ShotgunRelations (4 page)

He paused again and let his mother vent her
fury until he’d had more than he could take. “Goodbye, Mother. I’ll call you
some day next week. If you have financial problems, I suggest you curb your
shopping habits. I’m in no position to take over for a sugar daddy you drove
away by your own stupid action. Even if I could, I doubt I would.” Ending the
call, he went back to the bed and sat beside Liz.

“I’m sorry we got interrupted by that.”
Tension had Jack’s muscles taut, his stomach cramping. “You might as well know,
I’m the only child of an emotionally needy single mother who’s not particularly
happy these days. I have to try to placate her every now and then.”

Sometime soon, if he was going to make a
24/7 commitment to Liz, he’d have to tell her about his personal history and
reveal his connection with the powerful Caden family, even though that
relationship was biological and nothing more. Right now she seemed to know what
he needed, because the touch of her fingertips lightly massaging his back were
doing a damn good job of working out the tension that always gripped him when
he had to talk with Marianne Duval.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Liz sounded
genuinely concerned.

She had a way of coaxing him out of not
only the tension but also the protective reserve he’d built up over the years.
“Not unless you have a magic potion to turn a witch into a fairy godmother.”

Jack sighed and leaned back into the warmth
of Liz’s touch. “My mother recently ended a relationship that had lasted since
before I was born. Her lover left her comfortably fixed financially, but she
had expected much more from him. Since he won’t take her calls, she comes after
me. I’m not used to it. As long as she was with him, she barely acknowledged my
existence.”

“I’m sorry.”

Liz moved closer. The warmth from her body
seeped into his pores and relaxed him further. There was something about her
that put him at ease—something that had nothing to do with the reasons he’d
singled her out in the first place. He’d never felt so attuned with a sub—and
she definitely was a sub—once a scene was over. “It’s not your fault. It’s no
one’s fault but Mother’s that she’s alone, lonely and growing old.”

He thought back to his early childhood,
before he’d been sent away to boarding school at an age when most kids were
sitting at the kitchen table learning their ABCs. Marianne had been pretty—his
roommates at school had said so—but Jack couldn’t remember her ever taking him
to the park or the store. She’d gone out a lot from the time of his earliest
memories, leaving him with a sweet, middle-aged babysitter named Hortensia
Martinez. She’d made the best
flan de leche
he’d ever tasted. He’d liked
it best when he’d been left at Hortensia’s house for days at the time. It had
been a bustling place filled with laughing people and a passel of friendly dogs
and cats. He’d been happy there.

“Mother sent me away to boarding school
when I was seven years old. I believe I missed my babysitter more than I missed
her. After that, I rarely saw her until after I finished college and law school
and bought the practice here—until, that is, she split up with her lover. Now
she’s on my back two or three times a week, wanting me to drive over to Lubbock
and take care of something for her.”

He liked the feel of Liz’s arms around him,
her warm breath tickling the back of his head. He found himself wanting to pour
out his doubts and troubles, sensing that she’d listen and absorb them without
making judgments. She was curious about his lifestyle, at least the parts he’d
silently revealed with his jewelry and tattoos.

I want to tell her everything. Well,
almost.
Eventually he’d have to tell her he was
Byron Caden’s illegitimate son, but not until he had her so enslaved that she
wouldn’t think he might initially have gone after her out of spite toward the
father who’d never claimed him.

He leaned back against her. “You know,
honey, you’ve got a way of making me want to talk to you and explain what makes
me tick. I can think better, though, when you’ve got some clothes on. Put on
the robe and let’s go out to the living room.”

Chapter Three

When Jack took a seat near the end of the
large sofa, Liz sat beside him. He took her hand and laid it on his thigh.
“It’s been a long while since I felt enough for another human being to want to
share not just an occasional fuck but real, honest closeness. I want that with
you.”

“You have it…Master.”

