The Sublime Miss Paige (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Ronnie Dobbs finally climbed behind the wheel of an old, battered pickup. He tried to burn rubber out of the lot but only succeeded in stalling the engine. While restarting it, he shrieked out the window, “You’ll be sorry! I’m not the ‘most arrested man in the Coachella Valley’ for nothing!”

  “Is that so?” Steffen mused quietly. “I’ll thank him for informing us of that.”

  Willow exhaled loudly when Mr. Dobbs finally drove off. Steffen turned to her. He’d been so keyed up getting rid of the repulsive collector he hadn’t thought how this altercation might have affected her. Now he just wanted to put his arms around her and soothe her, though of course that would be ridiculous. They barely knew each other and had a professional relationship.

  “Jeez, that was strange,” breathed Willow, her hand on her stomach.

  “I’m sorry about that. I hope you didn’t have a sweet deal going with Mr. Dobbs there that I just ruined. But that guy was over the top. He was out of control.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t agree more! Come, what’s next on your list?”

  Steffen looked at his clipboard. “Ah, vents in the kitchen.” They started walking. “Listen. Who’s your foreman? I need to talk to him anyway about a couple of items I see aren’t finished. But I want to warn him about that Dobbs character. He seems overly obsessed with this alleged watch. Have you actually found any watch?”

  “My foreman is Chas White, but he’s usually difficult to find. No, I haven’t even found any damned watch, that’s the strange part. My realtor just an hour ago told me to expect this guy. She didn’t describe which artifact he wanted. I’ve found several, as you can imagine.”

  “Well, find out where she found that crackpot. I don’t want him around you.”

  Willow looked at him from underneath her eyelashes. “That’s very sweet of you.” They had obviously already stepped beyond the boundaries of an inspector-permittee relationship, and Steffen wished intensely he could step even farther. He had the feeling, though, that Willow had to allow him. She would give him the sign. “What I want to know is, how did that damned bondage cross get into my utility room? And Ronnie Dobbs seemed to instantly know what it was.”

  Steffen didn’t point out that he had also instantly known what it was, too. Willow was the only one who hadn’t. Steffen thought it was sort of cute that she wasn’t jaded like so many Southern Californians. Maybe she thought the St. Andrew’s Cross was a football tackling dummy. “I have a suspicion about that,” Steffen said. “There’s a connecting door from the Cesar Romero Room next door to the utility room. How much remodeling have you done in Cesar’s room?”

  “Oh, that one has barely been touched. The door is a bitch to get open and I need one of these carpenters to take a look at it. See?”

  Steffen tried the knob. It didn’t turn at all, but there was a two-inch crack through which he could see stacked boxed and other large, darkened objects. “The door could be warped and need to be planed,” Steffen suggested. He was going to suggest they try the adjoining door from the utility room—he didn’t usually like to butt into rooms that weren’t on his inspection sheet—but the curiosity, and his interest in Miss Paige, were overwhelming. However, his cell phone buzzed. His dispatcher had texted, “Mr. Barbieri at Lone Palm wants to know if you can come now instead of at six.”

  He told Willow, “Apparently my next appointment was just moved up. I’d like to come back tomorrow if that’s all right. Check the kitchen, plumbing, see the progress on the HVAC.” Actually, he just wanted to come back, period.

  “Sure.” Was it his imagination she seemed more excited than most permit applicants? “Maybe by that time, I’ll have this door open. This is a big, exciting mystery!”

  “If there’s a watch in there, don’t tell that whack-a-mole,” Steffen suggested. “And I’d like to finish hearing the end of your story.”

  “Story?”

  “You were telling me about something that happened in Daytona Beach ten years ago. You saw two men in an alley.”

  “Oh.” She visibly reddened, and started walking toward the pétanque court, toward the lawn, away from the workers. “Yes. Daytona Beach. I guess I just didn’t want you thinking I was some kind of prudish schoolmarm.”

  “You can tell me,” Steffen encouraged. “Believe you me, I see all sorts of odd things in this business.”

  They both faced the same way, standing on the lawn looking out at the vast bowl of desert ranch land and gypsum mines. “Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘odd’ per se. I was very excited and interested.” She scooted closer to Steffen so she could speak more quietly. “Like I said, one man leaned back against the wall, another man on his knees before him. He was obviously…”

  “Giving him a blow job.” Steffen filled in.

