Stay Vertical

by Layla Wolfe

  What did I think I was doing, consorting with the sworn enemy of my sister’s husband? Ford Illuminati was a powerful man in the Pure and Easy area and beyond. The P & E Bare Bones charter was the dominant charter, but there were others, for instance in Flagstaff, Prescott, and Phoenix. Once a month they’d have an enormous fish fry and hold a “church” meeting at the Citadel with all the brothers. It was something to behold, a hundred and fifty leather-clad, inked rowdies all coming together like that, the airfield runway a sea of chrome and black. Knowing Ford was President of the dominant charter made me flush with pride, so I knew what I was doing shouldn’t be taken lightly.

  But it wasn’t just a cheesy fling. I’d known I was seriously, gut-wrenchingly in love with Lytton Driving Hawk for awhile now. My every thought was sucked up by him. I’d changed my clothing and appearance to embrace the image I thought would arouse him. Hell, I even bought some Kush essential oil to dab behind my ears, thinking that on some subliminal level Lytton would be attracted to me smelling like a marijuana plant. Even if he wasn’t consciously aware of it, I figured that scent would remind him of fortune and fame.

  Was I stupid enough to tell Lytton that I loved him? Not on your fucking life. Because I knew he didn’t love me back.

  He was too wrapped up in his inner turmoil, his vendetta against his brother and The Bare Bones. He didn’t have much time or room in his brain for me. Instead of moving on with things, he’d stagnated in his rage. When he found out his father was Cropper Illuminati, he’d also discovered his brother had buried him. I just wanted to be there for him when he inevitably gave it a rest, failed in his vengeance, or came around to Ford’s side of things. I really hoped the latter.

  Tobiah’s hawk nose stuck out like a toucan’s beak from under his bowl of hair. Even so, I could tell his face was white with fear. “He’s in the family room with Iso, but really June, I think you want to tread lightly.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I heard about the dead driver. Who did it, do you know?”

  “I wasn’t there, luckily.” Toby’s voice trilled with nerves. “But it was Iso who took out that beaner driver. As far as I could tell, he had no fucking reason to. The guy got out of the truck all right when they told him to while they jacked all his medicine. Iso’s laughing how he just shot the guy through the forehead because the cholo was playing mariachi music and had a Tweety Bird sticker in the side window. I fucking told Lytton no good would come of this association with The Cutlasses. He’s blinded by revenge, June. We don’t need to bury The Bare Bones to make more money. Hell, Lytton doesn’t need more money. Do you know how much we pull in a month here? I’m helping him with this one more job and that’s it, June, I’m telling you.”

  “What one more job?”

  “Oh…nothing major, really. I just have to pay an innocent visit to your friend Turk at the—never mind. Let’s just say I enjoy stretching my acting chops.” Holding a hand to his stomach proudly, Toby relaxed for the first time since he’d opened the door. “I was a pretty major player in theater arts at MIT. ‘How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!’”

  I was eager to see Lytton, not listen to a revival of Death of a Salesman, so I said, “Is anyone going to get caught for icing the driver?”

  “Not that I know of, but Iso’s kind of hiding out here for awhile just in case, to keep the heat off The Cutlasses. Look, it’s no secret that I like you and Lytton together. I want him to eventually reconcile with his brother. We could work hand in hand with The Bare Bones. I’m not overly fond of The Cutlasses, seeing as how they’ve been trying to rob us for years. Especially a guy who would take out a cholo just because he had a stuffed tiger tied to his bumper.”

  “June, hey!” Lytton was being overly hearty as he strode down the hallway. He had that demeanor of someone who is trying to steer the attention off something else. He even put his hands on my shoulders and literally walked me toward the stairs.

  I tried not to be such a pushover. “Lytton, hey, I heard the job went south today.” I knew it wasn’t a woman’s place to ask about business, but I wanted to be sure he had no hand in the murder.

  He put his hands on his hips. “Went south, yeah, if you want to call it that. Is that word all over the fucking street?”

