ShotgunRelations (13 page)

Not that her feelings toward Jack were
remotely daughterly. Even as tired as she was, her body came alive at his
touch. “Master?”

“What, honey?” His warm breath on the back
of her neck sent delicious shivers down her spine, and when he kissed her there
she knew exactly what she wanted.

“Make love to me. Please.”

He rolled her over and took her mouth, his
lips soft on hers, his tongue seeking and mating with hers. With gentle hands
he drew their bodies together, stroking and gentling her as a stockman might
calm a fractious colt.

Breaking the kiss, he spoke softly in the
deep, mellow tones that turned her liquid with desire. “How do you want me?
Tell me.”

“Fuck me. Make me forget everything that’s
going on. Empty my mind of everything but you. Master.”

He didn’t, not right away. Instead he sat
up and looked at her, his gaze not scorching but warm…caring…she’d almost say
loving. She lost focus on her fears and worries as he stroked her with
exquisite care. The pulses he sampled along her body, the sensation of his
calloused fingers moving gently yet possessively, the look of devotion on his
arresting face filled her mind, driving out horrific memories and replacing
them with him.

His caring. A focused devotion Liz had
never experienced until now. Everywhere he touched her with his hands and his
gaze, it stoked flames inside her. Flames that simmered instead of sizzling
tonight.

Jack knew what she needed. He was her
master, all she needed to weather the storms that had battered her. All that
mattered when everything was said and done.

She reached up and stroked his cheek, ran
her fingers along the short, dark stubble that had been shaved smooth before
all this happened. He’d altered his routine for her and she loved him for it.
“What will your barber say about you missing your appointment today?” she
asked, a nonsensical question that came unbidden to her mind.

“I’m not worried about that. You’re what’s
important to me now.” He laid a hand over the tattoo on her mound—her symbol of
his possession. “Let’s make love.”

Not “Let’s fuck”. Not tonight. Tonight
there’d be no toys, no restraints, no titillating talk of ménages or bondage
scenes. “Yes, Master.” He knew what she needed now, and he moved between her
legs and fitted his cock into her pussy.

Taking care not to abrade her healing
tattoo, her master braced his hands on the bed, holding his weight off her. The
only point of contact was where he’d joined their bodies, flesh on flesh,
nothing between them.

Somehow that intensified the feelings, the
sense of oneness with him that flowed over her as she watched the bunching of
his powerful muscles, the up-and-down motion of his hips as he claimed her this
way.

“Come with me,” he said, and she eagerly
obeyed. Every sensation grew more intense. Her cunt clenched. She looked into
his intent gaze. “Now.”

She came, a burst of sensation that practically
stole her consciousness. But she felt the first hot bursts of his release as
her world turned black.

“I love you like I’ve never loved anybody
before.” His words, softly spoken, broke through her muddled brain and she felt
him withdraw and take her back into his protective embrace.

 Chapter Eight

For the next few days Jack tried to find
the right time to talk to Liz, but everything seemed to conspire against him.
If it wasn’t the crisis at her ranch, it was a client who owned one of the
smaller spreads around here, whose ex was trying to move out of state and deny
him the right to be a part of his son’s life.

Then the autopsy reports had finally come
back and he’d had to spend untold hours looking for an attorney to take Frank’s
case when his charges had become exponentially more serious—and more difficult
to persuade an area attorney to defend. Not too many lawyers wanted to boast
about defending a client accused not only of rustling but also two counts of
capital murder.

He glanced over at Karen’s darkened office,
grateful that she’d gotten back from her honeymoon that morning and would be
available to answer Four’s legal questions, since doing that had taken up some
of his time as well.

Jack had a feeling he wasn’t going to get
back into his old routine any time soon. Yesterday morning he’d watched his
barber convert his shaggy high-and-tight into a conventional buzz cut that
wouldn’t require such frequent attention. He’d realized last night that his
hard-core image at the Neon Lasso didn’t mean as much to him as it used to
before he’d found Liz and collared her during a scene at the club.

He opened his desk drawer and brought out
the pewter heart-shaped jewelry box he’d bought at the estate jeweler next to
The Corral where he’d also found the modest engagement ring he intended to give
Liz when he joined her at her ranch tonight.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, he
slipped the ring back in the drawer next to the copy of William Wolfe’s last
will and testament, which he’d gotten at the courthouse. He’d have to give that
to Liz first—and hope she wouldn’t hate him for keeping the truth from her.
It’s
only been a week since I found out
, he told himself, but that excuse didn’t
hold water.

It’s been a hell of a lot longer than a
week since you found out you’re Byron Caden the Fourth’s bastard. Liz will have
a perfect right to tell you to fuck off when you drop that piece of news.

“Mike Dryden’s here for his appointment,
Jack.” Mary Ellen, the receptionist Jack shared with Karen, ushered in the
worried-looking young rancher, who sighed as he sank into the chair in front of
Jack’s desk.

