Dono suspected Dillon knew, though he’d never said a word. It was the eagle-eye way his big brother regarded him for a while afterwards, whenever he’d headed into town for a night out.
“Pryin’ eyes,” Dash muttered. “I think that’s what we’ll all have sometimes. I liked watching you hump Sally.”
“Playing the gentleman who merely observes?” Dono taunted mildly. He pointed to an outside shower built large enough for six people.
“Maybe. ’Specially if she likes it.” Dash followed Dono’s finger. “Yeah, we want it that big. Lots of movin’ around room for handling her fleshly charms just right. Hell, am I gonna dream about that tonight.”
“We want that shower size inside. If we order the parts now, we can get it installed real fast.”
“We already have her privacy room set up.”
“This is for us, her husbands. And for her, feeling all of us lovin’ on her.”
Placing the order, Dono listened to his brother pant. His breath burst out like an excited stud.
“For us,” Dash repeated. “Dillon won’t ride our butts over this. He’d do anything to pleasure a wife.”
“Yep. He’ll probably be ridin’ our butts about building this just right.” Dono rechecked his order, his own blood pumping hard and quick.
Dash moved, restless. “I’ll start gettin’ that part of the room ready.”
“I don’t want her left alone.”
Dono hadn’t thought the words before they erupted past of his mouth, although, he damn well knew they came from his own wrong doin’s and from the danger she could be in, given the nature of the world.
Dono scowled with determination. Besides, no man but he and his brothers would ever touch her. He’d see to it. Reflexively, he gripped the handle of the derringer he most always carried.
“Not ever?” Dash asked, his tone practical. “I don’t think she’ll want one of us underfoot all the time. Mother never—”
“I remember,” Dono cut off his brother. “She liked her alone time as she called it.”
“You’re right. It’s different now than back then. Our wife will need our constant protection. I’m making certain she learns to shoot and fight just in case, if she doesn’t know how.”
“You better wait until she gets used to us and accepts all three of us before you learn her how to shoot or kick our balls, nasty as a rampaging mare.”
Dash chuckled, amusing himself with some thought. He pointed to an outdoor shower unit designed for marital relations. “I want that one too.”
“Well, hell, don’t place an order yet. That will get you on Dillon’s bad side.”
Dash threw an irritated glance. “Naw, I ain’t that stupid. I’ll put it on his look-over list. I’m bettin’ he won’t be able say no.”
“Put a bubbly tub on there, too. One large enough for all of us and her. Besides, she might need to relax after we get done pleasurin’ her, loving on her.”
“You mean pumping your breeding flesh into her female rose.”
“I mean both. Dang it, Dash, it ain’t just a physical act. You know that.” Dono frowned. Tickled suddenly by the picture before his mind’s eye, he howled with laughter briefly.
“What the dang heck is so funny?” Not looking around, Dash entered a screen with bubbly tubs.
“You. The image of you being a complete and thoughtful gentleman while you pump your breeding flesh inside her tender little rose.”
“That ain’t funny.”
“Yes, it is.” Dono looked closely at the screen. “Admit it.”
“That’s why I like smashing my fist into your face. Your sense of humor is stinky as,” Dash straightened, “no, odiferous as a sack of rotten potatoes,” he intoned, his idea of a gentleman.
With great effort, Dono restrained himself from goading his brother. He scanned the selection of tubs, instead.
“I think I’m gonna find me an actual tuxedo,” Dash uttered after several moments. “I’ll dress myself up like a proper gentleman for her. I’ll take my wife to that fancy French restaurant in El Paso. I’ll seduce her with dinner and champagne. Then I’ll escort her to our splendid accommodations. Forthwith, I will accomplish a proper romantic exploration of her beautiful and yielding body. I will conclude with a long and excellent dip inside her tender little rose.”
Quickly pushing away from the screen, Dono sagged back and let his laughter rip. Hearing Dash belt out chortling howls and seeing him shove back from the desk, Dono laughed all the harder. Their guffaws bounced off the walls, and Dono clutched his ribs. Soon his sides heaved uncontrollably, just like his brother’s did.
