by Layla Wolfe
But dogs lead us into a land that is both loving and frustrating. Dogs can push your buttons, often more pointedly than humans! As I fell in love with Mickey, I entered a new universe with fresh flavors and rituals. Town and I would venture into the forest, and our walks were slower now with Mickey stopping to smell every leaf. When I’d call her name, her whole body seemed to tense into a smile.
“I think we look to pets for love,” I said, “because human love is so hard to find. Today’s world is so alienating. We live in these horrible, lonely times.”
Town ventured to say, “Are you lonely without your flask?”
It was the first time he’d mentioned it, and I was shocked, as though someone zapped electrical wires to my heart. I couldn’t look him in his handsome face, so as usual I looked to Mickey Finn, who was squatting to pee on a fern. Linus looked on with interest, as though about to help show her how.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “It was my good friend for many years.”
Town surprised me by saying, “I know how you feel. It was a source of comfort, like a baby with a bottle.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, looking him right in the face. Oh, that brawny, sexy hunk had put his head between my legs! Sometimes the memory was too much, and I had to think of something else. “Exactly, Town. I had no other source of comfort, except maybe my dog Chip.”
“The one you had to leave behind.”
“That one. It’s such a . . . private relationship, both the booze and the dogs. But each day I go without, the stronger I feel. I sometimes wonder if I could . . . drink a little bit, like Slappy and Crybaby do.”
Town guffawed. “A little bit? Them?”
I touched his bicep. “Okay, they sometimes overdo it. But you know what I mean. Not around the clock, like I used to do. Where I could take it or leave it, like they seem to do.” It was a daring concept, I knew.
But Town shrugged. “Possible. I wondered that about myself a few times, then decided abstinence was my way to go. Some people can handle moderation.”
I was shocked that he didn’t oppose the idea right out of the barn door. In fact, I thought I had just made it up on the spot. “I’ll see. Give it another few weeks until I feel stronger. I might try it, though I don’t want you staring at me when I do like some kind of judge.”
Town grinned. How I adored that crooked mouth! It had brought me to orgasm like no vibrator ever had. “Nobody likes being under the microscope. I’m not going to question you, my angel.”
Beetle and Linus had taken off. When the zoomies hit them, they enjoyed zigzagging between trees, flying so horizontally over ferns they were sometimes surprised by a stick in the tummy. I jogged to keep up, trying to teach Mickey to “come.” She thought it was an optional command, and I couldn’t let that happen. She was skittish in her movements, nearly crouching on the ground, and she had to be lured.
“Come, come!” I said happily, and Town burst into a jog too.
Such high drama came with dogs. There was no social judgment such as happens with children. No teacher would call us up asking why Mickey was stressed or freaked. She would be allowed to heal at her own rate, as Town seemed to be allowing me. He was giving me the freedom to make mistakes. But this came with a risk—the risk of heartache and losing him if I blew it.
We had been teaching Mickey to let us pick her up. We only won because we were bigger, but she’d struggle to get out of our clutches, as we told her we’d never let her be hurt again. She wouldn’t let her past mistreatment change her basic nature, an example I tried to follow. I didn’t want to inflict Town with my struggles to obliterate my past. I drank so as not to be constantly reminded of the damage done to me. I was terrified that if I didn’t have that cushion, the memories would carry me back into a dark place.
So far that hadn’t happened. I knew it was because of my basic uplifted nature, my work with the mushrooms, the dogs . . . and Town. When he’d surprised me by sitting on the edge of my bed, I’d responded with a lust I didn’t know I had in me. All the teasing, the flirtation, the brushing my rack against his arm, all of that had just built to a crescendo. It was inevitable as dawn that I had spread my legs and yanked him down to me.
Town was a giant of a man who had been through as much—or more—than me. I felt he understood me. His travails in Syria, the death of his fiancée, the rejection by his family—all these experiences had molded him into a headstrong towering man with a heart of gold. What had started with this man sweeping me from the scene of a crime developed into a slow burn. I watched his jeans-clad ass when he walked away. I couldn’t resist focusing on his stiff nipples through a tight t-shirt. I spied on him once when he was lifting weights. And so on.
