“Ah, mi amor,” she whined.
“Hush,” he laid his finger tenderly across her red lips.
She scowled unhappily.
“So, why not?” Ramon pressed. “You sell the slave to us and have your girl? Si?”
“No, friend. As appealing as your offer might be, this one will be returned to the man who pays me. It’s not yet time for me to plant my roots, and much as I love it here, this is not the place.”
“You make a mistake.”
“Yes, and this could be one. I’ve made many. But I’m sure you’ll forgive me in time.”
“Yes, and wait for your next visit.”
“Soon,” Logan assured him as friends will often do when a bittersweet parting becomes painful.
“Come here, runaway,” he motioned to Jill. By now, she was almost accustomed to her nakedness. It certainly did not seem as strange or embarrassing to her as when she was first led washed and naked through the tiny village.
With a nod to his friends, and a last quick parting smile in Susanna’s direction, Logan took Jill by the upper arm and led her to the truck.
“Climb in.”
She looked at him worried.
“Logan, I have no clothes,” she pointed out the obvious.
“You’re right.”
“I mean, I have no clothes!” she said more emphatically. “Dona Maria cut mine away; they’re ruined… in rags somewhere. How am I supposed to…” she was nearly in tears and couldn’t finish.
“So, you don’t have clothes. That shouldn’t bother a slaveslut like you. You can ride naked.”
Embarrassment, shame, heating like a fire inside her, Jill climbed into the back of the truck. Perhaps it would be another day of back roads and deserted landscapes. The windows on the truck were dark and no one could see inside—she hoped. But how long could she travel like this without being seen, without being gawked at by leering eyes, too thrilled with the sight of a naked woman in public to understand her suffering?
Jill was right. They traveled along more back roads through a desolate landscape as they moved East. Although Logan had little fear that she’d try to flee from the truck shackled and naked, he nonetheless, locked her wrist cuffs to the eyebolt in the side of truck whenever he stopped for gas or food. He wasn’t particularly discreet about hiding her from the view of the general public. Although for most of the next day, the general public consisted of a half- out-of-his-wits old man rocking in front of a food store, and a sneering, curious cowboy type who passed by the truck and gaze in the moment Logan opened the door. He wouldn’t have been able to see her pussy, but he certainly could see that she was naked from the waist up.
Logan smiled as the man raised his eyebrows at him enviously, then the bounty hunter slammed the door so Jill was again out of sight.
“She’s got this fantasy,” he shook his head explaining with a smile.
“Lucky man.”
The fellow moved on and Logan spent the next ten minutes buying food in the grocery store before they took off again.
When Jill complained that she had to pee, Logan drove until they were alone on the empty stretch of road, with enough cover to hide her from view should someone happen to drive by.
Though she reluctantly emerged from the truck in her shackles and bare as babe, she had little choice but to live with the humiliating procedure if she planned to relieve herself. She made quick work of her personal business, hiding behind a tree or shrub, and quickly learned to navigate effectively in the shackles.
Before even half the day was over, Jill accepted that Logan truly didn’t care if she were clothed or not. He might have been an alluring man for the way he reached into her dark dreams, but he was also as ruthless, as callous as they come. She realized now that he believed everything he’d said about female sex slaves. What silliness to think amorous, tender thoughts about a man as bereft of humanity as this one. Though she’d been green with envy hours before, knowing that he spent the night with the senorita, her recent conclusions about the man made her feel sorry for the poor girl. What miserable hell it would be yearning for a man of such despicable aims and with so cold a heart. He was a practiced chameleon, able to alter his personality to suit his needs, but Jill was convinced now that he had not one loving bone his handsome body. He was no more than a charismatic, empty shell of a human, a wasteland of male testosterone and cruelty, with an obsession for power. What stunned her was how any man so inhuman could raise her hopes, engage emotions and inspire romantic thoughts. She wouldn’t let that happen again.
The day heading away from the hacienda was as long as the one that brought them to the tiny village. After long hours of perpetual thought, Jill’s mind finally emptied. There were no more thoughts to think, dreams to dreams, pictures to create. She was bereft and incredibly bored. Turn to the bounty hunter for conversation? It seemed pointless. But the monotony of the trip and her desperation needed some relief.
“You care to talk?” she opened, hoping that he might be as interested in the break in silence as she was.
“What about?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I guess I’m bored.”
He snickered amused. “The road can do that to you.”
“But you must like it.”
“Sometimes.”
“Like when?”
“Like now.”
“Now?”
“You’re dollar signs, Jillian. I’m on my way to collect. That’s a good enough reason to enjoy the trip.”
“That is all I am to you, isn’t it?” she said, still amazed that the man could be so cold. “Dollar signs.”
“Ultimately. But then there are times like last night when I exercise the darkness I can’t seem to shed. I get another kind of satisfaction. I have explained that, haven’t I?”
“I guess you have. But I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve made up my mind about you, and at this point I’d rather you didn’t confuse me.”
She actually hoped to bait him with the vague comment, but he didn’t bite. Waiting another few minutes for him to reply, she finally started in again.
