Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (28 page)

Maybe the fact that a drunken guy, or a very good friend of mine, was saying it made all the difference. Normally I would’ve been highly embarrassed at that sort of talk.

But tonight sitting by the crackling fire, suddenly it made sense. I looked calmly, directly at April and said, “I love April. Always have. Always will.”

I’d never seen her look so serene, so lit up with an inner glow. “I love you too, you dirty outlaw.”

Everyone was silent for a few moments. I thought that we were pondering our inner peace, or mulling over our spiritual futures or some such crap, but then Sequoia burped loudly, sort of ruining the moment.

April giggled, and Sequoia said, “I love you guys, too.”

Then all three of us looked at each other. A truck was coming down the dirt road.

Sequoia still had his gun, and of course I hadn’t gone armed to a fucking charity fundraising function. I stood and held my hand out to the Cahuilla Indian.

“Hand me your piece.”

“No. Who’s that? Were you expecting someone?”

“No one. That’s why I want you to hand me your gun.”

“No! Why do you think I’m packing it? I need protection.”

“I can see in the dark better than you. In the service I was always sent on the night raids because I can see in the dark. You, however, need glasses.”

April was standing too as the truck’s headlights swept closer. The driver seemed to know where we’d be. He was making a beeline directly for me. And he had so many men with him they were packed into the bed of the truck. “Sequoia, hand Dyno your gun. He’s a better shot than you.”

“I know what.” I jogged back to April’s car and yanked open the back door. My old battered sleeveless “Melrod” army jacket was in there. Sequoia had always admired it. I’d been wearing it the night we met at the jail. “Here. A trade, Yazzie. You can
keep
my Melrod jacket if you hand over that gun.”

Sequoia considered the trade with wobbly eyes. He knew that Billy Melrod was my hero back in Paducah. Billy had come back on leave, given me that jacket, and had proceeded to go back in country in Afghanistan only to get blown to smithereens by an IED. He’d inspired me to enter the armed forces with his motto of “honor for one, glory for all.”

“You’d part with that?”

Sequoia sure was chewing over the finer details while this truckload of goons came rolling up to April’s car. My voice might’ve become a little more strained then.

“Yes! I’d part with it, Yazzie! Just take it! Hand over the gun!”

This was a serious dilemma for him. It became less so for me when I realized that at least six
armed
cowboys were leaping out of that truck. They clutched various pump action shotguns and high-powered rifles, as if anyone needed a scope to shoot us at twenty yards off.

I realized it was a fucking
lynch mob
coming to get Sequoia, and quite possibly us. I could tell a mile off by the limp in his walk the leader was none other than Lawson Willard, come to get revenge on me for what my horse had done to him seven years ago. I knew that Sequoia’s piece wasn’t going to help us. Now all I prayed for was to save April from this colossal clusterfuck.

I took her by her arms and steered her toward her car. Tossing my jacket in back, I put her in there, too. “I’ll get this sorted out.”

“No you won’t, Dyno! Lawson’s got a fucking rifle and he means to use it, too!”

I never thought I’d be seeing this day, but I told her, “Call 911. We’ve got to hand him over to the proper authorities.” I’d never imagined asking cops for help before. I’d always been the one that cops arrested.

Giving her something to do took her mind off the situation, so she let me skulk back toward Sequoia.

I didn’t get too far, though. Willard was bellowing, “Hand over the Injun and no one gets hurt!” Like he was in a fucking western movie.

I hollered back, “I don’t think so, Willard! I’m not handing him over to a lynch mob! Since when did mob justice become legalized again? Besides, there are no trees around to hang him from.”

“Just leave that to us!” Willard boomed at the top of his voice, though we were well within speaking distance. He must’ve been so riled and liquored he didn’t realize how loud he was yelling. “That’s none of your concern! Hand over the tomahawk-chucker and we’ll let you go!”