My yearning for Town grew in my mind and body. I felt perkier when he looked at me. I wanted my rack to stand out. I wanted him to look at me with hunger. When we cooked in the kitchen and he’d reach across me for some spice bottle or other, I’d turn so my boobs brushed his chest. Sometimes he’d acknowledge me with a smile, but I could tell he was restraining himself. He had his reasons—maybe too much trauma in Syria. Maybe he didn’t want another fiancée to die on him.
When it happened, it was sublime. Just the idea that this superb man was squirming his tongue back and forth across the core of my being was enough to raise me to the brink of climax. His husky shoulders warm beneath my thighs, spreading me apart, unashamed. Laying myself wide open like that without tensing from fear was a revelation. I was a bit suspicious, of course, about his talent with his tongue. But I wrote that down to his fiancée and let it go.
When I did, I was in his hands completely. Just when I thought I’d hit the plateau of no return, he’d squiggle his tongue in my slit. It made me want to scream when he took his focus off my button. But he’d dive right back in after such a sexy diversion, and his rhythmic back and forth against my clit would ratchet me up a whole new level. My cries became quicker and shallower, and soon I sounded like some warped daybreak bird annoying everyone, waking them out of slumber. When the crescendo came, Town was capably prepared, and he bore down into my core with vigor.
Eventually I had to beg him to stop. It was too much. I must’ve been in the throes of the strongest climax of my life for at least three minutes. It became too intense, protracted and fierce. It was like I was about to break an interior organ. Even after I made him stop, I was still coming. I was hyperventilating, chuffing a series of tiny, fast breaths. I had to sit on the edge of the bed for Town to rub my shoulders and make soothing sounds. Then, I think, Wolf Glaser busted in, saying something absurd about Minnie Pearl.
Since then, we had been clinched in a few hot makeout sessions, but that was it. Our focus was on Mickey Finn, Linus, and the shrooms. From sterilization to inoculation was twenty-four hours. Then, from inoculation to full colonization was two weeks. There was always something to be done with the fungi. I quite liked playing with them in the fruiting chamber, the air humid and pungent. Town took himself to a VA appointment. I whined at him to allow me to come with, but he was adamant about going alone. Later, he would just tell me they did some imaging. I asked if there was anything that could be done surgically. He had three cracked vertebrae in his back.
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
I knew he played things close to the vest. Like with his family in Philly, his mom and dad. In an intimate moment while we dined by candlelight out back, I asked about them.
“Do you think you will see your parents soon?”
Town was silent for a long time, and I dreaded that I’d made a mistake bringing them up. However, he eventually said, “No. Last time I saw them, I’d turned down an important position with the government because it meant riding the train, engaging with people in an office every day. I knew I couldn’t do that in my agoraphobic state.”
I nodded eagerly. “Of course not.”
“To me, I’d gained the courage to accept the reality that was my life. Not so to them. My mamma shook her head with disgust and left the roo
m. Papà got in my grill and said, ‘you are not going to be one of those wounded warriors.’ He thought I was causing my own grief, my own pain, and he refused to allow it.”
“But didn’t he know you were wounded in Syria?”
“Of course. He got the usual call in the middle of the night. Somehow, he didn’t accept that these wounds were still happening. He just thought I was wallowing in self-pity.”
“Shut the front door.”
Town sipped his mineral water. “If I was a real man, I’d snap out of it. My PTSD diagnosis was just some weak, lameass excuse.”
I dared to ask, “So what’d you do?”
“I wanted to scream the roof down, to tell him what I thought of him. But I was almost too angry to ream him out. You know, the army’s betrayal sliced through to my heart, but losing the respect of papà just fucking . . . ran a sword through my soul, you know? That was when rage took over and my Syrian memories consumed me. That night I felt supremely alone. Without my family, there was nothing to keep me tethered to the dock, so to speak. That’s when I went back to my Colorado condo and drank myself into a stupor.” A smile flitted over his mouth when he looked down at Linus. “I don’t have real parents, but I’ve got this guy tethered to my side.”
