Conrad, Kelly - Rogue Preacher (Siren Publishing Ménage and More ManLove)

KELLY CONRAD

Copyright © 2011

Prologue

“Sin, sin, sin! You’re all sinners, and you’ll burn in hell! A burnin’, scaldin’, everlastin’ fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless you repent!”

Sweat crept down his rugged face as he looked around, his sharp eyes glaring into every dark corner and into every face.

“The Devil’s in this tent tonight!” he hissed. “He’s sittin’ beside you now, tellin’ you it’s all lies. He’s makin’ you thirsty for that devil whiskey or hungry for that painted up hussy!”

With a sudden movement, he tore his frock coat from off his back and stood there looking like a mad gunslinger. After rolling the arms of his shirt up as if he meant business, he threw his pulpit aside and stood threateningly on the edge of the platform, his hands clenched in fists.

“I ain’t afraid of you, Devil!” he shouted, his thick, unruly hair shaking as he shifted his fiery gaze to every part of the tent. “I’m here to whip you for God! I’m here to show these people the way to salvation, and you won’t get in my way!”

He could feel God’s power upon him and made a shocking move that had all the drama of a real hellfire-and-brimstone preacher. With one swift movement, he suddenly lifted his Bible in the air and threw it into the aisle at the sinners’ feet. “I give you God’s word! There it is, step on it, defile it, tear it to shreds, because that’s exactly what you’re doin’ if you ain’t livin’ by it!”

Suddenly a shout came from the back of the tent. “Oh, God, preacher, save me!”

Sunset Carson looked toward the voice and saw a man jump up from his seat, run into the aisle, and fall to his knees. He quickly jumped down from the platform and ran to him. “Dear friends,” he called out to his congregation, “pray for this lost lamb who’s askin’ for help.” He looked down at him. “Tell me, brother, are you a sinner?”

“Yes! I need to be saved. Save me, preacher!”

Sunset reached out and laid his hand on the man’s head, and then looked heavenward as if he could see past the dark shadows of the tent’s ceiling. “God!” he shouted out. “Do you hear me, God? Here’s one of your lost lambs. He’s cryin’ out for you to save him. He’s no better or no worse than the rest of us here, but he needs you. Save him, God, save him and wash the dirty sin out of his soul now!” Sunset looked down at the man. “Do you believe, brother? Do you believe Jesus can save your soul from hell?”

“Yes,” the man said in desperation. “I believe, preacher. I do believe!”

“Then open up your heart, sinner, and let Jesus into your heart and soul!”

“I do, preacher, I do! My heart is wide open!”

Right after his confession of faith, the man became so excited he looked up into the heavens and howled like a wolf. When he fell down on the ground and began shaking like a man possessed, sounds of sobbing and gasps filled the tent. Sunset immediately whirled around and lifted a hand toward the choir, indicating to them to begin singing. He then ran up the aisle, jumped up on the platform, turned, and dramatically lifted up his hands to his congregation.

“Now is the time, dear sinner! Not a second to waste. Jesus is callin’ you!” He pointed toward the Bible that still lay in the aisle. “See that Bible? That’s the Holy Word straight from heaven! You can choose to accept it or turn away from it, but I urge you to come to Jesus now. Tonight! And all you black-hearted sinners out there, listen to me. If the devil’s got you believin’ his lies and you turn away from Jesus, you might as well kick it, or spit on it, because if you walk out of this tent tonight without Jesus, you’ll be walkin’ out hand in hand with the Devil!”

With his arms still raised, he lifted his eyes toward heaven and began to cry. With sobs in his throat, he cried out, “Here they are, God! They’re your children. I’ve done all I can do. I’ve brought them to you, God. Now save them! Save them and put them on the path to righteousness!”

Almost as if a dam had burst, the people immediately jumped out of their seats and streamed up the aisle. Sunset boldly jumped down and met each one with a prayer for their salvation and laid hands on those who needed healing, urging everyone to believe for a miracle. It didn’t surprise any of them to see this fire-and-brimstone preacher perform one miracle after the other. By the time it was over, many were lying in the aisles, slain in the spirit, while the Bible still lay there, its pages turned to a warning about false prophets.

