Playing With Monsters

by Layla Wolfe

  Wolf had called him, complaining that he was “stuck” at the Leaves of Grass pot plantation with Gudrun, having to watch Tracy and Tobiah playing Jenga and giggling. Roman fumed as he rode up toward Mormon Lake. When is Wolf Glaser going to learn? You need to have something in common with a girl. Wolf wasn’t about to start playing Jenga, Klingon Boggle, or 3D chess. Wolf Glaser might be many things, but he’d never been given an atomic swirlie in school, probably the reason Tobiah’s hair was already shaped like a bowl. Wolf had not been cool, either, like Roman had. He had probably been somewhere in the middle, maybe playing in the marching band, basketballing, or smoking weed while playing with CB radios.

  Tracy was obviously getting along well with Tobiah, so why force it? It took Roman until he was almost past the lake to realize he was so angry with the Prospect due to his own experience. He and Andrea hadn’t really had much in common, not when you got down to it. She was a massively pretentious hanger-on, a wannabe model who just hitched her wagon to Roman’s star. They’d really had nothing in common other than they both enjoyed recreational drugs, rock-n-roll, and partying.

  Their backgrounds were fundamentally different. She’d been raised in some swank area of Los Angeles, so she sniffed every time a limo wasn’t a Bentley or a Rolls. For the longest time this snobbery had puffed up Roman’s ego. She only rode in Bentleys, but she liked him. He’d been living in fantasyland. He’d been blindsided when she had turned on him, when his father had been murdered—when she’d discovered who Dante Serpico was. Just a scum-sucking hit man for a fucking mobster. A hit man who had been murdered himself by the very people he worked for because he’d outlived his usefulness.

  Roman took in deep, bracing lungfuls of air as he climbed toward the weed farm. Gudrun and he obviously shared similar backgrounds. They’d both grown up in hardscrabble areas of Tucson, their mothers inexplicably in love with a sleazy Irish attorney. Roman felt at home with Gudrun, comfortable, as though they spoke each other’s language. He’d been an outcast in school, a lone hipster slinking through back alleys and rebuilding motorcycles, his hair greased back, getting inked. He was a rebel rocker even back then, confused yet impressed with his father’s job and lifestyle. Dante would be gone for days, weeks on end in his sicario activities for Tony Tormenta.

  Roman had missed a father figure, just as Gudrun had, even though Dante didn’t actually leave Yvonne until ten years ago, when Roman was well on his way to becoming the famous rocker he would be with Little Accident. He knew the absence of a father was quite common. It left a yawning loneliness that could be filled with the love of a spouse.

  Love. Roman never thought he’d use that word again in relation to a woman. He parked his ride next to Wolf’s. He knew he was in the right place due to the Camry and the “rice rocket” Suzuki that no upstanding brother in his right mind would drive. Those vehicles belonged to the plantation workers. Going around the side of the modest house, he grabbed the attention of a roly-poly guy carrying two gallon jugs of some chemical.

  “Gudrun? I think she’s with that Prospect down in the grow room.”

  Roman assumed the round-faced guy freely gave him directions because he wore a Bare Bones cut. At least, he hoped so. Workers had better not be randomly giving out instructions to just any biker off the street.

  Roman approached the long warehouse. He actually had no idea what a “grow room” was, so he was pleasantly surprised when he opened the door and stepped into a tropical wonderland. Rows and rows of fresh, live pot plants towered over his head, and he wandered down an aisle. He had not been big on smoking it the past couple of years as it tended to make him paranoid, but he still enjoyed the scent. And maybe being around such a profusion of living plants was oxygenating his brain. But suddenly he felt hyper-aware. Everything seemed to “pop” in a vibrant, lively way.

  Overhead fans circulated air, simulating a strange Hawaiian ocean of plants that swayed in the breeze. Rounding the end of a row of the trees that reached above his head, Roman stopped cold.

  There she was. She had cleared a few of the small trees off one of the rolling shelves in order to kick back with an e-reader. She looked almost like a little kid with her ankle-high boots and flowered miniskirt, her too-small T-shirt, her bright hair held back with clips.

  A surge of what could only be called love welled through Roman’s innards.

