Bad to the Bones

by Layla Wolfe

“I’ll be all right,” he said, but allowed me to grab his hand and wring it like delicate laundry.

  “Is that true, Maddy? Will he be okay?”

  “I believe so. Just a flesh wound, although it would’ve been better if he’d sought help immediately.”

  Knoxie snorted. The second Maddy reached the end of the ace roll, he yanked his leg from her fingers and put his boot on the ground. “Sought help where, Maddy? A Mexican clinic? They ask even more questions.”

  Like a child, I held Knoxie’s head to the belly of my coveralls. “He’s coming with me, if you don’t mind, Ford.”

  Ford shrugged and looked at his brothers. “We’ve been debriefed about his trip. Are you satisfied?”

  “I’m satisfied,” said Lytton. “We can find out more about…about the gunshot wound later.”

  Knoxie placidly allowed me to drag him to the kitchen door, but Madison had one last thing to tell me. In the hallway, she took my arm and whispered, “I think he may have been injured elsewhere on his torso, but he won’t show me the wound. When he first came here half an hour ago, he had a bloody T-shirt on. Ziggy gave him the plain clean one he’s wearing.”

  “What’s this now?” Knoxie said playfully, his arm around my shoulders.

  I was adept at changing the subject. “Come into my little hovel. Kneecap brought by that bed you promised me.”

  “Oh, good. Did he deface it in any way?”

  I frowned. What was wrong with my new double futon? “Looks fine to me. What’s between you and Kneecap, anyway?”

  Knoxie smiled mysteriously. “Let’s just say, before he met me, he was named Elmore. Hey, hey, hey. Careful with the merchandise.”

  As much as I never wanted to hurt Knoxie in the slightest, I was eager to proceed. He winced when I shoved him with my palm in the middle of his chest, encouraging him to fall back upon the futon.

  Planting one knee on either side of his hips, I tilted my head saucily and gripped the coveralls zipper between my breasts. “You know I’ve been waiting eagerly for you, Knoxie Hammett.”

  He encircled my waist with one of his big hands, his eyes assessing my form as I revealed it. “Never thought I’d be doing a chick in greaser’s overalls. But listen. I really need to shower.”

  “I’m not waiting.” I lowered the zipper past my navel. I could tell by the way his eyelashes flickered and his breathing came shallower that he was aroused. “I don’t care about a little road sweat. You think when I lived up in Coyote Buttes with Maddy, we cared about a little road sweat?”

  “You were little whores,” he said quietly, almost as an afterthought, sliding his hand inside my coveralls, around my waist. All I wore was a wifebeater over my underwire bra, and his touch on my skin was like little embers scattering over my flesh. “Maddy told me.”

  I was neither embarrassed nor proud. “That’s where I learned to give a good piston job.” Sinking my labia down right smack dab across his prick, I swiveled and rotated. His big slug-like cock ballooned under my caresses, and my clitoris shuddered as I rubbed it with intent against his bulging shaft.

  The second I exposed one bare shoulder, Knoxie yanked the sleeve completely down my arm. “You’re an excellent pipe jobber, Bellamy. But listen—ah! Seriously, babe. Come on. You’re torturing me. I’ve got fucking dried blood everywhere. You don’t even want to know what sort of a crib I had to try to sleep in last night just to blend in with that skanky hood.”

  I paused in the middle of removing my other sleeve. “Crib?”

  “No, no, no. I wasn’t doing any other gash. I was just crashing in some kind of rank flop house, some stash house with no glass in the windows, centipedes and scorpions making their nest in the carpet. Seriously.”

  I had seen worse up in Coyote Buttes. And I wanted to eat Knoxie’s dick so professionally that he made cartoon sounds and the top of his head came off. So I leaped to my feet and squirmed out of the rest of the oily wrench’s uniform. The effect on his face was worth it. It would’ve looked better if I were wearing high heels and not cloddish mechanic’s boots, but at least I wore a nice creamy push-up bra and panties Maddy had given me. Knoxie’s eyes bulged and he practically said “ah-ooga,” and that pumped my ego.