* * * *

Sunset Carson didn’t do anything small. His hellfire-and-damnation sermons were wild, his actions broad and strong. He didn’t stay still. He paced from one end of the platform to the other, raising his hands and talking to God during his sermons. His booming voice carried up and down the streets of the town, drawing people into the tent to see his wild performance. The tent was filled every night with every kind of sinner imaginable. As a frontier preacher, he met opposition so much, he stood beside his pulpit looking more like a gunslinger than a preacher. He wore a black frock coat, pushed the legs of his pants down in his boots, and wrapped two gun belts around himself, one for a right-handed draw on one side, and the second for a left-handed draw on the other. He was a two-fisted preacher, and a two-fisted gun. His thick, wavy hair drug his collar, and when he became excited, it would fall over his forehead in disarray while he ordered Satan out and invited Jesus in.

He wasn’t like most of the mild, gentle, forgiving frontier preachers. He was tough. When he preached, his voice bellowed out, and many times he was tested by those who thought he was nothing but show. Believing he had the Lord on his side, he pulled out his weapons and demonstrated his faith at the point of a gun. He towered over every man there, and any troublemakers who were smart enough backed away, deciding not to go against this preacher and his God.

Tonight he’d fucked his wife, but it was more for her than him. His interests lay in other areas, but she never knew. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife. He did, but something had been missing in their relationship for a long time. He blamed Satan. The dirty-mouthed demon had come in and planted a parade of disgusting pictures in this preacher’s mind and spewed his dirt into the preacher’s ear, filling him with desires the preacher knew were a sin. It was there all through his courtship, his wedding, and now, his marriage. It tugged at him constantly, becoming so much a part of him that one night after his sermon, he surrendered to temptation.

Now, with the donations safely in his pocket and his wife asleep, he furtively slipped out of the tent and met a cowboy who stood waiting for him in the shadows. Looking at the young, well-built cowboy, he felt the heat of ugly lust rising in him, and his breathing became heavy. He quickly took a step or two in his direction, grabbed him, and covered his lips with a hungry kiss. The hunger in both of them was unbridled and growing as each of them feverishly undressed the other. Finally, the two lowered themselves toward the ground, where Sunset pushed the cowboy over a trunk, hurriedly opened the cheeks of his ass, and pressed his cock against the cowboy’s opening and rubbed, feeling it begin to give. His hunger was such that he wanted to plunge in quickly, but instead he took a moment and inserted his large, rough fingers to stretch him out. When the cowboy was ready, he moaned as he plunged his rock-hard cock into his virgin-like tightness, and his groin burst with sparks of melting heat. With his soul on fire, he continued to plunge in and out of the faceless cowboy’s ass, chasing the hot, melting sensations until he was so close his frenzied movements became abandoned, his satisfaction coming in the next plunge, or the next. It eluded him over and over again while sweat rolled down his face. He closed his eyes, a deep, guttural moan resting in his throat, ready to come trailing out as he got closer and closer to that place where he felt the beginning of a raw, rolling tide. As he feverishly worked for it, it began to grow, each moment a lifetime until at last it engulfed him, bringing him closer and closer. His breath was labored and short, and a series of low moans pushed out, one by one. And then, before he knew what hit him, his groin was saturated with the heat, the raw, melting pleasure that burst upon him all at once, getting bigger and bigger until it at last put out the fire that burned in his belly. And then as it slowly ebbed away, he went limp, his breath labored.

The act was cold. Meant only to meet a need. The cowboy’s face would never be remembered. It was a face that would become lost in a flurry of other faces he had fucked in every town he’d been in. And then suddenly he felt the cowboy cruelly push him away.

“You ain’t no fuckin’ preacher!” the faceless cowboy hissed while he was closing up his pants.

