She needed to either lose the coyote in the parking lot or find a place close by to hide, and then double back to the motel. She scanned the parking lot and the other buildings surrounding the massive store. Most of the shops were small businesses that looked like they were getting ready to close for the evening. But then she spotted what looked like a restaurant in the far corner of the shopping complex. It looked as busy and crowded as the Wal*Mart had. She didn’t know if she would be able to lose her pursuer inside of the restaurant, but she didn’t think he would be bold enough to try and grab her with so many people inside of it. She wound her way through the busy parking lot, purposefully striding towards the restaurant entrance praying that she wouldn’t feel the coyote’s dead hands suddenly grab her.
Chapter 3
If you haven’t guessed already, I’m not exactly what you would call the social type. For the most part, I enjoy my own company and can do without most people. When I first took over the ranch, I didn’t leave the property once in the first 7 months I was back home. Sure, I talk with Juan and the other ranch hands some, but only when it was absolutely necessary. The fact was, after spending so long seeing the very worst of humanity in Iraq and then having to deal with my father’s murder, I didn’t have much use for anyone. I needed the solace of quiet, I needed time to not think and just let my mind go blank and reset itself.
You hear a lot about PTSD on the news and in corny television shows and movies, and all of that crap makes it sound like it’s one of those ailments where the person suffering from it might just snap at any moment and kill their neighbors, or their family, or themselves because they can’t let go of the things they’ve seen or the things they’ve done or had done to them. But in my experience, it isn’t as dramatic as all that. For me, it was almost like the world around me was like a television tuned to a channel of nothing but static white noise and the volume’s turned up to 11. It frazzles and spits at you and it's all you can hear even when someone is standing right in front of you, their mouth moving but with nothing coming out but more static. You can understand why so many vets take to drinking or drugging or even going so far as putting a bullet in their head because you just want the noise to stop.
But after my months of nothing but quiet I was able to shake off the worst of my memories. I know they’ll always be there, they’ll always be an ugly part of me, but I knew I was ready to rejoin the world, and I started making small sojourners out into the world. Going out for groceries, picking up feed, going to the movies, or even just out for a cup of coffee or dinner. And I’ll have to admit, it felt good getting back into old routines and enjoying the small, simple things. What I found myself enjoying the most was going out to restaurants and eating food I didn’t prepare myself. Sadly, I’m your stereotypical bachelor and my range as a cook is limited to grill cheese and tomato soup and grilling a semi-decent steak. I wouldn’t call myself a foodie or nothing like that—mostly because I tend to appreciate simpler tastes than most food snobs—but I do enjoy eating out and I make sure to do it at least 3 or 4 nights a week.
My favorite place is a Mexican joint called the Superstition Cafe. It’s been around for nearly 40 years and I even remember eating there when I was kid and kind of hating it. But once I started venturing out into the world again, the staff made me feel welcomed and relaxed, and the food is actually pretty tasty. The one downside of it is that it shares a parking lot with a Wal*Mart, which no matter how well adjusted and comfortable with the world I become, I swear I’ll never step inside of one. But I can endure the crowds in order to shovel the #6 taco plate into my mouth and drink a few margaritas.
I’m waiting to do exactly just that and working on the first of margaritas at the bar when I see a young Mexican woman push her way through the throng of people milling around the bar waiting to be seated. Her clothes are little rough looking like she hasn’t changed out of them in awhile, but other than that, I think she’s just about the most beautiful woman I’ve come across in a good long time. She’s short, maybe only 5’1, but not stick thin like most women her height. She’s curvy like a woman ought to be. Her thick black hair hangs down past her shoulders, perfectly framing her heart shaped face. But what’s most striking is her almond shaped eyes. They’re so intense and focused that they almost appear black in the lighting of the bar.
I’m so mesmerized by her that I’m almost surprised to find her standing right in front of me, her black eyes locked with mine. She gives me a small, delicate smile, as if she’s about to break out laughing, and then I realize the reason she’s giving me this look is because my mouth is wide open and my chin is resting in my lap. I want to say something clever that will make her laugh and make me seem smarter than I actually am.
“Uh … Hi,” Is all I’m able to squeak out, though, it does the trick though and her intense eyes lighten and her smile broadens.
“Hello.”
I’ve regained a bit of composure and my mouth starts working again. Although I’m still feeling a little awkward and I jab my hand out at her.
“I’m Henry.” I’m 34-years-old and I still act like a pimply faced teenager anytime I’m around a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, this is an inherited trait and one I fear I’ll be able to shake. Despite my stiffness, she still takes my rough, calloused hand in her’s and gives it a shake.
“I’m Inez.” As we break our handshake, she quickly looks over her shoulder towards the entrance.
“Are you meeting anybody here?” I ask.
“No … No, I was just shopping and realized I was a little hungry.”
“Well, it’s a little busy tonight, so you’ll probably be waiting awhile. Can I maybe buy you a drink while you’re waiting?”
