp report of car doors shutting and the crunch of gravel under car tires let me know the cops had taken off. A few minutes later, Bailey slipped back into the barn. I dug out my piece and put it back while she walked towards me. I kept hidden behind the last of the bales and when I straightened, it was with one of the bales on my hooks so she was none the wiser.
I hauled it over to the wall of straw and got it stacked and when I turned she was in my path, holding out the black leather rectangle that was my wallet. The deputy had lifted it when I was being cuffed, to look me up. I transferred one of the hooks to my other hand and took it from her with a mumbled thanks while she stared up at me with wide brown eyes.
“You just waded in,” she said. “There were five of them and they had weapons and you didn’t even think about it, you just went in and saved Renaldo.”
“Wasn’t my first rodeo and those guys were pussies. Local thugs, likely hired by your piss-ant brother.”
She was shaking her head, “One of the men you hurt told the police Renaldo owed them some money before he was taken by the ambulance.”
“And you believe that shit?” I huffed a bitter laugh.
“No! It’s just… the police did. I don’t know what to do.”
Yeah, I’ll just bet they did… I thought. Out loud I said, “Suck it up, buttercup. It’s only going to get worse if you plan to stick this out.”
“How would you know?” she asked, scowling.
“It’s why I was hired, remember?”
She scrubbed her face with her hands and said, “What, fight fire with fire? Pit criminal against criminal?” She said it with such a huge amount of disdain dripping from her sexy as hell voice I couldn’t help but get fired up but not the way you’d think. She was pissing me the hell off.
“Right, next time you have five guys kicking the shit out of one of your people I’ll just stand around with my thumb up my ass like you did. Sound good?”
She scoffed and said, “I called the cops, I’ll have you know!”
“Yeah, and what’d they do? Tried to arrest me for saving the day. What were you going to do in the meantime until the cops showed up, huh?”
“I don’t know, give them suspect descriptions? License plate numbers?”
“Fucking citizens,” I muttered.
“Hey!” She barked. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t even ask for you to be here, so stop being such an asshole!”
“Why, because you’ve been such a goddamned peach?”
She let fly and I caught her wrist without much effort at all on my part. The hay hooks clattered to the cement floor and I jerked her off balance, facing her into the bales and pinning the lower half of her body with mine.
“Let me go!” she demanded.
“No dice, buttercup. Your mamma and daddy may not have taught you it’s not nice to hit people, but I damn sure will.”
“What!?”
I backed off of her, my cock granite in my pants and brought the palm of one hand down squarely on her denim clad ass with an echoing thwack. She fuckin’ squealed her indignation and thrust her ass back into me, which she wasn’t getting away. I’d moved back in to pin her with my body and I have to say, the curve of her ass fit the curve of the front of my body mighty fine. She wiggled trying to break free and stilled with a gasp when she felt my cock through our clothes.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna use it unless you ask real nice.”
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“Not until I’m sure you’re not going to hit me again.”
“Are you fucking kidding me!?” she screeched indignant.
“Nope.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t disagree there. She’d started thrashing and stilled again when I said it.
“What is wrong with you?”
“A lot of things, Bailey. Nothing you’d probably understand.”
“Why don’t you try me?” she asked and it surprised me. She stilled, was out of breath, and tense, but wasn’t trying to thrash or hit me again so I eased off some, putting my hands on top of the bales to either side of her hips and leaning over her. She was still pinned between me and the straw, and I could still restrain her if she wanted to take a swing, but she wasn’t demanding I back off anymore. If anything, that tight little ass of hers was rubbing up against me in a way that made me wanna lose my mind.
“Bailey, you doing that on purpose?” I asked her.
“Maybe.”
“I meant what I said.”
“What? I mean, what time?”
“You wanna ride this cock, all you have to do is ask.”
“God, why do you have to be so crude?”
“Why you got to be so uptight, and what happened to the hot chick in the bar? If I remember correctly, you were the one who hit on me.”
