Gunmetal, p.1
Gunmetal, page 1
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
HOTWIRE (EXCERPT)
About The Author
GUNMETAL
________________________
His to Protect Book One
Bellamy Rook
Gunmetal: His to Protect, Book One
Copyright © 2022 by Bellamy Rook
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art and book design by Bellamy Rook.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review.
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GUNMETAL
CHAPTER ONE
TEX
I'm bored out of my skull behind the bar. Texas is dragging itself through the dog days of summer, with the kind of heat that makes you want to lay down and let the sun bleach your bones bare. That, or it makes you want to do something reckless, acting like a rabid dog. Not that I've ever needed an excuse to do dumb shit. The air shimmers, casting watery mirages over the cracked, hard-baked ground.
Hardly anyone comes out to the Cat Trap except by accident, and the girls and I are dying from a lack of stimulation. The Cat Trap is one-part whorehouse and one-part diner, with a couple of rooms up top to rent for the night if you're too tired or horny to drag yourself a few miles down the highway to the next motel. The girls and I live here; we all chip in for food and maintenance to keep the electricity and water running, and the place is ours as long as we can scrape together a few dollars every month.
I never make as much money as the girls. I'm too skinny to serve as muscle and the few men who come around are looking for cunt, not cock. You'd think living in a whorehouse would mean I'm getting dicked down every night, but I haven't been laid in months. I've got no problem getting off with men—it's the men who seem to have a problem getting off with me. Specifically, the men in small-town backwater conservative fucking Texas, and I have no interest in getting smacked around just so some repressed asshole can get his rocks off.
But money is money, and nobody's got it easy these days.
A black 1960-something Mustang rumbles into the parking lot, gravel crunching under its tires. It coughs up a spurt of dust as the driver turns to park in the scrap of shade at the front of the building. Straightening up, I lean over the bar to get a look at the driver as he climbs out. He's tall and lean, dressed in black from his hat to his boots, cutting a sharp figure against the orange of the desert. I might not have got a look at his face yet, but from a distance, he's the nicest thing I've seen in a while. Not that that's saying much, out in the middle of nowhere.
This guy hasn't come around before, so it's a coin-toss as to how he'll treat me. Or if he'll notice me at all. But it's been so fucking monotonous around here that I'm willing to risk a kick in the teeth if it means livening things up before we all drop dead of boredom.
And hey, who knows. Maybe the man in black is looking for a guy like me.
I snort and reach under the bar for a fresh glass. Yeah, right. I can't remember the last time anybody wanted to use me as anything except a punching bag.
The guy pushes through the door like a gunslinger in an old western coming into a saloon. His shirt stretches across broad shoulders before tucking in at the belt around his narrow hips. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of a slim chain resting against his tanned collarbones. Cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and big silver buckle on the belt to match the rings decorating his fingers. I like the look of him more than I should, even with his face hidden in shadows. I don't need a pretty face to be interested, but I'm curious. If his face is half as good-looking as the rest of him, he could be the most attractive man in the whole state. And I haven't even seen him out of his clothes. Fuck.
In contrast, here I am: tall and lanky and as light as he is dark, hair clipped short to almost nothing, and wearing too many earrings. My ripped-up jeans cling to my legs like a second skin and a sleeveless shirt so worn out it's halfway to transparency does more to show off my body than cover it up. Everything about me screams queer punk, and it's got my ass handed to me more times than I can count.
I'm staring at the guy, not trying to hide it. His boots land with a solid clink with every step, flashy silver spurs attached to his heels. When he catches me looking, he tilts his head back and the shadows shift over his face, revealing a sharp-cut jaw with dark stubble and glittering, coal-black eyes. He nods to the girls loitering in the sitting area, but he doesn't stop till he's facing me across the bar.
"Hi there," he says. His voice is low and husky with that Texas drawl that's as familiar to me as breathing. "Shot of whiskey, if you've got it?"
He settles in, leaning one hip against the bar as I pour him his drink. His hat is still tipped down over his eyes, but he makes a nice picture all the same: all long lines and sharp edges, solid black from head to toe. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, and his forearms are lean with muscle, the sinews and tendons ropy under his dark-tanned skin. I slide his drink over and he catches it, our hands missing each other by a fraction of an inch. His fingers are elegant against the whiskey glass, long and strong-looking with blunt, squared-off tips, rings glinting dully in the late-afternoon light.
He takes a drink. I watch him swallow it.
"You selling alongside the girls?” he asks casually.
He's got balls, coming straight out and asking somebody something like that without testing the water first. Either he's got no self-preservation or he knows he can take whatever anybody might dish out, and that kind of confidence is hot. I'm blindsided by a fantasy of getting bent over and railed by the guy. Fuck, I'm half-hard just thinking about it. It's been way too long.
I unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and manage to get out, “Depends what you’re looking to buy.”
