Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(6)
As he rode, he had ample time to ruminate on sordid subjects like his age, his feud with his brother, the futility of his existence. Above all, Sax was forty-f*cking-five years old and his nomadic lifestyle was beginning to wear on him. He was getting to be too old to be riding around the country, haunting bondage clubs to get his kinky rocks off. He was a born Dom, but it was growing old lording it over nameless, faceless subs. There were several women in several cities he could call “his” slaves. He knew their names, they hooked up, and he even went to some of their apartments and spent the night.
Still, it wasn’t like having The One. One was all Sax needed. One who’d be the perfect balance of submissive with perhaps a bit of the switch thrown in, a sassy woman who might top from the bottom now and then. That took imagination and verve, none of which his current subs had. They were routine, by the book subs, and their lingo and protocol was boring him. He was maturing, he supposed. He wanted someone who’d challenge him.
More than anything, he didn’t want to look like these burnt-out old bikers with crazy, frizzed grey hair and permanent bugs in their teeth. Holes in their throats from smoking too much, or corroded, picket fence teeth from doing too much meth. Sax was a clean liver and he worked out in the gym of every hotel he stayed in. He prided himself on his physique and the fact that almost all of his hair was still there, smooth, and barely flecked with grey. But still. That wouldn’t last forever. Lately, he’d had an empty, yearning ache in the pit of his stomach, and it wasn’t just for kinbaku rope binding. He wanted something more stable and soothing, and that unsettled him more than anything.
He met Harte at an old biker bar up the road from the North Fourth Street address of the Bare Bones’ club. Sax realized with shame that Harte had chosen it because, unlike most biker bars where scoots were lined up at an angle out front to make a show of power, this bar had a side lot where Sax’s Softail Harley was less likely to be noticed.
Harte’s gorgeously shiny head of ginger curls could be seen from the front door, even from Sax’s view in the back of the darkened bar. His chest was flooded with joy to see Harte again. Harte didn’t see him, glued to a game on the TV behind the bar. He was drinking some dark liquor, brandy or whisky, and Sax frowned. Harte had been a clean liver like him, as far as he knew. Maybe he was just upset about this associate of Leo’s. Lord knew, Leo gave a person enough reasons to drink in the middle of the day.
Was it his imagination, or did Harte’s eyes mist over when he got an eyeful of Sax? They embraced in a thug hug and even gripped hands after taking their respective bar stools. But soon they were down to brass tacks.
“Ah,” said Harte, yanking his hand from Sax’s to rake it through his hair. He should’ve been a rock star with hair like that, but instead he’d joined Leo’s construction company. Harte was even in the Laborer’s Union like Leo. It was an old family business founded by their father before them, so Sax guessed it was an upstanding path to follow. He was just selfish wishing Harte had chosen one of the sciences, like he had. And, of course, they used the construction company as a money laundering front for darker, more lucrative enterprises.
“It’s a major clusterf*ck, Uncle.” Harte sighed, his hand wrapped around the whisky glass. “You probably never met Cassie Hasselbeck—she’s only about my age, and didn’t start hanging around until she was eighteen—but she’s got a sweet heart, and to see her face look like an upside-down pizza on the floor, well, that’s just too f*cking much. She’s going to need plastic surgery.”
Sax told the bartender, “Soda water. So who’s the f*cktard I need to concern myself with?”
Harte’s eyes clouded over. He looked from side to side before leaning toward Sax and saying, “Tony Tormenta.”
Tony Tormenta. Sax knew the asswipe well. He’d started out in the short pants days as a low-level Sicilian mafia wannabe, real name Anthony Tataglia. But he soon abandoned wearing fedoras and suits for the rougher, more lucrative business of trade south of the border. He became an enforcer for the cartel, one of those frightening men who fold people up like massage tables and stick them in his car trunk.
Tormenta rose from the ranks, driving around in a weird mixture of various military uniforms, insignia and medals patched together from every country and branch of the armed forces possible. His armored cars had gold-plated bumpers and wheels. Sax had dealt with Tormenta before, unfortunately. He was a toolbag of the highest order. His favorite practice was “el guiso,” the stew. He boiled people alive in a large pot, then set them on fire with gasoline.
Sax pinched his forehead between his eyes. “Yeah. I know the guy. Leo’s been dealing with him?”
“Yeah, for about four months now. Pure and Easy won’t have a thing to do with the guy anymore. Tormenta recently backed Riker, remember him? He was ‘out bad’ when Cropper went down in the desert a couple years ago.”
“Yeah, who could forget that guy? Always running around wearing a latex hood or a PVC Y-harness going up his ass.” As a master in the world of BDSM, Sax had learned to loathe people like that. He was all for cock and ball torture, but people like Riker made it look like the most embarrassing lifestyle in the world. Riker wasn’t serious about it—he dabbled a little bit in everything, never truly committing himself. Sax had seen him wearing an adult diaper once, too, and he could’ve swore he glimpsed one of those giant baby cribs in one of the back rooms at their old P and E clubhouse, The Bum Steer. That was back in the days when anything went.