Stay Vertical

by Layla Wolfe

  Cropper had died last year and Ford was now President of The Bare Bones, running Illuminati Trucking out of an old airplane hangar on some mesa. Maddy had a new nurse’s job in Pure and Easy. Madison and Speed were much closer physically to Ingrid as the crow flies, but there was even less of a chance they would go check in on her. At least I spoke with Ingrid once a year or so out of some warped sense of obligation. I guess I couldn’t bear the thought that Ingrid would die in her rickety, leaky mid-century modern home, and the mailman would smell her a month later.

  Ingrid had never done the tiniest little thing for me. She had ignored and neglected me, never asking me the smallest question about how my life was going. I basically raised myself with no help from her. Why was I ending my service with the Peace Corps, dropping everything I knew and loved about Africa, to go and help her?

  Because no one else would.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LYTTON

  Lytton slammed his hips against the woman’s ass. He was buried so deeply inside of her he feared he might explode already, and that wasn’t very good Dominant behavior. A good Dom used all the tools at his command to control his own orgasm—Lytton never particularly cared about the orgasm of his partner.

  It was the most exquisite cock and ball torture when he made his slave snap the two-part leather studded cock ring around his penis. It wrapped below the balls and squeezed them prominently, while the second ring constricted the cock at the base. Lytton knew that everyone admired the way his long, thick phallus jutted from the cock ring¸ and he usually made them pleasure him orally until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Today, that tongue-lashing had been much shorter than usual. For some reason Lytton was ultra-sensitive today—maybe the strange high-pressure front moving into the Happy Jack area. A cold air mass was pushing down from Alaska, and that always made him jumpy and reactionary to every slight stimulation.

  So Lytton flipped the girl over and finished his workout by sliding his prick in to the hilt. He loved watching the action in one of several mirrors affixed to his playroom walls. He even forced the slave to watch, wrapping her neck chain around his wrist and yanking until her eyes bulged from their sockets.

  “Admire me, bitch,” he growled. But he was looking at his own reflection in the mirror.

  Obligingly, she wiggled her ass—about the only part of her body she could wiggle, Lytton had trussed her so well. He hadn’t gagged her, though. He wanted to hear her obey and praise him. “Oh God yes, Sir. You are fucking divine. You are so divine you are holy. Your ass is like a slab of beef.” He slapped her flank with his palm, correcting her. “Nicely marbled beef.”

  Lytton liked this slave. She was flowery with her words, a trait he encouraged. The usual “oh God your cock is so big” had gotten old a long time ago. He didn’t even usually bother remembering their names—some chicks would do anything for an ounce of Eminence Front—but he thought this one’s name was Diane.

  Diane was right. His glutes contracted beautifully every time he slammed into her pussy. His left deltoid shimmered as he gripped her by the waist, and his lumbar muscles undulated nicely as he uncoiled his spine with each thrust. If he swiveled his hips a certain way and fucked her in time with the slaps he peppered her red ass with, he could even admire the red and black, stylized tribal tattoo of an eagle draped over his entire shoulder.

  The ink had seemed rebellious five years ago when he’d first gotten angrily blitzed and demanded that Knoxie decorate him. Knoxie had tried to say something about not inking blitzed guys, something to do with their blood being too thin and bleeding all over his shop, but apparently Lytton had head-butted him until he complied.

  The giant goose egg on his forehead had backed up Knoxie’s story, but the design was absolutely stunning, and Lytton never once regretted it. Every time he looked at it—which was often—he was reminded of his unalienable birthright, that he was a native son of Fort Apache.

  No one could tell him any different.

  Lytton arched into Diane and spanked her so soundly her piercing cries were probably completely real. He was so pleased with what he saw in the mirror that he lost his supreme control and ejaculated.

  Digging his fingers into her waist, he held his breath as the overpowering waves of ecstasy rolled through him. His balls contracted up close to his body, wringing the utmost exquisite torture from the leather squeezing every last drop of semen from them. Lytton liked it when something hurt so bad it was good.

