“Undress me, Ryanne,” he commanded.
Shaky hands undid the button that was holding the shirt closed. Fingers that were also shaking slid the fabric from his shoulders as the serpent head on his chest stared at her. The red eyes almost glowed like rubies in the moonlight. She reached for his belt buckle, his arousal jutting right. He is left handed. She shook her head to knock away the other arbitrary thoughts that kept popping into her mind as his pants fell down around his ankles. He is not wearing underwear. Eddie stood before her bare, open and vulnerable.
“Look at me, Ryanne. See me as I truly am. I need for you to see me,” Eduardo said. There was some other meaning in his words, which reached out to her heart.
He was beautiful. The serpent’s head was only the beginning of the snake. Each scale that was etched into his skin made the snake appear to move as the tattooed serpent coiled around his body. An undigested meal sat in the middle of the snake, right above his left butt cheek, as the remainder of the snake’s body wrapped around his right leg. The tail of the snake was on the top of his foot.
“I see you, Eddie,” she said as she pulled the man into her arms. She held him close, feeling the warmth of his skin against her own. She repeated his words, “Even if it is just for a night, a week, a month, this is about you, about us….” She tiptoed a little so that her lips could reach his. Eduardo was hungry for companionship as his mouth devoured hers, his tongue flicking in and out of her mouth. His arms wrapped around her body, squeezing her tighter each time she exhaled. Hot lips trailed down her face to her neck as his teeth sank into the delicate skin, giving her just a nip with his teeth. She moaned as she leaned into him.
Ryanne Trodat Dobbins was an amazing woman. A nurturer. A giver. A woman with a loving heart. She was not a one-night stand. Eduardo had made a calculated risk and he was losing.
He could see himself loving Ryanne. It was something he could not afford, but it was too late. From the moment he met her, he wanted this time alone with this woman. He made love to her slowly, without hurry, as if he needed his body to remember every second in her love. She cried when she found her pleasure and he understood. He nearly cried when he found his own. The tenderness of the connection was not lost on him.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, they connected twice more, each time with the same force, the tender finish, and the missing pieces they both desired in their lives. Eduardo knew he was in trouble because Ryanne had weakened him, but there was still somethings he had to get done before he boarded his plane back to Colombia. He held her close as they slept, her legs intertwined in his own.
In her arms he felt needed.
She needed him.
This is something he would never have again unless she was a forgiving sort. He frowned in the darkness thinking about the last guy who had disappointed her. Him, she shot. In the nuts. What would she do to me once this is all over?
He could not afford her forgiveness, nor another night like tonight. He wanted her for himself. Even as he held her, he wanted this for himself every evening when he ended his daily tasks.
He knew it would not work, because at the end of the day, he was still a snake.
Chapter 18. Saxton … are you drunk?
Saxton was sprawled out on the bed butt naked counting his fingers. Odessa walked into the room and he gave her a gigantic grin.
“Saxton … have you been drinking?” she asked him. He made an attempt to sit up but plopped back down on the bed.
“Yessssss,” he slurred.
He made a second attempt to sit up, failing again. This was disappointing to her because she needed to tell him about the man in the store. The uneasy feeling that had been hounding her was not going away. Ryanne’s melt down along with her sudden disappearance in Lucy’s Caddy did not help the matter either. She was about to talk to her father, but he’d had a couple of cups of whatever Saxton had imbibed and was stumbling from the elevator. Evidently, it was too much to try walking with his bad hip and the cane, so Big Sarge cursed out the cane, threw it on the floor, and began to crawl down the hallway. For the second time in two days, she saw her daddy cry. Each time his elbow made contact with the floor, he wailed like a frustrated toddler unable to have his way.
“Dora … baby … come get me,” he called out like a wounded soldier on the battlefield. “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” His hand was held out in the air like he was reaching for the last Huey flying out of the rice patties in Nam.
“Get your drunk ass up off that floor, man, I can’t carry you,” Dora told him, her hands on her hips as she stood in the doorway watching him low crawl down the hall.
