by Wolfe, Layla
“Wow,” said Plaid Blue Shirt. “You guys sure live an exciting, dangerous life.”
Sax snorted. “Yeah. Sometimes too exciting and dangerous. Harte, you find the bike cover? Cover him good?”
Harte was back in the kitchen. “Yeah, he’s covered fine. Let me get these drops from the floor in case the cops want to take a gander.”
“Harte, you ever hear this saying? ‘The sun never sets on a Bare Bones patch.’”
Wolf snorted. “Tobiah claims it’s a real thing.”
“Sure, I’ve heard it,” said Harte. “My mom embroidered it on a sampler. It’s on the wall behind my dad’s desk.”
“Your dad.” It sounded like Sax muttered skeptically under his breath. “Your dad,” as though his dad was a piece of radioactive bear shit.
Now Harte squatted next to the love seat. “Sax. I’ll deal with the cops. You put Bee into bed. Maddy will be here pronto.”
“But don’t let her sleep,” said Wolf, “in case she’s got a concussion.”
Sax cut the end of the tape with scissors and fastened it down securely. “You guys hide your pieces somewhere. If we were having a bondage scene, there’d be no reason for you to have irons.”
“Wow,” said Blue Shirt. “I’d like to join The Bare Bones.”
As Sax stood me up, Wolf made a lip fart. “You serious, you tree hugger? I’m a fucking Prospect. Been a fucking Prospect for over six months now. Know how many guys I’ve killed?”
“You don’t need to brag,” Sax warned as he dragged me to the bedroom, my arm slung across his shoulder.
“Well,” said Wolf, “a lot. I can’t tell you how many, but a lot. A whole hell of a lot. Are you prepared to kill a lot of men? I didn’t think so.”
“I might,” said Blue Shirt, “if I was defending my brothers’ honor.”
“But it’s more than honor, I tell you! You’re defending the dignity, esteem, and reputation of every single Bare Boner when you are forced to kill some crappy, wife-beating, woman-slashing scumbag! It’s a credit to your name, I tell you, when you are forced to bury some low-life spitter like that guy there who can’t be bothered to take the gold grill out of his mouth before he spits back up the bags of crystal that have been cut with drain cleaner…”
We left Wolf spouting his stories of glory, and Sax put me down gently on his bed. I had made the bed earlier, and now was glad I had.
“We’ll have to find a shirt for you, cover up those bandages in case cops want to see you, make sure you’re okay.” Sax was rooting in his walk-in closet for a boyfriend shirt, I guessed.
“Zane?” I said groggily. I was still halfway in a daze. I had to focus my attention on Sax, otherwise he started to morph into Roscoe Flantz, into Baldy Avery. It was my brain telling me I needed to learn to trust. I couldn’t trust those former two guys. Sax, I could. “Now that we’ve got Tormenta, are you gonna let me go back to my nursery?”
His answer wasn’t immediate. He pretended to be choosing between two shirts, finally selecting a button-down light blue thing. I wondered where Sax ever wore that, with a tie. Maybe some BDSM awards dinner.
He sat next to me on the bed, bowling me toward him. He took a small white bottle of something from his nightstand. It was ibuprofen, and he shook out four. “I should. But we should also gauge to what extent Tormenta’s organization is going to want revenge. We made no bones about it being us—we wore our cuts, we wanted him to know who it was.”
“Post a guard at my nursery?” I grinned.
He handed me a glass of water and the pills. Suddenly his attitude was so gentle. He was the epitome of the classic gentle bear. “Maybe. Maybe we’ll need to do something like that. I know you need to get back to your job.”
“Yes,” I slurred, gulping four pills at once. “Lots of stuffed animals waiting for me.”
“What? But I don’t want you going back to your tiny apartment. That place is the pits. You’re moving in here with me.”
“I am?” The idea had never occurred to me. Everything was moving so fast. But then again, maybe everything was moving at just the right speed.
“Yes.” Sax took my chin between his fingers. “I love you, you know that, Bee. I already let you get injured because I didn’t leave a guard on you today.”
“You didn’t know Tormenta would get away from you.”
“I could have predicted the possibility. It could take months, even years, for this whole thing to die down, Bee. And I want you with me anyway. I want you to have all the kids you want.”
I nearly choked. “Kids…with you?”
“I hope to hell with me. Listen.” Sax kissed me on the forehead. In the stillness of the pine forest, I could hear the crunch of a car’s tires on the driveway. “I’d better get back out there, talk to cops, let them see I’m okay. Put this shirt on and get under the covers. The cops might want to question you.”
When Sax shut the door and I slid between the sheets, I had never felt safer. He wants me to have his babies…I had never been more flattered and honored in my life.
Was it possible I had finally attained the safety and security I’d been longing for since leaving the convent? It seemed too good to be true.
But I was definitely off to a good start.
EPILOGUE
SAX
“With this water the past is washed away. All the fear, sorrow, and danger that has trapped your soul is washed from you.”
Sax handed Beatrix the bowl of warm water. Taking the sea sponge from it, he kneeled and began “washing” her legs.
If the collaring ceremony had been performed, say, at the house of a fellow in the community, Beatrix would have been naked. But because they were crammed into Ford’s office at The Citadel with twenty other people, she had changed into a simple short shift. Lytton was playing the part of the officiant. Ford and Maddy had finally taken a romantic trip to Greece and Italy for a few weeks. Roman Serpico was there. He had profusely thanked Sax for taking out the asshole who’d turned his father into a sporting good. Of course Roman only wished he had been the one to do it, although he understood the situation. To make up for taking that joy away from Roman, Sax had allowed him to oversee the transition of Tony Tormenta’s head into a dartboard. Sax didn’t know and didn’t want to know, but suddenly, it was done.
So far there had been no retribution. Sax had even heard from a few guys within Tormenta’s organization that they were relieved to be rid of him. He was becoming out of control, they said. It was painful to work for him. Some guys even thanked Sax. It might be too good to be true there would be no blowback from the ops Sax had run, but two months later, that seemed to be the case. Their pants would be down around their ankles for many months to come waiting for Tormenta’s camp to make a move.
Lytton intoned, “Now is the time the two incomplete people realize something is missing in their lives. They’ve come into each other’s lives to fill that void. They have felt the same emptiness. Today their souls will combine and their lives will be whole. We invite everyone here to share today, to share their joy.”
Sax finished “washing” Beatrix’s neck. He admired the way the water had trickled down and bathed her breasts so the thin cotton was plastered to them. Bee was capable of so many looks, and today she was the innocent, eager virgin. Sax imagined she couldn’t wait to get him alone, to display her slutty side, to let her inner whore run rampant. In the two months they’d been living together, he hadn’t regretted choosing her for one moment. He’d made the right decision staying in Pure and Easy and letting a few minions run the road for him, going to mineral shows, selling his wares. Cassie helped him run Box of Rocks—in fact, she was there now holding down the fort—and Bee went to her Flagstaff nursery every day. It was the perfect, idyllic setup Sax had forgotten he had once wanted with Anna. She had even cooked naked for him a few times in nothing but an apron and high heels.
Taking the bowl of water from Bee, Sax took a goblet from Lytton that contained a lit candle. Handin
g this to her, Sax took the sage smudge stick from Lytton and lit it. Starting again at her feet, he smudged Bee up her entire body, front and back, winding it around her like a kinbaku rope.
Sax said, “I pledge my heart, mind and soul to your welfare. I willingly give you everything I am, everything I ever will be.”
A few of the older guys, Duji and Tuzigoot, coughed, so Sax gave the sage bundle back to Lytton and allowed him to pour some oil into his cupped hands. Clove, anise, and ginger bloomed inside Sax’s nostrils as he shared a sly look with Bee. She had been cleaned, perfumed, and now she was being oiled. It wasn’t a strange feeling for Sax, performing this ritual in front of his brothers’ eyes. He was used to performing in public. But he imagined Bee was a bundle of heart-pounding nerves. It wasn’t your usual biker ceremony.
As he oiled her calves and as far up on her thighs as he dared, Sax recited. He had only halfway memorized his speech—he was basically winging it, being accustomed to this sort of thing. “I pledge my insight and wisdom, my property, and my shelter to you. I will guide you, defend you, and meet all your needs.” He oiled her neck, her hands, and her face, showing attention to the details of her fingers.
Now Lytton handed Sax the collar he’d taken back from Bee for the ceremony. This wouldn’t be her everyday, nursery collar. He’d given her a much plainer one for that. This was her dress-up collar, embedded with fire opals, garnets, turquoise, and banded pink rhodochrosite like candy. “With this collar I bind you as my own, my property, my soul. You give these things to me of your own free will. You know what this collar represents. You freely give me everything you possess.”
“Yes,” Bee said in a small, chaste voice. “I do.”
As Sax fastened the collar behind her neck, he kissed her. The kiss was almost chaste too, and the room full of bikers erupted in a hearty cheer. In addition to the top Pure and Easy officers, the abovementioned allergic men, and Faux Pas, Gollywow, Wild Man, members of the Flagstaff chapter were here too, the few who remained after Leo had gone into the WITSEC program. Sax’s son Harte and his sometime lover Dayton Navarro stood on opposite sides of the room. After the ceremony, Harte was heading out to “find himself” on a road trip with one of Sax’s geology assistants. Fred Birdseye had stayed on as Veep once Leo had vanished, pledging his loyalty to the new Veep, Sax Saxonberg.
After Sax’s beatdown in the Citadel parking lot, Leo’s cover had finally been blown. On the surface, Leo been indicted on a racketeering charge, but Harte had gone to see him after he’d been transported to the U.S. Marshal Service, along with his extremely pissed-off wife Lulu. Leo admitted to Harte that WITSEC was his next destination, and that he’d been cooperating with law enforcement. He’d been secretly taping Flagstaff’s church meetings. Agents from the Department of Health had raided the P and E nail salon as well as a dozen others used as money laundering fronts for Tormenta and Leo. The fate of the unpaid or underpaid women was not known.
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. “S
ounds 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.