I trailed my fingertips from his neck to his shoulder, then down over his chest, grazing his nipple on the path to his hip. Would I ever tire of touching him?
Never, never, never…
His sigh tickled my ear as his kisses took a similar path along the contours of my own body, although he was obviously not content to merely graze my nipple with his lips. Surrounding my tingling flesh with the wet warmth of his kiss, he suckled my breast, occasionally swiping his tongue over the taut bud, reminding me once again of the direct connection between my breasts and my core. The ache deep inside me cried out for his attention, but I uttered no protests, made no attempt to encourage him, simply reveled in the effect he had on me. I welcomed that pain and the flood of moisture that followed.
Dusty’s kisses moved on down the slope of my chest to my waist before moving up to the crest of my hip. Once there, he eased me onto my back. His lips found their way to my mound, his tongue delving into the places that begged for his touch. Lifting my leg over his head, he settled between my thighs, kissing my wet folds as though seeking the source of that dampness—coming close to easing the ache, but never quite reaching it.
Moonlight shone through the stained glass of my window, illuminating his hair, altering its hue, first blue, and then green with a splash of crimson. Those soft blond curls were the only part of him I could reach. I let them sift through my fingers, wishing I could touch more of him and yet somehow feeling content. The intensity grew steadily, rapturously, ecstatically.
I hovered there, waiting for the stroke that would send me flying, but it never came. He backed off and moved up beside me.
“I want to fill you with cream before I finish that,” he said.
Again, I made no protest, perfectly willing to let him play me like a well-tuned guitar, the way I’d played him in the kitchen.
He rolled onto his back, taking me with him. “Mount up, sweetheart. Time to save that horse and ride your cowboy.”
I hummed with pleasure. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Placing a hand on his chest, I rose slightly before backing onto his dick. Capturing his cockhead with my pussy lips, I eased backward until I had him inside me, then sat up to drive him in the rest of the way. The emptiness inside me now banished by his presence, I leaned back to enjoy it, pivoting on his cock, drawing my knees up and using my weight to achieve the deepest possible penetration.
Absolute perfection.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “My beautiful Angel.” Palming my breasts, he thumbed my nipples, driving me ever closer to the point of ecstasy before sliding his hands to my hips. “Ride me.” To further illustrate his meaning, he took my hips in his hands and lifted me slightly, then pulled me down. “Mmm…yeah, like that…hard and fast and deep.”
Lifting me again, he slid me up his shaft then dropped me back down on his prick.
The rebound effect was incredible.
Following his example, I tried it myself.
“Holy shit, that’s good.” Not that this was anything new because it all felt good. So incredibly, mind-blowingly good…
Circling my hips, I swept my slick inner walls with his cock, only then realizing I hadn’t quite reached the pinnacle of ecstasy. Not yet. Not when that simple movement could ignite even more fireworks.
Dusty let out a groan. “That’s it. Use it…use my dick like a fuckin’ spoon…”
The spoon analogy made me giggle, but it also gave me an idea. “Hold on.”
I’m still not sure how I did it, but I somehow managed to turn around until I was straddling his right leg. With more freedom of movement than ever, I was able to generate even more force as I rocked up and down on him. Picking up speed, I let him have it for all I was worth.
Dusty was panting now, his upward thrusts meeting me on each downward stroke. “Oh, God. Fuck me, baby. Fuck me hard.”
Gripping my upper thighs, he pulled me down on him one last time.
Every pelvic muscle I possessed contracted, doubling me over as a deep, guttural groan escaped my lips—a sound I’d never heard myself make before. Seconds later, Dusty’s breath seemed to catch in his throat, only to come out with an explosive exhale. I clutched blindly at his leg as he pumped me full of cream.
His spurts had barely subsided before he began tugging at my hips. “C’mere and sit on my face. I need to finish what I started.”