“You don’t leave a soldier behind woman!”
“No, but I am going to leave your behind on that floor,” she told him.
He rolled over to his back like a dead cockroach, his legs in the air as he held his belly. Big Sarge moaned in the air, “Dora. I love you.” He passed gas, dropped his legs, and fell asleep.
Odessa called to her mother, “Mama, you need some help with him?”
Dora’s hands were still on her hips. “You have your own issues to handle on that end of the hall. I had to make your naked ass husband go into his own room. He came down here wanting to talk to me … naked! What the hell did they drink?”
She didn’t know. What she did know was that her sister was out there somewhere grieving, and Saxton Blakemore was drunker than Cooter Woods on a Saturday night. He was calling her.
“Odessa! Odessa! ‘Dessa … O … ’Dessa.” She stepped back into the room.
“Yes, Saxton,” she responded.
He was still playing with his fingers. “Hey, baby. When I hold my hands like this….” He forgot what he was going to say.
“Saxton … are you drunk?” she asked just to make sure he wasn’t high on something else.
“Hell yesssssss, I am. Daddy had some 120 year old Scotch that was 42 proof,” he said. “Wait, scratch that … the other way around. The Scotch was 42 years old … and 120 proof,” he told her. He lay there looking at her with pride for getting it right, like he had accomplished an amazing feat.
A deep voice could be heard in the hallway, whispering, “Blakemore … Blakemore, where you at?”
Saxton rolled to his belly on the bed, his finger and thumb aimed like a gun. “Get down, baby!” He tried to roll to sit up again and failed. “Odessa, make this damned bed stop spinning so I can cover you!”
Odessa ignored him as she opened the bedroom door. She spotted Agent Roget tiptoeing down the hall, whispering into a keyhole, “Blakemore … you in there?”
“Agent Roget, he is over here,” she said loudly.
The big man popped upright, like he had been caught red-handed, but he too was drunk and started to teeter. Odessa reached out her hand to steady him, careful to stand to the side in case he fell. She didn’t want him to fall on top of her. “Are you looking for Saxton?”
“I am,” he told her, trying to look dignified, but failing.
She pointed at the bed. “He’s in here.”
“Blakemore, we have a problem,” Roget said as he wobbled across the hall. One look in the room, and the big guy started stumbling backwards. “He is nekkid! Why is he nekkid, Ms. ‘Dessa? Why are you nekkid, Saxton?”
“My clothes were hot!” he yelled at Roget.
“Blakemore, I need your help, man,” Roget said.
Odessa was completely over this nonsense. “Agent Roget, go to your room!” She pointed down the hall.
“That’s the problem, Ms. ‘Dessa. I am lost. I don’t know where the hell my room is … this is a big ass house,” he told her as he looked over her shoulder at Saxton. His eyes got wide as he yelled at his friend. “Man, cut that out!”
Odessa turned to find Saxton with little Saxton in his hand.
He picked it up and it flopped.
He picked it up and it flopped again.
He grabbed at it one more time, a scared look covering his face. “Odessa,
I think he is drunk, too! He may need mouth to mouth to resuscitate him!” He told her with an uncharacteristic giggle.
“Oh My Ghhherrrrrrrrd!” she exclaimed as she spotted Belva come up the stairs. Odessa held up her hands to stop his sister from coming into the room. “Saxton is naked and playing with himself.”
Belva only shrugged. “Well, some things never change.” She looked down the hall to see Big Sarge sleeping on the floor. “I should have known they had gotten into the Scotch when Uncle Dusty came into the baby shower with his boots off, wiggling that deformed big toe at the ladies.”
Roget spoke up. “Yeah, what was up with that? His toe looked like a deformed penis.”
Belva sighed as she looked at Roget, trying to hold up the wall. She told Odessa, “I got this. Come on with me, big guy.” She put her arm around the agent and helped him the other side of the hall. “You are staying in my wing.”
