Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(5)
Lytton had stubbornly stuck out his lower lip. He knew he was stunningly beautiful when petulant—a quality that had no effect on the businesslike Toby Weingarten. “It wasn’t the weed that got rid of the guy. It was me shoving the barrel of my Glock against his temple.”
Toby threw up his hands. “Oy gevalt! You’re going to run our business into the ground with your johnson.” Toby had stormed out then. He had no sense of humor. Yet he was the one wearing the Klingon belt buckle.
Now, Lytton released the gag from the slave’s mouth. She panted with relief and regarded him gratefully. “Your cruelty is kind, Sir,” she recited. It made him wonder how many times he’d played a scene with this one. He needed fresh ones if they were just going to recite stale lines.
He was tiring of this. He wanted to get into something new. Wearily, he released what-was-her-name from the suspension cuffs, and she crumpled to the floor like a pile of Toby’s fanfic. Lytton was never the best at the touchy-feelie “aftercare” portion of the program, so even if someone was subdropping, he’d just turn on some jazz and hand them a bottle of water.
That’s what he did now. The jazz station he selected was a bit too easy listening for him, but it was supposed to be all about the slaves and their needs, he guessed. He went down the hall and into the bathroom. He removed the cock ring and cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide. He didn’t take his normal enjoyment in looking out the window as he did this.
His house was an old two-story 1950s clapboard cottage, built for someone’s hunting pleasure here in the Coconino National Forest. Running a pot farm—initially an illegal one, of course, and now fully certified by the state—had been a highly successful move. Lytton could easily afford to replace the old shack with something nicer and more ostentatious, like some California wine grower with his fountains and colonnades, but why? He didn’t need to draw any more attention to his operation and he already spent a fortune on security.
Hell, he’d started out here in a mobile home. Six years ago, armed with a fresh PhD in chemistry from MIT, he’d squatted on this land that some tribal member owned. Everyone said with his brilliance he should be working for the Mayo Clinic, General Mills, or Pfizer. It was actually Lytton’s internship at Monsanto that got him interested in cultivating great buds that weren’t sprayed with toxic pesticides or draining rivers dry and threatening ecosystems.
It must have been his Apache ancestry. Lytton proudly liked to think it was in his blood to grow only the purest strains of organic, long-flowering sativas. Native Americans were all about nature, right?
He didn’t have a wife and didn’t plan on obtaining one. For one, a wife wouldn’t look too favorably on his banging other women. Could he stop? Sure. He could stop anything at any moment. But why? He knew he was a jaded, bitter toolbag, just riddled with demons. His crappy life had wrung him dry of any sappy sentiment. He had raised himself by hook and crook from the ghetto of the res, only to find out that his entire life was a shitty, deceitful lie. Sure, he had good grades, but he had probably just gotten the MIT scholarship due to the board’s imagining that he was a full-blood Injun—a “minority.” He may as well have just stayed in Fort Apache with everyone else, dealing blackjack or drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at the bar in Whiteriver, his horse wandering around between the dog carcasses in the street.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. That was Lytton’s favorite motto, one he’d used a thousand times while escaping the res and ruthlessly working his way through MIT’s doctorate program. But now, arranging his cock in his boxer briefs and stepping into his jeans, he just didn’t know how it applied. What were the desperate measures he was supposed to take to avoid becoming bored with bondage and discipline? I should be so f*cking lucky. Life has been worse.
The shrill scream of his security alarm nearly gave Lytton a heart attack. His arms were only halfway through the armholes of his white wifebeater when the siren went off, practically shaking his brittle house to the rafters. Lytton’s torso slammed back against the bathroom wall. Only twice before had he ever been subjected to the air raid volume of this f*cking alarm. Once it was a coyote. Another time, some teens had tried to sneak through the forest into his veg room and steal some clones. They had only gotten far enough for one of his former SEALs to nearly blow their heads off.
Three gunshots coming from the harvest greenhouse area let Lytton know it was no damned coyote or teen. He’d left his Glock in the play room. Out of habit, he always kept his piece close to his person even when engaging in a scene. Especially during a scene.
Shoeless, he tore back down the hall while yanking his shirt down around his hips. He only skidded into the play room long enough to wrest his Glock from the holster that hung from the X of the Saint Andrew’s cross. He had a flashing view of the two women cowering in terror against the wall, clutching each other, but he had no time for that.
He pounded down his front steps, whipping around the side of the house where a path had been beaten through a stand of ponderosa pine. He chambered a round as he ran, unsure if the large caliber report of another shot was from his men or theirs. All of his men carried nine millimeter semis, but then so did a lot of guys.
For good reason, there was only one pedestrian entrance to the harvest greenhouse. Seeing that the shipping and receiving dock doors were still closed, Lytton slammed his back up against the outer greenhouse wall next to the open door brandishing his weapon barrel skyward like in a TV show, eyes bugged, listening intently. Inside, men’s boots sounded against the cement foundation as they ran up and down the rows of little tents that housed just-harvested plants, fans, and humidifiers. Between the air raid siren and the drone of the machines, he was lucky to hear a few shouted phrases from the intruders. His technician Helium Head always manned this greenhouse, but none of the shouts were his.