by Amanda Jones
I do like red meat more, and no matter how much I eat now, I stay the same size. Slightly plump.
But no super powers.
Though Rufen burns easily, the sun don’t kill him.
I get nice and tan.
The other effect the infection has on me is that I can bear Rufen’s children. Or his litter. I’m not sure what the right term is.
Lucky me.
“I don’t want to do that in front of you Aubrey.” How far he would go with this? He’s a nice pup at heart, always has been. I wanted him to lay me down and take my in the leaves, but playing with myself for his enjoyment stretched my limits. I’m not shy, but I’ve never let anyone watch me masturbate. “It’s too private.”
He yanked my hands up with one hand wrapped in his lasso. Whap. The switch burned my right thigh.
“Oww,” I yelled.
“I seen you, Jes. I know you don’t mind this that much.”
He was right. The burning spread from my thigh and right to my sex. Before Rufen, I would have screamed crazy murder and kicked Aubrey where it hurts. Since Rufen’s infection, though, sensations like Aubrey’s swat just made me more excited.
“You want me to stop? I’ll quit if you say the word.”
The smooth river pebbles mixed into the sand at the forest side of my little beach pressed into my soles. The rope burned around my wrist, much better suited for lassoing a running calf than for binding my gentle skin. But I’m sick and the roughness thrilled me.
“Oweee!” The switch found my other thigh, and more heat rose to my bud, shooting between my lips, my own moisture dripping and adding to the flow to the distant sea.
The maple switch’s heat slashed away my shyness. But, I wanted to push him a little further. After the ungentle passions Josiah Rufen hooked me on, I needed to see how far the boy could go.
“Fuck you, I won’t do it.” I looked at him from under my bangs, willing him to take my bait.
Slap! Another strike. “I said play with yourself.” He struck me again. And then again.
Hot welts sprang up on my naked thighs, and an electric tingle shot into my sex. My bud swelled, seeking attention.
five
“You giving in?” Aubrey held the switch up. “I can do this all day.”
“Can you?” I stuck my fingers into my mouth. Aubrey’s chest heaved as he sucked in his breath.
I moved my lubricated fingers to my sex, rubbing them over my slippery mound. I stroked the lips of my pussy.
My disease-enhanced passion rose in me like the hottest fire, clouding my brain.
Staring, Aubrey dropped the tip of his switch.
The maple rod left me dripping and slick. I stuck two fingers into myself, and rubbed my clit at the same time with my thumb. Aubrey’s mouth dropped open.
“Oooh,” I moaned, rubbing faster. The rope tore at my wrists. I had to hold my left hand high to keep enough slack so I could frig myself with my right.
I imagined my fingers were his, and closed my eyes.
Josiah Rufen’s scarred face popped into my head. I felt his undead fingers, cool and rough, pushing into me. Slapping my ass. Cursing and calling me bad names. I hated him, but I could not purge him from my mind, even with a sweet boy posturing in front of me, trying hard to be dominant.
“That’s enough.”
Aubrey pulled the rope tight, jerking my hand from my pussy.
“No,” I whimpered. My labia gaped open, my clit reaching upward. Wanting something to replace my slick fingers. Soon.
“Stand up,” Aubrey ordered.
six
An eagle cried, breaking me free from my memories.
The rumble of an American motorcycle echoed off the mountain’s red shoulders. Clouds of mustard colored dust swirled through the creekside dogwoods and Rocky Mountain maples and followed the sound out over the sage covered plain.
I watched my rider go. He’d just brought me a message. My friendship with Aubrey Wills had come to the attention of the Sunwalkers Motorcycle Club and they were driving here, led by Rufen. Josiah Rufen, my first love and the man I despised more than anyone alive.
He’d begun his courtship several months ago, soon after my mother died. My mother, who had been his wife. Rufen’d smashed through the door and roped me into a fiery romance. I had been slipping into an unrecoverable intimacy, but one that died soon after beginning, when I discovered what he craved.
