THREE
FOR ALL
Hell’s Delight 3
KAREN
MERCURY
Copyright
© 2013
Chapter
One
Hell’s Delight,
California
“This isn’t your average Delight
Hardware crowd.”
Boy, did Lacey make an understatement. Of
course, Hannah O’Loughlin had expected a colorful bunch of people at the
Hardscrabble Ranch party. It was Halloween. But the extravagance presented here
went beyond a few devil, Frankenstein, or Charlie Sheen masks.
A few men even were clad in My Little Pony costumes, complete with
plumed tails swishing from their rumps. Muscular gladiators wearing leopard
skin capes clanked by in chains. A life-sized Barbie had the dolls glued to
every conceivable part of her body. A six-headed hydra spewed sequins from
three of its mouths. One fellow was half man, half woman, depending from where
you viewed him. The crew-cut, leather-clad lesbian bikers seemed almost homespun
next to the razzle-dazzle that paraded in this barn.
“I feel so simple in my costume,” Hannah
told Lacey. “And when I picked it out at the store it felt so daring.” We’re not in Montana anymore.
Lacey clutched Hannah’s arm. She seemed
to genuinely fear for Hannah’s comfort level now. “Oh, I hope you don’t feel
out of place. Believe me, these folks are just cutting loose. They’re normally
just everyday people. See that gal dressed like the Statue of Liberty? She’s
really Miss Teen Buckeye County. And that guy wearing nothing but a giant
book—see, he’s got binoculars for eyes?—well, he’s just the Hell’s Delight
bookstore owner.”
Since Lacey was married to one of the
owners of Hardscrabble Ranch, many people were trying to gain her attention. It
was nice of Lacey to go out of her way to brush her other friends off and stand
with the newcomer Hannah in the straw by the beer keg. Lacey didn’t really owe
Hannah anything. They’d only met two months ago, when Lacey had walked up to
the counter at Delight Hardware where Hannah worked to buy some nylon rope and
duct tape. They had bonded over the fact that Hannah had taken Lacey’s old job
at the store. Lacey had invited Hannah for a drink at the Bit o’Honey bar and
they’d been solid friends since. Lacey was a godsend for Hannah, who knew
almost nobody in town. She had just moved to the area after penning a deal to
buy a ranch, but the deal had fallen through, so Hannah was stuck selling
people nails, washers, and clothesline rope. She knew a bit about many hardware
items from having owned a ranch in Montana, so it was a natural fit.
“Didn’t you tell me that bookstore owner
was a flasher?” Hannah asked. The people of this Sierra foothill town certainly
were festive and colorful. The most picturesque anyone in her Montana town got
was the feed store clerk with a lacey bra cup peeking out from under his shirt.
But Hannah didn’t want to make Lacey feel uncomfortable, either. “Oh, look at
that pretty hat made of butterflies.” Hannah inadvertently gasped when she
realized the Carmen Miranda hat wearer was a man in a flouncy blouse with
clown-like, garish makeup. Get over it,
Hannah. It’s Halloween. You’re never going to fit in with these people unless
you start relaxing a bit. It’s California, not Montana. Of course people are
going to be a bit more unconventional. That guy probably doesn’t normally wear
hoop earrings. But Hannah started to wonder what some of these citizens were
really doing with the O rings and lashing straps that they purchased in her
store.
Lacey shook Hannah’s arm. “Seriously, my
dear. If you want to go back to your apartment I’ll understand. In fact, I’ll
go with you. We can hang out, have a couple glasses of wine. Catch up on that Longmire marathon.”
“Of course
not, Lacey! It’s your husband’s party, after all. You can’t leave, and neither
will I.” Lacey’s husband Devin was currently on a makeshift stage playing
guitar with his country and western band. Hardscrabble Ranch was the largest
outfit in the area, and Hannah hadn’t hoped to compete with them, but if she
still hoped to be a rancher again someday she would have to deal with Devin at
various events in both a social and business setting. It behooved everyone if
she stuck it out here, even if she did feel like a complete and utter skank in
the harem costume. She had felt like a gorgeous, exotic genie putting on the
sheer, ballooning harem pants. Now she just felt like a dork. A naked, fat dork
with her midriff exposed. She really wouldn’t mind going home and seeing her
dog, Blackbeard. “Look, here’s Cal.”
