Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC Book 5) (26 page)

How Sax wished he could’ve been a fly on the wall for that meeting between Leo and Harte. Leo had evidently assured Harte he had not turned anyone else in and once he was gone, the persecution would cease. But Sax didn’t trust a word that scumbucket had to say, so he was on pins and needles in that regard, too. Panhead and Baron Funkhauser would never be returned to them. They may as well be dead, for all practical purposes. Saying “Well, my betrayal ends here” didn’t erase all that had gone before. Sax just regretted he hadn’t been able to burn off Leo’s backpack before he vanished.

“I’ve never been to as many weddings as I’ve been to in the past couple months,” raved the club’s lawyer, Slushy. He had brought Yvonne Serpico, Roman’s mother, after marrying her again to make sure it was fully legal after all.

“Oh,” said Bee modestly, “this isn’t a legally binding wedding. Just a bondage collaring ceremony.”

“‘Just’?” mocked Sax good naturedly.

“Looked more real than our ceremony,” said Slushy. “We just went to Vegas and were married by a James Brown impersonator.”

Yvonne frowned. “But it was legal.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! Sweetheart,” Slushy assured his bride.

The tattoo artist Knoxie was the next to congratulate the couple. He was owner and operator of The Missing Ink on Bargain Boulevard, not far from the Box of Rocks. “Your wrists, please.”

Obediently, Sax and Bee stuck out their inner wrists for Knoxie to examine. He’d just done the ink job the day before, so the pictures were still slightly red and puffy. Bee’s wrist had a door key on a chain. On Sax’s inner wrist, the chain continued, and led to a lock. It was symbolic on many levels.

“Beautiful job,” said Sax. “As usual.”

Bee said, “Now you need to do those gems on his scapula. I choose purple fluorite, but Sax says it’s too ordinary. He wants something rarer, like diop—diop—”

“Dioptase.” Sax could’ve picked any number of even rarer gems to be inked on his back, but rare gems were usually ugly. He was planning on giving Bee a tanzanite engagement ring.

“You’ll have to give me photos,” said Knoxie.

Someone opened Ford’s office door and an enormous brown shaggy puppy streaked in. Sax grinned as his new dog made a beeline right for Santiago Slayer. Slayer may have lost part of his ear at the hands of Tormenta—he was an especially avid dart player over at The Drawing Board these days—but the vivid white slash across his handsome Latin face had made him even more irresistible to women, it seemed. Sax was trying to convince the playboy bounty hunter to stay, to contract for his chapter on a permanent basis. Slayer insisted he was an adventurer, a “pilgrim on the hazardous landscape of life.” “One small club is not enough to contain my big personality.”

“Ah,
mierde
, that dog is trying to kill me!” cried Slayer as the large puppy jumped up on his lap. She must have been cruising around the revetment area because she left two dusty red paw prints on the crotch of his white slacks.

“She likes you,” Sax pointed out.

“Ah, ah!” lamented Slayer as the toddler Scruffy leaped over and over, his lap now an impressionistic painting of paws. “I like dogs. Just not the ones that are the Terror of Tinytown!”

Once the door had been opened, sweetbutts poured in. Sax shared a knowing look with Bee when they migrated Slayer’s way. Russ Gollywow was the only single officer present, and he always shot Slayer an ungrateful look when this happened. Bee giggled.

“Ah, please, ladies,” said Slayer, holding his hands up in surrender. One club whore put her shelf of tits on his shoulder. She must have been over six feet tall. “There is plenty of Santiago Slayer to go around.”

Bee said, “It’s nice to know some things never change.”

Sax could feel her steering him toward the door, so he submitted. He assumed part of their ceremony would be a balls-to-the-wall fuck, symbolic of course, but a colossal lay, all the same. This time, Harte was the only one who stood in their way, and he walked with them down the hall.

“Don’t hog the game room!” Wolf Glaser called out, harking back to the time he’d interrupted them in there.

“That was a beautiful ceremony,” said Harte, his hands buried deep in his jean pockets.

Was it Sax’s imagination, or did his son seem like he had other things on his mind? “Yes,” he agreed. “And Bee has never smelled lovelier.”

