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LYTTON

L
ytton had been waiting a long time to claim June.

Sure, she wore the diamond and garnet choker he’d given her. Several garnets made teardrops, symbolic of the hell they’d been through to be together. But Lytton felt he’d wised up and progressed far in the past several months. He found himself wanting more, surprising even himself.

He had designed his new house with June in mind. He’d been holding himself back from her, waiting to see how she reacted to the trauma she’d endured. He didn’t want to throw anything too major at her while she was still recuperating from her ordeal. Being close physically had resumed at a snail’s pace, of course. For the first few weeks, Lytton just being there had been tense enough, probably for both of them. After all, he was the one moronic enough to harbor Iso at his ranch while the psycho hid from a murder rap.

Lytton couldn’t escape the guilt. Ford even tried making him feel better by bringing up theories, like he couldn’t have known Iso was a pervert who would cross the line with someone’s old lady. Or he thought June had left the ranch when he did—he had no way of knowing she’d go back for the phone that Iso had stolen.

None of this shit soothed him, and Lytton was on pins and needles the first few weeks until June assured him she didn’t hold anything against him. Slowly, bit by bit the guilt eased off. Lytton’s first job was to gut the play room and put all the furniture in storage. When it became obvious Toby didn’t even like sleeping in the house, that was when Lytton went ahead with the plan that had been in the back of his head for a long fucking time. He bought ten acres closer down to Pure and Easy off Highway 17. He grabbed an architect he was already pals with and had designed a five bedroom house in the Arts and Crafts style he knew June adored.

But Lytton hadn’t asked her to move in. Not even when she accepted the hydraulic job at Leaves of Grass, no, she drove herself back to Ford’s house after work every day because he didn’t dare ask her to spend the night. That old shitty house would be good enough for daytime offices, but Lytton couldn’t wait to put it in his rearview. Now it looked just like some nerdy “incubator” where adult children played video games and threw pizza upside-down on the floor. Typical of a bunch of bachelors, there was always a carton of spoiled milk in the fridge, no toilet paper on the roll, and a stripper pole in the play room. It was time to leave all that behind.

They hadn’t even fucked. Lytton couldn’t bring himself to infringe on her space in that way. He’d gone from being an overbearing, aggressive Dom who could care less about the woman’s orgasms to a sensitive, caring lover who
only
cared about her orgasms. At least, June’s. Because her mouth was out of bounds for now, Lytton had spent the last weeks muff diving and honing his fur smoking skills, as Toby would say. It was an area of expertise he’d been lacking, and now he was pretty good, if he did say so himself. He could bring June off in two minutes flat, if he didn’t want to draw it out longer.

Now that metal was off her teeth, it was time to push his luck a bit farther. He’d been keyed up about this for weeks. His normally unflappable spirit was suddenly wracked with nerves when it came time to recite his planned speech. “It takes more love to share the saddle than to share the bed, and we’ve got both in spades. June Shellmound, would you do me the honor of becoming June Driving Hawk?”

Had the words actually come out of his mouth? Lytton wasn’t sure. She just stared up at him with those round doll’s eyes, so Lytton slipped the ring on her finger. It struck him that this was presumptuous. She hadn’t uttered a word other than to whisper a few things in Swahili. But she allowed him to slide the ring on—Madison had helped him find the ring size by borrowing one June wasn’t using from her room at Ford’s.

Lytton took a big bite from the side of her throat, right above her collar. Splaying his hands around her waist, he pressed his torso to hers. His prick was up like a gavel, pulsating against her belly, and he sucked a bruising kiss on her neck, branding her.

“Oh, Lytton,” she sighed, like the wind through electrical wires. She uttered a few entire sentences in Swahili—it was such a musical language—while he ground his cock against her.

It took him awhile to realize he hadn’t received an answer from her. Lust was sucking up the logical, left side of his brain. Undulating his spine like a stretching cat on a fence, Lytton obscenely swiveled his packed crotch against June’s pubic bone. She cradled the back of his skull, weaving her fingers through his damp hair, urging him on.

Yanking down the neckline of her mesh tank, Lytton slurped up a stiff nipple. He loved it when her pert boobs popped out of her push-up bra. He’d been thinking for a long time about having Knoxie ink her breast with some Apache symbol. Now he lovingly tongued the luscious globe while expertly unbuckling her chaps.

