Breath on the Wind (29 page)

The sound of a sob had her turning back around.  Chiz was sitting on the opposite side of the bed, his back to her, his feet on the floor.  She unfurled herself, and crawled across the bed to investigate the strange sound. Chiz had his elbows propped on his knees, and was crying into his hands.

As terrified as she had just been, her heart broke for him.

“Baby?  You okay?”

“You’re askin’ me?”  He looked up, and laid his tear-dampened palm against the side of her face.  He allowed it to slide slowly down, until it was lying benignly against her neck.  She tried not to flinch, and felt that she succeeded.  “Why’re you askin’ me?  I tried to hurt you.”

“That wasn’t you, baby.  I know it wasn’t.  Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It was me.  You’re not stupid, so don’t act like it.  It was me.  I’m dangerous.  I’m dangerous to you.  Don’t ever forget that.”

Andy settled on her knees and wrapped her arms around him, being careful not to press against the bandage, which was showing some red now.  Bold color had seeped into the pristine white.

“I know.  I won’t forget it.  But let’s talk.  What happened?  What do you need?  Because we either figure out how to stop this from happening again, or we need to end what we’ve got going here.”

Chiz had stopped crying now, but his tears were still wet tracks on his cheeks.  He leaned into her embrace.

“I don’t wanna stop. I don’t wanna lose you.”

“Me, either.  So talk to me.”

“I lose control.  You shouldn’t… I’m fucked up.  All fucked up.  I’ll go.

Chiz tried to push up off the bed, but Andy gripped him more tightly.  “No.  Stay.  Tell me how I can help.”

“You don’t understand, doll.  I’ve killed people.”

“Well, I didn’t think you were off delivering Girl Scout cookies today.”  She released her hold, only enough to trace her fingertips over the bandage on his arm.

“No.  You really don’t understand.  I’ve killed women - doin’ what I was about to do to you.  When my head gets all full like this, I don’t have control.  It’s happened more than once.”

This time when he tried to get up, Andy relinquished her hold and let him go.  She sat back on the bed as he stood.  The memory of the night that she’d agreed to the breath play was tainted now, by more than the memory of his leaving her.  “Who?”  She asked.

“What do you mean?”  Chiz’s desolate expression made a little room for confusion.

“Who?  Who’ve you killed?  Do you drive around and pick stray women up like a fucking serial killer?”

He flinched at that, and so he fucking should, Andy thought. 

“No.  It’s hookers.  It’s always hookers.”

Andy stayed, kneeling by her pillows, watching this man in front of her, a self-confessed murderer of women.  The man that she loved, that she’d followed, in the blind faith that tying her life to his was the right decision.

“That stops.  If you’re with me, you’re with me.  No more.  No more hookers, and no more breath play.”

Chiz came back to sit on the bed, but he left space between them.  That was no bad thing at the moment.  “I don’t want anyone else.  That’s why I came back to you.”

Andy wasn’t convinced that the explanation was the compliment it might have been meant as.  “Then we need to figure out what we do, when you get that urge.”

Chiz looked lost.  It was the only way she could describe his expression, such a mixture of confusion and sadness.  “You should be runnin’ from me, doll.  Why ain’t you runnin’?”

“Not to split hairs, baby, but this is my place.  I’m not leaving.”

Chiz’s lips twitched into what might have been about to start to be a smile.  “I don’t wanna havta leave.”

“So, neither of us is leaving.  If we’re going to be together, we have to find a way around this, a way to make it work.  I won’t take that from you.  I won’t let you hurt me.”

“I don’t want you to.”  He drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a weighty sigh.  “It’s just… my head, gets so busy.  When there’s waitin’, and I know the action’s gonna start jumpin’ any minute, but I have to wait.  I’m not good at thinkin’. I don’t know how to handle it, the pressure, the weight in my head.”

Andy was beginning to think that she knew how to handle the situation.  The territory was familiar.  “I have an idea.  Do you trust me?”

Chiz reached over and cupped her cheek.  This time, when he touched her, she didn’t have to think about not flinching.  “More than you know, doll.”

Andy shuffled off the bed, and went to the top drawer of her dresser.  She’d done some shopping the day before in anticipation of his return, but hadn’t formulated her plans much beyond having the items ready and available for use.

