ShotgunRelations, page 7
Jack thought for a minute before he replied. “Frank doesn’t impress me much but I wouldn’t go quite so far as to accuse him of rustling. I know he’s been the Laughing Wolf’s foreman since Liz was a kid. She trusts him—so much so that she lets him walk all over her at times.”
“I know. Mavis leans on him even more than Liz does. I told her what I suspect and asked her to be careful around the man.”
Jack recalled hearing Liz tell Sheriff Atkins that Frank had neglected to mention having hired and fired employees around the time the Laughing Wolf had lost cows from a pasture where nothing had been cut and the gate had remained locked. “You may be right. Have you talked to Atkins or somebody from the Rangers’ task force about this?”
“No. That’s my question for you. If I report my suspicions and they’re wrong, will Williams have a case against me for slandering him?” Four stood and paced the length of Jack’s small office, stopping to peer out the window toward the street. “I’d ask Karen, but I don’t want to interrupt her and Bye’s honeymoon.”
“Frank could sue you in civil court. Anybody can sue anybody over anything if they feel like it. Whether or not he’d win would be another story. I’d argue, if I were defending a case like you describe, that the accusation was made to law enforcement with the intent of helping to uncover a ring of rustlers. Most judges would dismiss a suit like that, but if the plaintiff insisted on a jury trial anything could happen.” Jack flipped on his computer and reviewed an abstract of the Texas statutes on character defamation. “Here’s what the law says.
“‘To prove defamation of character in Texas, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant made a false statement to a third party about the plaintiff with the required degree of fault. The amount of fault required differs depending on whether the statement is about a public official, a public figure or a private individual.’”
Four turned around and looked at the screen. “Stop quoting the law and tell me in plain English what this means.”
“You’d be accusing a private individual, so Frank wouldn’t need to prove that you made the false derogatory statements with malice, only that you accused him negligently. In other words, you accused him based on nothing more than unfounded suspicion. If I were you, I’d share my doubts about his innocence with the task force people but nobody else.”
“I see. How much do I owe you for this fifteen minutes of your time?”
“Nothing. First visits are free, not just for you but for everybody who comes in here. If you’re ready to go, I’m going to lock up and drive out to the Laughing Wolf. I’ve got a feeling Liz is going to need some moral support.”
Chapter Five
“You told Sheriff Atkins that I lied,” Frank said, his face beet-red and his fists clenched by his sides as though he wanted to use them on her.
Liz met his gaze. “No I didn’t. I told him you must have forgotten about the three new men that came on and the two we fired around the time the cows were taken. Don’t look at me that way.”
“They think I may have been involved now. Me, after I’ve spent almost fifteen years babysittin’ you and your mama since your daddy died.”
About to agree that she shouldn’t have told Sheriff Atkins, Liz hesitated when Jack strode into the barn, stopped beside her and put his arm around her waist. How had he known she needed his strength at just this moment?
Frank stepped back as though he expected to be attacked. “Stay out of this, lawyer. You don’t own this place just because you’re fucking Liz.”
Moving with catlike grace, Jack strode forward and grabbed Frank by the front of his shirt, lifting him until the toes of his scuffed cowboy boots barely touched the ground. “Keep in mind that you don’t own it either, and that you won’t be sticking around for long if you keep talking about your boss like that.”
“She’s not my boss, her mama is. Take your hands off me.”
Jack shoved him backward into a bale of hay. “Gladly.”
Then he turned to Liz and took her in his arms. “Did the son-of-a-bitch hurt you? If he did…”
“Jack, it’s okay. He didn’t lay a hand on me.” She took a step toward the hay bale. “Frank, I’ve put up with you running this place for a long time. At first Mom let you because she didn’t know enough about ranching to step in after Daddy died and I was just a kid. I’m grown now. I know all I need to know about running this place and it’s high time for you to follow my orders for a change. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave.”