“It’s the cinnamon,” she said.

Sax put his arm around her. “I prefer the sage.”

They stopped outside the game room. A couple of guys playing pool caught view of them and abandoned their game, tossing their sticks on the table and slouching out the exit. “Ah…” Harte was looking everywhere but at Sax. “Just wanted to say. I’ll be in touch, of course, while I’m on the road. I’ll have, ah, a meeting with you when I get back to update you on everything.”

“All right,” said Sax, eager to get inside the room and lock the door. Why was Harte hemming and hawing over this? He clapped him on the shoulder, palsy-walsy. “Sounds solid, Harte. We’ll reach out soon.”

“I wonder what that was all about.” Sax mused aloud as he locked the game room door behind Beatrix.

“I think he may have been made aware that you’re his father,” Bee said coolly, sitting on her old favorite stool.

Sax felt for the coil of rope in his cut pocket. Bee’s words stunned him. Was that possible? “What the fuck? You think…”

“Yes.” Bee’s smile was dazzling. She may have a patchwork of scars on her left breast, and a vivid one to match Slayer’s across her shoulder, but she was blissful, serene. And this made her more gorgeous than ever. Being newly pregnant agreed with her. “I think someone told him.”

BEATRIX

The collaring ceremony, with all the attention focused on me as it hadn’t been in years, combined to release a rush of endorphins into my system.

Since meeting Sax, my life had become a whirlwind of action and events, and now was no exception. I was learning trust in all its many facets. I had to trust that all would turn out okay. I sat on my customary stool and said, “I think someone told him.” I really did think that. I’d never seen Harte act so nervous, either. He had heavy things on his mind, and it wasn’t just where to sell mimetite and chrysocholla.

I looked at my husband. Yes, he was basically my husband. We just needed that one piece of paper to make it legal. Maybe we’d follow Slushy’s example. Except maybe we’d get a Sinatra impersonator, or a Rod Stewart lookalike, to marry us.

Sax was a bold, brawny hunk of man. What he said during the ceremony about feeling safe and secure? He knew that was my number one sore spot. The trauma with Tormenta had thankfully not lasted long, although I still had nightmarish flashbacks about it. I saw Maddy’s shrink who told me to focus on the positive and happy aspects of that nightmare—the part where Sax and his friends saved me. Dr. Petrie said this would reassure me that overall, the world was a friendly, safe place. That I was loved.

How did Petrie know Sax loved me? He didn’t. He said he just assumed by Sax’s actions that he loved me. Well, that was true of many of Sax’s actions. Right now he was stripping my damp, clinging shift from my torso, skimming the shred of my panties down my legs, unhooking my tiny bra. The second I saw the soft white polyester rope in his hand, I knew what I was in for. I sat up straighter, like a good schoolgirl.

He started working on my torso, placing a pattern of diamonds down my abdomen between my breasts. He worked with two ropes at a time, carefully placing each rope with precision. He manipulated, shook, and patted each section, leaving my nipples bared and jutting. But his concentration was drawn elsewhere. I noticed he didn’t even knot the rope and pass it under my pussy. That was probably by design.

“You think he knows?”

“Why would he have been acting so strange? Leo might not have told him. Maybe Lulu did, when Harte visited the Marshals office.”

Sax snorted. “Yeah. I imagine Lulu was pretty pissed. She hasn’t been close to Leo for a long-ass time, if ever.”

“Sax, were you…you and Lulu
close
?”

His answer was immediate. “No. It was strictly a medical matter. She’s not my type. Too brassy and ballsy. She’s the new sort of woman. I like the old fashioned sort.”

I sat up even taller. “You think I’m old fashioned?” I had to place my bare foot on a rung of the stool to lift my thigh. Sax passed the rope under my ass, but there wasn’t enough room for him to craft the design he had in mind, so he had me stand, leaning my hands on the side rail of the pool table.

He slapped my ass just hard enough to sting. “Of
course
you’re old fashioned. About as old timey as they get, I’d say. Who else aspires to be a
nun
?”

