June 2005
Slants of moonlight spilled through the cheap, ugly motel curtains, throwing soft silver glows on discarded clothing. A broken lamp dangled from a table, cord taut, the shattered bulb still flickering. The orange sparks of light were locked in tune with the muffled rattling of an ice machine and the hum of cicadas going about their own song and dance of seduction.
They had some catching up to do there.
Hers was already finished.
She laid there, muscles sore and tender to the touch, the thin mattress offering little comfort. Even though the A/C was maxed out in an effort to combat the sweltering desert heat, her skin was still superheated, a thin film of sweat mingling with the cum that had long since turned cold.
Two fingers met at her lips and she mimed the motion of a dope addict. She’d given that up a while ago. Cold turkey.
Even so, the motion of smoking remained. It gave her an odd sense of peace.
She blew smoke rings, imagining them lifting into the air, expanding.
It was just fantasies fulfilled, stress relieved. Much like the entire night had been.
The sex had been wild, dirty, and tinged with brutality.
It’d had just the right amount of pain to make her feel alive again.
Powerful.
Then the feeling faded.
It always did.
Her heart skipped a beat when she heard him groan, shifting in his sleep. He grabbed subconsciously at her breasts and she squeaked in surprise at how sensitive her nipples still were.
She pulled away, gently disentangling their slick limbs. With the cicadas buzzing in time with her heartbeat, she danced through the shadows and around the silver light like a predator, going for the pants with the cold steel handcuffs.
She was light on her feet, and with a soft touch she slid the metal over his wrists, looping the chain through the bedpost.
She’d never admit it, but her heart fluttered as she stared at him, the light outlining the strong jaw, highlighting those salt and pepper locks.
He looked peaceful, after a fashion. Whether it was from the sex or a level of contentment in the lies she’d woven from, and into, half-truths, she honestly couldn’t say.
She hated herself for it. Then felt worse.
Feeling had never done much for her. It’d gotten people killed and landed her in Texas, in a place no sane person would choose.
So she left him there and padded into the bathroom, that same heavy scent of booze and Lysol hanging in the air.
She turned the shower to scalding, desperate to burn everything away. To wash it all down the drain.
/oOo\
March 2004
She’d come into that Honky Tonk one cold Texas night with an air of desperation that was only half faked. Like many things in life, the intentions were far different than the actual reality of it. In this case, the cold, simple, clichéd intentions of revenge. There was nothing new or meaningful about it. It was just important to her. Something to hang on the gravestone of the only man she’d ever called father.
They’d made a grand ole' show about giving a damn about her, especially that countrywoman with iron in her chestnut hair. Much later, she’d learn she was the woman who ran the Dixie Mafia outfit in Texas. The one whose hands were just as bloody as the men she’d had deprive her of something akin to a childhood.
She hadn’t believed their words in the beginning, that country twang sounding honest.
Heartfelt bullshit.
All that.
The rage was still boiling in her blood, even though the event itself was distant memory.
/oOo\
Then one day, she woke up in a pile of naked feminine flesh, a soft, delicate tongue making love to her ass, burrowing in deep. Then her own tongue, lapping away at a warm, wet pussy for the first time, high as a kite, loving every damn second of it. All while the woman with the iron in her chestnut hair watched from a chair, a hand in her jeans, rubbing furiously.
A fully-fledged member of that twisted Dixie family. The man she’d once called father probably died all over again in that grave of his.
/oOo\
She flirted. She smiled. She started using. Then she started selling their dope like a pro. Then she started selling herself--willingly of course. It was all about free will with them. They got off on it.
She was their dirty little bitch with the Navajo blood coursing through her veins.
She was one of a kind.
Fucked like an animal.
Clawed their backs.
A blowjob? $100.
Triple that for the pussy.
Give 70% to the white man, or rather, the white woman. It was the way of the world for people like her, all the way down at the bottom. In Texas, with the Dixies, they took until nothing more could be taken.
And she grew to love being taken.
/oOo\
She started battling for supremacy.
The dirty Navajo whore forgot who she was.
The other bartenders, the other prostitutes, they grew to hate her. She started sleeping with the woman with the iron streaks in her chestnut hair. She learned things about the female body that’d make even the most uptight, hillbilly bible thumper fall in love with sinning.
She felt wanted.
The illusion of caring.
It was survival wrapped in a cloak of sexual desire and feigned acceptance.
It had a certain appeal as long as she didn’t admit certain things. After all, the best lies you can tell yourself are the ones built from truths.
/oOo\
She found the peyote at the bottom of a drawer one day. She remembered little about it. Her mother may have given it to her. She smoked it one night after a long day. Became a wolf, darting across the desert plains, feeling truly alive for the first time in a long time. Remembered the rage and the revenge when the drug-induced hallucinations ended.
She stopped using.
She started playing guitar again, a song writing itself in her head.
/oOo\
June 2005
Sweat slick bodies moved to the quickstep rhythm of a steel guitar, spinning wildly when the fiddle cut in, redirected the energy of the Honky Tonk. Catcalls echoed, bouncing off the wood paneled walls as a cute drunk blond straddled the bucking bronco machine, her plaid shirt half buttoned, flashing the black bra that hid her pale breasts.
Someone kicked the jukebox and Johnny Cash came rattling to life, and the voices dyed off in midsentence, the sound of beers clinking down onto hardwood signaling the change in mood. Only Cash and the mechanical rattling of the bronco filled her ears.
It was one of those nights.
Nice and calm before all hell broke loose. The hints were all there, but her mind was on a single track. Little would matter until a flash of salt and pepper.
And that happened later.
Right now, it was Cash’s “Beast in Me” in an east Texas Honky Tonk, owned by the Dixie Mafia, and full of men drinking their troubles away and pretty blond girls waiting to dance, and to maybe get fucked by a man with a dark streak, or at least a bit of money.
She leaned back against the bar, taking it all in. There were always these moments of relative peace when a Cash song came on. The iron haired owner, that weathered old bitch of a woman who ran the place, loved Cash. And she made sure everyone who came here damn well knew it.
The calls for more beer went up and those southern belles with their marble skin and white blond hair attached themselves to their men, unwilling to let them out of their sight, especially around her.
The dirty Navajo bitch.
She smiled, keeping the laughs deep inside her belly as their faces scrunched up, adopting that air of superiority that comes naturally to women with money and quality breeding. She took it all in stride. She was used to it and more.
“You got this all handled, B?”
Tiny little Marry-Anne was at her elbow; beer glasses the size of her slender, freckled forearms clinked together as she set them down on the bar.
“Just fine,” she answered, waving her away distractedly as she refilled beers and shots of whiskey. Marry-Anne huffed indignantly and moved along. Across the room, the other bartenders gave her dirty looks.
Some stuck up two fingers in the universal V, wriggling their tongues, showing what they thought of her preferential treatment.
She winked at them, and then at the blondes hanging desperately to their cowboys, muttering under their breaths.
Crazy slut.
Dirty Indian.
Of course, the women throwing the loudest insults were usually the ones who moaned loudest when she’d pull her fingers from their wet snatches and smear their juices across their pink lips.
Female hierarchy was a nasty thing. Not that she particularly cared.
She ruled in the dark shadows that nobody liked to talk about or admit existed. Out in the sun, she was just dirt to them. Trash to be swept under the rug and forgotten, until their dark fantasies needed fulfilling. Then she was dragged back out, a wolf of the night meant to slake their lusts under the moon.
A laugh escaped her, and a strawberry blonde glared hard at her, yanking her cute little cowboy away with a sharp tug. His eyes were on her though. She winked again.
The jukebox flipped, another song primed and ready.
/o0o\
The atmosphere changed, catcalls and whoops going up in the suffocating heat of the building.
Sexual arousal blanketed the room, mingling with the scent of booze and smoke. Sweaty bodies lit up the dance floor, writing together in some new, dirtier version of the Texas 2-Step.
Hips pressed a little tighter, a little longer, the nasal rasp of Hank Thompson urging them on.
The sounds and scents barely reached her. The song spun in her mind, kept repeating itself.
You tended to let the anger burn when the Dixie Mafia stole something from you, then turned you into one of them. She was tired of that slow burn. It needed release.
The words of the only father she’d ever really known, had ever really loved, if that’s what that feeling was, came to her in a slow crawl.
1. Pay Attention.
2. Expecting Anything.
3. Everyone wants something.
4. Trust in fear.
5. Use what the good lord gave you.
6. There’s always someone better.
Irony.
Not following his own rules had gotten him killed, relocated six feet under.
She gazed out from behind the bar in-between calls for more beer, more Jack, more escapes. The dancing became sloppy, mere gyrations of flesh against flesh, covered cock to covered ass.
The temperature in the bar increased another level, the country music pounding more loudly in her ears, the sweet smell of smoke and alcohol filling her nostrils.
The jukebox flipped again, another song ripping through the loud cheers and stamping feet and clapping hands.
Yes. It was one of those nights all right. That’s why she chose tonight. It was why that script kept running through her mind. It was why her blood was running hot.
The jukebox flipped again.
/o0o\
The music finally crested, sliding back down the mountain of calm quiet. The dancing and the loud cheers slowed to a dull roar, the tight bodies of the women slick with sweat and pheromones, purring in heat, the eyes of the men shining and wild.
“You’ve got fifteen, B,” Jay murmured to her from the left.
She glanced over at him, all six feet, five inches, miscast, much like her, in a bar full of white southerners. His suit was top of the line, falling perfectly over the corded muscles of a former linebacker.
Black shades.
Clear earpiece.
His deep onyx skin glowed a soft purple under the lights.
Definitely out of place, especially when he was married to the little blond daughter of the bitch who owned the place. It was a pity and a waste of a halfway decent man.
“You okay there, B?” he asked.
“Just dandy, partner,” she said, predicting the smile that always came with that nickname, white teeth flashing behind dark lips.
“Looking forward to the show,” he grinned, winking as he moved on.
She should have known. The wink. The smile.
She really should have known.
One-track mind. That’s how it always is with things you should know in the future.
Worries get pushed to the side.
/o0o\
The jukebox flipped one more time, the final song before she took the stage.
Rolling Stones: ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
It figured.
She made her way around the dance floor, back to the dimly lit hallway to the room that held her guitar.
The only possession she owned that had ever really mattered.
/o0o\
She took the stage and the script howled inside her like a wolf to the moon.
The hook.
Both leads were already cast, scuttling around in the crowd. Jay, with those black shades, surveying every nook and cranny, his face locked on hers, or her ass. It didn’t matter.
There was the second lead, a cute young man with horn-rimmed glasses doing his best dress like a cowboy and failing hard.
He was the Dixies’ little numbers boy. A top-notch accountant that just so happened to be the son of the bastard who’d killed her father.
Her ticket out of this rat infested town.
/o0o\
The smoke inside the club billowed, hanging like a fog, real sweet to the senses when combined with the hard spice of whiskey on her breath.
The crowd was quieting now, being respectful, or what passed for it anyway.
When she took the mic and the lights dropped, they all shut up, drowning in their alcohol and hazy fantasies, her delicate fingers shredding out an improvised jazz tune.
Fantasy.
She was their tiny little Navajo whore with hair like night.
Jazz was what she played and despite everything, this was Texas.
There was a reason she wore tight little Daisey Dukes, red cowgirl boots, and one of their hats.
They didn’t come for the music. Didn’t care about it. They came for her body. They came wishing it were one of those nights instead. The nasty little secret the Honky Tonk did its best to cover up, to keep from the more “civilized” members of society.
Everyone would be surprised. That good ole’ southern cowboy charm was a sham.
She took a moment, stared them all in the eyes, and knew each and every one of them. She saw where their gazes were directed. Saw the marble skinned blondes squirm in their seats.
They’d settle for the alcohol fueled visions of bending her over the stage, over the amp, and taking her right there, shorts around her ankles, bucking wildly.
Their little Navajo whore. The kidnapped daughter of the tribal chieftain, begging to be fucked harder, screaming in a native tongue they didn’t understand.
She popped a couple buttons on her blouse, fueling their fantasies, smiling at the seething rage behind the eyes of good southern girls, many of whom she’d fucked in this very establishment.
If this were to be her last night, she’d certainly make the most of it.
/o0o\
The last thought she had before the crowd disappeared was Jay’s nod of appreciation. He was the one of the few who understood the music. Trouble was, half of that was a lie she still let herself believe.
/o0o\
The crowd faded away. The music took over, the script running in a continuous loop.
She saw color as she played: purples and blues exploding into silhouetted images. Reds and oranges sparked in waves, bringing in smells and tastes.
The song took on a life of its own as the jazz notes floated, filling the Honky Tonk with sounds it’d never heard before, lyrics the patrons would never hear.