Josiah Rufen wasn’t after my love.
The sound of the rider’s bike faded and a desert breeze blew soft. Emerald fields of alfalfa watered by Maple Creek waved around me. My creek, my water. The water that provided grass for the horses and cattle of my ranch also fed my business, the custom leather company my father founded after returning from the wars overseas. At the large warehouse, just past the green fields, we took in rawhide from surrounding ranches and my herd, and sent out custom jackets painted in brilliant colors, vests and pants with intricate designs, and crops, whips, saddles, and boots. My mother and father built this business in the middle of nowhere, and I still used my dad’s designs and contacts.
The factory’s name, Maple Creek Leathers, was known worldwide, with my parents’ legacy carried on by me alone.
A situation Josiah Rufen lusted to end.
seven
Beyond the adobe colored warehouse sage covered slopes rose, broken only by cedar trees, alone and in small clumps, casting long shadows in the afternoon sun. Crimson spires shoved their shoulders through the ground, stark and eroded, slowly crumbling like children’s sand castles frozen in the act of collapsing.
The dirt road away from Maple Creek Ranch cut a pale line from my spread, curving around several sage covered rises before disappearing over Signal Hill to the west where the track then ran along the red foothills eventually leading to the city of Kayena.
The roar of motorcycles broke the silence and nine sharp shapes crested Signal Hill. They raced up fast and skidded in the gravel parking lot, throwing stones and tearing ruts.
The nine engines stopped and silence rushed back like water released from a dam.
The lead rider dismounted and stood before me, his hair standing out around his head. Josiah Rufen raised his arm, ropes of lean muscle bulging as he made a fist.
“Where’s Wills?”
I shrugged.
“Word’s gone out that he needed to come see me in Brecklan. Instead, he shot the place up and ran. I sent a message here with one of your hands.”
Brecklan’s the nearest settlement, a vampire infested half-empty copper mining town roosting beneath Polidor Butte.
“I didn’t give him your message.” No way would I tell Aubrey to go down to face Rufen. Not by himself.
Wild auburn curls escaping from my bun teased my neck. I touched my face. I wanted a mirror to check if eye shadow dribbled in wild streaks from the corners of my eyes along with the sweat beading and dripping down my face.
Rufen’s eyebrows dropped low. He raised his lip, showing his teeth. He lifted his hand, stepping forward.
“I should take you over my knee right here—,” He stopped himself, and motioned to his men.
I locked my eyes to his, chin high. With a predator, you can’t show weakness.
There are rules even the old ones have to follow. He’d have to get me to say yes to his proposal. Josiah Rufen couldn’t beat the word from me.
He’d tried that already.
“Johnny, go in and find Wills. Bring him out here.”
Five riders trotted toward my house, leather pants creaking and the wallet chains snaking from their belts into their back pockets clanking softly when they walked.
eight
“What the hell are you doing?” I stamped my foot. I’d played brat to his alpha male in the bedroom, but that was the past and he had no right to order his men to search my place.
“If you want to take Aubrey, you should wait until he’s left. I don’t want your thugs tracking their dusty boots all over my rugs.”
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My temperature rose, anger flashing through me.
I met his accusing eyes without flinching, though inside I trembled. A part of me wanted to submit to my old master again.
“What do you want him for, anyway? He wasn’t the one that shot up Brecklan last night. He was here the whole time.” I drew in a shaking breath. “On my couch, with his gun locked in my safe.”
“Why do you protect him, Jeslie? You’re a Sunwalker familiar, as your mother was and yet you roll around with this useless stray, like a bitch in heat,” Rufen hissed through clenched teeth.
“He’s not useless.” I tensed. I couldn’t grow fangs and suck blood, but I’d do some damage to him if he kept pushing me like this.
Or expire in the effort.
“He’s a great racer; he took the UMA series twice for Maple Creek.” My father sponsored riders in the great races, and orders always increased when one of our riders won a series title.
“And he saved Faith Askel’s life last year.”