June squeezed a handful of his hair. “Lytton…my sleek, dark stallion…I’m ready for you to take me. I’m wide open, hungry for you…I want you to be my husband, now and forever…”

That did it. That pushed Lytton over the edge, and he found himself eagerly lapping at her tit while jerking her jeans down to her knees like some fucking animal. “You’re killing me, little one,” he murmured, acting fast, as though she might change her mind. “You smell like powder, you’re innocent, angelic and devilish all at the same time.” He ran his tongue up the underside of her jaw, velvety as cream.

June squirmed, assisting him in shoving her panties over her ass. “I’ve loved you since you first stormed into the Citadel, Lytton.” When he pulled back to look at her, her face was lopsided with desire, twisted by a new sort of lust he’d never seen in her before. She held his skull between her palms and said earnestly, “I was afraid to want you too much, because everything I’ve ever wanted has been taken from me. I had no childhood at all. I was forced to grow up too soon. My brother and sister were pitted against me. I had to go halfway around the world to find a satisfying occupation. Now I came home and ran into you. I was so afraid the second I
wanted
you, you’d go away. You’d be even farther from my reach, even harder to catch. I was afraid to tell you that I love you.”

Lytton almost felt selfish, trying to slide his hands around her bare ass and carry her to a box of A-1 sauce bottles.
Almost
selfish. He did it, anyway, setting her cowboy-booted feet on the floor and turning her to face the wall. He smoothed his palms over the soft contour of her hip. “Don’t you worry about a thing, lady. I’m not fucking going anywhere. You’re moving in with me as soon as we cut the ribbon on that house and baptize it. You can design the whole garden. Make it look like a fucking Kenyan savannah if you want.”

June fairly purred with pleasure as he fondled a boob from behind. With his other hand he unfastened his belt buckle and jeans buttons, giving his cock freedom to slap up against her ass. She had lost a lot of weight during her recovery. Her rib bones, when she leaned forward with her hands against the wall like this, stuck out like The Bare Bones of the patch on the back of his cut. He had taught Toby how to make her smoothies in their blender at Leaves of Grass—he couldn’t be there that often, since there was a buttload of work to be done at the dispensary. But either Toby had fallen down on the job or the smoothies were made of air. He made a mental note to feed her peanut butter smoothies from now on.

She wiggled her bony hips and did shoulder shrugs, preparing for his invasion. “Do me, Lytton. I haven’t felt your cock inside of me in so long. I’m yours, heart and soul.”

Swiping two fingers across her slit, Lytton found her slimy and ready for him. He eased his erection inside of her slick channel, his balls clamoring for release after the enforced chastity of the past couple months. He’d have to take it slow, so he reached around and rubbed her pussy lips together. June hissed like a slowly leaking tire, and he knew he’d hit the right spot. He was getting good at this.

He hadn’t had a chance to feel her pussy coming around his cock, so he worked her clit with the skill of a master chemist. Soon she was pounding her palm against the greasy wall and keening like a banshee. If they hadn’t been blasting The Allman Brothers in the restaurant, her cries would have been the main attraction in The Bum Steer.

In fact, the throbbing bass line that vibrated the walls also resonated through Lytton’s balls. He tried to focus on pleasuring June’s bulging clit, but his balls were thrumming with an eagerness to match June’s ecstasy. Lytton wasn’t sure if he could hold out. Not only had he been celibate, he hadn’t even been shining his pole that much. Getting the dispensary up to par with the new organic product and getting June trained in the intricacies of a pot farm had Lytton falling into bed at night, asleep before his head hit the pillow.

He was barely moving inside of her searing hot cunt, but he couldn’t stop the surge. He diddled her faster, hoping for a mutual explosion, and he was rewarded when she arched her back and froze, her inner pussy clamping down around him.

Mungu moja
, did she come for a long, long time. He splashed his load against her cervix, spasming methodically while a wave of blissful shivers erected his nipples, making his cock jump. June was still contracting violently around his dick when he was pretty much done. He could stand, relax, and watch the beautiful show, his penis still jerking inside of her every time her walls constricted around it.

