Under His Domain (10 page)

“I don’t need the world,” she said.
 
“Just you.”

Suddenly, Easton’s cell phone was
ringing, a distinct chiming
sing-song
noise, from the
nightstand.
 
“Shit,” he muttered,
turning and walking naked to see who was calling.
 
He froze.
 
“It’s my dad.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.
 
Probably.”
 
He answered the phone, his voice
sounding confident, but almost phony.
 
“Hey, Dad,” he said, turning his back to her.

As he listened to whatever his father was
saying, Kennedy couldn’t help but stare admiringly and longingly at his
incredible body.
 
His back muscles
were moving, writhing as he changed positions, as if trying to flex for
her—except she knew he wasn’t doing any such thing.
 
His body was just that tight and toned.

And his ass was powerful, large and
strong, joined by his tree-trunk thighs that had been honed from years kicking
in the gym.

He was like a Greek god, and he was all
hers.

“Dad, we still need to get ready,”
Easton
explained.
 
“We can’t meet you at the range until at least an hour from now.
 
Can you wait or not?”

There was a long silence and Easton threw
his head back and stared at the ceiling, clearly annoyed.
 
“I said
we’ll
get there as fast as we can.
 
You
just called me—you realize that you’ve given me no notice whatsoever…
.right
.
 
I know
,
I’m pretending to be a big shot to impress you, Dad.
 
Uh huh…yeah, I’m bringing her
along.
 
She can’t wait to meet
you.
 
See you soon.”

Easton hung up the phone and turned
around, his large penis swinging, totally unselfconscious about his
nudity.
 
He stared at the cell phone
in his hands as if it had tried to hurt him.

“Everything okay?” Kennedy asked.

“We should get a move on,” Easton said,
distracted.
 
“Dad wants us to meet
him at the range in an hour.”

“What range?”

“The shooting range,” Easton replied.

Kennedy didn’t even know what to
say.
 
She hadn’t exactly bought her
new outfits expecting to go shooting, and she’d never fired a gun in her life.

But when in Rome…

“I’ll change,” she said, hurrying over to
her bags of clothes to try and find something that would work, knowing nothing
would be right for the occasion.
 
 

I’ll
change.

The words seemed to echo over and over
again in her mind, and Kennedy was suddenly hit with a powerful realization of
just how deadly that phrase really was.

***

 
Easton pulled up in a gravel lot next to
a rusty blue car with a cracked windshield.

There was only one other car in the
entire lot, a large pickup truck.
 

“What’s this?” Kennedy asked, as he
turned the car off.
 
“Where’s your
dad”

Easton had been preoccupied ever since
getting the call from his father.
 
“
He’s
 
here
somewhere.”

“Here?
 
I thought we were going to a firing
range.”

“Yeah, this is the range.”
 
Easton opened his door and got out of
the car.

Kennedy’s brow furrowed, and she got out
too.
 
As she caught up to Easton,
she managed a last glance back at the blue rust bucket with the cracked
windshield, and she happened to notice that it had a “rejected” inspection
sticker.

“I don’t get it.
 
This doesn’t seem like a firing range,”
she continued, nervous as they started walking through a path into a patch of
trees.

“Well,” Easton said, not looking at her,
“that’s more of a term we use to describe it, not necessarily a completely
accurate one though.”

She didn’t understand, but she decided
that it wasn’t worth questioning.
 
They came out of the trees and entered a large field.
 
Just as they did so, a loud CRACK CRACK
CRACK pierced the air in rapid succession.

Kennedy flinched and ducked.

Laughter echoed, howling, floating into
the sky.

Easton put his hand on her back.
 
“You okay?”

“Yeah, I—I think so,” she said,
feeling shaken from the shocking sound.

She turned her head and saw two men
looking over at them.
 
The two men
were holding large guns and standing next to a table that looked strangely placed
in the middle of this overgrown field that was strewn with junk.

“Scare ya?” one of the men shouted, and
then they both laughed again.

Kennedy and Easton exchanged
glances.
 
“I should probably have
warned you in advance,” Easton said.
 
“The old man is a little bit wacky.”

“Okay, well now I know.”

“Just try not to take him too
seriously.
 
That’s what I do, when
I’m able.”
 

As they turned to approach the two men
and the table, the man who must’ve been Easton’s father placed his gun into a
case and then started walking towards them.
 
He put his arms out wide and
smiled.
 
“Look at this kid!” he
shouted excitedly.

Easton’s father was thin, with long
graying hair strung back in a ponytail.
 
He was taller than Easton, but much less muscular.
 
The muscle he did possess looked tight
and strong, like a wire.
 
He wore a
ratty t-shirt and jeans, work boots, and round wire framed glasses.
 

Easton and his father embraced for a long
moment, and his dad’s enthusiasm and joy in seeing his son was actually quite
touching for Kennedy.

She found herself unexpectedly tearing
up.

Then, they broke off from their hug and
the older man turned his beady blue eyes toward her.
 
“So this is the beautiful young gal
everyone’s buzzing about.”
 
He
smiled and showed teeth that were haphazard, with a few missing, but he was
unselfconscious about it, seemingly.

“Everyone’s buzzing?” Kennedy asked,
afraid of him somehow.

