by Jessie Cooke
He grabbed hold of Kay and with one arm he flipped her over on her belly. Becca smiled and scoot up toward the headboard, letting her legs fall open automatically as she did. Kay didn’t waste any time, and by the time Gunner slipped his hard cock into Kay’s tight pussy from behind, she was lapping at her friend’s pussy. Becca had her eyes closed now, and she was arched up off the bed, reaching back to hold onto the headboard. Gunner used one hand to grab onto one of Kay’s breasts and Becca had a hand on the other one. He thrust up and forward and Kay thrust back into him until they fell into a hot, erotic, rhythm. She was moaning into Becca’s pussy and that seemed to stimulate her friend into making even more loud, sexy noises. Once again Gunner was completely overstimulated. He let go of Kay’s breast and grabbed her hips with both hands and began to drill her. His and Kay’s movements got rough and frenetic, and when she had her orgasm she dropped down flat onto Becca’s body underneath her. Gunner was right on the edge, and it was hard for him to stop, but he wanted to say he fucked them both. He pulled out of Kay and let her roll off before he plunged up into Becca. She was soaking wet, and she cried out and brought her long legs up around his waist, clamping onto him like a vise with her muscular thighs. Kay lay on her side gasping for air but every so often she sucked one of Becca’s little breasts into her mouth while Gunner fucked her. He had sweat rolling off him and he felt like he was on his last breath when he finally gave in to the orgasm that had been threatening to explode since the girls walked in the room. He pounded into her relentlessly as he held onto her thin hips, and at last he felt like his insides shattered and his balls exploded. For the second time since he’d been on the ranch he had an orgasm that threatened to overshadow every other one he would have in his life.
8
“Fifteen thousand dollars.” The man talking was dressed in a suit that probably cost at least that much. It was quite the contrast to the old converted barn he was standing in. Another man, somewhere in his fifties and dressed in a flannel shirt, boots, and jeans, that probably cost less than the other man’s tie all told, sat on a stool a few feet away. His brow was covered in sweat and his lip was split. A few drops of blood covered his chin and the front of the white t-shirt that poked out from underneath the flannel one. He looked like he was trying to decide if he should say anything or not, especially because the two young guys that stood behind him had split his lip and maybe broken one of his ribs the last time he opened his mouth. “Well?” the rich, impatient man asked. “Where is my money?”
The sweating man wiped his brow with the back of his hand and with a lisp he hadn’t had before he said, “I used it, Eddie, to set all this up.”
“You used it?” Eddie’s voice sounded quiet and smooth, yet menacing all the same.
“Yes,” the older man said, excitedly. “By the time tonight is over we’ll have it back tenfold. We’ve got some big spenders here from Dallas and Houston and that MC just set up in town, the Head Hunters or some shit…”
“And your fighters, they’re here too, right?” Eddie’s tone indicated he knew the answer to that and he wasn’t happy about it.
“Well, Red Crow is here…”
“True, that’s true. I saw the big Indian down the hall; that motherfucker looked ready for a fight.” There was a creepy tone in his voice. “My people are out there taking money on that guy left and right. Money they might have to refund if nobody shows up to fight his big ass. See, the story I got was that your boy… Gunner, is it? Story goes that the boy you staked all this on, Kinley…your very life even…hasn’t even shown up yet. I do hate rumors, messy things. I’m hoping that’s all this is, a nasty rumor. The Puerto Rican boy is in the back somewhere fixing that long, pretty hair of his and he’ll be ready to go any time now, right?”
“Well, not yet, Eddie, but…”
Eddie took a step toward Kinley and lowered his voice so he could barely be heard above the sounds of breathing in the room. “You have exactly one hour to find that little pretend biker prick and make sure he understands he’s not only going to fight tonight, he’s going to win…that is, if he wants to live.”
“He’ll win, Eddie. You saw the video of the last fight, right? This kid is undefeated. He’s an animal in the ring. He’s going to make us a killing.”