“Will you wear these?”  She held out a pair of handcuffs, a copy of the pair she’d taken to the motel room on the night he’d let her dominate him.

Chiz didn’t hesitate in his answer.  “Yes.  Anythin’ for you to feel safe, doll.”

“It’s not just about me feeling safe, baby, and it doesn’t have to be all the time.  It’s about working out the noise in your head, so that we can both be safe, so that people around us are safe.”

Chiz nodded.  “You got anythin’ else in there?”

“A few things.”  Andy smirked.  “Want to come and choose?”

Chiz still couldn’t quite find a full smile, but he was looking brighter as he joined her by the dresser.  He sifted around in the drawer.  Andy was both surprised and not when he handed her the fabric blindfold and the rubber paddle.  She’d bought similar items to the ones they’d already played with, thinking that familiarity would be best at first.  But she was surprised that he was amenable to the paddle again.  Although, maybe it did make some sense.

Andy closed the drawer, and drew Chiz over to stand at the end of the bed.  She dropped the toys in a pile on the comforter.

“You’re going to have to bend down for me to get the blindfold on.”

“You want me to kneel?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.  Chiz dipped his head, so that Andy could tie the fabric in place around his eyes, and then straightened. 

Andy brought his wrists around to his back and fastened the neoprene cuffs around them. This scene did not have the teasing spar of the first time that they had played it.  Not yet.  But Andy had an idea of how to get it back.  She wanted to make this about more than just punishment.

“Stay,” she instructed.  Chiz smiled, and nodded.

Andy hurried into the kitchen, collected the few items she needed, and brought them back into the bedroom.  Chiz hadn’t moved.  Without touching him, she knelt in front of him.  She placed the two glasses that she’d brought in with her a little way away from his feet.

He was completely soft now, his cock hanging limply in its nest of dark golden hair.  Andy grinned to herself as she took it between her lips, taking care not to touch any other part of his body.  Chiz jumped at the touch of her mouth, but didn’t pull away.  When she looked up his body, she could see that he was smiling down at her from beneath the blindfold.  She kept her hands in her lap as she sucked him, twirling her tongue around his shaft as it hardened.  When he was solid once more, she released him from her mouth.

Chiz was still smiling blindly down at her.  Elmo picked a cube of ice out of one of the glasses.  She popped into her mouth and sucked it, moving it around with her tongue until her lips were almost numb, before taking it back out.  She kept hold of it between her thumb and fingertips as she sucked Chiz’s cock into the now cooled cavern of her mouth.

“Doll, what the…?”

Andy pulled back.  “You will address me as Domina.”

She dropped the ice cube back into the glass with its siblings, and took a mouthful of whiskey from the second glass.  She swilled it around her mouth before she swallowed it.  Then she took Chiz’s cock between her lips, which were now burning with the heat of the alcohol.

“Jesus, shit, doll!”  What’re you doin’?”

“I won’t tell you again.  You will address me as Domina, or you will be punished.”

She repeated the process, the ice first, followed by the fire of the whiskey.  She kept alternating the stimulation until Chiz’s hips bucked instinctively, and almost continuously, against the sensation.

“Fuck, doll!”

Andy moved the glasses well out of the way, and rolled to her feet.  “Don’t say you weren’t warned. Turn and kneel.”

She had to guide Chiz a little; he wasn’t quite steady on his feet as he turned.  Once he was facing the bed, she pushed on his shoulder until he knelt.  Then she put her flattened palm between his shoulder blades, and pushed until his chest was resting on the bed, and his backside was exposed.  Andy got into position.

“One.”  She brought the paddle down on his ass.  Chiz hissed and jerked, but did not speak.

“Two.”  She hit him again.  She counted out five strokes in total.  “Do you want more?”

“Yes, Domina.”

Andy delivered another five strokes, counting out loud for each one.  By the time she’d finished, Chiz was grunting with each hit, and his ass was glowing a rosy red.  Andy placed the paddle on the bed, and shuffled on her knees until she was directly behind Chiz.  He jerked as she pressed her body against his tender skin.