It would be so damn easy to take her at her
word, but he didn’t kid himself. She could only become his 24/7 slave if he
laid his cards on the table, because if he didn’t tell her his secrets, some
member of the club surely would let things slip when he took her there. “Not so
fast. You may not want me once you know who and what I really am.”

The motion of her warm, smooth hand on his
inner thigh felt soothing yet arousing. “I know enough already to know I want
to belong to you.”

He damn nearly lost his resolve but he
managed to still her hand by taking it and moving it into her lap. “Be good or
I’ll have to tie you up again.”

“Yes, Master.”

To get out of temptation’s way, he moved
off the sofa, picked up the afghan Hortensia had made for him to take to
boarding school and took a seat on a chair a good seven feet away from Liz. For
a long, awkward moment he considered where to start. “As I told you, I’m a
lifestyle Dom. Do you have any idea what that means?”

She shook her head, but from the hot look
in her eyes he guessed she was anxious to learn. “Some folks play at domination
and submission. I live it 24/7. From the time my roommate and I took jobs at a
BDSM dungeon when we first started college, I fully embraced the lifestyle.”

Jack paused, but when she only glanced over
at him and smiled, he continued. “The tattoos, cock ring and earring are
souvenirs from the Domme who ran that club. My roommate’s markings are mirror
images of mine. We started out as submissives, doing scenes with the Domme who
managed the dungeon.”

“You, submissive? Master, I find that hard
to imagine.”

“For a little while I was. While my
roommate was a natural sub, I didn’t last in that role very long before my
employer decided I should train as a Dom. She got off on watching me dominate
my roommate while he serviced her.”

He watched her closely for any sign of
revulsion, but the only emotion that registered on her flushed face was mild
surprise. Feeling more exposed than when he played naked in the public room at
the Neon Lasso, Jack draped the afghan over his lap before continuing. “At first
I was humiliated, having to play onstage with Carl and our Domme in front of a
bunch of voyeurs. I told myself I did it because I wanted the spending money my
college fund didn’t stretch far enough to provide.” Jack took a deep breath and
considered stopping now, but he couldn’t, not if he intended to take Liz as his
24/7 slave—let alone his wife. “That wasn’t the case for long though.”

Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth went
slack. “You mean you got to enjoy playing sex games with…with Carl?”

“Yes.” He needed to connect with Liz, so he
moved back to the sofa and stroked her hand. “I learned that I can enjoy sex
with men as well as women. For a couple of years back then I even thought I
might be gay.”

“You aren’t though—are you?” Liz looked
confused, as though she was trying to reconcile what he’d just said with the
mind-blowing sex they’d shared not half an hour ago.

“No. I’m not gay. But my first sex slave
was a male. He taught me I need to have complete control over my partner,
sexually speaking—and he was the first to give me that control.”

“Where is Carl now?” she asked, her tone
brittle.

“He’s still living in Boston, clerking for
a federal judge. And he’s still with the Domme we started out with, still her
slave. He tells me she occasionally lends him out to Doms at the club.” Jack
panicked when Liz didn’t say a word. “We talk to each other occasionally, but
the last time I saw him was at our law school graduation. That was almost four
years ago.”

“I never thought I might need to be jealous
of a man.” Tears ran down Liz’s cheeks, spoiling the just-fucked beauty Jack
had seen before he was stupid enough to think she’d understand. “But you lived
with him for what? Seven years?”

“One. I changed roommates my sophomore
year. It was too much, playing the master for him 24/7. We kept doing scenes at
the club for another year or so, until I decided that poverty beat being on
display for every BDSM player in Boston, risking discovery by somebody from
back home who might recognize me in spite of my shaved head, tattoos and all.”
Jack ran his thumb along the veins on the back of her hand, wishing to hell he
knew what was going through her mind. “I’ve never had gay sex outside a club
since then. You may hear that I’ve fucked men at the club, but only in threesomes
and once in an onstage orgy. If you’re still willing to be my slave, I won’t do
it again unless I believe you want to experience sex with two men at once and
set up a
ménage a trois
scene at the club.”