“Yes … Yes, I would very much like a drink, that’s very kind of you.”
“No problem. Is a margarita fine with you?’
“Yes, that would be fine.”
“Hey, Carl! Could I get another one of these for this young lady?” I ask the bartender while shaking my glass at him.
“Sure thing, Henry. But first I’ll need to see some ID, young lady.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have it on me.”
“Ah, come on, Carl, loosen up a bit.”
“You know I can’t, man. The liquor board was in here just last month and they ended up busting a couple of my waitresses for serving minors, I can’t take any chances.”
“That’s fine,” Inez says while holding up her hands and shaking her head. “If I could just get a glass of water, that would be fine.”
“That I can do,” Carl says as he pulls a sweating bottle of water from the cooler and sets it in front of her.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine, really.”
“Well, maybe since you’re here on your own, I could buy you dinner instead?” I feel my cheeks redden a bit. I’ve never been this forward with a woman before, but the fact is, I don’t want her to go away just yet.
“I … Yes, that would be very nice of you.”
Chapter 4
The hours of my dinner with Inez slide by like minutes. Despite our initial awkwardness, we quickly become comfortable with each other and ease into conversation. Actually, I should say that I ease into it and as the food and drink—our waitress ends up serving us a couple of pitchers of margaritas—begins to flow, my mouth starts working like a broken faucet. I fill Inez’s ears with stories about my family, the ranch, my time in the service. She’s the type of person who has an easy laugh and willingness to listen, which is kind of a rarity considering that the bulk of people are usually only interested in listening to themselves speak most of the time.
By the time our waitress brings me the check, my head is swimming from all the booze and I’m obviously no shape to drive and I ask the waitress to call me a taxi. Inez and I go outside to wait for the car to come.
“I’ll have the driver drop you off where you need to be,” I tell Inez with a dopey grin. She smiles up at me and then laces he
r fingers into mine.
“Maybe I can go where you’re going instead?” She asks as she goes up on her tip-toes to gently kiss me. At first, I’m a little hesitant to respond because I know that she’s had just as much to drink as I have and she’s almost a quarter of my size. I don’t want her waking up in the morning and thinking that I’d taken advantage of the situation and risk never seeing her again. But, you know how it goes, the male body has a mind of its own, especially when it’s full of booze and tacos. So instead of being polite and gentleman-like, I pull her into my arms instead. When the cab pulls up, we tumble into it like a couple of teenagers. I somehow manage to give the driver my address despite the fact Inez is sucking at my neck and her hand is rubbing hard against my inner thigh. As we pull away from the restaurant our bodies once again lock and I resist the urge to pull her out of her clothes in the back of the car.
When we arrive home, my restraint goes right out the window and I have her stripped down as I pull her onto the large sectional couch in the living room. The feel of her body is electric. With each touch her body writhes with pleasure, my lips moving down her swan-like neck, to her shoulder, and down to her breasts. Despite her small stature, her breasts are very full and large. I push them together with my hands, gently massaging them as my eager mouth sucks at her small brown nipples, teasing them with my tongue and teeth for several minutes before moving quickly down her flat stomach to the moist thatch of black pubic hair between her legs.
As I begin lapping at her swollen clit, I pushed two fingers inside of her sopping vulva and she begins to squirm and writhe harder against my hand as I find the spongy mass of her g-spot as if she wants me to go harder and deeper. So I oblige the will of her body and quicken my pace. She tangles her small hands into my thick blonde and pushes my mouth hard against her clit as her entire body shutters with a long moan as her orgasm erupts from her in a rush of her own juices that soak my face and chest.
As she lies trembling on the couch, I stand up and quickly strip out of my now soaked clothes. As I pull down my pants and underwear, she sits up and seizes my cock in both hands and puts it into her mouth. With one hand, she gently strokes the shaft while squeezing and massaging my balls with the other. Her full lips and mouth are like a vacuum and her tongue magically rolls across the head in tight liquid circles. I begin to feel myself coming and try to pull out of her mouth, but she holds firm, taking it deeper down her throat and milking me dry.
Our bodies are on auto pilot now but still full of desire. As she continues to stroke my still throbbing member, she repositions herself on the couch, spreading her legs and guiding me inside of her. Our love making isn’t as fevered as our first two acts as if we’ve now decided to take our time and experience each other with slow clarity. Her legs are wrapped tightly around my lower back, our mouths joined, the taste of ourselves intermingling. The heat of our bodies against one another could start a wildfire if were near dry brush. I once again feel her body tense and quicken my pace as her legs clamp harder around my back and both of us simultaneously erupt in a tangle of flesh and new found love.
***
I don’t know if this is problem most men have, but whenever I spend the night with a new woman, I have a bit of problem with getting to sleep. It’s not that I’m not used to having another body in bed with me, but it’s almost like I’m a little kid at Christmas waiting for the sun to rise so I can rush into my parents room without them yelling at me to go back to bed. I know that sounds like kind of a weird comparison, but that’s exactly how I felt lying there next to Inez. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of her out of fear that if I went to sleep, she wouldn’t be there when I woke up in the morning. I know it was completely unfounded, especially since the ranch is a solid 10 miles from anywhere resembling civilization.
