Spouse Swap

Chapter 11

Gabe Penner was chomping at the bit in front of the Lone Pine bus depot when Trish Asher drove up. He slid into the bucket seat beside her and growled, "It took you long enough to get here. What the hell did you do, come in by way of Timber City?"

"No," Trish snapped as she squealed rubber getting away from the station and turned Main Street into a drag strip. "I came by way of Lonesome Valley." Anger brought cramps to her belly. "You fucked up with the Lockridge girl, lover. You also underestimated Joe Dooley. They both know about Hank and the missing money." Gabe's eyes bulged in their sockets. "Are you sure?"

Trish took the traffic light on red before she answered. "I made sure. Something about that Lockridge cunt never did grab me just right. She was in the kitchen when you phoned for a lift tonight, dressed for a trip. I wanted to know where she was going, so I pretended to cut out for town, then doubled back on foot and followed her. She met Dooley on the cow path, and then they went to the cabin. If a deer hadn't showed up after I rattled some bushes and damn near twisted an ankle, those two bastards might have caught me putting the ear to their conversation. Like I said, you fucked up with both of them."

"Maybe so," Gabe admitted reluctantly, "but the fuck-up can be corrected."

A chill rode up her spine. "How? By killing them?"

Gabe shook his head. "Murder isn't my bag, puss. Putting someone in the hospital is something else. I'm talking about that Dooley bastard. He's long overdue for having me pound some sand up his ass."

Mockery edged her voice. "If you're smart, you'll keep those meat hooks of yours in your pockets. At least until the money turns up. After that, I won't give a damn what you do to Dooley, or he to you."

Gabe glared at her, his face chalky and pinched. "You think he'll clean my clock, don't you?"

She kept her eyes glued to the road ahead. She gave a short, bitter laugh. "It could happen. I don't like any of these locals, but I have learned something about them during these past few weeks… they like to drink, fuck and fight, and they're exceptionally good at doing all three."

Gabe made a derisive sound. "I'm no slouch myself in the knuckle department, puss; I've done some battling in the ring, remember?"

"So did Manny Black," Trish said angrily, "but it didn't keep that bastard I'm shacking up with from knocking him on his ass. I say back off, Gabe. It's better to be pissed off than pissed on."

Gabe laughed suddenly and surprised Trish by saying, "Know something, puss? You're right. About everything."

Her stomach started to relax. Gabe was starting to calm down, but she had to be sure. "Then you'll leave Dooley alone? "

Gabe exhaled loudly. "It won't be easy, but I'll keep the old hands in my pockets until we find the money. You say Elke and Dooley have been hunting for it at night?"

Trish nodded, "Which means that you'll have to give up some sleep so you can tail them. I can't do the job. After dark is when Bruce does his best to put bedsores on my back."

"No problem. I'm slowly getting used to going without sleep, but not without sex."

Trish ignored his hint at sex and took the right road at Truck Stop Junction. She was tired of making like a community whore for everybody who came up with a stiff prick.

Gabe cut into her thoughts. "When you reach the rest area, pull into it."

Trish sighed, asking foolishly, "Why?"

Gabe started to lose his cool again. "Never mind why. Just do it."

I'd better do as he says, she told herself. The strain is beginning to show on him. It wouldn't take much to put him over the edge and get my ass dumped.

"All right, Gabe," she said placatingly. "All right."

They arrived at the tourist's pull off a few minutes later. Trish checked the wild impulse to drive past, skidded into it and killed the engine. A moment later tension gripped her. It had something to do with Gabe's sullen silence. In fact, it had everything to do with Gabe's sullen silence. Fear clawed at her guts. She tried to quell her nervousness by looking around. Her eyes prowled, her heart hammered, her nose wrinkled. Some rest area. One overflowing litter barrel that smelled as though something had climbed inside and died; a plank table cluttered with dirty paper plates, empty beer cans and pine cones; one abandoned Canada Dry bottle, and one used sanitary napkin. It was enough to gag a maggot.