There was Jay, in the restroom, as she whispered promises of all the dirty things he could do to her ass.
The accountant with the conservative, bookworm girlfriend who probably didn’t know what a French kiss was.
It would be child’s play, the easiest of cons, followed by two cocks throbbing inside her, singing their hearts out under the power of the oldest, and most effective of truth serums: a warm, wet pussy, and a hot, tight ass.
And then she’d have access to the only thing that mattered to the Dixies--drugs, money, and guns.
/o0o\
Her fingers danced along the strings now, introducing bits of bluegrass, stoking the flames of lust, the audience’s fantasy of playing cowboys and dirty Indian.
Sweat beaded along her brow, her skin hot, and her pussy humming. It turned her on sometimes when she played, the colors coalescing into corporeal fantasies.
The song fluttered at the top and she started bring her in for a landing.
Colors mixed again, then faded to white as she struck the last chord.
Complete silence.
Revenge. Horniness. Release. Anger. Anticipation.
Whatever it was, it helped her shred that song. She fucked it right to orgasm. They’d never know it. That was the problem with these people. Just didn’t get the music.
And then her eyes snapped open, salt and pepper at the very fringes of her vision. She ignored it, focused on the crowd.
The looks she was being given weren’t the usual. Oh, the lust was still there, but something else was too.
Disappointed regret. Saw it in Jay’s shoulders.
She packed up her guitar and hopped off stage, heading for the exit.
/o0o\
She didn’t make it far, a few steps down that dark hallway. She heard him before she saw him. Former linebackers don’t have soft footfalls. You always heard them bearing down on you.
She turned, shoulders slumping, hoping for something.
“So that’s how it is?”
“That’s how it is, B,” Jay said.
The how of it didn’t matter so much.
Never did.
Sloppiness. Arrogance. Just like her father. Her eyes darted, looking for something, anything. Saw nothing.
“Just like them after all,” she accused. “Back to being the little errand boy for the white man.”
His eyes hardened and even though she was surely going to die, the insult left her feeling guilty. She may be staring death in the eyes right now, but she was better than that.
“We could’ve had fun, Jay. You. Me. That nerdy little accountant,” she said.
His eyes widened a moment before zipping back into a sad glare.
“Married. Happily,” he said.
“That wouldn’t have stopped you now, would it? Girls know when men look, J. Survival mechanism.”
She grinned in the near darkness.
“Both holes,” she added, before that flash salt and pepper, a pistol to the back of Jay’s head.
“Evening, Marshall,” she said, as she stepped over the unconscious body.
“Thanks for the assist, but I think I’ll be on my way. Busy girl after all.”
That grating chuckle and sound of cold metal against her wrists said otherwise.
“You’ll be busy all right,” was the husked response.
Her eyes rolled hard.
His face flashed in a spill of light when a door opened. He was virtually unchanged, all rugged and handsome. That salt and pepper mix of hair all styled up.
“Gonna be a little hard to square dance like this, Marshall,” she muttered.
“Hey, the fuck you do to Jay,” some redneck hillbilly shouted.
“Dancing is the least of your worries. You traded up in the world, girl. Assault to ripping off the Dixie Mafia,” he said as he pushed her along toward the exit.
Not fast enough. Jay’s wife, Suzanne, chose that moment to join them in the hallway, surprise etched on her face at seeing her still alive. Looked down, saw Jay, and screamed her pretty little head off.
There it was.
Hell finally breaking loose.
The jukebox and the dancing, the clapping, the stomping all cut out at once.
Shouts went up. She heard the click of guns. Working in a Honky Tonk run by the Dixies, you learned that sound by heart.
“I suggest we move along before the both of us get riddled with bullets.”
The Marshall grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the door and into the starlit night.
She stumbled. Cut up her knees on the gravel. She was yanked back up hard, and the next thing she knew, she was being thrown into the back of a cruiser.
“Asshole,” she spat as he got in.
“Save it for later. You’ve got a bar full of pissed off rednecks looking to tear you apart.”
/o0o\
The car peeled away, spitting gravel in an earthy roar the same moment the double doors of the Honky Tonk swung out.
A cacophony of noise and a hail of gunfire rang out. The windshield shattered.
Then it was over in a cloud of dust and rocks, the accelerator purring and the engine working overtime.
It wasn’t until mile marker 88 that her heart plummeted, mouth turning to cotton.
She saw her guitar, in a darkened hallway, abandoned inside a bar full of shit heads and the bitch that controlled it all.
/o0o\
She woke to gummy eyes and soft music. For a second, the fear was palpable, thinking herself back in that Honky Tonk, with the sweat, the lust, and the promise of death. Facing down the inevitable, just like he probably had.
Then she felt the cold leather of the cruiser.
The jazz.
Jazz?
That wasn’t right.
Then the scent, a spiced wood musk mixed with clean sweat.
Figured.
It’d been one of those nights.
She reached for the guitar that wasn’t there.
Felt naked without it.
She thought about begging to him to go back. Thought better of it.
Her life or the guitar her mother had sold hers to buy.
The answer was simple enough, right?
“Finally awake?” he asked.
“Course. Slept just like a princess, asshole.”
He turned the dial, the music powering in.
Duke Ellington.
Smartass.
“Finally did some detective work, huh, Marshall?”
She saw the smile in the mirror, almost feral.
“I’ve a mind to it sometimes.”
“Tired of the office jokes I bet. Little Indian girl from the rez keeps eluding the Deputy. Must be tough.“
“It can be,” he said.
“How?” she asked. She already knew. Wanted to hear it, anything to keep her mind off that guitar.
“The Blues. Jazz. Heard it on the radio one day. Familiar names. All mismatched.”
She smiled.
“Took awhile to track everything. Nothing hit. Then some hillbilly calls in about a woman involved in a bank robbery. He had a distinguishing mark to go by. Little wolf tattoo inside a dream catcher.”
/o0o\
“I have to pee.”
“Hold it.”
“Want urine in the car?”
“Federal car. They’ll take care of it. Perks of the United States Government.”
“I doubt you have a maid handy.”
“Power windows. Nifty feature.”
“Fuck you.”
The car slowed, pulling over to the gravel shoulder. Her door popped open and he grabbed her roughly by the handcuffs.
“Two minutes.”
She dangled her wrists, metal clinking and flashing in the night.
He sighed, rubbing his temples. No patience.
“You’re not leaving my sight.”
She shrugged, found a nice bush with a decent amount of privacy, and popped a squat.
/o0o\
When she turned to go, she felt it, a subtle jolt that traveled from the tiny hairs on her neck, deep into her very bones. She squatted again, reached out, took a handful of dark red clay and gravel, coating her palm with a thin layer of dust.
Deep inside her chest, she could feel the hum. Every mile closer to the rez it’d get stronger. Her grandmother told her this as a small child. It was who she was. What she was. The Navajo blood pumping like fire in her veins. She’d know the second she reentered her ancestral lands.
She hated the feeling. Hated her people. They lived in fear. They built their faux community, putting everyone before themselves, to the detriment of themselves. Community mattered only so far as you weren’t accused of witchcraft, of being a skinwalker. Then you were cast out. Or worse.
She hated him as well, that U.S. Marshall with the smug look of satisfaction. What he’d done. What he hadn’t.
The guitar. Abandoned in a dark hallway in a Honky Tonky full of Dixies.
Despite that though, despite all of it, she couldn’t bring herself to hate his presence.
It was funny how that worked.
It a twisted way, he was the only one who cared. Even though the reason was an abusive ex with a whip fetish currently sucking wind through a straw. A trail of adulteress husbands robbed blind in the night.
Felon.
She mouthed the word, tasting it and all that it meant.
Her rap sheet probably had its own rap sheet. And that didn’t include what she’d done the last year.
She felt dirty suddenly. Scraped raw, the shine gone and impossible to get back.
Felon.
A designation that meant one person cared enough to follow, even if that one person was just a single lawman, caring out the government’s due diligence.
That, by its very nature, was all kinds of fucked up. They probably had a name for it. Similar to that state kidnap victims get when they fall for their captors.
“Time’s up, princess.”
She shrugged, limped back to the cruiser.
“Hold on,” he said, gently grabbing her, turning her around to face him. He squatted, a flashlight in his hands. She looked down as well, noticed the streaks of blood, half dried, running down her leg.
He sighed.
“Hold on.”
He rummaged in the trunk, brought out a first aid kit. Patched her up.
Used whiskey to disinfect. White gauze. Good as new, the knee that is. Everything else would never be good as new.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem. It’s my ass if you show up in less than stellar condition. Some tool in an Armani suit will scream brutality. Make the case murky.”
“No, thank you,” she emphasized. It was by pure reflex the way she responded to his small act of kindness. A gentle touch to the front of his jeans, cupping his balls, her fingers going for the zipper.
He slapped her hand away, hard, jerking back quickly as if he’d been burned. Probably afraid of the dirty little Navajo girl and all the nasty things she’d done. Things no decent woman would do.
She felt the burn of embarrassment as he stood there, looking her over, that calculated stare that only ever meant one thing: judgment.
Her life for the past year and change had known little more than the drunk power that came from being desired. The girl every man wanted to fuck, even when they didn’t know why.
Sure, there’d been more attractive women working for the Dixies. There always were. Bigger breasts. Bigger butts. Fuller lips. Blue eyes. Golden hair.
Didn’t matter though. Not when they had the chance to sample her bronzed skin and midnight locks. Dress her in buckskin and live out their cowboy fantasies of the Wild West. Take her from behind until she screamed in ecstasy as they pumped her full of cum. Not knowing who was really in control.
Their little Navajo slut that did things their girlfriends wouldn’t.
She had no idea how to respond to rejection, the hard rebuff. So she sat there on the trunk of the cruiser, body numb, her mouth turned to cotton.
“You ever do something stupid, Marshall? Gone too deep you don’t recognize the person on the other side?”
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. She gazed straight ahead, at the giant disk of white silver hanging in the Texas night.
There was a crunch of gravel. He leaned against the cruiser, eyes closed.
“First marriage,” was all he said, before spinning around and opening the door.
“In you go, princess. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
Princess? The word sounded strange to her. The list of words to describe her had always been very small.
None of them had ever been particularly flattering when you got down to it.
She shrugged, and slid back into the car, thankful for the cold leather of the seats.
/o0o\
“I’m not going back to the rez,” she murmured, the words barely perceptible above the smooth guitar riffs of Earl Hooker and the clunking bumps of wheels over uneven road.
“You won’t,” he answered, that smooth baritone that had just enough edge to make a normal girl swoon.
“I’d rather die.”
“I believe you.”
“Just so we’re clear on that.”
“It’s up to the federal government, but I’ll do what I can. I promise.”
“Promise?”
Her laugh was barbed wire, sharp and frayed at the edges.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The sound was disconcerting.
“Promises of the white man,” she continued. “I’ve heard all that before.”
“Listen, I-“
“Are a man of your word, right?” She laughed again. It was a phrase men liked to flaunt as if it still meant something.
“It must be a shame to live like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“A felon on the run. Believing in no one. Must be lonely.”
“And running around the country chasing criminals isn’t?”
“Didn’t say it wasn’t. There’s a difference though. If I wind up dead in a ditch, bullet to the head, body rotting in the desert heat like yesterday’s garbage… I at least have someone in this world that cares enough to bury what’s left. Do you?”
There was sadness in his words, a sympathetic pity she wasn’t expecting.
He was right.
Which was why it hurt all the more, shattering her confidence like a bullet through a cheap pane of glass.
She’d be just another dead prostitute, much like her mother, a disposable toy, a spent pussy that gets tossed aside when it loses its luster. People like her? They were easy to replace. Like sand in the desert.
She stared out the windshield, pupils dilating to the high beams, watching the cruiser eat up the pavement, and drawing closer to the end of… well, whatever the end was for people like her.
“Well, someone cares, Marshall,” she whispered, the words tumbling out before she could staunch the flow. “Otherwise, I’d be back at that Honky Tonk right now.”
“I reckon so,” he said.
She thought she saw him smile at that.
/o0o\
“Want to hear a story, Marshall?”
He turned down the stereo.
“I guess we have nothing but time.”
“A white man comes to the rez one day, a government official.
Slants of moonlight spilled through the cheap, ugly motel curtains, throwing soft silver glows on discarded clothing. A broken lamp dangled from a table, cord taut, the shattered bulb still flickering. The orange sparks of light were locked in tune with the muffled rattling of an ice machine and the hum of cicadas going about their own song and dance of seduction.
They had some catching up to do there.
Hers was already finished.