  “Yes. I must’ve been a bit drunk myself, because I stumbled toward them, away from my friends, and just stood there like a slack-jawed moron.”

  “But you liked what you saw.”

  “Yes. They were very young and buff and…hungry. They didn’t seem to care who saw them coupling like that in an alleyway. The one receiving the…”

  “Blow job.”

  “Blow job, he looked me right in the eyes. I mean, I’m sure they were gay, and that I was watching didn’t turn them on in the slightest.”

  “Or maybe they were exhibitionists.”

  “Oh, yes.” Willow’s ardor practically simmered, like heat waves emanating from her body. “But he locked eyes with me and didn’t look away, not even while he was choking and gasping and…”

  “Coming.”

  “Yes, coming.” Suddenly Willow inhaled and exhaled loudly, and finally turned to Steffen. “Whew! I don’t know what prompted that memory! Well, the St. Andrew’s Cross, obviously.” She stuck out a hand for Steffen to shake, as though they had just discussed her roofing.

  Steffen was so aroused as he shook her hand, he knew his erection would be evident, cradled in his 501s. That cut of jeans didn’t leave much to the imagination, so he swiftly turned away from the valley, back toward the parking lot. “I’ve got to get over to Lone Palm Ranch. Guy’s added a tack room. He’s your neighbor, actually. You can see the cattle from here.”

  “Oh, I used to love riding horses in Florida. I could do that, if I could ever get an hour away from this damned remodel. Well, I’ve got a dinner to go to. I suppose that’ll be my public outing for the month.”

  Willow’s rueful sigh led Steffen to believe she wasn’t that excited about the prospect of the dinner date. As he walked back to his company truck, he realized he was jealous of her date. Just as fervently as he wanted to keep Ronnie Dobbs off the property of the Searchlight Motel, he wanted to know which knuckle-dragger was taking Willow to dinner.

  All the way down into the valley, Steffen couldn’t stop thinking about the shapely motel owner. She was quite a gem, just like her lovely Desert Modern establishment. Yes. She was sublime, and he simply had to have her.

  Chapter Three

  “Okay, I’m going to have to issue a stop work order,” said Steffen Jung. He stood on nearly the top step of an eight foot ladder looking at the ceiling of the new tack room. His well-rounded ass in the tight, worn jeans was so luscious Amadeo’s penis lengthened and plumped. Just watching this delicious specimen of manhood stand, move—hell, do anything— was a joy to behold. “The structural plans for ceiling joists were approved using two-by-fours. Your contractor used one-by-fours. And this load-bearing beam is only a double two-by-ten. Should be a triple.”

  “Uh-huh,” Amadeo said vaguely, practically drooling as he looked up. Steffen Jung had aged like a fine wine in the twenty-two years—Jesus, has it been that long? I feel ancient—since high school. It was obvious Steffen didn’t remember Amadeo, who had been a sophomore when Steffen had reigned as varsity quarterback, homecoming king, and masturbation fantasy for every horny teenage girl, and young men of certain inclinations. Such as Amadeo.

  “And these metal gussets are much too feeble. Where’
d he get them, a cereal box?”

  “Uh-huh.” Amadeo was practically senseless with lust. Usually boys who were hotshots in school turned out to be doughy bastards and losers later in life. That had been his experience, anyway. He ran into some of those high school jocks in his forays into Last Chance or Palm Springs for supplies. He’d even stumbled into a few of them at the Racquet Club, the coed bondage dungeon in Last Chance. He’d had the unfortunate experience of viewing a member of the high school wrestling team in one room at the club, swinging spread-legged trussed up in a sling. That image had ruined any play for the entire night—and for many nights thereafter. Latex G-strings would just never be the same again.

  But Steffen Jung was finer than ever. He had even improved with age, if such a thing was possible. He had grown into his looks. The slight crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the stubble sprinkled across his chiseled jaw, the sinewy forearms when he made a fist and knocked on a beam—Amadeo was entranced. Whereas the other jocks seemed to have slid into a careless mindset where they let their bodies go, maybe thinking that after age thirty it was all downhill, the forty-year-old Steffen was more superb than ever, more carved than any of the vaqueros or hands who worked for Amadeo.

