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Death in the Rockies Ch. 01

By: sr71plt



(Death in the Rockies is a ten-chapter novella, the last chapter of which will be post by the end of the first week in October 2011)

I was coming up from a fog; I could hear the buzzing, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was and was struggling with whether I should even care. Where was I and what was I doing when I drifted off? It was dark in the room, but the curtains weren't drawn over the window, so the blue and yellow alternating flashing of the neon sign across the canyon of the street was bathing the room in pulsing, if soft-focus, light, and the noise of not-yet-dead-of-the-night traffic was drifting up from several stories below. I forced my eyes open and saw the bullet head, with the buzz cut, the nose that probably had been broken several times and indifferently set, the scar running from lower eyelid and over the cheek toward the cauliflower ear. Much too close though, and the breath smelled like a beer hall on the morning after. Pulling my head back, I was now staring into a blue-and-black-ink tattoo of a grinning skull on the side of his neck.

Looking down along his body, I saw that he was virtually nude, had the musculature of a body builder, and was breathing deeply and snoring slightly in repose. My own body, stretched along his, was turned slightly toward him as we lay full out on the bed, and I could see that I had my forearm running across his belly and was holding his generous-sized genitals. He had black leather cuffs at his wrists and was wearing heavy hob-nail boots.

In bed. In my bed. Ah, I was remembering at least that much. The room did have a familiarity now that I thought of it. My own bedroom. I hadn't had the small apartment near the village in New York City for long, though, and I had no intention of making this a permanent, or even long-term residence, so I forgave myself the slow uptake.

My head was throbbing, and I was still in a half haze. I'd either drunk too much or not quite enough. I couldn't figure out which. I had the notion that I would have been better off going one way or the other.

I was, however, beginning to remember bits and pieces of the earlier hours of the evening. I was on my way somewhere, but I was out of sorts and stopped in at Benny's on my way for some fortification.

I wondered briefly why'd I'd been out of sorts. The buzzing had stopped but now had started again and I wondered about that. The guy lying next to me snorted in his sleep, and I pulled my hand way from his balls, but I didn't wonder about what he was doing here. I felt that was strange even as I wasn't wondering—I didn't recognize him as anyone I knew. But I felt the pressure to think of something else—and maybe more than one something else—as being more important to think about just then. Somehow I knew that figuring out who this guy was and what he was doing in my bed wasn't my highest priority. Fundamentally, I knew I was the champion of the one night stand. And I wasn't at all surprised this guy was in my bed. He had a monster cock and muscles—and tattoos. Those were almost always enough reason for me—all together or individually.

About all a guy had to do was unzip and pull out something that size and tell me he wanted me, and I was good to go. I had learned long ago that they call guys like me satyriacs, and the sound of that word still made me laugh. I didn't make excuses for it; it was what it was. So, for the most part, I just enjoyed it. Sometimes I concerned myself a bit about not being able to be steady with one guy—and I almost got there once, with Brad. But thinking about that made my head pound so I willed it away.

How had this motorcycle guy type gotten here, though, I wondered. And why did I feel pangs of guilt about that? It had been some time, years, since I'd felt guilty about bringing guys home and letting them fuck me. Even guys I didn't know—especially guys I didn't know. But somehow my mind was telling me I should be someplace else.

But en route to someplace else I'd stopped at Benny's, one of the rougher clientele bars near police headquarters. And I'd been in a deep funk. Yeah, right, now I remembered. It was that thought of not feeling guilty for some time. There was a time when I would have felt guilty, when life was more steady and I was monogamous—if only briefly.

This was Brad's birthday. Brad had been my partner—in more ways than one. This had been in the years when I'd cared enough to live someplace that wasn't a six-floor walkup bathed in blue and yellow pulsing neon lighting from the building across the street. Brad had been murdered two years ago, and I'd been on a downward spiral ever since. Cleaned up his murder, I had, but I was his partner and hadn't been on the ball in our case. If I had been, maybe we would have gotten the guy before he got Brad.

Today was Brad's birthday. I was supposed to go someplace where they were celebrating—not Brad's birthday, but something else I couldn't help being bitter about. And maybe if it wasn't supposed to be a happy time—a beginning—on Brad's birthday, I wouldn't have concentrated on it being an ending—or at least a "never can be again." Maybe I wouldn't have felt so sorry for myself. And maybe I wouldn't have stopped at Benny's for some fortitude.

Obviously I'd had too much of the fortitude. I did remember now the drinking and the boasting and the challenge to dance the pole at Benny's and how well that exercise in pushing the thoughts of Brad and how I'd failed him out of my mind had gone over. Guys—rough-looking guys, when I was feeling like being handled roughly—were working my vanity and playing a yelled-out guessing game of what movie star I looked like while I danced and stripped for them—with a few actually coming up with the name of the matinee idol of years gone by who was, in fact, my father.

I'd obviously made an impression on their libido and they on mine, because here I was, in my bed, next to a lightly snoring biker type with a nice fat dick. I almost regretted that I didn't remember what we did here that tired him out so much that he was sleeping in my bed. It couldn't be much beyond 11:00 PM, I didn't think, gauging from the noises that were coming up from the street.

That part had amazed me when I moved in here—discovering that it didn't take me more than two weeks for my internal clock to set to the differences in the types and volume of sound coming up from the canyon-like New York street. That I didn't need any other clock.

And thinking about the time told me why I was hearing the buzzing off and on.

"Shit," I muttered and turned over toward my nightstand to where I was sitting on the edge of the bed, feet on the cold, dusty tiled floor. A new cell phone. I wasn't used to the ring tone I'd set it to.

I picked the cell phone up and hit the talk button. Didn't even have the chance to say anything.

"Clint, where the hell are you? I've been ringing for an hour."

"Uh, sorry, Chief. Not feeling well; decided to give it a pass, but forgot to call before I hit the sack."

I nearly added a yelp. My answering the cell had awakened the giant, and he had rolled over toward me and had an arm around me. One hand was on my cock and the other one was running under me, snaking between my butt cheeks, a finger pressing up into my hole. I slapped at the hand encasing my cock, and I felt the bed shift as he snorted and rolled over on his back again. The other hand stayed where it was, though, and I felt a second finger pushing into my channel. Visions of memory hit me of earlier—mostly the vague sensation of feeling, though. He had been good with his cock, very good. The memory was almost of more than just his cock in there, a counterpistoning. I didn't wonder why we'd both been exhausted enough to doze off.

"Danny told me that would be the case." Burton was saying into my ear. "He isn't surprised and sore. He said you could catch him on his bachelor's party for the next marriage. Reminded me it's Brad's birthday."

"Thanks. Tell Danny thanks—and that I'll toast him alone some day this week. And sorry, Chief. You're right. I guess I just couldn't party today."

I felt guilty about that, about giving the chief the impression I was alone and just in a funk I wanted to handle in solitary. Obviously, I could party. A vision of the guy on my bed on his back and me straddling him and riding his shaft hard blew through my mind. I was hardening right up and knew what I'd be doing when I clicked the phone off. I was partying. But not in the "new beginnings" way the guys from the squad were partying. I was doing it my own way, my own self-pitying way, I had to acknowledge. But it was my way. And I was hooked into it, even though some of my friends, meaning the best, told me it was self-destructive behavior.

"Won't be toasting him this week," the chief of NYPD Homicide said. "Got a call after you left. You might pack your bags tonight. You'll be going out West tomorrow night. A special assignment. Your specialty. I'll tell you about it when you come to headquarters tomorrow."

"Right, Chief." I didn't need to ask what my specialty was. Whenever they had anything involved with guys doing guys or needed someone who could get close to that, they called on me—not just in New York, but also farther afield. I didn't mind. I guess I knew it was an ideal job for me. I loved being a cop. But I also loved being cocked. And as long as they needed the specialty and knew they needed it, I was safe from the normal rules of serving in the NYPD and didn't have to hide my wants. Because my wants were my wants; as much as I liked being a cop, I couldn't deny my wants.

As I placed the cell phone back on my nightstand, I looked up at hearing an unexpected sound and from suddenly being bathed in light. The door to my bathroom was opening and another guy not unlike the one on my bed, but hairier, scarier, with bigger muscles and hanging even lower than the guy on the bed was standing there, grinning and naked. In the light, I picked out the residue of white powder at his nose and could see beyond him to the glass shelf over the sink, where he'd been cutting his stuff.

Oh fuck, I thought. Not in my own apartment. But then that sort of crime wasn't my look see.

He had a raging hard-on, which I figured now would last for a couple of drug-enhanced hours. I didn't like the idea of the drugs in my place, but the hard on was just fine.

In two strides, he had reached me and pushed me down on my back with a beefy hand pressing on my sternum. I went down with my head on the belly of the other guy on the bed, who gave a grunt, but his belly was so rock hard that I knew I hadn't done any damage there.

I didn't know the drugee from Adam, but I knew I was having a personal pity party, and I knew I liked what I saw between his legs—not just the flesh, but the thick cock ring piercing the bulb of his cock. I gave him a big smile as he roughly grabbed my legs by the meat of my calves, spread-eagled them with a splitting jerk, and thrust his dick inside my channel, splitting me with a thickness that had me arching my back and yelping to the ceiling and him shouting out with pleasure. As he began to pump and I thrilled at the feel of the metal of the ring rubbing on me inside, my hips began to counterpunch as if they had a mind of their own. My channel grabbed the digging monster tool and pulled it deeper inside me. The other guy took my head in his hand and turned it southward on his body, where I saw that he had something rising there for me to work on with my mouth. I moaned and sighed and steeped my senses in the best drug I knew of to remember and then try to forget that it was my Brad's birthday.

But the funk wasn't only because it was Brad's birthday. And I was only beginning to acknowledge that, as I felt the guy who had been stretched out on the bed pull his cock out of my mouth. He changed positions, close behind me now, his chin on my shoulder, his hard nipples pushing at my shoulder blades, the leather wrist cuffs rubbing roughly on the small of my back as his hands moved to and grabbed my waist, working his way under me from the back. The guy crouched between my legs with his bludgeon up my channel was lifting me off the edge of the bed, his meaty hands cupping my butt cheeks, enabling the other guy to move his thighs under my butt, lapping me. I moaned and began to breath in big gulps as I remembered now that it wasn't just him counterpistoning me earlier in the evening.

The biker in front of me whispered something.

"What?" I murmured. In a daze, steeling myself, pumped up with fear and exhilaration. A hill to climb, a challenge to take on, something to transport my mind, focus it on managing a challenge, while knowing it wasn't impossible, because I'd already scaled that height once this night.

"A snort? You want something . . . to help?"

"Nooo," I moaned. "I want it all. I want to feel it . . . working together."

"You're gonna feel mine for sure," he muttered, "'Cause the snort really made me into a horse. You're gonna feel them this time, pretty movie star boy. You're going to squeal." And then he laughed.

I was trembling, shuddering, groaning as I felt the bulb at my entrance, there rubbing the underside of the cock of the biker crouched between my legs. Begging entrance, demanding entrance, gaining an inch, as I panted hard and groaned. Yes, this was what I wanted—what I'd gone to Benny's for. It wasn't just because it was Brad's birthday. It was very much as well because it was Danny's bachelor's party. It was the two, together, pushing me over this edge—seeking this punishment.

Danny's impending wedding. Danny, the young, black stud macho cop, just up from the beat and learning the ropes in Homicide. Strutting around boasting of how much cunt he got—often and from whatever woman he fancied. His tales maddening, because of his hunkiness and the chip on his shoulder and mostly because of what he didn't boast about—that I opened my legs for him on demand too. And had heard him whisper that he loved me—and only me. Danny, who I'd wanted every inch as much as I'd wanted Brad.

I panicked, having second thoughts, even while knowing I'd gone beyond the stage of refusal, both bikers now grunting and straining, not to be denied—knowing they could have it because they'd had it before. But the drugee was right. He'd become a horse. I didn't think . . . I . . . . could. And then I had. "Oh, god," I cried out—squealed just as the biker said I would—as the second splitter worked up into me and the bikers went into a counterpumping sharing. "Oh, god, Yesssss!"

They danced their cocks in my channel. I writhed between their heaving, sweating chests and worked my legs in the air in a bicycle movement in a vain, instinctive movement to master and diminish the filling of their cocks—and, with a cry, shoot my load up a sweaty belly. The bikers laughed and pumped on toward their own ejaculations.

So much to forget.

Death in the Rockies Ch. 02



The Ranchero was a bull-riding bar, complete with sawdust and peanut shells on the floor and a twangy country and western voice singing a "girl done gone up and left me" song assaulted a raucous crowd of men from the rafters. The basement club was set smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, but you'd never know it was there—unless you were a gay male, cruised, and liked both riding and talking the bull.

It was a place where guys could project themselves out of the canyons of skyscrapers by putting on their jeans and checked shirts, red bandanas, cowboy boots, and ten gallon hats and exchanging their workday martinis for mugs of Coors beer and a slug of chawin' tabbaca. And it was a place where cowpokes could mill around and tease each other about riding, and horse hung, and free ranging and might even wind up hooked up for a personal little rodeo.

Those gathered around the bar and sitting in the straight-backed wooden chairs around the oak barrel-based tables wedged up to the edge of the show platform put up a cheer as a voice announced over the loudspeaker. "Time for the bull." There were cat calls and yodels as the voice continued. "First up is our own Jake—just to show those of you just in off the range for the first time how it's done. Then you can try your own hand at it if you want. $30 a ride, unless you do it with just chaps and a jock, in which case it's $10 and any tips you get." An even louder roar met this announcement. "And, oh by the way, if it's Jake you want to ride rather than the bull, that will be $100." The place went wild.

The house went dim and spots came up on the center platform, on which stood—dominating the entire club room—a mechanical bull.

Cheers were renewed as Jake came out from in back of the club and sauntered toward the mechanical bull. He was wearing just a red thong and reddish-brown chaps, a red bandana, a ten-gallon hat, and spurred boots.

The bull began to rock gently as Jake approached it, and he swung up easily into the saddle. Jake was a sandy-haired lad of no more than eighteen or nineteen. Lithe but hard muscled and smooth skinned. Not an ounce of baby fat and a sheepish "oh gosh" grin that made him look inviting and vulnerable all at the same time.

And could he ride a bull. It wasn't long before the bull was tossing this way and that way, but Jake held the saddle and swung his ten-gallon hat above his head. He put on an awesome show, mesmerizing the guys gathered around him, jaws dropped to chests, as they followed the undulating of Jake's bull-worked muscles and dreamed their little dreams.

Jake looked out over the crowd. Times like this he liked picking out the faces, liked looking for the best-looking guy in the crowd and of what he was thinking as he watched Jake ride the bull. Was Jake turning him on, making him think of how much he wanted to ride Jake? This is what Jake did this for—not for the money—but for the thoughts of turning these guys on, of having a room full of horny, good-looking guys, all wanting to fuck him.

