Bounty Hunter Read online

  “And that’s why I left him!” she announced defiantly.

  He laughed. “Oh, no! I know why you left him.” He stood eye to eye with her, a scoundrel’s rude jeer breaking out against the backdrop of his stolid features. “You were green with envy over his latest conquest. Don’t do yourself the injustice of denying it.”

  Her eyes fired nails of hateful thoughts at him—which he easily fended off—but her heart ached, knowing that he spoke the truth.

  “Oh, how can you do this!” she spat out at him.

  “Because I get paid in cash, and I have no shame.”

  Mary watched as her captor sauntered away and rifled through Arthur Riggins’s top desk drawer. Finding what he was looking for, he pushed the drawer shut with a firm shove, and walked back to her with a pair of scissors in his hand.

  “Now, if it were my call, I wouldn’t do this,” he said a bit sadly. “It may be brutally demeaning, but it seems a shame to see this lovely hair trashed.”

  “Good God, no!” She shrank back, those gathered tears rolling en masse down her pink blushing cheeks, streaking her makeup with lines of black mascara.

  She pulled away, but even now she didn’t try to bolt. What was the use? She closed her eyes and held her breath, while Logan Dunn grabbed fistfuls of her hair and cut away the long blonde tresses, until there was nothing left but irregular tufts of hair sticking out from her pink scalp.

  Her sobbing almost wrenched his heart. This was one thing he truly didn’t like, especially when the man he worked for had a slave as lovely as Mary Stein was. Why deny Mary her beauty, when it would be just as easy to treasure it in the captivity of chains, and experience its lush quality as it emerged in her surrendered state?

  But the nasty deed was quickly done and the transformation complete according to plan.

  “It will seem like an eternity but it will only be a few tough minutes. I wouldn’t get upset, you’ll never see these people again.” Brutal, but true, he thought.

  Mary wasn’t listening anymore. Her mind had turned away from him. She’d backed herself into the cocoon of submission, where she might thoughtlessly, mindlessly survive the long journey down the halls of Riggins & Worthy and out the door. She’d turn her eyes away from the shocked faces and curious stares of her coworkers. She’d pretend she was on another planet, in another dimension, on a different time line, and nothing that she’d done for the last eight months meant anything. It wasn’t even real, but a dream that never was.

  For the bounty hunter, Logan Dunn, the woman he led from the offices of Riggins & Worthy, was just another of the many runaway slaves that he brought back to the unique justice of his clients. They were often like Mary Stein: pretty, naïve, perfect candidates for the unusual lifestyle they once embraced with passion. Several others like Mary had bolted from the rigorous life for the same reason that Mary did. That old green-eyed demon cast a terrible shadow over a vulnerable woman, a slave used to having the undivided attention of her dominant master. There were problems when the competition arrived. Often, their complaints were justified, except that there was no complaining allowed in the master’s domain. If a master tired of his old slave and wanted a new one, then the old one graciously stepped aside. She could hope that her beloved would tire of this new toy and return his affections where they belonged. But too often, the discarded slave would remain second place in a world where she had no rights and no power. The bitterness that resulted ended in a rash move, a break for freedom that was sometimes successful, but just as often a disaster, as it would be for Mary Stein.

  Logan Dunn opened Arthur Riggins’s office door, and with a hand firmly gripping Mary’s upper arm, he led her into a sea of astonished eyes. Moving slowly down the hallway, the pair passed two-dozen men and women who had been the former Marcia Rayburn’s friends. Just as she expected, they stared at her in shocked wonder with mouths agape. Although she looked at them from the corner of her eye, from the detached safety of her manufactured fantasy, her imagination was not enough of a shield to protect her from the judgment and the snickers that naturally arose from her curious audience. It penetrated beyond the shield and inside her skin, taking up space inside her grinding, anxious belly. Humiliation. Shame. Disgrace. Was there a name for it equal to the feeling inside? Likely not.

