The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (18 page)

“Can’t you just assume it’ll be painful and
degrading?”

“Exactly my point!” Veronica had laughed as
though the world, and Fiona in particular, tickled her. “When have
I ever shied away from either of those things?”

Veronica had dismounted, turned to face the
pillar, and bent at the waist. Fiona hadn’t the slightest clue how
to proceed. Veronica guided her through the process of using spit
to lubricate, taking her time, and using a natural angle, which all
led Fiona to believe the experiment had spent a lot of time between
Veronica’s ears before she found a sufficiently dire situation to
bring it up. The pre-preparation that involved fingers, stretching,
relaxing, and spit took on something of a virginal, sensual quality
as Veronica was nervous and thus not interested in it ending right
away, and Fiona was in no particular hurry as the act itself
wouldn’t be doing much for her and she was entirely possessed with
the need to not hurt Veronica; after a good deal of very intimate
stretching with the three longest fingers on Fiona’s right hand,
Veronica had declared herself ready. Fiona had followed the further
instructions with all care, guiding the springy, red strap-on
between the alluring curves of Veronica’s ass, using every last
drop of her spit possible to ease the process. Stoicism, which was
something Veronica had in spades, prevented any verbal reaction
from escaping until Fiona was slowly working the toy in and out,
grasping the base with both hands for stability. “You’re right,”
Veronica had groaned, “it’s unpleasant.” Fiona had offered to stop;
Veronica told her there wasn’t a chance in the world they were
going to quit after how much effort it had taken to get the thing
in there. She’d guided one of Fiona’s hands to her waist, and told
her to stop being a wuss about it. Veronica’s own hand had found
its way to her clit, giving herself a different context for the act
with furious, urgent rubbing. Fiona took the demand with tentative
care at first, losing a bit of her reticence when Veronica began
pushing back against her. Her lover’s legendary stoicism mixed a
pained edge into her moans of pleasure, but without any other
discernable discomfort, although her body told a different story,
showing that whatever stimulation she was giving herself was
clearly tempered by a fairly intense pain from what Fiona was
doing. The red strap-on, though never fully entering Veronica’s
tight swirl, began sliding easier, and Fiona took that as a cue to
increase the speed and depth of her thrusts, until she could feel
the trembling, sweat-soaked, Veronica climaxing in a deeply intense
and strangely muddled orgasm that left her visibly shaking,
forehead rested against the pillar, wet blond hair clinging to her
neck and shoulders. Fiona very slowly withdrew the strap-on from
her in a wet sucking sound, accompanied by a hiss of pain from
Veronica’s lips.

“Are you okay?” Fiona had asked.

Veronica’s response, which Fiona never
forgot, “If you ever tell anyone I enjoyed that, I will kill you.”
There was an element of jest to it, mostly from the gentle slap of
her own ass that Veronica added for effect, but the deeply
embarrassed quiver in her voice told Fiona that Veronica had not
only not expected to enjoy the act, she loathed herself for how
much she’d enjoyed it.

Veronica turned slowly, her face a mask of
pleasure with a strange lacing of shame. She caught Fiona’s
eyes—the primal shine to them had been satisfied. “Do you want to
try?” Veronica had asked. Fiona didn’t, although she only shook her
head, struggling hard to keep any facial expression out of the mix
that might indicate how much she didn’t. “Good,” Veronica sighed.
“I could use some vanilla to clear my head.” The reciprocity of
filling out Fiona’s list may have been provincial, but the
emotional bond created through Veronica’s list added a new level of
intimacy that Fiona cherished, even if the sex itself was only
athletic and a little rough.

As the sky began pinking with the coming
dawn, reinforcements from two different Raven camps rolled back the
Slark long before they were in any real danger, but Fiona and
Veronica were too busy with each other to join the fight.

Fiona returned to the present with a strange,
sad longing for the closeness she’d shared with Veronica. They had
been inseparable after Barstow. Their falling out, less than six
months after the parking garage, took place at the edge of the
burning wreckage of a train. Fiona had indeed threatened to kill
Veronica if she followed. The statement hadn’t severed all of
Fiona’s emotional nerves as she’d suspected, and secretly hoped, it
would. Whatever else Veronica was, she was Fiona’s first love. The
strap-on, acting as a strange and lurid symbol of their past
intimacy, wasn’t given as a wanton gift, but Fiona couldn’t divine
exactly what it meant.

“You want me to…?” Fiona began.

“I want you to do what comes naturally to
you, gunfighter.”

Chapter 12:
Feverish, famished, and
frustrated.

Fiona left the
Lazy Ravens’ brothel with a sack containing hundreds of the silver
coins and the enormous strap-on from her past. She was rich, not
because the coins had an inherent value, but because she knew
Veronica would make them worth killing for within a month’s time.
That’s what Veronica did: find desires, exploit them, and
consolidate all the vices under her rule. Her Machiavellian
approach to controlling a population was the norm in the Lazy
Ravens, and Veronica was the best at setting up franchises. Before
Veronica had come to Vegas to tame the town, it was Tombstone
without Zeke’s tenuous control. Methanol cults, slavers, drug
dealers, Slark sympathizers, white supremacists, and roving
marauders turned the former tourism Mecca into a perpetual war
zone. Fiona joined the Ravens just to have a group to watch her
back. Within six months of arriving in town, Veronica had brought
the entire city of Las Vegas under Lazy Raven control, took over
the slave trade and eradicated anyone who wouldn’t be brought in
line. Immediately after, she reintroduced money, taxes,
racketeering, and government. Tombstone was looking to be a softer
approach for Veronica—at least, Fiona hoped it wouldn’t turn into
the slaughter required to tame Vegas.

