ShotgunRelations (15 page)

Much later, as they lay sexually satiated
in the dark and cuddled under the covers, they watched soft, wet snowflakes
drift by the windows, turning the night into a winter wonderland.

* * * * *

By Monday afternoon all the snow had burned
off and it felt almost like spring when Liz went to meet Jack in town. He’d
been tied up all day with the county judge on a child custody hearing and she’d
herded cows out of barns and back into their pastures until two hours ago.
Tomorrow would be the judge’s day in Caden to hear criminal charges, so she’d
stay at Jack’s and attend Frank’s arraignment even though the idea of seeing
the man in shackles saddened her.

That arraignment was certain to be a
circus, with every rancher in the county on hand to see the process of justice
begin for the man who’d allegedly run an active gang of rustlers. Jack had
mentioned last night that he wouldn’t be shocked if somebody tried to exact
vigilante justice, so many folks in The Corral had been talking about ropes and
trees and lynchings.

Pulling a ranch SUV into Jack’s driveway,
Liz told herself to concentrate on her master, to forget about all the outside
forces that seemed to conspire against them getting quality time together. She
grabbed a thermal bag full of the dinner Maria had fixed, threw her overnight
bag over her shoulder and made her way to Jack’s front door where she fumbled in
her purse for the key he’d placed in her hand this morning.

It’s going to be a rough day, hon. I
want the first thing I see when I get home to be your gorgeous, naked body in
my kitchen. First I’ll want some food, but then I intend to spend the rest of the
evening gorging myself on my precious slave.

She smiled when she remembered what he’d
said. Her master had a prodigious appetite—for Maria’s good food as well as for
steamy, down-and-dirty sex.

Once she’d put the chili con carne in a pot
to reheat and turned the oven on to warm tortillas and the peach tart Maria had
tucked in for dessert, Liz took off her clothes as Jack had instructed. Since
the food was taking care of itself, she stood in the living room door where
he’d taken her the night they’d first made love and looked her fill.

Now that she knew him better, she
understood his penchant for minimalist, contemporary décor. Only the patchwork
quilt he’d told her his babysitter had made stood out as an article that had
special meaning for him.

It didn’t matter that he’d grown up without
strong roots, calling boarding school and college dorms home. They’d put down
roots together, whether here or at the Laughing Wolf—maybe in both places. Liz
felt a particular affinity for this simple house where she’d first realized her
own desire—to submit to a strong Dom not just for a night but for a way of
life.

She wanted to submit to Jack. In every way.

It would be half an hour before he could
get home, so she went and gave herself a thorough cleansing inside and out,
using the bidet he’d demonstrated to her the last time she’d spent the night.
She’d need to have one of the devices installed at the ranch, because when she
felt thoroughly clean she had no misgivings about anywhere Jack might want to
put his mouth. She wondered idly if he sometimes used it too.

When she heard footsteps on the porch she
hurried back to the kitchen. She loved following her master’s every command
rather than having to make the decisions that had filled her days since Sheriff
Atkins had dragged Frank off to jail. Here, away from the ranch and all its
responsibilities, she could be herself. Jack Duval’s faithful, obedient slave.

She sank to her knees and gazed up at the
nearly six-foot expanse of hot, delectable male still wearing the navy pinstriped
suit he’d put on this morning at the ranch. His tie was loose, his shirt collar
unbuttoned, as though he’d put in an even harder day than she had. Dark circles
shadowed his eyes. The short, crisp stubble at the crown of his beautifully
shaped head looked as though he’d run his fingers through it over and over, a
nervous habit she’d picked up on the night he’d told her the secrets he’d
thought might send her running. If he had a conventional haircut, she imagined
his hair would stand out all over his head by the time a stressful day was
done.

“It’s been one hell of a day, but now I’m
home with my honey. Come here.” He bent and brought her to her feet, holding
her so tightly that the finely woven wool of his suit abraded her naked skin.
It felt good, arousing—almost as good as feeling his naked body pressed close
to hers.

He might be tired but his cock rose against
her mound. She longed to take him inside her, love away his exhaustion that
seemed more mental than physical. “Tell me what you want, Master.”