  Soon I was standing in only bra, panties, and the clodhopper boots. I had never had to seduce anyone before. In Coyote Buttes, you just toked a joint and fell into a clinch. No foreplay, no nothing. In Bihari, I don’t think I need to add, it was even worse. There wasn’t even any pretense that it was all about lust, desire, or need. It was a strictly mechanical, functional act, executed to bring about some desired result.

  In a flash, I was on my knees between his thighs. Frantically I scrabbled at his belt buckle, not wanting to let him get away for a second. I wanted to cement our relationship, to know it was real, that he would be there for me. My entire life had been uprooted. Everything I knew had been wrenched from me. I needed Knoxie to be the one stable, constant presence in my life.

  “No!” His sudden bark pierced my eardrums, and before I knew it, I was on the other side of the room, spinning on my ass. What the fuck? Knoxie must have shoved me so monstrously that I’d gone flying, limbs sprawling, all the air knocked from my lungs.

  I gazed at him, shocked. He stood like The Hulk, having leaped to his feet with brutish hands at his sides clenching and unclenching. He looked even more frazzled and frightening because he hadn’t shaved and one of his pant legs was torn off. “What the fuck, Knoxie! If you’re into bondage and discipline just say so, but I’d appreciate a heads up.”

  Instantly his face fell as he regretted what he’d done. “Ah God, Bellamy! I didn’t mean to do that! I—”

  He was at my side, yanking me to my feet. “No, no, no,” he said over and over, pressing me to the grimy wall with his hips. “You’re good, Bellamy. You’re good. You’re the one good thing in my life, and I want to taste you, to drink you. I don’t want you servicing me like some whore. You’re not a whore, and this—what we have between us—isn’t some lesson or fake therapy.”

  As he stared intently into my eyes, his fingers snaked around the curve of my ass. I gasped loudly and jumped about a foot when his fingertips slithered around my pussy lips. I hadn’t noticed how swollen and slick they were, and his fingertips slid around my opening. He jutted the ridge of his cock against my pubic bone, and again I felt my inner cunt flutter. Now I was the one with drooping eyes, panting against my lover’s face.

  When his fingers slithered over the erect bullet of my clit, I cried aloud. This seemed to set something off in him, because now he was tearing his belt apart and practically snarling. “Fucking is nothing but sensual fun, Bellamy.” His fingers never stopped diddling my clit, and with each gasp I inched higher up the wall. Soon he was nearly holding me over his head as he fiddled with me. “Fucking is just one goddamned thrill, one indulgent joy ride.”

  I had never been the subject of such talented fingering before. Within seconds I felt strangely high, drugged, a sensation of fullness flooding my entire pelvis. I barely noticed when Knoxie pressed the naked, hot skin of his tight cockhead to my pussy. I was suddenly all about this full, tense feeling that gripped all organs in my pelvis. I heard myself crying, sobbing out to Knoxie.

  “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

  What was I, some kind of whore? No one at Bihari dared beg anyone for anything. You could just bet your ass they’d be giving you the opposite of whatever it was you wanted.

  “That’s it,” Knoxie said soothingly as he speared me with his fat cock. I felt it flexing inside of me, plumping up fatter and longer, but I was all about what he was doing to my button. “Keep it up, Bella. I’m going to bring you higher and higher. Don’t even think. Just concentrate on my fingers.”

  My heart nearly broke. He wasn’t even asking me to concentrate on his dick, the center of the universe for all men!

  So he knew he was doing something urgent to me with his fingers. I tried to relax and let go, allow his fingers t
o take me where they would. I propped one heavy boot on the lowest shelf of a nearby bookcase, giving Knoxie easier access to my core.

  “That’s it, babe,” he breathed. He was amazingly talented, diddling me like that while keeping up a steady thrusting rhythm with his hips. My uterus was fluttering, that’s the only word for it, fluttering. The tension built, spread to all my female organs, and soon my very ovaries were shuddering with a strange kind of thrilling, edgy, nervous energy. Knoxie’s fingers were coaxing this beautiful, blooming explosion from me, and before long I knew the floodgates had opened.

  “Agh!”

  I heard my voice from outside my body. It was like I stood in the next room listening in on this convulsing, idiotic mental patient. Knoxie had broken through the dam, and my pelvis was flooded with ecstasy. It was like a dandelion pod had broken deep within me, spreading seeds to all four corners of the world.