  “Well, the street that leads to The Bare Bones’ distributor at least. You…didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”

  “Me? No, of course not. Iso just got…carried a bit away…”

  “Hey!” Iso appeared in the hallway like Fonzie, rocking his leather cut and giving the thumbs up—to my boobs, apparently. I had come straight from the children’s party without changing, so I was innocently wearing a flowered, flippy little dress that did display a bit of cleavage. It was just a dress I thought looked girlish, but suddenly now I felt slutty. “If it isn’t my favorite curvy pass-around.”

  Lytton tried to stand in between us. “She’s no pass-around, Weaver.”

  Iso peeked around Lytton’s arm. He formed his hands into the shape of my boobs. “Whatever. You said she’s not your old lady, so how’s about sharing the wealth, buddy?”

  Lytton reached around the small of his back. I saw the grip of a pistol where the piece was lodged into the waistband of his jeans. His fingers wiggled as though he itched to squeeze the trigger. I felt Toby, standing next to me, tense and hold his breath. I knew Lytton usually—or always—packed a gun to protect his farm against marauders just like Iso.

  Lytton’s left hand went toward Iso, palm out, like a crossing guard. “Back off, dirtbag. You’ve got plenty of sweetbutt pussy back at your clubhouse, only Zelov told me to keep you here for a couple days. So my house, my rules. Get back to your video game.”

  Iso’s face fell. “Aw. I’m already getting bored with that Minecraft game.” I could hear Crybaby and Helium Head back in the family room, yelling at each other about moon stones and frameworks.

  Toby boldly stepped out from my shadow. “I’ll show you how to build a spaceship to the moon.”

  That seemed to cheer Iso up. “Oh, righteous. Is this what you’re going to trick that pretty boy with tomorrow? A spaceship?”

  I had beyond no clue what Iso referred to, but Toby was already gingerly plucking Iso’s sleeve to lead him back down the hallway. Iso yelled at us over his shoulder,

  “Did you schedule an inspection with your friend from the Health Department?”

  Lytton waved. “I got it, Iso. It’s all under control.”

  I thought Lytton would shuttle me back out the front door, tell me everything was okay, and to go home and be a good little girl. But he didn’t.

  Facing me squarely, he smiled down at me. He was so devilishly handsome he just won me over with his dazzling smile. His warm woodsy scent enveloped me and gave me a strange sense of security. I felt safe with Lytton. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well—”

  He whisked me up the stairs so fast my head was practically left behind in the foyer. Within seconds we were back in the large, airy bedroom where he’d cared for me when I was sick. The sheets were all rumpled, as though he hadn’t expected any company, but I knew he hadn’t had any slaves up here, sluts or otherwise. A woman can sense these things.

  Putting his hands under my arms, he lifted me onto the library table where his chemistry textbooks were. I leaned back on a book that was open to some hydraulic engineering tables, spreading my thighs wide. I had no shame. I knew that if I wanted to win and keep Lytton’s attention, I couldn’t be the prim and proper mathlete or the crusading Peace Corps volunteer. I had to be the hard-as-nails, worldly biker chick who was as comfortable on his Softail’s pussy pad as I was in his bed.

  He pressed his forehead to mine. The
crotch of his jeans was packed with his straining erection, but unlike most men, he proved he could ignore that for a few seconds. “I want you to be my old lady. Weaver forced my hand, June. I want to put your best interests first in my dominance of you. Here.”

  Without tearing his eyes from mine, he swiped an object from a taller dresser. I didn’t want to break his gaze either, and I felt more than saw him wrap a wide leather cuff around my wrist. He was serious now, his eyes brimming with unexpressed emotion, and I had the distinct feeling he didn’t do this sort of ceremonial thing every day.

  “Your happiness, your health, your contentment are in my care now, June Shellmound. I offer this cuff to you to guide you in your journey through life.” He grinned and added in a less stiff tone, “I’ll get you a better collar when I get down to P & E. This just happened to be here. Go with me on this.”

