The engine between our legs was rhythmic thunder. Sunglasses on, I leaned on the back-rest, and soaked up the mid-morning sun — hair flying out behind me like a banner.
I’ve had a decent life experience with my chosen profession. Enough so that I’ve mixed with the powerful jet set crowds, been on private jets, lived in impossible to afford hotels, and resorts. I’ve even been a guest on a private island in the south Pacific — and what a paradise world that turned out to be. Most of this came about because of the quote, ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’, which a lot of rich white collar criminal types take to be sage advice. Maybe it is, when dealing with enemies who might be up to something or planning on doing something to you. With the Press though — not so much — because we don’t do things. We wait, and watch when you do things. The last place you want us to be when you do things is, close. But hey, they’re the experts, and I love the tan lines and fruit drinks.
I’ve been in some hell-holes too. I chased stories to Afghanistan and several to Beirut. The story took me to the Philippines during the riots, and out to West Africa during the regime change. I have never ridden into a story on the back of a Harley, however. Until now.
Without other people to compare notes with, there was no way to be sure this was not a unique interpretation, but it certainly altered my perception of motorcycles as a lifestyle.
When you arrive some place in a car, even the best of cars, the most luxurious or speed designed muscle car, it is the prop of an attitude adjustment. When you step out of the car, you step onto the stage, and you take as much energy as you can with you from the ride you came in on. Driving to that stage, you see the world passing by like it’s on TV. It is on the other side of the glass, passing. Sliding by. It doesn’t touch you. The world rolls off you like water down a duck’s back. You are separate, and untainted.
On a motorcycle, you are part of the world. Everything. You are part of the road, the scenery, the surrounding traffic. You have been on the stage the whole time, and when you swing your leg off the bike, there is no change, and nothing to bring. It’s all you, baby. You are the world, and the real.
Also, leather says things which silk just doesn’t have the vocabulary for.
We were on our way to the Cortez Cartel main house in northern Mexico. For lunch, no less. Just this trip had the promise of huge bucks for me and my choice of contracts after. Being able to say, ‘I sat, and listened as…’ was a blank check any news producer would cash.
In 2008 the Tijuana Cartel was gutted. October of that year was the single bloodiest Cartel battle field in history. Thousands of murders, and killings happened all over the city. During the next two years, the Templars Cartel fell. It would rise again, under new management, but the Tijuana Cartel was no more. This opened the area up to the Cortez Cartel. Three other families attempted to rise at the same time. The Cortez family absorbed two of those, and eradicated the third who didn’t wish to play well with others.
It was after this that the first signs of C-Source began to surface. It was all hush hush, but not silent enough to be secret squirrel. Rumors spread. Thin, without plot or depth, but they spread — oil slick on a lake surface, it covered the whole area, with indistinct and confusing patterns.
Kane went over this history with me before we left. Most of it I had already learned through my research, but details were always welcome, as details are what light the way.
That morning I learned what Powers were too, and that I had it all wrong. I was thinking of a power as someone who people might call a ‘major piece on the board’ or a ‘game changer’ or someone who generated his own gravity. A player.
None of those were even close.
A Power was an Immortal Influence.
“A what?” I asked Kane, as I stepped into the shower with him, and rubbed my body against his. This was the reason I risked going against Ore’s Sex Decree.
Having sex with Kane was already a done deal, and this morning was to be the deed done. I wasn’t waiting any longer to have my man fill me with his marvelous cock and ride me hard.
I would be damned, however, if that meant me being an auto brood mare for the brotherhood. Besides, the choice was made. Sorry, but you chased the wrong gal. I’m Kane’s. Looking at the shine of my diamond should have clued them in on that news-break, but their loss if they thought it was a mere prop or window dressing.
Yes, I would spend the time with the others, and get my story, and follow the traditions of their guard change — but it was all for show and tradition. No complaints. Not one. Every wife had in-laws to deal with, right? I had Pomp and Circumstance to deal with, no big deal. I even liked his brothers. The last two days were eventful, and astounding in some places, but nothing I felt for Kane had changed. When he looked at me, I didn’t feel any changes or hesitation from him either.
My ring stayed on.
“An immortal influence,” he repeated, and then swallowed as I circled his cock with my fingers, and stroked him.
Dear sweetness he felt good in my hand, coming alive, and hardening. “What do they influence?”
“Depends,” he murmured, and then hummed a deep roll of pleasure in his throat, that had me pressing up against his back to feel with my whole body, “…on their strength. Strength being how large an area they can influence, and whether they influence non-sentient or sentient or both.”
“Influence?” I asked. “Is that like, control?”
“No,” he said, “nothing so hard. More like the original meaning of the word, a ‘streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon the character or destiny of men.’ More subtle, but pervasive nonetheless. Powers don’t make decisions, only press or guide decisions to be made, and we can have some control over the awareness of options and choices.”
Hard as stone, and hot as life in my hand, I stroked his cock with slow glides, squeezing with all my strength. “And you? What’s your strength? How much do you influence? I mean, outside of this shower area.”
“We, me and my brothers, influence at the world level. We believe we’re the only ones, but we have no true evidence of that. Others could exist, who possess the same or greater power, which we have not discovered,” he said, and I nearly lost my footing in the shower.