  “Who’s your contractor, anyway?”

  When Steffen looked down, Amadeo knew his hard-on was obvious. He wore the leather chaps he favored when he had to ride through the creosote bushes, prickly pear, and ocotillo. They cradled the bulge of his cock nicely. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. Steffen obviously didn’t recall him from school, and he’d already said he was issuing a stop work order. What did Amadeo have to lose?

  “El Mirador Construction. Run by Chas White. Do you know them?”

  “Sounds familiar for some reason.” Steffen had started to descend the ladder, but stopped, looking into the distance thoughtfully. “Right. The place I was just inspecting, Chas White was the contractor, too. Is he around right now?”

  “I doubt it,” said Amadeo. “I’ve never actually seen the guy. That’s probably why the workers didn’t build it to specs. There seems to be a disconnect between Chas and his men.” It was all Amadeo could do to refrain from gripping Steffen by the hips, yanking up his sweaty button-down shirt, and taking an enormous fat lick from his salty abdomen. His face was just two feet from Steffen’s glorious crotch, and that was not a gun in the quarterback’s pocket, nor was he happy to see Amadeo. No, his dick was long and fat, just as Amadeo recalled it from watching Steffen shower ages ago.

  Steffen continued down the ladder, wiping his sawdusty hands on his jeans. “Are there any workers around at the moment, maybe working elsewhere on the property?”

  There were some laborers working on the back deck of his house, but Amadeo didn’t want to leave the privacy of the tack room. “Where did you just come from? I mean, where else was Chas White working? If his work is shoddy all over town, something should be done.”

  His ruse worked. Steffen wandered over to a wall where hooks held bits and bridles. Steffen first looked at a regular saddle rack, but his eyes soon wandered to a hook where Amadeo had carelessly slung a few collars, shackles, and cuffs—items obviously too small for horses. One never knew when a playmate would arrive at his ranch. Amadeo did not do long-term relationships, and he didn’t associate with his play partners outside of a scene, so he would not be horseback riding with them. But he had already foreseen the endless possibilities when he’d had this new tack room built.

  “Oh, it’s the new Searchlight Motel that’s being refurbished. You know where that is?”

  Amadeo came closer to his old idol. “Yeah, I noticed some work being done there.” Of course he had. The Searchlight was only about four blocks away from the Racquet Club. “That thing’s been decrepit as long as I can remember.”

  Yes. Steffen was definitely inspecting a studded collar that hung by a D-ring. There could only be one possible use for that. “You’ve been around Last Chance for awhile.”

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be useful to reminisce about the ole Twelve Palms High days until later. Much, much later. Steffen had probably never taken note of Amadeo even back in the day. Amadeo was Italian and had been pretty much a pot-smoking thug, into playing guitar with his grunge band. They definitely had not run with the same crowds. “Yeah. My dad started this ranch when he came here from Italy. I’ve been stuck here for quite awhile.”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. I’ve come to be really fascinated by the architecture.” Steffen’s tone changed now, and he reached out to finger a pair of fleece-lined handcuffs dangling from a hook. “Hm. This must be the day for finding stuff like this.”

  What the fuck. Be bold. Go for the gusto. “Stuff like what? Bondage handcuffs?” Amadeo held his breath. The building inspector would either encourage him in his kink or buckle a cuff around his wrist in anger.

  Or neither. Steffen finally turned to Amadeo, and his eyes twinkled. “Yeah. Over at the Searchlight, you wouldn’t believe what we found. A vintage St. Andrew’s Cross.”

  Amadeo was surprised that the square inspector knew what a St. Andrew’s Cross was. “You’re kidding,” he said warmly. “So it was from the fifties when that place was last operating?”

  “Sixties, I imagine. The last revenues from the Searchlight were sixty-five, when everything started going down the tubes in Palm Springs.”

  “Before the rehab,” Amadeo said, actually becoming excited about the subject. “It’s just been in the past couple of years I’ve seen Last Chance coming around again. It was real depressing before that, practically a ghost town.” The Racquet Club had opened two years ago to booming business. Other thriving businesses had followed. It only made sense someone would want to remodel the Searchlight.

  “Right. These projects are what make being a building inspector worthwhile.”

  “You mean the Searchlight, not my dull-ass tack room.”