  The pair walked past the water cooler where she’d joked with her best friend, Angela, that morning—they were going shopping at lunch that noon to buy Marcia Rayburn a dress for her date with Thomas Autry that night. Marcia wouldn’t be keeping the date, and she wondered what Thomas would say when Angela whispered to him the awful details about her real identity and her capture. Thank God that she’d never have to explain herself to these people.

  Logan Dunn mercifully used the elevator to transport them to the parking garage underneath the building. He could have made her walk down the stairs and through the lobby. He could have taken her out on the street in front of a hundred pedestrians, but he decided that the leering Mary suffered under the scrutiny of her friends would have to be enough for Xavier Tremaine. And if it wasn’t enough to please him? Well, he’d never really know, would he? If the man had any balls at all, he’d have done the dirty deed himself.

  This was all that Mary Stein would receive in compassion from Logan Dunn, and frankly, it was more than she had a right to expect.

  Outside of the Riggins & Worthy office, several more curious business types stared in amazement as they walked by the strange pair waiting at the elevator. The shocked faces threw a few more painful knives at Mary’s gut. One man was bold enough to join them in the elevator to the basement, and then a few more wide-eyed on-lookers stopped to stare as Logan led Mary to his van. Once inside the close quarters of the vehicle, the worst was over. After securing his prisoner in the back of the van, Logan took his seat, started the engine, and moved quickly into the midday Houston traffic, heading toward the Interstate for the trip north.

  

  “A cigar, Mr. Dunn?” Xavier Tremiane asked.

  The balding gentleman was aptly dressed for this kind of celebration, in a velvet smoking jacket and leather slippers. The several rings on his left hand gleamed in the room’s mellow light. He was casually dressed down from his usual business attire, and at the same time prepared for the evening ahead, which he awaited with eager anticipation.

  “Sure,” the younger man accepted the Cuban import and allowed his host to light it with a silver cigarette lighter. “And maybe that scotch you promised?”

  “Oh, my, yes,” the man suddenly remembered.

  Xavier went to the bar at the side of the room, while Logan stared out of the enormous bank of windows toward the water on the far side of the woods. There couldn’t have been a more beautiful place to live than Vashon Island in Puget Sound. Lush. Peaceful. It reminded him a little of the place where his cabin was in Northern Michigan. Too bad this place was overrun with people—in his estimation. It would take a lot of hearty souls willing to brave frigid winters before his home in the Michigan’s wilds would become as popular a place as this one, thankfully so. There were no big cities near his cabin, just forest, trees, endless lakes and a few dirt roads. All the privacy a man could want. He’d be spending the fall there; glad to kick back, watch the leaves turn colors and fish… at least until another assignment came his way.

  “Mr. Dunn?” Xavier interrupted Logan’s reverie, handing him a glass of scotch. “You seem pensive?”

  “It was a long trip, not easy finding Mary. I’m tired and want to go home for awhile.”

  “I understand. You don’t know how much I appreciate your services. From what you’ve told me about the arrest, I couldn’t have arranged it better. The slut certainly deserved the humiliation, after all the aggravation she’s caused me. But she’ll pay, and pay some more. She may never stop paying.” His eyes alone were enough to send a cold shiver through any sentient being.

  “What I don’t understand, sir…” Logan’s gaze narrowed on the man, “what’s the point
? If she doesn’t want to be with you anymore, why keep her? Why bother going after her? You’ve obviously gone on to some other girl.”

  “Why keep her? She’s my property. I wouldn’t give up on a valuable car, or a jewel, or stolen money. I’m certainly not going to give up on a runaway slave. If I set her free, that is my prerogative, but she’s not free to leave on her own, and she knows that.”

  “And what will become of her when she’s finally finished paying?”

  “Not sure yet. I have worldwide contacts, men in a dozen foreign countries who would be more than delighted to have her. In those places, there’s no question of running away; it’s impossible. I’d sell her off just for spite.”

  Logan sipped his drink as he slowly strolled about the room. “It always amazes me how you can get judges in your back pocket to put out these fake warrants.”