Rufen grimaced like the girl’s name disgusted him. “I’m not here about Faith. I’m here about treachery. In the form of Aubrey Wills. A wolf, not even one of The Restored. I told you to stop messin’ with him, and here you are, hiding him.”
I stamped my foot, raising a cloud of dust. ‘The Restored’ is what Rufen’s kind called themselves. As in, restored to Adam’s state of immortality. As if drinking blood to see eternity was what Jesus would do.
“You want my body, but you don’t want my heart. You want my land. You want my business. You want my babies. You want me to obey you. But, you don’t care about my love.”
Rufen’s pale, unlined face flushed around his hairline and his neck at the collar. Like he had many times before, he rolled his eyes at my words.
“Do you love him, Jeslie? That barely weaned pup?”
His lower lip jutted. So, the great Josiah Rufen, Prince of The Restored, was jealous.
I stared back into his shadowed eyes. His hair shone like a halo with the light at his back. He moved his head to the side, letting the sun shine in my eyes. The sudden glare made me squint.
“Maybe I do.”
Rufen cracked his knuckles with a popping sound that startled the crows sitting in the big dogwood on the south side of the gravel lot. One croaked a warning and the flock took flight.
“You know what they call a bunch of crows? A murder. That’s what’s going to happen to your lover boy now.”
nine
“Move!”
Rufen’s boys appeared, pushing a man before them. I put my hand to my mouth, shocked seeing my young lover with his arms held behind his back. His shirt fell unbuttoned, as if they caught him while he was sleeping. Since Aubrey lost his house and bike to the bank, he’d been drinking too much. It showed in his rumpled clothes, the same clothes he’d worn when I caught him watching me bathe. His garb had been wrinkled and well used then, and he looked worse now.
Though his attire was not impressive, I admired his stance. He strode forward with wide steps, and with his head low and his shoulders straining his ragged shirt. His gaze held steady on Rufen, with no hint of submission.
I bit my lower lip and ran my tongue along my teeth. I wanted him now, back beneath the willows along Maple Creek.
“Boy, you need to be gone.” Rufen’s words washed over me like icy water.
My mostly innocent young friend might die here today, and I couldn’t think of anything that would save him.
“I know what you want, but I won’t do it. Why should I?” Aubrey crossed his arms over his chest, defiant.
“Because, I’m telling you to,” Rufen snarled.
“You can tell me all you want. I’m not leaving unless Jeslie tells me.” Aubrey lowered his chin, glaring at Rufen from beneath his brows. “You hate that she wants me to stay.”
“I’m giving you one chance to leave, for Jeslie’s sake. You don’t take it, I’ll whip you right here and leave you in the canyons.”
ten
Rufen uncurled a bull-whip from his belt. With ten feet of braided Kangaroo-hide, the thing made a fluid weapon designed to get the attention of a thousand-pound steer. The rough braided leather would tear Aubrey’s soft flesh from his shoulders in strips.
Jagged bits of metal shone in the sun, twisted into the braids.
Silver! Aubrey was too youthful to turn into a wolf without moonlight, and the silver shards would tear wounds that wouldn’t heal.
“You can’t do that,” I cried.
“I can, Jeslie, and I will. And I’ll use it on you if you try and stop me.”
Rufen snapped the whip with a crack like a rifle shot.
“This ain’t one of the play toys you like, girl.”
“That whip will kill him!” I screamed.
“No. I can’t whip him to death. There’s a pact. But I can whip him within a yard of death, and let the empty canyons finish the work,” Rufen’s voice was firm. Final. Like the way he read the words at my mama’s funeral.
“You put this pup here. You belong to the Sunwalkers, by blood right. Your people have forbidden you to speak with lobo dogs like this one, much less —,” Rufen spat into a clump of sage brush on the side of the lot, “fuck them. You should know your place. You’re a familiar, you can give us children. Your father could build all this because he obeyed the rules. Your mother was able to leave you all this because I obeyed the rules. It’s your turn to obey now.”