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, but at
least she turned and met his gaze. “I don’t know about that, Master. I think
you’re plenty enough man for me.”

They’d been quiet for a few minutes while
Liz tried to digest what Jack had told her. He’d held onto her hand like a
lifeline. She wanted to say it was okay—that she appreciated his honesty about
something in his past that he could as easily have left buried. But she
couldn’t find the right words, so she just stroked his hand and waited for him
to take the lead once more.

He cleared his throat. “If you want, I can
have the tattoos removed. Or get other ones that have meaning to both of us.”

He’d do that for her? Liz shuddered when
she thought how much pain would be involved in getting rid of those daggers,
particularly the big one on his arm. “No. I like them, Master. They’re part of
you.”

And Jack was part of her now. He made her
feel wanted for herself, not for the land and wealth she might bring a lover.
She liked the fact that he wasn’t a rancher eager to annex her daddy’s land, or
a cowboy who saw her as a way to bolster his status on the ranch by hooking up
with its heiress. Most of the time since she’d finished college, she’d had to
come across as strong and invincible, a woman worthy of stepping into her dad’s
footsteps and running his huge operation. She liked the fact that when she was
with Jack he was the one in charge.

He mastered her as no one ever had before.
She loved it. Truth be told, she’d started falling in love with him long before
he’d even noticed her.

* * * * *

The following morning Liz blinked when she
woke up. When she finally got her bearings, she realized she was still in
Jack’s bed, pleasantly sore from the most intense sex she’d ever experienced.
Here he was, standing next to the bed wearing unbuttoned jeans and a big grin.
He looked incredibly sexy with his bare chest and that dagger tattoo on his
arm. “Coffee?” he asked as he handed her a steaming mug.

“Thank you Master.” She took the mug,
noticing he’d added milk. “You remembered how I like it.”

“You have to have a memory for detail in my
line of work.” Sitting beside her, he stroked her thigh. “What are you doing
today?”

“Making sure the ranch hands do their
jobs.” Liz couldn’t help resenting the fact that her mother paid no attention
to anything but the main house, even on Sundays when their ranch foreman, Frank
Williams, was off. “No rest for the wicked.”

Jack shook his head. “Pity. I had plans to
keep you right here until I have to be in court tomorrow for a trial that may
last most of the week. Drink up though, and I’ll take you home.”

“I wish I could stay, but…”

He gave her a quick, hard kiss. “It’s okay.
I understand you need to take care of your ranch. But you’re going to save next
weekend for me. All of it, from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. I intend
to keep you naked the whole time unless I decide to take you to the club.”

“I don’t know, Master.”

“I do.” He didn’t sound angry—just
supremely confident. “Tell your foreman his days off this week will be
weekdays, not Sunday. Or get your mother to oversee whatever the help has to
do. Honey, if I’m your master, you’re going to have to fit your schedule to
mine, since I haven’t been able to persuade judges to do that.”

Liz wished that was as easily done as said.
“I’ll try. Frank, our foreman, has always had Sundays off so he can take his
wife to church. Until Daddy died, he had Saturdays and Sundays off, and it took
some serious persuasion for me to get him to agree to work Saturdays and take
Mondays off instead.”

Jack stood and looked down at her. “You
submit to me, honey. Not to any of your employees. Not anymore. If I have to,
I’ll set every cowboy on your payroll straight about who’s their boss, but I
think you can do that just fine by yourself. If you need me to though, I’ll
step in.”

Part of Liz wanted Jack to take an interest
in the Laughing Wolf. Another part liked the fact that he hadn’t tried to
insinuate himself into ranch business right away, the way some of her old
boyfriends had done. “If you’d like, you can come home with me and ride along
while I check the fences between the Bar C and the Laughing Wolf.”

“You think I can manage to dominate a
horse?” When Jack laughed, it accentuated the crinkly lines around his eyes.