“Not about to, pal,” I bawled, my thumbs in my belt like John Wayne. But because I didn’t want to stand in front of Sequoia and risk him using his trigger finger, I had no choice but to leave him a wide-open target. “This is a situation best left to the authorities to handle, not the racist citizens.”

Sequoia must’ve sensed that he was a big target, because his hand holding his piece started shaking uncontrollably. I’d never seen him that much of a wreck, but then again, he’d just killed a man. Like he was playing the bad guy role in the movie, Sequoia roared, “You’re not going to take me a fucking hostage! I’d rather die an honorable death than at the end of a rope!”

Willard bawled, “Have it your fucking way, redskin!” while his cohorts clamored around him in a half-circle. Their pieces were all drawn and ready to fire. There must’ve been seven, eight pieces all leveled at Sequoia and me. I was the only unarmed one. It sure looked like it was going to be a surefire St. Valentine’s Day Massacre out there.

“How fucking honorable is it going to be if I have to shoot you?” yelled Willard. “You’re gonna die all sprawled out like an idiot, just like Marcus Seaver did, right underneath that giant penis statue that you
stole
from our high school!”

I yelled, “I fucking stole it. Sequoia had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you just let me take him in my car down to the station house and—”

I had spoken too late. I was just too fucking slow on the uptake. Sequoia shot Willard, again smack dab in the middle of his chest, and he was shrieking,

“You’re never gonna take me alive! You were never friendly to me in life, and I’m going to get revenge on you in death! Dyno and April Pleasure were the only people who ever stooped to befriend me!”

Meanwhile his pistol arm was flailing about as though he meant to shoot the stars, Willard was a pile of empty clothing on the ground, and nobody dared approach the body for fear of being shot by Sequoia again.

I knew then that he’d blown his luck. He’d played every hand dealt to him, and had no more cards to play. I had to cut my losses, especially with April, my precious cargo, sitting in the Mustang’s back seat, well within range of Sequoia’s itchy trigger finger.

I dove around the lee side of the car as one of Willard’s posse ruthlessly plugged Sequoia in the head. A few more bullets told me that less brave guys were also taking their turn at Sequoia’s body. Spent casings rolled so close to me I could feel their heat. April flung the passenger door open for me, and I dove over her to take the driver’s seat. She already had the keys in the ignition.

“I’m sorry, Squarepants,” I panted, “but we’ve got to bail. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

My window was closest to the posse. The reports of their firearms were so loud my ears later rang. As I backed up the Mustang so fast I spewed gravel, I tossed the Melrod jacket out the window toward where Sequoia had fallen. His limbs were splayed out like an Egyptian hieroglyphic, as if he pointed to some distant star where his spirit would soon be found.

Oddly, April was putting her seatbelt on as I drove off. It struck me as a weird thing to do when running from a band of armed rednecks out for blood. “I know. But it’s just sad, Dyno. One part of me knows he was a doomed person. There’s an air about people like that. You just know they’re not going to make it far. Like Lawson.”

“Protecting you is my first priority,” I said, my jaw set firmly. “Lying around in the middle of a firefight isn’t doing my job of saving you.”

Behind us came one more crack of a rifle, then silence.

April was silent for quite a while, until we were almost to her Quarry Cave House. We could regroup there and figure out what to do next.

She said, “You do an excellent job of saving me, you outlaw. You wouldn’t even believe what you’ve saved me from so far.”

I’d never been so flattered in my life.

APRIL

“O
h, God! Stop,
stop! You’re much too big. Your cock is way too big!”

I bucked my hips as though to throw off the assailant. I thrashed my head from side to side, whipping him with my hair. I battered my heels against his bare butt.

But I could do nothing, because I was handcuffed to a coat hook behind me.

He stopped. “I’m hurting you?”

I looked at him blankly. “I didn’t use our safeword now, did I?”

A look of relief washed over Dyno’s face. “Oh. Right.”

Our safeword was “glitter,” and I know I hadn’t said it, so Dyno kept fucking me. I was definitely accustomed to his big cock by now. And as always, I wanted more, more, more.