She laid there, muscles sore and tender to the touch, the thin mattress offering little comfort. Even though the A/C was maxed out in an effort to combat the sweltering desert heat, her skin was still superheated, a thin film of sweat mingling with the cum that had long since turned cold.
Two fingers met at her lips and she mimed the motion of a dope addict. She’d given that up a while ago. Cold turkey.
Even so, the motion of smoking remained. It gave her an odd sense of peace.
She blew smoke rings, imagining them lifting into the air, expanding.
It was just fantasies fulfilled, stress relieved. Much like the entire night had been.
The sex had been wild, dirty, and tinged with brutality.
It’d had just the right amount of pain to make her feel alive again.
Powerful.
Then the feeling faded.
It always did.
Her heart skipped a beat when she heard him groan, shifting in his sleep. He grabbed subconsciously at her breasts and she squeaked in surprise at how sensitive her nipples still were.
She pulled away, gently disentangling their slick limbs. With the cicadas buzzing in time with her heartbeat, she danced through the shadows and around the silver light like a predator, going for the pants with the cold steel handcuffs.
She was light on her feet, and with a soft touch she slid the metal over his wrists, looping the chain through the bedpost.
She’d never admit it, but her heart fluttered as she stared at him, the light outlining the strong jaw, highlighting those salt and pepper locks.
He looked peaceful, after a fashion. Whether it was from the sex or a level of contentment in the lies she’d woven from, and into, half-truths, she honestly couldn’t say.
She hated herself for it. Then felt worse.
Feeling had never done much for her. It’d gotten people killed and landed her in Texas, in a place no sane person would choose.
So she left him there and padded into the bathroom, that same heavy scent of booze and Lysol hanging in the air.
She turned the shower to scalding, desperate to burn everything away. To wash it all down the drain.
/oOo\
March 2004
She’d come into that Honky Tonk one cold Texas night with an air of desperation that was only half faked. Like many things in life, the intentions were far different than the actual reality of it. In this case, the cold, simple, clichéd intentions of revenge. There was nothing new or meaningful about it. It was just important to her. Something to hang on the gravestone of the only man she’d ever called father.
They’d made a grand ole' show about giving a damn about her, especially that countrywoman with iron in her chestnut hair. Much later, she’d learn she was the woman who ran the Dixie Mafia outfit in Texas. The one whose hands were just as bloody as the men she’d had deprive her of something akin to a childhood.
She hadn’t believed their words in the beginning, that country twang sounding honest.
Heartfelt bullshit.
All that.
The rage was still boiling in her blood, even though the event itself was distant memory.
/oOo\
Then one day, she woke up in a pile of naked feminine flesh, a soft, delicate tongue making love to her ass, burrowing in deep. Then her own tongue, lapping away at a warm, wet pussy for the first time, high as a kite, loving every damn second of it. All while the woman with the iron in her chestnut hair watched from a chair, a hand in her jeans, rubbing furiously.
A fully-fledged member of that twisted Dixie family. The man she’d once called father probably died all over again in that grave of his.
/oOo\
She flirted. She smiled. She started using. Then she started selling their dope like a pro. Then she started selling herself--willingly of course. It was all about free will with them. They got off on it.
She was their dirty little bitch with the Navajo blood coursing through her veins.
She was one of a kind.
Fucked like an animal.
Clawed their backs.
A blowjob? $100.
Triple that for the pussy.
Give 70% to the white man, or rather, the white woman. It was the way of the world for people like her, all the way down at the bottom. In Texas, with the Dixies, they took until nothing more could be taken.
And she grew to love being taken.
/oOo\
She started battling for supremacy.
The dirty Navajo whore forgot who she was.
The other bartenders, the other prostitutes, they grew to hate her. She started sleeping with the woman with the iron streaks in her chestnut hair. She learned things about the female body that’d make even the most uptight, hillbilly bible thumper fall in love with sinning.
She felt wanted.
The illusion of caring.
It was survival wrapped in a cloak of sexual desire and feigned acceptance.
It had a certain appeal as long as she didn’t admit certain things. After all, the best lies you can tell yourself are the ones built from truths.
/oOo\
She found the peyote at the bottom of a drawer one day. She remembered little about it. Her mother may have given it to her. She smoked it one night after a long day. Became a wolf, darting across the desert plains, feeling truly alive for the first time in a long time. Remembered the rage and the revenge when the drug-induced hallucinations ended.
She stopped using.
She started playing guitar again, a song writing itself in her head.
/oOo\
June 2005
Sweat slick bodies moved to the quickstep rhythm of a steel guitar, spinning wildly when the fiddle cut in, redirected the energy of the Honky Tonk. Catcalls echoed, bouncing off the wood paneled walls as a cute drunk blond straddled the bucking bronco machine, her plaid shirt half buttoned, flashing the black bra that hid her pale breasts.
Someone kicked the jukebox and Johnny Cash came rattling to life, and the voices dyed off in midsentence, the sound of beers clinking down onto hardwood signaling the change in mood. Only Cash and the mechanical rattling of the bronco filled her ears.
It was one of those nights.
Nice and calm before all hell broke loose. The hints were all there, but her mind was on a single track. Little would matter until a flash of salt and pepper.
And that happened later.
Right now, it was Cash’s “Beast in Me” in an east Texas Honky Tonk, owned by the Dixie Mafia, and full of men drinking their troubles away and pretty blond girls waiting to dance, and to maybe get fucked by a man with a dark streak, or at least a bit of money.
She leaned back against the bar, taking it all in. There were always these moments of relative peace when a Cash song came on. The iron haired owner, that weathered old bitch of a woman who ran the place, loved Cash. And she made sure everyone who came here damn well knew it.
The calls for more beer went up and those southern belles with their marble skin and white blond hair attached themselves to their men, unwilling to let them out of their sight, especially around her.
The dirty Navajo bitch.
She smiled, keeping the laughs deep inside her belly as their faces scrunched up, adopting that air of superiority that comes naturally to women with money and quality breeding. She took it all in stride. She was used to it and more.
“You got this all handled, B?”
Tiny little Marry-Anne was at her elbow; beer glasses the size of her slender, freckled forearms clinked together as she set them down on the bar.
“Just fine,” she answered, waving her away distractedly as she refilled beers and shots of whiskey. Marry-Anne huffed indignantly and moved along. Across the room, the other bartenders gave her dirty looks.
Some stuck up two fingers in the universal V, wriggling their tongues, showing what they thought of her preferential treatment.
She winked at them, and then at the blondes hanging desperately to their cowboys, muttering under their breaths.
Crazy slut.
Dirty Indian.
Of course, the women throwing the loudest insults were usually the ones who moaned loudest when she’d pull her fingers from their wet snatches and smear their juices across their pink lips.
Female hierarchy was a nasty thing. Not that she particularly cared.
She ruled in the dark shadows that nobody liked to talk about or admit existed. Out in the sun, she was just dirt to them. Trash to be swept under the rug and forgotten, until their dark fantasies needed fulfilling. Then she was dragged back out, a wolf of the night meant to slake their lusts under the moon.
A laugh escaped her, and a strawberry blonde glared hard at her, yanking her cute little cowboy away with a sharp tug. His eyes were on her though. She winked again.
The jukebox flipped, another song primed and ready.
/o0o\
The atmosphere changed, catcalls and whoops going up in the suffocating heat of the building.
Sexual arousal blanketed the room, mingling with the scent of booze and smoke. Sweaty bodies lit up the dance floor, writing together in some new, dirtier version of the Texas 2-Step.
Hips pressed a little tighter, a little longer, the nasal rasp of Hank Thompson urging them on.
The sounds and scents barely reached her. The song spun in her mind, kept repeating itself.
You tended to let the anger burn when the Dixie Mafia stole something from you, then turned you into one of them. She was tired of that slow burn. It needed release.
The words of the only father she’d ever really known, had ever really loved, if that’s what that feeling was, came to her in a slow crawl.
1. Pay Attention.
2. Expecting Anything.
3. Everyone wants something.
4. Trust in fear.
5. Use what the good lord gave you.
6. There’s always someone better.
Irony.
Not following his own rules had gotten him killed, relocated six feet under.
She gazed out from behind the bar in-between calls for more beer, more Jack, more escapes. The dancing became sloppy, mere gyrations of flesh against flesh, covered cock to covered ass.
The temperature in the bar increased another level, the country music pounding more loudly in her ears, the sweet smell of smoke and alcohol filling her nostrils.
The jukebox flipped again, another song ripping through the loud cheers and stamping feet and clapping hands.
Yes. It was one of those nights all right. That’s why she chose tonight. It was why that script kept running through her mind. It was why her blood was running hot.
The jukebox flipped again.
/o0o\
The music finally crested, sliding back down the mountain of calm quiet. The dancing and the loud cheers slowed to a dull roar, the tight bodies of the women slick with sweat and pheromones, purring in heat, the eyes of the men shining and wild.
“You’ve got fifteen, B,” Jay murmured to her from the left.
She glanced over at him, all six feet, five inches, miscast, much like her, in a bar full of white southerners. His suit was top of the line, falling perfectly over the corded muscles of a former linebacker.
Black shades.
Clear earpiece.
His deep onyx skin glowed a soft purple under the lights.
Definitely out of place, especially when he was married to the little blond daughter of the bitch who owned the place. It was a pity and a waste of a halfway decent man.
“You okay there, B?” he asked.
“Just dandy, partner,” she said, predicting the smile that always came with that nickname, white teeth flashing behind dark lips.
“Looking forward to the show,” he grinned, winking as he moved on.
She should have known. The wink. The smile.
She really should have known.
One-track mind. That’s how it always is with things you should know in the future.
Worries get pushed to the side.
/o0o\
The jukebox flipped one more time, the final song before she took the stage.
Rolling Stones: ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
It figured.
She made her way around the dance floor, back to the dimly lit hallway to the room that held her guitar.
The only possession she owned that had ever really mattered.
/o0o\
She took the stage and the script howled inside her like a wolf to the moon.
The hook.
Both leads were already cast, scuttling around in the crowd. Jay, with those black shades, surveying every nook and cranny, his face locked on hers, or her ass. It didn’t matter.
There was the second lead, a cute young man with horn-rimmed glasses doing his best dress like a cowboy and failing hard.
He was the Dixies’ little numbers boy. A top-notch accountant that just so happened to be the son of the bastard who’d killed her father.
Her ticket out of this rat infested town.
/o0o\
The smoke inside the club billowed, hanging like a fog, real sweet to the senses when combined with the hard spice of whiskey on her breath.
The crowd was quieting now, being respectful, or what passed for it anyway.
When she took the mic and the lights dropped, they all shut up, drowning in their alcohol and hazy fantasies, her delicate fingers shredding out an improvised jazz tune.
Fantasy.
She was their tiny little Navajo whore with hair like night.
Jazz was what she played and despite everything, this was Texas.
There was a reason she wore tight little Daisey Dukes, red cowgirl boots, and one of their hats.
They didn’t come for the music. Didn’t care about it. They came for her body. They came wishing it were one of those nights instead. The nasty little secret the Honky Tonk did its best to cover up, to keep from the more “civilized” members of society.
Everyone would be surprised. That good ole’ southern cowboy charm was a sham.
She took a moment, stared them all in the eyes, and knew each and every one of them. She saw where their gazes were directed. Saw the marble skinned blondes squirm in their seats.
They’d settle for the alcohol fueled visions of bending her over the stage, over the amp, and taking her right there, shorts around her ankles, bucking wildly.
Their little Navajo whore. The kidnapped daughter of the tribal chieftain, begging to be fucked harder, screaming in a native tongue they didn’t understand.
She popped a couple buttons on her blouse, fueling their fantasies, smiling at the seething rage behind the eyes of good southern girls, many of whom she’d fucked in this very establishment.
If this were to be her last night, she’d certainly make the most of it.
/o0o\
The last thought she had before the crowd disappeared was Jay’s nod of appreciation. He was the one of the few who understood the music. Trouble was, half of that was a lie she still let herself believe.
/o0o\
The crowd faded away. The music took over, the script running in a continuous loop.
She saw color as she played: purples and blues exploding into silhouetted images. Reds and oranges sparked in waves, bringing in smells and tastes.
The song took on a life of its own as the jazz notes floated, filling the Honky Tonk with sounds it’d never heard before, lyrics the patrons would never hear.
There was Jay, in the restroom, as she whispered promises of all the dirty things he could do to her ass.
The accountant with the conservative, bookworm girlfriend who probably didn’t know what a French kiss was.
It would be child’s play, the easiest of cons, followed by two cocks throbbing inside her, singing their hearts out under the power of the oldest, and most effective of truth serums: a warm, wet pussy, and a hot, tight ass.