One face out there arrested his attention. Not the youngest or best looking of the faces Jake had focused on during the ride. And not adoring and drooling. More intense, more possessive, harder. Jake shivered and pulled his gaze away from that face, looking for what he really liked. But he found he kept returning to that face, which remained immobile, staring him down, pulling him in from across the crowd.

Jake was done, once more taming the bull, and while the voice over the loudspeaker cajoled someone from the crowd to try riding the mechanical device, Jake moved toward the back of the club through an avenue of fans, which parted for his progress as he walked like he was a victorious fighter returning to the dressing room after a knockout. As Jake walked, men were touching him, and talking to him—some dirty, some with admiration, some calling out phone numbers and related propositions—and several were slipping ones and fives in the waistband of his thong. All Jake could see, though, was that one face in the crowd.

If there was more action for him after a bull ride, Ted would be waiting at the back area door with the john and the c-spot in his hand. Nothing like that tonight, though, so Jake pushed on through the beaded curtain separating the club room from the back area warren of corridors and rooms, some of the rooms outfitted with beds in a bunk room motif.

Jake took in a ragged breath as he was walking past the fuck rooms toward his own dressing room when he saw a figure emerge from the shadows. The face from the crowd. Three fifties in his hand.

There was no need to ask what the man wanted, and no reason to haggle. The three fifties said it all. Jake gave the man a look and a nod and the man fell in behind him as Jake continued walking, not to his dressing room now, but to one of the other rooms. 

Jake was down on his knees in front of the guy in one of the bunk rooms, unbuttoning his trousers and pulling out his cock and giving him head, as the guy flicked Jake's shoulders and back with a short riding whip, between bouts of taking Jake's neck in his gloved hands and squeezing his thumbs up into the flesh under Jake's jawbone until he felt dizzy. It was just a flick with just a hint of sting, but Jake knew it would get more involved than this. The look in the face had told him this. The three fifties told him this. But this was the way it was occasionally.

There were plenty of lengths of rope around, carrying out the motif of the cowboy bar, and after the guy with the face produced another fifty, Jake had nothing to say about having his wrists bound together in front of him through the wooden slats at the foot of the bed, and the guy, breathing heavily now, standing behind him and whipping the riding whip around his body—on his chest, across his back and buttocks and the backs of his thighs, while fingering his hole greedily with searching, stretching gloved fingers.

Jake's eyes did go wide, though, when his bandana was stripped off him and roughly forced between his teeth so that the only sounds he could make were muffled grunts and groans as the lash increasingly bit into his tender skin.

He went up on his toes and widened his stance with an internal scream when the guy's dick thrust up inside him, and he writhed about under the combined fury of the whip and the fucking, bucking like the bull he had just ridden, but with as little effect on the strength of the cocking by his rider as he had had with the mechanical bull. A length of rope was whipped around his neck, and he arched his back toward the source of the heavy breathing—not voluntarily or even by instinct, but because the rope was cutting into his flesh, forcing his neck back, wishboning his body. Another length of the rope was whipped over his head and around his neck the rope was being knotted . . . and pulled tight.

The dick inside him was thrusting in deep jabs . . . up into the center of him. Jake was gagging and coming, his eyes were bulging, he couldn't breathe. Jake's legs had gone to rubber; he couldn't support himself. He was held up by the power of the other guy's thighs under his. The guy with the face was panting hard and making guttural noises, and above all else—the pain, the tight straining back of his torso, gagging and lack of breath—Jake felt the guy with the face coming as well—in short, powerful condom-sheathed bursts and jerks deep inside him.

But neither the bucking or the tightening of the rope lessened. Jake couldn't breathe. He just couldn't . . .



Death in the Rockies Ch. 03



The longer I sat in Lieutenant Burton Kahn's office, the worse I felt about how I'd let myself go—knowing full well I'd just keep on doing it. I wasn't even sure I could withstand the pressure from Danny.

"Come to the layover room with me," he'd breathed in my ear when I'd entered the squad room, summoned by Burton to find out why I'd packed my duffel bag for traveling.

That wasn't where the conversation had started, of course.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry about missing your bachelor party," I'd said when I'd entered the room and all nearly seven foot of black, overpowering muscle named Danny Thompson had uncoiled himself from the desk across from mine and slowly sauntered up to me, his eyes boring into mine, hooded so I couldn't quite tell which way he was going to go with this.

There were some others in the squad room, but the bulk of them were off at the side doing a play-by-play on the Yankees' close loss the night before on the baseball diamond, and the ones who weren't chiming in on that were on the telephone, creating or following up leads on their cases.

We were partners, so there was no reason why anyone in the room should think twice about Danny and me having a close conversation, even a tense one. Everyone knew what I was; but they didn't suspect Danny in the least. Danny was getting married in a week. 

"It's OK, I understand about it being Brad's birthday and all," Danny answered. He was staring me down, giving me an out.

"It isn't about Brad," I answered. I should have taken the opening, I knew. But we were partners on the dangerous streets. We had to be straight with each other. And this had to be settled. Otherwise we couldn't work together—we will have lost our edge. And that could mean death on the streets.

"Sharenda needn't change anything," Danny said in a low voice.

"Sharenda changes everything, Danny," I shot back.

"Come to the layover room with me, Clint. I expected my party to go on after the other guys left last night. You spoiled it. I understand, but the party wasn't complete."

"It's time to put an end to this, Danny. I should have stopped as soon as I heard you were getting married."

"I never told you I didn't fuck women," Danny said, letting the hurt show in his voice. "I gotta have it. You know that."

Yes, I knew that—knew that very well. My black hunk of a lover was oversexed. That had never been a secret. And with what he had between his legs, he could have just about anything that walked that he wanted. He certainly didn't have any trouble having me.

But it had to stop. "Fucking whoever you want is fine when you're single, Danny. But not when you're married. You don't just cheapen what you have with Sharenda; you also cheapen me—what we've had together—by not seeing the difference."

And then I just walked on by him and into the lieutenant's office, and entered another world, a world where under similar circumstances to mine, different choices had been made—choices that sometimes—like now—made me feel tawdry and weak.

The lieutenant wasn't in yet. So I had to wait, wait in the world he'd created after his Mariah had died. Kahn had been left alone—as suddenly and irrevocably as I had when Brad had been murdered and almost at the same time.

He'd come home from the precinct one night after a hard, bloody day on a case—to find Mariah on the floor, dead from a heart attack at a shockingly young age. She'd been there most of the day, the coroner said, turning stone cold on the linoleum floor in front of the kitchen sink, while Burton had been on the street, tracking down a killer who had robbed a liquor store for less than $100 in cash and shot dead the clerk and three patrons in the process.

Mariah had been Kahn's life, all he could talk about in those days I first knew him. He had always said that going home to Mariah every night was all that kept him sane and balanced in his job of catching and putting away sleaze balls.

And yet, when my Brad had been murdered, and his Mariah had left him without so much as a good-bye, Kahn was the one who had managed to control himself; I was the one who had folded and had let myself go wild in grief and blaming everyone but myself—because I knew that I should have been able to prevent Brad's death. And, without Brad there, slowly pulling me back to a more stable life and not so much whoring around, I'd been overcompensating in that department, although there, just for a few brief months, I thought Danny was going to be a Brad for me.

I looked around Kahn's office as I waited for him to prepare. Whereas I had fallen apart—punished myself by moving to a walkup in a seedy part of town and just letting myself go wild to forget—Burton had withdrawn into his job and made it a fortress of the world he'd known. His office, small as it was, was more like the life he had had before Mariah died. It was a self-contained slice of the home he hadn't been able to go back to after finding his wife dead on the kitchen floor. In addition to his desk, he'd brought in a rug, an overstuffed chair, a sofa, and knick knacks and mementos from the home he'd shared with Mariah. And her photograph. There was one on his desk and one on the side table next to the sofa and one on the bookshelf behind the sofa.

I didn't have any photographs of Brad. Whereas I, in guilt, wanted to forget, Kahn, in reverence, wanted to remember.

I couldn't look at the photos of Mariah as I sat there, waiting for Kahn to come down from his morning meeting with the brass two flights up. When I looked at her photo all I saw was Sharenda.

"Thanks for coming in, Clint. I know you'd asked for the day off. This came up, though, and we need to get you out to Denver later today."

"Denver?"

I looked across the desk at Kahn. He was all business, but I could see he was a bit distracted. He kept looking at the photographs of Mariah. His anniversary was about to come up as well.

"Yes, well, over the mountains from there. A dude ranch in the Rockies—across the mountains from Denver."

"I don't know if I have the clothes for—"

"You won't need much in the way of clothes where you're going. They'll provide what you need. It's that kind of assignment. Your kind of thing. And highest priority from upstairs."

"Maybe you'd best start from the beginning," I said.

"You've heard of Giacomo Arcardi and Lorenzo Rapino, haven't you?"

"Sure. The heir apparents of two of the busiest crime families in the state. Except Lorenzo's dead, isn't he? Murdered nearly a year ago—a pretty sordid sex thing, if I remember rightly."

"You do. And Jason Jenks? You know who he is?"

"Jason Jenks? I'm not sure. The only Jason Jenks I can think of . . ." But then I stopped. I couldn't see any connection.

"The mystery writer—the crime novelist, yes. That Jason Jenks. You're being called in because of where those three connect."

"Go on. I'm dying to hear what this has to do with Denver."

"Nothing," Kahn said. And then he laughed. "I said across the Rockies from there. A dude ranch—a special dude ranch—to be specific. I'm sure you can appreciate what it would mean in this city for the Arcardis and Rapinos to be set against each other."

"Major war. Blood on the streets. Probably a lot of collateral damage"

"Right. And that's what we've just about got. War between those two. And all because of Jason Jenks."

"He's written about them?"

"You could say so. His publisher brought it to our attention. Jenks isn't cooperating, and thus far there's not much we can do about it. But we are beginning to get across to him, we think, that he needs to tell us more of what he knows, more of where he got what he's written about—hopefully before his latest novel comes out, and certainly before any of the Rapinos read the book."

"So, this is about Lorenzo's murder?"

"Yes, if you'll recall, Lorenzo was found dead in a hotel room—naked—suffocated to death and covered with bruises. There was semen, so it was logged as a sex crime. But it turned out to be his own semen. He'd been fucked—whether willingly or not, we don't know—but the assailant had used a condom."

"And the connection to Giacomo Arcardi and Jenks?"

"Jenks has written a book about a murder closely paralleling the death of Lorenzo Rapino—and the murderer in his book closely parallels the real-life Giacomo Arcardi. When that book comes out, we're afraid the shit will hit the fan—that the Rapinos will decide that Jenks has evidence linking Giacomo to the murder and a full-scale crime family war will break out. There are a couple of wrinkles. First, this isn't the only murder like this in the city in the last year. We think there have been at least three murders with the same MO. And Jenks is dragging his feet on us and we may be running out of time on finding out if he can help us solve the case."

"How so?"

"There's an indication the Arcardis have gotten wind of the book. Someone's already been trying to buy up the rights to the book from the publisher, probably to squelch publication. And if the Arcardis know about it, we have to assume the Rapinos do too. We're afraid that Jenks might be in danger as well. It's not just the book that would have to be squelched if the Arcardis want to bury this."

"And so, I'm supposed to hold Jenks's hand until you've gotten whatever you want out of him—including through a trial, if he has to testify?"

"Well, more than his hand—and we don't want him to know we're watching over him—and we'd like to get him to talk to someone if it isn't to us directly."

I raised my eyebrow. "And so?"

"He's gay. He's promiscuous. And he likes younger, handsome, athletic-cut men. That's you."

"And this dude ranch beyond Denver?"

"It's a gays-only retreat. He's going there whether we like it or not—we don't have any means to keep him here and don't want to encourage him to clam up by letting him know the danger he could be in. It's called the Big O Ranch—very openly a gay sex service for wealthy men. We've already arranged to put you on the staff. The owner will cooperate in putting you close to Jenks—both to protect him and to find out what, if anything, he knows that will close this case and get this serial killer off the streets—using your special talents."

At that point, one of the other guys poked his head in the door, and gruffly announced. "We're up, Chief. Another gay suffocation murder. Over in Chelsea."

Kahn stood up from behind his desk and quizzed the other officer briefly as he strapped his gun holster on.

"Where in Chelsea?"

"In a leather cowboy bar, the Ranchero. One of their bull-riding performers. Young guy. Found him in one of their special back rooms. Pretty well marked up and snuffed."

I stood. "So, should I—?"

"No," Kahn said. "You need to get to admin and collect your tickets and per diem. This will clear the squad room—got to get them out on the street and both milking their sources and tamping down the communities. Danny will stay long enough to brief you on who to report to and how to report back. I briefed him yesterday. You need to get on a plane to Denver."

The squad room was deserted when I came up from admin. The light was on in Kahn's office, though, so that's where I headed.

Danny was there, sitting behind Kahn's desk, watching the door.

"OK, Danny," I said as I entered the office. "Chief told me you'd brief me."

"I will, but first, shut the door."

I did so.

"Now strip. First I want you. I want you bad."

"Danny, no. It's over. Not again."

"Once. Just once. You'll be in Denver. I'm transferring to Los Angeles. Sharenda's got a job out there, and I can get one. No problem. Once more, and then you won't see me again."

"Danny, no," I said. But then he stood up and I saw that he was naked from the waist down. And he was unbuttoning his shirt, showing me that magnificent, shiny-black body of his. And what was between his legs, stiff and standing proud. Wanting me.

And I wanted it. I couldn't help myself.

At least I had a small shred of decency left. Before I stripped, I turned down the photos of Mariah, Burton's Mariah, on the bookcase and the side table—and then, as Danny lowered me on my back on the top of Kahn's desk and moved his meaty, brown thighs between mine and brought his huge, jet-black cock to my puckering hole, I turned over the photo on Kahn's desk as well—and, because I knew that it was what Danny wanted, the signal of my complete surrender to him, I reached down and grasped his cock in both of my hands and thrust my hips up, impaling my channel on the tool that I had loved moving inside me so much.

We fucked like there was no tomorrow—as, indeed, there wasn't for us. And then, after he pounded me to my ejaculation on the desk, I made the surrender complete, as he pulled me up and back across the rug and sat down in the sofa, and I came down into his lap, straddling his still-hard cock and fucked myself as he leaned his head down and feasted on my nipples—for the last time, I thought.

But the surrender was more complete than that.

"I can't give you up, man, you know that," he whispered in my ear. "When I want you again, you gonna give it me?"

"No."

"Make that a yes, man."

"Yes," was all I said in reply. Now the surrender was complete.

"And tonight? My place? Sharenda's got an all-night bachelorette party to go to."