Dash swiped at his eyes, once their laughter subsided. “I mean it, ya know. I’m gettin’ that tuxedo.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea that ain’t in the Union anymore.”
“Yep. The tea leaves we’re growing right here in Texas. That ’n hemp are makin’ us some friends on the border. Don’t need no spies.”
“Nope. Tea-party diplomacy instead of gunboat diplomacy.”
“Now that was amusin’.” Dash chuckled loudly.
“Now you did it, brother. I can’t stop my funny bone.”
Doubling over together, they bellowed out guffaws until they were exhausted.
Chapter Five
Rolling Around on Razor Blades
“Shit, I might as well be rolling around on razor blades.” Kylie stared at the blacktop highway she sped down, and refused to think about everyone and everything she’d just lost.
She’d tossed her cell phone, along with her bank card, beneath a Dumpster outside of Wichita, Kansas. After dropping in her iPod, credit cards, and ID, her knees had gone weak. She’d barely managed walk back to her car and get inside.
Confronting the horrible stark reality of her loss, she’d collapsed against the back of her seat, shaking violently. Desperate to leave, she’d stabbed the key at the ignition while sobbing. Finally, the key had slid into position and she’d managed to get the car started.
For miles afterwards, a sickening chill had taken over her flesh and seeped into the marrow of her bones. She’d driven by rote, almost losing her way when she’d ended up on a pock-marked deserted highway.
Once the shock had ebbed away enough to think again, she’d tried to give herself some comfort. Maybe, just maybe, the police would decide she’d been abducted and was most likely dead.
“If only…” Kylie silently prayed any investigating law enforcement officers would conclude she was deceased, even if she’d been too chicken to leave any blood evidence.
She drove southwest on Highway 54, having passed the Texas border about twenty miles back. During her trek through several states, Kylie had carefully avoided all the interstates. She’d headed south, away from I-70 before crossing the Missouri border into Kansas.
Even after nearly twenty hours of driving, her adrenaline, or something besides Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino, kept her wide awake and traveling. Maybe it was the sheer dread of what the cops would do to her if they ever caught her.
Terrifying scenarios of being handcuffed and put behind bars took over her mind. At times, she couldn’t shake the images and she’d twist around frantically, checking to make certain a pack of patrol cars or a Swat team wasn’t chasing after her. All the while, “Bad girl, bad girl, whatcha gonna do...” played in her head.
The few times she’d spotted a patrol car, her stomach had lurched, encountered her trip-tripping heart, then lodged inside her throat. When she’d stopped for gas outside a small city, a police cruiser had driven past slowly. Despite breaking out into a cold sweat, she’d remained calm enough and acted in a rational manner.
No. Exhaustion hadn’t put a claim on her yet. The couple of times she’d settled on top of her pillows at a well-lit truck stop, sleep eluded her. Kylie had simply gassed up her car and kept on driving.
So far, she’d chosen whatever highway seemed to beckon. Even though she studied the road atlas she’d purchased, whenever she
stopped to eat, Kylie hadn’t made a firm decision about where to go, or where to end up.
Instead, it felt as though some weird instinct guided her. Or was it her intuition? That she could believe because she did follow her hunches. Still, for all she knew, she was destined to keep driving until her car gave out and she died painfully in some out-of-the-way place.
Suddenly blinded by the afternoon sun, Kylie angled her sunshade across the passenger window, then refocused on the road. The traffic remained light so she could simply sail on down the highway.
Shaking her head slightly, then rolling her shoulders, she tried to relieve the tension from this much drive time. Unbidden tears dripped down her cheeks, and she heaved a dispirited sigh. When her vision became too blurry, Kylie plucked out several tissues and dabbed at her face.
So far, her emotions had acted like an out-of-control roller coaster that threatened to jump its tracks at any moment. Ignoring her compulsion to flip open the cell phone she no longer had, Kylie punched up the radio’s volume.