And then she’d have access to the only thing that mattered to the Dixies--drugs, money, and guns.
/o0o\
Her fingers danced along the strings now, introducing bits of bluegrass, stoking the flames of lust, the audience’s fantasy of playing cowboys and dirty Indian.
Sweat beaded along her brow, her skin hot, and her pussy humming. It turned her on sometimes when she played, the colors coalescing into corporeal fantasies.
The song fluttered at the top and she started bring her in for a landing.
Colors mixed again, then faded to white as she struck the last chord.
Complete silence.
Revenge. Horniness. Release. Anger. Anticipation.
Whatever it was, it helped her shred that song. She fucked it right to orgasm. They’d never know it. That was the problem with these people. Just didn’t get the music.
And then her eyes snapped open, salt and pepper at the very fringes of her vision. She ignored it, focused on the crowd.
The looks she was being given weren’t the usual. Oh, the lust was still there, but something else was too.
Disappointed regret. Saw it in Jay’s shoulders.
She packed up her guitar and hopped off stage, heading for the exit.
/o0o\
She didn’t make it far, a few steps down that dark hallway. She heard him before she saw him. Former linebackers don’t have soft footfalls. You always heard them bearing down on you.
She turned, shoulders slumping, hoping for something.
“So that’s how it is?”
“That’s how it is, B,” Jay said.
The how of it didn’t matter so much.
Never did.
Sloppiness. Arrogance. Just like her father. Her eyes darted, looking for something, anything. Saw nothing.
“Just like them after all,” she accused. “Back to being the little errand boy for the white man.”
His eyes hardened and even though she was surely going to die, the insult left her feeling guilty. She may be staring death in the eyes right now, but she was better than that.
“We could’ve had fun, Jay. You. Me. That nerdy little accountant,” she said.
His eyes widened a moment before zipping back into a sad glare.
“Married. Happily,” he said.
“That wouldn’t have stopped you now, would it? Girls know when men look, J. Survival mechanism.”
She grinned in the near darkness.
“Both holes,” she added, before that flash salt and pepper, a pistol to the back of Jay’s head.
“Evening, Marshall,” she said, as she stepped over the unconscious body.
“Thanks for the assist, but I think I’ll be on my way. Busy girl after all.”
That grating chuckle and sound of cold metal against her wrists said otherwise.
“You’ll be busy all right,” was the husked response.
Her eyes rolled hard.
His face flashed in a spill of light when a door opened. He was virtually unchanged, all rugged and handsome. That salt and pepper mix of hair all styled up.
“Gonna be a little hard to square dance like this, Marshall,” she muttered.
“Hey, the fuck you do to Jay,” some redneck hillbilly shouted.
“Dancing is the least of your worries. You traded up in the world, girl. Assault to ripping off the Dixie Mafia,” he said as he pushed her along toward the exit.
Not fast enough. Jay’s wife, Suzanne, chose that moment to join them in the hallway, surprise etched on her face at seeing her still alive. Looked down, saw Jay, and screamed her pretty little head off.
There it was.
Hell finally breaking loose.
The jukebox and the dancing, the clapping, the stomping all cut out at once.
Shouts went up. She heard the click of guns. Working in a Honky Tonk run by the Dixies, you learned that sound by heart.
“I suggest we move along before the both of us get riddled with bullets.”
The Marshall grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the door and into the starlit night.
She stumbled. Cut up her knees on the gravel. She was yanked back up hard, and the next thing she knew, she was being thrown into the back of a cruiser.
“Asshole,” she spat as he got in.
“Save it for later. You’ve got a bar full of pissed off rednecks looking to tear you apart.”
/o0o\
The car peeled away, spitting gravel in an earthy roar the same moment the double doors of the Honky Tonk swung out.
A cacophony of noise and a hail of gunfire rang out. The windshield shattered.
Then it was over in a cloud of dust and rocks, the accelerator purring and the engine working overtime.
It wasn’t until mile marker 88 that her heart plummeted, mouth turning to cotton.
She saw her guitar, in a darkened hallway, abandoned inside a bar full of shit heads and the bitch that controlled it all.
/o0o\
She woke to gummy eyes and soft music. For a second, the fear was palpable, thinking herself back in that Honky Tonk, with the sweat, the lust, and the promise of death. Facing down the inevitable, just like he probably had.
Then she felt the cold leather of the cruiser.
The jazz.
Jazz?
That wasn’t right.
Then the scent, a spiced wood musk mixed with clean sweat.
Figured.
It’d been one of those nights.
She reached for the guitar that wasn’t there.
Felt naked without it.
She thought about begging to him to go back. Thought better of it.
Her life or the guitar her mother had sold hers to buy.
The answer was simple enough, right?
“Finally awake?” he asked.
“Course. Slept just like a princess, asshole.”
He turned the dial, the music powering in.
Duke Ellington.
Smartass.
“Finally did some detective work, huh, Marshall?”
She saw the smile in the mirror, almost feral.
“I’ve a mind to it sometimes.”
“Tired of the office jokes I bet. Little Indian girl from the rez keeps eluding the Deputy. Must be tough.“
“It can be,” he said.
“How?” she asked. She already knew. Wanted to hear it, anything to keep her mind off that guitar.
“The Blues. Jazz. Heard it on the radio one day. Familiar names. All mismatched.”
She smiled.
“Took awhile to track everything. Nothing hit. Then some hillbilly calls in about a woman involved in a bank robbery. He had a distinguishing mark to go by. Little wolf tattoo inside a dream catcher.”
/o0o\
“I have to pee.”
“Hold it.”
“Want urine in the car?”
“Federal car. They’ll take care of it. Perks of the United States Government.”
“I doubt you have a maid handy.”
“Power windows. Nifty feature.”
“Fuck you.”
The car slowed, pulling over to the gravel shoulder. Her door popped open and he grabbed her roughly by the handcuffs.
“Two minutes.”
She dangled her wrists, metal clinking and flashing in the night.
He sighed, rubbing his temples. No patience.
“You’re not leaving my sight.”
She shrugged, found a nice bush with a decent amount of privacy, and popped a squat.
/o0o\
When she turned to go, she felt it, a subtle jolt that traveled from the tiny hairs on her neck, deep into her very bones. She squatted again, reached out, took a handful of dark red clay and gravel, coating her palm with a thin layer of dust.
Deep inside her chest, she could feel the hum. Every mile closer to the rez it’d get stronger. Her grandmother told her this as a small child. It was who she was. What she was. The Navajo blood pumping like fire in her veins. She’d know the second she reentered her ancestral lands.
She hated the feeling. Hated her people. They lived in fear. They built their faux community, putting everyone before themselves, to the detriment of themselves. Community mattered only so far as you weren’t accused of witchcraft, of being a skinwalker. Then you were cast out. Or worse.
She hated him as well, that U.S. Marshall with the smug look of satisfaction. What he’d done. What he hadn’t.
The guitar. Abandoned in a dark hallway in a Honky Tonky full of Dixies.
Despite that though, despite all of it, she couldn’t bring herself to hate his presence.
It was funny how that worked.
It a twisted way, he was the only one who cared. Even though the reason was an abusive ex with a whip fetish currently sucking wind through a straw. A trail of adulteress husbands robbed blind in the night.
Felon.
She mouthed the word, tasting it and all that it meant.
Her rap sheet probably had its own rap sheet. And that didn’t include what she’d done the last year.
She felt dirty suddenly. Scraped raw, the shine gone and impossible to get back.
Felon.
A designation that meant one person cared enough to follow, even if that one person was just a single lawman, caring out the government’s due diligence.
That, by its very nature, was all kinds of fucked up. They probably had a name for it. Similar to that state kidnap victims get when they fall for their captors.
“Time’s up, princess.”
She shrugged, limped back to the cruiser.
“Hold on,” he said, gently grabbing her, turning her around to face him. He squatted, a flashlight in his hands. She looked down as well, noticed the streaks of blood, half dried, running down her leg.
He sighed.
“Hold on.”
He rummaged in the trunk, brought out a first aid kit. Patched her up.
Used whiskey to disinfect. White gauze. Good as new, the knee that is. Everything else would never be good as new.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem. It’s my ass if you show up in less than stellar condition. Some tool in an Armani suit will scream brutality. Make the case murky.”
“No, thank you,” she emphasized. It was by pure reflex the way she responded to his small act of kindness. A gentle touch to the front of his jeans, cupping his balls, her fingers going for the zipper.
He slapped her hand away, hard, jerking back quickly as if he’d been burned. Probably afraid of the dirty little Navajo girl and all the nasty things she’d done. Things no decent woman would do.
She felt the burn of embarrassment as he stood there, looking her over, that calculated stare that only ever meant one thing: judgment.
Her life for the past year and change had known little more than the drunk power that came from being desired. The girl every man wanted to fuck, even when they didn’t know why.
Sure, there’d been more attractive women working for the Dixies. There always were. Bigger breasts. Bigger butts. Fuller lips. Blue eyes. Golden hair.
Didn’t matter though. Not when they had the chance to sample her bronzed skin and midnight locks. Dress her in buckskin and live out their cowboy fantasies of the Wild West. Take her from behind until she screamed in ecstasy as they pumped her full of cum. Not knowing who was really in control.
Their little Navajo slut that did things their girlfriends wouldn’t.
She had no idea how to respond to rejection, the hard rebuff. So she sat there on the trunk of the cruiser, body numb, her mouth turned to cotton.
“You ever do something stupid, Marshall? Gone too deep you don’t recognize the person on the other side?”
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. She gazed straight ahead, at the giant disk of white silver hanging in the Texas night.
There was a crunch of gravel. He leaned against the cruiser, eyes closed.
“First marriage,” was all he said, before spinning around and opening the door.
“In you go, princess. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
Princess? The word sounded strange to her. The list of words to describe her had always been very small.
None of them had ever been particularly flattering when you got down to it.
She shrugged, and slid back into the car, thankful for the cold leather of the seats.
/o0o\
“I’m not going back to the rez,” she murmured, the words barely perceptible above the smooth guitar riffs of Earl Hooker and the clunking bumps of wheels over uneven road.
“You won’t,” he answered, that smooth baritone that had just enough edge to make a normal girl swoon.
“I’d rather die.”
“I believe you.”
“Just so we’re clear on that.”
“It’s up to the federal government, but I’ll do what I can. I promise.”
“Promise?”
Her laugh was barbed wire, sharp and frayed at the edges.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The sound was disconcerting.
“Promises of the white man,” she continued. “I’ve heard all that before.”
“Listen, I-“
“Are a man of your word, right?” She laughed again. It was a phrase men liked to flaunt as if it still meant something.
“It must be a shame to live like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“A felon on the run. Believing in no one. Must be lonely.”
“And running around the country chasing criminals isn’t?”
“Didn’t say it wasn’t. There’s a difference though. If I wind up dead in a ditch, bullet to the head, body rotting in the desert heat like yesterday’s garbage… I at least have someone in this world that cares enough to bury what’s left. Do you?”
There was sadness in his words, a sympathetic pity she wasn’t expecting.
He was right.
Which was why it hurt all the more, shattering her confidence like a bullet through a cheap pane of glass.
She’d be just another dead prostitute, much like her mother, a disposable toy, a spent pussy that gets tossed aside when it loses its luster. People like her? They were easy to replace. Like sand in the desert.
She stared out the windshield, pupils dilating to the high beams, watching the cruiser eat up the pavement, and drawing closer to the end of… well, whatever the end was for people like her.
“Well, someone cares, Marshall,” she whispered, the words tumbling out before she could staunch the flow. “Otherwise, I’d be back at that Honky Tonk right now.”
“I reckon so,” he said.
She thought she saw him smile at that.
/o0o\
“Want to hear a story, Marshall?”
He turned down the stereo.
“I guess we have nothing but time.”
“A white man comes to the rez one day, a government official.
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Someone like yourself maybe.”
“He meets a pretty little Navajo girl, bubbling with energy. Her only fault is maybe being too naïve. But she’s young. Only eighteen.”
“This man, he takes her on a blanket under the stars. He makes promises in the night. Leaves in the morning.”
“Sounds like—“
“Quiet!” she snapped.
His jaw clinched.
“Several years later, another white man. The girl is now a woman. Still naïve. He says he’s a former marine. She falls in love.”
“Was he?”
“No. Though, I think she liked the idea of it too much to care."
“What was he really?”
“Nothing but a two-bit conman.”
He nodded, slowly.
“So he takes this woman and her daughter with him.”
“So, how’d he break his promise then?”
She looked out into the night, a vast nothingness that reminded her of her own life.
“The fool went and got himself killed on the job.”
“That’s it?”