The man smiles, a slow and easy thing. “Just your conversation, for now. What’s your price for something like that?”
My daydream of getting split open on the guy's cock fizzles out like a mirage.
“Conversation,” I repeat blankly.
The man shrugs. “I've been on the road the past while, and there's only so long a man can talk to himself. Course, if you’re not interested, maybe one of the ladies here will humor me?”
The girls stop whispering among themselves long enough to smile and wave at him. No shit, one of them would humor him. They're as starved for good-looking company as much as I am.
He's still watching me, waiting for an answer. And sure, why the fuck not. He doesn't seem likely to start throwing his fists around unprovoked—not sober, anyway—and maybe all he wants to do is talk to somebody, but that's fine by me. Talking is easy money.
“For conversation, I’ll take a dollar a minute,” I say.
“That how you rate all your transactions here?”
“Course not.” I flash him a grin. “The girls would be making five bucks a fuck. We’d never earn enough to get by.”
The stranger and I are just about the same height. I'm six feet but I'm wiry, with no real meat on my bones. I'm wearing converse sneakers, but the man’s boots have a good inch or two in the heel. I put him at a stocky five-ten, five-eleven if I'm being generous. He's twice as wide as me though, and I bet he's ripped. He offers his hand, still holding his whiskey with the other, and his grip is warm and firm. His fingertips are calloused and I want to feel them on me under my clothes. Just thinking about them inside me makes me shiver despite the heat of the day and the heat uncurling in my stomach.
“Conner West,” the man says.
It's not as obviously a fake name as what most men offer in here, but I bet it's not what his mother calls him. That's okay. None of us use our real names in this place. It's not like I've got 'Tex' written on my birth certificate, though it's what I've called myself for years.
“Tex, though I’ll answer to whatever you want to call me.”
Conner raises his whiskey. "Have a drink with me?"
There are probably worse things than getting drunk with a hot stranger, but I don't pour myself more than a finger of liquor. I don't have a lot of rules, but if I'm on the job, I'm staying sober.
“What kind of conversation are you after?" I ask, stashing the bottle back on the shelf behind me. "The kind where I smile and nod and tell you how smart and interesting you are, or the kind where I can actually talk back?”
Conner laughs. “You’re a charmer. You must be real popular round here.”
“You want charming, we've got plenty of girls for you to pick from.” I glance around the room, counting heads. There's Jess, Doe, Krystal, Becca, Lucy, and me in the Cat Trap on any given day, and we get a handful of others who stop by every so often. Doe's in the kitchen and Lucy was running an errand in town the last time I heard, but Jess, Krystal, and Becs are watching us like hawks. “Well, a couple might be occupied, but still. Just about anyone in this place is more charming than me.”
“No, I like it. It's a breath of fresh air like a slap to the face.” Conner grins. “As far as conversation goes, why don’t we start with the weather and see where we go from there?" He raises his glass to his mouth. It leaves his lips wet for a second and I want to lick the whiskey off them. Swallowing, he says, "I got the money. I can afford to start with small talk.”
I raise my eyebrows. "Oh yeah?"
Conner sets his drink down and fishes a handful of cash from his hip pocket. Slapping the bills down, he pushes them across to me with his own brows raised in return, a smile curling over his lips. “A dollar a minute, you said.”
I flick through the bills, eyeballing their worth. “This is enough for an hour.” Stacking the cash, I shove it into my own pocket, tilting my hips to fit it in. Fucking skinny jeans. “You must be a real slow drinker.”
“You complaining?”
"You're not getting a refund if I decide your conversation isn't worth having for the full time," I warn him. "So no, I'm not complaining."
Conner raises his hands in easy surrender. I have to admit, the longer I look at him, the more I like what I see. He hasn't gotten his hackles up at a single thing I've said, so either he's playing a long game and his real colors will come out once he's finished his drink and he's got me alone, or he might actually be a decent catch.
"So," I say. "The weather, huh. Hot out, isn't it?"
"Hottest it's been in years," Conner agrees, like he genuinely wants to shoot the shit about the fucking temperature. It's summer in the south; what's there to say except it's hot? "Drought's tearing across the desert something fierce."
"You from around here?"
I'm fishing for details as much as I'm making small talk. A lot of the guys we get in here are liars one way or another, giving us fake names or pretending like they don't have a wife and kids back home. It's easy to see right through most of them. But this Conner West puts the rest of them to shame. He's a born liar if I've ever met one. I just can't work out what exactly he's lying about. There's no tan line from a missing wedding ring on his finger, not that I care if he's hiding a wife. Maybe he's some kind of celebrity. He's got the charm and the confidence of one. But if I had to bet, I'd say he's a con artist. Which, unless he's paying in counterfeits, really doesn't make a difference to me.