She turned her attention back to the still-silent Gabe and said peevishly, "Let's go somewhere else."

Gabe baring his teeth in a mirthless smile, shook his head. "I like it here. Get out."

All color drained from her face, and her mouth dropped open. She had made an error in judgment by concluding that Gabe had taken her harsh words concerning Elke Lockridge and Joe Dooley the way she had intended them to be taken-as sound advice. He was hating her for being right, and in his own sadistic way he was going to do something to let her know it.

"Don't worry," he said, sensing the fear that gripped her. "Nothing's going to happen. I only want to talk. Get out."

Trish sat frozen. A feeling of total inadequacy flooded her system, and it became increasingly difficult to speak. She made an effort to gather her courage, to put the sudden anger she felt into verbal form, to fight him with open defiance. She finally managed to find her voice, and now the words dropped from her lips like hard pebbles trying to defy gravity. "Gabe, I've got something to say. I want you to stop using me for a punching bag every time something goes wrong. I didn't sabotage your stinking pickup, so why take it out on me?"

Impatience edged his voice. "I don't intend to take anything out on you, but if you keep bugging me, I might. Get out."

Trish surrendered to the inevitable and climbed out of the car. She stood still. She really felt like running. She sucked air into her lungs and waited, breasts dancing in rhythm to the same fear that was making her flesh crawl.

Gabe stopped before her. His eyes bored into hers. He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was husky with anger. "You're a slow learner, aren't you?"

She blinked. "I don't follow."

He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Oh, you follow, all right. I'm talking about the bad habit you have of trying to run a ring through my nose."

"All I said was that making waves before we got the money would be stupid."

"And you were right," Gabe conceded, "only you should have told it to me in a nicer way. I don't like chicks who try to cram things down my throat."

Trish groaned inwardly and looked off into the night. A weakness settled into her knees. She knew what was coming-another dumping. She tried to head it off at the pass. She licked her lips in a moistening gesture and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, Gabe."

He smiled coldly. "Sorry won't get it, puss. What you need is another lesson in how not to act so goddamn bossy. The one I gave you the other night didn't work. This one might. Drop your laundry."

Trish stood frozen.

Gabe laughed as though he were gargling with mouthwash and took a step forward. Fingers tightened over her shoulders. He drew her to his body. His mouth mashed down on hers, lips hard and tongue working to reach the inside of her mouth, wrapping around her tongue.

Trish felt his stiff cock jab against her stomach and felt suddenly nauseated. She didn't want to play. She twisted away, panted, "Gabe, don't!"

He snarled like a wild animal and reached for her heaving breasts. She slapped his hand away with no particular force. A mistake. Hers. Gabe's hand chopped down and caught her across the breasts, bringing instant pain. She screamed and staggered back, clutching herself.

"Damn you," she hissed. "You hurt me!"

Gabe laughed and unholstered his cock. "Bossy bitches were born to be hurt. My mother found that out the night I dumped her overbearing ass and ran away from home. Yeah, she sure did find out."

His words jarred. Trish's eyes bugged, and she looked at Gabe as though seeing him for the first time. A sinking sensation filled the pit of her stomach. The truth was there for the reading. Gabe was insane, not playing with a full deck. Strange she hadn't noticed it before…

Gabe closed the narrow space that lay between them. He lifted his hands to the twin mounds behind her blouse and croaked, "Give me your tits, bitch."

Her arm lifted, dropped. Her long fingernails clawed a bloody trail down the left side of his face. She shrilled, "Leave me be, you crazy bastard!"

Gabe didn't seem to hear her. He was oblivious to everything except the desire to hurt and humiliate her. He trapped her in his powerful arms and jammed his mouth against hers until her teeth began to hurt. His arms tightened, pulling her toward his exposed prick. Their lower bodies collided, and Trish felt his erection gouge and threaten to punch a hole in her skirt. She sagged against him for a few seconds. Then she uncoiled like a broken spring and struggled desperately to escape the tongue Gabe was trying to cram into her mouth.