“Were you expecting some magical tale of love? Those stories aren’t meant for a naïve little girl with Navajo blood pumping in her veins.”
The Marshall didn’t say a word. He wasn’t sure whom she was talking about anymore.
/o0o\
They pulled up to one of those dingy highway motels out in the middle of nowhere. No frills. It was called the Saddlehorn Inn. The busted neon sign was missing half the letters. Only horn and the ‘i’ in inn were visible.
He cuffed her to the steering wheel. Said he’d get a room.
She saw the manager through his windowed booth. He was a fat, squat man with mustache that didn’t fit. He looked like a porn addict, not that she had any room to judge, being what she was.
/o0o\
The room was spattered with cowboys riding bulls, lassos spinning about their heads, revolvers in their hands. Off to the corner, Indians were given looks of bloodlust. She’d never escape it. Not in the heart of the south.
There were two beds and a TV.
Broken of course.
She was sensing a theme here, all the broken things in her life meeting in one place.
He prowled, looking for possible escape routes that couldn’t exist in this tiny square of a room.
Checked the bathroom next, looking for windows.
“Don’t trust me, Marshall?”
“Would you?”
“No. But then, I wouldn’t choose to be me either,” she shrugged.
“There are towels in there. Don’t try to hang yourself.”
She rolled her eyes.
/o0o\
The bathroom smelled of booze and a full can of lemon-scented Lysol spray. She pictured the fat man, drunk off his ass, cleaning. It made her smile.
Then she looked in the mirror. She didn’t like what she saw.
Haggard. Old. Not in the physical sense. Not yet. It was her eyes.
They were pitch-black coals of sad resignation.
She felt a tingle and realized she hadn’t gotten high in awhile. She realized she missed the empty feeling it gave her. She remembered the crushed packet of X in her back pocket. Had a deep craving for it.
/o0o\
She came out of the shower refreshed. Stared into the mirror for a long while after. Thought of her people for the first time in years, about what it meant to be a skinwalker. She wondered if the Navajo legends said anything at all about being born one, skipping over the witchery and the required family killings altogether. Thought about how silly it all was to be ruled by the fear of someone who could shape shift, take of the form of a wolf. They took it seriously too. Hardly spoke of them.
She’d certainly participated in enough evil to be the modern day version.
She wondered what they’d think of her now, a dirty little Navajo girl who fancied herself a skinwalker.
/o0o\
The built up steam rushed out when the door opened, the scent of cheap soap wafting into the room.
Stepped out wearing nothing but a white towel that showed signs of heavy use, the thin material pocked with tiny holes, teasing the soft bronze skin underneath. Her midnight hair was still damp, cascading down her back and beginning to curl at the edges.
He gave her a strange look, sitting there with his booted feet propped up on the rickety coffee table. It was a look she couldn’t place. It unsettled her. His eyes just raked over her, showing no hint of emotion.
Dispassionate observation.
“Ever fucked a desperate felon on the run, Marshall?” she asked, trying to break the awkward silence.
“Can’t say that I have,” he said.
She grinned, tried to make it teasing.
“Really? They’ll do things a nice little country wife would think are downright sinful.”
The chair clattered back onto all fours. Finally a rise out of him, the strange look disappearing.
She mounted the bed on all fours, head nestled into a pillow, her ass thrust high and proud into the air, swaying back and forth, pulling tight against the white cloth.
He continued to just look at her and she flushed, feeling out of place, the sexual façade falling part.
“What are you?” he asked, his eyes softening a bit at the edges and that look of pity returning.
She swallowed.
“What would the wife say?” she said, gesturing to the pale band of skin on his tanned hands.
“Not much. We’re taking a break.”
She flopped down onto the bed at a loss. The man thoroughly confused her.
“What are you?” he repeated.
“A ghost. A skinwalker. A used up prostitute. A wolf in the night. What does it matter? Why do you give a damn?”
He shrugged, dug out a bottle of whiskey from a black duffel bag. He unscrewed the cap and took a quick drink. He sighed, his body relaxing.
“Just curious.”
There was a look she thought she recognized.
“Want a turn with the dirty Navajo girl, don’t you? Live out a dark, seedy fantasy? Have me scream for help?” Her eyes rolled. She was all too used to living out that fantasy for cowboys in a Honky Tonk. Tired of enjoying it too.
“Do you really think so little of your heritage?” he asked, kneeling beside her.
She shrugged.
He leaned down, whiskey on his breath, and kissed her softly, the rugged stubble of his face scratching her.
This time, she was the one who pulled sharply away.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Stop asking me that.”
He repeated it again.
Her eyes hardened.
Again.
She was backed up against the wall now.
“Why?”
“Fuck you!” she screeched. It was a question she never wanted to answer. Couldn’t answer. There was too much tied to that simple question. Too many dark memories she’d spent years forgetting, scrubbing over with thousands of notes of music and melodies.
She tried ducking under his arm, lunging for the bathroom.
He caught her arm, spun her around, and pressed her back into the wall.
“Fuck you,” she snarled when he leaned in again.
His eyes flared, twin globes of blue steel.
And there it was.
The Biology.
The Chemistry.
Addiction.
Neural synapses flaring, shooting carnal want deep into his veins like a heroine addict with his needle. She saw it all as it happened, beneath those steel blue eyes, right before the lust took over completely.
He shoved her hard against the wall, his wiry frame enveloping her, the sheer brutality of him stealing her breath away before she could cry out the one word that gave sense to it all.
Finally.
Yes. Finally.
/o0o\
Sometimes, seduction happens over a period of time. Two participants, neither one realizing it, until a moment changes it all, things that had been locked away in a dark room, explode out in a collision of lust.
Sometimes in a dingy motel on the way back to New Mexico when one feared a return to the rez, the other fearing the end of the chase.
In that one moment, before everything was lost in a haze of sex, they both wondered who had seduced whom. They wondered if the entire thing was some grand scheme, a game created by players bigger than them, a game with one inevitable conclusion.
Fuck it.
Who the hell cared anyway?
/o0o\
He tore the towel away, threw it across the room where it tangled around the lamp, spinning around, until it tipped over, bulb crashing down hard on the dresser.
She was lifted high up the wall without preamble, his tongue trailing wet kisses in a line, first at her collarbone, then sliding down between the valley of her breasts, swirling around inside her belly button for a moment, before continuing on to her hot pussy.
With her legs draped over his shoulders, her fingers pulling at his salt and pepper hair, his tongue snaking deep into her sopping cunt, his hands cupping the taut flesh of her tiny little ass, kneading it roughly.
She screeched out a series of unintelligible obscenities when a quick orgasm fired deep inside her, a stream of warm honey flooding out of her. Her thighs tightened around his head, shoving her super heated pussy against his talented tongue.
Then the pleasure was gone and she was sailing across the room, her small compact frame landing in the middle of the bed.
She bounced once.
Twice.
Three times.
A stomach-stitching laugh tore from her lips, mingling with the orgasm in such a way that her giggles were more like tiny, hiccuping moans.
Then his body was on top of hers, capturing her lips in a rough kiss, and she moaned, tasted herself on his tongue, started to feel light headed from the aftertaste of spiced whiskey.
Her hips rose up, pressing against his jean covered crouch, grinding furiously against him as she clawed his back.
She hadn’t felt anything like this in a long time. The raw ferocity combined with unbridled passion.
Her hands slid under his jeans, cupping the hard muscles of his ass as they writhed together like animals, lips bruising from brutal kisses, nothing but heavy breathing and deep moans filling that dingy motel room.
When he couldn’t take it any longer, he rolled off her to stand at the foot of the bed, tearing at the buckle of his jeans, desperate to free his straining cock.
She flowed with him, pressing a small hand to his chest.
“I’ll care of it,” she said, her breasts heaving, dark nipples standing proud and erect.
Her hands reached out, fingers going for the zipper, hesitating for a moment before carrying on, knowing that there wouldn’t be any objection this time.
A thought came to her in the haze of lust, something that should probably be taken care of before they got any further.
“Bella,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“A name. Figured you might want one.”
She popped the button, pulled the zipper down slowly.
“Is it--”
“No. “
The jeans were eased down over his hips, purple boxers next.
“My--“
“I know, Deputy Marshall Preston Lynch.“
She looked up at him and winked before sliding her soft dark lips over his smooth, perfectly cut cock, moaning as his hot balls met her small chin.
“Fuck,” he gasped, finding his words again, fingers threading into the damp dark locks of her hair.
She smiled around his cock, hands sliding up the backs of his legs, palms moving in slow circles when she reached his ass.
He took hold, and his smoldering eyes met hers. She could read him like a book. He’d never had a girl like her. Few had. There was nothing egotistical about it. Few could match the skills of a good old-fashioned prostitute. In that moment, she was glad of her time with the Dixies. She wanted to do things to him no other woman had, no other woman could, and none could ever match.
She popped off his cock, leaving a messy line of saliva.
“Go ahead,” she groaned. “Fuck my dirty little mouth.”
His cock throbbed hard, filled with more blood.
He wove his fingers into her midnight hair and fucked her mouth like a bucking bronco, loud grunts spilling from his mouth in a torrent of animalistic lust.
Her hands grasped hard at his ass, nails sinking into the soft flesh as his pace built, her messy wet gurgles joining his moans, breathing deeply through flared nostrils.
She popped off his cock for a second when he pushed too deep, gagging. She took that moment to look up, saw him hunched over her, eyelids squeezed tight, heart beating so hard, so fast, that she could see it press against his chest.
A bead of saliva mixed pre-cum hung from the tip of his erect penis and she took the purpling head just inside her mouth, swirling her tongue in slow lazy circles. His hands tightened in her hair again, and he pushed back in to the root, grunting out some prayer to a god she was unfamiliar with. She’d have to change that.
She felt his muscles stiffen, his balls rising up as he sought release. She was close again as well, thumb and forefinger strumming her clit like the strings on her guitar, creating a different kind of music in the rising heat of the tiny motel room.
Her pussy was a mess, leaking sweet honey all over the thin carpet, pulsating wildly, humming along in tune to Preston’s heartbeat.
His fingers pulled painfully at her hair, his groans becoming louder. Her mind swirling with hedonistic pleasures, she collected a shiny film of sweet smelling juice from her steaming pussy.
Her moment came when he shoved his thick cock deep into her throat, grunting out an elongated ‘fuck’.
She spread one ass cheek to the side, and with her honey coated finger, circled the tightly puckered hole she figured no woman had ever played with, and wormed her way up his colon.
His cock went off like a bottle rocket in her mouth, flooding her throat with a thick torrent of boiling cum.
She gagged once, unable to handle the volume of milky white fluid. His cock popped out of her mouth, several more streams of cum shooting out in thick ropes.
Her arm shot out, tiny hand redirected the stream to her open mouth, desperate for more. His cock pulsed a couple more times. Then its power flagged, the spit soaked tool softening. She took the sensitive head gently into her mouth, massaging him, sucking out the last few drops of delicious cum.
When she felt his legs start to give, she popped off, spinning him around so he plopped comfortably, if not ungracefully, onto the bed, his shiny, flaccid cock bouncing back and forth, slapping against his chest.
His eyes cracked open, muscles heaving from release, and looked at her.
“Holy shit,” was all he said as he relaxed his muscles and fell back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Bella crawled onto the bed, straddling his thighs, pressing her sweat slick forehead to his.
“Fucking amazing,” she added, wiping the corners of her mouth with a finger, collecting the stray cum, popping it into her mouth.
She licked his nose, tilted her head, her mouth seeking the pulsing vein in his neck. His skin was hot to the touch. His scent, that spiced woodsy musk, intoxicated her, flooding her senses, setting off a fresh spark of arousal.
Her handed traveled down, jacking his cock a few times.
“Wait a second,” he gasped, back arching up to her touched. “Too much.”
She lifted her body and stared him down, her eyes black, predatory coals.
“Never enough,” she purred.
“I need—“
“You let me worry about that.”
She backed up on hands and knees until his soft dick was front and center again.
Her hands went up, tweaked his nipples, before traveling back down, fingers tracing figure eights over the lightly scarred skin. She rained sloppy wet kisses on his inner thighs, and then blew cold air on his warm cock, smiling as it throbbed with renewed life.
Every now and then, she’d run her tongue from base to tip. Then she’d suckle the head like a blow pop, and then blow cool air.
She repeated this several more times before gently sucking one of his warm, wet balls into her mouth, massaging the other delicately between her fingers.
It took hardly any time at all before he was hard as steel, fidgeting impatiently.
She crawled up his body again, mouth seeking out his nipples, rolling them between her teeth while he grasped her hips.
“No more teasing,” he grunted, as he flipped them other, pressing her small, lithe body into the thin mattress.