“Big talk, Miss Liz. Let’s go up to the house and see what Ms. Mavis has to say about that.” Frank spat out a wad of tobacco, the look on his face one of pure hatred as he stomped out of the barn and headed for the house.
When she started to follow him, Jack held her back. “Let him go, honey. Give the man some rope and let him hang himself.”
“What do you mean?” Frank would fill her mother with lies, make her hysterical again the way he’d done several times before when she’d tried to assert control over him. “I need to stop him before he upsets Mom.”
Jack shook his head. “Not now. Let him upset Mavis. I’ve got a feeling the task force will be investigating old Frank. You don’t want to force his hand right now.”
Had Jack heard something? “You don’t think he had anything to do with the rustling, do you?”
“I don’t know. But it seems awfully suspicious to me that he lied about cowhands leaving and starting around the time you lost those cows that apparently disappeared through a locked gate. Maybe I’m wrong, but there’s something about the man that I can’t stand. I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
“Who else?”
“Four. I ran into him in town this morning. From the way he talked, he’s had suspicions that Frank has been up to something fishy for a long time. He said he shared his feelings about Frank with your mother last night, so maybe she’ll back you up. I won’t have you groveling to the man.” Jack reached up and stroked her cheek, a gesture more soothing than sensual.
“What if he quits?”
“All the better. You can hire a foreman who’ll do as you say. One who doesn’t lie to law enforcement and hopefully one who nobody will suspect of being into rustling cattle.”
Liz saw the logic in what Jack said, but she was still afraid to cross the man who had been foreman at the Laughing Wolf for practically as long as she could remember. “I don’t know, Jack.”
“I do. I want you to go inside now, pack an overnight bag and put on that black embroidered skirt and the low-cut blouse you wore for our date the day before Bye’s wedding. No underwear. I want to be able to play with your cunt all the way to Lubbock. I’m introducing you to my mother since I have to go there and decipher some papers for her. If you still want to be my 24/7 slave after you meet her, we’ll stop by the tattoo and piercing shop and get you a little dagger like mine.” His sexy whisper near her ear made her fantasize about his mastery, her absolute submission to his hot desire. “We may even make a detour by the Neon Lasso on the way back to my place.”
“Yes, Master.” When he put it that way she had no choice but to do as he said. She wanted to squelch her worries about the ranch in a haze of white-hot lust made hotter by her total devotion to the man she’d accepted as her master.
* * * * *
“Why are we stopping?” Liz asked when Jack pulled in at a deserted rest stop hardly more than halfway to Lubbock.
When he stopped the car and turned off the engine, he got out and practically ran around to drag her out of the seat and into his hard embrace. For the last ten miles he’d endured her bombarding his senses. He might have been able to withstand the lure of her little whimpers when he finger-fucked her cunt, the heady scent of her arousal and the look of his woman fully primed and ready. It was the feel of her seeking hands on his swollen dick and the gentle touch of her fingers as she played with his balls that drove him to the edge.
“We’re stopping because I can’t fuck you while I drive and I’ve got to fuck you now.” He walked her to the nearest tree and sandwiched her between it and his aching body.
“Here?”
“Here. Now.” He punctuated the words with a hard, almost brutal kiss, loving the taste of her as he ravaged her with his tongue. “Unzip my pants.”
The rasp of teeth on the zipper heightened his need. “But, Master, somebody might see us.”
“Let ’em.” He bunched her loose black skirt up over her hips. “Wrap your legs around my waist and let me in.” Fuck the condom, he’d take her bareback, nothing between them. The cock ring cutting into his flesh might prevent him from coming. If it didn’t, that was okay too. “God but you’re as hot and wet as a woman can be.”
She took his mouth again, her hands stroking his scalp, holding him to her as she tangled her tongue with his. Their labored breaths mingled, coming harder and harder as she neared her climax. Her desperate need for release fed his own. His balls tightened against the ring and his cock swelled even larger as he moved in and out of her slick cunt, going deeper and harder with every thrust.
