“Okay,” I finally admitted. “I was a little reluctant. But don’t think I’m above giving my apprentice a massage, if she needs one.”
Tess laughed. “Careful what you promise, I may hold you to it.”
I shook my head. Even after nearly a week, I still wasn’t used to Tess. She was a great choice for an apprentice; smart, brave, willing to work hard, everything I could have wanted in an apprentice. But she was so much more. That was her only problem.
The light changed. The semi was slow taking off, and after the left lane had cleared a bit, I motioned for Tess to follow and we pulled around the semi and accelerated up to the speed limit. In a few minutes, we were back on the open road, following the four-lane blacktop toward the northwest and New Mexico.
We did a pit stop in Texline and a few miles later drove through lonely Clayton, New Mexico. We turned more westerly leaving Clayton and followed part of the Cimarron branch of the Santa Fe Trail. This area has some of the loneliest stretches of road in the lower forty-eight. Except for some parts of northern Nevada and central Wyoming, few places could boast as much barren openness. Trees were almost non-existent, although occasionally a copse of stunted evergreens could be seen along the lee side of small rounded hills. The few trees alongside the roads were shaped by the wind, all of their branches pointed downwind, toward the east. A few shield volcanos, long dormant, poked up from the terrain, but each of these was as barren as the rest of the landscape.
A train, on the Union-Pacific tracks that paralleled Highway 87 for hundreds of miles, came past us. It carried thousands of tons of high-grade coal from the vast fields in Wyoming toward the ever-hungry power plants in central Texas. It took several minutes to pass us completely.
I was watching it disappearing behind us when I noticed a speck in my side mirror. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but when it was still there half-dozen minutes later, I grew suspicious.
“Tess, at the next train underpass, we’re stopping for a minute,” I called to Tess.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I’m not sure; it might just be my paranoia, but better safe than sorry.”
While the highway had small culverts wherever flash floods were apt to fill the small arroyos at a moment’s notice, the railroads were more worried about their tracks and this section of track had small trestles that were dozens of feet in length across even the smallest of the rain cut arroyos. We reached another one in a mile or so, and I slowed and pulled off the highway onto the rarely used dirt path that ran under the tracks.
As soon as we were out of sight beneath the trestle, I cast a glamour on Beast and another one on Tess’s motorcycle.
“What are you doing?” Beast growled as I slid off his back.
“I think there’s something following us. It looked like a hawk or an eagle, but it stayed with us for miles,” I answered.
“I don’t think a hawk could keep us with us that long,” Tess said.
“You think it’s glamoured,” Beast asked.
“Yes, I do. I’m not sure what it might be, but it’s high enough that it would be hard to take out from the ground.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Tess asked.
“I thought I’d let Beast check it out and if it’s a threat, either kill it or let me know so I can arrange an ambush.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“I’ve put a glamour on him of a sparrow, something small enough to be missed unless our friend is paying close attention. Beast, I want you to wait until Tess and I have been gone for five minutes or so and then I want you to sneak up on whatever is trailing us. What happens then is up to you.”
Beast growled low and menacing. “My pleasure.”
I slid a leg over the back of Tess’s seat and sat down behind her. Neither of our seats was really meant for two people, but two could ride in a pinch, as long as they were friendly.
I snuggled in behind her, and she rose up and forward just enough to let me get my tailbone into the soft leather of the deep bucket seat. When I stopped fidgeting, she settled back into the seat and let that well-padded posterior mold into my crotch. I felt an immediate stirring in my loins and bit my lip. I brought my hands up and around her waist and interlocked my fingers just above the top of her leather pants. Her tight stomach muscles quivered for a moment against my palms and then relaxed.
“Comfortable?” Tess asked. Her voice sounded a little throatier than usual.
“Sure, I’m ready when you are.”
“Promises, promises,” she murmured low enough that she might have thought I wouldn’t have heard her, but I had my senses tat active, and she might as well have shouted.
Dropping the transmission into gear, Tess accelerated smoothly back up the slope toward the road. There was a short transition from dirt to pavement. It caused us both to bounce in the seat, and she settled even tighter against my crotch. I rolled my eyes and tried to get my mind off her rear end, but it was already too late. In a few more seconds, she couldn’t miss what was growing between us. We had reached cruising speed when I felt the muscles of her cheeks flex tightly against me and then relax again.
Yeah, she’d definitely noticed.
“So, I assumed you’ve put a glamour on us too,” Tess said.
“Yes, it should appear that Beast and I are riding alongside of you.”
“You think that’s why we got ambushed this morning? Someone followed us out of New Braunfels?”
“I’d bet on it. Rowle probably sicced those apes on us, and he knew our