His face was flushed red with sexual need; rivulets of sweat slid down his cheeks. She drew him down on top of her, husked into his ear what she wanted first.
She savored the look in his eyes. The reluctance, followed by the heady desire and the inability to deny her what she wanted, the key to slotting his thick cock into her tight wet pussy.
He slithered down her bronzed legs and she lifted them slowly, letting them come to rest over his shoulders. His eyes found hers again, defiant for a second, before his head ducked down and his mouth latched onto her slick cunt.
“Fuck,” she sighed as he lapped away. One hand reached down, directed his movements while the other traveled up, pinching her nipples, mixing pain and pleasure into the perfect combination.
A thick digit soon joined his wriggling tongue, seeking out her g-spot, curling inside her just so, and drawing out a small orgasm and a fresh flood of honey.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She shoved his head further down.
“Do it now. Now!” she begged.
He shifted, rising up on his knees, dragging her with him. He took her legs and pressing them gently to her heaving chest. Then he grasped her ass, spreading her cheeks gently apart, exposing her tightly puckered rose. His breathing was hitched.
Nervous.
“Please,” she pleaded.
Preston took a deep breath and lapped once more at her steaming cunt before dipping down and worming his tongue through the tightly muscled ring of her ass.
The powerful muscles in her legs tried firing out like a gymnast coiling for a back flip and it was all Preston could do to keep them pressed tightly to her chest.
Her head thrashed back and forth as his tongue burrowed in deeper, circling the tight knot of flesh.
She spat out a series of obscenities, not in English, but her native tongue, things she thought she had long ago forgotten. They came racing back to her now though. All it took was a tongue to the ass. His tongue.
She could die right there, well and truly content in life.
No. Fuck that. She wanted more.
“Fuck!” she screamed, her body heaving with pleasure, her nerves going haywire.
She really was a true, blue, anal addict. It was why her client list had been so large. It was why her fellow coworkers threw insults, talked behind back. Threw murderous glares at her back when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Irony.
More than a few of those very same women had been bent over a toilet in that Honky Tonk, marble white asses sticking up proudly in the air as she rammed her tongue up their tight little holes. They’d plead to the god they worshipped every Sunday, begging her not to stop.
Just like she was begging Preston right now.
“Keep going,” she screeched. Oh did he ever. He was getting into it now, like every person she’d ever fucked.
His tongue wiggled furiously, lapping harder and harder. Then he’d pull away, finger fuck her pussy for a bit, smear her sweet honey over her puckered hole, then got at it all over again.
She lost count of the orgasms, her mind shattered, turned to orgasmic goo.
“Holy fuck shit!” she grunted, a stream of juice squirting out of her pussy, running down her stomach, sliding between her breasts.
\oOo/
Preston lifted his salt and peppered head and grinning devilishly at her, his chin soaked with a thick film of her cum.
Her eyes flipped open at the sudden break of contact and she struggled for breath, her heart hammering in her throat, choking off the words she wanted to speak.
“Fuuu …” she blubbered.
He just grinned at her, blew cold air across her scalding pussy and messy ass.
“Fuuuuuck …” she blubbered again, pushing damp strands of black hair away from her mouth.
His only response was to kiss her thighs.
“Fucking fuck me already!” she screamed, the words finally coming out in a scratchy moan.
Preston let her legs fall to the bed as he backed away, her ass hitting the mattress softly.
He moved to mount her just like that.
“No,” she whimpered. “From behind. Take me from behind.”
He turned her gently over, grabbed one of the extra pillows, and slid it right under her navel.
Preston paused, eyes raking over her back. She knew what that pause meant. The tattoo on her back burned slightly, for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, the wolf inside of a dream catcher, howling at the moon. His fingers traced the design, momentarily distracted. Taking it all in. Maybe thinking a bit, considering the contradictions of the tattoo in regards to her people, to herself. His wet lips touched that tattoo softly. Just for a second.
Then he mounted her, straddling her tiny body, resting his rigid cock between the crack of her ass. He took hold of her slim waist and slid back and forth, edging himself, and giving her a chance to recover from her stream of orgasms.
When he felt she was ready, he parted her cheeks, centered himself, and slid slowly into her sloppy wet snatch, grunting at its skin peeling tightness until he bottomed out into delirium.
\oOo/
Her body roared in pleasure when his thick cock parted her slick folds, sending thrills of pleasure racing through her body.
She’d had bigger cocks before, smaller ones too, much smaller ones in fact. But this dick just felt so right, filling her up perfectly.
Her arms tightened around the pillow as his rock hard dick turned her to silly putty with each slow thrust.
“Harder,” she whimpered.
Preston’s fingers tightened on her waist. She’d bruise, but she didn’t care. She needed a hard, brutal fuck.
His pace sped up, the corded muscle of his legs slapping hard against the soft tone of her ass.
“Oh fuck yes,” she sobbed, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes as he pumped her faster, harder, hot juices rushing out of her squishy cunt, soaking the cheap motel sheets, delicious stains that’d never wash out.
She rose up on her elbows as his thrusts became erratic. Bella looked over her shoulder, saw the fire in his eyes, the mad look of complete, animalistic lust that’d never be quenched the same way by a different woman.
She bucked her ass back at him. Told him to spank her. Hard.
He did.
A few hard pumps, then he’d bury himself to the root, holding himself at maximum depth inside her wet slit.
Give her taut little ass a couple spanks.
Then back to thrusting.
“Fucking incredible,” he grunted.
She felt his pace start to slow and she keened loudly, clamping her pussy tight around his cock, staunching the building flow of cum.
“Not yet, Marshall,” she gasped. “Not even close.”
Her pussy was a quivering, sloppy mess.
The motel room reeked of sex and she breathed it all in deeply, savoring the smells of their liquid arousal.
She needed more. Something dirtier. Nastier. Uncontrollable. She needed something that would tip them both over the edge. She told him so.
He slid out of her cunt with a wet plop and padding into the bathroom. He came out with her Daisey Dukes.
“Back pocket,” she told him.
He looked at her, unsure.
He pulled out the tiny little bag of powdered X.
The haze from his eyes cleared a bit as the mind put it all together, realizing just what it was he had in his hands.
“I don’t think—“
“You don’t need to think,” she purred. “You just need to feel.”
Bella hoped he wouldn’t find the lawman now of all times. She needed the sweet release that only a little dose of X could provide. It was a holdover from the Dixies that she’d likely never get over.
You mix sex and drugs long enough, and you came to a point where you couldn’t enjoy one without the other. The white powder was like sugar. It called her, seducing her, waiting to be consumed in a carnal act of hedonistic sex.
She was a sweat slick beast, her dark hair tangled, her skin flushed hot and coated with a thin film over her own cum.
She shifted around, turning to face him on all fours. Crooked a finger at him. Seduction enough. Promise enough.
“Trust me,” she said. “Live a little. Throw the rules out the window. Pump your delicious seed into my nasty little ass.”
His eyes flared again. Biology and chemistry at work again. His cock throbbed powerfully. The head may have had uncertainties, but in the haze of sex, the only head that mattered was the one at the end of a cock.
\oOo/
“How does this work exactly?” he husked, walking back over to the bed.
“Let me take care of it all,” she answered, holding out her palm.
He dropped the Ziploc bag into her hand.
She dipped cum soaked fingers into the fine white powder, give Preston’s slick cock a light dusting. Then she flipped back over onto all fours.
“Now fuck me,” she ordered.
He took his place behind her again, rubbing his powdered cock along the folds of her pussy before grasping her hips again, and thrusting himself inside.
It didn’t take long. The bitch that owned that Honky Tonk had introduced her to the power of powdered X when it came to sex. It absorbed quickly into the wet folds of her hot pussy, worming its way into her blood stream, magnifying the pleasure.
Five minutes and a couple dozen thrusts into it, she knew Preston felt it to. The temperature in the room rose. Sweat and heat poured off their bodies in waves. Nothing but hard, wet slaps filled the room, music to their ears. She needed one last thing though.
She whispered it to him in the dark. Then begged.
He pulled out of her messy snatch again, fiddled with the plastic bag, applying another light dusting of X to his superheated, drug-fueled cock.
Then he was behind her again, kneeling, lapping away at first her pussy, and then her tight ring of muscle, spearing his hot tongue inside her ass.
She squealed, body jerking forward then back.
“Fuck my dirty little ass already,” she cried, wriggling against his tongue. “Make me your whore, your dirty little Indian whore.” The words came in a rush. She no longer cared what they meant, so long as his powdered cock took her to hell and back again.
He pushed her head down, bringing ass up to the proper angle. Then he thrust inside her.
Hard.
The time for pleasantries was over.
This wasn’t a fuck for love or sympathy, or whatever else you wanted to call it.
It wasn’t a fuck for two seemingly incompatible souls finding each other in the night.
It was a fuck to rub dirt in the eyes of love.
It was brutal, fast, and hard.
His cock pumped her scorching ass at breakneck speed as she cried out in her native tongue again. The sounds spurred him on and they bucked wildly against each other, the power of the X peaking, fueling the kind of debauched, raw, animalist sex that few in this world would ever try, would ever know.
It was a crude dance.
The hard wet slaps.
The scratchy grunts.
The squeaky mattress that was ready to snap under the pressure of their coupling.
They were oblivious to it all.
Then the waves of pleasure crested. He pumped her a few more times, erratically, pulling on her long black locks of her, her eyes glazed over, rolled up into her skull.
“Fuuuck,” she howled when the orgasms tore through her, turning her body to jelly, a warm spurt of juice flooding out of her pussy.
Then he grunted, launching a torrent a hot cum deep inside her, the milky white liquid coating her hot, slick ass. Her tight ring of muscle squeezes it all out, five big spurts filling her ass to overflowing.
When his softening cock pulled free, it bubbles out in a pearly white froth.
Her hips hit the mattress and he collapsed on top of her, caught himself, hovered over her limp body, and then fell to the side.
They met in the middle with a lazy kiss, sharing her juices, suckling each other’s bruised lips.
A level of exhaustion they’ve never known hit them half way through, taking over their bodies. A smile danced across her lips before sleep takes over.
A Felon and a Marshall. Sweat slicked bodies pressed tightly together. No illusion of caring this time.
\oOo/
When she exited the shower, the smell of sex still hung heavy and sour in the room. Her nose wrinkled a bit. The hot spray had soothed away her sore muscles. It had also washed away the illusion that sex helped create.
Reality was a bitch.
The fact of the matter was simple. Despite the sex, the revelations, the discussion that took place after the sex, he’d still turn her in.
Lawmen.
An outdated sense of duty and honor and what it meant to keep your word.
He was truthful about that at least. She even believed him now. That’d he do his best.
That wasn’t enough though. Promises were never enough, even if they were kept. A girl needed more than that. Especially a girl with Navajo blood pumping strong in her veins, calling her back to a home she’d never wanted in the first place.
She stood over the bed for a moment, taking a mental snapshot of that salt and pepper hair, the faint scars on his chest, the way his lips, in this moment, seemed curved up into a content smile.
Then she was out the door.
\oOo/
She took the big bowie knife from under the floor mat of the driver’s side.
Slashed the tires.
Large jagged gashes, the air hissing out angrily.
Then she looked up at the moon, that full silver dollar hanging low in the Texas night, calling out to her.
Her blood ran hot.
Skinwalker, she thought. She probably wasn’t that after all. She was something though.
Tires crunched over gravel as a Greyhound bus stopped outside the Saddlehorn Inn.
She needed to get away from Texas. More than that, she needed to get away from her ancestral lands.
Canada?
Mexico?
Somewhere other than here was all that mattered, away from that salt and pepper hair.
She looked back, but that mask, the person she was inside that tiny motel room, was already gone. Tossed aside. She wore a different mask now.
Her legs starting pumping, sprinting toward the bus.
Made it in time.
Hopped up the stairs.
Saw a man in a nice suit.
Third isle.
Window seat.
Alone.
She smiled, a new name already forming on her lips.
\oOo/
She couldn’t help looking back one more time as the bus peeled away.
Maybe he’d chase her again. Maybe she’d let him catch her. Or maybe, she’d just become that wolf in the night, ruling in the shadows. Avoiding the light that revealed all the dirt and grime that clung to her, would always cling to her.
“He meets a pretty little Navajo girl, bubbling with energy. Her only fault is maybe being too naïve. But she’s young. Only eighteen.”
“This man, he takes her on a blanket under the stars. He makes promises in the night. Leaves in the morning.”
“Sounds like—“
“Quiet!” she snapped.
His jaw clinched.
“Several years later, another white man. The girl is now a woman. Still naïve. He says he’s a former marine. She falls in love.”