“So, did Christopher really tell you that no one could use my cunt?”
Logan chuckled. “No, that was my idea. I have no clue what Christopher Hurst expected of me or you on the return trip. But he didn’t tell me that you couldn’t be used. So, I go with my gut, and my gut told me that he wouldn’t mind if you were gangbanged, as long as he had you back.”
“You’re probably right,” she conceded.
“Why’s that?”
“Nothing. I just know him.”
“And you’ll get used to him again, I’m sure.”
“No, not again. That’s impossible.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I’m very sure. But I don’t expect you to care. You’re just doing your job.”
“That’s right,” he said smiling at her through the rearview mirror.
What did she expect? Logan to suddenly switch mid-stream, back up his physical allure with a heart and soul? Dammit! She had to stop hoping that by some miracle that would actually happen.
Jill sat back against the seat and let her mind drift again until Logan suddenly broke the silence himself.
“Don’t worry, Jillian Ingalls. You’ll get used to it because it’s who you are. You can lie to yourself and world, but not me.”
This was the wrong thing for him to say; the last thing she wanted to hear. She held back, biting her tongue, but unable to quash her anger, she let loose with a force that surprised even her.
“You bastard!” she seethed. A dreadful feeling welled inside her consuming her entire body. There was far more behind her anger even she didn’t anticipate. Without warning, a sudden burst of white-hot rage vented through her and she lunged forward, trying to go over the seat into the truck, her free hand pummeling Logan’s shoulder in violent attack. The truck swerved, narrowly missing a bridge rail. Logan slammed on the brakes, and the vehicle lur
ched forward hard before it finally settled back with a jerk and she was thrown back against the rear seat, landing with a thud. A second later, the driver side door opened and before Jill had caught her breath, Logan pulled her from the truck, through the small opening behind the front seat.
Where the paddle he held in his hand came from, she had no clue. It must have been hidden under the seat, stashed there for just such a scene as this one. The ominous thing looked as if it were a mile long to her scared and road weary eyes, when it fact, it was a modest eighteen inches of half-inch thick hard wood, drilled with holes and polished to a gleaming shine. Logan dragged her to the front of the truck, hoisted her over the hood and held her there with his free hand. He then laid into her with hard, fast swats that turned her bruised ass raw in less that ten seconds. While she struggled to get free herself, screaming the entire time, he kept up a heated punishment for as long as time and privacy allowed. But seeing a car approach, he quickly pulled her off the hood and thrust her back in the seat. Then he drove just far enough so that they were off the bridge and parked in a handy turnout on the other side of the river.
With the car stopped, he whipped around and pinned her to the back seat with his eyes. “I don’t know what’s gotten into your addled brain, but you’d better put it on hold when you’re with me. You might have got us killed.”
“As if I care.” She took pains to sound as unfeeling as he did.
“You damned well better care,” he fumed. He grabbed her shackled right hand and quickly locked it to the eyebolt side of the panel, and then did the same with her left hand.
“You bastard!” she seethed again, the anger still there.
“Bastard I may be, but you’re not doing that again!” Rummaging through his glovebox, he pulled out a rag, which he stuffed in her mouth and quickly taped over with duct tape before she could spit it out. “Just to make sure.”
She mumbled ineffectively from behind the gag and jerked her shackles in frustration.
“Be angry all you want. It doesn’t change the truth. Fight it, and it’s just gonna come back and grab you in that pretty wriggling fucking ass of yours again. Just like it did last night. Might as well accept it before you die stupid. But whatever, you’re not taking me down with you. You do anything even remotely like that again, I’ll chain you gagged in the bed of the truck for the rest of the trip… after I beat you raw. Got that?”
She didn’t answer, not even a nod of her head, but stared him down with hate-filled eyes, until he knew she wouldn’t quit. Emotions spent, he turned around, started the engine and roared off down the road as if he could leave her behind in his dust.
Several hours after sunset, when the sky was black, Logan pulled into a motel that looked like every other sleazy motel in the rundown outskirts of a city. Jill guessed from the road signs that they were in Texas, though she wasn’t sure exactly where. She’d give anything to sleep in a really decent place, but it would seem that dreary worn-out hovels like this Sleepytime Motel were the rightful habitat for bounty hunters and their recovered properties.
She’d spent the day naked, peed naked, ate naked, got angry and punished naked, while riding naked six hundred miles heading East. What did she expect when they stopped for the night? Clothes maybe. So she could look normal when she made up the short distance between truck and motel room—a scant twenty-five feet over a berm and six feet down a well-lit corridor.
Once he booked the room, Logan made quick work of unlocking her shackles from the cab of the truck. “I told the manager that I had an insubordinate fugitive in my custody and I had to strip her of her clothes to keep her from running off again.” He smiled. “You know, he actually bought my story. Just told me to be quick getting you to the room.”
Still gagged, she stared at him with her angry eyes shooting daggers. “So we’re going to make this quick, Jill. Maybe no one will see you. But if they do, they do.”