“Literally, sometimes,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
But he seemed to want to talk about it. “Mamma would snipe at me. ‘Why you want to tell that story? Why you want people to know you have problems?’ For her, it was something to be swept under the rug.” Again, his face softened. “I wanted passion back in my life. I’d been withholding any sign of affection from them and isolating myself. I reached the point when I wanted to fling my arms around a dog. The love comes back to you a thousandfold.”
That was the night I convinced Town that it would behoove us to sneak in a visit to Byron Riddlesberger’s puppy mill. At the dinner table, I took another spoonful of mashed potatoes. Town always said I was too thin, and I was doing things to stop that.
He tried to dissuade me from my idea at first. “The club has their own plans for that jagov, Heaven. We can’t be messing around in their plans.”
Reaching across the table, I covered his hand with mine. Was I using sex as a weapon? “Oh, but Town. We’re just going on an intel mission. We can hand them whatever we discover. We can pretend to be people interested in buying a dog.”
Town covered my hand with his, but he scoffed. “Riddlesberger knows us. Remember? We’d have to put some heavy-duty disguises on. I’d have to put on Mandalorian armor.”
Although I had no clue what a Mandalorian was, I got into it for a second. “I’d have to be Mata Hari. Wear a beaded bra and hat.”
Town lifted a hand to point at me. “No! Not a word about it, Heaven! I’d need to bring my Glock just to protect you from those scum-sucking rat bastards.”
“Did someone call my name?”
Slappy Lomax ambled up, the candlelight casting a vampiric look to his features, his Mohawk. He cradled a cold bottle of beer. I remember looking at it, and for once not coveting one.
Town glanced over his shoulder at his friend. “If your name is rat bastard, then yes. Heaven here wants to do an op over at Riddlesberger’s puppy mill. I’m trying to talk her out of it.”
Slappy put his beer on our table, grabbed a chair, turned it around backwards, and sat, like a real he-man. He tipped an imaginary cap at me. “That’s quite a good idea, lady. We can map the op.”
Town had to admit, “Slappy here was very good at mapping. Anywhere outside the wire, he’d be able to measure the ground in his head and place outbuildings, guns, or IEDs right into his mapping software, without a drone.”
I made an impressed face. “You think it’d help the club if we mapped this place, scope it out? I think so too.”
Slappy nodded vigorously. “That way, when they go in guns blazing, they know exactly where to go. Won’t waste time breaking down barn doors and scaring more animals. We can map out where Riddlesberger’s bedroom is.”
“See?” I told Town. “If we do a run-through, the club will scare less animals.”
Town rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell. I’m not putting you in any more danger, Heaven.”
“There won’t be any danger. We’ll just sneak onto the property and like Slappy said, scope it out.”
Town was stubborn. “There’s a new law in Arizona that forbids pet stores from buying from puppy mills. They have to be licensed, have less than four breeding females.”
I was ready for that. “It’s actually a step backward. The USDA doesn’t have enough inspectors to make sure of that. You wanna bet Riddlesberger has more than four breeding females? Of course he does.”
So eventually Town relented. “Tango Mike!” Slappy said, raising his bottle to his former commander.
I glowed with pride that I now knew that meant “thanks much.”
I held Town’s hand. “I love you,” I said, sort of quietly so Slappy wouldn’t overhear.
Town heard—his boyish eyes went all moist, and his nostrils trembled. I didn’t want him to feel obligated to say it to me again, so I brushed off the moment by acting kind of corny. “You’re gold, Ponyboy.”
That was one of the few books I’d read as a teen. The men in the story were rebellious, outcast, strong.
Just like Town.
Chapter Sixteen
Town
“Psst.” Slappy said.