“Was he?”
“No. Though, I think she liked the idea of it too much to care."
“What was he really?”
“Nothing but a two-bit conman.”
He nodded, slowly.
“So he takes this woman and her daughter with him.”
“So, how’d he break his promise then?”
She looked out into the night, a vast nothingness that reminded her of her own life.
“The fool went and got himself killed on the job.”
“That’s it?”
“Were you expecting some magical tale of love? Those stories aren’t meant for a naïve little girl with Navajo blood pumping in her veins.”
The Marshall didn’t say a word. He wasn’t sure whom she was talking about anymore.
/o0o\
They pulled up to one of those dingy highway motels out in the middle of nowhere. No frills. It was called the Saddlehorn Inn. The busted neon sign was missing half the letters. Only horn and the ‘i’ in inn were visible.
He cuffed her to the steering wheel. Said he’d get a room.
She saw the manager through his windowed booth. He was a fat, squat man with mustache that didn’t fit. He looked like a porn addict, not that she had any room to judge, being what she was.
/o0o\
The room was spattered with cowboys riding bulls, lassos spinning about their heads, revolvers in their hands. Off to the corner, Indians were given looks of bloodlust. She’d never escape it. Not in the heart of the south.
There were two beds and a TV.
Broken of course.
She was sensing a theme here, all the broken things in her life meeting in one place.
He prowled, looking for possible escape routes that couldn’t exist in this tiny square of a room.
Checked the bathroom next, looking for windows.
“Don’t trust me, Marshall?”
“Would you?”
“No. But then, I wouldn’t choose to be me either,” she shrugged.
“There are towels in there. Don’t try to hang yourself.”
She rolled her eyes.
/o0o\
The bathroom smelled of booze and a full can of lemon-scented Lysol spray. She pictured the fat man, drunk off his ass, cleaning. It made her smile.
Then she looked in the mirror. She didn’t like what she saw.
Haggard. Old. Not in the physical sense. Not yet. It was her eyes.
They were pitch-black coals of sad resignation.
She felt a tingle and realized she hadn’t gotten high in awhile. She realized she missed the empty feeling it gave her. She remembered the crushed packet of X in her back pocket. Had a deep craving for it.
/o0o\
She came out of the shower refreshed. Stared into the mirror for a long while after. Thought of her people for the first time in years, about what it meant to be a skinwalker. She wondered if the Navajo legends said anything at all about being born one, skipping over the witchery and the required family killings altogether. Thought about how silly it all was to be ruled by the fear of someone who could shape shift, take of the form of a wolf. They took it seriously too. Hardly spoke of them.
She’d certainly participated in enough evil to be the modern day version.
She wondered what they’d think of her now, a dirty little Navajo girl who fancied herself a skinwalker.
/o0o\
The built up steam rushed out when the door opened, the scent of cheap soap wafting into the room.
Stepped out wearing nothing but a white towel that showed signs of heavy use, the thin material pocked with tiny holes, teasing the soft bronze skin underneath. Her midnight hair was still damp, cascading down her back and beginning to curl at the edges.
He gave her a strange look, sitting there with his booted feet propped up on the rickety coffee table. It was a look she couldn’t place. It unsettled her. His eyes just raked over her, showing no hint of emotion.
Dispassionate observation.
“Ever fucked a desperate felon on the run, Marshall?” she asked, trying to break the awkward silence.
“Can’t say that I have,” he said.
She grinned, tried to make it teasing.
“Really? They’ll do things a nice little country wife would think are downright sinful.”
The chair clattered back onto all fours. Finally a rise out of him, the strange look disappearing.
She mounted the bed on all fours, head nestled into a pillow, her ass thrust high and proud into the air, swaying back and forth, pulling tight against the white cloth.
He continued to just look at her and she flushed, feeling out of place, the sexual façade falling part.
“What are you?” he asked, his eyes softening a bit at the edges and that look of pity returning.
She swallowed.
“What would the wife say?” she said, gesturing to the pale band of skin on his tanned hands.
“Not much. We’re taking a break.”
She flopped down onto the bed at a loss. The man thoroughly confused her.
“What are you?” he repeated.
“A ghost. A skinwalker. A used up prostitute. A wolf in the night. What does it matter? Why do you give a damn?”
He shrugged, dug out a bottle of whiskey from a black duffel bag. He unscrewed the cap and took a quick drink. He sighed, his body relaxing.
“Just curious.”
There was a look she thought she recognized.
“Want a turn with the dirty Navajo girl, don’t you? Live out a dark, seedy fantasy? Have me scream for help?” Her eyes rolled. She was all too used to living out that fantasy for cowboys in a Honky Tonk. Tired of enjoying it too.
“Do you really think so little of your heritage?” he asked, kneeling beside her.
She shrugged.
He leaned down, whiskey on his breath, and kissed her softly, the rugged stubble of his face scratching her.
This time, she was the one who pulled sharply away.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Stop asking me that.”
He repeated it again.
Her eyes hardened.
Again.
She was backed up against the wall now.
“Why?”
“Fuck you!” she screeched. It was a question she never wanted to answer. Couldn’t answer. There was too much tied to that simple question. Too many dark memories she’d spent years forgetting, scrubbing over with thousands of notes of music and melodies.
She tried ducking under his arm, lunging for the bathroom.
He caught her arm, spun her around, and pressed her back into the wall.
“Fuck you,” she snarled when he leaned in again.
His eyes flared, twin globes of blue steel.
And there it was.
The Biology.
The Chemistry.
Addiction.
Neural synapses flaring, shooting carnal want deep into his veins like a heroine addict with his needle. She saw it all as it happened, beneath those steel blue eyes, right before the lust took over completely.
He shoved her hard against the wall, his wiry frame enveloping her, the sheer brutality of him stealing her breath away before she could cry out the one word that gave sense to it all.
Finally.
Yes. Finally.
/o0o\
Sometimes, seduction happens over a period of time. Two participants, neither one realizing it, until a moment changes it all, things that had been locked away in a dark room, explode out in a collision of lust.
Sometimes in a dingy motel on the way back to New Mexico when one feared a return to the rez, the other fearing the end of the chase.
In that one moment, before everything was lost in a haze of sex, they both wondered who had seduced whom. They wondered if the entire thing was some grand scheme, a game created by players bigger than them, a game with one inevitable conclusion.
Fuck it.
Who the hell cared anyway?
/o0o\
He tore the towel away, threw it across the room where it tangled around the lamp, spinning around, until it tipped over, bulb crashing down hard on the dresser.
She was lifted high up the wall without preamble, his tongue trailing wet kisses in a line, first at her collarbone, then sliding down between the valley of her breasts, swirling around inside her belly button for a moment, before continuing on to her hot pussy.
With her legs draped over his shoulders, her fingers pulling at his salt and pepper hair, his tongue snaking deep into her sopping cunt, his hands cupping the taut flesh of her tiny little ass, kneading it roughly.
She screeched out a series of unintelligible obscenities when a quick orgasm fired deep inside her, a stream of warm honey flooding out of her. Her thighs tightened around his head, shoving her super heated pussy against his talented tongue.
Then the pleasure was gone and she was sailing across the room, her small compact frame landing in the middle of the bed.
She bounced once.
Twice.
Three times.
A stomach-stitching laugh tore from her lips, mingling with the orgasm in such a way that her giggles were more like tiny, hiccuping moans.
Then his body was on top of hers, capturing her lips in a rough kiss, and she moaned, tasted herself on his tongue, started to feel light headed from the aftertaste of spiced whiskey.
Her hips rose up, pressing against his jean covered crouch, grinding furiously against him as she clawed his back.
She hadn’t felt anything like this in a long time. The raw ferocity combined with unbridled passion.
Her hands slid under his jeans, cupping the hard muscles of his ass as they writhed together like animals, lips bruising from brutal kisses, nothing but heavy breathing and deep moans filling that dingy motel room.
When he couldn’t take it any longer, he rolled off her to stand at the foot of the bed, tearing at the buckle of his jeans, desperate to free his straining cock.
She flowed with him, pressing a small hand to his chest.
“I’ll care of it,” she said, her breasts heaving, dark nipples standing proud and erect.
Her hands reached out, fingers going for the zipper, hesitating for a moment before carrying on, knowing that there wouldn’t be any objection this time.
A thought came to her in the haze of lust, something that should probably be taken care of before they got any further.
“Bella,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“A name. Figured you might want one.”
She popped the button, pulled the zipper down slowly.
“Is it--”
“No. “
The jeans were eased down over his hips, purple boxers next.
“My--“
“I know, Deputy Marshall Preston Lynch.“
She looked up at him and winked before sliding her soft dark lips over his smooth, perfectly cut cock, moaning as his hot balls met her small chin.
“Fuck,” he gasped, finding his words again, fingers threading into the damp dark locks of her hair.
She smiled around his cock, hands sliding up the backs of his legs, palms moving in slow circles when she reached his ass.
He took hold, and his smoldering eyes met hers. She could read him like a book. He’d never had a girl like her. Few had. There was nothing egotistical about it. Few could match the skills of a good old-fashioned prostitute. In that moment, she was glad of her time with the Dixies. She wanted to do things to him no other woman had, no other woman could, and none could ever match.
She popped off his cock, leaving a messy line of saliva.
“Go ahead,” she groaned. “Fuck my dirty little mouth.”
His cock throbbed hard, filled with more blood.
He wove his fingers into her midnight hair and fucked her mouth like a bucking bronco, loud grunts spilling from his mouth in a torrent of animalistic lust.
Her hands grasped hard at his ass, nails sinking into the soft flesh as his pace built, her messy wet gurgles joining his moans, breathing deeply through flared nostrils.
She popped off his cock for a second when he pushed too deep, gagging. She took that moment to look up, saw him hunched over her, eyelids squeezed tight, heart beating so hard, so fast, that she could see it press against his chest.
A bead of saliva mixed pre-cum hung from the tip of his erect penis and she took the purpling head just inside her mouth, swirling her tongue in slow lazy circles. His hands tightened in her hair again, and he pushed back in to the root, grunting out some prayer to a god she was unfamiliar with. She’d have to change that.
She felt his muscles stiffen, his balls rising up as he sought release. She was close again as well, thumb and forefinger strumming her clit like the strings on her guitar, creating a different kind of music in the rising heat of the tiny motel room.
Her pussy was a mess, leaking sweet honey all over the thin carpet, pulsating wildly, humming along in tune to Preston’s heartbeat.
His fingers pulled painfully at her hair, his groans becoming louder. Her mind swirling with hedonistic pleasures, she collected a shiny film of sweet smelling juice from her steaming pussy.
Her moment came when he shoved his thick cock deep into her throat, grunting out an elongated ‘fuck’.
She spread one ass cheek to the side, and with her honey coated finger, circled the tightly puckered hole she figured no woman had ever played with, and wormed her way up his colon.
His cock went off like a bottle rocket in her mouth, flooding her throat with a thick torrent of boiling cum.
She gagged once, unable to handle the volume of milky white fluid. His cock popped out of her mouth, several more streams of cum shooting out in thick ropes.
Her arm shot out, tiny hand redirected the stream to her open mouth, desperate for more. His cock pulsed a couple more times. Then its power flagged, the spit soaked tool softening. She took the sensitive head gently into her mouth, massaging him, sucking out the last few drops of delicious cum.
When she felt his legs start to give, she popped off, spinning him around so he plopped comfortably, if not ungracefully, onto the bed, his shiny, flaccid cock bouncing back and forth, slapping against his chest.
His eyes cracked open, muscles heaving from release, and looked at her.
“Holy shit,” was all he said as he relaxed his muscles and fell back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Bella crawled onto the bed, straddling his thighs, pressing her sweat slick forehead to his.
“Fucking amazing,” she added, wiping the corners of her mouth with a finger, collecting the stray cum, popping it into her mouth.
She licked his nose, tilted her head, her mouth seeking the pulsing vein in his neck. His skin was hot to the touch. His scent, that spiced woodsy musk, intoxicated her, flooding her senses, setting off a fresh spark of arousal.
Her handed traveled down, jacking his cock a few times.
“Wait a second,” he gasped, back arching up to her touched. “Too much.”
She lifted her body and stared him down, her eyes black, predatory coals.
“Never enough,” she purred.
“I need—“
“You let me worry about that.”
She backed up on hands and knees until his soft dick was front and center again.
Her hands went up, tweaked his nipples, before traveling back down, fingers tracing figure eights over the lightly scarred skin. She rained sloppy wet kisses on his inner thighs, and then blew cold air on his warm cock, smiling as it throbbed with renewed life.
Every now and then, she’d run her tongue from base to tip. Then she’d suckle the head like a blow pop, and then blow cool air.