  I finally looked down and saw he’d snapped a plain brown leather wristband around my arm. The contentment Lytton wished for me flooded through me instantly, and I found myself saying, “I want to belong to you and go wherever you want to bring me. I trust in you, Lytton. I submit to your guidance because I know you want what’s best for me.” I have no idea where I pulled that from, but it worked. I did submit to his guidance—in almost everything.

  I probably would’ve said the dreaded “L word,” but he silenced me with a kiss. Now he leaned into me, pressing his hard-on against my very core, making my inner channel flutter with anticipation. The shudder seemed to resonate through my uterus and ovaries, sending a surge of estrogen through me. I angled my hips toward him, locking the heel of one shoe in his back jeans pocket. Love swept through me because he’d made me his old lady.

  It was almost as though he felt that love. Suddenly some intense and frantic libido took hold of him. Bending at the knees, he scooped my ass into his palms and carried me to the bed. He tossed me like a load of laundry and I bounced, my arms splayed above my head, wide open for him. I knew I was smiling when he stripped that wifebeater from his sculpted torso. I could have easily stayed there for a century watching him lift his arms over his head, the stylized eagle rippling as it wrapped around his shoulder.

  But Lytton didn’t have all the time in the world. Last time I’d been with him, he’d been a generous, sensitive lover, putting my orgasm first. He hadn’t even seemed to care about whipping his cock out and finding release. Now, though, he was all about unbuckling his belt in a flash and finding satisfaction.

  I wasn’t prepared—I didn’t exactly wander around Arizona with old expired condoms in my wallet—but I knew it was the safe time of month. At the moment, to be honest, safety wasn’t first on my mind. When Lytton shoved his jeans around his thighs and his long, fat cock leaped free, I was his willing receptacle.

  I knew Lytton wouldn’t make me pay for my meal, or bring his fishing pole on a romantic vacation, or measure the spice in the curry jar. He’d never had his retainer tossed onto the school’s roof—for better or worse, he’d been the bully giving the swirlies and purple nurples to the nerds. Lytton was a larger than life renegade, a survivor of an impoverished upbringing. He was tough and courageous, with a fiery spirit that could not be kept down, and right now he was sinking himself balls-deep in me while I cried out with a soul-splitting wail, begging to be filled.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LYTTON

  He ploughed into the woman with more vigor and enthusiasm than he had in a long time.

  Lytton had just made June his old lady. “Girlfriend” sounded juvenile and “old lady” fit the bitter, hardened biker’s veneer he’d adopted of late. He wanted to stake his claim to June, to put a stamp on her so one of these random bikers wouldn’t jump her.

  Especially if he was going to be working downtown at the Entwistle Drive location of The Buddy System, competing with and bugging the shit out of The Bare Bones and their Joint Effort clientele, he needed everyone to know to keep out of his shit, and that meant June. For the first time since Tina had ventured into space and out of his life with NASA, Lytton was overwhelmed by that painful surge he used to know as “love.”

  He didn’t want to love June. He was too busy with life, had too many things to do. He was starting a new company and taking down the brother who had murdered his father. That was a lot on a man’s plate. Still, along the way, if he could lay claim to a faithful, monogamous old lady who would be his and no one else’s, all the better.

  He knew it would involve giving up his other slaves. He’d screened calls from at least ten of them each day the past week, not calling them back. He told himself they just wanted his famous weed, but he knew they wanted his cock too. He was actually well-known in the area. There was at least one BDSM club in Flagstaff where Master Hawk was sought after.

  Now, as he swiveled his hips and held his cock still, throbbing deep inside June, it didn’t bother him to never enter that club’s premises again.

  He hadn’t intended to take her like a fucking wild animal. It had just happened. When she promised to submit to his guidance, to belong to him, Lytton had just lost his shit. The last woman he’d bothered to collar had been Tina. While he wasn’t prepared to go all head over heels yet, he saw June had potential. She was trainable.