“What have you found out? You said you’d
gotten the report from the investigators.” Mike had obviously spent some
restless nights waiting to hear if he had a shot at winning the custody fight
against his ex.

Jack was glad to divert his attention
toward somebody else’s problems. “Relax, Mike. I’ve done some research, but as
I told you, family law—particularly fathers’ rights in Texas—isn’t an area in
which I’d put myself out as an expert. On paper, the laws on child custody and
visitation are equally weighted to father and mother and based on seeing to the
child’s best interests. Practically speaking, though, the mother’s going to get
primary custody of a young child unless the father can prove she’s unfit in
some way. Are you willing to air Sarah’s dirty linen in the courthouse across
the street?”

Mike looked pathetically hopeful when Jack
handed him the fat report he’d received yesterday from a private investigation
firm in Houston. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep Johnny with me.
What did they find out?”

“Well, during the years Sarah lived in
Florida before you two met, she apparently had some acquaintances who make your
criminal history look no more serious than a speeding ticket. She was friends
with a guy who recently got hit with a federal charge for trafficking boatloads
of cocaine, and she ran around with a bunch of addicts who are members of an
outlaw motorcycle gang. Several of them have convictions for dealing cocaine
and OxyContin, and the gang itself has strong connections with the trafficking
rap guy.” Jack didn’t know if he’d want his child, if he had one, to be saddled
with the stigma of a whole county knowing his mother had been a gang slut for
that crew of thugs.

Mike looked up from the report he’d been
paging through. “Will this count with the judge? Most of it happened a good
while ago, before she moved to Houston.”

“I’m sure it will count if you use it.
Frankly I think it will be enough to prove to the court that she left you and
is shacking up with a married guy whose reputation isn’t very savory but whose
worst criminal conviction to date is one for drunk driving with property damage
and possession of cannabis. We may be able to get the judge to hear the case
behind closed doors. If so, we can hand him the report from the investigators
and you should be granted full custody of your son.”

Jack felt sorry for Mike, who’d been
designated a felon because of a DUI manslaughter conviction from more than fifteen
years ago when he’d been just seventeen. “The only problem I see is that Sarah
herself hasn’t been caught for anything worse than speeding and reckless
driving. Those pictures she left on her old MySpace account of herself smoking
a hookah pipe and guzzling Patron ought to sway the judge, but they might not
since they were taken before she met you. If you want me to, I’ll see if I can
get a qualified family practice guy from Dallas to come and sit first chair at
the hearing. The attorneys in the firm I’m talking about all specialize in
protecting fathers’ rights.”

“I don’t know. The Dry Gulch’s ranch
operation’s no slouch but it’s not the Bar C either. How much would this guy
cost me? You’re charging me fairly, but the PI fees have put a serious dent in
my cash flow.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. Investigations that
cross state lines and cover five years or more get expensive. I imagine a
board-certified family practice attorney would charge somewhere around five
hundred an hour, portal to portal—meaning you’d not only pay him for his time
to review the case and show up here in court, but you’d also have to cover his
travel time and per diem expenses for however long he’s here.”

“Damn. It may take some doing but I’ll
handle it if I have to. I’ve got one good piece of news though. Melissa has
agreed to marry me.”

“Good.” When Jack heard that he felt a
little more confident that he’d be able to take care of Mike’s problem without
the help of a big-city fathers’ rights advocate. “Melissa will make Johnny a
great stepmother. Who could ask for anybody more qualified for that job than
the county’s only kindergarten teacher?”

“We dated back in high school. I should
have married her years ago, but it took her a long time to get past condemning
me because I got drunk, got in my car and killed an innocent person. Every time
I’d think I was making progress with her, she’d find another guy she thought
she cared for. Then when they broke up I’d be tied up in another meaningless
relationship. This time, though, we’re both free at the same time.” The
rancher’s expression brightened noticeably when he talked about his future
wife. “When is the hearing set for?”

Jack understood Mike’s concern because
Sarah had Johnny with her in Florida until the custody case was settled. “It
isn’t. I wanted to go over this report before scheduling it. Now that we’ve
talked, I’ll try to get it on the docket as soon as possible. Meanwhile the PIs
will be keeping a close watch on Johnny, and if Sarah does the slightest thing
that could be construed as threatening to his welfare, the court down there
will have him taken away from her. Then you can go there and petition for
temporary custody on an emergency basis.”

“You’re sure my felony conviction won’t
keep them from letting me have him?”

“Don’t worry about it. According to the
law, the judge can’t consider those things unless they’re recent and indicate
that you might be a risk to your son. Sarah’s associations and her having
kidnapped Johnny and taken him out of state without your knowledge will play
worse with the judge than your fifteen-year-old conviction.”

“Okay. It’s just that I worry…” Mike looked
away as though he thought being a felon made him unworthy to regard others as
equals.