“Come for me.” There was no way he could hold it in. No way he could pull out of her now. A voice in his head told him to do it. To come into her womb and damn the consequences.
He couldn’t, not without giving her a chance to say no, so he held on and whispered near her mouth. “I want to come in your pussy. You might get pregnant. If you do or even if you don’t, I’ll take care of you. Do you mind?”
“No, Master.”
Thank you, God. Every muscle in his body protested as he strained to hold her steady. Her inner muscles clenched his cock when she came. He was a goner. One thrust, two. His balls tightened painfully. He was coming in long, hard spurts against the mouth of her womb. Endlessly, it seemed. For the first time in his life it didn’t terrify him to know he might be making a woman pregnant.
Amazingly, he was still half hard when he lifted her and set her down. “Thank you, Master,” she said, her blue eyes glowing when she met his gaze. Then she surprised him. She went onto her knees and licked their mingled juices off his cock.
He was the one who owed her thanks, but he was too moved for words, so he held her loose hair out of his line of vision, using his fingers to massage her scalp. Feeling for her more deeply than he’d ever allowed himself to feel for anyone before, he watched him take his balls in her mouth and suck them clean. His cock twitched against her cheek and she swallowed it, sucking and licking her way to its head, where she tongued a drop of lubrication from the slit.
She was his sex slave, but she was more. Jack realized as they risked discovery in a roadside rest area that Liz was the woman he’d love for the rest of their lives.
* * * * *
“Sorry about Mother. I told you she’s interested mostly in herself.”
Liz squeezed Jack’s hand as they waited for the owner of this upscale tattoo and piercing salon to finish with another customer. “I’m sorry, Master.”
Marianne Duval hadn’t been exactly rude when Jack had taken Liz to meet her, but then she hadn’t been pleasant either. Liz guessed Jack had drawn an even poorer mom than she had, only he hadn’t had the benefit of having a great father like hers had been, until he’d died during roundup the year she’d turned thirteen.
The house where Jack had spent his childhood, though small compared with the ranch house where she’d grown up, was in an upscale neighborhood that smacked of money and good taste. While the traditional cherrywood tables and silk-upholstered chairs weren’t what Liz had expected considering Jack’s contemporary taste in décor, they were well-made, obviously expensive and apparently brand-new. She wondered if Marianne had pitched all the furniture and replaced it after the breakup with her lover.
Jack cleared his throat. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. The only reason Mother wanted me to come over was to help her decipher some bills. Come on, Thad’s ready for us now.” He picked up a gym bag and led the way to a workroom that looked almost as sterile as a hospital operating room and helped her climb onto what looked like a stainless steel GYN table centered below a huge overhead light.
Thad Hill, who Jack had told her owned the Eye of the Needle, was a huge bald man with a diamond stud centered below his lower lip, a small hoop hanging from his right eyebrow and a manner that put Liz immediately at ease. That was a good thing, because Jack had excused himself to change out of his suit. “Will this be your first tattoo?”
She smiled, hoping she didn’t look as scared as she felt. “Yes. Jack will show you what we want.”
“A dagger, he said. If it’s small I should be able to finish it tonight.”
Liz couldn’t help staring at the full-sleeve tattoos on Thad’s arms. “How long did it take for you to get all that done?”
“It’s been a work in progress for years now. I started out with tribal bracelets and the artist I bought this shop from just kept on going. Occupational hazard, I guess. He’s finished my chest and back and is working on my legs, at his house, every time I have a few free hours. Gives the old guy something to live for. Want to see?”
“Sure.” When he peeled off his T-shirt she saw that his hairless chest and back were covered with intricate, brilliant-colored designs, all the way from his neck to where they disappeared beneath a pair of loose white karate pants. She also noticed the silver hoops hanging from his nipples and a large silver circle covering his navel that was apparently held in place by a small ball that protruded from the flesh just above. “There’s more but I don’t think Jack would like it if I showed you,” he said with a toothy grin.