"Stop fighting me, puss," Gabe snarled as he lifted the hemline of her short skirt with his hard-on and rammed the tip of it against the webbing of her bikini panties. "You aren't going to win anyhow. This juicy cunt of yours is mine. All mine."

She writhed and felt his cock move to her thigh. It was cold and slimy. Like a snake. She kept twisting her body and snapped, "Turn me loose, you crazy son of a bitch!"

Gabe dropped his hands to her haunches and rubbed his tool over her thigh. "Sure, puss. I'll turn you loose. Right after you drain the cum from my whang. Now stop acting like a goddamn virgin and strap some pussy on me!"

Trish wanted nothing to do with his cock. She attempted to knee him in the groin, missed. Gabe cursed and removed one hand from her haunches. He slapped her face, hard, then reached for her left breast. He cupped, squeezed, hurt, and Trish felt her nipple harden against his palm. She flinched. Then she raised her knee for the second time, right on target.

Gabe grunted, paled, then said through pain-clenched teeth, "You just earned yourself a sore butt for doing that, puss. I only intended to screw your snatch, but now I'm going to make a detour and fuck you in the ass."

Terror twisted her features, making them momentarily grotesque, and her voice sounded as though a pair of visible hands gripped her by the throat as she croaked, "No, Gabe, not there! Oh, my God, not there! I'll be good, I promise! I won't try to boss you any more! I'll do anything you say, only please don't fuck my ass! Don't, lover, don't!"

Gabe laughed and applied more pressure to the breast he gripped. Trish moaned and fought to break away from him. It was a waste of time and effort. He was too strong for her. And too determined. He backed her haunches against the picnic table, and now both hands came into play. Aspirin-sized buttons popped free of her blouse and flew in all directions, and he hooked a fat finger into the V of her half-bra, gave it a downward tug and tumbled her breasts into nakedness. Sickness threatened to erupt in her stomach as he caught her tumid nipples between thumbs and forefingers and squeezed them as though they were grapes he wished to reduce to a pulp. Agony ripped through her body, reached her brain. Senses reeled, darkness threatened to devour her; she hadn't felt like this since the night she had bailed out into the freezing cold from that damn Boeing.

"Enough," she said weakly. "Don't hurt me any more. I've had enough."

Gabe shoved one hand against her mouth, attacked her skirt with the other. The zipper broke, the skirt fell down around her ankles. Another tug and the panties were shredded from her body, and now, except for her shoes and the broken-strapped half-bra that rode on her ribcage like a misplaced sash, she was naked and vulnerable.

Gabe rubbed the knob of his drooling dong against her pouting navel and said, "Turn around, puss."

"Gabe, no!" A waste of breath.

Gabe yanked her rump away from the picnic table and whirled her around. Empty beer cans and other litter clattered to the dirt as he draped her face down over the rough planking. He palmed and stroked her hips, pried her legs apart with his right knee, and a second later the tip of his cock gouged into the cleft between her pale buttocks. She tried to escape, and she was still trying when he locked an arm around her slender waist and said, "Game time, puss!"

Trish almost cried out as the huge tip of his slimy organ made contact with her tense anal circle, but bit her lower lip in time to smother it. A moment later she did scream as Gabe vented his sadistic spleen by ramming the entire length of his sausage into her with one brutal thrust.

"Take it out!" Trish whimpered as daggers of agony sliced at her nerve tips. "In the name of mercy, take your big prick out of my ass before you kill me! It hurts! Take it out, take it out!"

"Not a chance," Gabe croaked as he proceeded to snake his whang in and out of her asshole, hurting her with every inward thrust. "You must be punished for trying to boss me around. I don't like bossy people. I don't like bossy women. I don't like you. Do you hear me, Mother, I don't like you!"

Mother? Trish momentarily forgot her pain. Christ, a shrink would have a field day with this creep who's got his dick shoved up my ass!