“Yeah, that was after something like four shots of bourbon.”
“Lightweight,” I murmured by her ear and she shuddered.
Yeah, she was definitely turned on. I smiled and whispered, “Undo those jeans and slide them down, take the panties with them.” I let my tone carry the command and I felt her go rigid. She swallowed audibly, and turned her head. I leaned back just enough so she could see I was serious as a heart attack.
“If I don’t?” she whispered quietly.
“Then I let you go, you walk out of this barn, and we can pretend none of this ever happened.”
“If I do?”
“Then I bend you over this bale of straw, shove myself in you balls deep, give you the ride of your life and if you want? You walk out of this barn and we can try to pretend none of it ever happened.”
She hesitated, her eyes sliding shut, and again with that nervous swallow. I bent forward and placed my lips in the hollow behind her ear, planting one, light and errant kiss. Her breath left her in a shuddering sigh and her hands moved to the front of her jeans.
Aw yes, option B!
I held still as she slowly worked her hands between herself and the straw bale I held her against. I backed off just enough to allow her some room to work with and wasn’t disappointed when she worked her belt free, then the button on her jeans. She unzipped and wriggled her hips in that way only a woman could and I about lost my motherfuckin’ mind again.
She slid the denim and lace down from the sides and over the ripe, beautiful curve of her ass. I appreciated the view every second it was happening too.
“Your turn,” she murmured and there was the girl from the bar. All she’d needed to do was commit.
I undid my belt, button, and zip peeling the flaps of my jeans to either side, sliding the scorching head of my cock up and down against her pussy. The angle was all wrong, so I put my left hand on her right shoulder and did just what I said I was going to do. I slammed her forward, bracing my arm against her back so she couldn’t stand upright again. Her hands automatically pressed against the straw and she tested me. It wasn’t happening though, not unless she said ‘no’, not unless she told me to stop.
“What are you waiting for?” she aske
d, and I was all for having the green light.
I pressed against her opening and filled her up with one long, deep stroke until my balls slapped the rest of her tight little pussy.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her fingers curling into the straw as she held onto the bale and I smiled and told her, “That’s right, baby. Hold on tight.”
I set a punishing rhythm. Slamming my body into hers until her hips bucked hard against the bale I held her against. I could feel her tight and wet around me and fuck if she didn’t fit me like a glove.
I never, not once in a million years thought, I would ever see her again, let alone that I’d ever get the chance to fuck her again, but I was glad we were here, and I was glad this was happening, and I was really glad she was as into it as I was. How did I know? The way her ass perked up and she shoved herself back to meet every oncoming thrust I could dish.
She gave a low, quiet, throaty moan and I seriously had to hold onto my shit. I was gonna lose it and come before her if I didn’t. I worked myself in and out of her wet heat, searching for that spot that would make her sing, and take her sky high. She cried out and jerked under the hard pin I had her under and I knew I found it. I worked that spot, too. Her breaths coming closer together, faster, her body writhing despite the hold I had on her, her pussy tightening around my shaft. Fuck that felt so good…
“That’s right, baby. You come for me, you come all over that dick,” I kept my voice low, a harsh breathless whisper to spare anyone overhearing or catching us. Bailey had the same idea, shoving her fist against her mouth as her switch flipped and she shuddered beneath me like she was being electrocuted. I fucking loved it when I took a woman that high and dropped her. Her pussy’s rhythmic throbbing and pulling along my cock sending me right over the edge with her.
I spilled inside her and shoved as deep as I could get, pressing our bodies tight together. She went ragdoll limp underneath me, and I let up on my punishing grip, dropping both my arms to my sides and tipping my head back to suck in air. My body demanding I breathe and I couldn’t disagree.
“Pull out,” she demanded after a few false starts and I did, slipping free from her body and watching a spill of my cum follow. God that was fuckin’ hot.
