Bone's Country 12 (Patreon)

The Chihuahuan Desert was like riding on top of Hell—seeing it break through in every jagged boulder, spiky cactus, and blistering heat haze. Almost the moment they left town, what little green there was in the world vanished. The grass became grit and pebbles, all brown as the bottom of a river. Cacti and creosotes sprang up, their green a mockery of green, seeming more brown than the brown.

They rode all day, Bone in the lead, Sophia following behind and holding the reins of Frenly’s horse. He was bound and gagged and Sophia often looked back to reacquaint herself with the bit in his mouth. It made her think of Bone's anger with her, with the world. She felt at times like a chimney that let out the smoke of his burning hatred so it didn't suffocate the whole blasted countryside.

She knew how rage could fuel a man, or a woman. In her time with him, she'd tried to mollify his. Calm it, corral it, massage it. Keep the flame from spreading out of the fire pit.

But the burn never cooled, not all the way. She feared this would be the time it escaped and reached her instead of just her body. And she worried fearing it each time –having the fastest gun in the West protecting her and still never being safe.

And she feared the feel of safety, because she knew something would be missing if anger were not an ingredient in what Bone felt for her.

As the ride stretched on, Sophia’s body ached and she thought more of that than her worries. She wondered if Bone too was hypnotized by the relentless push of the landscape past plodding hooves. When he looked at her, would it be with the appreciation her voluptuous body demanded? Or would it be a spark off his burning anger?

She did not know. He didn't look at her.

In time, she craved his eyes, even if they struck her like lightning. There was something enticing in taking a man so calm, so cool, so collected… and kindling a fire out of that snowbank.

Finally the blazing day became a frosty night. They made camp, digging a deep hole to fill with mesquite wood and then burning it so there was warmth but barely any light. Sophia and Bone bunked down in their bedrolls, while Frenly had to rely on his fat and body hair to protect him from a chill that seemed like it was trying to make up for the day’s desert heat.

“Imm culd!” Frenly insisted, over and over again, with the gag obscuring his words but not his meaning. There were plenty of pebbles on the ground and Bone threw one at Frenly every time he made noise, which shut him up for a while.

Sophia watched Bone, his arms his pillow, his hat tilted low over his brow to defend his rest from the light of the stars and moon. She wanted to make things right with him; get his usual, half-loving caresses and know that once more he accepted her, even if it was as a puta.

But another voice in her—deep in her body, close to her cunt—asked if what she wanted wasn’t to taste his rage again.

“Imm culd—” Frenly said tiredly, with not much energy left.

Bone groped around for a pebble and threw it blindly at his prisoner. It half-heartedly traveled the distance, falling short, but Frenly still shut up.

He was close to sleeping, Sophia’s man. She knew he wouldn’t like to be woken. If she wanted him… his rage or his forgiveness… she would have to ask for it soon.

Sophia got up before she thought of what she was doing—the prospect of motion was too alluring to resist. She threw her blanket over Frenly and went to Bone, slipping into his bedroll with him, feeling the roughness of his clothes on her sensitive skin and the harshness of his hard body through her supple dress.

“What d’you want?” Bone snorted, not rousing from his reclined position, even as she wrapped herself about him.

“Just warming you up, jefe.”

“Ain’t in the mood.”

“Not in the mood to be warm? That doesn’t sound like el torero I know.”

A bulge traveled under his blanket, into the open neck of his shirt, where his hairy skin awaited Sophia’s touch. She felt a puckered bullet scar on his breast. Her finger described its roundness while she kissed Bone’s shoulder, paying homage to his body even without any pleasure in it for her. Though there was a satisfaction in rubbing her lips against the frayed cotton… in knowing she would bleed if she kissed it enough…

“Remember when we first met?” she whispered intimately in Bone’s ear. “The hot bath I drew you… how clean I made you… how dirty you made me… how am I to sleep with such machismo there for the taking?”

“I’m not aiming to be taken,” Bone told her, his voice as cold as the white exhale that came out of his mouth with it. “Do you want another ten? Maybe more?”

The words slipped out of Sophia. “As many as you want to give me, mi amor.”

Bone grunted a humorless laugh. “You’re a real wildcat, ain’t ya?”

“You make me wild.”

“I ain’t making you anything. It’s too late for that.”

Sophia could only hope he was referring to the hour. “And it is too cold to sleep alone,” she argued.

“Never said ya couldn’t sleep. What you’re doin’ have a fella wide awake ‘fore long.”

“I would be wide too, when you are done.” Sophia brushed her lips against Bone’s bristly cheek to let him know of the smile he had given her. “You’ve ridden that dumb horse all day; can’t you ride me ahorita?”

“You don’t wanna fuck me. You just want to convince yourself I love you.”

“What’s the difference, jefe?” Sophia kissed his jaw. Three little kisses, before she stopped. “You can show me how much you hate me if you want. Make me see again how angry I made you. I know underneath all that anger is your need for me. And I want all of it. I can take the pain you give me before you let me have your love.”

Bone turned onto his side, dumping her off his chest. His hat fell over and she saw his bald-headed scars, glowing white in the moonlight like his skull was showing through his skin. White-hot with all his feverish mind was thinking.

“I’ll do what I want with you when I want to.”

Crossing his arms across his chest, he shut his eyes resolutely.

Sophia slunk closer to him. She turned over, facing away from him, and shuffled back against his front. Took an arm from against his chest and wrapped it around her body, so they were like two spoons nestled together—Bone the larger and her the smaller. He studiously ignored her and Sophia imagined them as a stray dog and a cat she’d had once.

The cat would bat at the dog and the dog would studiously ignore it. Well, let Bone say he was ignoring her. He was still giving her his warmth, his closeness, his protection. And she felt the holstered firmness of his manhood. Like an arrow drawn back on a bowstring, it might not be in motion now, but she felt in every leaden inch its willingness to thrust, penetrate, fill, and conquer.

Love and hate—was there that much difference between them? They were both passion and it was passion she craved. Sophia had worked for so long as a prostitute, letting men pay her for love. If she could do that, why could she not take Bone’s fury as payment for his love?

She certainly would rather have what was bought with his anger than what was bought with pesos.

She’d rather hate Bone than love anything else; better his hate than anyone else’s love.

Deliberately, she ground her plump ass into Bone’s groin. There might well have been a telegraph line from the anticipatory fullness behind his fly to the waiting emptiness between her legs. Sophia felt a pulse stirring in his cock with an answering beat in her own folds—the inner muscles that would be shouldered aside, with deliciously pain, when his vast erection took possession of the inside of her.

She pushed against him, rubbed up and down, drawing her dress out of the way so there was no muting the bodily heat she offered to his swelling groin. Her nerves were reawakening to the fire she could expect to scorch her, remembering both how good the loving was and how there wasn’t enough in simple remembrance of it. She’d have to experience it again, have to once more possess that burgeoning machismo before she truly knew how sweet it was to be his woman.