“What’s this that I wouldn’t want you to show Liz?” Jack stood framed in the doorway, wearing just a pair of tight black jeans that rode low on his hips and hugged his muscular thighs. Dressed for success he looked imposing, but now her master definitely looked like a man no one should dare to cross.
“The rest of my artwork. Want her to see a real man?”
“The hell you say. You’re a pussycat whose mistress leads you around by your dick. Everybody says so.”
What did Jack mean by that? Liz looked at him, confused by the tattoo artist’s laughter.
Jack let out a guffaw too. “Go ahead, strip down and show her your hardware. That’s about all that’s worth looking at. Honey, lift up your pretty ass and let me take off your skirt so Thad can get to work.”
When Thad dropped his pants Liz had to stifle a scream. A silver ring much larger and thicker than the ones in his nipples dangled from the head of his penis, which had been tattooed to look like a diamondback rattler ready to strike. “Oh. My. God.”
Thad chuckled and pulled his pants back up. “It’s okay. I get that kind of reaction almost every time.”
“Serves you right for giving your mistress your cock for a canvas, my friend.” Jack turned to Liz and took her skirt. “I figured seeing that would discourage you from wanting to sample Thad. It did, didn’t it? There’s no need for modesty in here. Thad has seen it all in the course of his work.”
She couldn’t help shivering in the icy room as Thad bent over her and felt her mound. “Good. If you weren’t already shaved, I’d have to do it to ink the tattoo. This is where you want it, I guess,” he said, tracing a spot in the center of her mound with his finger.
“Yes.” Jack cupped a hand over her mound, using his little finger to tweak her clit. “The point should aim right here.”
“Okay.” Thad pulled out stirrups on either side of the table. “Jack, go ahead and help her get situated so I can get to my canvas.”
Liz felt exposed, vulnerable. When Jack arranged her legs in the stirrups and removed the lower part of the table, she almost backed out, but he sat in a chair beside her, bent and dropped a gentle kiss on her lips. There was nothing she could deny her master, not when he looked at her as though she’d hung the moon. She did her best to calm the butterflies that were bouncing off the inside of her stomach.
“Since you want me to draw this freehand, I’m gonna need to look at the tattoo on your arm while I work.” Liz realized when he spoke that Thad had rolled his chair between her legs. When she glanced his way she saw he’d adjusted its height so his shoulders were level with her knees.
Jack pulled a chair up close to the table and laid his tattooed arm across her body. “Can you see it now?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Don’t move, though, while I’m drawing the outline.”
A tickling sensation hinted to Liz that Thad was using something that felt like the tip of a fine ballpoint pen to draw a dagger on her mound, and she felt his warm breath pass over her clit when he spoke. “Whoever did that tattoo was a real pro, my friend.”
“I had it done in Boston when I was in college.” Jack mentioned the name of an artist that must have impressed Thad because he let out a whistle that made her pussy tingle.
She needed to touch Jack, reassure herself he was the same wonderful master who’d made love to her with wild abandon a few hours ago. “May I touch you, Master?”
“Feel free. Jack’s getting the needles ready now.”
Her stomach turned somersaults at the prospect of being pricked. She felt clammy all over, though the air in the room was cold and dry. She tried to concentrate on the warmth of Jack’s muscular arm on her belly as she found his hand and laced their fingers together.
Soft music invaded the silence. Thad must have sensed her nervousness and wanted to calm her, but she found the most comfort in the weight of Jack’s arm, the tickle of his breath on her throat as he bent and whispered in her ear. “Calm down, honey. Thad’s ready to ink in the outline.”
“All right. This will be the worst of it, the outlining part. I’ll be using a very fine needle with black ink and saturating it pretty thoroughly.” Thad’s breath tickled her thighs when he talked.