  He was going to see her, talk to her casually. Act as though he’d just popped into the plantation on his way to do club business. He was going to remind her that he was still her protector. He was going to tell her they were well on their way to taking down Riker—so what the fuck was he doing in Mormon Lake, then? He should be taking down Riker, not tracking down Gudrun. Frustration overtook him, and he rushed down the aisle toward her.

  She practically tossed aside the e-reader, her mouth a little O. Roman didn’t pause in his race to her, not even when he realized he was scaring her. All the more reason to scoop her in his arms and take her into his lap, where he caressed her like a beloved puppy.

  “Ah, Gudrun, my sweet.” He stroked her hair to calm her down, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on her.

  Her eyes remained wide and terrified. She clutched the front of his cut, her form radiantly lit from the opaque greenhouse panels above. “What the fuck, Roman? I thought you were on important club business.”

  “I was, love. I just had to break free and come see you. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  Her face softened. The grin that lifted the corners of her mouth was adorable. “I am. I’m just surprised—oh!”

  All at once, Roman was on top of her. The bench was a bleacher type of affair on wheels, fifteen feet long but only a foot wide, just enough to fit the potted plants. Straddling both one of Gudrun’s thighs and the entire width of the bench, Roman pinned her, not so subtly rubbing her pubic bone with his erection. He knew he was like a dog but he suddenly didn’t fucking care. He’d missed his chance in The Wagon Box to nail her to the wall like a hammer, and he’d been regretting it ever since.

  Not that The Wagon Box was the ideal setup for a love tryst. This greenhouse was. Roman pulled down the scoop neckline of her shirt and feasted on her nipples, poking out the top of her too-small sports bra. He sipped on her nipples, first one, then the other, as though sampling ice cream at a self-serve bar.

  Her reaction was massive. “Ah, Roman!” she practically roared. She spread her thighs like a doll with loose joints, just splayed there for his taking. Was this position not hurting her? Clutching the back of his head in her palm, she nuzzled his head to her breast in encouragement, her breaths coming short and fast.

  Her amorous squirming spurred Roman on. “I couldn’t stay away,” he mumbled, his mouth full of boob. “I kept looking for Riker and thinking about you.”

  She seemed to still then. “Wait. Looking for Riker?”

  He stilled, too. But only for a split second. He resumed lapping her nipples into frothy tips. “Looking for Riker,” he admitted, hesitant to ruin the moment by mentioning the name, “so we can avenge you and everyone else he’s ever wronged.”

  This righteous crusade seemed to warm up Gudrun. She practically purred like a warm engine, rolling her mons pubis against the ridge of his erection. His ball sac filled with seed, and he was afraid he might squirt inside his jeans like some fucking teenager. “Ah, Roman, I missed you something big. I haven’t seen you since—” She went quiet, seemingly shy.

  He filled in for her. “Since you fucked me up the ass with that flashlight at The Wagon Box.”

  Luckily for him, this memory seemed to be a good one for the girl. She rubbed her bone so ardently, it mashed the ridge of his stimulated glans, and this time he did spritz a couple drops of precum. How many groupies had he fucked in his time—thousands? And here he was, humping her on a bleacher like a teenager, within seconds of creaming his own jeans. Had she even been fucked since her accident? Roman knew he should go slow, but like a hormonal teen, he simply couldn’t.r />
  “Yes,” she murmured, shimmying her tits against his cheek. “You seemed to like getting fucked up the ass by that thing.”

  “What’s not to like?” he admitted, moving his torso off of hers. For a few seconds he looked down at her all splayed out like that. All her defenses were down, and he realized that she trusted him implicitly. This was a huge burden and honor to bear, and the pride was almost too much for him. To cover up the sappiness of the moment, he dipped at the waist again, but this time his mouth aimed to taste her cunt again.

  “Oh, no, Roman!” she squealed. She sure didn’t seem to care who heard her. And where the fuck was Wolf Glaser, her bodyguard? Playing The Settlers of Catan with Tracy and Tobiah? “No, I can’t fucking take it! I’m too sensitive right now. You touch me with your mouth and I’m just going to go off like a rocket!”