A brief glance at the parking showed that there was no one around, although the road behind them was a steady stream of cars coming off the highway looking for places to stop for the night. A dozen people could have spotted the nude woman being led from the huge black truck. A few might have even slowed down long enough to confirm their first impression, until the pale white female wearing chains disappeared into the motel room with the man who held her tightly by the arm.
For her part, Jill breathed relieved when the chance for exposure passed. She was shaking and still angry, but too exhausted now to care about anything but lying down and falling asleep. Logan chained her to the dresser and left the room with her still gagged. With nothing else to so, she lay down on the scratchy rug and nearly fell asleep.
A half hour later, Logan returned with Mexican food. Pulling the gag from Jill’s mouth he allowed her eat, while he silently ate his meal. The pair then fell asleep, Jill on floor, Logan in bed, until they woke almost simultaneously at dawn.
They began the day much like the last one. Though now, Jill forcefully suppressed her anger. It hadn’t disappeared. In fact, it only seemed to grow as the days went by, but she had no desire to be beaten again. She could hope for no more than a difficult, naked ride back to Christopher Hurst’s doorstep.
They had re-entered the States somewhere around El Paso, that first night spent in the Sleepytime Motel outside Waco. The next day it was Baton Rouge. Then making a sharp left they headed north toward Jackson, and Nashville and through the mountains of West Virginia until they reached Maryland.
By then, Jill could barely contain her festering anger, but she forced it down, knowing she had to stay civil in order to keep the bounty hunter from blistering her behind with his paddle drilled with holes to increase the torture.
Chapter Twelve - Tell Me Who You Are
“Take a shower, Jillian; you’re starting to get ripe,” Logan ordered her.
They’d checked into their motel room at an unusually busy stop adjacent to a major intersection of US Highways—not his usual operating procedure. Thankfully, their room was at the back of the two-story motor hotel, and there wasn’t a soul in sight when she moved from the truck to their accommodations at the top of the stairs, still naked, her shackles clanging all the way. At least the place was clean, a whole heck of a lot better than the dives they’d stayed in to that point.
“I’m not surprised. I stink,” she said, as she massaged her chaffed wrists. It was her first time out of cuffs since Mexico and, oddly, it didn’t feel right. However, she wasn’t going to argue about anything now, since the thought of a long bath almost made her mouth water. “You suppose I could actually climb in the tub first?” she asked in a surprisingly conciliatory tone. She wanted him to say yes.
“Sure. You have an hour. But leave the door open.”
“Yes, sir.” That was a first… she called him, sir, as if she did it every day. Hopefully, he didn’t notice.
A long, luxurious, fragrant hour with shampoo, soap and lotion—the complimentary hotel bottles were nearly empty when she finished. When the hour was up—at least she guessed it had been an hour, she walked out of the bathroom drying her hair on a white terrycloth towel, bringing back the curls that had, before her ordeal with Logan, framed her face with a sensuously soft and cheerful look. That other time, her other life seemed a billion years away—was it just ten days since the café in LA? Hard to believe.
“What’s that? She looked at the bed, seeing clothes laid out, her size, or awfully close. “Where did those come from?”
“Get dressed, we’re going out?”
“Out?” She stared dumfounded from the clothes on the bed to Logan.
“Out,” he repeated. He was dressed himself in a fresh pair of blue jeans and a clean T-shirt; his hair slicked back and drying.
She looked at him wondering how he happened to look so clean. He’d been about as rank as she after several days on the road.
“I showered next door,” he explained without her having to ask.
“We’re in a hurry?”
“No, but it’s time to leave.”
Jillian turned her attention to the clothes on the bed, which were decidedly more feminine than anything she’d worn in a long time. The black skirt was short, about mid-thigh, and the diaphanous black blouse was nearly transparent. Adding to that, a lacy bra, thigh-high stockings and heels, made her feel shrouded head to toe, and safe. Elated by the amazing change, a light, golden feeling of goodwill salved her wounded spirit. She almost had to smile when Logan politely took her arm and helped her into the truck.
Now, she sat at his side—no shackles, no chains, and no hard seat in the rear of the truck. She was far too bewildered to be angry with the bounty hunter. She took a break from her unceasing rage, as it slunk back in the corner of her emotions like sulking cat. Logan, for the first time in days, exuded that magnetic allure, which so often tricked unknowing females into thinking he really was a decent guy.
Jill entered the basement tavern, with Logan Dunn holding her hand firmly like a protective father. She found his near bone-crushing hold strangely exhilarating.
No, she had not changed her mind about the man in any way, but the sudden switch to normalcy and his unusually merry mood made her forget not just her anger but the loathing hatred. In fact, if she weren’t careful, she’d find that enduring charisma affecting her in all the wrong ways. He oozed charm, which then reminded her of Mexico and the tenderness he showed the senorita, Susanna. A wave of anxiety thundered through her body, briefly turning her stomach nauseous.
Logan greeted a number of friends as he led Jillian through the crowd. After a brief hello and an exchange of hugs and handshakes, he moved on, engaging another, different crowd of friends who eagerly awaited his attention. It seemed to her that he was as welcomed and comfortable here as he had been in Ramon’s village.
Bounty Hunter Page 16