Sniffling like a baby, she listened to the latest caller on a talk show out of San Antonio, Texas. The sometimes heated back-and-forth revolved around Governor Rick Perry’s assertion that Texas, according to the state’s constitution, had a right to secede from the United States.
Her ears perked up as various callers vehemently defended or opposed the immediate secession of Texas. Since her own feelings boiled like crazy over the totally unjust situation she found herself in, it was all too easy to understand why many favored an independent Texas.
Yeah, shit, here she was, a wanted criminal. How effing unfair and utterly unreal was that?
Despair cut at her again. “Yeah, I might as well be trapped inside the dark bowels of hell…with the demons merely waiting their turns to snatch at my wretched flesh…an endless torment.”
Nope, this wasn’t her life. It was a nightmare horror movie, even if the hordes of zombies hadn’t attacked yet.
“Bad to the bone. That’s me,” she whispered, then sniffled.
“Damn fuck, if only this were actually the old west, I could join the Hole in the Wall gang and start over. Become the best rootin-est tootin-est woman outlaw ever. Jesse Jane instead of Jesse James. Yippee kayay. With my trusty rifle aimed, I’d shout. ‘Hands up and hand over all that payroll gold.’”
A cold, yet blazing anger seized every cell of her body and her stubborn determination asserted itself, once again. Kylie didn’t bother trying to tamp her rage down. Crap, she couldn’t count the times she’d muttered and shouted “fuck you”, while thinking about the police officers’ abusive treatment.
Hearing a caller list the states that currently had bills of secession, Kylie concentrated on the radio show. How had she missed this news? Not that she frequented the mainstream news sites or read a newspaper from end to end. Generally, she only watched the local news for the weather report and the about-town info.
Maybe, just maybe, finding a backwater town in Texas was the thing to do. If the state ever seceded, she couldn’t be hauled back to stand trial for a stupid crime she’d never committed in the first damn place, unless there was an extradition treaty.
“Dalhart, ten miles,” she murmured, reading the road sign. Since it was time to stop, gas up her car, and study the road atlas again, she’d look for the least populated areas of Texas and tune into her intuition.
Kylie grimaced, not liking the idea of driving through Dalhart itself. Still, she pulled into the first stop-and-shop place she found. Somewhat fascinated, she gazed at the old-fashioned grain elevator that stood above the rest of the buildings.
Making quick work of filling up her car, she bought her usual chocolate milk, juice, and Starbucks Frappuccino, then found an out-of-the-way spot to check her road atlas, and backed into it.
“Thank you, Dad, for being a map fanatic,” she whispered. Opening the atlas to west Texas, she propped it against her bags and recalled how she’d read maps for her father on their family vacation trips. It had never failed. He always lectured her on their importance.
“And, thank God, I never got GPS installed. I don’t have to effing rip it out of the car now.” Kylie had known her way around the city, and the extra tech had been one more expense she hadn’t needed.
While scanning the parking lot, she twisted off the plastic cap on the chocolate milk. After downing most of it, she eyed the map for the sparsest population areas. West Texas, the area past the panhandle, yep, that looked like the ticket—the mountainous northern region rather than the southern stretch on the border with Mexico.
Kylie preferred hot weather, but not the desert heat. All she had to do was make it past Amarillo, then Lubbock, and she’d aim for the tiny isolated town of Pine Springs, which appeared to be on the edge of Guadalupe Mountains National Park and sat at a high elevation.
At least, she possessed an actual plan now. If nothing else, maybe she could spend a few days resting or hiding out in the national park. Hiding out, that was her life now. Still, there would be hiking trails and camp sites where she could survive for a time, if she had to escape pursuit by the law.
“Yeah, the law. What law? They’re just thugs with Tasers and guns.”
Even though, Kylie had never been a girl scout, or a let’s-go-camping kind of girl, she did know a bit about forging for wild edible plants. Of course, she hadn’t brought those books with her.