“I imagine you can. You are a born Texan,
aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t brought up on a ranch.”
He sounded a little unsure of himself, and that surprised her.

“Can you ride horseback?”

He shrugged. “I rode a lot when I was at
boarding school, but that was a long time ago. I’m sure I won’t be able to ride
circles around your cowboys. Or you, for that matter. I doubt I’ll get thrown
though.”

“I’m willing to chance it if you are. I’d
love to have company riding fences.”

“Then I’m all in. Get dressed and we’ll
head out to play cowboys and cowgirls. Maybe we’ll stop for a break and have a
quick fuck in one of those line shacks that dot every ranch around here.”

Liz laughed. “There just may be one along
the section where we’ll be checking fences.” She lowered her voice to a husky
whisper. “Master.”

She hated putting back on the outfit she’d
worn to Bye’s wedding, but she had no choice so she started dressing. “I’ll
have to change into jeans when we get to the house.”

“I’m glad. Have I ever told you I think you
look mighty pretty in your jeans, with your hair in a ponytail?”

“Thanks, I think. I feel more at home in
jeans than I do in this garden-party dress.” Giving Jack her hand, she went
with him to his car.

* * * * *

The Bar C went on for miles, from the
outskirts of Caden to another farm road that led around a Bar C pasture on the
high plateau, where cattle grazed around dozens of pumpjacks, and windmills
turned high above land dotted with colorful Texas wildflowers. “Now that looks
like efficient use of land,” Jack said, trying to mask his resentment toward
his old man.

“Yes it is. Four brought in the oil and gas
wells, but Bye’s the one who started the wind farm a couple years ago. His
mother encouraged him to do it.”

“Four?”

“That’s what everybody calls Bye’s father.
I’m glad ‘Five’ never stuck with Bye. His mother didn’t like people calling her
son by a number.”

“What was Mrs. Caden like?” Though Jack had
never met her, he’d heard people—Bye and Deidre as well as other folks around
Caden—say nothing but good things about his father’s late wife. He’d often
wondered how different his life might have been if he’d been her son as well as
Four’s.

Liz turned to him and smiled. “Mae Caden
was one of the nicest women I ever met. She loved Bye and Deidre
unconditionally, even when they did crazy things that made her worry. I doubt
that Four would have let Bye build his wind farm if not for Mae championing the
project. He wasn’t at all anxious to encourage alternative energy sources that
might someday supplant oil and gas. I suppose he had his reasons, because there
must be close to a hundred wells pumping crude out of Bar C land.”

Jack guessed from the way she talked about
Mrs. Caden that Liz had found a friend in her. He doubted Liz’s own flighty
mother had been much of an influence on her. Mavis Wolfe was as airheaded as
any woman he’d ever met, totally oblivious to everything and everyone except
herself. He wished he could have met Liz’s dad before his death, since Liz had
obviously gotten most of her good traits from him.

Halfway down into the valley, he turned
onto a blacktop road topped with a metal arch that had a large brass replica of
a laughing wolf dangling from its high point. “We’re almost there.”

“Yes. We’ll be riding back up this way to
check the fences I told you about.” When Liz laid a hand on Jack’s knee he
found he liked the casual intimacy. “Next week I’ll have the brush mowed down
in that pasture, but I’ve been holding off because I like to see the
wildflowers that spring up amidst the weeds. Pretty soon we’ll have a cold
spell and most of them will die.”

Every time he spent time with her, he
learned another facet of her personality. Practical in most things, she
occasionally gave in to whimsical impulses like the one that had made her spare
some flowers from a thresher’s teeth. He was coming to care more for her each
day—and not just because he’d found the perfect submissive for his bed.

He pulled into the driveway in front of the
main house, a rustic-looking two-story place built of native limestone he
figured was probably around a hundred years old. A narrow, detached garage
built from the same material looked as if it had been a coach house at one
time. “Where would you like for me to park?”

“You can pull in on the grass, over by the
garage. That way, if Mom needs to leave she’ll be able to get out easily.”