Gabe cut into her thoughts. "Stop acting like a corpse and start fucking, or I'll break your pretty neck."

Do as he asks, she told herself. Tranquilize the bastard with your asshole before he goes so far out into space you 'll never be able to bring him back. Dingy or not, you still need him to help find the money. Give him what he wants. It's only an assh ole. Wha t's it worth?

Trish ignored the agony in her rectum and decided to get it over with as quickly as possible. She brought her hips to life and said with forced passion, "Here we go, lover! One trip coming up! Do your thing and turn me on, too. The pain's gone, and now I want your dick!"

Lies.

All lies.

Gabe laughed and rammed his prod all the way up her burning tail, then rasped, "How about my balls? Do you want them, too?"

"Yes, yes!" Trish panted. "Give me everything you've got! Play with my tits, stick your finger in my pussy; do anything. Just don't stop fucking my ass. Not now! Now when I'm so close to creaming! Oooh, I feel as though I'm going to blow my mind!"

"Blow away, puss," Gabe grunted. "Blow my mind, too. Draw the cum out of this bone of mine and make me cream with you! Grind, puss, grind!"

Trish responded. In more ways than one. The pain was gone, and now Gabe's sawing sausage was getting good to her. No more agony and no more faking it.

She started fucking desperately.

Earnestly.

Passionately.

Sensing the approach of climax. Racing to meet it. Wanting orgasm. Needing it.

"Fuck me, Gabe, fuck me."

"I am, I will. Wriggle, puss, wriggle."

"How does this grab you."

"Faster! Rock faster!"

Trish increased the speed of her grinding hips, and a few seconds later she was rewarded for her efforts as Gabe rammed himself home for a final time, buried his cockshaft deep into her and gushed a hot and spastic load of semen into her. The fluid tripped her own trigger, and now they moaned and shuddered their way through a simultaneous climax that left them both breathless.

"Damn," Gabe said as he withdrew his withering whang from her back hole and proceeded to clean it with a handkerchief, "that was one good fuck!"

Trish straightened, turned, smiled at him and thought, Not as good as the quick fuck I'm going to throw into you after we find the money.

"For me, too, Gabe. I came like crazy." Her voice licked at him. She wanted him all the way calm. "I wouldn't mind another cum. Would you like to fuck my fanny again?"

Gabe finished cleaning his cock and crammed it back inside his pants before he answered. "I've had it for tonight." He lifted a hand to his scratched cheek and smiled sourly. Then, as he always did after his anger dissolved, he said contritely. "Sorry I had to get rough with you, puss, but sometimes you do forget which side your bread is buttered on."

What's the difference? Trish thought acidly. eat both sides anyhow.

"It won't happen again," she said quietly. "I'm cured. I don't mind playing games with you, but not when you're teed off at me."

"I – " Gabe stopped talking as headlights appeared suddenly on the highway and bore down on them.

Trish saw them at the same time. She stiffened, blanched. She told herself that maybe the vehicle would shoot by. It didn't. The car slowed, came into the rest area, skidded to a stop. No, not a car. A Jeep. Joe Dooley.

She shot a hasty glance at Gabe and said, "Play it cool, lover." Secretly she wanted him to tangle with Dooley. "Think about the money."

Gabe ignored her and stepped out in front of the Jeep's headlights. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he growled, "I'm glad it's only you and not the county cops, Dooley. Now I won't have to hunt for your ass. I've got a bone to pick with you."

A slow smile spread across Dooley's thin, homely face. "Figured you might, Gabe. What's your problem?"

Trish sagged against the picnic table and thought, Gabe doesn't know it, but he's about to get the shit stomped out of him. Well, let it happen. I can always pick up the pieces later.

"You know my problem," Gabe said flatly. "I don't like wise guys who screw up my pickup."

Dooley was amused. "That makes us even. I don't like people who disable my Jeep."

Gabe stopped in the middle of the ragged circle of light, and now slyness edged his voice as he locked glances with the unemployed hunting guide and asked, "What else don't you like, hillbilly?"