She reached for the glass of ice first, and lubricated her hand with one of the melting cubes, then she twined her arm around him, until she could grasp his cock in her cold, wet fist.  He was still hard as rock, but she wasn’t ready to let him fuck her again yet.  She pressed closer still, feeling the heat of his abused ass against her thighs.  His cuffed hands dug into her stomach.  She began to pump, and within barely ten stokes of her hand, Chiz was spurting come onto the floor, and yelling to the ceiling.

Andy untied the blindfold, and used it to wipe away the last traces of semen from her hand.  She unfastened the cuffs, and then rolled to sit against the end of the bed.  Freed from his restraints, Chiz twisted to sit next to her, nudging her to move over to make room for the mess that he’d made. She outright laughed when he cursed, and jerked as his ass made contact with the carpet.

“How’s your head feeling?”

“Quiet.  My ass is screamin’, but my head is quiet.”

“Thought it might be.”  She snuggled into Chiz’s side.  He wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her closer.  “Next time that happens, don’t cut me off.  Tell me, and we’ll deal with it.  Give me the control.  You only need to feel the release.”  She paused.  “And I’ve got some lotion you can put on your ass.”

Chiz chuckled, then sobered.  “I don’t deserve this, deserve you.  Not after the things I’ve done.”

“You must’ve been a saint in a previous life, then,” Andy said with a grin.

Chiz laughed at her joke.  Still half-smiling, he asked, “You ever gonna let me use this stuff on you again?”

Andy tilted her head from its resting place on his chest, so that she could look him in the eyes.  “Sure, when I’m confident your head’s in the right place.  If I’m not, then no.”

Chiz dipped his head, and kissed the tip of her nose.  “Doll, I think it’s time we got me a collar, ‘cause you are definitely holdin’ my leash.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Four weeks after the shootout at the industrial compound, the Priests were back on the road, and heading east.  This time, however, their business was personal.

Kong and Fletch were minding the clubhouse, but Morse had felt well enough to make this trip, although he was driving the van.  It was his first journey of any length since he’d been shot, but the club had a vested interest in this excursion, and he hadn’t wanted to miss it.  Crash, too, had been determined to join them, and since it wouldn’t be as long a distance as their business runs, no one had had the heart to tell him no, even though it would be completed in the space of twenty-four hours and would require immense concentration on his part to complete the ride without accidents.

Today, they were riding to claim justice against the First Church of Christ.

Chiz knew that should they be caught, their mission would be termed ‘revenge.’  It was all fucking semantics as far as he was concerned.  A group of fanatics, under the guise of religion, had murdered eleven people.  The law would not make them atone for their crimes, but the MC would.  That hurt had been committed against someone that they now considered on of their own.

That was part of the reason that Crash had been so adamant about joining them.  Elmo might not have wanted kids, but she’d managed to acquire a fully grown son, in the shape of their scarred resident technical geek.  Chiz thought it was more than a little skeevy.  Crash had a habit of referring to Elmo as ‘Mistress Elmo,’ which seemed at odds with the fact that Elmo was the one that Crash went to for advice about pretty much anything.  He wasn’t that much younger than her, either, only around five years, but Elmo appeared to have made it her mission to see that the boy ate at least one meal that wasn’t junk food each day.  Chiz was keeping an eye on that shit.  It wasn’t a crush, and he wasn’t jealous, but he absolutely did not want to play ‘daddy’ to one of his brothers.

Hand in hand with his growing affinity for Elmo, Crash had made it his mission to perfect the setup of their trip.  It had involved some hacking that would add to the list of federal felonies that they were about to commit, but it would be worth it.

First, they had a package to collect.

As they had planned, it was dark by the time they rolled across the state line.  Their first destination was the motel that Chiz knew so well now.  Morse, having not traveled outside of Absolution for some time, and without his colors, since he was driving the van, was the one to rent a room.  He came back with the key for the one they wanted, the one furthest away from the clerk’s office, in the darkest reaches of the complex.

They parked their bikes in a line outside the room, and reversed the van as close to the door as they could.  The equipment they needed was in the van, but it did not need to be unloaded yet.  The seven men entered the room.  Inside, they checked that they had their personal weapons where they wanted them, and they removed their kuttes.  Morse opened the back doors of the van, and tucked the bundle of leather to one side, before six men in nondescript dark clothing, with their faces and heads now covered, piled into the cargo space. 