Cal Zhukov was Lacey’s stepbrother. Tall
and gangly, he normally wore nothing fancier than a Black Sabbath or Megadeth
T-shirt when they worked together at his father’s hardware store. Cal liked to
let his freak flag fly, though, and tonight was no exception. He was dressed,
appropriately enough, as some heavy metal hair band member, complete with black
and white face paint and a Phil Spector fright wig. “Dudettes!” he exclaimed in
his usual jovial manner. He was out of breath from running in tall patent
leather platform boots. “This party is off the hook, Lace! Did you see John
Sansing with an actual peacock on his head?”
Hannah frowned. “I thought that was a
peacock headdress.”
Cal elbowed Hannah. “Nope, an actual
live peacock. That’s almost as good as Jenny Gardner coming as Casey Anthony. Did
you see her? Her mask is custom-made, and she’s smoking a cigar, has a bottle
of chloroform, and carries her own pole to dance with.”
Hannah didn’t know whether to laugh or
be mortified. She must have looked nauseated, for Lacey drew her even closer,
pointed, and said brightly, “Oh, look! Mickey Mouse!”
Cal’s face went blank. “Uh. Dudette. That’s
Prickly Mouse.”
“Oh, shit!” swore Lacey at the sight of
the rodent-eared guy boasting a bright yellow, dangling strap-on. “Is that Tad
Martin from the pharmacy? God, that’s my druggist!”
“It’s an understandable mistake,” said
Cal. “I first saw him from the back and thought he was Mickey Mouse, too. Scary
to think that’s the same guy who doles out the Valium and Viagra.”
“Let’s hope not both at the same time,”
said Lacey.
“I’m going to get a glass of wine,” said
Hannah, and started off.
Lacey held her back. “Oh God, we must be
scaring you half to death, you poor thing!”
Hannah pasted a smile on. “No, honestly.
I’m not much of a beer drinker. More into wine, as you know. Looks like there
are some bottles on the bar over there.”
Hannah honestly just wanted a change of
air. They had giant hoedowns like this in Montana, too—some even taking place
inside of barns—so it wasn’t as though Hannah was unfamiliar with the
experience. Lacey didn’t need to baby her. Sometimes Hannah wondered why Lacey
was so overly kind to her when she was a potential rival who might undercut
Devin’s beef price by a couple of bucks. At first she thought maybe Lacey
wanted to fix her up with her stepbrother Cal. But Cal seemed pretty heavy with
a pleasant girl named Julie who worked at Positive Vibrations a few doors down
from the hardware store. In fact, Julie was dressed as Joan Jett tonight to
complement Cal’s costume. They were actually dressed in matching outfits.
Hannah finally concluded that Lacey was
just a plain old nice person. Her husband Devin Jonas was a plain old nice
rancher, and maybe there were just plain old nice people in the California
foothills.
Was it her imagination, or did the
bartender give her a lecherous glance as he handed her the plastic cup of
cabernet? That can’t be it, you moron. There
are plenty of chicks here skinnier and younger than you. You’re thirty-three, a
used-up old rancher’s wife from Montana, tanned and callused from way more hard
work than these gals have seen in their entire lives.
Still, Hannah had never been more
self-aware in her entire life as she wormed her way from the bar area. She
should’ve thought ahead while choosing a costume. She had no idea her
nearly-bare boobs in the little Barbara Eden tasseled bra would be smushed up
against so many other people. She couldn’t have predicted that the party would
be so crowded it practically felt as though cowboys’ firm, packed crotches were
pressing up against her big old butt. She had had never felt so exposed in a
pair of flimsy panties under the chiffon pants. Are these even real cowboys? I’ll bet that guy isn’t a real cop.
Hannah burst out of the barn door,
nearly staggering with relief to be away from the blare and twang of the band
and the hubbub of people trying to be heard above it. She shied away from a guy
in a Simon Cowell mask that was probably scarier than the real thing. In her
haste she banged into a guy gesturing with a lit cigarette, and the lovely
lilac veil attached to her pillbox hat nearly went up in flames.
“Hey, watch it!” the guy yelled before he
realized she was dressed as a sexy woman. Then his eyes openly scanned her up
and down. Hannah felt rage begin to build, and she was glad she’d sloshed some
of her wine on the guy.
The fun barn hoedown was starting to
feel more like a nightmare, and Hannah assumed the worst when a guy built like
a brick shithouse stepped in between her and the smoker. With his back to
Hannah, hands on hips, she was able to get a full eyeful of the situation. Another
fake cowboy, a goat roper? His red checkered shirt with sleeves rolled up to
his bulging biceps seemed torn in all the strategic places so as to reveal
bunched muscle masses in his incredibly wide and athletic back. A worn Stetson
was even slapped on his head, but Hannah could see in light from the barn door
he had closely shorn salt-and-pepper hair. And, of course, his ass was
magnificent. Hannah had probably never witnessed another ass like that, and
would live a thousand lives before she would again. His wide leather belt even
looked as though it buckled with one of those etched silver and gold
three-dimensional scenes of a bucking bronco or a horseshoe.