"Oh, I'm from all over," Conner says vaguely. "Came from Houston most recently, though. Hell of a sight, driving out of there and seeing the whole desert stretched out in front of you. It's like nothing else."
I give him a hum and a nod in response. I've never been to Houston, never even been further than town. I can imagine it, though: a huge, glittering mess of skyscrapers and overpasses, dirty concrete and stained steel and glass that only ever gets washed by the rain, hot and choked by exhaust fumes, burning up in the sun by day and restless at night. Not restless the way the Cat Trap stays awake at night, with dim light filtering out from under closed doors and colorful scarves thrown over the lamps to create an illusion of exotic ambience. More like the buzzing, high-energy sleeplessness of a place crowded with so many people that it has no choice but to stay awake.
"How come you stopped here, of all places?" I ask.
Conner shrugs, downing the last of his drink. "I was following the highway for a while and I saw the sign. Thought I might like to sleep in a real bed for a night instead of in the car again, so here I am."
"Not the sex?"
"I didn't get up this morning planning to find somewhere to get my dick wet, if that's what you mean."
"No? That's too bad."
Conner hums. "Is it always this quiet here, or does it pick up later at night?"
"Once in a while we get a few people passing through. Truckers, tourists. Not many locals, all things considered. That's probably for the best." I brace myself against the bar and look him up and down. "Not that we get many people like you, either."
"And what am I like?"
"Don't get me wrong, we get plenty of guys in cowboy hats and big old boots like yours, but you've got a prettier face than just about anyone I've ever met."
Conner glances up at that and looks at me consideringly. "A pretty face," he repeats.
I figure if he's going to get pissed at me, it'll be now. "Not a word you like for yourself?"
But he surprises me by seeming totally unbothered when most good old southern boys I know would deck me for it.
"I don't mind it," Conner says thoughtfully, like he's never been called pretty before and has to decide how he feels about it on the spot. "Just usually hear it as an insult instead. But I figure you know all about that."
I sure do. “Pretty boy” is one of the rougher crowd's favorite insults, and one I'm as likely to hear on my knees as I am to hear while getting my ribs kicked in. But I like it fine as a compliment, so the insult doesn't really sting.
I roll with it. “So, what’s that pretty face of yours do? I’m guessing you're not turning tricks.”
“Nah, I've done a lot of things, but I ain’t done that. I don't have much of a fixed job, to be honest. I make my living as I go along. It ain't steady work, but it keeps me going.”
“Clearly, or you wouldn’t be dropping sixty bucks just to chat to some stranger.”
Conner levels a finger at me. “Point.”
“You’re done your drink but you've got plenty of time left,” I observe. Then I figure, fuck it, and throw caution to the wind. “You want to take this somewhere more private, or have you had enough of me yet?”
Before Conner can answer, three men walk in, all rugged, burly types in dirty boots, worn-out flannel shirts, and faded jeans. I recognize the one in front, Brick, but I don't know his friends' names and I'm not interested in learning them. They stomp their way up to the bar and Krystal detaches herself from the other girls to take my place as I slink out, leaving my drink behind. Conner follows me.
“Folks to avoid?” he asks.
"Bunch of assholes," I mutter through my teeth.
“Regulars?”
“They come in from town every once in a while. There used to be a fourth, but he got kicked out for getting too rough with the girls, so we don't see him around anymore, at least. Last I heard he wound up in jail, I think. Wife-beating. No surprise there."
Conner makes a derisive noise, curling his lip. He's small compared to Brick and his thugs: not so much shorter, but leaner, like a rattlesnake nipping through a herd of bulls. He's a damn sight finer than the bulls, too: the way his shirt accentuates the muscles of his back when he walks, and how his jeans cling to his thighs just right. I appreciate a man who knows how to dress, even if all that black looks like a costume. Not to mention how it must trap heat like a furnace in this fucking weather.
"Come on upstairs," I invite him.
I want to get away from Brick and his idiots before they start talking about me like I can't hear them, but mostly, I want to get Conner alone. Maybe he's really not interested in anything more than small-talk, but I've been pushing my luck for twenty-five years and I'm not about to stop now.
"That depends. We still just talking?"
Conner doesn't sound nervous about my offer, though. More like he's teasing me. My dick pulses in my jeans. It's more optimistic than the rest of me, but fuck, I can't blame its enthusiasm.
“Why don't you tell me about yourself,” I say, heading for the stairs. “What exactly do you do, Mister West?”
He's following me close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his body. We hit the stairs and I want him to pin me down and grind into me from behind. I need to kill my erection before we reach the landing and I have to turn around to face him again, but that's not going to fucking happen.
“All sorts," he replies, oblivious to my fantasies. "I could be an out-of-work actor, or the runaway heir to a fortune. Former priest who quit on God. Carjacker. Whatever you like.”
“That’s my line. And you aren't any of those things.”
“Maybe I’m a fugitive on the run from the law.”