From the pitch dark of the bowels of the van, Chiz heard Morse lock the motel room door, then his footsteps as he rounded the van, the click and bang as he opened and shut the door, and then they were moving.

Their first stop was a trailer park. 

There was no need for the full group to pile out of the van and draw attention.  Shark and Chiz were the only ones to jump down after Morse had opened the doors.  Morse returned to the cab of the van.  Chiz and Shark mounted the steps to the door of the trailer that they had parked alongside, and pushed open the door that they knew would be unlocked.

So far, so good.  The plan was working perfectly.  Inside the trailer, Shane stood next to the bound body of a woman.  Tricia Pendleton’s eyes were as wide as saucers, and filled with terror, but she managed to find a new level of fear when the two strange men entered her home.  She couldn’t make a sound, though, past the duct tape that covered her mouth.  Chiz nodded at Shane; only the big man’s eyes were visible between the hood covering his head, and the bandana around his face.

Chiz leaned out the door and checked that the coast was clear before Shark and Shane lifted the struggling Tricia and loaded her into the back of the van.  Chiz closed the door to the trailer securely as Shark and Shane climbed back into the van.  He did another sweep to check for nosy neighbors.  Satisfied that there were none, and that there were no signs of anything amiss, he climbed into the van and pulled the doors shut behind him.

No one spoke as the van began to move again.  The silence was only broken by the muffled sobs and whimpers of the woman on the floor at their feet.  This next section of their journey was slightly longer, as it took them well out of the city limits.  This time, when the van stopped, everyone emptied out into the night. 

Morse had parked in the location that Chiz had scouted the week previously.  Their destination was an old storage warehouse, just visible beyond the copse of trees that was camouflaging their vehicle.  Shane hefted the sniveling Tricia out with him.  She couldn’t move under her own steam, as he’d tied her wrists and ankles with cable ties.  The big man lifted the woman as if she weighed nothing, and settled her over his shoulder.

Terry, Sinatra and Morse were the first wave.  The moved almost silently through the copse, and began to spread out before they reached the edge of the trees.  Their posts had already been assigned.  A series of whistles informed the men still waiting that the plan was still progressing as it should.

Crash had spent the better part of the last six weeks posing as a potential investor in the Church.  He had created an identity, that existed only online, by which to contact the pastor.  Over the course of an extended email conversation, interspersed with several bank transfers of nonexistent money from a nonexistent bank account, he had built up a trusting relationship with Pastor Will McCabe.  The final carrot had been to offer to fund the conversion of a suitable space into a compound for the Church, a place in which they could live and pray as they pleased.  It would basically become home to a cult, although that word had not been used by either man.

The building that they were looking at was one that Crash had chosen and suggested specifically, because its isolated location suited the MC’s purposes as much as it suited the Church’s.  Crash’s online alter ego had suggested a meeting to discuss some finer details of the deal.  The pastor, blinded by his greed and supposed good fortune, hadn’t seemed to think there was anything ordinary about meeting a virtual stranger in the middle of nowhere after dark.  Chiz supposed that the pastor was trusting that God had his back.  God would be looking the other way this night.

The signals given by Morse, Terry and Sinatra had signified that the Pastor was inside and alone as planned.

Chiz and Shark, who was carrying the lumpy duffle of supplies from the van, headed down to one of the entrances to the warehouse, Samuel and Crash to the other.  Shane followed at a distance, carrying Tricia with him.  They wanted to trap the pastor in the building, and did not want the small noises that Tricia was making to alert him to anything amiss.  Terry, Sinatra and Morse would keep lookout outside.

The pastor only became aware that his night was not going to go as he’d planned when four men, who he had very definitely not been expecting, walked in through the only available entrances, simultaneously surrounding him and blocking his escape.

“Who are y’all?  What’re you doin’ here?” the pastor demanded.  He was full of confidence and bravado, until Shane walked in, came right up to him, and dumped the struggling Tricia at his feet.

The pastor dropped to a crouch.  “Tricia?  That you?  Honey, what’s happenin’?  Have they hurt you?”  He was asking the questions as he tried to pull the tape from her mouth.