  It was the second time he’d come in the past half hour, no small feat even for a sexual acrobat such as himself. He held Diane tightly to his crotch, but when he felt the blissful waves subside, he practically tossed her away. She would have fallen to her knees, but the suspension cuffs around her wrists were hooked to an overhead bar, preventing that. She just sort of hung there, rotating in the wind like a tetherball.

  Lytton had been actually thinking fondly of her a minute ago, but now he had no use for…what was her name again? He was an angry young man, bad to the bone, and he took pride in that. He knew that he had every right to be angry.

  His cock still standing at half-mast, he took a few strides to the spanking bench to untie the other girl. He had started out doing some fancy kinbaku rope work on her but had actually become bored halfway through, so he’d just wound the ends of the flat nylon rope between her wrists at the small of her back. Her bare tits jutted nicely and her eyes were appropriately pleading above the mouth gag, but Lytton had been getting bored with such shenanigans lately.

  He had been pushing the bondage envelope to prevent boredom. He’d drawn blood while flogging a couple of recent slaves. When one had gone crying to her boyfriend about her welts, the guy had come rampaging out to Lytton’s Leaves of Grass Ranch. That was a dangerous enough escapade in itself what with all Lytton’s security measures in place.

  Lytton used to use spike strips, for instance, on the only access road through his fortress-like front gate. Then some asshole inspector from the state Department of Health had shredded his own tires on his way in for a surprise inspection. He told Lytton if he wanted to be a legitimate medical marijuana grower, he had better stop using illegitimate tactics. Now Lytton had to be satisfied with ineffective cattle guards that wouldn’t keep out a determined rabbit. So he’d backed those up with a few mercenaries armed with Uzis patrolling the ranch in ATVs.

  Lytton’s partner, Tobiah Weingarten, had actually given him a stern dressing-down after that incident. Well, what the fuck? The bitch had gotten her ounce of Eminence Front weed. And her welts would heal. But Toby said if Lytton wanted to get that carried away anymore he’d best not do it in an upstanding place of business, but go down to Mormon Lake or into Pure and Easy and rent some fucking cave where nobody would notice blood splatter on the walls.

  “And don’t forget to take your fur kilt and wooden club,” Toby had yelled, “because no one’s going to be able to distinguish you from the other Cro-Magnon men in your cave.”

  “I got rid of the guy, didn’t I?” Lytton had protested.

  “Yeah!” shouted Toby. “By giving him two whole ounces of Young Man Blue! You know I have to account for our product down to the last one-one-hundredth of a gram, so how’m I going to explain that when the regulators come knocking?”

  Lytton had stubbornly stuck out his lower lip. He knew he was stunningly beautiful when petulant—a quality that had no effect on the businesslike Toby Weingarten. “It wasn’t the weed that got rid of the guy. It was me shoving the barrel of my Glock against his temple.”

  Toby threw up his hands. “Oy gevalt! You’re going to run our business into the ground with your johnson.” Toby had stormed out then. He had no sense of humor. Yet he was the one wearing the Klingon belt buckle.

  Now, Lytton released the gag from the slave’s mouth. She panted with relief and regarded him gratefully. “Your cruelty is kind, Sir,” she recited. It made him wonder how many times he’d played a scene with this one. He needed fresh ones if th
ey were just going to recite stale lines.

  He was tiring of this. He wanted to get into something new. Wearily, he released what-was-her-name from the suspension cuffs, and she crumpled to the floor like a pile of Toby’s fanfic. Lytton was never the best at the touchy-feelie “aftercare” portion of the program, so even if someone was subdropping, he’d just turn on some jazz and hand them a bottle of water.

  That’s what he did now. The jazz station he selected was a bit too easy listening for him, but it was supposed to be all about the slaves and their needs, he guessed. He went down the hall and into the bathroom. He removed the cock ring and cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide. He didn’t take his normal enjoyment in looking out the window as he did this.

  His house was an old two-story 1950s clapboard cottage, built for someone’s hunting pleasure here in the Coconino National Forest. Running a pot farm—initially an illegal one, of course, and now fully certified by the state—had been a highly successful move. Lytton could easily afford to replace the old shack with something nicer and more ostentatious, like some California wine grower with his fountains and colonnades, but why? He didn’t need to draw any more attention to his operation and he already spent a fortune on security.

