Bounty Hunter

Chapter One - Logan Dunn-2

“Take the slip off from underneath,” he ordered.

Her heart started to pound as she realized what he had in mind. “No, please. You can’t. Not here.”

He shook his head. “You wonder why I came for you here? I could have quietly taken you from your apartment, but you chose an enemy who wants to see you shamed. Now, how you behave in the next few minutes is your choice. You can hang your head in disgrace, or walk out proudly. I’m just doing what I was generously paid to do.” He paused and when she failed to answer, he repeated himself again, “Take off your slip.”

Mary’s wide eyes were glued to the man. Her breathing was labored and her heart beating unnaturally fast. With trembling hands, she reached underneath her skirt and tugged at the thin nylon material of her slip until it was free of the waistband and slid off her hips. Jerked free, it lay as a silky pool at her feet. She stepped out of it gingerly so her sensible heels wouldn’t get tangled in the torn straps.

“The shoes and the panty hose, too,” Logan instructed.

Her eyes returned to him, woefully frightened. Her face was as white as a sheet. “You’re not going to make me go out there naked, are you?”

His smirk was momentarily playful before it disappeared. “If it were up to Tremaine, I would, but since that would rock the bounds of common decency in this place, he’ll have to settle with a less provocative display. You can button your blouse, but the shoes and pantyhose have to go. Might as well get this with over as fight me.”

While she considered her bleak alternatives, Logan began fishing through a black leather bag he’d brought with him.

Hearing the rattle of chains, Mary shivered deeply, noticing certain physical responses in her body that were as predictable as the rising sun. There was no mistaking what she felt; her groin was warm and fluid, as if she’d just made love. She hated that physical response and how it betrayed her lust to any man astute enough to understand. All she could think of now was the horrendously embarrassing thought of being marched half-dressed through the office where she’d been working the last seven months. She walked in the door that morning as the dignified, diligent secretary she’d been during her exile from Mr. Tremaine, and would walk out just two hours later, a prisoner in chains. Her body would be paraded through the office, as the bounty hunter exposed the flipside of the flawless, carefully constructed persona. She’d come to relish her freedom since she walked way from Mr. Tremaine in a Seattle department store, even if her new life seemed dry and uninspiring compared to her former one.

She saw no way out. She could bolt for the door, but he’d move fast and bring her back. And what if she did flee into the outer office? Did she want the scene that would result, the eyes staring at her in wonder as she struggled against this brute? No. There was no way out and she would not exacerbate a regrettable situation.

Reluctantly, she responded to his orders. She flipped off her shoes and tugged her pantyhose down to her ankles.

“And your underwear,” he added, without bothering to look up.

She obliged him and with that done, stood helplessly in the middle of her boss’s office submitting to the final humiliation. A metal band went around her waist, and second ringed her red, flushed throat. And chains that attached the two behind her, also threaded through her crotch high enough to raise her skirt well above her knees. Unhappy with the look of the material bunched together between her thighs, Logan ripped the four-inch slit in the side of her skirt so it was three times as long. As if he knew exactly what effect that would have, he exposed the brand XT on her thigh.

Gathering her wrists together at the small of her back, he locked them in cuffs that attached to the waistband behind her. HerHerH

Her strained posture thrust out her chest, the way a common prostitute does when plying her trade. Her thin blouse pulled tight against her breasts, making them vulnerable to even the most casual glance; even the pale pink aureoles could be detected with a careful gaze, not to mention the tattoo that had been permanently etched into her skin.

“You take me through the office like this, you might as well strip me naked!” she cried despairingly, as tears of fear and anger gathered in her eyes.

“Ah, Mary Stein, what’s to get so upset about? If you lived with Mr. Xavier Tremaine for ten years, you’ve been through worse.”

“And that’s why I left him!” she announced defiantly.

He laughed. “Oh, no! I know why you left him.” He stood eye to eye with her, a scoundrel’s rude jeer breaking out against the backdrop of his stolid features. “You were green with envy over his latest conquest. Don’t do yourself the injustice of denying it.”

Her eyes fired nails of hateful thoughts at him—which he easily fended off—but her heart ached, knowing that he spoke the truth.

“Oh, how can you do this!” she spat out at him.

“Because I get paid in cash, and I have no shame.”

Mary watched as her captor sauntered away and rifled through Arthur Riggins’s top desk drawer. Finding what he was looking for, he pushed the drawer shut with a firm shove, and walked back to her with a pair of scissors in his hand.

“Now, if it were my call, I wouldn’t do this,” he said a bit sadly. “It may be brutally demeaning, but it seems a shame to see this lovely hair trashed.”

“Good God, no!” She shrank back, those gathered tears rolling en masse down her pink blushing cheeks, streaking her makeup with lines of black mascara.

She pulled away, but even now she didn’t try to bolt. What was the use? She closed her eyes and held her breath, while Logan Dunn grabbed fistfuls of her hair and cut away the long blonde tresses, until there was nothing left but irregular tufts of hair sticking out from her pink scalp.