Seeing how that status affected the man
who’d made a success of his ranch and contributed so positively to the Caden
County community shamed Jack. He’d have to squelch the frequent feelings of
inadequacy he’d been experiencing since he’d found out he was a bastard.

He stood and spoke to Mike. “Don’t worry.
Almost everybody around here is proud of you. Take that copy of the report—I’ve
got another one—and mark any information you don’t want me to use under any
circumstances. Otherwise I’ll consider it fair game in case I believe it’s
necessary to use it to win you full custody of your little boy.”

“Thanks, Jack. I’ll get this back to you in
a day or two.”

“Take care.”

For a long time after Mike had left, Jack
re-read the investigators’ report and took notes that would help him compose
his motion to the court. While that distracted him to some degree, his
attention kept going back to Liz and to what he had to tell her tonight. He
scribbled some notes about what he might say, as he often did when preparing
arguments for court.

None of them gave him any confidence that
Liz might accept his revelations as readily as judges and juries usually bought
his glib explanations of why his clients should win their civil cases.

* * * * *

An hour. Just one hour until Jack would
come and pick her up. Still damp from the shower, Liz looked out her bedroom
window at a sunny sky that was cloudless today for the first time in a week. It
was as if Nature had lifted the gloom just as her master had taken the worst of
her worries away.

Someday soon she’d have to do something
nice for Four. He’d done them a real service by handling her mother’s hysteria
as well as lending her the Bar C’s assistant foreman to help her manage since
Frank had been in jail. Mom hadn’t set foot here since Four had taken her home
with him the day Frank had been arrested, and her absence had made Liz’s job of
running the ranch far easier than it would have been if Mom had been underfoot.

But Jack had been the rock that had kept
Liz relatively sane. As she wrapped the bath sheet more tightly around her and
crossed the room to answer the ranch phone, she reached up and felt the gold
collar he’d put around her neck the other night. “This is Liz at the Laughing
Wolf. Can I help you?”

She listened to Nancy Williams whine about
being put out of the foreman’s house where she’d stayed for so many years.
“Nancy, the men are loading Frank’s and your things into a truck right now.
They’ll be brought to you at the apartment you found in town. We’re trying to
make this as easy as possible for you, considering the circumstances.”

Damn it, the woman shouldn’t even have
asked to stay in the house, not after Frank had been caught red-handed rustling
their nearest neighbor’s cattle. Not to mention that he’d also been charged
yesterday with killing two ranch employees. Liz held the phone away from her
ear while Nancy complained.

When she’d had enough Liz interrupted. “I
have too much to do to listen to your complaints. You will have your personal
belongings this evening. Goodbye.”

When the phone rang again she ignored it.
Without bothering with underwear—it got her hot knowing that Jack liked her
accessible all the time—she put on a low-cut red satin top and the matching
cut-velvet skirt. They were way too dressy for a stay-at-home evening but she
didn’t care. She wanted to look good for her master.

Funny, she thought when she looked in the
full-length mirror. Loving her master had done wonders for her appearance, or
at least for the way she saw herself. Her hair looked good, a riot of curls on
her shoulders. This dress did far more for her than most of the insipid pastel
dresses in her closet. She looked practically sexy. No, she did look sexy and
it was all her master’s doing.

His collar was the perfect touch. Knowing
what it meant and that it was securely locked, a symbol of his possession, made
her feel owned. Beautiful. Like a butterfly released by love from the
caterpillar she’d been before Jack had come into her life Before he’d worked
his magic on her.

Impatient now, she went downstairs and
checked one last time with Maria to be sure dinner would be ready at six
o’clock. Then she grabbed one of her mother’s black lace shawls from the coat
closet, wrapped it around her bare shoulders and stepped out onto the porch,
watching and waiting eagerly for Jack to arrive.

When he was halfway down the driveway he
saw her on the porch. His heart beat faster and blood slammed straight into his
dick. Good thing he’d worn the cock ring and loose pants, or he’d be
embarrassing himself in front of Maria the housekeeper.

How the fuck did I ever think Liz was anything
but beautiful?

She had on something red tonight, a loose
skirt that got caught in the cool breeze. The wind made it caress her slender
curves and gave him an occasional glance at the long, athletic legs she liked
to wrap around his waist when they fucked. He got instantly hard when he
imagined bunching the soft fabric in both hands and settling it around her
waist so he could look his fill at the pussy she kept smooth for him. His
pussy, with his mark in plain sight on her smooth, pale mound.

A black lace wrap let hints of pale skin
show through a red top cut low enough for him to reach inside and cup her small
but amazingly sensitive tits. As he walked up on the porch his gaze settled on
his collar, the dagger-shaped lock she proudly displayed in the hollow of her
throat.

His rock-hard cock protested at its
restraint. His balls ached. It took all the control he possessed to refrain
from carrying her to her bed and claiming her right now, without preliminaries.
His cunt. His ass. His beautiful, talented mouth.