Rufen popped the whip again. For all his ragged bravery, Aubrey Wills flinched.
“You could have avoided all this, but now you’ll need to learn a hard lesson. You’ll see lover-boy here whipped and dragged through the coyote brush until his flesh falls from his bones!”
eleven
I tugged at my hair. “Please Rufen. Josiah. Just let him leave. You don’t need to hurt him with that thing.”
My spine weakened. Alone here, in charge after my mother left, keeping the cows fed and the factory running along, I’d grown used to being the boss. To being listened to. But before Rufen’s set jaw and narrow eyes, I was helpless. Like watching a great storm rolling over the plains, shredding the cedars and throwing the creek-side willows around like sage brush, I couldn’t anymore stop the scene happening here than I could command lightning to strike.
Rufen’s man Johnny yanked Ned’s torn shirt off his back, showing skin gleaming from sweat.
Rufen spat again. “Wills, can you stand there for your whipping, or do I need my boys to tie you down?” He lifted his chin in the air. His face born a righteous look, though his familiar sadistic smile hid beneath. The smile he used to wear when he whipped me.
“I can stand it.” Aubrey didn’t look at his tormentor, instead he stared into the distance, his voice sharp and clear. “You should just kill me, though. If you whip me I will hunt you. I won’t rest ‘til I return the favor.”
Rufen drew back his teeth and licked his lips, like he planned to settle down for a delicious feast rather than the unjust beating of a pup. His fingers caressed the leather in his hand as he curled it.
“The little dog can’t stand it. Chain him boys.” One of Rufen’s men pulled a long chain from his saddlebag. Two others grabbed Aubrey from behind. He cursed and strained but could not prevail against Rufen’s riders, and they soon had him chained with his arms in front of him.
“Josiah, please.” I shook my head as if I could blunt his intent with the motion. “I don’t love him. I’ll obey you again. Like I did before. Just don’t hurt Aubrey. Don’t whip him.”
“Too late.”
I bowed my head. Water spurted from my eyes and soaked into the dry gravel making a darker spot on the yellow dust. I let out my breath and my shoulders slumped. My white dress flopped in the breeze like a surrender flag. I would have to watch Aubrey being whipped bloody and dragged behind a motorcycle. Embodied by Rufen’s fist wrapped around woven animal skin, fate’s iron hand controlled the situation, leaving me no lever to push for change.
; Between my feet, my tears watered a sage seedling lodged in the gravel, doing whatever they could to bring life to the dry stones.
No being should be made to hurt the way Rufen planned to hurt Aubrey.
twelve
I squared my shoulders and stared at the surrounding hills. Someone must hear the banging of my heart, so loud in my head I swear echoes were bouncing from the dry wine-colored hills.
Someone must come to help me.
Rufen’s gang stood there muttering and creaking in their leathers. They shifted in the heat, waiting for their master to start his work.
The nervous sounds stopped. I heard the throaty roar of a heavy motorcycle engine from beyond Signal Hill.
“What’s that,” one cried.
“That’s a nice bike,” said another.
I spun ‘round and squinted into the sun. At first just a silhouette showed against the glare. Then it resolved to a man on a motorcycle, shimmering as he rode over hill’s edge and out the sunlight’s direct path.
Rufen turned away from Aubrey.
“Who is he? Where did he come from?” He turned to his riders, holding his hands out.
“I’d know that bike if I’d heard it before,” grunted the man to Rufen’s right.
“That machine’s got purpose,” spat another.
“He’s all in black,” said the one called Johnny.
Rufen waved his hand and the men went silent. He stepped between Aubrey and the arriving rider.
thirteen
Maple Creek Ranch housed way too many gas-sucking machines to pay the retail prices charged at Dollar Gallon in Brecklan. Like many wilderness ranches at the end of a long road, I kept my own source fed by a three-thousand gallon underground tank. The rider pulled next to the weathered metal pump protruding from the gravel parking lot, dust waves settling behind him. He flipped his key and his engine’s thunder died.