“You. And a bowl of that chili that smells
so good. What’s in the oven?”

“Corn tortillas and a peach tart for your
dessert. Maria thought you might want something sweet.”

He let her go and sat at the table. “We’ll
have the chili first and then eat dessert in bed.”

She set steaming bowls of chili on the
table and brought out the crispy tortillas from the oven. They ate quietly,
fulfilling their bodies’ demands efficiently, with no wasted motion. When they
were finished she got up and started to tidy the kitchen.

“Leave it. Bring that peach thing with you
and come to bed.” His fatigue seemed to have gone away along with the chili,
she thought as he devoured her with a hungry look that seemed anything but
exhausted.

Jack stripped down quickly, feasting his eyes
on Liz the whole time as he hung up his suit and dumped his shirt and boxers
into the hamper in the bathroom. His dick had been half hard since he’d walked
in and seen her waiting, naked but for his collar, her ring and the little
dagger that always drew his gaze to her impudent clit and the softest,
smoothest pussy he’d ever sampled.

He straddled her face and fed her his dick,
then dived into the heaven between her thighs and ate his fill. The smell of
freshly baked peach tart invaded his nostrils. They’d feed it to each
other—later.

He loved tasting her, tonguing her warm,
wet cunt and driving her crazy by sucking her clit. Sixty-nine had always
turned him on, but she gave the best head he’d ever had. She loved sucking cock
but more than that, she loved serving him. He concentrated on the way her
satiny tongue darted down to the base of his cock as she took him deep down her
throat. When she swallowed, the motion coaxed out lubrication that she licked
off his slit when he slid partway out.

He wanted to stay this way forever. He
wanted to come in her mouth, her ass. Her delicious little cunt. Wanting to
drive her over the edge, he buried his face in her heat and rimmed her anus
with his tongue, the way the other Dom had done the other night during their scene
at the club. The faint taste of diluted antiseptic told him she’d cleansed
herself for him. For this.

The sweet, clean scent of her sex and the
aroma of peaches and pastry flooded his senses. He had to claim her fully. Now.
He moved off her and rolled her onto her back. “I’m going to fuck you so deep
and so hard we won’t know where you end and I begin. Lift up your butt so I can
prop this pillow under you.”

When she obeyed he positioned a folded
pillow under her ass. “Now spread your legs. When I come inside you, wrap them
around my neck.”

“Yes, Master.” Like the obedient slave she
was, she opened herself to him, trusting him to bring her pleasure not pain.

Carefully, he sank into her cunt, slowly at
first as he tested the angle of penetration. When she wrapped her legs around
his neck he slid in all the way, nearly coming when his cock made contact with
the mouth of her womb and his balls rested within her inner labia.

She’d never felt so full, so taken. Over
and over her master claimed his property, his strokes as long and as deep as
he’d promised they’d be. He had his hands on her breasts, his fingers plucking
at the nipples. Pressure built in her pussy with every powerful thrust of his
hips. She was coming and there was nothing she could do to hold it back.

When she opened her mouth to beg permission
to come, he spoke first, his voice sounding strained, desperate. “Come for me.
Come now.”

For long moments her orgasm racked her body
before he shouted out with his release. Each burst of scalding semen set off
another round of exquisite pleasure-pain that began deep in her cunt and spread
its heat along every nerve in her body.

A long time later she ate the filling from
her peach tart off her master’s cock and balls, after he’d eaten his off the
tattoo on her mound.

* * * * *

After showering together they sat up in bed
talking, something Jack had never done after sex—until now. Sometimes he’d
wished for a friend—a sounding board for his frustrations—but he hadn’t
realized until now just how much he’d needed this.

His work was confidential, so he couldn’t
let off steam about his cases to just anybody, particularly in sprawling Caden
County where there were less than six thousand people, possibly including the
livestock on the smaller ranches. But he felt comfortable opening up with Liz.
It was as though she were an extension of himself.

“What had you so frustrated when you got
home tonight?” she asked, her fingers massaging the kinks out of his neck as
his head lay on her lap.