Dooley exhaled loudly. "To grind an old saw, if the shoe fits, stick it up your ass."

Trish winced. This was it. The shit was about to hit the funky old fan.

Gabe exploded suddenly, but Dooley was ready for him. He brushed the punch aside and pistoned one of his own to the sadist's jaw. Gabe dropped to his knees like a religious fanatic anxious to face Mecca. Dooley didn't give him the opportunity to clear the cobwebs from his brain. He fisted Gabe's hair, jerked him erect and belted him across the chops with the back of his hand. He backhanded Gabe four times in rapid succession. Then he shoved him away and kneed him in the groin, the same way Trish had done earlier. Gabe sagged to the dirt and lay there, doubled up like a fetus, holding his injured balls.

There, you bastard, Trish thought smugly as she grabbed the empty Canada Dry bottle from the picnic table and waited for the chance to cop a sneak on Joe Dooley. Now you know how it feels to be on the hurting end for a change.

Dooley waited until Gabe stopped grinding his molars before he kicked him in the rump and said, "Some bone-picker you turned out to be! You might be good when it comes to muscling women and cripples, but you aren't worth a fiddler's fuck when you come up against someone who fights back." He grabbed Gabe by the back collar of his jacket, tugged him erect, pushed him away. "Hit the road, prick. I'm sick of looking at you."

Gabe continued to hold his aching balls as he snarled, "This isn't the end of it, Dooley. We'll tangle assholes again."

"For your sake, I hope not. The next time I might go for broke and hang up your fucking saddle for good. Consider yourself lucky and shove off." He shook his head as Gabe turned toward the little car. "On foot. And not toward Cord's ranch. You're through working for him. There's a hotshot freight going east in another four hours; be under it. Go back to New York and try your luck at hustling drinks."

Gabe stopped clutching his balls and snarled, "Fuck you and the dog you rode in on, Dooley. I'm not about to let you or anyone else run my ass off until that money's found and I get my share of it."

"You can't stop me from running you."

"No," Trish said as she crept up behind Dooley and broke the empty Canada Dry bottle over the back of his skull, "but I can."

Dooley crumpled to the ground without a sound, stretched his length and lay still. Gabe stepped forward and drew back a foot to kick Dooley in the ribs. A pulse beat later he changed his mind and snorted, "Fuck it. I'll wait for the prick to come around. I want him to make noises when I put the boots to him."

Trish's breasts rocked with the excitement that had her nerves walking a tightrope. She asked breathlessly, "What are we going to do with this clod?"

"Put him on ice, what else."

"Where?"

"Not down the tubes, if that's what you're thinking. There's an old root cellar on the ranch that hasn't been used in years. We'll lock him in there."

"Until when?"

Gabe thought it over, "Until we find the treasure."

"What about Elke Lockridge?"

Gabe shrugged. "If she shows up at Lonesome Valley tomorrow night, I'll put the arm on her and toss her in the cellar with this creep."

Trish laughed. Then she rubbed her hands together and said, "With Dooley not around to bug us, we should be able to cover more ground than we've been doing. Christ, every time I looked up, there he was, like a sagebrush voyeur." She stopped rubbing her hands and smirked. "Well, thanks to you and one bottle over the back of his head, we can stop looking up to see if he's there."

Gabe stared at her. "What did you just say?"

She loooked and sounded bewildered. "About what?"

Gabe snapped his fingers in a gesture of impatience. "That part about not having to look up to see if Dooley was there."

"You got it right."

Gabe barked a laugh. "I got more than that, puss." He slapped his forehead. "Talk about two people being stupid! No goddamn wonder we haven't been able to find that bag of bread. We were looking for it in the wrong place."

Trish blinked. "Come again?"

Gabe licked his lips. "The magic word is up, puss. We were looking down for the money when we should have been looking up."

Trish shook her head. "I still don't understand, Gabe."

"The trees, puss. That goddamn sack of money has to be hung up in one of those stinking trees!"