Stay Vertical (3 page)

His cock still standing at half-mast, he took a few strides to the spanking bench to untie the other girl. He had started out doing some fancy kinbaku rope work on her but had actually become bored halfway through, so he’d just wound the ends of the flat nylon rope between her wrists at the small of her back. Her bare tits jutted nicely and her eyes were appropriately pleading above the mouth gag, but Lytton had been getting bored with such shenanigans lately.

He had been pushing the bondage envelope to prevent boredom. He’d drawn blood while flogging a couple of recent slaves. When one had gone crying to her boyfriend about her welts, the guy had come rampaging out to Lytton’s Leaves of Grass Ranch. That was a dangerous enough escapade in itself what with all Lytton’s security measures in place.

Lytton used to use spike strips, for instance, on the only access road through his fortress-like front gate. Then some asshole inspector from the state Department of Health had shredded his own tires on his way in for a surprise inspection. He told Lytton if he wanted to be a legitimate medical marijuana grower, he had better stop using illegitimate tactics. Now Lytton had to be satisfied with ineffective cattle guards that wouldn’t keep out a determined rabbit. So he’d backed those up with a few mercenaries armed with Uzis patrolling the ranch in ATVs.

Lytton’s partner, Tobiah Weingarten, had actually given him a stern dressing-down after that incident. Well, what the fuck? The bitch had gotten her ounce of Eminence Front weed. And her welts would heal. But Toby said if Lytton wanted to get that carried away anymore he’d best not do it in an upstanding place of business, but go down to Mormon Lake or into Pure and Easy and rent some fucking cave where nobody would notice blood splatter on the walls.

“And don’t forget to take your fur kilt and wooden club,” Toby had yelled, “because no one’s going to be able to distinguish you from the other Cro-Magnon men in your cave.”

“I got rid of the guy, didn’t I?” Lytton had protested.

“Yeah!” shouted Toby. “By giving him two whole ounces of Young Man Blue! You know I have to account for our product down to the last one-one-hundredth of a gram, so how’m I going to explain
that
when the regulators come knocking?”

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 fucking 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 fucking 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.

“
Iso
!” shouted one of the assholes. “Roll up that fucking door so Tyke can bring the jeep around!”

Iso!
Isosceles Weaver was the fucking sergeant-at-arms of The Cutlasses, a local motorcycle club that considered the Leaves of Grass Ranch to be their backyard. They’d tried to hit him before several times, mainly by being stupid, and had been rebuffed each time by one of Lytton’s mercs.

Once, Iso had pretended to be delivering a load of space buckets and grow lights. As if anybody would fall for that. The merc had shot out Iso’s tires and the box truck had blocked Lytton’s driveway for a week until he’d had it towed to the impound yard. Another time, Iso faked he was an electric company worker, complete with authentic uniform and clipboard, concerned that a neighbor was poaching electricity and running up Lytton’s bill. Yeah, sure. If anything, everyone always suspected the pot farmer of poaching power.

Lytton didn’t know how they’d gotten this far this time, but suddenly he felt alive, on top of his game. Was this the desperation he’d been waiting for to jolt him out of his stupor?
This
was what had been missing from his life. He’d become too complacent—a Sativa King in his lonely turret, acting out warped fantasies that were only a paltry shadow of the real world. All the while
real
danger and excitement lurked just beyond his own greenhouse—

“I can’t get it up!”

That was Iso’s stupid voice, all right. He was apparently having trouble with the chain on the roll-up door, and that Tyke douchebag was already crashing through the woods in his stupid fucking Jeep.

Lytton had to act fast.

Pivoting on one foot like a quarterback, Lytton entered the greenhouse, the barrel of his Glock leading the way. He was hit with the sweet, pungent aroma of flowering marijuana buds. Overhead light banks cast a futuristic glow on the rows of plants, but the first thing Lytton fixed on was Doug Zelov’s eyes, peering at him piercingly over a bush of fluffy green leaflets.

Lytton shot first. He’d been prepared to shoot since originally hearing the shots inside his greenhouse. If one wasn’t prepared to shoot, why would one carry a gun? But Zelov must have been ready for it, for in a flash he was gone. Lytton screeched around the corner of that aisle, nearly flying like a bowling pin when his bare foot snagged on a warm, mushy human limb. He barely registered that loyal old Helium Head, who had been with him since the motor home days, was sprawled like a starfish. His eyes behind the circular spectacles lens were wide open and glassy.

Pissed off supremely now, Lytton sprinted like he hadn’t since high school. Arms pumping, adrenaline rushed like a tsunami through his veins. That aisle of pot plants had never seemed longer, like in one of those dreams where you run and run and don’t get anywhere.

He rounded that corner in time to see the back of a stupid cut flying the Cutlass’ colors just as its wearer vanished behind his hydraulic door. Back in the illegal days, Lytton had realized he should have an escape route. This greenhouse was pushed up against a rise of the mountain, so the hydraulic door led to a three-foot tall tunnel lined with concrete. Helium Head must have left the door open, and now stupid biker boots were sticking out of Lytton’s tunnel as the rat tried to tunnel away.

Lytton shot him in the ankle first and then pulled him out. Iso screamed like a baby.

“Ow! What are you fucking doing?”

“What do you
think
I’m fucking doing?” Lytton shouted back. “You just killed my man! Come out of my fucking tunnel!”

The sergeant-at-arms was thrashing around so thoroughly Lytton couldn’t keep his grip on his ankle, so he stood back and aimed his piece at the boot. Some of the leather had been blown away where he’d already been blasted. The ankle was no doubt shattered, as a rivulet of blood trickled from the tunnel. “Come out or I’ll shoot you again.”

Reluctantly, Iso squirmed backward through the tube. Lytton impatiently waited to swoop down and snatch him up by the back of his cut, the rocker, predictably, displaying two crossed swords.

But just as he yanked Iso to his feet—some sergeant-at-arms, the guy bawled like a moron—Doug Zelov stepped out from behind a space bucket containing a lush Young Man Blue plant. Zelov, predictably, leveled his barrel at Lytton. Now it was a Mexican standoff.

“Give me back my man,” Zelov said matter-of-factly.

“You shot my man,” Lytton stated.

“And you shot my man. So we’re even.”

“Not exactly. You
killed
my man and I just shot yours in the foot.”

Zelov chuckled. “He’s not dead. Just stunned from more action than he’s seen since the new PlayStation was released. You’re pretty organized here. This is the most impressive setup I’ve ever seen.”

What was the fucktard babbling about? He sounded set to make a sales pitch for a late night product. “I’m glad you approve. Now I’m holding you here until the cops arrive.” Lytton rattled Iso around in one hand and emphasized his point by pressing his barrel to the loser’s temple.

Zelov said, “Which should be in about two hours thanks to that twisty drive up the mountains. Listen, why don’t we just cut a deal. Your pot is by far the most potent on the market and people are clamoring for it ‘cause you don’t use all these chemicals that are banned from the country. People are getting sick of toking that pesticide-laden crap. We really just wanted to borrow a couple of buckets of Young Man Blue.”

“And some Eminence Front,” Iso added, hopping around on his one good foot.

Zelov waved his piece. “Forget the Eminence Front. We wanted to see if our chemist could duplicate it, Driving Hawk. We’re thinking of setting up a pot dispensary in Pure and Easy.” Zelov was sure being palsy-walsy, calling Lytton by his surname.