“The custody case. Judge Robinson considers
himself primarily a criminal court judge. He’s not big on hearing any civil
cases, particularly ones he thinks belong in a separate family court.
Unfortunately he’s the only choice here for everything too major for the
Justices of the Peace, because the county population doesn’t justify having an
associate judge.”

Liz moved her hand up and began to stroke
his right temple. “I thought things having to do with marriage and families
were handled in the Justice of the Peace courts.”

“You’re half right. They handle marriage
licenses and official records. But divorces and child custody cases have to go
to the county judge or one of his associates.”

“What did Judge Robinson do that made your
case so difficult?”

Jack appreciated that Liz never asked what
client’s case he was talking about, even though she probably knew at least half
his clients better than he did. “First, he’s old school. My client is a father
whose ex-wife wants to relocate with their son. He wants the child to stay here
with him, which the judge wasn’t anxious to consider. We’d hoped not to need to
prove the mother unfit, but ultimately we did.

“It didn’t set well with me to tell the
court, in front of a dozen or more observers, that a little boy’s mother had
been involved in numerous affairs and is presently living with an unsavory
former lover who’s now married to someone else.”

Liz let out a frustrated sigh. “Couldn’t
the judge have listened to your argument in his chambers?”

“Yeah, he could have, but he wouldn’t. I
tried skirting around the fitness issue by explaining that my client is engaged
to marry a woman whose reputation is unimpeachable, and that his situation is
stable while his ex’s is the opposite. It didn’t work. At three o’clock this
afternoon I had to paint a picture of the ex as being hardly better than a
hooker walking the streets of Houston.

“That little boy may have to live his life
being constantly reminded by some cruel people that his mother was a slut who
had no clue about right or wrong.”

He looked up at Liz, saw sorrow on her
face. “The father did get custody, didn’t he?”

He sat up, trying to relieve the throbbing
in his head. “Yes, but—”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Master. You did
what you had to do.” She moved behind him and rubbed his temples, kneading
gently with her fingertips. “You’ve got a headache, don’t you?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I see it in your eyes. Does this help?”

“Some. It would feel better if my head
weren’t sporting five o’clock shadow. I keep worrying that I’ll scratch your
fingers.”

She smiled. “I like feeling your five
o’clock shadow. I don’t believe I’ve thanked you for going military again. I
know keeping it up takes a lot of time. Maybe after we’re married you’ll let me
shave the sides and back between haircuts.”

He’d never come across a woman before who
liked his high-and-tight. Or maybe it was that he’d never before found a woman
who was totally in love with him with or without his preferred hairstyle.
“Maybe I will. You do a good job shaving the other parts of me when we have
time to play afterward.”

“I love the way you look like a Marine
recruit, but I’ve wondered what made you decide to adopt that style when you
stopped shaving your head the way so many BDSM practitioners do.”

He rubbed the landing strip and grinned at
her. “Lots of dudes shave their heads because it sort of hides the fact they’re
going bald. That’s not my problem. I don’t have hair like Bye or my old man.
Mine’s like my mother’s would be if she didn’t spend nearly a thousand a month
having it straightened. For a while when I was little she used to shave her
head. She wore a wig almost all the time back then, even at home, but I
remember seeing her without it a few times.”

Liz looked at him, then closed her eyes as
though she was trying to picture Marianne without her long black hair with its
startling white streaks at the temples. “I’m telling you the truth, honey. Our
kids may be cursed with the Marianne hair gene.”

“No worse than if they’re cursed with my
bone-straight, dirty-blonde locks, Master.”

He was glad she felt that way. “I’d kill to
have hair like yours. Or to be going bald so I’d have a vanilla excuse for
keeping my head shaved. Take a look here.” He found the longest strip of hair
at the back of the horseshoe pattern and rubbed the butch wax off the stubble, then
bent over so she could see the tight, ugly little ringlets. “See, my hair is
totally unmanageable if I let it get more than an eighth of an inch long. Even
now it takes a lot of butch wax to keep it standing up like it’s supposed to.
In high school the guys all used to say I looked like a poodle that needed a
trim.”