“Shut up, hellcat!” Sunset Carson growled back at him as he slipped him a few dollars. “If I ain’t a preacher, you go talk to God about it and leave me alone!”

“Yeah? What if I decide to tell? By the way, how much did you take in tonight? I saw people puttin’ everything they had in that fuckin’ donation plate. I’d hate to have to tell this lousy town all about their God-fearin’ preacher. Give me everything in it, and my mouth is closed!”

As quick as lightning, Sunset drew his guns and pointed them at the cowboy. “I know a better way to close your mouth.”

“You mean you’d shoot me? My God, you’re a preacher! You ain’t supposed to go around killin’ people.”

“Yeah?” Sunset answered. “Well, I do a lot of things I ain’t supposed to. Just so you know, this gun’s got a hair trigger, and I ain’t shy about usin’ it.”

“You’re crazy!” the cowboy shouted as he backed away. “I just let a crazy preacher fuck my ass!”

As the cowboy turned and ran, Sunset made his way back to his wife, his secret still hidden in his black heart.

* * * *

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,

till thou return unto the ground; for out of it

wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

The little black book that lay open in Sunset’s hand was thin. Most of the pages were dog-eared and torn, and the cover was badly scuffed up from long use. Chapter by chapter, it instructed the circuit preacher in the proper ways of conducting weddings, funerals, counseling, and prayer meetings, everything from small camp meetings to a large tent revival. He’d depended on it all his life, and now as he read from it, he was laying his wife to rest, her dead body nestled in pale yellow silk.

He had just closed the book when the grave diggers came forward to lower the casket into the ground. As he saw the top close and the casket descend, a pain much like a doubled up fist hit his heart. He felt as if a part of him was being buried with her, a part of his life he would never know again. As he continued to stare down into the dark, gaping hole, he remembered her smile, her laughter, her warmth—and the face of the snake who killed her.

The life of a traveling preacher was hard on a wife and could be dangerous. He knew that she had dreams of the day he would settle down and get a church of his own, but he was too young right now. For the most part, church people wanted older men to head their churches, so that left the younger ones to travel the circuit. In every town he went into, he would set up either a tent revival, or a camp meeting, depending on the size of the town. His job was to stir people up, so that when the permanent pastor came, the people would be in the right mind for a church.

His life changed on the dark day he and his wife were traveling through a small Texas town located in the hill country. A rich landowner by the name of Lon Cassidy hired a couple of gunslingers to run off the homesteaders. They were settlers who had purchased their property from Cassidy, only to find he’d reneged on the deal and later claimed they were violating his land. The renowned bad men knew only one way to do their dirty work—with guns.

Desperate, the homeowners called on the preacher to help, so he confronted Cassidy and tried to reason with him, only to find himself engaged in a war. The men in black grew in number—like snakes that seemed to crawl from between the planks of the house and descend upon him. Instead of turning to run, he stood his ground, each hand holding a gun that shot bullet after bullet into those that dared try and take what didn’t belong to them. Thinking his wife was safe inside, he stood alone while he rushed them, the bullets leaping one after the other from the barrel of both guns, blazing, sizzling, blasting. When they finally turned and ran, it was already too late, because behind him, lying in a pool of her own blood, was his beloved wife. By the time the gun smoke had cleared, a pair of the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen was etched in his memory—eyes of the dirt and sweat gunslinger that he would see in his mind for as long as he lived.

Now, as he uttered the last “amen,” the crowd stepped back so the grave diggers could begin covering the casket. The dreaded scraping of hard ground was like fingernails on a blackboard, and each
thump
as the heavy dirt landed on the top was like another blow to his heart. One by one, the crowd began thinning out, but he lingered until everyone was gone. His frock coat was dusty with trail dust, and his two guns hung askew on each side of his hips. The line of metal bullets glinted in the hot Texas sun, telling anyone who cared to look, that this “Man of God” was a two-fisted gun. Many times when he encountered opposition, he drew his guns, and with the Bible open to his favorite chapter and verse, this frontier preacher blasted the sinners to Hell and the saints to Paradise.