  The man smiled unctuously. “They get their piece, if you know what I mean,” he replied. “Although in this case, there weren’t any trumped up charges. Mary not only and reneged on our contractual agreement, she damaged valuable property. She could be in jail now. But,” he sighed, “I’d rather use her for my own benefit than have her waste away useless to me in the county jail.”

  “Obviously,” Logan raised his drink, as if toasting the man’s ingenuity.

  “You’re not having a crisis of conscience now, are you?” Xavier asked, looking just a little worried about the pensive bounty hunter.

  “No, not really. I just sometimes wonder.”

  “Well, that’s good that your sentiments haven’t changed. I’d like to recommend you, should one of my acquaintances need your services.”

  “By all means, do.”

  “So,” he was ready to move on with his evening’s plans, “now that my Mary is safely where she belongs, maybe you’d like to enjoy her punishment yourself. She’s been bound for whipping. Would you care to indulge? I understand that you’re a man of such passions yourself?”

  “Hum, I’ve been known to dabble, yes. But that’s usually toward a specific end,” Logan answered vaguely. He wasn’t particularly interested in giving away his secrets.

  “Oh? A specific end being a sexual one?”

  “Perhaps,” he said guardedly.

  “But then you didn’t take advantage of my offer while you were driving from Houston. Mary tells me that you didn’t touch her.”

  “That’s my policy with runaways. Less entanglements that way. Besides, I’d rather have the women I associate with free to choose what they want. Taking them merely because they are obliging subjects of a master isn’t much fun. Takes away the conquest.”

  “Hum. A different point view,” Xavier noted. “Well then,” he put down his drink glass and removed his smoking jacket. After rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, he moved toward the far wall of the room, saying, “Why don’t you join me for a little old-fashioned discipline?”

  Through a secret door in the paneled living room, the two entered into a bleak, bare room, where Mary Stein hung naked and bound, ready for her master’s retribution. Her feet were already spread wide and tightly tethered to metal eyebolts in the cement floor. In the same manner, her arms were secured high above her head and toward the side of the rectangular room, fixed to eyebolts in the open rafters of the ceiling. Spread-eagle and bound—the classic position for sadomasochistic punishment, Logan noted. His crotch replied to the visual stimulation with a significant and pleasurable jolt. Sadly, he had little control over this physical response.

  There wasn’t an inch of Mary’s pretty pale body that was not available for the punishment Xavier Tremaine would give her. Sticking out chaotically from her scalp, her crudely cut hair made her look like a madwoman. Her molten eyes only enhanced the crazed image. She’d been hanging in this position for nearly an hour and the strain must have been nearly impossible to bear by now. But that was Xavier’s point—to make her suffer.

  “Why don’t you start?” Xavier suggested, offering Logan a braided cat o’ nine tails.

  “No, thank you. It’s really not in me to punish the women I recover, unless they rebel against me personally. Then I can be quick to take them down. But your Mary was a perfect prisoner. Your quarrel with her is yours not mine.”

  Tremaine looked a bit surprised. “I see, but you do punish your slaves?”

  “Humm. I don’t actually think of the women I abuse as slaves in the sense that you do. I’m looking for a different type of relationship. Not that I’m judging yours, my personal tastes are just different.”

  “Each to his own,” he nodded, although he found Logan’s comment a bit odd coming from a man who supposedly shared the same sadistic urges that he did. His body and soul were poised for action as he turned his attention to Mary… Oh! poor, sweet Mary Stein, who was just a little too open with her new life in Houston. Most runaways were never caught, but then again, most didn’t have Logan Dunn going after them like a Pinkerton detective.

  Satisfied that he’d given the bounty hunter every chance to wreak havoc on his most recent capture, Xavier Tremaine took up the punishment himself. He began with the cat o’ nine tails laid on Mary’s front side, where her flawless skin cut easily and any strike was painful. Unlike her back, her shoulder and her ass, which relished the harsh sensations, and where in sadomasochistic scenes a good master normally began his work, her breast, her belly and the sensuous mound of pleasure between her legs would instantly revolt as the braided leather struck her skin. After all, this was punishment for the crime of turning her back on him, denying him, rejecting him. He did not take rejection well.