Kylie quirked her mouth at the disgusting irony of her circumstance. Maybe she could find those kinds of survival manuals at a mom-and-pop bookstore.
Once she’d finished off her chocolate milk, she placed the container in the canvas bag with the others. Glancing back up, Kylie froze in mid-action. Her heart hammered as she watched a city police car turn into the parking lot, then halt close to the store’s entrance.
Should she leave, drive away as if she was simply on her way? Or, should she wait, then leave?
The woman officer stepped out and strode into the convenience store. Donuts and coffee, the stereotypical view of cops, intruded into Kylie’s thoughts. She wanted to laugh hysterically. God dammit, she wished she would wake up from this living nightmare.
Keeping herself calm, so that her hands didn’t shake, Kylie got her car started, then slowly pulled out onto the street. She controlled her quivers by squeezing her steering wheel hard. Concentrating on driving smoothly, she checked her rearview mirror constantly as she passed through several stoplights.
Surprised her rapidly fluttering heart didn’t just fly out of her chest, Kylie kept taking deep breaths and watched for highway signs. There it was, a sign for Highway 385.
She blinked several times, intrigued and amused by the giant sculpture of a saddle that came into view. Hey, where was the giant cowboy to go with it? Ridiculously, she wondered in some part of her mind if there ever had been one, given the skeletons of a true giant race had been discovered, then kept hidden from the public.
Nope, no giant cowboy. It was the Empty Saddle Monument. Kylie stared at the oddity, though probably not unusual for everything-is-bigger in Texas.
If she’d been traveling with her small group of girlfriends, they would have been joking about the extra-large cock of the cowboy who belonged to that saddle, not to mention his exceptional prowess. “Yeehaw, ride ’em, giant cowpoke,” she murmured, turning south onto 385.
Clamping her jaw, Kylie refused to shed the tears stinging her eyes, once again. All she had now was the memory of her girlfriends and their good times together. With her senses on high alert, she drove through Dalhart and let herself enjoy the old timey appearance.
Figuring she’d better learn to fit in, she studied the people and their western-influenced clothing until she hit the open highway. Beside her, the sun dipped behind the trees inside Rita Blanca Lake Park, and she was half-tempted to check it out as a refuge for herself. “Too close to civilization,” she muttered, pressing on the accelerator.
* * * *
Kylie drained the last swallows from her second
bottle of Frappuccino. She shook her head vigorously, forcing her eyes to stay open. Good damn thing Pine Springs was mere miles away. If she hadn’t been driving out in the middle of nowhere, she would have pulled off the road and collapsed on top of her pillows.
Once she passed Carlsbad, New Mexico, heading southwest into Texas again, exhaustion had struck with a vengeance. Kylie had pumped up the volume of her radio and lowered her window. The cool night air blasted her face while country western songs she never knew existed twanged and boomed, the sound distortion an assault on her ears.
Love lost. Love found, or lust found. Heartbreak and affairs gone bad out the wazoo. That’s what she listened to.
Currently, Willie Nelson sang “Stardust” in his poignant mellow voice, one of the few country artists she recognized because her mother had a “definite thang” for Willie, as she expressed it.
Kylie smiled for an instant, remembering how her mom would rock her on her lap as she listened to her ‘Willie’ in the evening, especially during the summer. Choking back a sob, Kylie flung her hair briskly as she shook her head hard again.
There was no point in crying anymore. Nope. Time to toughen up and put on her “big girl” pants.
Surrounding her, the night had become a solid-looking black, the likes of which she’d never seen before. Kylie kept one eye on the center line, even with her headlight brights on. Admitting to herself that the complete blackness freaked her out some, she forged ahead and bounced along with Garth Brooks.
Scents from the arid region washed over her and were soon infused with the fragrance of pine. Gradually, the smell of greener foliage filled her car. She’d picked up a brochure on Guadalupe Mountains National Park and discovered that the dry barren land surrounding Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, hid a rich interior of trees and an abundance of animal life.
Branded by the Texans [Three Star Republic] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 5