Eddie snickered. “Yeah, he’s going to win, if he shows up. You know how I know that? Because I made sure of it. If he doesn’t show up…” Eddie let that hang in the air for a few seconds and then said, “I’m leaving here tonight with my money either way.”
Listening quietly from underneath the floorboards Gunner looked at Billy and said, “What the fuck is going on?”
Gunner had shown up fifteen minutes before the fight was supposed to begin. He was surprised Billy and Patty hadn’t seemed happy to see him. Before anyone else saw him, Patty told Billy to get him the hell out of the bar while she pushed his Harley out of sight. Gunner was confused, but didn’t have any time to ask questions before Billy was urging him out the back door and they were running across the field that stretched between Patty’s bar and Kinley Bonner’s farm. The big old barn was already surrounded by cars and trucks and motorcycles, but the two boys had grown up sneaking on and off the properties in the county, and even in the dark they knew where they were going. Billy led him to the double doors in the ground behind the barn. They pulled them up and took the narrow stairwell down to the cellar below. It was dark but Gunner saw the finger that Billy put to his lips. He pointed at the floor above them and then at his ear. They’d been listening for over ten minutes by the time Eddie walked out and when Billy didn’t immediately answer his first question Gunner said:
“How did Kinley get mixed up with Eddie?” Kinley Bonner was a third-generation farmer. Sure, he had been the one to start the Saturday night fights, but to the men in the small farming community it had been as harmless as a friendly poker game: a way to relax after a hard week of working sixteen-hour days. It was nowhere near on the scale of anything Eddie Martini should be interested in.
Eddie Martini was born Edward Martin. He changed his name right out of high school when he started running books for some guy in San Antonio. By the time he was in his twenties he was running his own small but successful gambling operation. He was also pimping out some of the neighborhood girls. One of those girls was Gunner’s mother, and that was how he first came to be in Gunner’s life.
Gunner knew Eddie as the guy who came by once a week or more to collect money from his mom for years. Sometimes he’d spend the night behind his mother’s closed door, and sometimes he’d even bring candy or a toy for Gunner. Eddie was never mean to his mom, at least not in front of him, so Gunner had a hard time understanding why his mother seemed so afraid of the man, until after she died and Gunner was on the streets. He found out quickly that her fear had been well-placed. Eddie’s sharp clothing and handsome face housed a monster inside, and the kids that worked for him referred to him, behind his back, as “Eddie Munster.”
Eddie had a small army of kids working for him. They were mostly runaways or junkies that he supplied and then demanded payment with whatever the kid had to offer. Gunner heard stories about how some of those kids went missing when they refused to do something Eddie asked of them, or talked about him to anyone. No one ever saw them again unless it was on a slab at the morgue. He steered clear of Eddie and his “business” for as long as he could, but after almost a year on the streets, cold and alone and only eleven years old, he gave in. Billy was already working for him and that was how they met. The first job Gunner did for Eddie was simply carrying a package across town and picking up another to bring back to Eddie’s guy. He made enough cash to eat real food for a couple of weeks, and to a street urchin that was a windfall. The draw to make more was just too tempting, and before long he and Billy were running packages all over San Antonio. It was all good at first and even when the two boys found Patty and a safe warm place to sleep every night, the temptation to keep making that money was too great to give i
t up.
For a while, Gunner didn’t know exactly what was in the packages, and he didn’t care. He only found out what he was carrying when he was about thirteen and got caught up in a sting the police had set up. He delivered a package to an undercover police officer. As soon as he took the package full of money from the cop he was arrested. Gunner found out fast that they didn’t want him, they wanted what he could tell them about Eddie. He was streetwise enough by that time to know that spending time in juvenile hall for running illegal guns would be a lot less dangerous than talking about Eddie.