“What?” I whispered, annoyed. I mean, fuck it. We were on our stomachs low crawling in this fucked grass full of burrs and foxtails. Heaven wore jeans, but it was still an uncomfortable op. It was a still day where every knee in the weeds crackled loudly.
We had left our dogs with Crybaby. Wolf had made it to Bogotá and was palling around with the cocaine smugglers. A video was making the rounds. Wolf had recently gotten his testicle—I kid you not—stuck in a padlock. The key didn’t work. The video depicted all these rough and tumble broke dicks pointing at him laughing. It must’ve been some kind of dare, or the type of thing those pendejos did on the regular. There were all the expected cracks, like “he’s got the balls to do this” and “we’ve got him by the short hairs.” I wasn’t sure if this was impressing or mortifying the Bare Bones.
Slappy said, “There’s this poor dog tied to that barn. Leonberger. Got only one eye.”
“Oh, good God!” cried Heaven, probably too loud. So far, we hadn’t seen anyone else. We were making our way to the most likely mill barn where we heard rustling and creaking, sort of like bones against wire. Heaven clasped my arm. “Town! We’ve got to bring that poor dog back home.”
I sighed. How could I resist the woman I loved? Would she want to take the entire barn of poor creatures with her?
“Okay,” I whispered back. “On our way out. Let Slappy map this place.”
Slappy had brought along a small notepad. With his field glasses strapped around his neck, his thumbs sashayed across the screen marking, tapping at various points of interest. Twenty minutes ago, we had ambled past handmade wooden signs hammered to a post. “Boxers, Beagles, Leonbergers.” Good God in an evil world, as Heaven muttered. No responsible breeder would just mix and match breeds like that, especially not the giants with the mediums and smalls. I’d learned that from Doll Strikeleather.
We’d talked on the phone. “If enough people ignore the pet stores and only buy from shelters, rescues, or responsible breeders, mills would stop being practical, moneymaking operations and the suffering would end,” Doll said. About our dogs found in the creek, she said, “Saves them a bullet.” Her description of mills she’d known—and helped to take down—steeled me for what we’d see.
“Come on,” urged Heaven, crawling ahead of me toward the roped dog.
“Fuck,” I muttered, inching after her. In the military, we’d learned how to go over a wall like this without getting shot.
Heaven got to the poor chained Leonberger before I did. She got up on her knees and reached out tentatively, probably unsure if
it’d bite. Why was he chained there? Was he supposed to be a watchdog? Luckily he wasn’t a very good watchdog, and he lowered his head obediently to let her fondle him.
When she looked to me, her eyes brimmed with tears. Her voice trembled. “He’s never known any human kindness.”
I couldn’t handle seeing this dog on an eight-foot chain. Heaven’s Mickey Finn had been improving by leaps and bounds. She slept on a bed at the foot of Heaven’s mattress. Heaven said every morning she lifted the blanket and knew she’d seen nirvana when they looked into each other’s eyes. Mickey never let her former abuse get her down, capering about with Linus and Beetle. Heaven taught Mickey a nice high five, and the dog’s ears puffed with pride. Her courage made us brave. Brave enough to tackle this op.
On all fours, I crawled through the open barn door. Fortunately the wind was wafting away from me, but the stench of pee and poo stung my eyes. Some cages were stacked next to a large glassless window, so I could plainly see the Jack Russells stacked higher than your head in cages too small to turn around in. A few beagles noticed me and whined, but some Leonbergers barked.
“Ssh!” I hissed, uselessly. It wasn’t my mission to save anyone today, just to gather intel to turn over to the Bare Bones. The flood of odors, the hopeless whines, the ragged breathing—I didn’t need to be transported back to a hovel of death like this, and I certainly didn’t want Heaven to be. The new law was supposed to force millers to stop stacking cages with wire floors, buy them of a decent size. But like Heaven had said, with not nearly enough inspectors, it would be easy to get around these new laws.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered, and crawled back out the door.
Heaven was busy trying to undo the gatekeeper’s knot, but Slappy had crawled up to the plate with his Bowie knife. He silently went to work freeing the poor bony thing.