Agent Roget didn’t care. He had been staring at Saxton’s sister since he arrived. She was a very attractive woman. “You’re pretty,” he told her. “You smell like flowers covered in dew on a fairies nose.”
“That’s nice,” she said. Belva guided him past the stairs. “So, Marecus … is that an African name?”
“Why do y’all white folks keep asking me that?” he said as she aided him into a room.
Saxton was splayed out on the bed. At least he didn’t still have his junk in his hands. He’d somehow managed to roll over twice and show her his bum. “Odessa, is my ass still there? I can’t feel it….”
This was all too much. She decided instead of taking a chance with her drunk husband, she would go and sleep in the room Ryanne was in. At least when her sister came back, they could talk.
Ryanne’s room wasn’t empty. Instead, she found her brother resting there. Face down in the bed. Also butt naked.
“Oh My Ghhherrrrrrrrd!” she yelled.
This was insane. But Thanksgiving was about to get worse.
It was going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Chapter 19. Say what now…?
Victorío arrived on Thanksgiving morning to find a table full of hung over men. Well, everyone but Dusty and Bobby Ray. Those two were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and getting the fires started for roasting the pig in the pit. Dusty stood by the fire, using a long hot poker to dig in the coals, mix in the wood chips along with mesquite chunks to get the fire ready for the meat. Another grill was fired up for ribs so that Bobby Ray could show off to his new best buddy, Big Sarge, his famous bar-be que sauce.
Unfortunately, after spending much of the night on the hallway floor, Big Sarge was not only hungover, but stiff, sore, and bordering on cranky. Lucy had the cure all as she doled out her hangover remedy and passed everyone a glass. She stopped in front of her eldest son, staring at him.
“Saxton, it is good to see you this morning with clothes on. I don’t know why you decided to come find me in the middle of the night to talk about the meaning of life, butt raving naked,” she told him.
Saxton only mumbled under his breath. “My clothes were hot.”
There were many other items on Lucy’s mind to discuss with her son. At the top of the list were all the bullet holes in his body. Tears flooded her eyes when he walked away from her last night and guilt took over. Had I been a better mother, he would have never run off into danger to prove himself. This morning, a new feeling had taken over Lucy, and along with the celebration of the holiday, there were many things for which to be thankful. Her son was home and she was going to be a grandmother.
Odessa was past grateful when Ryanne walked through the back door around 9:30 am. It was obvious to all that the Ryanne who walked through the door in the morning was not the one who walked out last night. The version that came through the doorway for breakfast was full of spark, seemed sated, and was carrying a great deal of confidence – confidence that shone through when a call came in from Dwight’s mother.
Ryanne took the call at the kitchen table as she ate like a woman who had not seen food in a month. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Dobbins, but I am not in Corpus Christie. I am in Houston. I have been in Houston since Monday.”
There were questions flung at her along with accusations through the phone. “I did not kill your son. Yes, I shot him, but I didn’t kill him.”
Screaming could be heard through the line. “You want answers about his death? Start with his bank accounts. Whomever was paying him all that extra money is who you have a fight with, not me,” she told her very upset mother-in-law.
“No, that is not true, Mrs. Dobbins. I found out about the bribes at 3:30 in the morning from a phone call he was having in the kitchen. When I would not play along is when he decided to beat me into acceptance. I will tell you the same thing I told him, my father doesn’t hit me, and neither would he … which is why I shot him,” Ryanne told her.
Mrs. Dobbins was still yelling. “I’m sorry your son is dead but whomever was paying him is probably who killed him…. No, not necessary. I will have the body released to you as well as everything in his bank accounts. I will have my things out of the house by Saturday and I want nothing else to do with him.”
Dwight’s mother was still talking when Ryanne hung up the phone. She looked around the table. “Can someone pass me those grits?”
She was smiling as she guzzled down a glass of orange juice. “I am so thirsty this morning!”
Renteria was deep in a conversation with Connard about airplanes, when Odessa spoke to her husband.