She let out a loud groan and suddenly seemed about to slide down the wall. Lytton gripped her around the ribcage. “
Ah
! Oh, ah!” She reached around and slapped her own ass, as though it’d gone to sleep, so Lytton helped her. He slapped it, too, his prick leaping inside of her heat. When she looked over her shoulder at him, his heart was wrenched with love. Even disheveled, just fucked, with her eyeliner smeared, she was the most adorable woman he’d ever seen. She looked even better wearing his ring.

A sudden rap at the door made them jump, but they stayed speared together like two dogs. They both whipped their heads to look at the door, but whoever it was wasn’t about to let manners stop them from barging in. Lytton rolled his eyes.
Typical
. Especially now that he was a Prospect for The Bare Bones.

Almost predictably, it was Ford. He barely glanced at them, as though he’d caught them playing a hand of Old Maid. This time Ford wanted to bother June. “June, your sister wants you for something urgently out in the bar.”

They both stood up straight, but Lytton’s prick still throbbed inside of his fiancée. “All right,” said Lytton, “but let my fiancée get herself put back together.” He finally detached from the woman, puffed with manly pride at his still-stiff cock that bobbed in midair.

“Fiancée!” Ford cried. “Holy shit! Welcome to the family, little June. Well, that’s some fucking good news in a day that really needs good news.”

“What do you mean?” asked June, stuffing her boobs back into their cage.

“Oh, nothing. Just that things have been so black, so dour lately. This is fucking good news indeed. Where are you having the wedding?”

Lytton said, “We barely discussed it, as you can see.” Something occurred to him. “I hope you don’t mind if Tobiah is my best man.”

“Of course not. You’ve been brothers since the short pants days. Hell, as far as Toby’s fashion sense is concerned, he’s still
in
the short pants days.”

Everyone chuckled, thinking about Toby’s floodwater pants, and Lytton kissed June goodbye. Now it was appropriate to pack his cock back inside his jeans. It seemed Ford had something more to say to him. Ford seemed uncomfortable, so it might be something sappy he was trying to say.

He started out, “I was going to do this anyway, but…Here.”

Lytton accepted the item from Ford before he knew what it was.
Oh
. It was a patch for his cut, a “Filthy Few” patch. “As you probably know, Prospects don’t need this patch to become fully patched. I just know you earned it. We haven’t talked about Isosceles Weaver since that day I drove the eighteen-wheeler away, but I know you earned this. You did it to avenge June, you did it for yourself, but you also did it to show unity with us, with The Bare Bones. We all appreciate it.”

That tractor-trailer had turned up abandoned at the bottom of Tollhouse Draw on the way to Lake No. 1 and the Cutlass clubhouse. An anonymous call from a burner phone had alerted cops to its presence. They had found Iso’s body in the driver’s seat, and a shitfaced passed-out Truitt in the passenger seat holding the Sig Sauer outfitted with a silencer. Losing the piece was a small price to pay for setting up The Cutlasses. Iso’s prints were all over the place as being the driver of the heroin shipment, so a RICO investigation had been opened into The Cutlasses. They’d be under the microscope now, and wouldn’t have time to fuck with The Bare Bones. Apparently Truitt had taken so many roofies, his claim that he’d been framed was completely disregarded. His story was as full of holes as the Albert Hall. The Mexican trucker had apparently run off somewhere between P & E and Tollhouse Draw. He was never heard from again.

“Thanks, brother.” Lytton slid the patch into his cut’s pocket and casually started finger-combing his hair in an imaginary wall mirror. He had thought life had been handing him lemons for so long. He’d been resentful of the res, then loathed his stepfather for having given him his name. He had learned through June that he had actually grown up in a privileged society—compared to almost every African tribesperson, at least. He had been so bitter for so long. Now he was slowly learning how to thank Mungu—he shared June’s idea that Mungu was a benevolent, kind God, so that was good enough for him—for all the little generosities in his life.

The brothers weren’t much for sap, but apparently Ford had more in mind. “And here.” Ford jingled something from his fingers. A glint of metal caught Lytton’s eye. “This was my tag when I was a SEAL. I want you to have it. So many times I was yanked back from the brink of death by some fucking unseen hand, Driving Hawk. I knew I was destined for bigger things. Here, take it. I don’t mean to say I’ve
accomplished
all of these bigger things yet, so don’t write me off yet.” He patted something near his hip. “I wear the other tag on a chain here to remind me how close death always is. How to treasure your friends, your family, your brothers. And you’re my brother in more ways than one.”