“Come here, give old Billy a hug,” he
said, stretching those long arms wide once more.

She allowed herself to be enfolded in his
arms, which proved to be strong and also somewhat repellent to her.
 
He smelled like smoke and aftershave.

“Hi Billy, I’m Kennedy,” she said,
stepping back and offering him her hand.

He laughed and shook.
 
“Well aunt she cute,” he said, winking
at his son.

Easton nodded his head, looking
uncomfortable.
 
“How long you been
shooting, Dad?”

“Not long,” Billy said, placing his hands
on his hips and glancing from Kennedy to Easton and back again.
 
“Sid brought a couple of surprises,
though.
 
Wait’ll you get a look at
the artillery.
 
Have you been
practicing at all?”

“Nope,” Easton replied, walking towards
the table.

“Of course not, you’re too busy playing
businessman,” Billy cackled.
 
He
turned back to glance at Kennedy, who was following them uncertainly.
 
“You ever shoot anything, darling?”

“No, never,” she admitted.

“Aw, that’s fine.
 
We’ll teach you.
 
I’ll show you how it’s done.”

“Great,” she said, trying to smile, and
finding it didn’t fit right.

They walked up to the table.
 
Nearby were a host of black cases and
bags, all of them seeming to contain either a weapon or the ammunition.
 
Not far from the table were various and
sundry objects, which these men apparently used as targets.

There was a large screen television that
had had the screen blown out, a few chairs, a couch, a very old car, and some
other old pieces of junk.
 
As well,
there were various bottles and cans set up on various flat surfaces, whether the
top of the TV, the hood of the car.
 
And besides that, there were trees and bushes that had clearly been shot
up as well.

This
can’t be legal
, Kennedy
thought, but decided not to ask.

As Easton and his father looked over the
merchandise, Billy’s friend Sid stared at Kennedy like he was undressing her
mentally.
 
He smiled as she grew
uncomfortable and tried to ignore him; a short, fat man with a green vest and
camouflage pants.
 

“Heard you got into it with some friends
of Dean’s,” Sid mentioned, as he finally broke away from ogling Kennedy,
spitting what looked like tobacco juice into the dirt at his feet.

“Friends of Dean’s?” Easton said, holding
a pistol and checking it for bullets.
 
“Not exactly friends.
 
More
like guys who wanted to kill him.”

“That’s fully loaded,” Sid informed him.
 

“Dean says you took care of them,” Billy
added, walking to the table and picking up a rifle, peering down the sight, and
then shooting a beer can off the top of the broken TV.
 
The beer can
exploded
in a shower of spray, and the two older men whooped and hollered.

Easton pointed his pistol and fired off
three quick rounds, hitting three different cans in succession.

“Hooboy!
 
He sure can shoot,”
Sid
exclaimed, his teeth brown.

“I told you, my boy inherited my
twenty-twenty vision,” Billy said.
 
“Of course, he’s not as good a marksman as me, but he can hold his own.”

Easton rolled his eyes, smiling a little
for Kennedy’s benefit.

“So, you want to learn to shoot?” Sid
asked her.

“Hell yes, she wants to learn,” Billy
replied, walking to her with the rifle outstretched.
 
“Take this,” he ordered.

Easton put his gun down on the table,
folded his arms and watched.

As Kennedy took hold of the rifle, she
instantly felt afraid.
 
The gun was
heavy and its power seemed to pour off of it in waves that she could sense in
her hands.

“Now, you hold the gun up to your
shoulder, like so,” Easton’s father said, miming the motion she should use with
an invisible rifle.

Kennedy tried to copy him to the best of
her ability, while Easton stood by and watched, and Sid continued to smile and
ogle.
 

“Like this?” she asked, uncertain.
 
Her hands were shaking.

“Not bad, not bad.”
 
Billy licked his lips and pointed
out.
 
“Now turn your head and stare
into the gun sight, and line up a target.
 
Focus, and then gently squeeze the trigger like you’re squeezing a…” he
started to laugh, as did the others. “Just pretend you’re squeezing a stuffed
animal or something.”

Kennedy targeted the couch.
 
It seemed safe and large.
 
She started to squeeze the trigger, and
then there was a violent burst from the barrel and the butt of the gun lashed
backwards into her shoulder, causing the nose of the rifle to move upwards at
the last second.

The sound was deafening in her ears.

“Okay, not so good.
 
Now, try again,”
Billy
said.

Sweat had broken out on her forehead and
she felt a wave of dizziness.
 
Where
was Easton?
 
Why wasn’t he showing
her how to do this?
 
She’d have felt
so much more comfortable if he’d been touching her, smiling, with his calm
voice guiding her movements.

She didn’t want to shoot firearms.

She didn’t like this place, or these
people.

Kennedy hardly even aimed this time, she
just shot, almost blindly, and the gun kicked again and she yelped, more from
being startled than anything else.

“Okay, I think she’s had enough,” Easton
said.

“Nonsense, she hasn’t even hit nothing,”
his dad replied.

“No, that’s okay,” Kennedy smiled,
handing the rifle back to him.

His expression was puzzled and a little
bit frustrated as he took the rifle.
 
“You want we can give you a smaller pistol?
 
Some ladies like to shoot derringers,
aint that so, Sid?”