  Hell, he’d started out here in a mobile home. Six years ago, armed with a fresh PhD in chemistry from MIT, he’d squatted on this land that some tribal member owned. Everyone said with his brilliance he should be working for the Mayo Clinic, General Mills, or Pfizer. It was actually Lytton’s internship at Monsanto that got him interested in cultivating great buds that weren’t sprayed with toxic pesticides or draining rivers dry and threatening ecosystems.

  It must have been his Apache ancestry. Lytton proudly liked to think it was in his blood to grow only the purest strains of organic, long-flowering sativas. Native Americans were all about nature, right?

  He didn’t have a wife and didn’t plan on obtaining one. For one, a wife wouldn’t look too favorably on his banging other women. Could he stop? Sure. He could stop anything at any moment. But why? He knew he was a jaded, bitter toolbag, just riddled with demons. His crappy life had wrung him dry of any sappy sentiment. He had raised himself by hook and crook from the ghetto of the res, only to find out that his entire life was a shitty, deceitful lie. Sure, he had good grades, but he had probably just gotten the MIT scholarship due to the board’s imagining that he was a full-blood Injun—a “minority.” He may as well have just stayed in Fort Apache with everyone else, dealing blackjack or drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at the bar in Whiteriver, his horse wandering around between the dog carcasses in the street.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures. That was Lytton’s favorite motto, one he’d used a thousand times while escaping the res and ruthlessly working his way through MIT’s doctorate program. But now, arranging his cock in his boxer briefs and stepping into his jeans, he just didn’t know how it applied. What were the desperate measures he was supposed to take to avoid becoming bored with bondage and discipline? I should be so fucking lucky. Life has been worse.

  The shrill scream of his security alarm nearly gave Lytton a heart attack. His arms were only halfway through the armholes of his white wifebeater when the siren went off, practically shaking his brittle house to the rafters. Lytton’s torso slammed back against the bathroom wall. Only twice before had he ever been subjected to the air raid volume of this fucking alarm. Once it was a coyote. Another time, some teens had tried to sneak through the forest into his veg room and steal some clones. They had only gotten far enough for one of his former SEALs to nearly blow their heads off.

  Three gunshots coming from the harvest greenhouse area let Lytton know it was no damned coyote or teen. He’d left his Glock in the play room. Out of habit, he always kept his piece close to his person even when engaging in a scene. Especially during a scene.

  Shoeless, he tore back down the hall while yanking his shirt down around his hips. He only skidded into the play room long enough to wrest his Glock from the holster that hung from the X of the Saint Andrew’s cross. He had a flashing view of the two women cowering in terror against the wall, clutching each other, but he had no time for that.

  He pounded down his front steps, whipping around the side of the house where a path had been beaten through a stand of ponderosa pine. He chambered a round as he ran, unsure if the large caliber report of another shot was from his men or theirs. All of his men carried nine millimeter semis, but then so did a lot of guys.

  For good reason, there was only one pedestrian entrance to the harvest greenhouse. Seeing that the shipping and receiving dock doors were still closed, Lytton slammed his back up against the outer greenhouse wall next to the open door brandishing his weapon barrel skyward like in a TV show, eyes bugged, listening intently. Inside, men’s boots sounded against the cement foundation as they ran up and down the rows of little tents that housed just-harvested plants, fans, and humidifiers. Between the air raid siren and the drone of the machines, he was lucky to hear a few shouted phrases from the intruders. His technician Helium Head always manned this greenhouse, but none of the shouts were his.

  “Iso!” shouted one of the assholes. “Roll up that fucking door so Tyke can bring the jeep around!”

  Iso! Isosceles Weaver was the fucking sergeant-at-arms of The Cutlasses, a local motorcycle club that considered the Leaves of Grass Ranch to be their backyard. They’d tried to hit him before several times, mainly by being stupid, and had been rebuffed each time by one of Lytton’s mercs.

  Once, Iso had pretended to be delivering a load of space buckets and grow lights. As if anybody would fall for that. The merc had shot out Iso’s tires and the box truck had blocked Lytton’s driveway for a week until he’d had it towed to the impound yard. Another time, Iso faked he was an electric company worker, complete with authentic uniform and clipboard, concerned that a neighbor was poaching electricity and running up Lytton’s bill. Yeah, sure. If anything, everyone always suspected the pot farmer of poaching power.

  Lytton didn’t know how they’d gotten this far this time, but suddenly he felt alive, on top of his game. Was this the desperation he’d been waiting for to jolt him out of his stupor? This was what had been missing from his life. He’d become too complacent—a Sativa King in his lonely turret, acting out warped fantasies that were only a paltry shadow of the real world. All the while real danger and excitement lurked just beyond his own greenhouse—

  “I can’t get it up!”

  That was Iso’s stupid voice, all right. He was apparently having trouble with the chain on the roll-up door, and that Tyke douchebag was already crashing through the woods in his stupid fucking Jeep.

  Lytton had to act fast.

  Pivoting on one foot like a quarterback, Lytton entered the greenhouse, the barrel of his Glock leading the way. He was hit with the sweet, pungent aroma of flowering marijuana buds. Overhead light banks cast a futuristic glow on the rows of plants, but the first thing Lytton fixed on was Doug Zelov’s eyes, peering at him piercingly over a bush of fluffy green leaflets.

  Lytton shot first. He’d been prepared to shoot since originally hearing the shots inside his greenhouse. If one wasn’t prepared to shoot, why would one carry a gun? But Zelov must have been ready for it, for in a flash he was gone. Lytton screeched around the corner of that aisle, nearly flying like a bowling pin when his bare foot snagged on a warm, mushy human limb. He barely registered that loyal old Helium Head, who had been with him since the motor home days, was sprawled like a starfish. His eyes behind the circular spectacles lens were wide open and glassy.

  Pissed off supremely now, Lytton sprinted like he hadn’t since high school. Arms pumping, adrenaline rushed like a tsunami through his veins. That aisle of pot plants had never seemed longer, like in one of those dreams where you run and run and don’t get anywhere.

  He rounded that corner in time to see the back of a stupid cut flying the Cutlass’ colors just as its wearer vanished behind his hydraulic door. Back in the illegal day
s, Lytton had realized he should have an escape route. This greenhouse was pushed up against a rise of the mountain, so the hydraulic door led to a three-foot tall tunnel lined with concrete. Helium Head must have left the door open, and now stupid biker boots were sticking out of Lytton’s tunnel as the rat tried to tunnel away.

  Lytton shot him in the ankle first and then pulled him out. Iso screamed like a baby.

  “Ow! What are you fucking doing?”

  “What do you think I’m fucking doing?” Lytton shouted back. “You just killed my man! Come out of my fucking tunnel!”

  The sergeant-at-arms was thrashing around so thoroughly Lytton couldn’t keep his grip on his ankle, so he stood back and aimed his piece at the boot. Some of the leather had been blown away where he’d already been blasted. The ankle was no doubt shattered, as a rivulet of blood trickled from the tunnel. “Come out or I’ll shoot you again.”

  Reluctantly, Iso squirmed backward through the tube. Lytton impatiently waited to swoop down and snatch him up by the back of his cut, the rocker, predictably, displaying two crossed swords.

  But just as he yanked Iso to his feet—some sergeant-at-arms, the guy bawled like a moron—Doug Zelov stepped out from behind a space bucket containing a lush Young Man Blue plant. Zelov, predictably, leveled his barrel at Lytton. Now it was a Mexican standoff.

  “Give me back my man,” Zelov said matter-of-factly.

  “You shot my man,” Lytton stated.

  “And you shot my man. So we’re even.”

  “Not exactly. You killed my man and I just shot yours in the foot.”

  Zelov chuckled. “He’s not dead. Just stunned from more action than he’s seen since the new PlayStation was released. You’re pretty organized here. This is the most impressive setup I’ve ever seen.”