In short, he wore every detail of the
cornball Halloween cowboy costume except for the fake revolvers in holsters,
but Hannah didn’t care. He was her savior. She even began to feel a little
feminine and melty with this big slab of masculinity acting as her shield.
“Listen here, Trevor,” drawled the
cowboy. His voice was unbelievably deep and resonant. Trevor and his band of
partiers shrank back under the festive light of some paper lanterns hanging
from an oak tree. “The day a hot, attractive woman dressed like this has to ‘watch
it’ is the day I hang up my spurs.”
Hannah nearly laughed at the man’s corny
act, but covered her mouth with her hand. Trevor and his friends certainly
seemed intimidated by his act. In fact, Trevor just allowed the brute to snatch
his stupid Osama bin Laden mask from where he’d shoved it back on top of his
head and crumple it in one hand.
“In fact,” continued the cowboy, “the
day any woman has to ‘watch it’ is
the day you hang up your spurs, you lowdown hand.”
Impressed and emboldened by his words,
Hannah went around his side to view him in profile. He had an absolutely
stunning Grecian silhouette, brutally coarse with full lips and a straight,
aristocratic nose with flared nostrils. His Van Dyke facial hair was already graying,
too, although he himself couldn’t have been a day over forty-five. His dusty
shirt had been ripped at the throat as though he’d been roping pretend cattle,
revealing amazingly buff pectorals sprinkled with just the right amount of
hair. A stiff nipple even poked through one of the holes in the shirt,
completing his authentic costume. And yes, his belt buckle did seem to depict a
pair of steer horns.
Trevor held up his hands. “It’s all
right, Mr. Gatling. We don’t want no hassle. In fact, we was just leaving.”
“Yeah,” echoed a doofus who cowered
behind Trevor. “We was just leaving.”
Hannah admired the way Mr. Gatling just
turned his back on the knot of five men, absolutely unconcerned about whether
they’d jump him. They melted away like the fringes of a hallucination. Then
Hannah was alone with Mr. Gatling as he advanced on her, his long arms swinging
freely. She was slammed with his sexual power, the potency of his virility. He
fixed her with a steady, slow-burning gaze as she found herself backing up into
a wall of hay bales.
“Thank you for the help,” she stammered
moronically. Discovering she still held her plastic cup, she gulped what was
left of the wine and dropped the cup. That’s how nervous Mr. Gatling made her. She
was so aware of her nakedness. What had seemed like such a cute, adorable idea
in the store now made her feel like a concubine in a Zanzibar harem. Lacey had
talked her into a fake gold coin choker that jingled when she so much as
breathed, fake gold armbands, and she teetered on strappy gold sandals she
could barely walk in. She was glad she hadn’t opted for the finger cymbals.
Mr. Gatling seemed to be salivating at
the sight of her, like some modern day caveman. He came so close to her his
body heat warmed her, stiffening her nipples. He did smell like cow manure. His costume certainly was a good one. He
cracked his knuckles as though prepared to do business. “You looked so helpless
there. I know that Trevor Dillon. He’s a fucking oaf.”
Hannah began to get a bit of her Irish
up. “I’m not that helpless, really. I
just came from inside where it was very stuffy, and I sort of stumbled into
that jerk.” Her heart raced so heavily the fake gold coins lying across her
chest were shivering. She knew why she was afraid of this man, his brutality,
his strength. Her past had taught her a “fight or flight” instinct, and right
now she was cornered.
“It’s okay, little one,” Mr. Gatling
said in that rich, chocolaty voice. He seemed to have picked up on her fear. “They’re
gone, and I won’t let any harm come to you.”
What was he talking about? She was a
modern woman in a modern society. It wasn’t as though those losers were about
to bash her over the head with a club and drag her away by her hair. Hannah
changed the subject. “You have a very authentic costume. You even smell like a cowboy.”
This made Mr. Gatling chuckle
indulgently, looking to the stars for help. He even took off his Stetson and
slapped it against his thigh that was like a tree trunk, raising a cloud of
dust. “It’s no costume, honey.” Honey?
He had a bit of a Southern drawl, but that was no excuse to call anyone these
days “honey.” “I’m sure as shooting a real cowboy. My property butts up to
Hardscrabble and I had to repair a fence. One of my randy bulls was trying to
get to one of Devin’s cows in heat.”