World level? Global influence?
I recovered from the shock of this revelation, by sliding down his body, to my knees, and bringing his cock into my mouth. There, under the shower, holding on to his thighs, I sucked him, and wondered at the choice I was to make. I was choosing between five men — Powers — who influenced man and beast at a global level. That was my task, my position, my burden.
My father once used the term, a Dread Responsibility, and now I understood what that term meant.
Kane took me to bed still damp from the shower. Sex didn’t hold much interest with me, until now. For the most part it felt good, but just being held felt good too.
I had come across erotica with graphic descriptions creating sex scenes, sure. But these books also had Fiction written on the cover, and for good reason. Reading these sex scenes got me hot, yes. That was biological, just like yawning people made people yawn, or reading about yawning people made people yawn. It’s all part of the animal. Yawning animals made us yawn as well. Graphic descriptions of hot sex made me hot. Masturbating to orgasm after reading them, didn’t make the descriptions real. It was all purple prose written by erotic hacks.
Or…
I might have been sleeping with the wrong men, as it turns out.
This one could be over five thousand years old, which explained how he knew where to touch me, as well as when and how. There was no fumbling around or poking places – is this it? Is this it? Should I push here, lick there? No, none of that nonsense. When he touched, my need increased. When he licked me, my back arched. When he entered me with his cock, I was begging him to do so, and crying out in ways that made the purple prose I had read, sound like the obituary column.
Such agony felt unreal. My body writhed, my mind cried out, and I screamed his name from the very top of my lungs. What I felt, in this moment, as his body covered mine, so more than just a want, it was a need. So primal, so real.
“Kane,” I whispered, nibbling at the lobe of his ear. He moaned a response, and entered me again, this time slower than the others, but impactful nonetheless. Perhaps even more impactful. It was as though each stroke took its time to torture my pussy in all the right ways.
“I’ve waited for you for so long,” he grunted. He rested a finger on my chin, tipping my head up as he eased into me again. “So…so…so…long,” he whispered and then kissed me. Every breath I had ever taken, every beat my heart has ever endured felt like nothing compared to what he was giving to me right now. His cock was deep, so deep and my pussy locked tight around him that I could feel every rush of blood through the thick vein on his shaft. My entire body hummed as I enjoyed him filling all of me. I licked at his tongue, breathed every breath from his lungs and took everything he was willing to offer.
He worked my body slowly for a while longer and I could feel in the way his grip on me tightened that he was just as close as I was to spiraling out of control. Our kisses became greedy then, and we fought for more of each other. More than there was to give. Teeth and tongue, sweat and saliva. We were a mess. A wonderful, beautiful mess.
Kane’s strokes picked up pace and when he entered me that last time, my body sang while orgasms struck like hammer blows. His eyes had storms, and I saw lightning when he came crashing. The very same lightning I’m sure he saw in mine.
***
The hacienda in a semi forest area, sixty miles South of Tijuana, had a formidable look. It acted as the main center for the Cortez family. Outside, it had a thick wooden wall about fourteen feet tall. Concrete columns to reinforce this barrier stood every ten feet. These three foot square pillars also gave the needed support for platforms on the wall inside. Gunmen stood on the platforms to defend the house. In front of these barricade walls, a six-foot wide green belt planted with cactus trees, known as prickly pear, added to the barrier’s effective strength. Even with people not shooting at you from the top of the wall, hacking through that green belt would be a daunting task.
At the sides of the main building inside, the space between the barrier wall and the house could park three cars side by side with room to open doors. Using traditional Mexican architecture for large haciendas, the building served as a frame for a large inner courtyard. The front of the building had a single story with high vaulted ceiling, while the rear had two floors, and post areas for machine gun nests. I wasn’t sure if the machine gun nests were traditional or just popular.
Yellows, whites, coral, salmons and beige made up the sunset coloring of the house. The manicured gardens, and olive trees highlighted the festive yet restful feel of the place, and nearly detracted from the gunmen standing around smoking cigarettes enough to push them into invisibility.
The size of the front courtyard felt like half a football field inside the gate, though it was likely smaller. A huge concrete and marble fountain stood before the front door — looking suspiciously like a barricade against anyone trying to ram a truck through the double solid oak doors.
The whole place stood as a melody of fortress and paradise.
Kane brought us up to the main gate, and waited, allowing the engine to idle. After a short time, a man came around from the side of the fence and asked who we were, while not pointing his automatic rifle in our direction. It was an odd feeling, this ‘Not Being Threatened’ threat.
Kane told the man his name, and that we were expected. The man nodded and agreed that we were expected, and then pressed a button on his lapel. Speaking into his collar, he turned and went back around the corner. Heavy wood bars were drawn back and the gate opened. Kane drove us inside and I turned to see the heavy bars were slid back in place as Kane pulled us over to the left area and parked us next to six other Harley Davidsons.
Our goals were not their goals, Kane explained to me. He also told me that it might prove to be useful if I didn’t understand Spanish. “Don’t lie,” he warned. “But don’t volunteer either.”
“How much danger are we in right now?” I asked, taking my bag from him.
“Scale of one to ten?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Eleven?”
“Oh,” I said.