She repeated this several more times before gently sucking one of his warm, wet balls into her mouth, massaging the other delicately between her fingers.
It took hardly any time at all before he was hard as steel, fidgeting impatiently.
She crawled up his body again, mouth seeking out his nipples, rolling them between her teeth while he grasped her hips.
“No more teasing,” he grunted, as he flipped them other, pressing her small, lithe body into the thin mattress.
His face was flushed red with sexual need; rivulets of sweat slid down his cheeks. She drew him down on top of her, husked into his ear what she wanted first.
She savored the look in his eyes. The reluctance, followed by the heady desire and the inability to deny her what she wanted, the key to slotting his thick cock into her tight wet pussy.
He slithered down her bronzed legs and she lifted them slowly, letting them come to rest over his shoulders. His eyes found hers again, defiant for a second, before his head ducked down and his mouth latched onto her slick cunt.
“Fuck,” she sighed as he lapped away. One hand reached down, directed his movements while the other traveled up, pinching her nipples, mixing pain and pleasure into the perfect combination.
A thick digit soon joined his wriggling tongue, seeking out her g-spot, curling inside her just so, and drawing out a small orgasm and a fresh flood of honey.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She shoved his head further down.
“Do it now. Now!” she begged.
He shifted, rising up on his knees, dragging her with him. He took her legs and pressing them gently to her heaving chest. Then he grasped her ass, spreading her cheeks gently apart, exposing her tightly puckered rose. His breathing was hitched.
Nervous.
“Please,” she pleaded.
Preston took a deep breath and lapped once more at her steaming cunt before dipping down and worming his tongue through the tightly muscled ring of her ass.
The powerful muscles in her legs tried firing out like a gymnast coiling for a back flip and it was all Preston could do to keep them pressed tightly to her chest.
Her head thrashed back and forth as his tongue burrowed in deeper, circling the tight knot of flesh.
She spat out a series of obscenities, not in English, but her native tongue, things she thought she had long ago forgotten. They came racing back to her now though. All it took was a tongue to the ass. His tongue.
She could die right there, well and truly content in life.
No. Fuck that. She wanted more.
“Fuck!” she screamed, her body heaving with pleasure, her nerves going haywire.
She really was a true, blue, anal addict. It was why her client list had been so large. It was why her fellow coworkers threw insults, talked behind back. Threw murderous glares at her back when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Irony.
More than a few of those very same women had been bent over a toilet in that Honky Tonk, marble white asses sticking up proudly in the air as she rammed her tongue up their tight little holes. They’d plead to the god they worshipped every Sunday, begging her not to stop.
Just like she was begging Preston right now.
“Keep going,” she screeched. Oh did he ever. He was getting into it now, like every person she’d ever fucked.
His tongue wiggled furiously, lapping harder and harder. Then he’d pull away, finger fuck her pussy for a bit, smear her sweet honey over her puckered hole, then got at it all over again.
She lost count of the orgasms, her mind shattered, turned to orgasmic goo.
“Holy fuck shit!” she grunted, a stream of juice squirting out of her pussy, running down her stomach, sliding between her breasts.
\oOo/
Preston lifted his salt and peppered head and grinning devilishly at her, his chin soaked with a thick film of her cum.
Her eyes flipped open at the sudden break of contact and she struggled for breath, her heart hammering in her throat, choking off the words she wanted to speak.
“Fuuu …” she blubbered.
He just grinned at her, blew cold air across her scalding pussy and messy ass.
“Fuuuuuck …” she blubbered again, pushing damp strands of black hair away from her mouth.
His only response was to kiss her thighs.
“Fucking fuck me already!” she screamed, the words finally coming out in a scratchy moan.
Preston let her legs fall to the bed as he backed away, her ass hitting the mattress softly.
He moved to mount her just like that.
“No,” she whimpered. “From behind. Take me from behind.”
He turned her gently over, grabbed one of the extra pillows, and slid it right under her navel.
Preston paused, eyes raking over her back. She knew what that pause meant. The tattoo on her back burned slightly, for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, the wolf inside of a dream catcher, howling at the moon. His fingers traced the design, momentarily distracted. Taking it all in. Maybe thinking a bit, considering the contradictions of the tattoo in regards to her people, to herself. His wet lips touched that tattoo softly. Just for a second.
Then he mounted her, straddling her tiny body, resting his rigid cock between the crack of her ass. He took hold of her slim waist and slid back and forth, edging himself, and giving her a chance to recover from her stream of orgasms.
When he felt she was ready, he parted her cheeks, centered himself, and slid slowly into her sloppy wet snatch, grunting at its skin peeling tightness until he bottomed out into delirium.
\oOo/
Her body roared in pleasure when his thick cock parted her slick folds, sending thrills of pleasure racing through her body.
She’d had bigger cocks before, smaller ones too, much smaller ones in fact. But this dick just felt so right, filling her up perfectly.
Her arms tightened around the pillow as his rock hard dick turned her to silly putty with each slow thrust.
“Harder,” she whimpered.
Preston’s fingers tightened on her waist. She’d bruise, but she didn’t care. She needed a hard, brutal fuck.
His pace sped up, the corded muscle of his legs slapping hard against the soft tone of her ass.
“Oh fuck yes,” she sobbed, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes as he pumped her faster, harder, hot juices rushing out of her squishy cunt, soaking the cheap motel sheets, delicious stains that’d never wash out.
She rose up on her elbows as his thrusts became erratic. Bella looked over her shoulder, saw the fire in his eyes, the mad look of complete, animalistic lust that’d never be quenched the same way by a different woman.
She bucked her ass back at him. Told him to spank her. Hard.
He did.
A few hard pumps, then he’d bury himself to the root, holding himself at maximum depth inside her wet slit.
Give her taut little ass a couple spanks.
Then back to thrusting.
“Fucking incredible,” he grunted.
She felt his pace start to slow and she keened loudly, clamping her pussy tight around his cock, staunching the building flow of cum.
“Not yet, Marshall,” she gasped. “Not even close.”
Her pussy was a quivering, sloppy mess.
The motel room reeked of sex and she breathed it all in deeply, savoring the smells of their liquid arousal.
She needed more. Something dirtier. Nastier. Uncontrollable. She needed something that would tip them both over the edge. She told him so.
He slid out of her cunt with a wet plop and padding into the bathroom. He came out with her Daisey Dukes.
“Back pocket,” she told him.
He looked at her, unsure.
He pulled out the tiny little bag of powdered X.
The haze from his eyes cleared a bit as the mind put it all together, realizing just what it was he had in his hands.
“I don’t think—“
“You don’t need to think,” she purred. “You just need to feel.”
Bella hoped he wouldn’t find the lawman now of all times. She needed the sweet release that only a little dose of X could provide. It was a holdover from the Dixies that she’d likely never get over.
You mix sex and drugs long enough, and you came to a point where you couldn’t enjoy one without the other. The white powder was like sugar. It called her, seducing her, waiting to be consumed in a carnal act of hedonistic sex.
She was a sweat slick beast, her dark hair tangled, her skin flushed hot and coated with a thin film over her own cum.
She shifted around, turning to face him on all fours. Crooked a finger at him. Seduction enough. Promise enough.
“Trust me,” she said. “Live a little. Throw the rules out the window. Pump your delicious seed into my nasty little ass.”
His eyes flared again. Biology and chemistry at work again. His cock throbbed powerfully. The head may have had uncertainties, but in the haze of sex, the only head that mattered was the one at the end of a cock.
\oOo/
“How does this work exactly?” he husked, walking back over to the bed.
“Let me take care of it all,” she answered, holding out her palm.
He dropped the Ziploc bag into her hand.
She dipped cum soaked fingers into the fine white powder, give Preston’s slick cock a light dusting. Then she flipped back over onto all fours.
“Now fuck me,” she ordered.
He took his place behind her again, rubbing his powdered cock along the folds of her pussy before grasping her hips again, and thrusting himself inside.
It didn’t take long. The bitch that owned that Honky Tonk had introduced her to the power of powdered X when it came to sex. It absorbed quickly into the wet folds of her hot pussy, worming its way into her blood stream, magnifying the pleasure.
Five minutes and a couple dozen thrusts into it, she knew Preston felt it to. The temperature in the room rose. Sweat and heat poured off their bodies in waves. Nothing but hard, wet slaps filled the room, music to their ears. She needed one last thing though.
She whispered it to him in the dark. Then begged.
He pulled out of her messy snatch again, fiddled with the plastic bag, applying another light dusting of X to his superheated, drug-fueled cock.
Then he was behind her again, kneeling, lapping away at first her pussy, and then her tight ring of muscle, spearing his hot tongue inside her ass.
She squealed, body jerking forward then back.
“Fuck my dirty little ass already,” she cried, wriggling against his tongue. “Make me your whore, your dirty little Indian whore.” The words came in a rush. She no longer cared what they meant, so long as his powdered cock took her to hell and back again.
He pushed her head down, bringing ass up to the proper angle. Then he thrust inside her.
Hard.
The time for pleasantries was over.
This wasn’t a fuck for love or sympathy, or whatever else you wanted to call it.
It wasn’t a fuck for two seemingly incompatible souls finding each other in the night.
It was a fuck to rub dirt in the eyes of love.
It was brutal, fast, and hard.
His cock pumped her scorching ass at breakneck speed as she cried out in her native tongue again. The sounds spurred him on and they bucked wildly against each other, the power of the X peaking, fueling the kind of debauched, raw, animalist sex that few in this world would ever try, would ever know.
It was a crude dance.
The hard wet slaps.
The scratchy grunts.
The squeaky mattress that was ready to snap under the pressure of their coupling.
They were oblivious to it all.
Then the waves of pleasure crested. He pumped her a few more times, erratically, pulling on her long black locks of her, her eyes glazed over, rolled up into her skull.
“Fuuuck,” she howled when the orgasms tore through her, turning her body to jelly, a warm spurt of juice flooding out of her pussy.
Then he grunted, launching a torrent a hot cum deep inside her, the milky white liquid coating her hot, slick ass. Her tight ring of muscle squeezes it all out, five big spurts filling her ass to overflowing.
When his softening cock pulled free, it bubbles out in a pearly white froth.
Her hips hit the mattress and he collapsed on top of her, caught himself, hovered over her limp body, and then fell to the side.
They met in the middle with a lazy kiss, sharing her juices, suckling each other’s bruised lips.
A level of exhaustion they’ve never known hit them half way through, taking over their bodies. A smile danced across her lips before sleep takes over.
A Felon and a Marshall. Sweat slicked bodies pressed tightly together. No illusion of caring this time.
\oOo/
When she exited the shower, the smell of sex still hung heavy and sour in the room. Her nose wrinkled a bit. The hot spray had soothed away her sore muscles. It had also washed away the illusion that sex helped create.
Reality was a bitch.
The fact of the matter was simple. Despite the sex, the revelations, the discussion that took place after the sex, he’d still turn her in.
Lawmen.
An outdated sense of duty and honor and what it meant to keep your word.
He was truthful about that at least. She even believed him now. That’d he do his best.
That wasn’t enough though. Promises were never enough, even if they were kept. A girl needed more than that. Especially a girl with Navajo blood pumping strong in her veins, calling her back to a home she’d never wanted in the first place.
She stood over the bed for a moment, taking a mental snapshot of that salt and pepper hair, the faint scars on his chest, the way his lips, in this moment, seemed curved up into a content smile.
Then she was out the door.
\oOo/
She took the big bowie knife from under the floor mat of the driver’s side.
Slashed the tires.
Large jagged gashes, the air hissing out angrily.
Then she looked up at the moon, that full silver dollar hanging low in the Texas night, calling out to her.
Her blood ran hot.
Skinwalker, she thought. She probably wasn’t that after all. She was something though.
Tires crunched over gravel as a Greyhound bus stopped outside the Saddlehorn Inn.
She needed to get away from Texas. More than that, she needed to get away from her ancestral lands.
Canada?
Mexico?
Somewhere other than here was all that mattered, away from that salt and pepper hair.
She looked back, but that mask, the person she was inside that tiny motel room, was already gone. Tossed aside. She wore a different mask now.
Her legs starting pumping, sprinting toward the bus.
Made it in time.
Hopped up the stairs.
Saw a man in a nice suit.
Third isle.
Window seat.
Alone.
She smiled, a new name already forming on her lips.
\oOo/
She couldn’t help looking back one more time as the bus peeled away.
Maybe he’d chase her again. Maybe she’d let him catch her. Or maybe, she’d just become that wolf in the night, ruling in the shadows. Avoiding the light that revealed all the dirt and grime that clung to her, would always cling to her.