Hannah wondered if he was the asshole
who had thwarted her attempts to purchase a neighboring ranch. “Oh, so you
really are a rancher, then? On which
ranch, may I ask?”
Mr. Gatling looked at her askance. “You
sure are a feisty bottom,” he said guardedly.
What’s
that supposed to mean? Oh, that I have
a feisty bottom. Must be some Southern lingo. “No, not feisty, Mr. Gatling.
Just wondering where you work. I’ve done some ranching, myself.”
Mr. Gatling hooked his thumbs in his belt,
drawing even more attention to the torn strip of checkered fabric that revealed
half of a hard six-pack. He must work out every day. Certain of those muscles
were not much used on a ranch. Gatling was carved like a turkey, every muscle
defined. “Why, the Lay-Z-Boy.”
The
Lay-Z-Boy Ranch!
That was the ranch Hannah had tried to purchase! She had sold her Montana ranch
and come hellaway out to California thinking she had a sure bird in the hand
with a signed contract and everything properly in escrow, and then bam! That asshole had defaulted! But the
name hadn’t been Gatling…This bull of a man must just be a hand on the ranch. The
asshole’s name had been Frank Garibaldi. She’d never forget that name. Slyly, she said, “I heard
that ranch was up for sale recently.”
Mr. Gatling frowned. “Yep. It was. But
the owner decided to do something different.” He raised a hand to her hair, to
her veil, and Hannah automatically shrank back into the hay bales. “You sure
are a jumpy little sub. Tell me. What are your hard limits?”
Hard
limits? Sub? Is he talking some foreign language? Some California ranching
language I don’t understand? Hannah moved away sideways. “I’m jumpy
because I most certainly will not
submit to you, Mr. Gatling. I suppose that is my limit. If Mr. Garibaldi sent
you to harass me or scare me into leaving town, I’m going to report him—”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on!” Gatling stepped
back and raised his hands as though surrendering. “Who said anything about
Garibaldi? I was just, you know, trying to get to know you, have a munch, discuss our common interests.”
Munch?
Can’t he pronounce lunch? Hannah inched away, too. “Ah, that’s fine, then,
Mr. Gatling. I’ll just be—”
Someone new wrenched her arm. “Hang on,
little missy.”
At first she thought her new protector
was another crew-cut motorcycle man. But the sandpaper voice and men’s cologne
belonged to a female of the Cultured Pearl motorcycle club. They didn’t need to
wear much in the way of Halloween costumes. Hannah knew this one from the
hardware store. She was friendly enough. “Lila, I’m fine. Mr. Gatling here was
just helping me out of a situation, but he was just leav—”
Lila barked, “Mr. Gatling, eh? Old
Dominating Dom here wasn’t about to leave unless we stepped in. Right this way,
Hannah Montana.”
The ladies of the bike club liked to
call Hannah that. She knew that lesbians and men didn’t mix—while, oddly,
homosexual men and women mixed very well—so she didn’t put much stock in the
feud between Lila and Dominating Don Gatling.
“Yes,” said another lesbian named
Regina. “Let’s go get some of that Mickey Tart yogurt inside the barn.”
The bullheaded Don Gatling pointed a
finger at the ground. “You can’t steal my sub, Lila.”
Lila shouted over her shoulder, “She’s
not your sub ’cause she didn’t agree to it.”
“Yet!” yelled Don.
Hannah had to admit, once Lila had
steered her back inside the barn, she sort of felt lonely for the safety and
security of Don Gatling’s presence. He had melted something very deep inside of
her, something that hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. Hannah had a
vague feeling it might be something sexual because she felt mushy between the
legs. It had been ages since she’d been turned on sexually, so it took a while
for her to identify the feeling.
Holy
shit. That brutal cowboy actually got to me. He may have been sent by Garibaldi
to scare me out of town, but he only succeeded in turning me on.
“This here’s the best yogurt flavor,”
said Regina, shoving a cup with a wooden spoon in it at Hannah. “Mickey Tart
has cherries in it.”
“Mickey Tart, Mickey Tart,” chanted
Lila, making a face. “Regina’s obsessed with that flavor. Here, sweetie. Try
the Filbert Lesh. It’s nuttier and doesn’t make your eyes water.”
Hannah knew logically she should thank
the bikers for “saving” her from that line rider for Garibaldi, but she found
herself wistfully standing on tiptoes, craning her neck to see out the barn
door.