When he got out eight months later he was released into Patty’s custody. Gunner never knew how she managed that, but her one condition to not turning him over to social services was that he stop working for Eddie Munster. He wasn’t smart enough to heed her warning, however, and at fifteen he was arrested again for carrying drugs. He did two years on drug trafficking charges. He still didn’t give up Eddie as his supplier, though, and when he got out at seventeen, Eddie seemed to have forgotten all about him. Patty let him come back and he slipped into his role of handyman at the bar in the tiny town of Lincoln, and started fighting in the Bonner barn on Saturday nights. It wasn’t a great life, but it was comfortable. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting arrested, unless he did something stupid like he had the week before. Most of all, he didn’t have to worry about Eddie Munster. He stayed out of the city and although life in the little town as a bartender and bouncer in the only local bar had been boring at times, he had to admit that it was a lot more peaceful without Eddie in it.
“Patty says Kinley ran into some financial troubles a while back. He’s been gambling a lot. He’s not just setting these fights up, he’s betting on everything and playing in poker games—he was about to lose the farm.”
“And he went to Eddie for a loan?”
“Yeah, Eddie has a few guys working around Lincoln. Kinley got the loan and then he couldn’t pay it back on time.”
“So why is he still breathing?”
“Because of you. Kinley convinced Eddie that they could make a fortune off you, but you know Eddie, it had to be his way.”
“His way?”
“Yeah. The guys up there aren’t your usual Saturday night crowd out of Nowheresville U.S.A. These guys are big gamblers, big money. Eddie’s changing the stakes, upping the ante, like he always does. Didn’t you wonder how Kinley got a guy with a reputation like the Indian’s to agree to one of these fights? I heard the dude was trained by one of the best trainers in MMA history.”
“That’s true, but Kinley told me that before Bob Red Crow cashed in on all that talent, he got drunk and killed an old man and woman on his way home from a party one night. He spent five years in prison for manslaughter, which pissed off a lot of people who thought he should have done more time. He lost his trainer and any endorsements he ever hoped to have. I Googled him—it’s all true. I just assumed he was taking what he could get these days and after I fought that guy Stacks a few weeks ago and knocked him out in the first round…” Gunner stopped talking and hesitantly Billy said:
“Stacks is also well-known in the San Antonio underground. That’s why there were so many people at that fight. Most of them were betting against you.”
Suddenly Gunner felt like a fool. He was talking out loud as the thoughts raced through his head. “No one else had ever taken Stacks down that easily. He had a fight with Red Crow a few months before he fought me and went all three rounds before finally tapping out. Kinley said the videos of that fight and the one between me and Stacks were circulating in the underground, and suddenly I was someone Red Crow was interested in fighting. This fight was supposed to be my steppingstone. Fuck! The motherfuckers set the whole thing up, didn’t they? Stacks took a dive so they could make this fight with Red Crow look legit…fuck!”
“Yeah, and Red Crow is going to take a dive in the third round tonight.”
“How did you find all this out?”
“Kinley’s oldest son, Mike.”
“He told you all this?”
“Nope. He told Patty. I guess they’re…”
“Shit, I don’t want to know that.”
“Anyway, he told her that his dad thinks he can use the money he makes tonight to pay Eddie back and he’ll be done with him.”
“He’s a fool.”
“Yep. Kinley’s still in a small-town Lincoln frame of mind. He doesn’t know Eddie Munster the way we do. We need to get you out of here, Gunner.”
“Out of here? I’m not going anywhere until after that fight.”
“Excuse me? Are you insane? You know I admire those brass balls of yours, but you know what happens to people that fuck with Eddie. If you win this fight, he owns you. If you lose…” He shook his head. “I say get back on that pretty bike you rode up on tonight and get the hell out of here before they know you’re back.”
“I’m not going to let Eddie or anyone else own me. If I run, I’ll have to keep running forever. If I win this fight because that’s the way they set it up, Eddie will expect me to do it again. The only way I can prove to these assholes that I can’t be bought and sold is by staying here and losing this fight.”