  The bliss washed over me, wave after wave. At the beginning, each new wave was more blissful than the last. It took a while for them to ebb. My entire uterus was clutched in a giant grasping hand that seemed to squeeze it for every last drop of blood. It took me many long minutes to realize I had gripped a handful of Knoxie’s hair at the back of his head, and was probably hurting him, my knuckles were so white.

  Without any conscious commandment, my pussy clenched at his long, fat dick. It was like I wanted to drain every last drop from him, too. We remained locked together like that for what seemed like a long fucking time. I died and was reborn about a dozen times.

  I’m not accustomed to feelings. It was strange, wild, and unreal to be feeling such intense sensation gripping every atom of my insides. My mind shut down, overwhelmed by the deluge of consciousness. By the time I came to and gathered myself, I was sniffling, sobbing, almost tearing poor Knoxie’s scalp off his head. I held him to me with every available weapon—my thighs, my fists, my pussy.

  Poor guy. He had probably never fucked a woman who’d never experienced an orgasm.

  “What…the fuck…” I remember whispering. My lower jaw was chattering against my upper, my teeth clacking like oldfangled typewriter keys.

  Knoxie held himself deep inside me, barely breathing. His fat penis jumped and twitched up against my womb. I had literally never been this close to another man, and it bonded us in a terrifying way. Knoxie was right. The Bihari sex had been wham, bam, thank you ma’am. This was deep, intense, and dare I say it…emotional.

  Too emotional for me.

  Slamming my boot to the floor, I tried to push Knoxie away. “Well,” I said awkwardly. “That was nice.”

  “It’s still nice, Bella. What’s wrong? Having a mind-blowing orgasm scares you?”

  I pushed harder this time. By squirming my hips, I could get his dick to slide from me. “Well, yes! What the fuck was that?” I strode furiously to the window, adjusting my panties. “Is that how it is for all women? I thought something was going to break inside of me just from being squeezed so hard!” In fact, I think I was still coming. My inner pussy walls seemed to miss Knoxie, still clutching at a ghost dick. I put my hands on the sill and leaned, panting.

  “That was your first.”

  I couldn’t see Knoxie, but I could tell he wore a sly smile. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I could not lie. “Yes. I suppose.” I shrugged. “Never got that much into masturbation as a teen, and no one ever mentioned it at Bihari.”

  “You’d think they would. Sounds like some self-actualization type of thing.”

  “Maybe for men only.” Then I realized how funny that statement was, because it was probably true, and I started laughing. Turning around, I saw that Knoxie was laughing too, his hand lightly caressing his stomach over the T-shirt. That reminded me, Maddy had told me to find out where he was injured, so I approached him seductively. I rubbed my tits against his chest to see if he winced. I thought I could feel a bandage or something over his left pec, so I felt the hot, naked strip of flesh at his waist.

  “You’re very good,” I said. Flattery always distracted men.

  Not Knoxie. He gripped my exploring hand. “Now I seriously have to go shower. I’m thinking of maybe staying here at the Citadel a few days, lay low, go on a personal lockdown.”

  My other hand strayed up his waist, bunching up the hem of his shirt as I went. “Is someone after you?” When would I ever learn not to ask questions?

  “Could be. Hey, hey, hey. You seriously don’t want dried blood all over you.” By twisting his torso, Knoxie wrenched himself from my clutches, but not before my roving hand had felt a large, crinkly bandage covering the area of his left nipple.

  “Knoxie, what’s—”

  He was gone almost before I could finish the sentence.

  “—wrong, why do you have a bandage?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  KNOXIE

  Knoxie felt bad as he showered down in the hangar.

  He knew he shouldn’t feel bad. Keeping secrets from old ladies was club policy. It was a given, everyone did it, and it was usually for the benefit of the old ladies. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. And most of it was none of their fucking business anyway.

  But it had been painfully obvious how he’d torn himself from her just as she was probing his chest, her fingers like little sensors zeroing in on his wound. He could explain the bullet wound in his calf, but how to explain where someone had torn and gnawed at his pec? He couldn’t even explain that wound to his brothers.