  That got to him, “go off like a rocket.” Giving her pussy a few munches through the thin lining of her panties, she did nearly skyrocket off the fucking bench, so Roman again sat up, swiftly letting his hard-on out into the pleasant, climate-controlled air. Softly, he asked, “Are you okay, Gudrun? I mean…I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her eyes were open and round, trusting. In fact, she was the one fingering aside the strip of her panties, exposing her bulging sex to his view. “Hurt? Nothing hurts me right now, Roman. Especially not you.”

  So, barebacking it like the idiot he had never been in his most plastered groupie days, Roman slid on into her, just one long, enormous, swelling and mounting sensation of ecstasy. His balls practically fluttered with anticipation of spending their load inside this delicious female. He had to ease into her slowly or he’d spew his wad instantly.

  To distract himself, he looked down at her and talked. “Gudrun. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you. I couldn’t admit it because…”

  There was that delicious smile at the edges of her mouth. Her pussy was hot, slick, inviting, clearly ready for him. It seemed to suck at his dick like a sexy siren, enticing him to greater heights of sensitivity than he’d known he was capable of. Holy Jesus on a stick, if he moved just one inch deeper inside this delicious woman he’d lose it.

  She filled in for him. “Because you have a higher mission. Because you don’t have time for a simple woman like me. You have bigger things to do.”

  Roman choked back a laugh at their absurd situation. “I think you have bigger things to do.”

  Her laugh was so delightful, and she threw her arms around him with such abandon, he drove deeper into her. Just barely hanging on by a thread now, he gasped like a bad soap opera actor. His breath came raggedly, as if each pant ripped a new hole in his lungs.

  She, however, seemed supremely in control. Her lips parted seductively against his. “I want to feel you come deep inside me, Roman. I want to feel your big, fat cock fill me with your jizz. I can feel it flexing inside me, pumped up, all fat and filled with cream.” One of her hands slid over his haunch, parting the globes of his ass. Oh dear God, was she going to…yes. Yes, she was.

  He tried to talk through it, to pant, to breathe. He didn’t want her knowing how badly she had him in the palm of her hand, quite literally. “I’m going to find Riker for you, Gudrun. I’m going to find that asshole and end him.”

  But the moment he said “asshole” her devious little fingertips had reached his. She petted the puckered hole with the pads of her fingers, wet with his sweat and her saliva. “Darling,” she cooed. She had an uncanny ability to clench her inner pussy around his pulsating rod, too. Each clench was like a giant hand jerking off his dick, and despite his best efforts, Roman felt the floodgates open. The jizz inevitably crept up the length of his penis until it burst. “Just let go. Let go inside of me.”

  When she swirled her fingertip around his hole, Roman didn’t need any more encouragement. He flooded her with his juices. His entire body stiffened up as though having a seizure, only his cock throbbing and pumping into the woman. His brain seemed to shut down for a few moments. All he was aware of was the bliss that drained his pelvis, his balls tightening up against his body, her finger stroking his asshole. Eventually, he felt the cooling breeze of the overhead fans. He smelled the pungent, fresh vegetable aroma of the pot trees around them.

  Gudrun soothed him. “That’s it. So fucking good, Roman. I’ve never been drilled by such a man. Oh god, my pussy wants it. I want it. That’s it. Just fill me to the brim. I love your taste, Roman. Your sweat, your neck, your shoulder just like velvet. I want all of you.”

  He was almost lulled into some weird tropical sensation after a while. He didn’t pull out—for some reason he didn’t want to leave a huge puddle behind on the bleacher, so he left his half-mast dick inside her, like a plug. It was almost like he drifted on a sandy beach with the fans and the waving plumage of the trees. But that only lasted so long. Even his distant, remote paradise could be popped like a balloon by the arrival of another asshat.

  “Hey Wolf! You’re never going to believe what fucking pinged off this fucking Fitbit. Good thing those Chinese are concerned about their weight and maybe stop dining at Wo Fat’s so much—whoa.”

  Roman lazily lifted his head. He could only see Tobiah’s pencil-thin red pants and white vinyl belt, but he didn’t have to see any more. “Tobiah…” he said, nearly snoozing.

  Tobiah made a nominal effort to turn around, to not watch the couple. “That’s okay. I’ll find Wolf. Don’t get up. Where is Wolf, anyway? Isn’t he supposed to be with you, Gudrun? Don’t answer that. I’ll find him myself.”