"If that's what you want," I muttered. And as his hands went to my butt cheeks, pulling them apart to make deeper room for him inside me, I put my face in the hollow of his neck and then started to slow pump him. 



Death in the Rockies Ch. 04



"Shit."

"What is it? What's wrong?" Lieutenant Kahn asked sotto voce. We were walking, being carried along by far too many people, I thought, to be out and about at 9:00 am. We were trying to get to the gate for my flight to Denver, connecting through Chicago. At the moment, though, I was grateful for the crowd, even though their chatter was exploding in my skull like bombs going off in a cave. I shouldn't have had that farewell night with Danny last night. I should have told him that what he got on Kahn's desktop was all he was going to get. But I'm weak that way. And, truth be known, if Danny tracked me down after he and Sharenda got hitched, I knew I'd still give him what he wanted—no matter how many times I said no. I had already checked on the air flights to L.A. Back to L.A., I should say. I was raised there—in the Hollywood environment. But I had avoided the place once I'd escaped it. All it took, though, was the feel of Danny to get me to consider going back.

"At our gate coming up," I whispered to the lieutenant. "Isn't that Giacomo Arcardi, surrounded by a phalanx of goons? I'm sure it is. Don't look hard enough that they'll look at you. Let me slip in on the other side of you."

"Shit."

"I've said that already. What were the chances I'd be on the same flights as him? Could it be that he's going to Denver too? If so, is he staking Jenks out. If he's head to the ranch, we can't let him see that I've come from New York too. He might get suspicious. I'm vetted as coming from Chicago."

"Shit."

"You're full of help, Burton. Keep walking—down to gate 26. There's a crowd down there waiting to board a flight. We've got to figure this out."

By the time we got down there, I had a plan, and, thankfully, Kahn caught on to it immediately and was able to get it done.

"Also, while you're at it," I said as he was getting up to execute the plan, "have your guy in airport security check the seating. If I'm not way in the back and Arcardi is way in the front, do what you can to get the seating juggled."

Twenty minutes flat—well, more like twenty-two, which I would forgive Kahn because of his age and the trotting distance back to the main terminal hall, Burton was back.

"It's all arranged. This here is Hal; he'll take you down to the tarmac and back up to the onramp into the plane so you can be in and seated before anyone else is loaded onto the plane. Just remember, if he's going through to Denver, to hang back on the Chicago arrival and then make like you are boarding for the first time in Chicago. You were seated way in the back anyway and Arcardi and friends are up in first class."

"No problem with identifying me to the flight crew as an undercover air marshal?" I said.

"Nope. It was a piece of cake as long as we promised you weren't carrying. You aren't, are you?"

"Of course not. Would we have gotten through security if I had been?"

"Maybe," Burton said. And then he laughed. "This is LaGuardia, you know."

"Yeah, you're right," I answered with an accompanying snort.

Hal frowned in disapproval and Kahn, knowing who was doing who a favor, apologized.

"So it's all set," Burton then said. "Go, go, go. They'll start to board soon. Problem solved."

"I hope," I answered.

"What? What's not taken into account?"

"We gotta hope the plane isn't hijacked between here and Chicago," I responded with a laugh. "Then I'd be expected to do heroics—without anything to do it with."

"You could use the in-flight magazine," Burton answered. "I've gotten paper cuts from those before."

"Yeah, right. Thanks boss. Keep in touch."

And, with that, I followed Hal toward a hidden door in the wall at gate 26 with a staircase on the other side going down to the tarmac.

* * * *

"You see that gentleman over there? He wonders if you'd like to catch a drink with him before we board. It's a long, dry ride to Denver."

I looked up in a shock I didn't need to feign at the big bruiser who was standing over me where I sat at the gate in Chicago waiting for the flight on to Denver. I didn't even have to look where he was pointing to know that Giacomo Arcardi was over there giving me the eye. It had been a real wrinkle in the plan to see he was headed to Denver as well. I was going because we were afraid his family would track Jenks down; no one planned for him to be out there ahead of Jenks, though. He'd watched me approach from down the corridor where I'd sprinted when I came off the flight from New York so that I could wander back pretending I was just now boarding in Chicago.

"Ummm, thanks, but flying and alcohol don't mix well with me. Tell him thanks for me, please." I had told Kahn that I shouldn't be dressing like a male escort for this trip, but he'd said it was never too early to get into character. Bad idea, though, I thought. This was getting to be like a premature ejaculation. Arcardi was the suspect—the guy we presumed I'd be trying to protect Jason Jenks from. I could probably do it OK from in his bed, but at least we could wait until we got to the ranch. Of course he had no idea we'd be meeting at the ranch—I hoped. But he already was a couple of steps ahead of us, so who knows?

Our informant had told us until this morning as we were leaving for the airport that Arcardi was on the move too, but we didn't figure that he might be going to the ranch too. Even if he'd thought that was possible, we didn't have time to figure all of the possible angles on why Jenks and Arcardi were headed for the same place when the game plan was to keep them as far apart as possible. With luck, it was a coincidence, and Arcardi was headed elsewhere.

"Well, when we get to Denver, then. You need a ride somewhere from the airport? The gentleman would be quite happy."

"Well, ummm. I think I'm being met. I—"

"He really wants to meet you. He's willing to pay you—generously—for your time. Or am I wrong that—?"

"Mr. Folsom? Mr. Clint Folsom? Is that you, sir?"

I could have kissed the agent—except that she was a woman, and I'd sworn off them years ago. Still, she was a welcome woman. She was all decked out in the airline's uniform, so both I and the bruiser instantaneously knew that this was a business call.

"Yes, that's me?" I stood in the presence of the voice of airline authority and gave both the bruiser, and, turning, the "gentleman" across the waiting lounge an apologetic "if only" look, and then turned my full attention to the young lady.

"Excuse me, Mr. Folsom, can I ask you to come back to the ticketing desk for a moment. There's something security wants to check in your bag."

Sure, I said. It obviously was going to be the two handguns I was carrying, but, as I had permits to transport those, I wasn't too worried. That wasn't it, though. When we got to the ticketing desk, the young woman looked perplexed.

"He was here just a few minutes ago. I'm sorry; could you wait here just—?"

"That's OK, Maryanne. I'll take it from here," another, older, and obviously more authoritative airline uniform said from across the counter—a man this time.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Folsom, there's been a slight mistake. You're all clear. If you can just wait here a few minutes, we'll see that you get on your flight."

And he did just that—seeing that I got back to the gate just in time for the tourist class boarding. It was all done very professionally—but it left me wondering who was looking out for me here in Chicago. I obviously had been saved from an encounter with Giacomo Arcardi, which prematurely could have gone too many unwanted ways. I looked around to see who my shadow might be. As I entered the gangway, I saw him and he gave a wink at me, acknowledging that he had been made—a well-built guy with a bullet-shaped bald head and a handlebar mustache—so conspicuous he was almost unnoticeable—maybe early forties, and U.S. Marines written all over him, although he was decked out like a cowboy now, with plaid silver-studded chambray shirt over faded blue jeans, serious ranch boots, and a Stetson in his hand.

We had to pass Arcardi and his thugs as we moved down the aisle to the back of the plane. I couldn't help but make eye contact with him as I passed, and I answered his smile with one of my own—I didn't want to alienate the man; I just didn't want him to fire off prematurely. The Marine cowboy, pushing me along from behind, though, helped me get past the gauntlet until I was safely beyond the curtain line separating first class from cattle car.

I found my seat and the big angel with the Stetson kept moving back to an aisle seat two rows behind me, where he'd be able to see the back of my head.

I spent the first half of the flight lamenting that I had a middle seat wedged between a woman with a screaming infant and an overweight businessman with something going wrong with his sweat glands. But I spent the second half of the flight blessing their presence, as Arcardi had taken a circuit of the aisle from the front of the plane to the back, obviously looking for me, because he hesitated in the aisle as he approached my seat and saw me. He obviously was disappointed to find there was no open seat next to me and no opportunity even to speak to me of what he wanted. From the looks he'd given me back in the Chicago airport, there was no mystery about what he wanted from me.

* * * *

The next hurdle came when we landed at Denver International Airport. I'll have to hand it to Arcardi; he wasn't anything if not persistent. But at this point, I was logging into a system—and one with rules and leverage.

It was almost comical—me trouping down to the baggage claim area and one of Arcardi's goons trouping along behind me—followed by bullet head with the handlebar mustache and the Stetson. And who knows who else might have been following along in the tail end.

At the curb, a little guy—kind of cute, with his hair in a pony tail, a small but nicely built sandy-haired lad—was holding a sign that said "Big O Ranch" on it and was leaning against a black stretch limousine. Behind this was parked an even stretchier Lincoln Navigator limo, looking like it was about to swallow the ranch's limo. And standing at the door of this one was the bruiser who had tried to hook me up with Arcardi back in Chicago. A back window of the Navigator was rolled down a third of the way, and I could see that Arcardi was already in there. So much for the mystery of where Arcardi was headed.

I walked up to the Big O Ranch limousine and started to say something to Little Sandy, but another, big-muscled guy standing next to him interjected himself and said, "You Folsom?"

I looked at him and determined right away that he was the authority figure of this outing. He was a no-nonsense type of guy. Crew cut, yet another tattooed retired Marine clone, and wearing ranch work clothes. He had been handsome once, but he'd been in probably three too many equal-strength fights.

At my nod, he said, "I'm Butch," to which I thought, "I'm sure you are."

He added, "I'm the foreman of the Big O. Get on in the car. Sit on a jump seat. We're waiting for a couple of paying customers before we can pull out."

Before I could do as he said—being quite willing to do so, Arcardi's bruiser walked over and said, "He connected to the ranch, Butch?"

"Yep. A new hand; gonna be a 'T' wrangler if he vets out," Butch answered. I was impressed that the bruiser was on first-name basis with the Big O's foreman. When I thought about it I wasn't all that surprised, though. I'd been told that Arcardi was a regular at the ranch, which is why our guys had tried so hard to dissuade Jason Jenks from going there. And at the time, I'd thought it was an unfortunate coincidence if Jenks was going to hide out in the very den of the man he should be avoiding—which was how it was panning out. But then Kahn had reminded me that Jenks wouldn't admit he was in any trouble at all and that it stood to reason he'd come in contact with Arcardi before if he'd put an Arcardi character in one of his books.

"Mr. Arcardi would like Folsom to ride to the ranch with him, please," the bruiser said.

I didn't have a chance to say how much I didn't like that idea. Butch stood his ground while pushing at my shoulder. I got the hint and folded myself down and entered the back of the limo and listened to the rest of the short exchange from the relative safety of the jump seat.

"That's against the ranch rules, Tony. I'm sorry. But this guy ain't been signed in yet at the ranch. Mr. Arcardi and you guys can get a crack at him once vetting is done and contracts have been signed and all. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. The way you do it, you'll be glad the liability is all worked out beforehand."

"I'll ride in the other car," I heard a squeaky voice say, and I looked out onto the pavement to be sure that it had been Little Sandy who said it. "You said we'd maybe be crowded in this car if all the customers showed up you were expecting."

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Jess. You maybe don't know how—" Butch started to say. But then the bruiser had a say of his own.

"Mr. Arcardi's gonna be disappointed and keyed up, I think. It might be best if I ask him what he wants."

"Well, OK, Tony. But make it snappy. I see what looks like the others I expect on this run claiming their baggage and headed this way. We'll see you out at the ranch. We have a stop to make a pickup at the Denver Swim Club of another new hand."

Ten minutes later, Little Sandy—who apparently I should now be calling Jess—was gone to the other limo, and three men in suits—two upper middle age and one not so old, all looking quite prosperous—and all giving me the eye—were stretched along the back wall of the limo on the comfortable seat and facing me in one of the jump seats. That left the jump seat next to me open, but I'd heard Butch say we'd be picking another guy up at a swim club. I had to munch on that for a couple of minutes, because it seemed a rather odd rendezvous spot. But, whatever, I was glad to be in this car and not in the Navigator. I didn't particularly like the worried expression on Butch's face when Jesse skipped off toward Arcardi's limo.

During the ride out to Interstate 40 from the terminal and then west on East Colefax, the three guys took turns leering at me and asking me pretty personal questions and vying with each other for Mr. Desirable. I understood the role I was supposed to play, so I teased and flirted back. Two of the guys—the older ones—were regular customers at the ranch—men I recognized from public life but would certainly not let on that I did under these circumstances. This was the first time for the younger guy, he said. That was a pity, as the two older ones were ahead of the younger one on what to say and what might happen out at the ranch. They were far ahead of me on that score too, so I mostly just smiled and said I was new and would have to learn the ropes. Both of the experienced guys offered to show me the ropes—and I said we'd have to see what I was supposed to do when we got there. They introduced themselves to me as Ted, Jim, and Cliff. Jim, the younger guy, was naïve enough to have given me what I thought was a real name. Of course the other two didn't.

When we stopped at the Denver Swim Club, I got the idea right off the bat. It was an adobe-looking low building with a walled enclosure off to the side. The way it was hiding itself from scrutiny from the street told me the score. No windows and a neon sign over the top of the building telling me what it was. One door and I could see a booth at the side right at the entrance inside. It screamed of gay bath and nightclub. Duh.

"Wait in the car," Butch said, as he climbed out of the limo at the door. "I'll go in and get him."

While he was gone, a big black Navigator limo pulled up behind us and went on idle. Arcardi was still lurking around, I could see.

Butch came out a few minutes later with an irritated expression on his face and steam coming out of his ears. "The guy's not here yet," he said. I could see he was fighting himself for control, and I guessed he was only doing so because there were three customers in the back.

"Would you gentleman like to spend a hour or two here?" he asked. "The ranch is sorry for the inconvenience, but you might like to get a taste of what Colorado has to offer before we get out to the ranch. At the ranch's invitation, of course."

"I don't know. We—" the uninitiated Jim started to say. But both of the experienced guys shot forth with a "Yes, that would be fine." Obviously they already knew what Colorado had on offer—and they didn't mind imbibing in it.

As we all started to climb out of the car, Butch put a hand on my sternum and muttered, "Not you, Folsom. Wait in the car for us." But then he tensed as he looked around, and he changed his tune. "OK, yes, you come in. But you stay back with me at a table. Nothin' happens til you're at the ranch and have signed the contract. Understand?"

"Fine with me," I answered. It was, indeed, fine with me, because as the three customers were on their way to the door of the swim club, the doors of the Navigator limo were opening too and Arcardi and his two goons were slowly disembarking.

I thought Butch was a pretty quick thinker. If Arcardi wanted me, it would have been a snap to do it while Butch and the ranch's customers were in the club and I was out here by my lonesome. I didn't see Arcardi as one to be overly controllable by ranch rules—or to be quickly punished for not adhering to them off the ranch property.