So instead of sleeping, I stared down at her peaceful, beautiful face under the gauzy rays of the moon that peeked through the curtains and the shadows that played across her body. But something didn’t sit right with those shadows. The property around the house is clear of any kind of bushes or trees and there shouldn’t have been any kind of shadows at all. I rose from the bed and went to the window, pulled the curtain aside and saw three figures maybe 10 feet from the house and all of them aiming semi-autos right at my bedroom.
I dove for the bed just as they began to fire, cover Inez’s body with mine and then dragging her onto the ground. A hail of bullets shattered the window and tore the room to shreds, filling it with the stink of burning wood and cordite. I could here Inez hyperventilating underneath me, but staying completely quiet. I took her example and calmed myself. I knew whoever was shooting at us would have to reload soon enough, and that’s when we would have to make a break for it. Finally, the last of the gunshots quieted and heard the familiar snap of magazines being pulled from rifles and that’s when I grabbed Inez and dragged her from the room and headed towards my father’s old trophy room.
Like a solid hunk of Arizona’s rural population, my old man was a bit on the paranoid side, and when he added his trophy room onto the house, he basically had the contractor who built it turn it into a near fortress. The walls were reinforced solid steel and the door leading into it was made of the same material. Once you were locked inside, it would basically take a couple of hand grenades or a bazooka to get inside. If all else failed, we’d be safe Or, at least, Inez would be. Me, on the other hand, I was plenty pissed. Tonight had been one of the best of my life and now that someone one had come along and tried to ruin it for me, I was bound and determined to take their fucking heads.
With the door lock behind us, I flipped on the light inside of the windowless room and opened up the gun safe. I’m not a large caliber or automatic weapon kind of guy—I never understood persons need to fire a bunch of bullets at once in hopes of taking out their target, when all you really needed to do was just bide your time and only fire one or two rounds and put down your target for sure—but I have plenty of revolvers, shotguns, hand-to-hand combat weapons, and, of course, my old sniper rifle. The rifle was still nothing but bad memories whenever I picked it up, so I loaded up two .38 snub noses, a pump action Remington, and a spring loaded 9 inch flip knife incase I needed to get up close and personal. Fortunately, I also had a pair pf khakis to store my gear in stashed away in the gun safe. At least I wouldn’t be swinging in the wind while hunting these clowns down.
I went to where Inez was crouched against the far wall and handed her one of the revolvers. She took it like she was handling a poisonous snake.
“Do you know how to use one of these?” I asked.
She shook her head and clutched it to her naked body. I kissed the top of her forehead and took to my feet.
“The door locks automatically, so when I leave, don’t open it for anyone except for me, do you got that?”
“Henry, no—!”
“No, I’ve gotta. These guys are trying to kill us for some reason, and my guess is they ain’t gonna stop until they’ve got us.”
I turned, went to the door, and switched off the light.
“Remember, only open this if you know it’s me.”
I then went low, quietly cracked open the door, and duck walked out into the hallway.
Whoever had shot at us was definitely in the house now. From the sounds of it, they were going from room-to-room turning my stuff into kindling as they moved along. It took a lot of balls to pull a home invasion at my place, especially if you know mine and my family’s reputation, which made me think none of these clowns had the slightest clue of who I was or what I was capable of. I heard noise coming from the kitchen to the right of me and movement in my little brother’s old bedroom to the left. Since the kitchen was closer, I moved towards there.
I had the .38 holstered and the shotgun slung across my shoulder and gripped my knife, planning to use it as my primary weapon. I had no idea how many of these guys were inside the house, so I was planning on taking them out as quiet as possible. Just as I was about to slide i
nto the kitchen, I saw a huge figure emerge from it, his rifle slung easy and unconcerned off his shoulders as he stuffed something into his mouth. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t pros, pros didn’t grab a snack while they were hunting their prey down. Just as he was almost right on top of me, I sprang up, covered his mouth with one hand and drove my blade into my neck with the other. I watched as his eyes went wide with fear, he knew I was the last sight he was ever going to see.
I quietly lowered him to the ground as his feet kicked and spasmed. No, these guys definitely weren’t pros. The guy I just dropped looked more like a redneck biker gone to fat, but he didn’t look like no killer. I moved down the hallway to my brother’s room and ran almost smack dab into another fat biker type. Even though he easily spotted me, he was slow on the draw and I was able to put two in his head with my .38 before he had his rifle up. The shots made someone come pounding out of my now decimated bedroom, and I was ready for him with my shotgun. As he turned the corner of the hallway, I fired low and took out his legs in a spray of buckshot and bullets. He screamed like wounded habit and his rifle went flying out into the dark. I was on top of him in seconds, the hot barrel of the Remington buried under his chin.
Married To The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 3) Page 61