  Gudrun struggled to lift herself, too. They were like two sleeping people on an ocean liner in the middle of the night being told to grab a life raft. No one was sure what was going on. “What did you get off the Fitbit?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” Tobiah’s giant ego couldn’t tolerate being shoved down for long, though, for he burst out with, “I found the computer the Chinese are using! It’s near the Glen Canyon dam, right at the border with Utah, and I’m positive your friend Shannon is, or was, right there!”

  Wolf Glaser came running out of the pot jungle, of course the second he wasn’t needed. Roman was just shoving his rubbery cock into his jeans and attempting to stand when the Prospect practically bowled him over again.

  “How do you know?” Wolf asked excitedly. “I mean, isn’t there a huge margin for error in these things? You can only track it within a ten mile radius, for example.”

  Tobiah looked about to say “pshaw” and buff his fingernails on his shirt. “It was just a lucky break the model of pedometer the guy wore had GPS. He paid extra to know exactly which routes he took.” Tobiah giggled with excitement. “I can see exactly where he jogged around Tucson before nabbing Shannon and her vehicle. He took quite a run around the ol’ meteor crater before going to shoot Speed at the Wagon Box. Now, the satellite caching is extremely slow on this model…”

  “Well, that’s fucking handy,” said Gudrun, swinging her legs around to sit like a proper spectator on the bench. “Did you get anything off the cellphone we gave you?”

  Roman was irritated that these people seemed to be making more progress than him. But it was all in the name of club solidarity, so he couldn’t mind. “Yeah, I took a burner phone off the riceman, too.”

  Tobiah held up a forefinger. “Right. Again, I just compared it to other phones to show he’s in cahoots with Riker and a Sammy Hung of 118 Date Street, Page, Arizona. Right by the Glen Canyon Dam.”

  “Brilliant, Tobiah!” cried Gudrun.

  Wolf remained a bit more skeptical, looking at the IT guy askance. “You still don’t know that Shannon’s at that location. You don’t know anything at all. In fact, you stopped being able to track the guy’s jogging path the second Roman here shot him. The guy stopped exercising altogether!”

  Gudrun slapped Wolf’s leg. “Oh, shut up, will you? He’s got a lead, anyway.”

  Which is more than I can say for myself. Roman spoke up. “I’ll get right on that, Tobiah. I’ll get together a
crew and take a ride up to this Page place.”

  But when he looked down at Gudrun, expecting to see shining gratitude in her face, instead all he saw was a crestfallen woman who had just been fucked and left. Her face was beginning to screw up in a way that didn’t bode well, and he knew he’d made an error. “Or…” he said experimentally, waiting for a change in her expression. “I could stay here with Gudrun while someone else gets together a crew.”

  Gudrun sighed. He could tell she swallowed her feelings for the betterment of the club. She patted Roman’s leg now. “It’s okay, Roman. You go. I want you to go.”

  He grabbed her hand and cradled it in his. “Are you sure? You’ll be stuck with only Wolf to guard you.”

  “Hey!” shouted Wolf. “I’m a damn fucking good bodyguard.”

  “Oh yeah?” goofed Tobiah. “Is that why you were off sampling some of our Young Man Blue while your boss here was greasing Gudrun’s wheel?”

  “Hey!” shouted Wolf again, perhaps miffed that Tobiah was using some of his own lingo. “I was fully aware he was sawing off a chunk while I politely stayed down at the other end of the greenhouse. It’s not my fault there’s a sample drying rack down there.”

  Roman lifted Gudrun’s hand to help her stand. He wanted to get away from those two goons, so they wandered off down the aisle.

  “You’re sure about this? I’ll be gone another few days.”

  “It’s for the good of the club, right? And of course, for Shannon. You’re not doing anyone any good guarding me. It’s a job Wolf can easily do.”

  Why did Roman feel so uneasy about it, then? They were far away enough now from the arguing men, so he turned and faced Gudrun, taking both her hands in his. He kissed her hands. “We’ll get this fucking thing ironed out, my sweet. It’s a new beginning.”

  “Yes,” she agreed simply. “Just that our new beginning is taking longer than anyone else’s.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN