Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) Page 17

  I put my arm around Fox’s waist as we mounted the front steps. He was still holding onto Wolf’s arm, so we were a very affectionate threesome. I said, “It’s all right, darling. I think you pretty much saved the fucking day.”

  He smiled crookedly down at me. “I don’t think I did, pussycat. What was up with you and your bow?”

  I smiled too, until I realized we’d have to step over the body of that cleaning woman who had been caught in the crossfire. I tried not to look. “Oh, I got one inside the lobby here,” I bragged.

  “Good for you. They would’ve gotten us if we hadn’t gotten them. That’s how to look at it.”

  “Damn straight.”

  The lobby was a blur of activity. Maddie, a nurse, had found the first aid kit and was bandaging Ford’s forehead where he’d been pistol-whipped bloody. The building inspector Paul had some sort of bullet grazing injury to his upper arm, and June was tending to him. And Gollywow’s entire white T-shirt was a mass of bloodstains, although when he took off his shirt, he looked intact. Maybe he’d just gotten splattered by an Ochoa.

  I started wiping the blood off my desk and shredding the bloodstained papers. The guy I’d buried was gone, dragged off. My lobby had suddenly become a command station for a natural disaster. As Wolf and Fox fell to helping me, we developed a copacetic rhythm. Wolf carried a trash can over. Fox handed me a roll of paper towels. Everything was getting done like clockwork. Maddie had even finished bandaging Ford and went over to check out Paul. It was like a triage station in there, and before I knew it, Wolf had whisked away the trash can, moving on to wiping blood from the floor. I could sit at my desk as though nothing had ever happened. I could always reprint those blood-soaked purchase reqs.

  Fox perched on the edge of my desk. With his hands folded between his thighs and his devilish grin, a sheen of sweat just barely breaking forth on his forehead, he looked like he’d just come from a rousing baseball game—one that his team had won, of course. “So now you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “How to create your own story. See what I mean? Now you’re truly Pippa Lofting of the Smoky Mountain High cannabusiness.”

  “That’s for fucking sure. And you’re forever going to be Fox Isherwood of the Bare Bones MC.”

  He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  I lightly slapped his arm. “After this? How can you say no?”

  He just smiled enigmatically. “Come on. Let’s see if there’s any food for these folks.”

  EPILOGUE

  FOX

  “And the Leaves of Grass plantation in conjunction with its dispensary, A Joint System, is proud to be the underwriters for this noble, mellow, and truly harmonious undertaking,” said Lytton into the microphone. “With all the overpopulation, pollution, fracking, terrorism, and racial tension in this world, it’s an honor to contribute to such a peaceful venture. When Pippa Lofting first came up with this idea, I thought ‘you’ve got to be kidding.’ A bud and breakfast where people can sit around enjoying a peaceful bowl—where cancer patients can come to get over their recent bouts of chemo. But Slushy here looked up the laws, and sure enough, it’s perfectly legal with a medical card.”

  Lytton gestured at Slushy, who stood near the red ribbon with his trusty pair of giant scissors. People had told me he’d do that, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it for myself. He was truly just dying to cut that ribbon. We had built an enclosed patio in the back near the office and kitchen where people could eat their breakfast, toke up, read, or have cocktails in the afternoon, so we’d put the ribbon on that gate.

  “He’s just chomping at the bit,” Pippa whispered.

  “I’ve seen him cut through strands of garlic and sun dried tomatoes when opening up a farmer’s market,” confided Wolf. “He’s just mercenary the way he goes to town with those scissors.”

  “Maybe he should’ve been a Bare Boner,” I said.

  I was currently wearing a PROSPECT patch above the front pocket of my cut. If a year ago you would’ve told me I’d hang up my sicario holsters and adopt the colors of a club of men, I would’ve shot you dead.

  Pippa’s gracious, loving influence had altered my life so irrevocably. Somehow, she made me want to stick around a place, to put down roots, to nest. After giving up her trashed apartment, we’d found a nice 1940s bungalow in an old subdivision on the way out of town toward Mormon Lake. I was working fulltime at the raptor conservancy and had even filled in for the director when he’d gone away on business trips a few times. We were a normal, homey family, especially with the addition of Pippa’s giant mutt, Monstro. WITSEC had finally seen the error of their ways and had allowed her to take custody of her dog.

  “Oo, that guy’s cute. Is he spoken for?” asked Sally.

  Oh, that’s right. I should say with the addition of Pippa’s dog and her sister, now known as Sally Decker. You heard right. Randy Blankenship and I had developed such a great rapport that I liked to believe it was me and me alone who had convinced him to rattle some cages and get Sally transferred here. I let him know in oblique ways that the Jones matter was taken care of, sewn up, concluded. They would hassle us no more. And he went to bat for Pippa.

  “Oh, gross,” said Pippa. “That’s Russ Gollywow. He rarely takes a shower. I don’t think he’s spoken for, if that’s your style.”

  “That guy’s cute, too.”

  “Oh, even grosser. That’s Maddie and June’s brother Speed.”

  I listened to the rest of Lytton’s speech. “I want to stress that first and foremost we’re a club in the most intense sense of the word. We are truly brothers in arms. And when we created this idyllic oasis on the shores of Mormon Lake, we created a new sort of club. A brotherhood of people who have a deep, abiding appreciation for the splendors of the glorious weed. Huzzah!”

  Lytton lifted up a bong, and the crowd went wild. Pippa’s first customers were there, too, to partake in the grand opening. She’d listed her inn in a web database of bud and breakfasts, and already she was booked three months in advance. It was truly a booming business, although Gunhammer had pulled out once and for all after Abel Ochoa and twelve of his workers had gone missing. No thanks, Gunhammer had told the remaining Ochoas. It might be legal, but it’s still too risky for me. And it’s still illegal in the eyes of the feds.

  Lytton introduced the mayor of P and E, who started yammering about the greater good of all and the camaraderie of a close-knit community. I couldn’t ask Pippa to step away from her own grand opening, but I was itching to bang her. I held her closer to my side, my left hand draped over her shoulder straying down over her chest. In turn, her hand at my waist traveled over my ass. She put her little hand in my back jeans pocket and squeezed. Maybe she was bored with the mayor’s speech too.

  I bent down. “Do you want to—”

  “Yes!” she answered instantly. “The Eminence Front Room!”

  Each unit had been named for a strain of Lytton’s pot. We practically jogged out of the patio area, shoving our way past Ford and Maddie, who gave us annoyed, and then knowing looks. The same happened with Faux Pas and Sapphire as well as Duji and Monique.

  “Go get ’em, Prospect,” Duji growled in his gravelly, Al Pacino voice.

  I had wondered how Pippa would react to being seen as a belonging to a man. She seemed hyper-independent, but then, so did most of these club old ladies. So when I’d offered her a PROPERTY OF patch, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t take it. She’d been property of Lieutenant Commander Heston for so long, then she’d been a slave to the Joneses in that warehouse. Of course she was going to balk at being labeled my property.

  But to my surprise, she’d taken the patch. She’d even personally sewn it onto the back of her jean jacket. “I know I’m not literally your property, Fox,” she’d said. “But it gives me a sense of security knowing I’m tied to you emotionally. I can’t just leave. You can’t just leave. We’re bound to each other in ways that a ring or a patch can’t achieve.”

 
That had bothered me. It had stuck in my craw, her mentioning a ring. I felt too inadequate to give her a ring. The bud and breakfast looked to be booming, but no one made a bundle at a nonprofit bird place, not even the assistant director. I’d been living off my sicario savings, which was formidable, but I felt guilty as hell not having asked her to marry me.

  I wanted it. Hell, after what I’d been through, I liked security as much as Pippa did. Who said men didn’t like having a nice house with decent furniture? A food processor, lawn chairs, a view of red rocks? We had all that now and I wanted to think it was enough for her, but I often wondered.

  I slammed and locked the door to the Eminence Front Room, pressing Pippa between my body and the door. My cock was up like a hammer against her belly, and she squirmed and purred with delight. She rocked her head back and forth against the door, her silken hair now dyed nearly the same fiery shade of red as mine. That always got to me, her ultra-feminine ways. Some men might call them wiles even, but since they didn’t bother me in the least, they were just sexy, seductive ways.

  I took a big bite from the pit of her throat. “How those balls feeling?”

  She rolled her hips like a belly dancer and ruffled my hair with her hand. “The balls are turning me on, sir.” No one had asked her to call me “sir.” Because she did it on her own, I never protested. And who didn’t like being called “sir”? “It was all I could think of listening to Lytton’s speech.”

  I reached down to crunch the hem of her skirt in my hand. “You’ve kept them inside you the whole six hours?”

  She smiled like a cat. “The entire fucking time.”

  Now I rubbed the glans of my cock against her belly. Arrows of pleasure shot through straight to my ball sac, tightening it up, bringing it closer to my body. I had to bend at the knees to travel my greedy hand up her inner thigh. I could feel the moisture halfway up, little trickles of pussy juice. Those Ben Wa balls never failed to do their job.

  “You like holding them inside your cunt?”

  “Mm. I like how they make me think of you. You and your big, plump, long prick. How our bodies fit perfectly together. How good you fuck.” Pippa punctuated this by squeezing my ass.

  I slipped my middle finger back and forth against her clit. She hissed and jumped like hot drops of water in a pan. I could tell by how extended and swollen her button was that she’d already been primed. And, knowing how hot I was, we could be back outside in time for the celebratory punch bowl.

  “You think I fuck good?” I wanted praise as I unsheathed my cock, rubbing the head against her clit as my fingers slid inside of her to retrieve the balls. One by one they dropped into my palm like satiny eggs, and I stuffed them in my pocket.

  She had one boot up against the back of my leg, telling me she was wide open for me. “The best,” she murmured. Her eyes were heavily lidded, her features perfectly tranquil, and why not? Everything was going her way, for once. “It’s like my body isn’t fighting you. We’re perfectly yin and yang. When your cock’s inside me I’m full—ah!”

  She gasped and gulped when I slid my dick inside of her. My fingers were now free to diddle little patterns against her extended clit. She was getting it from both points as I fucked her slowly, indecently. I spoke against her mouth. “I want to feel you come around my cock. I want to feel this tight little pussy clamping down on my prick and milking me. I want to feel your pussy gush juice all over my hand—”

  “Agh! Fox! Fuck me hard!”

  My aim was to please. Nothing but the best for the woman I loved.

  PIPPA

  It was like my spirit had been drawn out of me when he slid his big cock inside me.

  Fox was a succubus, skilled in the art of manipulating my body. With his long prick nestled up against my womb, I was a mindless toy. My eyes rolled into their sockets, I sucked in giant lungfuls of air. This was my entire world. Fox, his penis pinning me to the door and flexing inside of me, and his skillful fingers twiddling all sorts of piano concertos against my clit.

  “I love you.” It just came out of me without conscious thought. It still felt like a foreign novelty to say it, but it always filled me with joy. “I love you, darling. Now do me.”

  He laughed low and obscenely against my ear. “You want it? You want my big dick?”

  I had enough presence of mind to clutch at his dick with my inner muscles. Now that made him gasp. I laughed. Now he was my property, fully and completely. No man could resist having his prick clenched by strong Kegels, exercised daily to perfection. “I said do me.”

  “If you insist.”

  He banged me in earnest now, sliding his cock in and out of me with big swivels of his hips. He had this uncanny ability to never miss a beat with his fingers as he stroked me to ecstasy and kept up a solid, mind-boggling rhythm with his hips. He should have been a musician.

  My monologue by now went something like this. “Ah! Ah! Ah! Do it! Ah!” That was how heavily he’d fucked the sense right out of me.

  But when I came, it was almost unexpected. It was the most sudden, most uproarious orgasm of my life. My fingernails scraped the paint on the door, I held my breath, and I let the most powerful spasms I’d ever experienced take control of my midsection.

  I thought Fox was coming, too. He had this way of throwing his head back and holding his breath too. I could feel his penis twitching inside of me, jumping with each powerful spurt of jizz. His hips jerked with his pleasure, and he held his cock tightly inside me.