I was a little worried at Butch's concern, though. Guys must be fucking all around him at the ranch. I could only assume that he knew that it wouldn't be a simple fuck with Arcardi—so maybe Arcardi was living up to why we were pussyfooting around him and thinking he might be a serial snuff killer.

The Denver Swim Club was pretty much what I expected—but probably a little better. It did, indeed have a very nice outdoor club area—in the walled enclosure I'd seen when we drove up—and the pool was filled with some pretty interesting men. So was the main club area.

Butch had me tag along until he got the three customers paired up satisfactorily and then he took me to a table in the corner, with wall on two sides, and sat me back in the corner, with him sitting point. Arcardi and his goons took a table nearby, but Arcardi was quickly distracted by a flouncy little thing with black hair and blue eyes, and he disappeared toward the pool. The goons relaxed then and just sort of turned off, no doubt grateful for the down time.

I sat and watched our young customer, Jim, being fucked by a younger, thinner guy on a sling over by a red-painted wall. Jim was doing most of the movement, leveraging the soles of his bare feet off the wall—and he was doing a good enough job of it for me to reassess how naïve he was. In the limo, I'd found myself wanting to be more friendly with Jim at the ranch—but now I saw that we probably wouldn't be matching up. Certainly not when he realized he wanted what I wanted too.

After about a half an hour, a guy sauntered into the room who had Robert Redford looks and a chip-on-his-shoulder attitude. He talked to the guy at the entry booth for a moment, who gestured over to our table, and then the guy meandered—not fast enough to indicate he cared that he was late—over to our table and held out his hand to Butch and said, "Hi, I'm Chuck. You're supposed to take me out to the Big O ranch, I've been told." He looked good from my angle, but he also looked spoiled and "I'm so fine, and I know it." Butch ignored the proffered hand and stood and said he'd like to talk to Chuck over in the locker room.

They were only gone for five minutes or so, but when they came back Chuck had a bloody nose and didn't look quite so "I'm so fine."

"OK, fifteen more minutes, and you two go out to the limo while I round up the customers," Butch growled. And then he turned to a chastened Chuck and added, "And the entry fees for tonight come out of your first paycheck, hot shot."




Death in the Rockies Ch. 05



I got rousted out myself not long after dawn the next morning. I was pretty sore and afraid I wouldn't be able to walk a straight line and would be wearing a sloppy grin all day, but I needed to get the lay of the place before Jason Jenks, the novelist I was supposed to keep alive, arrived. And I also needed to get my expected routine down, now that I had been vetted by ranch management. 

I'd been ridden hard the previous night as part of an indoctrination into my "expected" routine—but it was no more than I was expecting. I wasn't all that sure just how much the ranch management had been told about who I really was and why I was here, because if they were letting up on me, I'd hate to know how they initiated a guy coming in to work the line for them for real.

Right off the bat in the morning I learned what the costume was going to be for the guys working the line. When I woke, my new uniform was laying at the end of my bunk. There was a jock strap, a pair of tight, worn low-rise jeans with a zipper up the back, buttons at the crotch, and a tube of lube and a string of condoms in the pockets, a pair of leather chaps, workman-looking cowboy boots, a red bandana scarf, leather wrist bands, and a cowboy hat. And that was all. I thought back to what little the guys were wearing who came out to help scrape what was left of Jesse off the floor of Giacomo Arcardi's limousine the previous evening when we'd arrived. It had essentially been the same thing—except for the guy they called "Doc," who was older and was wearing a checked brushed-cotton shirt as well—and I could see that this was how it was going to be for the guys hired here as wranglers.

That's pretty much how the head guy at the ranch, "Side" Slade, had laid it on the line for me when Butch took me in to see him soon after we'd arrived and Jesse had been carted off on a stretcher.

His office was empty when I was taken there and told to keep standing and waiting for Side to arrive.

"Side?" I asked.

"It's short for his nickname," Butch said gruffly. "Sidewinder. That's what we call him. I don't rightly remember his real name." Then he laughed. "A sidewinder's a snake, and Side can be a real snake, but I reckon he got the name because he's got a real snake. And he's got a fetish too. You stay around long enough and he takes a fancy to you and you'll probably find that out. But no need for you to know more than that now. We don't do a lot of gossiping here. It's part of the service. Privacy, silence, obedience, and no talk back. That's what we want from the 'T' wranglers."

"The 'T' wranglers?" I couldn't resist asking. I remembered hearing him refer to me that way back at the airport—but there'd been too much going on then for me to ask about it.

"The takers. Bottoms. That's what you're booked in as. Any problems with that?"

"No," I said, giving him a steady look.

"There are the 'G' wranglers—the givers—the tops," he added. "We don't tell the clients at this ranch which ones they want. They self-select. They pay through the nose to get what they want at this ranch and we give it to them. Now that's enough tellin' for you now. You stand right here. Side'll be in in a few minutes. He's doin' the greetin' thing with the guests who came in. He'll tell you some of what there is to do, and when he's done with you, I want you to use those stairs you saw in the hall as we came in and go down them. I'll be down there, and I'll tell you how's it gonna be in the peckin' order around here and git you all squared away."

While I waited, I looked around the room. It was large, maybe twenty by twenty feet and all decked out in Western-style junk that I was to find set the motif of the dude ranch. This was what one who went to the movies in the sixties would expect a rich cattle rancher's house to be decorated with. But it went beyond the pale; it was almost Disneyesque. My parents, who lived at a ranch and were actually in movies like that in the eighties, as the genre was winding down, didn't decorate like this. There was a buffalo head and a buffalo skin on the wall and Navajo blankets all over the pine floors and pine walls. Crossed Indian spears, with feathers hanging off of them, and Winchester rifles also decorated the walls and there even was a fancy saw horse covered in horse hide with an elaborate leather saddle on it. The overstuffed sofas and chairs were covered in cracked blood-red leather and the desk in the center of the room was big and heavy in some sort of dark wood. The ceiling was almost two stories up and two wagon wheel chandeliers flanked one made out of the horns of antelope.

"So you're Folsom," a booming voice sounded behind me. I turned in surprise, expecting a mountain of Wild West bluster and splendor, but finding a man in his late fifties who was thin and tall and range worn. In contrast to the office, this man looked authentic—not movies authentic, but actual rough-life cattle ranching authentic. What he was wearing screamed of dude ranch, though. White shirt with fancy black patches and sliver studs everywhere and tight black jeans descending into cowboy boots with so much silver roping and studding on them that they gleamed in the light from the wagon wheel chandeliers overhead.

"Sadie told me she was sending you. Recommended you highly and told me how she wanted you used. Very unusual. You fucking Sadie? You a favorite boy toy of hers? I want to know what I'm dealing with right off the top."

"No, sir. I don't even know who Sadie is. I was just working in Chicago and told I was being shifted out here."

"Strange very strange. She owns the place. Usually I go shopping and pick out my own wranglers. Sadie knows that. This is the first one she's sent. I didn't really know what to expect. Take off your shirt. Let's see what it is that Sadie would recommend." 

I stripped off my blue dress shirt, holding it below my waist in back without taking my arms all the way out of the armholes, a pose I'd learned men liked during a slow strip. Then I stood there, in the center of the room, under the antelope chandelier as Slade moved around me, assessing and hemming and hawing. I tried to look fetchingly demure, eyes down and a half smile on my face and a lock of hair hanging down across my eyes—a pose in "oh gosh" innocence I'd learned from watching my daddy on the screen. Slade put his hands in play, running them over my muscles and torso. He prodded and made a fist and pounded my pecs, none too lightly, to check out my musculature.

"Ummm. Not too bad. Sadie knows her flesh. And a well-studied stance. Some clients will harden up on that alone. You been told what we do here at this ranch, what you'll be doing here?"

"More or less," I answered.

He was standing up real close to me. He cupped my chin and pulled my face up so that he was looking down into my eyes. His were black and beady, and I could clearly see the resemblance to a snake. He was smiling, but even that had a cold, cruel, snakelike edge to it. He had the palm of his other hand on my belly. And he held my chin and my eyes, gauging my reaction as his hand moved down over my belt and tightened over my dick through the material of my trousers. I did what I could not to flinch or lose eye contact or put anything into my expression that would indicate either anger or reluctance.

"You sure you're a taker?" he asked. "You feel like a giver. I was told you were a taker."

"I can do either," I answered in a steady voice. "I prefer to bottom, though."

"We call that a 'T' wrangler here. Did you know that?"

"I was told that much, yes," I answered. "Not much more." I took the "no gossip" to heart. I didn't want to finger Butch for telling me anything at all. Butch looked very much like someone I didn't want to be on the bad side of—which meant Butch looked pretty damn good to me.

"The guys who dick we call 'G' wranglers. For 'giver.' You'll soon see the difference. The clients can see the difference. Strip all the way down for me, please. And if you think you can make it entertaining, do."

I slowly stripped down as he walked off and leaned his butt against the desk top, which was clear of everything but a blotter.

"Yeah, slow like that. The zipper slow. You'll see that you will have jeans with buttons. If the client wants, work those slow. And you'll have a jock, but if you know already the client wants a show, lose it beforehand. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Turn for me, please. You sure you're not fucking Sadie?"

"No, sir, I'm not."

"You're prime, though. How'd she know that, I wonder."

I was prepared for this. "I model. There's a portfolio. And I've got a DVD or two out—me with other guys. Maybe she's seen those. And . . . and . . . I have worked in the Crystal Lounge in Chicago."

"Ah, that must be it. She owns that too. Someone there must have told her you'd fit in here. If she's seen your photos, that probably would have told her a lot too."

"Yeah, maybe that," I answered.

"Doesn't say why she'd let you go from Chicago though. You must have been real popular there."

"Ummm, I think they might have been following my preferences. I've heard of this place. I wanted to try it out. Chicago was a bit . . ." I acted that I couldn't quite find the words.

"Refined? Tame?"

"Yeah, yeah, I guess that's it."

"Mean you like it rougher than you were getting in Chicago? More cowboy style?"

"Yeah, I guess something like that." This was all back story that had been carefully constructed. I was a little nonplused, though, as I didn't know if this guy knew more of why I was here than he was telling—which is what I would have assumed—that maybe he was afraid someone was listening to us and was just being careful.

And I was even more confused—and fighting hard not to show it—as I turned toward him and found that he'd dropped his jeans and was unbuttoning his shirt. And now I knew for sure where he'd gotten the snake and even the sidewinder nickname. His cock was long, really long, and slender and it crooked slight to the side right behind the bulb. The rest of him was rangy and hard muscle over a thin, angular body—a body I'd call wiry. And his muscles were so hard on his body and tight-fitting, that his veins ran just below the surface of skin, in a pattern that ran all over his body. I rather liked that, and I immediately began showing him my appreciation.

"You harden up that fast for all men?" he asked.

"The ones I like the looks of."

"Can you do it for the ones you don't like the looks of?"

"I've been able to do so thus far," I answered. "You know how it is at the Crystal Lounge, I assume," I said.

"Yes. And so you know how it is here, don't you? We can go more into it later, but this is no different from the Crystal Lounge—except a little more free style and a little rougher and the johns don't come and go as quickly as they do in downtown Chicago. They're here for pretty long stretches of time. If they take a shine to someone, they can work him for days. You work here, you do what you are told when you are told—for as long as you are told. And we get bigger spenders here than they do in Chicago—men who have the money to get all that they want."

"Yes, sir. I understand." The look he was giving me sort of told me that he did, in fact, know more of why I was here than he was letting on—and that he was signaling that I'd have to do it all if I was be successfully inserted into the life of the ranch to do what I needed to do.

"And you understand that, Sadie or no Sadie, I don't have anyone working here who I and Butch haven't vetted? And that vetting pretty much covers everything."

"Yes, sir, I understand that."

"So, come here and kneel in front of me—and show me that you want it."

I serviced his cock, which grew in length, but not much in thickness until I had him breathing heavy. Sucking wasn't my specialty, but I figured I'd make up some ground with him when we got to the main event. That was a specialty of mine.

"Are you good at riding? You're not just a pretty boy, are you?" I heard him almost growl in a low voice.

"I was raised on a ranch," I said. "I can ride a horse." This part was more-or-less true. My movie star parents had had a beach house at Malibu, but they also owned a ranch up in the canyons running off toward Las Vegas, and I had been stashed there much of the time during my childhood—which as I got older probably had much to do with what I'd become. My parents weren't around much. But a lot of their male colleagues and friends found their way out to the ranch. They liked the remoteness and not having a whole lot of people around knowing what they were up to—and a lot of time to take their pleasures slow. One of them once told me I was honey that could be smelled all the way from Hollywood and Vine.

"That's not the kind of riding I mean. See that saddle?"

"You want me to mount that saddle?" I asked. Was this his fetish? He liked to see naked men riding a saddled horse?

"No," he said with a throaty laugh. "I'll be doing the mounting. I want you to sling your belly over that saddle, and when I fuck you, I want you to show what you'll do for a client—that you'll be active in the fuck and not just lay there with your legs spread and thinking about what's on for supper."

He fucked me from behind as I bellied over the saddle on the fancy saw horse, and I fucked him back—tightening and releasing the muscles of my channel as he mined me deep with that long crooked snake of his and moving my pelvis with his thrusts, eventually letting him just stand there while I fucked myself on his tool. From his groans, I could tell he was enjoying it.

"On the desk now," he said in a choked voice. "On your side, stretched out at the edge."

Peculiar, I thought, but I readily did so. And then I found out what his fetish was—why he was called "Side." He stood there on the floor, one hand clutching one of my biceps and the other my leg just above the knee—after he'd worked his cock inside me—and he fucked me sideways, this time telling me to hold still and him doing all of the work—deep inside me at an angle that had me shooting off onto his blotter a long time before he was finished with me.

"Here's the deal. This is how it's gonna be," he said later when we were dressed again and he was sitting behind his desk and I was sitting in a straight chair on the other side of the desk and staring down at the globules of cum I'd splattered his blotter with.

"This is a high-class male-on-male brothel—just like the Crystal Lounge, except with a larger playground and longer playtime—and, as we said, rougher and with clients willing to pay for more than the usual. You get room and board and $2,000 a week and all of your tips. And, in exchange, you open your legs for whatever client—or senior ranch staffer—wants it. Anytime they want it; any way they want it—within reason, of course. We don't do any snuff stuff here, and, although we don't rough the clients up if they get violent, they have to pay through the nose if they get rough enough to damage the goods, and then they may not be invited back. We manage to keep most of them in line. There are limits; you can try to talk them down from the edges. But we do allow more rough than they do at the Crystal Lounge."

"I understand," I said. "I guess that's why I'm here."

"I hope you do understand. You'll be tested at the edges before we take you on fully."