  That shape. Her curves went on forever, yet she had that innocent aura about her. Lytton knew she had never fucked anyone with as much grit and gumption as him. As he drove into her, he wanted to cover her with his dirty outlaw pheromones. He knew the good girl had never been debased by a twisted half-breed who liked to paddle bound women’s asses with a leather riding crop. He hoped she wasn’t slumming it, just taking him between her thighs because he was the Flavor of the Week.

  But as Lytton fucked her, intense emotion welled to the surface. Her high-pitched little sighs when he slammed into her, the way she flung her arms above her head as though her wrists we cuffed when they weren’t, the way her ample boobs rippled with each thrust of his hips, everything came together at once. Something contracted in his chest, and he realized it was his heart.

  “You’re a fine, beautiful woman, June,” he gasped. His balls drew up hard and close to his body and he knew he had only seconds before erupting. “You were made for me. Our bodies fit together perfectly.”

  He was pounding her mercilessly, but her face was placid, almost serene. “I’ve never been fucked so good, Lytton. Do it. Do me. I want to feel you coming inside—”

  He managed to grind out, “I can’t—”

  As quick as a flash, he pulled out and straddled June’s chest. Grabbing the back of her head, he plunged his spurting prick down her throat. She swallowed eagerly, just as she had that day in the greenhouse. Her lapping tongue, her greedily sucking mouth surrounded him as he choked on his own groans.

  He fell quickly into the orgasmic trance where his mind was an utter blank. Consciousness was gripped by bliss, pure and simple, as he fed June his come. Energy flowed between them, the connection his prick in her mouth. He fucked her mouth until he gasped, his eyes popping open. Everything seemed so clear. It was almost as though he was in a lucid dream, everything making utter sense, yet a scary clown might dart into the room any second, letting him know it was only a dream.

  “Ah.” Lytton collapsed on his back next to June. She looked wide-eyed at the ceiling as though in shock. What had he done? Something occurred to him. “I know the rhythm method doesn’t work. But I figured it’d at least give you a decent shot at staying safe. I’m sorry I was so…eager.”

  She finally looked at him. “Oh, that’s not it! It’s my safe time of month anyway. I’m just…feeling very pleasurable.”

  Lytton grinned. Girl would need aftercare even if he hadn’t spanked her or had a fire play session with her, so he got up to get her some cold water. “Spend the night here, June. I don’t want you going back down the mountain in the dark.”

  He went to check on Iso, who was learning how to right-click on the spaceship’s cockpit. Lytton had agreed with Zelov that after Iso’s careless and
pointless murder of the Ochoa driver, he would harbor the idiot for a few days until it blew over. They were also harboring the jacked Staples truck, covered by stacks of dried pot plants, parked behind the drying shed. It had occurred to Lytton this was a lot of exposure for someone running a legitimate business. But he had participated in the heist. These were the risks one took when getting into bed with outlaws like The Cutlasses.

  The risk would soon be none once they got The Buddy System up and running. Once he established Buddy as the premier distributor of fine, aromatic, pesticide-free medicinal pot, Ford’s venture would go under. Lytton grabbed a beer for himself and a bottle of water for June, along with a small plate of the cheese and crackers Helium Head had set out for the guest. Lytton wasn’t one for domesticity, but he imagined his old lady needed something to eat.

  Inside his bedroom, June had turned off the lights. Setting the drinks and plate on a dresser, Lytton went and looked at her. Her eyes were open, her arms still flung over her head, but she’d taken off her dress and pulled the covers up to her neck. Another wave of heartwarming love rushed through Lytton, and he unbuckled his belt again. He would just get in with her.

  “Lytton.”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “What if Ford had a really good reason to kill your dad? Would you ever forgive him if he had a really good reason?”

  Whoa. Lytton hadn’t seen that coming. He was in no way prepared to forgive Ford because he had a “good reason.” He hadn’t imagined Ford even having a good reason. Ford was an outlaw biker who had been wearing the “Filthy Few” patch since the age of seventeen. He had probably just shot their father for wearing the wrong shade of black, or not banging the gavel at the end of church.

  He continued undressing. “What might that reason be?”