Her sobbing almost wrenched his heart. This was one thing he truly didn’t like, especially when the man he worked for had a slave as lovely as Mary Stein was. Why deny Mary her beauty, when it would be just as easy to treasure it in the captivity of chains, and experience its lush quality as it emerged in her surrendered state?

But the nasty deed was quickly done and the transformation complete according to plan.

“It will seem like an eternity but it will only be a few tough minutes. I wouldn’t get upset, you’ll never see these people again.” Brutal, but true, he thought.

Mary wasn’t listening anymore. Her mind had turned away from him. She’d backed herself into the cocoon of submission, where she might thoughtlessly, mindlessly survive the long journey down the halls of Riggins & Worthy and out the door. She’d turn her eyes away from the shocked faces and curious stares of her coworkers. She’d pretend she was on another planet, in another dimension, on a different time line, and nothing that she’d done for the last eight months meant anything. It wasn’t even real, but a dream that never was.

For the bounty hunter, Logan Dunn, the woman he led from the offices of Riggins & Worthy, was just another of the many runaway slaves that he brought back to the unique justice of his clients. They were often like Mary Stein: pretty, naïve, perfect candidates for the unusual lifestyle they once embraced with passion. Several others like Mary had bolted from the rigorous life for the same reason that Mary did. That old green-eyed demon cast a terrible shadow over a vulnerable woman, a slave used to having the undivided attention of her dominant master. There were problems when the competition arrived. Often, their complaints were justified, except that there was no complaining allowed in the master’s domain. If a master tired of his old slave and wanted a new one, then the old one graciously stepped aside. She could hope that her beloved would tire of this new toy and return his affections where they belonged. But too often, the discarded slave would remain second place in a world where she had no rights and no power. The bitterness that resulted ended in a rash move, a break for freedom that was sometimes successful, but just as often a disaster, as it would be for Mary Stein.

Logan Dunn opened Arthur Riggins’s office door, and with a hand firmly gripping Mary’s upper arm, he led her into a sea of astonished eyes. Moving slowly down the hallway, the pair passed two-dozen men and women who had been the former Marcia Rayburn’s friends. Just as she expected, they stared at her in shocked wonder with mouths agape. Although she looked at them from the corner of her eye, from the detached safety of her manufactured fantasy, her imagination was not enough of a shield to protect her from the judgment and the snickers that naturally arose from her curious audience. It penetrated beyond the shield and inside her skin, taking up space inside her grinding, anxious belly. Humiliation. Shame. Disgrace. Was there a name for it equal to the feeling inside? Likely not.

The pair walked past the water cooler where she’d joked with her best friend, Angela, that morning—they were going shopping at lunch that noon to buy Marcia Rayburn a dress for her date with Thomas Autry that night. Marcia wouldn’t be keeping the date, and she wondered what Thomas would say when Angela whispered to him the awful details about her real identity and her capture. Thank God that she’d never have to explain herself to these people.

Logan Dunn mercifully used the elevator to transport them to the parking garage underneath the building. He could have made her walk down the stairs and through the lobby. He could have taken her out on the street in front of a hundred pedestrians, but he decided that the leering Mary suffered under the scrutiny of her friends would have to be enough for Xavier Tremaine. And if it wasn’t enough to please him? Well, he’d never really know, would he? If the man had any balls at all, he’d have done the dirty deed himself.

This was all that Mary Stein would receive in compassion from Logan Dunn, and frankly, it was more than she had a right to expect.

Outside of the Riggins & Worthy office, several more curious business types stared in amazement as they walked by the strange pair waiting at the elevator. The shocked faces threw a few more painful knives at Mary’s gut. One man was bold enough to join them in the elevator to the basement, and then a few more wide-eyed on-lookers stopped to stare as Logan led Mary to his van. Once inside the close quarters of the vehicle, the worst was over. After securing his prisoner in the back of the van, Logan took his seat, started the engine, and moved quickly into the midday Houston traffic, heading toward the Interstate for the trip north.



“A cigar, Mr. Dunn?” Xavier Tremiane asked.

The balding gentleman was aptly dressed for this kind of celebration, in a velvet smoking jacket and leather slippers. The several rings on his left hand gleamed in the room’s mellow light. He was casually dressed down from his usual business attire, and at the same time prepared for the evening ahead, which he awaited with eager anticipation.

“Sure,” the younger man accepted the Cuban import and allowed his host to light it with a silver cigarette lighter. “And maybe that scotch you promised?”

“Oh, my, yes,” the man suddenly remembered.

Xavier went to the bar at the side of the room, while Logan stared out of the enormous bank of windows toward the water on the far side of the woods. There couldn’t have been a more beautiful place to live than Vashon Island in Puget Sound. Lush. Peaceful. It reminded him a little of the place where his cabin was in Northern Michigan. Too bad this place was overrun with people—in his estimation. It would take a lot of hearty souls willing to brave frigid winters before his home in the Michigan’s wilds would become as popular a place as this one, thankfully so. There were no big cities near his cabin, just forest, trees, endless lakes and a few dirt roads. All the privacy a man could want. He’d be spending the fall there; glad to kick back, watch the leaves turn colors and fish… at least until another assignment came his way.