“Saxton, the oddest thing happened yesterday in the mercantile,” she started to say to her husband. “This man took a selfie with me. He took one with Ms. Patsy as well … wait,” she said. Odessa darted up the stairs, or as fast as she could move with a small bowling ball for a belly. She returned a few minutes later with her phone. “I took a selfie with him too.”
Odessa turned the phone to Saxton. “Have you ever seen this guy before? He said his name was Eddie.”
Ryanne’s head came up slowly. How does she know Eddie?
The phone was floating about the table as others took a peek. Saxton, who could almost hear a rat urinate on cotton, was having trouble drowning out ambient sounds. Everything sounded loud to him. Especially when Renteria came into the room, saw the selfie, and dropped his glass.
“Ay Dios Mio! Do you know who that is?” he asked.
Everyone, including Ryanne, all asked, “Who is he?”
Renteria legs were giving way under him as he fumbled to get to a chair, trying to sit while talking at the same time. “That is Eduardo Delgado! The head of the Zeta Cartel! He is Hugo’s younger brother and the man who sent Mateo to kill you.”
Saxton was stone cold sober now. He sat up alert and staring at the photo. I have not been paying attention. I let my guard down and he got this close to my wife and son.
Ryanne remained quiet. Big Sarge could not. “He doesn’t seem like that big of a bad ass to me. That Mateo guy was more intimidating than this dude.”
“Well, Mateo is dead. This dude …” Renteria paused. He pointed at the pic of the man in the phone, “… sent me Mateo’s head in a box yesterday.”
“Say what now?” Ryanne asked. It was all too much for her, as she tried to stand, lost her footing, which caused her plate to flip off the table, a plate that also served as a receptacle for the vomit that also flowed from her mouth. Dora was trying to console her as shots could be heard in the distance.
“Where is Roget?” Saxton asked.
“Where is Kevin?” Odessa wanted to know.
“Where did the shots come from?” Renteria asked.
Dusty came into the kitchen. “The shots came from the stables.”
“Odessa, ladies, you stay here. Grandma, arm the women folk, we will be back in a jiffy,” Saxton said as he darted out the back door, each footfall reminding him of his pounding head.
It was indeed a beautiful horse. As a lover of horse flesh and all things fine, Eduardo appreciated the regal bearing of the bl
ack stallion. His intention had been to simply take a photo with the animal. Longshot was not having any part of it. As Eduardo leaned against the stall, the horse clamped down on his shoulder and bit him. “You son of a bi-…” Eduardo swore at the beast.
Longshot had learned early how to open his stall. This was also a surprise for Eduardo when the horse bent his head, lifted the latch, and came out of the stall at him. All Eduardo could see was black muscle coming at him with hooves, teeth, and anger. His hands were up defensively when Roget came into the stables.
“What in the hell?” Roget asked. When Eduardo turned, Roget knew immediately who he was. “How the fu-…” was all Roget managed to get out, as Eduardo pulled his gun and flipped off the safety, firing three shots.
One was a warning to the horse, who did not slowdown in his attack. The second went into the horse’s head and third one went into Roget’s leg. The big man dropped. The blood was spurting from his leg as Eduardo looked at him, raised his gun in the air, and fired another shot. The horses went into a tizzy as he heard footsteps coming his way in a hurry. Eduardo opened the doors of the rear stalls, setting those horses free. He made a point of steering them away from Roget as he ran out the back entrance using the horses as cover.
Roget was losing a lot of blood and Longshot was dead. And that was only the start of Thanksgiving Day.
Chapter 20. Call 911 …
Saxton arrived in the barn to find Roget bleeding out. At that rate, he was not going to survive until the ambulance arrived. Everyone in the barn knew it, but Saxton was home, he wasn’t in the field. On the ranch, there was nothing his daddy couldn’t fix and make better. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “Daddy! Help!”
Bobby Ray had made it to the barn when he saw Marecus on the ground and all the blood. “Holy shit balls, they got an artery!”
Dinner With the Blakemores (The Blakemore Files Book 5) Page 8