He came explosively, true to his nickname, filling me with a big load of jizz. We’d both agreed that I would have the IUD removed. Studies were showing that women lost eggs earlier in life than previously imagined, and the race was on to get pregnant before I hit thirty. This time really felt like the magic charm as he flooded me with his semen. The warmth flowed through my womb as my pussy grasped his girth, and it just felt right.

We had found the handcuffs he’d gotten for me when I was seventeen. We’d never had a chance to use them because my dad had slapped them on Dyno before hauling him to the station. He’d found them in the storage unit he rented with Sequoia when going there to clean it out. A depressing task, going through Sequoia’s baby teddy bears, his ancient video games, his worthless junk. I kept the teddy bear, though, and a few old battered racecars, pathetic GI Joes, things like that.

We moved Bull Gravy over to Sequoia’s house after installing his dad to a good hospice in Palm Springs. It was the nicest thing that’d ever happened to Mr. Crooks, although he couldn’t drink any more. Some relatives even popped out of the woodwork and seemed to be visiting him. Bull Gravy stood as a memorial to Sequoia’s brief flame. People surprised me by visiting and placing flowers, feathers, and other tributes. It seemed the town loved him as a rodeo clown and he hadn’t even known it. I was having Sequoia’s house remodeled with a vague plan in mind to have a sort of Cahuilla Indian center there. I’d been in touch with a few of his tribesmen who liked the idea.

We were so slick with sweat that I wanted to take a shower. My boobs were squeaking against Dyno’s bare chest as he unlocked the cuffs at the small of my back.

“You were right,” I panted, “those cuffs came in handy.” We didn’t want to bring up what they’d last been used for.

His dick twitched inside of me. He looked manly and professional unlocking my cuffs, shirtless, wearing nothing but his leather rodeo chaps. He was only more beautiful as he aged into maturity. He even had a few random white hairs at the temple now. He now wore his hair short in a modified buzz, handy for the rodeo, and I liked the porcupine feel when I ran my palm over it. It showed off his face, his high cheekbones, the almost Far East cast to his eyes.

I gathered his skull in my palm and drew him to me. “I love you, you fucking outlaw.” I kissed him.

His cock twitched some more, making me jump. I swore it even expanded inside of me, though he’d just come. “I love you, you fucking ice queen.” He pulled back. “I’m not taking a shower. I can’t wait to get at that fucking buffet. I’m like a pig in a trough out here.”

I agreed. “Yeah, let’s skip the shower. I’m starving. Hey!” Dyno had pulled away, going to strip off his chaps so he could step into his jeans. Only, he’d left one of my wrists cuffed. “Uh, I think you forgot something?”

He grinned sideways at me. “Didn’t forget nothing. Y’all got tongue enough for ten rows of teeth, and I need you to keep your mouth shut for a few seconds.”

I was offended. Did I really talk that much?

But when Dyno whipped a velvet-covered box from his suitcase and fell to one knee at my feet, I didn’t need encouragement to stop talking the hide off a cow. Was he…was he really going to…was he really going to ask—

“April Pleasure. I’ve had the joy and the agony of knowing you for going on ten years now. We’ve definitely had our ups and downs. That’s what makes life interesting, now, don’t it? You’re the other half of my soul, and if I can’t swap spit and hit the road with you, I’d rather die.”

My eyes just about fell out of my head when he opened the box. I’m not a jewelry expert by any stretch, but some diamonds glittered, and something bigger that looked like a sapphire.

“When my daddy took away my inheritance you didn’t throw me over. You believed in me, and fought to get your ranch, and now we’re doing well enough for me to ask you to be my wife.” He grinned crookedly. “Didn’t want to do it too soon, risk people thinking I was a gold digger. But now you and your dad know I’m not.”

Tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t fall on the ground too, being chained to the wall like I was. But I could slap my one free hand to my face in shock, and I did. I sort of blubbered for a few minutes.