"We do bareback here unless the client wants to use rubbers. You'll have a supply of those, if he does. You'll be tested every week. The clients have to be certified by approved doctors right before arriving here too—and they have to submit a blood sample for our checking upon arrival. If you won't do bareback, you say so, and you'll be on tomorrow's flight out of Denver."

"Didn't we just do that?" I asked. "Same rules as the Crystal Lounge. I have no problem. I like skin on skin—if it's safe, of course."

"Just making sure. And hygiene. That's very important here. You will take showers often—it will be hot and dusty on the ranch proper and you will look desirable at all times. And you will clean yourself out—good, with the douches we provide—a couple of times a day. And always before an encounter that you anticipate. And we have long-lasting lubes to apply after cleansing—so you can comfortably fuck on the fly, as demanded."

"Same at the Crystal Lounge."

"Sadie has specified that you are to be assigned to range excursions. That gives you the fullest range of movement here. You'll be taking clients on overnights up into the mountains or down toward one of the lakes. If they want to take you into town, though, that's not allowed—and we tell them that right off the top. Our services are for the ranch or on our outings only—if for no other reason than that we don't want to have too high a profile around here. You can only get so much from greasing the palms of the local law. You'll be expected to show the clients a good time. Occasionally we do hunts—with rifles. You know how to use a rifle?"

"Yes."

"The client's the boss here, though. He says for you to bend over, you bend over. Sometimes more than one client will be at you. You'll be expected to sort them out and satisfy them both. But if it really gets rowdy, you can call in Butch. He'll sort it out so that you do them both—and together, if that's what works. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I answered, looking directly into his eyes. I had few illusions about what was considered too far here if the client had the money. I'd seen what Giacomo Arcardi and his thugs had done to Little Sandy—Jesse—en route here from the Denver airport. And still Arcardi had been given a royal welcome. This wasn't that big of a worry for me, though. I was a trained cop. If my life were in danger, I wasn't defenseless. I'd just have to be careful to let a client think he was getting away with something he wasn't actually getting away with. And I fully understood that I was here not just protecting a witness from a brutal killer but also, now that Arcardi had chosen to show up, bringing that killer to justice if I could.

"Have you ever been doubled?"

"Not for a couple of days," I couldn't resist saying. "But, yes."

Slade was giving me a look now that was full of assessment.

"We have a special client coming in after the weekend. A novelist. You don't need to know his name, but I think he'll like you. He has some special needs. We don't do much assigning, but if Butch and Doc give the go ahead on you, I think we'll put you close to him."

"Whatever you say," I responded. I looked around for evidence that someone was listening to us. This had all of the markings of a setup on demand. Keeping close to Jason Jenks when he got here was just exactly what I'd want to be doing. 



Death in the Rockies Ch. 06



"Did he do you on the saddle?" Butch asked as I hit the bottom stair to the basement when I'd left Side Slade's office and gone down the stairs as the ranch's foreman had told me to do.

"Yes," I answered, but I wasn't my most attentive to the question. This was what Slade must have meant about Butch testing me on the edges before I was let loose—and they weren't going to waste time in getting that vetting done. I half suspected, again, that Slade knew more about why I was there than he'd been owning up to and wanted me to be fully in the traces before Jason Jenks showed up—and maybe, though, he just didn't have a whole lot of love for cops. In any event, "fully in the traces" seemed quite an appropriate phrase at this point.

My attention first went to the room Butch called me into. This one was about thirty by forty feet and was rock walled—a true subterranean cavern hewn out of solid rock below the main ranch house. It was a fully outfitted S&M dungeon. I didn't waste much perusal time on this, though, because Butch himself—the foreman of the ranch, the man who would closely and personally control everything I did here—was standing before me in the center of the dungeon—in full leather regalia. Crotchless black leather chaps with a plump dick and low-hanging balls fully exposed and rising to half staff as I appeared. The cock had a thick leather band at the root with silver studs on it. Black leather armbands, a full black-leather pouch over his head with holes for mouth and eyes, and a black leather, silver-studded belt criss-crossing his chest. He had a Bowie knife with a thick leather handle in one hand and a hand whip in the other.

But the most magnificent thing about the tall, husky, bulging-muscled man was that he had intricate, full-body tattooing. Tattooed men were a fetish of mine. I didn't much care where the edges were that were going to be explored. As long as I could watch the tattoos undulating as his muscles worked in rhythm with a fuck, I would be happy.

Or so I told myself. There was no use in worrying the issue. This was how it was going to be. But that was more than all right with me. I had begun to tremble with excitement as soon as I hit the bottom of the stairs and took in the scene. The muscles in my channel began to move of their own accord—anxious to go into action, to be pulling something big and throbbing inside me.

"Yes he did me on the saddle," I said.

"Anywhere else?"

"He side fucked me on the desk. I guess that's the fetish you were talking about." Stop talking, my mind was screaming. Take me and use me.

Butch narrowed his eyes and was licking his lips. "He must have liked the goods then. It usually takes him a while to get around to that. Come here."

I walked slowly to him, surprised that he hadn't asked me to strip as Slade had done. But that's what the knife was for, I learned. When I got to him, he grabbed my wrists in a strong grip and raised them over my head. It was only then that I saw the leather leads and wrist constraints hanging from the ceiling.

After strapping me up, Butch sauntered over to the side of the dungeon and turned a crank, which I quickly saw and felt was pulling me up to where only my toes touched the ground. I looked down and saw that there were other leather leads on the floor near my feet and wondered what they were for.

Butch then came and stood in front of me and smiled a wicked smile. I looked down and saw that he was in full erection now.

"You have your choice after I fuck you," he said, making clear that he intended for that to happen whatever else happened. I wanted him, though, so that wasn't a concern I had. "I'm not going to do anything to you that we wouldn't let a ranch client do, but we have to vet that you would do it if asked." Then, without further explanation he took the Bowie knife and began to cut my clothes away. When he was done and I was naked, he lifted the knife and showed it to me. For the first time, I noticed how unusual the handle was. It was a good foot long and it was thick—maybe two and a half inches or more—but the handle ended in two globular protrusions that were at least three and a half inches in radius.

As I watched, he dipped his hands in a bowl on a column nearby that contained some sort of slick and thick lubricant and started rubbing it over the handle of the knife.

"If you stay, I'm going to fuck you with this knife handle. You think you can handle it? It's as big as having two men inside you. You ever have two men inside you at once, Folsom?"

"Yes," I murmured.

Butch broke out into a big grin, obviously pleased. "And if you stay, then I'm going to fuck you and you are going to be stretched as never before—not just your ass but your whole body. And I'm going to punish your channel with the studs on my cock ring and your body with the studs on this here chest belt. Nipple clips will be involved. And I'm gonna whip you. It'll be rough, but not too rough. We don't want to mess up that pretty body of yours before you even begin. So, if this is too rough for you, you don't really want to work here. If you don't want to take that, I'll escort you to a nice guest room for the night, and we'll put you back on an airplane for Chicago tomorrow—after I've fucked you. What's it to be? You want to work here or not?"

"I want to work here. And I want you to fuck me. Hard and long." I had been prepared for this. I had to earn my way into this ranch operation. Besides, I was a slut. I couldn't wait for his fuck.

"The room's soundproof," Butch whispered in my ear, as he stood close behind me. I could feel the bulb of his cock brushing against my thigh and the ball at the end of the knife handle at my hole. "I think you'll want to scream anyway, but this is sort of an audition. The clients who like to do this mostly like to hear that it has an effect on the guy they're doin' it too. So, I'm listenin' for some pain and sorrow here. But I'm also listenin' for you telling the client how good it is."

Expressions of pain and sorrow is what Butch got while he was working the knife handle into my ass—and not all of it was feigned. When he was in to the hilt, he reached his hands around and clipped my nipples, which I didn't much care for—and told him so, which he appreciated. After he worked the knife handle around a bit in my channel, he left it there and I felt him kneeling down and working at my ankles. The first thing I knew I found out what those leads on the floor at my feet were for, because he went back over to the dungeon wall and started cranking something—and I felt my legs jerked out from underneath me and backward, so that when he was finished cranking, I was suspended in air, belly down, legs spread, balls dangling.

I whimpered and moaned as he attached lead weights to my balls that pulled them down toward the floor, and then he was slowly pulling the knife handle out of my ass, and I lurched and cried out and he laughed as he ran the underside of his cock up and down on my hole until I begged him for it. Then he drove his cock hard and deep inside me and began to pump me and pull me back and forward hard on his cock. As he fucked me, the studs on his cock ring rubbing hard against the rim of my entrance, he flicked me on the back and around on the chest and belly with the hand whip. At some point he stopped doing that and reached around my belly with a hand and milked me.

When it was all over, he pronounced that I had passed muster and could stay if I still wanted to.

"Yes, please, I answered. And the next time you fuck me, I'd like it to be face to face so I can watch your tattoos at play."

This seemed to please him.

He explained the daily routine at the ranch and his ground rules as he unharnessed me and handed me a pair of jeans to slide onto my sore legs.

Then he took me to the bunk house I was to call home and introduced me to Hank, who was senior in the bunk house.

"Hank here is a 'G' wrangler," Butch told me in parting. He wouldn't have had to tell me that, though, because an hour later, when I was laying on my belly, exhausted, on my bed, Hank, lanky and dark and hard muscled, played his seniority card by covering my back with his naked body and mining my ass with his cock, the two of us motionless except for the rolling of our pelvises and the harmony of our sighing and moaning.

So, when I woke the next morning and stumbled out of bed and into my new uniform, I'd already been well initiated into the life, pecking order, and privileges of seniority at the ranch.

The first thing I did in the morning was to get my bearings in the macro sense. I walked out a way toward the main gate and looked around. I knew that we were northwest of the nearest town, Granby; that Willow Creek, which was not much more than a drizzle running between stands of cottonwood trees, ran through the ranch; that the mountain peak to the northwest was named Parkview Mountain; that the ranch was located in a dip between that and slopes of the Arapaho National Forest on the east; and that to the south of us was the Willow Creek Reservoir. And all around me, rising in each direction, were the peaks of the Rockies.

My job specialty at the ranch—chosen to give me the greatest freedom of movement—would mean that I might see all of these outlying areas. The locale was beautiful in a bigger-than-life way. The vistas were majestic, and what could be seen closer to hand gave a sense of wild freedom and challenge. The perfect place for high-octane men taking risks and leadership positions in the urban world to retreat to so they could kick back and indulge pleasures they could not own up to craving in their other world.

And speaking of high-octane men, as I was standing by the side of the road taking in the vistas, I felt more than heard the whoosh of a vehicle moving past me at more speed than it should have been on the narrow dirt lane, and suddenly I was choking and coughing from the dust being thrown up by its wheels. When I could clear my eyes, I looked up and saw Arcardi's black Navigator moving out toward the entrance into the ranch at great speed.

My first thought was that Arcardi was being sent off for what he'd done to Jesse on the trip in from the airport the previous evening. But then I saw it slow down and stop right outside the main entrance to the ranch. And when I viewed it doing that, I saw, for the first time, two camouflaged Hummers that had been parked at the side of the main road. The Navigator pulled up to the Hummers and men got out of both of them and walked toward each other.

Where had I seen those Hummers before, I wondered. And then it hit me. They were at the Granby airstrip the previous night when Mario Rapino's corporate jet landed. I couldn't see the men who were approaching each other, in each case, one man in the lead and two bulkier men following. My first thought was Giacomo Arcardi and Mario Rapino were having a showdown and that gun play could be expected, and I instinctively hunkered down at the side of the road. But then nothing happened. They just stood there, talking, and when they got back in their vehicles, they didn't come back into the ranch. They headed south, in tandem, toward Granby.

My next thought was that there was some sort of hanky-panky going on, a switching of allegiances. That one of the parties didn't include their principal. But any way you sliced it, it was something out of line with our thinking of what was going on with these two families. I turned and walked back toward the group of buildings at the operations center of the ranch.

As I walked into the center of the complex where wranglers and the few guests in residence were milling around, I quickly saw the visual distinction between the "T" wranglers and the "G" wranglers. In contrast to what I was given to wear, the "G" wranglers were given no jeans at all. They just had chaps and a G-string, with a cock and ball sack that could quickly and conveniently be tucked under the wrangler's balls to enable immediate action. And their bandanas were blue.

I was surprised to see as I walked back toward the ranch house and was approaching a horse barn that the laid-back Chuck we'd picked up at the Denver Swim Club was a wrangler—he was a "G" wrangler and already was in action, framed by the hay door on the floor above the barn door. The younger of the clients who had come in from the airport the previous night with me, Jim, I think his name was, was leaning against the side of the hay door, framed by the opening and Chuck was behind him, encircling his bare chest with his finely muscled arms and fucking up into his ass from behind. Jim had an expression of sheer bliss.

I was more surprised, though, by what I saw on the ground below. At first I couldn't figure out what the middle-aged client named Ted was doing. I knew it looked like he was between a pair of legs and fucking, but one of the legs had a heavy white cast on it as did an arm I saw hanging on Ted's hip. It took me a few seconds to realize that Jesse must have recovered enough from his ordeal the previously night to be back in action again this morning. I was happy that he hadn't been banged up any worse than just a fractured arm and leg. I felt sorry for him until I walked by enough to look back and see the expression on his face, which reflected pure pleasure. I had found a soul mate—a guy who loved to be fucked. I tarried at the split rail fence that marked the exercise yard of the horse barn to share in Jesse's pleasure.

"Look like they're having fun, doesn't it?" I felt him close behind me, his hands possessively at my waist, his crotch leaning into my butt, letting me feel his need. It was the third client who had come in the limousine with me the previous night—Cliff.

"Yes, I'm glad that the little sandy-haired guy seems to have recovered from last night," I answered, not looking around.

I felt and heard the zipper at the back of my jeans being pulled down.

"I want to fuck you," Cliff whispered in my ear. "I wanted you last night—in the limousine. But Butch said it wasn't allowed there. It's allowed here, though."

"We could go someplace more comfortable," I whispered—my actual thoughts being, "Well, here we go. Showtime. My first one."

"No, I want you here, both of us watching those two fuck on the hay bale."

"Whatever you want," I answered.

So he took me there, his hands holding my wrists out wide on the top rail of the fence and me hunched over the rail a bit as he fucked me from behind.

Afterward I went back to the bunkhouse and showered and rested in my bunk for a couple of hours and thought about the difficulties of protecting Jason Jenks in this environment—especially when it appeared now that he hadn't escaped what was threatening him—that Giacomo Arcardi was here, waiting for him. As I drifted off to sleep, my last thought was one of wondering where Arcardi was now—and what he might be doing to one of the "T" wranglers—maybe in the dungeon in the basement of the man ranch house.