Fiona walked the streets again, head and
heart full of conflicting feelings and thoughts, and weighed
heavily with newfound wealth and an old friend. She nearly drew
steel when she caught on that she was being followed. Her hand went
to her gun, but her tail identified himself before she could jerk
it and blow him out of his boots.

“Easy, Red,” Danny said, “it’s just me.”

Fiona relaxed her posture, although her hand
remained on the butt of her pistol. Danny emerged from the shadow
between two trucks, hands held up, Padres hat turned backward to
make his face clearly visible.

“What do you want?” Fiona asked with a little
more acid than she intended.

“I saw you come out of the Lazy Raven Nest,”
Danny said. “That’s what they’re calling it, I guess.” He stuffed
his hands in his pants pockets and shrugged like the confused
surfer boy she’d known years ago. “Do you think Veronica recognized
me?”

Fiona slid her hand away from her gun and
took the rest of the striking coil out of her stance. She sighed
and shook her head. “I should have known you would put it
together.”

“My mom only raised three fools, and I wasn’t
one of them,” Danny said with a boyish grin. “If you’re making a
play for anything, count me to back your hand. There’s only a few
of us left, but we all remember what you saved us from.” Danny took
a few steps closer to lower his voice to just above a whisper while
still being heard. “I’m also starting to piece together that what
you saved me from might also be starting here.”

“Veronica says the Ravens are done with human
trafficking,” Fiona said.

“Maybe she was telling the truth, I mean, you
know her better than I do,” Danny said. “Do you think she was
lying?”

“She can lie to me like breathing and I would
never know the difference.”

“All I know is the people that Zeke puts on
the train to Vegas don’t come back,” Danny said. “Maybe train
tickets back cost too much. Maybe they like it so much they stay. I
don’t know. I’m not about to hop a train and find out though. I’ve
got the wrong plumbing for a position of power and I’m not
interested in bondage, if you catch my meaning.”

Fiona snorted. “Welcome to the world I grew
up in.” She turned to walk away, although she only made it a few
feet before Danny called after her.

“Are the rumors true?” Danny asked. “Are you
the Fiona Bishop from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue?”

Fiona stopped dead in her tracks. She thought
it was a real secret, something only someone as smart and
stalker-ish as Gieo would figure out; she even thought of saying
something trite and hackneyed along the lines of ‘that Fiona died a
long time ago,’ but she didn’t think she could keep a straight
face. She looked over her shoulder and gave Danny a sultry
half-smile reminiscent of her modeling days. At twenty-six, her
modeling career would have been long over even if the Slark hadn’t
invaded—what did she care if Danny knew.

“The one and only,” she said, walking
away.

Gieo was packing up her work for the day when
Fiona finally strolled through the saloon’s swinging doors. It took
everything in her not to leap from her seat to run to her; then,
everything in her failed to hold her back, and she went ahead and
vaulted the table.

“Are you okay?” Gieo asked. “You’ve been gone
all day and I was worried. Not that you’d get hurt, but that you’d
shoot more people on my behalf. You look half-starved and
sunburned. Have you eaten today? Did you drink any water?”

“No, I guess I haven’t had anything since
breakfast.” Fiona took off her hat and wiped her forehead with the
back of her forearm.

Gieo reached up and touched Fiona’s forehead
with her hand as soon as it was done being wiped, but before Fiona
could replace the hat. “You’re burning up,” she said. “Were you out
in the sun all day?”

“I suppose.”

“You’ve probably got heat stroke.” Gieo
guided Fiona to a chair, took her hat and sunglasses from her, and
began fanning the gunfighter with both. “We have to get you cooled
down.” Gieo knelt at Fiona’s feet and began pulling off her
boots.

“What are you doing?”

“You have two options, but both of them
involve you getting naked,” Gieo said. “You can do it yourself
voluntarily, or I can do it against your will, but it’s going to
happen.”

“Aren’t you in a frisky mood?”

“Irrelevant,” Gieo said. “You wouldn’t
survive having sex with me in the condition you’re in.”

Fiona had to admit that was probably true.
Her head had started pounding before she even walked in the doors
and she was getting a serious case of the spins just sitting. With
Gieo’s help, Fiona managed to stumble up to her room where Gieo
deposited her on the bed and raced around the room to open both
windows and retrieve water from the jug next to the nightstand.

“I made fifty of those little silver coins
this evening,” Gieo said as she busied herself undressing Fiona in
the most unceremonious way. Fiona, who had gone limp at some point,
just nodded. “Apparently that’s only eight gallons of fuel
though.”

“This wasn’t how I pictured this,” Fiona said
as Gieo pulled off her pants. The cool air on her legs felt good
immediately and she began to wonder if maybe the pilot wasn’t right
about the heat stroke.

“I can tell,” Gieo said with a little laugh.
“You’re not wearing underwear, Lady Firebox. At least I know your
carpet matches your drapes.”

“I don’t have a carpet,” Fiona said, trying
to laugh through a dry throat.

Gieo inspected the modest amount of almost
perfectly straight, flat, red hair on Fiona’s mound. It was true.
Even in a natural state, Fiona was far smoother than fuzzy and in
no places bristly or bushy. “You’ve got me there,” Gieo said. “I
have to tame mine or be ready to braid it.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Which part? The taming or the braiding?”

“First one, then the other.”

Gieo laughed and shook her head. “I think the
fever is making you delirious.” She pulled off Fiona’s t-shirt
before depositing her back on the bed. Gieo looked a little sad and
contemplative as she stared down at Fiona’s naked form causing
Fiona to curl around herself in embarrassment.