  Yet he managed to keep up stroking my clit. Slower now, I got to that jumping and twitching phase as I gulped air, putting one wobbly boot on the floor, testing it experimentally. My inner pussy still clutched at his cock. I had to giggle that every time I did that, and he would gasp and jump.

  Finally we both started breathing again. Fox let me down, but he was still seated deep inside me. Looking in my eyes purposefully, he lifted his hand to his mouth and sucked on each finger in turn, making big lip-smacking sounds.

  “Oh! Gross!” I said, pushing him away. Without him holding me up, I staggered a few steps like a drunk person. I made it to the bathroom to pee and fix myself up as best I could, then I staggered back out.

  Fox sat in a chair looking out the window. He’d opened the blinds. We couldn’t see the patio from here, but various guests, laughing and smoking, walked by. I went to take the other chair, but Fox shot his hand out like lightning and grabbed mine, pulling me onto his lap. I kissed his forehead, smooth and unlined by worry.

  “I love you too, kiddo,” he said.

  “I know. You know, it sounds crazy. But you’ve done the most loving, caring thing of all when you took that cleaning woman’s body to the Joneses and told them you were through.”

  It was true. Fox needed a female body, and the cleaner was thin and lithe like me. Small-titted. It must’ve been gruesome work, taking off her burnt clothes and putting on some of mine we’d burned in a bonfire. Fox had to take Lytton’s cage instead of his scoot, but Fox had met with Ortelio Jones in Nogales to show him the body of “Flavia Brooks.” Meanwhile, I stayed at home dying my hair a shocking, playful red. Why not? I worked in a god damned weed hotel. If that wasn’t the time to get all fancy, when would it be?

  “I took a fucking chance. They could’ve demanded dental records or some crap. But he at least pretended to believe me.”

  “Not working at the tux rental or even the dispensary anymore is also a help. As far as I know, he never connected me to this inn.”

  “No way. I don’t think he ever even connected you to the dispensary, since Jaws never got the information out of Emily.” Fox jumped, though, when someone knocked briskly on our door. “What the fuck?”

  “Pippa!”

  I looked at Fox and rolled my eyes. But there was a smile on my mouth, I knew. I got up, but just stood behind the door. “Yes, Randy?”

  “Just wondering if you’re coming out for hoover doovers. There are some fantastic chalupas, and the guys are already messing up th
e queso fundido. One guy practically dove face-first into it.”

  Fox rolled his eyes. “A guy who looks like Ronald McDonald?” he yelled.

  “That’s the one,” said Randy.

  I decided to open the door. The U.S. Marshal had been good to me, amazing as it sounds. He hadn’t reported me in violation the time I’d run off to Shelda’s. He’d arranged it so Shelda and Monstro could move here after Fox convinced him Jones was no longer a threat. In fact, I’m sure Randy knew that Jones thought I was dead. Randy had been cool throughout the entire mess. Not knowing about the epic shootout at my new motel probably helped.

  Randy only took one polite step into the room, probably afraid Fox was buck naked. Now, that had really happened before on at least one occasion. We needed to lock the front door of our house more often. “I’ve got to tell you, Pippa. You’ve got a real winner with this bud and breakfast.”

  “Well,” I said, “that means a lot to me, coming from my cousin and all.” We’d decided Randy was my cousin from San Francisco who had always hated my wife-beating ex, Russ. He now lived in Flagstaff, which explained his frequent visits to Pure and Easy.

  “Aw, shucks,” said Randy. He even put a hand on my shoulder. “No rush, but I’m serious. That guy’s holding the queso bowl to his face like he’s drinking a pail of milk. Come on. Maybe there are still some empanadas and tamales left.”

  “We’ll be right there.” Fox held an arm up indicating his assent. He got laboriously to his feet as if he’d just run a mile as Randy zipped back to the party. Randy was getting to know the Boners, and I think he actually liked them. Or most of them.

  Fox came over to me, and messed up my bright red hair. The mariachi band I’d hired started up over at the patio. Fox had to talk louder over the cheerful accordion. “Mm. You sure know how to make a man feel good. Great, even.”

  I threaded my fingers through his hair too. “That’s my job, sir. And it will be my job until the end of time. Do you approve?”