It
did
sound pretty funny hearing him say it. “Well, it’ll be for the best if Harte does find out, don’t you agree? Leo’s out of the picture, now he has no dad, and you’ve always been a father figure.”

Sax chuckled. Kneeling, he was working the rope down my thigh. He would tie my ankles together, but not my knees. “That’s what started our giant falling-out ten years ago. I had the nerve to lecture Harte on getting that girl pregnant. Leo felt I was overstepping. That Harte might figure it out just by the way I was acting. Now, if you accept Harte as your stepson, how weird will that be? He’s the same age as you.”

My answer was quick, too. “He’s one year younger than me! A year and a half, to be precise. It’s not like I’ll mother him. We’ve been friends for a long time.
Ah!
”

Harte’s father had buried his face between my ass cheeks. He hadn’t been able to hold out until he patterned my other thigh all the way up to my cunt, and had unceremoniously buried his face there. Knowing what a talented pussy-licker he was, I tried to spread my feet on the tiled floor, but could only spread my knees. Sax wound up with his nose in my asshole, his tongue reaching to stroke my clit, more of a maddening situation that had me jumping around like a scratched CD.

In this position, I could reach behind me by arching my back and grabbing a handful of his thick, scruffy hair. Rotating my hips like a hula dancer, I ground my pussy lips against his mouth, encouraging him to reach farther, to stretch his throat muscles, to slash his tongue-tip across my puckered hole. That was a lewd, taboo act that was unfamiliar to me, and my inner pussy shuddered with excitement.

But that wasn’t his goal, and he withdrew to make quick macramé work of the rope. Yanking my hands together at the small of my back, he bound those, too.

“You still need to learn obedience.”

“I know, father.” I still liked calling him that. Whether it was a familial reference or a religious one, either way it was strictly forbidden, heightening the eroticism of the scene. “I feel safe when I’m obedient to you.”

He pressed a knot to the small of my back. “How does this make you feel?”

I squiggled in my bonds. “Safe. Safe and secure in your arms.”

“Good.” With the finality of a big tug on the knot, Sax stood. Behind me, he rustled around for something in the wet bar’s drawer. Coming to stand where I couldn’t see him, he touched something sharp and metallic to my shoulder. I pulled away with a hiss, afraid it was the tip of a knife blade.

He brought the fork around so I could see it, and I exhaled. “Do you trust your father, your Master?” he murmured in my ear. His strong forearm was around my waist, the heat of his bulging crotch pressed against my bound ass. I wiggled my ass so the ropes massaged his cockhead through his jeans. Sax had told me I was an “intuitive,” a natural born bottom. I always knew exactly what to do, how to act.

“Yes, father. I place my entire trust in you.”

“Good.” When he slid the fork tines over my protruding, crinkled nipples, a delicious shiver ran simultaneously up my neck, making me gasp, and down my spine into the very core of my pussy, making my uterus shudder. Then he did it to the other nipple. The sensation was so strong it was almost as though my uterus was going to cramp. He was stimulating me, riling up my endorphins as though stirring a dangerous stew. Being pregnant, I’d been surging with hormones lately anyway. He was just stirring the pot.

Then he slapped my ass! He would scrape with the tines, down my belly inching closer to my pussy. He used the fork like a paintbrush, touching me here, there, I never knew where to expect it next. Then he’d spank me with what felt like a big wooden paddle. He was riling me beyond belief, but my hands were bound behind my back, and all I could do was squirm like a stray dog in a net.

“Learning to trust again is the most important thing,” he growled. “You need to believe in me, to know that I’d never hurt you.”

I knew what he was doing. He was using his Psych 101 training to ensure that I never connected him, consciously or otherwise, with the immature, abusive fumblings of Roscoe Flantz. The sociopathic violence of Tony Tormenta, that was a given. Sax was doing everything in his power to make me immune to those memories. Dr. Petrie had mentioned something called EMDR, a PTSD treatment used by the Department of Defense. Apparently reliving my trauma while shifting my eyes back and forth and him tapping or making some kind of repetitive sound, this would eventually render the memory ineffective, take the punch out of it. I could replace it with something positive. It seemed like Sax was enacting something like that. Whether he knew it or not, I couldn’t tell.