  “Well, yeah.” Was it Amadeo’s imagination that Steffen’s look actually became sly and almost flirtatious then? Steffen did glance back at the cuffs, meaningfully. “But it looks as though you’ve got a lot in common with the former owners of the Searchlight.”

  Be bold. Amadeo was accustomed to being bold. “You mean collect bondage artifacts? I don’t just collect them. Most of mine have gotten a bit of use. This particular pair”—and he swiped the cuffs from the hook to fondle them admiringly—“just happens to be new. You never know when you might have a sudden need for a good set of cuffs. Was the cross in good shape?”

  “Yes. Damned good shape, like barely used. It looked homemade.”

  “Most of them are, or were, especially back then. You couldn’t just walk down to Walmart and pick one up. Could you tell if the owner has any interest in selling?”

  “Well, our investigation was sort of cut short—by my appointment with you, matter of fact. But yes, I don’t think she has any particular interest in keeping the cross. I could ask her. I plan to see her tomorrow. We have a feeling there might be more artifacts hidden around there, but we’ll know more tomorrow.”

  “I’d really appreciate that.” Taking another leap of faith, Amadeo plunged ahead. “Fact, we could use a new cross over at the club. Those things get pretty bashed-up with the heavy use they get, and one of ours is about to bite the dust.”

  “The club?”

  “The Racquet Club on Manilow Avenue, just down from the Searchlight.”

  Amadeo had been in the lifestyle long enough to know the startled look of recognition in someone’s face. He wondered if Steffen would admit having been there before. “Oh, sure, the club. Yeah, I think I know the cross you mean. In that room with all of the mirrors, right?”

  “Right. Were you at the club to inspect the room addition?”

  Steffen grinned so seductively there was no mistaking his attendance at the dungeon. “Nope. No inspection at all, unless you count inspecting the Domme’s techniques.”

  It was impossible to tell if Steffen said “Domme” or “Dom.” But since Amade
o was accustomed to grabbing the bull by the horns, that’s what he did.

  Still grinning, Steffen attempted to walk on by Amadeo, out the tack room’s door. Shooting out a hand, Amadeo grabbed the inspector’s forearm and firmly slammed him against a spot on the wall that had been purposefully left bare, aside from a couple of bucket hooks that held no buckets. Steffen was probably so surprised he allowed himself to be slammed, and Amadeo was so experienced within the flashing of an eye he had the building inspector cuffed to a hook, behind his back at waist level.

  He only cuffed one wrist, but Steffen didn’t raise a finger to prevent Amadeo from running his face up the sweaty side of Steffen’s throat. It was better than any erotic fantasy, breathing in the salty dampness, the slick moisture against the tip of his nose, the brushing of his lips against the stubbled jaw. It seemed that Steffen even rolled his skull back against the wooden boards to bare his naked throat to Amadeo’s mouth.

  “You’re a hot, delicious stud,” Amadeo whispered, taking a slight nip from Steffen’s earlobe. He pinned the other man to the wall with the strength of his hips, making one, two, three immense lunges to massage his stiff cock against Steffen’s crotch. Amadeo was taller than most men—a strapping, six-foot-five Paleolithic hunk of man—but Steffen was substantial enough not to get lost beneath Amadeo’s bulk. When Amadeo swayed his hips into the other man, he felt the rigid bulk of a hard shaft pressing back against him, and he humped even more energetically. The other man’s penis thanked him by nearly bringing him off when he ground against it. The quarterback could not deny that he was turned on. His enormous pulsating schlong was testimony enough.

  What a colossal toolbag I am, making a grab for Steffen Jung. But I have nothing to lose. Steffen Jung was already issuing a stop work order. It wasn’t Amadeo’s fault anyway, about the joists. It was Chas White’s fault. Chas White seemed to be a guy they both hated.

  Amadeo parted his lips and took some hungry bites from the steamy throat. “How can anyone keep their hands off you?” he sighed. Just by gyrating his hips against this man he’d had a mancrush on for decades, he’d instantly brought himself to the brink of coming. Must slow down. Must. Slow down. He nipped at Steffen’s lower lip. He swept his hand up Steffen’s hard abdomen, slinking a couple fingers between two buttons to revel in the hairy, well-developed chest.