When I awoke, it was time to take on the last hurdle to being fully employed here. Everyone had to take an initial medical exam by Doc—as well as frequent exams thereafter. My exam was thorough—more thorough than any I'd had before, because near the end, the doctor had me lay on my back on the examining table, with my feet in stirrups, and he strapped my arms down and unbuttoned his white coat to reveal that he was naked underneath. He then proceeded to make use of his senior status and feed his fetish by opening a box of surgical wands—small stainless steel tubes of graduated sizes with a rounded end.

"What are those for, Doc?" I asked innocently, knowing full well what they were for, but wanting to steel myself for what was to come.

"Don't worry, son," Doc said in his most professional tone. "It's all quite harmless and can be quite safe if you don't fight it, and you'll enjoy it immensely if you hold very, very still. This is the last of the tests to ascertain whether you will give yourself fully to clients here as called to do so."

"That's OK, Doc," I said. "You don't need to do this; I guarantee I'll lay down on demand."

"Then you'll lay down for this, Folsom. This isn't just a test. This is my prerogative. This is what I enjoy. You are going to hold still, while I insert these surgical wands in your urethra—you know what that is, don't you? Your piss slit—from small to large. If you hold very still, you'll find you like it. And I'm going to make you come with these. And then I'm going to fuck you."

"No, that's OK, we can skip to the . . . ahhhhhh!"

"Hold still!"

I went very still as commanded, as I felt the first of the wands, a tiny one, entering my piss slit and running slowly down the track. I felt every microinch of it move in the tiny channel, gently spreading it.

"Oh, god, Doc . . . oh, god."

"Careful now. Very good. Now I'm going to slowly twirl it. Feel that? Feels good?"

I was trying to control my breathing, holding very, very still, my eyes focused down the line of my body on Doc's fingers at the head of my cock and the top of the surgical wand as it twirled. Beyond that I could see Doc's belly and his now-jutting cock. He was breathing heavily, enjoying this.

"Oh Chrisssst," I moaned as he slowly extracted the tiny wand and reached for one slightly larger.

Several ever-larger wands later, not realizing I'd gone so tense, I collapsed back onto the vinyl table top in my own sweat, with a small cry of release as my cum burbled up around the steel shaft of the sounding wand buried deep inside my cock.

"Very good, you have marvelous control," Doc whispered with admiration in a throaty voice. I felt the bulb of his cock at my ass channel and he started working his way into me without withdrawing the largest of the sounding wands from my piss slit. He reached over and started twirling the wand inside me as his cock ran up inside me. As he fucked me in the ass with his cock, I moaned and burbled cum until he came and declared he was satisfied that I was worthy to be cleared to work at the ranch.



Death in the Rockies Ch. 07



For the rest of the day I avoided what sexual encounters I could. I enjoyed being fucked as much as the next male satyriac, but this was a bit much, coming on the heels of the vetting process. Besides I had expected to be contacted by someone else on the inside of the ranch—someone who was supposed to maintain communications with the special unit that had been established down in Denver to work this case and who could watch my back. But thus far he hadn't revealed himself. I worked my way around the periphery of the main compound, thinking I'd be contacted where there was more privacy. And I even took one of the horses out for a practice ride and found that it was like they said about riding a bicycle—I hadn't forgotten how to do it. While I was out toward Granby, I saw a cloud of dust on the road and pulled into a copse of trees and watched Arcardi's Navigator returning to the ranch.

No contact having been made, as soon as I could after I'd returned the horse to the stables and taken a route that avoided a large swimming pool and deck at the back of the main house where most of the ranch's clients now seemed to have retreated to and were cavorting with members of the staff in the altogether, I slipped off to my bunk and drifted off to sleep.

I woke at the nudge to my thigh. Hank was sitting on my bunk beside my legs.

"Didn't see you out at the pool. Aren't being evasive, are you?"

"No . . . but Doc worked me over pretty good this afternoon . . . and . . . I've been out riding around, getting a lay of the land and working back into riding a horse."

"Ah, yes, Doc is . . . enthusiastic and can be quite tiring. I take it that, since you're still here, you passed the checkout."

"Apparently so," I answered.

"And it's a good thing you've gotten acquainted with a horse. Rosey's a good one. She'll give you good service. You're going out on an overnight tomorrow with some of the clients who arrived the same time as you. You'll be taking them east up into the lower reaches of the Rocky Mountain National Park—to Grand Lake. The party'll spend the night there and come back down tomorrow."

"I don't know if I can find—"

"You don't have to find it this time. I'll be leading the party. We're taking another new wrangler or two also. It's one of the easiest trails to follow."

"So, I'm going out so soon because I'm new?"

"No, mostly because a client requested that you go."

"Arcardi?"

"No, Butch told me and the other senior wrangler to keep you away from Arcardi as much as possible. No, the guy calling himself Cliff asked for you. And if you recognize him from any newspaper reporting on Congress, you'll still think of him only as 'Cliff.' Understand?"

"Yes, I get it." I had, in fact, recognized the congressman immediately in the car from the airport to the ranch. But I knew the score on this recognition business.

"It's not always like this with the sex. Much of what you've been getting was the vetting process. And the clients usually go wild right at the beginning, but they get tired of it nonstop soon enough. The heaviest time is when several new clients come in at once—and then sometimes even then they pair off with each other and don't ask much from the wranglers. You've actually got it good. That guy Arcardi bought up a whole wing of the place to have privacy, so we're not full up at the moment."

"But, it's good you're getting some shut eye now," he continued. "It's not a bad ride up that lake, but it's a long one—it'll be bad on your ass if you haven't ridden in a while."

"Yeah, thanks. My ass is already sore from being ridden hard the last twenty-four."

"Not hard enough. Before you go back into lalaland, move your butt over here to the edge of the bunk and open those legs for me."

Hank was good—very good. And he wasn't rough with me. And for the first time since I'd arrived here—including his first taking, which had been swift and almost impersonal—he paid attention to what I wanted and what was giving me pleasure. And since he had the biggest, fattest dick I'd had on the ranch, when he got started with his slow pumping and was thumbing my nipples and kissing me in the crook of my neck, about all I wanted was more of him, deeper and longer.

* * * *

There were only three clients on the overnight, the guys I was beginning to think came as a set, although I knew two of them from the real world and would never have paired them there—one being a congressman and the other an evangelistic TV preacher. I didn't have a handle on the younger one, Jim, although it seemed obvious he came from money. And I could see where something Hank had said might be building here. Ted was showing quite a bit of attention to Jim, so it wouldn't surprise me if they paired off before we returned to the ranch compound.

There were more wranglers on the trip than clients. But I understood this wasn't out of the ordinary. Three official wranglers—Hank, me, and the other guy who had come in with me, Chuck. But, then, there were a couple of older guys who were real cowboys and did the brunt of the work—and weren't for sale, apparently. And a cook, who was called Cookie, naturally, and a couple of step-and-fetch it assistants of his, Sam and Julio, who advertised their availability by wearing red bandanas and who apparently were on offer for someone who liked his meat tender (Sam) or Hispanic (Julio).

This wasn't exactly the Old West roughing it approach to an overnight ride up into the higher Rockies. The men and horses were trucked down route 40 almost to Granby and then north on 30 to the edge of the national park, where the wranglers took the dudes on up to the Green Ridge area overlooking Grand Lake, while Cookie and his assistants drove on up in Range Rovers and had the camp all set up for us.

Still, it was a four-hour ride up a narrow, steep, but well-marked trail into the high timber, upward and toward the continental divide that ran down Olive Ridge to the east of the lake. The dudes were pretty green, so the going was slow, and Hank called frequent stops for them to stretch their legs and wet their gullets with the Coors beer that one of the old cowpokes had in a cooler strapped behind his saddle.

We were on a longer break while Ted and Jim went off to a rock overhang to admire the view back down toward the rest and for Ted to lap-fuck Jim. I was walking around, trying to work the knots out of my legs, Hank and Chuck were conferring off to one side, and the two wizened cowpokes were trying their best not to show their disgust of this whole venture. Cliff was walking in circles near me, moving in closer and closer—and I knew he had the same thing on his mind that Ted and Jim were already off doing.

Hank must not have wanted us to be held up for longer than it took Ted to fuck Jim, though, because he broke off talking with Chuck and came over to me before Cliff could make his move.

"I want you to ride on ahead and let them know how far out we are. We're not more than an hour from the camp. The trail's well marked, and Cookie's going to fly a Big O Ranch flag high enough for you to see from across the lake when you get to it. The camp's on the other side of the lake from here."

I said OK and got onto my horse and started out. Within fifteen minutes, though, I thought maybe Hank had sent someone else to go with me, because I could hear sounds of movement not far in my wake. I slowed down to let whoever it was catch up to me, but they slowed down too. This began to spook me, though, so I moved out a little smarter.

He was waiting for me in a glade of trees right after a steep, winding, rock path came out to a small meadow bordered by pines. He was standing, holding the reins of his horse, right at the verge of the pine trees where I couldn't miss him. He gestured to me when I saw him and retreated back far enough from the trees to be hidden from the path.

I rode over to and into the pines where I'd last seen him because I recognized him. It was the dude with the handlebar mustache from the Chicago airport who had covered my avoidance of Giacomo Arcardi.

"You've been tracking me?" I asked as I dismounted within natural speaking distance of him. I was wary and didn't want to get too close.

"Yep. It was me. I've been waiting to get you alone."

"I was out alone around the ranch for nearly two hours yesterday, waiting for whoever might show up."

"Sorry, I was in Granby trying to catch up with a surprise. And it would be best if I didn't come on ranch property. It would be hard to explain what I was doing there."

"Would the surprise be a meeting there between a Rapino and an Arcardi?"

"Yep. And you would know about that because?"

"Maybe I should see a badge or something first. Some verification."

"Sorry. The name's Price. Ron Price. Denver Specials Unit. Part of the team following your action up here."

He showed me a badge and it panned out. It had been obvious he had my back in Chicago, so there was no real surprise. "The two of them met up just outside the ranch. I wasn't sure that it wasn't a sellout. Are you saying that it really was both Mario Rapino and Giacomo Arcardi in a meet yesterday."

"Yep. Surprised the hell out of us. We'll have to do some rethinking now. We were moving on the theory that Giacomo murdered Lorenzo Rapino and we had a gang war on our hands."

"Still possible he did, isn't it?" I answered. "And that Mario doesn't know that and is being played—and maybe was enticed up here to join Lorenzo in the great beyond in the same sort of sex snuff act."

"Yep, we're still playing that record as a possibility, but it makes your work a little stickier now. You aren't just protecting the witness, Jason Jenks, now, but you also have to try to figure out what Giacomo is up to if it's deeper than just being up here to silence the novelist."

"And you're my contact? I thought it would be someone on the inside."

"There's someone on the inside. But he'll contact you when and as needed. I hope you understand; we have to compartmentalize this. If you fail—and are interrogated—we need to protect our backup."

"I understand."

"Making out OK so far?"

"Yeah, so far. Although I have to say it's one ass-breaking assignment."

"I was told you liked it that way." He was looking amused at me. And, I'll have to admit that he was looking mighty fine and capable to me.

"Yeah, but there are limits even for me."

"I hear you like rough and leather—and that the limits are pretty far out there."

"You've got quite an informant."

"Maybe after all this is over you might want to stop in Denver for a debriefing . . . a private debriefing." The signaling couldn't get much more obvious than that. And he looked good to me, so I saw no reason to hold him off.

"Yeah, I might like that. But now, if you don't have more for me, I'd best get back on the trail so that I'm there before the party that sent me ahead is."

"Good luck. And it starts sooner than we expected. We've had to send in some temporary protection at the ranch for Jason Jenks tonight."

"Tonight? Jenks isn't arriving until this weekend."

"Those were the plans. But the guy is a real arrogant piece of work. He hasn't paid a bit of attention to any of the advice he's been given. He's arriving there today—and so Arcardi has all tonight and most of tomorrow to snuff him without you being there if he wants. But we read Arcardi for someone who likes to play with his victims. We got someone in there, supposedly doing some electrical work, but he'll have to be gone before you come down out of the mountains tomorrow. We can always hope Arcardi's got another meeting with Rapino in Granby tomorrow to keep him busy."

"This is all a little loose. I hope it all works out," I said, as I got back onto my horse.

"You'd have to be loose to take me," Price answered, which is as close to a challenge as he had given me.

"Maybe we'll see," I answered as I trotted off.

"Yep. Everything works out well and you come out of this alive—and maybe we'll just see. In the meantime, take care of that pretty little ass of yours."

* * * *

The camp wasn't anything like roughing it, but we were outside and we did have a beautiful view of a full moon shining off the surface of the lake. The sky was clear and the stars were putting on quite a show and the air was crisp and smelt of the pine trees that backed up the rocky promontory overlooking the lake where Cookie had set up camp. The side of the back of one of the Land Rovers folded down into a pretty fancy kitchen unit, and folding tables and chairs had appeared on which we ate a hearty broiled steak meal that would have gotten a good tip in one of Denver's finest steak houses.

The cowpokes turned out to be the entertainment too, with one of them playing a mean harmonica and the other a guitar. The guitarist had a mellow deep baritone voice that put the dudes into a mood. Preacher Ted was fucking Jim again in one of the tents, making the nylon side shimmy with his vigor, and Cliff had taken a shine to the diminutive, barely legal Sam, who was making virginal noises as Cliff split him on a blanket just beyond the light of the camp downhill toward the lake.

The dudes were really feeling their oats, though, because Ted came out of the tent and told Chuck that Jim wanted him now, and Ted laid a hand on the Hispanic Julio's arm and ushered him off into the pines at the side of the camp. Chuck shrugged and went into the tent, and Jim was vocal for him in the song of taking that Ted hadn't managed to pull out of him. It made me curious about Chuck, not for the first time.

I was sitting there, legs stretched out and back against a saddle lying on the ground and imagining what Chuck must have between his legs to get such a response on seconds when Hank came over to me.

"Cliff wants you now."

I sighed and stood. I figured this was inevitable, although there was some hope that Sam would be enough for Congressman Cliff tonight—and I had become partial to Hank, and hoped he'd be doing me as soon as it was evident that the clients were satiated.

I found both of them on their backs, Cliff on the blanket and the little Sam on the grass off to the side. Sam had his legs parted like he couldn't get them back together again and was moaning softly. Cliff was still in full erection. He had a good eight inches on him and it was all hard and standing straight up.

"The little fucker couldn't handle it," he muttered in a "complaint to management" voice. "Tried for a good half hour and I couldn't get it all stuffed in. Cried like a stuck pig. He should be prepared to take it all."

"Some like that," I said by way of a soothing apology as I stood over him and slowly unbuttoned my jeans. "We cater to all kinds here. Sam's not one of the wranglers. He's softer and less experienced, but, as I said, some like it. You could have just forced it in, if you wanted. He'd have taken it. But I'm here now. It's time for the adults to play."