Shane reached forward and grabbed the pastor’s wrist, pulling him upright and away from the woman.

“Hey!  Let go.  I don’t know who the fuck y’all are but you’ve no right…”

Samuel stepped forward and spoke.  His voice was muffled by the bandana around his face.  “On the contrary, my friend.  We have every right.”

“What do y’all want?  I have money, I can pay.”

Will McCabe wasn’t a short man, but he was skinny.  His badly-fitting cream-colored suit hung off his shoulders.  Shane was easily twice his width, and had no problems keeping ahold of him, even though the pastor was struggling hard enough to send the party element of his mullet flying.

At a nod from Samuel, Shane caught both the pastor’s wrists, and brought the man in front of him.  The pastor struggled some more, but he didn’t make what Chiz would have considered a serious attempt to free himself. He didn’t even attempt to back-heel Shane in the shins.  Chiz wondered if the man simply hadn’t comprehended yet how much trouble he was in.

“We don’t want your money.”  Samuel rumbled.

“What do you want then?”

“Retribution.  ‘Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.’”

“I don’t know what y’all’re talkin’ about. What’ve you done to Tricia?”  Fear was forcing the pastor’s voice to a higher pitch.

“Nothin’.  Yet.”

Samuel turned to Chiz.  Chiz stepped forward and pulled Tricia up from her position on the floor.  He dragged her to the empty space in between Samuel and the pastor.  She was struggling frantically again, so Chiz slapped her.  The shock and pain took the fight out of her.  Shark stepped forward, and dropped the duffle he was carrying by Chiz’s side.

“’And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,’” intoned Samuel.

“I don’t know what y’all’re fuckin’ talkin’ about!” Will McCabe shouted.  “What the fuck’re y’all gonna do to Tricia?”

“Your friend here planted the bomb that killed eleven people at a club near the city a couple of months ago.  She will be punished.”

At those words, the pastor stopped struggling.  “Who are y’all?”  The question was little more than a desperate whisper.

“We are your judgment,” Samuel responded.

Chiz had finished extracting the items he needed from the bag.  What she saw caused Tricia to whimper in fear.  She started to twist and writhe again, but Shark grabbed her shoulders.  Chiz unsheathed his knife from his hip.  He reached around Tricia and sliced through the cable ties that bound her wrists. 

Shark’s fingers dug into the terrified woman’s shoulders.  But Chiz wasn’t looking at the fear and pleading that was naked in her eyes.  She had ceased to be a human being to him the moment that he’d seen her walking out of the Pumpkin Patch on the security film, a half hour before the building exploded.

He grabbed her right arm and pulled it out from her body.  He reached for the medical tourniquet first.  He slipped it around Tricia’s forearm, and yanked it tight, then he forced her arm down against the cold concrete floor.  He reached for the tools he’d laid out, selected the large Bowie knife, and in a swift movement, brought it down on Tricia’s wrist.  The knife was heavy and razor sharp, and the cut was clean.  Tricia screamed behind the duct tape as she stared at the bleeding stump of her wrist.  When Chiz reached for the small blowtorch, she passed out.  She did not regain consciousness while he cauterized the wound.

From the moment Chiz had cut the woman’s hand off, the pastor had started screaming “No!  No, no, no, no!”  The words ran together in a continuous litany.  When Chiz turned to him, he was whispering them like a prayer.

Chiz picked up the Bowie knife and wiped the blade clean on the pastor’s suit.  The pastor had tried to pull away when Chiz approached him, but the mountain that was Shane behind him was a solid wall, and he could not escape.

Chiz returned the large blade to the bag.  He took his own knife and cut a lock of hair from the pastor’s mullet.  He twisted it into a knot, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans.  Then he nodded wordlessly at Shane.  This revenge would be his.

Shane let go of the pastor’s arms.  The groaning man slumped into a pile of flesh and bones, still whimpering, “No, no, no, no, no.”

Shane dug into the duffle.  When he’d been consulted about the plan, and had been offered the chance to exact justice on behalf of Andy and their dead friends, he had requested some very specific items.  His shopping list had raised a few eyebrows, well, except for Shark and Chiz.  They’d seen the list and gotten a little giddy.