  Furious with purpose, Tremaine reared back and then brought the cat forward, lacing Mary’s firm round breasts with a hard hot strike of the unforgiving leather. The blows were relentless and erratically applied, so there was little chance that she could absorb, let alone transform, the pain before the next landed. The only relief came when her master changed his aim and abraded her belly, her thighs and the luxuriant flesh beneath her pale pubic curls. She jerked like a puppet and cried, and gritted her teeth, and swore under her breath to no avail.

  Mary knew that her master would show her no mercy, for she’d endured as much from him before, when she was smitten, in love and blinded by physical lust.

  Once her body was striped with cutting red marks from her breasts to her thighs, Tremaine moved behind her and continued with the punishment on her back, upping the intensity with blows that made her scream for mercy. But the act inspired the act. The flagellation inspired the flagellation. And her screams only renewed his resolve. The fire in the man’s belly roared like thunder, and leapt out with more cruel, biting punishment.

  While Mary Stein and her avenging master faced off in the unequal battle, Logan Dunn watched, seeing if he could still recognize the beauty in her face. He wanted to know in his gut, if this treatment was what she most desired. Was she getting the payoff she wanted, or was she beyond that now, incapable of ever wanting this rough treatment again? For a long while, there was nothing but emptiness in her eyes, and pain, and fear. When Xavier moved to her backside, the same emptiness, pain and fear registered in her eyes. Her screams were angry and bitter.

  When Tremaine returned to Mary’s red streaked front side to inflict more damage, Logan, for the first time in his long career of bringing runaways to justice, almost stopped him. He’d never even considered doing that before. But now, despite the way the brutal punishment stirred his sadistic desires, the temptation to interfere was nearly as strong.

  Then, just as he was about to interject himself into the cruel clash of master and slave, he saw what he’d been looking for in Mary Stein. It came on him like a wave off the ocean, crashing erratically through his energized body. He saw it in her eyes where she recorded that strange satisfaction that comes to submissive women when they are beyond the pain and inside that private space where their bliss is finally worth what it takes to get there. Her could see her in that private place now; where she would likely
stay for as long as Xavier Tremaine chose to beat her.

  During an unusually long pause, as Xavier caught his breath and refreshed himself with a drink of water, Logan moved to his side and whispered to him privately:

  “Man, I’ve gotta take off. Thanks for the cigar and the scotch and my next month’s rent.” He patted his chest where he’s zipped the thick wad of hundred dollar bills into the lining of his bomber jacket.

  “Hopefully, I won’t need you again,” Tremaine replied. “And I’m sorry you didn’t want to stay longer; we could have enjoyed ourselves tonight.”

  “Thanks, but there’s a little bar across the Sound with a waitress I hope will remember me.”

  “Good luck, then. You can show yourself out?”

  “Of course.”

  The pair shook hands. And with no further ceremony, Xavier Tremaine returned to his task while Logan Dunn slipped back through the panel door and left the house. The night refreshed his spirit further. He took a deep breath of clear cool air, hopped into the rented Jeep and sped off toward the ferry.

  Chapter Two - Scenes from a life…

  Caught In the Corridor…

  Jillian Ingalls polished the silver lamp in the parlor, pleased to see her face in the flat surface shine back at her. Good enough, she decided. She wanted to spend the afternoon reading, if she could escape from Christopher’s endless demands. She wanted some time to herself, but time to herself was becoming rarer by the week. She heard the man—her absent mother’s husband—talking to someone in his office across the hall, so slipping into the foyer, she tiptoed noiselessly along the slick marble floor toward the back corridor. Almost free, she thought gleefully as she remembered the hot romantic novel waiting in her room. But then the door behind her opened suddenly.

  Her body cringed reflexively, but she kept going.

  “Jillian,” she heard him speak. Did she dare ignore him, just this once? “A word with you.”

  He was already on his way. What happened to his guest? she wondered.