I lowered my pelvis onto his cock as I straddled his hips with my knees, and I gave him a deep-fuck ride that left him cooing, exhausted, and totally satiated, as Sam watched us, eyes wide open, mouth gaping, from the sideline.

They both remained there when I returned to the circle of light of the camping area, and I heard later in the night that Cliff had taken my statement to heart and was getting all he wanted from Sam. I noticed the whiskey bottle Cookie had out on the kitchen drop counter was suddenly almost empty, though, so my guess was that Sam had help opening up.

I'd hoped that I'd share a tent with Hank, but it turned out that Jim wanted to try him too, so I was alone in what was to be our shared tent—at least deep into the night, when I heard a rustling and looked up to see Chuck hunched over me in the dark.

"We're both raw wranglers," he whispered, "so I can't demand it, but it will be all the sweeter for both of us if you give it to me of your free will."

Chuck was one mighty fine looking guy, so I pulled his mouth down to mine as we both reached out for the other's cock.

He gave slow, deep fuck, changing position frequently. When he got around to side splitting me, he put his lips to my ear and whispered, "Are you all set to be watching over Jenks? Got it all under control?"

My contact at the ranch; my connection with Price and the Denver Special Unit. "We'll see," I whispered back. "It's going to be hairy standing between him and Arcardi, but we'll manage somehow. Glad you've got my back."

"Your back, your ass, your nipples . . ." he was slow pumping me from behind and thumbing my nipples ". . . and your sweet mouth." Our dueling tongues prevented further talk. He was a good fuck—but I still would have preferred Hank.

* * * *

The first thing I noticed when the convoy of Land Rovers and horse trailers drove under the Big O arch and up the dusty drive into the main ranch compound were the two police cars and the meat wagon.

"I thought the police never drove into here," Congressman Cliff said with a strangled voice from the back seat of the Land Rover we were in. I looked around to find both he and Ted shrinking into the upholstery. Jim was in one of the other vehicles, but I assumed he was doing the same thing.

Hank, who was driving, said "It's OK, we'll drive around to the side and you can go on into the main house from the swimming pool patio. Don't worry. You won't have to meet the police."

Still, his voice seemed a little worried. He wasn't half as concerned as I was, though. I was out of the door while he was still rolling around toward the back and hurrying toward the police vehicles. I knew what a meat wagon was and what it was for. And I was very much afraid of what this one was here for.

But as I was rounding the corner of the main house, I looked up on the porch and he was staring down at me and my heart slipped back out of my throat and into its proper place. I'd been shown several photos of Jason Jenks so I knew it was him instantly. He was even more imposing in life than in his photos—a man who knew his worth and demanded every inch of what anyone would give him. Well over six feet and big boned, but not in a fat way—in a towering way. Gray eyes that pierced right through you and a fine head of wavy gray hair. He looked just like the actor who had played in several of my parents' movies—the benign, old lawyer type who dispensed wisdom and justice and commanded any scene he was in—and who had visited our ranch in California while my parents were filming in Egypt and for my high school graduation present had taught me to give and take hand jobs—anything more than this, he said, would be considered sex, and he had too much respect for my parents to go down that road. In other words an insufferable, egomaniac windbag in person. It was left for later in that same summer that another good friend of my parents, a producer, took me all the way down that road.

"You're new here," he said. The voice was booming, a deep baritone. Another similarity to that early initiator of mine—not, by any means, the only friend of my parents who was happy to show me what men could do with men.

"Yes, yes, I am," I answered. "Can you tell me what the police are here for? Is this a raid of some sort?"

"A police raid at the Big O Ranch?" he said with a snort, clearly amused at the suggestion that the ranch didn't know how to arrange its affairs. "Hardly. Some young man has gotten himself killed. My name is Jay. I like the looks of you. I think you should sleep in my room tonight."

"I would like that," I answered. "I'm Clint. And I was told that you might like me. So, no problem. Do you have any idea who it is? Who has died? And how?"

Jenks didn't have to answer that—and, truly, he seemed more interested in me than in discussing that—because just then, the stretcher was being rolled out from around the side of the main building.




Death in the Rockies Ch. 08



Within twenty-four hours I learned just how difficult this assignment was going to be and I also got a flavor of an assignment I didn't particularly welcome of how Jesse had met his maker.

Hank, having guided the guests, Ted, Cliff, and Jim to their rooms through a back entrance was entering the lounge of the main house that also served as the lobby reception area for the ranch as I was entering the front door, shaken by the death of Jesse and looking for Chuck to see if he could get word back to the special unit in Denver before they learned of this through regular channels.

"I want you to take Cookie and his boys and the men who went out with you to Grand Lake and take the guests we have here today over to the Jacob's ranch area," he said, pulling me aside and speaking to me in low tones out of the hearing of the deputy who was standing by the reception desk with Slade. "It's part of this complex we use for remote entertainment—and keep them entertained there until we've cleared everything with the police here. The regular hands know how to get there, and I'll send some of the other wranglers down there to give the guests a real fuck party at the pool there. They'll think it's all part of the regular planned service."

"I'll tell Chuck—I was just going to look for him."

"I want Chuck to stay here. I'll drive down there and let you know when it's safe to bring the guests back. We've got the police covered, but Mr. Slade doesn't want them to even see any of the guests we've got here."

So, quick, quick we rounded up all of the guests on the QT and got them and the wranglers we were taking along piled into Land Rovers parked out of site behind the barns—all except for Giacomo and his goons, who stuck to their Navigator—and we headed off for route 40 on a back road that couldn't be seen from the main house.

Jenks must have had real clout, because as I was standing and waving away the fleet of vehicles before I got in the last Land Rover, I discovered it was just him and me in the back of that and a closed glass panel between us and the driver who I only saw as a pair of eyes looking into the backseat occasionally to watch the action.

The novelist was a big bear of a man. He minced no words and believed in no long seductions. I was kneeling between his spread legs and servicing his plump cock before we'd even reached route 40 on the back road. This was fine with me, though. Every minute that it was just Jenks and me together was a minute when I was doing what I was placed here to do—making sure that Giacomo Arcardi wasn't getting at him.

He got hard fast and pulled me up from the floor, unzipped the opening at my ass and had me settled, facing him, on his cock in short order. I rode his cock to his obvious satisfaction, as he ran a short length of rope over my bare body and snapped me with it absentmindedly. He had it under my chin and pulled my head up with it, when I noticed that there was something happening outside the Land Rover that now fought for my attention. I brushed the rope away and began to pump him hard with a twist at every third stroke, which had him gurgling and bouncing around like a rag doll underneath me.

We were the last Land Rover in the convoy, but not the last vehicle driving down the road. I looked out of the back window in half panic as two camouflaged Hummers pulled off the side of the road and fell into line behind the convoy. But when our line of vehicles pulled off of 40 and back into the ranch property, the Hummers held up at the boundary.

I was confused and in panic, thinking that it was because the presence of Lorenzo Rapino and his thugs on the periphery of the action was one more wrinkle that I wanted to be dealing with—but as my attention returned to the interior of the Land Rover, I realized that this wasn't what had me in confusion and panic at all. Jenks was pushing toward the edge in his fuck. He was making deep, guttural animal noises and was chewing at my nipples and his fists were closed hard around my neck as I pumped his cock. He was so much into the fuck that he didn't realize that he was cutting off my air. In a Herculean effort, I closed my ass canal muscles tightly on his cock and went into overdrive in the pumping of my ass up and down on his staff, sending him quickly into ejaculation and making him release me and sink back into the cushions of the Land Rover in exhausted relief.

We arrived at the old Jacob's place soon thereafter, which had been so refurbished into the same fake rustic Western style as I'd seen back at the main building, that I thought it a bit ironic to be calling it "old." There was a pool and a game room, with several pool tables, and a giant-screen TV, and a bar that never ended, and small cell-like bedrooms aplenty. At the front of the house, pretty much deserted and in the shadows, was a long room with sofas and deep-cushion chairs, and big ottomans. And in short order Cookie and his assistants had a rolling barbeque going out by the pool.

I tried to stay as close to Jenks as possible. The fuck I'd given him apparently had satiated him for the present, as he was content to sit at the bar or by the pool and hold court. The "guests three," which was how I was beginning to think of Ted, Jim, and Cliff, were in thrall with hearing the adventure stories from one of their favorite thriller and real-life-detective story authors. From time to time one of the three would see a piece of ass floating by that they fancied and would go off for a brief encounter. But they'd also come back for more mixing time with the novelist. He had a mesmerizing effect on them. Giacomo Arcardi and his two goons sat, for the most part, on the other side of the pool and stared Jenks down—which Jenks didn't even seem to notice. This seemed natural enough, because Jenks gave the impression that no matter how many people were in the room, he was the only one there of interest.

From time to time Arcardi and the goons also went inside, where I assumed they were playing pool or watching TV.

I floated a bit, but spent most of my time at the pool or near the bar, out of Jenks's aura but near enough to reach him quickly if there was trouble. He wound down when the sun hit its zenith and begged off to take a nap, but he was back out by the pool in not much more than two hours.

Late in the afternoon, though, I sensed trouble brewing. I saw Giacomo at the door into the lounge/bar area, staring out at the pool, and soon thereafter, one of his goons—the one who had approached me in the Chicago airport—came out to the pool and strode toward the area where Jenks was holding court.

I was between him and Jenks, though, and stood as the goon got near. To my surprise, he turned to me and said, "Mr. Arcardi wants you inside."

"And where will you and his other guard be?" I asked. It was a gamble. I couldn't tell him no. Those were the rules. And I was lucky Arcardi hadn't called for me earlier. But I really didn't want to be off fucking him with the goons on the loose doing who knew what to Jenks.

"Oh, we'll be there too," the goon said, giving me a cheeky leer.

"OK, I'll be in in a minute," I said.

To my relief that seemed to satisfy him, and he turned and reentered the house.

I called over the two old hands, who were standing around on the periphery prepared to do whatever was needed short of servicing the guests themselves—and truth be known they were such dried out and gnarled specimens that a guest request to them was highly unlikely. I asked them to keep an eye on Jenks—that Slade wanted to make sure he was safe, so they should do what they could if anyone tried to harm him. They were asked to do a whole lot of different and strange things, so the request didn't seem to faze them a bit.

I expected to go back to the bedroom area with Arcardi, but I was caught off guard as soon as I entered the house. I was backhanded hard across the face, which made me reel toward a wall, except I never got there. A man's long tie was slipped around my neck and my motion was arrested in a choking sound from me. That didn't prevent me from doubling up, though, when a fist went into my solar plexus. Winded, I found myself being manhandled not toward the bedrooms, but toward the lounge area at the front of the house in an area set off from the bar, which was being manned by Roy—who just went on whistling and minding his liquor bottles—just as he was trained to do.

I was carried over to an ottoman and pulled down on top of one of Arcardi's goons, who was naked and whose jutting cock poked up between my legs, as the other big goon, also naked, worked at pulling what little clothing I was wearing off me. The goon who was lapping me held me close to his chest with the tie around my neck, with both ends wound around his fists. The other goon lifted my hips when I was naked and impaled my ass on the cock of the goon under me.

He punched me in the face again, even though I wasn't objecting to the treatment.

I could see Arcardi beyond him, sitting in a chair, pantless, and his hand working his cock as he watched the beat-down fuck. The goon in front of me, satisfied that I was cowed and helpless, hunched down on top of my thighs, rolled my hips up toward him, and started working his cock in on top of the one that already impaled me from the back.

I was being double fucked by two monster goons while their master watched, slightly smiling and working his cock with his fist.

He didn't last long. I saw him shoot off when the two goons hadn't been working me like a piston engine for more than ten minutes. And when he had shot off, I heard someone clear his throat from across the room.

"The police are gone. It's safe to return to the main house now. Those out at the pool are already packing up."

It was Hank, come to my rescue—sort of.

I was reluctantly released, still gagging from the tie choking me—more so than from the double fuck. I'd had thicker and managed it. The beating wasn't my favorite touch, however. Arcardi and his goons suited up and departed quickly, leaving Hank and me alone in the lounge.

"How long were you standing there?" I asked.

"Long enough. I'm sorry if it was getting too rough, but until Arcardi ejaculated there wasn't much hope they'd stop. And the rules—"

"It's OK, I know the rules," I said, as I felt my tender neck with my fingers. Hank was right. It could have gotten worse if he had tried to stop it before Arcardi got off on it. And Hank had no way of knowing Arcardi was a cold-blooded murderer.

Something about that thought worried me though, but I didn't have time to pursue the thought as we were loading up to return to the main house.

That night I slept with Jason Jenks—who I supposedly knew as just Jay. His room was a lot more comfortable than my bunk room. But I already regretted any time I spent away from the bunk room in the hope that Hank would visit me in the middle of the night and give me a proper fucking.

Jenks started off with one that was getting rough—he liked raking my skin with his sharp fingernails when he wasn't using a riding crop on me and his hands were fast to go to my throat—but as it was getting close to that elusive edge I was told was the boundary for what a client could do, we both looked up in shock to find Chuck standing by the bed. I don't know what Jenks thought about that, but I saw it as Chuck watching my back, not letting things get out of control.

"Sorry," Chuck said. "I was told to come right in. Complimentary massage. I can come back or you can just tell me you don't—"

"No, no, that's OK," Jenks said gruffly. "I could use a massage."

So, he got a massage—a superdooper massage, because as Chuck massaged his muscles, I sucked on his favorite muscle, sending him into dreamland. After Chuck left, I stretched along Jenks's body and held him through the night. I woke him with a gentle riding of his cock ending in an ejaculation that seemed to satisfy him for then.

All hell had broken out again by the time we came out of his room for breakfast.

"When was the last time you saw Cookie's assistant, Sam, yesterday at Jacob's ranch?" Hank asked me as I peeled off from Jenks when he entered the main dining room. Hank's look of concern raised my level of attention.

"Sometime in the early afternoon, I guess. Roy was manning the bar and Sam was helping Cookie at the barbeque."

"Well, no one claims to have seen him later than that. Cookie couldn't find him this morning, so I sent one of the wranglers back out to Jacob's ranch. They found him dead and rolled under a bed in one of the bedrooms."

"How—?"

"His wrists were tied with rope and he'd been brutalized and strangled."

I walked over to the entrance to the dining room and looked in. Giacomo Arcardi was at a table by himself, blissfully eating his breakfast, a little smile on his face, apparently without a care in the world. In a table next to him were his two goons, suspicious eyes sweeping the room, ever on the lookout for whatever might develop.



Death in the Rockies Ch. 09



I berated myself for weeks thereafter for not having given more thought to what had bothered me about what happened in the lounge at Jacob's ranch. Later my lieutenant, Burton Kahn, repeatedly told me that it worked out for the best that I'd let it slip my mind—and I hadn't even told him what the trying circumstances were that made it fall out of my thinking—that I was being brutally double fucked by two goons. But by the time I did give it a thought, it was too late.

It was seeing the rope that Jason Jenks pulled down from the wall at the horse stable when we were walking the grounds earlier in the afternoon and when he asked me if I liked being bound when I was being fucked—that he'd be happy to do that if I liked it—and we were in a quiet spot then and there and he was feeling horny. Seeing him standing there, holding that length of rope, and the image of the serial killer's methodology brought back my encounter with Arcardi and his goons the previous afternoon. In my imagination I exchanged Arcardi for Jenks standing there swinging that short length of rope and the truth—or at least part of it—began to chink into place in my mind. I'd been such a fool. But then I hadn't been the only one.

I started to flesh out the true scenario in my mind but the real world was, I am afraid, several steps ahead of me.

Hank appeared in the sunlight beyond the door to the stable and called out, almost frantically, "There you are, Clint. Come with me please. Right now."

I looked at Jenks with what I hoped was a look of disappointment, which was returned by a look of slight irritation, and headed for the door.

"There's been another killing," Hank said in hushed, but choppy tones as I joined him out in the central yard of the ranch compound. "The police are on the way. But you need to ride out immediately."

"Another killing?" I asked dumbly. "Who? And so you want the guests taken to Jacob's ranch again today."

"No, you need to take out after Chuck. He's got a head start, but he didn't know which of the horses was faster. I can give you a better mount. I've got to stay here for the police to arrive."

"Chuck? I don't understand. Who's been murdered?"

"Giacomo Arcardi. One of his bodyguards is dead too—and the other one is pretty well cut up."

"I don't understand. Like Jesse and Sam? And what's this about Chuck?"

"No. Straight knifings. He got them out in the parking area as they were getting in their vehicle. It was Chuck?"

"Chuck?" I was stunned. Chuck was my contact with the special unit down in Denver. Had he been identified and attacked? Was he defending himself?

"Yes, Chuck's killed them. He was seen. This isn't unfolding at all like we thought it would go down. We were concentrating on Jenks. Someone else was concentrating on the serial murderer. I think we can guess who, since Mario Rapino and some of his thugs are up here."

"We? Unfolding?"

"Yes. It's time you knew. I'm your inside contact here," Hank said. "I've been trying to watch over you as you've been trying to keep Arcardi from Jenks. Here," he said then in exasperation, as he pulled a badge out of his pocket. "I'm with the Denver police. The special unit. I'm your inside contact."

"You? Oh, god. I thought it was Chuck."

"Apparently not. Chuck must be an assassin. The Rapinos must have brought him in to avenge Lorenzo's death."

"I don't think Giacomo Arcardi is our killer either," I said as we started moving swiftly toward a horse barn, where one of the gristled cowpokes was preparing a horse for me.

"Why?" Hank said, almost in shock.

"You saw his goons fucking me. Arcardi's a watcher; he isn't hands on himself. I don't think it's his method at all. The fetish is in watching. And he wants his goons around to do the fucking. And they didn't bind me. All of the others have been bound."

"Oh, god. I'll try to sort that out here. You try to track Chuck down. There's a rifle and a handgun in the saddle holsters—and a badge for you, in case you run into any civilians who might get in the way."

Chuck wasn't hard to follow—or to catch up to, for that matter. His horse had thrown a shoe soon after he'd ridden out of the ranch compound and that had both made the trail easy to track and the horse slower than molasses—which must have vexed Chuck to no end. Not exactly your classic TV Western escape scene.

I saw him from a distance, and then I moved in real slow, watching and gauging what was what. The trail traced right up to where Chuck was laying on the ground, his horse standing docilely beside him, a hundred feet or so from the fence separating the ranch property from the road to Granby. The two camouflaged Hummers were pulling away toward Granby as I approached. I made sure they were at a respectable distance before I came in close, got off my horse, and nudged the body with my foot.

Chuck had been killed with a clean through-and-through shot to the chest. Pretty close to a perfect heart shot. I didn't think I'd want to stand up in a fire fight against whatever of Mario Rapino's thugs had done that.

I probably should have felt outraged for Chuck. I didn't bear a grudge against him even if he'd duped me. He was a good fuck and a loose and easy guy to be around. I certainly hadn't pegged him for an assassin. It was tough what Rapino had done to him as a reward for a job successfully concluded, but I didn't really have much sympathy to give to any of these guys in the underworld—certainly not ones from my own city who had come out here to carry out their vendetta—other than it was nice they did it here rather than on the city streets.

Very clever of Mario, though, I thought, to have managed to lure Giacomo out here to his doom—and then making sure they were seen together where he could have offed Giacomo and didn't. Of course, it might not have been possible to lure Giacomo here if he had been the real killer of Lorenzo Rapino. Since he wasn't, he probably had a blind spot about what the Rapinos were really planning for him out here. He probably thought they were just having one of their regular meetings on neutral ground in an effort to stay out of each other's hair in the city.

I manhandled the body up onto his horse, belly over the saddle, mounted my own horse, and slowly trotted back to the main ranch compound.

They were all—well, most of them—standing on the porch of the main house, lined up along the railing and watching me bring Chuck's body back in—the Sheriff, a couple of deputies, Slade, and Butch.

"See you got him," the Sheriff said, as I guided Chuck's horse up to the railing.

"Shot 'em?" one deputy said.

"He's been shot," I said. I saw no reason to get further into that now. Ballistics would eventually catch up with the truth of that, but there was no reason for this lot to know the whole story here—at least not yet. It wasn't over yet.

"Saves a trial," chimed in the other deputy. "Witnesses saw him do it, so you should be clear on that. Still, might be a little trouble for you."

"I doubt that," I said, and I then flashed the badge Hank had given me before I rode out. Conveniently, it was issued by the Colorado State Police and had a good enough photo of me on it. Hank had come through on that.

Butch turned all red and scared looking when I flashed the badge, but Slade stayed cool as a cucumber, which I took as a sign of who knew what about me from the outset here. Suddenly, though, I noticed who wasn't there.

"Where's Hank?" I asked.

"Haven't seen him in a while," Butch said.

"And Jason Jenks—I mean Jay—where's he?"

"Haven't seen him in a while either," Butch answered. No one else gave even that much of an answer—at least until one of the deputies spoke up.

"I saw two men goin' into a horse barn over there. An older guy and one of the wranglers."

"Oh, god," I said, the possibility of my stupidity zinging through me, and I turned my horse and spurred it toward the horse barn.

I found them near the back of the barn, Hank on his back on a hay bale, his wrists tied together by rope, a big bruise on his temple, dead to the world—but not yet dead, I hoped. Jenks was hunched between Hank's spread legs, flailing at him with a riding crop and fucking him furiously. His free hand was knotted in a length of rope pulled tightly around Hank's neck.

I shot him dead with the handgun Hank had given me.



Death in the Rockies Ch. 10



"So, when did you figure out that Jason Jenks himself was the serial killer?"

I gave Hank a steady look. We were across the table from each other in an interview room down at Denver police headquarters. But neither one of us was being interviewed—we'd both just needed a more private place to say our good-byes. I was about to leave the building and find a hotel near the airport. In the morning I'd ship out for New York, a job done if not exactly the job I'd been sent to do. I guess I was lucky. A cop didn't often get congratulated for killing the man he'd been sent out to protect.

"About fifteen seconds before I shot him dead—and I wasn't positive then until I saw that he had that rope around your wrists and your neck."

"You didn't suspect anything before that?"

"No. But I sure should have; he'd had me in almost the same position twice already, and I didn't get it. We were so sure Giacomo Arcardi was our man and that Jenks was our key witness. We all look pretty stupid now in hindsight. Of course Jenks could write up the killings in such detail—he was there. He was the killer. He really played us for chumps. He seemed so brave, if foolhardy, for remaining so public through it all; he'd set it up for the Rapinos and Arcardis to go at each other over this. He probably counted on getting another book out of it. But he was locked into his fetish; he just couldn't give it up. And then there was Chuck—him taking advantage of me thinking he was my contact. It helped him get closer to Arcardi."

"You didn't shoot him, did you?" Hank asked in a low voice. "Chuck. You weren't the one who shot him, were you?"

"No. That was the Rapino crew. I saw them driving off as I came on to Chuck's body. They'd gotten to him before I did. He'd carried out his hit on Arcardi for them—them thinking it was Giacomo who had killed Lorenzo, Jenks's book having misdirected them as much as it did us—and he was then just a loose end for them."

"You know that will come out as soon as the ballistics results come back."

"Yeah, I know. But by then I'll be back in New York City. I'll tell my lieutenant the full story. It's still a hot issue for us back in New York. It still feeds a vendetta between two major crime families there. You can close the books here in Denver, but we still have some political shit to wade through on this back in New York."

"You really want to go back to New York? To that sort of shit? I'm sure they'd be happy to have you on the force here."

"New York's my town," I said. If he was telling me something, I didn't really want to hold on to the hope. If he wasn't, I knew I'd be miserable in Denver. With my luck, he was probably married and had a passel of children.

"Pity no one took a closer look at Giacomo's preferences," he continued. If he'd had any idea what I was thinking, he didn't let on. I took it as a vote for "married, with children." "They'd have seen he didn't fit the killer's style."

"Yep. That's on us back in New York. I could have played his angle before he even came out here, and I could have told them he was a watcher, not a snuffer. Although he did like his violence."

"Don't take this on yourself, Clint. You pulled the wagon on this one. Mostly by yourself. I'm sure glad you showed up when you did. I didn't have a clue why he was asking me to check something out with him at the back of the barn—and then after he hit me on the head with the shovel, I was out of it until Doc revived me. I don't know what hurt me worse—my head, my throat, or my ass. I'd never been ridden before."

We sat there, looking at each other, for a long couple of minutes. I really, really didn't know what—or if—he was signaling. I wanted to get back to New York, but Hank was a hard man to leave.

"Well, I guess I need to be shoving off and checking out the hotels near the airport," I said reluctantly. I held my hand out across the table to shake his. He did so, but he didn't let go, and I didn't want him to. His hand moved up over my wrist, though, and held on there. A chill went through my body, remembering his touch the last time we'd made love—a touch that turned me on like no one had done since Brad. The signaling was beginning to look more like signaling.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said in a tone that sounded every much as reluctant as mine. "It was good, though, wasn't it?"

"It was the best. The very best." I was being too passive. If there was signaling going on, I needed to fall in with the game. But I didn't get the chance.

"So, there you are." The voice was big, booming. I expected it to break the spell, that Hank would let loose of my wrist. But he didn't.

"Hi, Ron," I said, recognizing the appearance of Ron Price, the guy who'd watched out for me from a distance. "I was just saying good-bye to Hank here."

"I hear you're going back to New York in the morning."

"Yep. I think I'm done here."

That had done it. It wasn't what I wanted, but if it wasn't going to go over the edge, it was just as well for this dance to end. I didn't get to this point often with a guy; it wasn't one of my favorite journeys. I felt Hank's hand fall away from my wrist. I looked up into his eyes, and I saw the hurt there—but I also saw a flash return to his eyes as he must have caught whatever my eyes were involuntarily revealing to him.

"Well, you've got another night here then. Remember we talked about leather and such. You don't need a hotel tonight, unless that's what you want. I can take care of you tonight and get you to the plane tomorrow."

I tore my eyes away from Hank and looked at Ron. He was looking real good to me, and if I had to rebound, I wanted to land on my feet. Tight pants, big bulge at the crotch and bulging biceps—the whole package I looked for when I was running away from myself. I couldn't help it; I was sinking fast into blind habit. I wanted to try out what he'd indicated he had for me.

I looked back at Hank, torn now. I wanted him too. I just couldn't control myself. That's what I'd had with Brad that I needed. He had me on a loose leash—and he knew I couldn't help myself—but he had control of me; he'd reign me in when I needed it. And he knew when I needed it.

"He can't tonight, Ron. Sorry. He's staying at my place tonight."

Hank had taken my wrist again and I was trembling. The shock thundered through my body—that Hank knew when I needed to be brought back. But did he know what delicate ground we were on here? Only Brad had known.

"Suit yourself. Have a good trip back to New York, Clint," Ron said good-naturedly. "Maybe we'll meet up there someday."

"Yeah, you have a good one too," I said to him as he turned and moved out the door. "And thanks for having my back in Chicago and up at the ranch."

Hank and I were back to where we'd been before Ron came in—he was holding my wrist from across the table again.

"You want him, don't you? Your body wants to try him out, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I do want him, Hank. But I want you too. I'm sorry. I just can't help myself."

"If I let him drive you home, to my place—after you two are done—will you still stay the night with me?"

"Are you serious, man?"

"If it's what I have to do not to lose you entirely, it's what I'll do."

Just like Brad. He'd handled it just like Brad would have. That's why it had worked with Brad. He knew my limits.

Ron fucked me in the back of his smoked-window SUV, all tricked out for sport, in a dark-corner space in the basement garage of Hank's apartment building. He had leads and restraints set so that I was bound and spread-eagled on the back floor of the vehicle from which all of the seats except the front ones had been stripped. I was in heaven.

Before fucking me hard, he played in my ass channel with a string of graduated-sized balls, and while they were all in, he hunched over me and face fucked me. He was using serious balls, and he didn't just take his time inserting them and slowly pull them out; he'd jerk the last, biggest one out to feel me tense and arch my back and cry out and then he'd push it back in. He had his cock harnessed in something electrified that made me gasp and give a shout whenever he pressed a bulb attached to it while he was fucking me.

"Gawd, you are some talented bottom. Class A." he muttered after I'd gone into a frenzy and tightened my channel and made him come when he was trying his best to avoid it. "I can see why they sent you all the way out from New York City for this gig. We gotta see more of you out West here."

He said he enjoyed it so much that he was sure now that he'd be paying a visit to New York City before the year was out. I'm almost sorry to say that I enjoyed it too and gave him my address and phone number in the city—and said I'd let him know when I moved. I already had decided that my apartment was too small and dingy to go back to.

Hank took me slow and tenderly that night until I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him deep inside me and begged him to punish me—telling him that I was so sorry that I was who I was, wanting what I wanted. And then he was pile driving me hard and deep until long after I'd come and pleaded that I was beyond exhaustion.

As we lay, still panting, but with enough breath now to speak in low tones, he whispered in my ear, "I've been thinking of transferring. I've a hankering for a larger city. Think they'd have me in the NYPD?"

"In a flash," I said.

"And would you—?"

"In a quicker flash. I'd already been thinking of getting a larger apartment without knowing why."

"Well, then."

"But . . . but, I'm not sure you'd want to. Hank, I can't change. I like cock too much—and variety—and the edge. I love it on the edge."

"I'm not asking for more than you can give."

"Well, then." And I settled down with a smile on my face and a purr in the back of my throat as once more, masterfully, he began to move inside me—reminding me so much of Brad that it almost scared me.