Billy sighed and rolled his eyes. Sounding like the weight of the world was on his shoulders he said, “Gunner…”
“Have faith in me, brother.”
Billy sounded completely flat as he said, “I got all kinds of fucking faith, Adam.”
Gunner handed Billy his wallet, keys, and phone and said, “I’m going to go up and tell them I’m here. I’d rather you go back to the bar.”
“Fuck that,” Billy said. “You’re not hiding out? Neither am I.”
Gunner grinned at his friend. “Thanks, man, but when this is all over…”
“Patty and I will move fucking heaven and earth to get you out of here before they kill your stupid ass.”
9
Sweat lingered across the wide-open space almost like a heavy fog as Gunner stood in the doorway and looked out on the scene before him. Kinley had obviously put money into the old space since Gunner had seen it last. The old man seemed to have switched gears from farmer to fight promoter overnight. Gunner shook his head. It was funny what the smell of money could do to people. The barn floor was all cement now, polished to a shine that reflected the scene above it like a mirror. New, ultra-bright fluorescent lights hung above the old ring, and the ropes that used to be tied together in places had been replaced. The folding chairs sat in clean organized lines on all four sides of the ring and behind eight or ten rows of those, people still stood two or three deep. Up above their heads at about ten or twelve feet, Kinley had turned the old walk-about into a viewing balcony that now held even more bloodthirsty spectators. Gunner had never fought in front of so many people before. The whole thing felt a little surreal—that Kinley, a man he’d known half his life, had set this all up without mentioning it to him at all. These fights had been about Saturday night entertainment for the small community, and now there were real gangsters with guns in the audience, looking to make real money off his blood. The game had completely changed for Gunner. He knew now that winning the fight wouldn’t be about proving himself to anyone. If he won, it would be proof to them that they owned him, that easily. Gunner sucked in a breath and tried to still the poisonous rage that was seeping slowly through his veins.
He began making his way down the aisle that had been cleared for him and toward the ring in the center of it all. He reminded himself once more that no one would ever own him, much less the people who loved to look down on him. The people in the crowd tonight weren’t just tired farmers looking for a night of fun. Eddie had recruited the real losers, those hungry for blood and money. Gunner recognized a lot of them. For years they walked past him and either looked right through him or looked at him with pure disgust. He was treated like he was a rabid, mangy animal; most of them gave him a wide berth when they passed on the street. They didn’t look him in the eye in public, but here beh
ind closed doors they chanted out his name and would undoubtedly cheer when he drew blood.
During the week, they dressed in their “costumes” and pretended to be good people. They were cops and lawyers, teachers and politicians. They had families, they went to church, and on the surface, everything about them looked respectable. But Gunner knew from years of neglect by society that you didn’t have to look far to find the ugly. He saw the cop who always twisted his arm harder than he had to when he arrested him, and the teacher who told him when he was just a little boy that he might as well join a gang because he’d never learn how to read anyway. There was the banker who told him he wasn’t good enough to date his daughter, and the lady who sat outside the drugstore handing out pamphlets about the impending arrival of Christ, both now sitting in the front row next to one of Eddie’s guys. They had all come to profit off the boy that had grown up without so much as a hand from any of them.
The circle of bodies cleared as he was led through by a couple of Kinley’s big boys that doubled as bouncers when they weren’t driving the tractors out on the farm. The crowd got louder when they saw him. The big Indian was already standing in the ring. He had an intense look in his eyes. Gunner wondered what he owed Eddie that he was willing to throw a fight to a nobody kid.
He stepped up under the ropes and saw Kinley in his corner. He glanced behind the old farmer and saw Eddie and a group of well-dressed people, who had probably never been this far out in the county, sitting in the front row. About six feet away Patty and Billy sat in their usual spot. Gunner smiled to himself. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was impressed by their loyalty or appalled by their stupidity. Either way he loved them for it. They were genuinely good people and as with Gunner, people rarely looked beyond the surface to see it.