  Some things were just best left unsaid, but that didn’t stop Knoxie from dwelling on it. Nogales had gone pretty much tits up. After finding the address Rafael had texted him—a major trap house in the slummiest area of Nogales, which was saying a lot, with surveillance cameras pointed every which way—Knoxie had hunkered down to survey the house. But it became obvious pretty quick that the DEA also had eyes on the house. Knoxie thought he’d scoped out a blind spot in the cameras’ field of vision and parked his bike safely behind a cage.

  He was feeling highly uncomfortable being on the fed’s radar like that. Even though he wasn’t approaching the trap house, it was obvious he was watching it. Just as he was about to make like a baby and head out, some major cluck burst from the house and headed straight toward him. It was obvious the tweaker had a pocket rocket stuffed in his filthy pants. Knoxie wasn’t about to create a scene in front of the fed’s undercover car, so he started up his engine and jammed on his brain bucket.

  The cluck kept coming straight for him. Just as Knoxie pulled out from behind the cage, he passed the guy. The guy didn’t want to make a scene either—just wanted to let Knoxie know he knew Knoxie was there. He didn’t seem to recognize Knoxie, but they passed within eight feet of each other, the cluck narrowing his eyes so evilly they were slits. Knoxie could easily see from the unruly hair and lack of a dental plan that it was none other than Riker, former sergeant-at-arms for The Bare Bones. Only way more trashed, hardened, and with much less to lose now.

  “Eat shit and die, esé,” Riker had seethed at him.

  So the trip hadn’t been a total failure. He had to tell his brothers all the details of Nogales and the Bihari venture, leaving out, of course, many details about the exalted swami. He could leave in the part about being bound because it was a pretty good escape story. The dead daimyo and the swami with his head stuck inside a TV might eventually come up again anyway, so Knoxie told the story straight, with some omissions.

  Nothing like that had happened to him in the Gulf. He’d been imprisoned a few times, but the torture had all been of a painful nature. Nothing weirdly sexual. Of course, the swami probably didn’t even realize he was torturing Knoxie. He thought he was perpetrating some of his usual therapy—with the added benefit of getting off on it, naturally. Now Knoxie knew firsthand how Bellamy must have felt to be laid open bare like that, wide open and helpless like a fucking squirrel caught in a trap. The swami was the predatory bird, pecking away with his ravenous beak, and Knoxie felt no compunction whatsoever abou
t what he’d done.

  He hadn’t even stuck around to see if the swami was still alive. He imagined he’d of heard word by now if the guru had been put in the ground, and Ford said he’d verify on the down low with Maddy and her hospital connections whether there was any chatter. Nothing, so far. Knoxie exited the shower trailer feeling like a new man—a slightly molested and abused new man. But he felt like he could move ahead with Bellamy now, and of course his ego was hugely pumped that he’d been the first man to ever make her come.

  Halfway up the inner stairs, his phone chimed. Rafael’s burner phone. Knoxie jogged back down and into the hangar to avoid any unwanted eavesdroppers.

  Rafael was practically whispering in Spanish, so he was obviously still inside the Bihari walls. “There was some kind of altercation down at the guard shack after I left?”

  “Yes. That loco ruler of yours took me at gunpoint, tied me up. I got away. What’s his status? He’s alive, I presume?”

  “Yes, but he’s pretty fucked up. Someone had to pick a whole sheet of glass out of his face. They think he might lose the other eye.”

  Knoxie felt a momentary pang of sadness. Not at the loss of the pervert’s other eye, but that now the guru would be some kind of martyr to his devotees. “But the guard—”

  “El guardia está muerto. I understand you had to get free, but you can’t just go around shooting these guys. Not until we’ve set up the operation. So far they still think I’m just their courier, their truck driver.”

  “I know, I know. I didn’t really have a choice. There were two armed guys outside the shack, too.”

  “It was a miracle you got out. Listen, you asked about a laboratory. I think I found one up in a side canyon. It looks like they might be manufacturing their own drugs, although it doesn’t look like any meth I’ve ever seen. I stole some vials I can give you. Maybe you can test them. There is a woman named Poona running the lab. Something called Operation Eggplant is going on.”

  “Good work, Rafael. Listen, when are you going back over the border?”