I wasn’t sure I could move, let alone do something requiring that much coordination. Nevertheless, I was willing to give it a try. After extricating my foot from beneath his left thigh, I turned around. “Didn’t hurt your bum leg, did I?”
“Oh God, no.” He dragged me up over his chest until I was straddling his head, then held me poised above his face. “Hot, creamy pussy. Mmm…” With that, he sat me down, teasing my labia apart before sliding inside to fuck me with his tongue. At that point, I couldn’t decide which felt better, his tongue or his dick.
Probably his dick, but this is pretty damned good.
Easing me up slightly, he bathed my clit with his tongue, sending lightning bolts of ecstasy ripping through me. Gulping in a breath, I grabbed the headboard and held on for dear life. My head was already spinning, but when he latched on to my clitoris and sucked, I saw stars.
As primed as I was, I didn’t think it would take much more than twenty seconds for me to come.
It took ten.
With a rasping moan, I lurched forward as my body imploded. Dusty held me right where I was, relentlessly licking my clit until I finally let go of the headboard and keeled over sideways. I don’t believe I moved a muscle that wasn’t orgasmically connected for the next ten minutes.
“Holy sheep shit,” I muttered when I could speak again. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
“No way,” he said. “I might let you go forty years from now, but not one second before.”
All I could say after that was “Mmm.”
Later on, I got up to pee and put on my pajamas before crawling back in bed with him.
“Pajamas? Seriously?”
“Get used to it, big guy,” I said as I pulled the blankets up over us. “You can take them off anytime you like, but I’m sleeping with them on.”
“Okay,” he grumbled. “If you insist. Not that I have any room to talk. I always wear a T-shirt and boxers to bed. Then again, I’m usually in a bunkhouse with a bunch of guys. I hardly ever sleep in the nude.”
I reached down to lay my hand on his naked cock. “I dunno… This feels pretty good. Guess that’s what you get for being such a slut and leaving off your undies.”
He put his arms around me and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Yeah, well, I could probably get used to that too.”
Lying in the circle of his arms, I drifted off while listening to him breathe, feeling his warmth, and inhaling his scent. He was mine now, and no one was going to take him from me. Ever.
I woke up sometime during the night, thinking I heard a car in the drive, but dismissed it as probably being Jenny or Rachel bringing the other guys home. I rolled over to go back to sleep, wondering briefly if they’d had as nice a time as Dusty and I had.
Naw, I decided sleepily, probably not nearly as good.
I must have fallen asleep because I was in the middle of some sort of idyllic dream when a noise right above my head had me as wide awake as flicking on a switch.
The unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked.
Chapter 27
I froze, barely taking a breath as I opened my eyes a slit. What little light there was cast swirls of color over the face of someone standing over me, holding the cocked pistol to Dusty’s head. I didn’t know if Dusty was awake or not, but I was taking no chances. Erupting from the bed screaming bloody murder, I knocked the startled intruder’s hand aside just as the gun fired.
Whatever I said probably wasn’t the least b
it coherent, but I did shout it at the top of my lungs.
“Get out of the way, girl,” a male voice hissed at me. “I need to kill his sorry ass.”
“No!” I fell on top of Dusty, doing my best to shield him from this maniac, whoever he was.
“Don’t protect him, sweetheart,” he urged. “Not after what he’s done to you. You protected the other one, too, didn’t you? He didn’t deserve it, either. Now get out of the way. If you don’t want to watch, you should leave, honey. I’ll take care of him. Believe me, it’ll be a pleasure.”
Honey? Sweetheart? Who would be calling me that? It couldn’t have been my father. The voice sounded so strange, not like anyone I knew—more like that of a young man whose voice couldn’t decide whether to be soprano or baritone. None of the men on the ranch were anywhere near that age. Who was this?
My heart pounded like a bass drum. I could feel as well as hear the pulse in my ears, and my hands and feet turned to ice in an instant. My brain wasn’t working very well, either. I was terrified and couldn’t think of a single thing to do to keep this from happening.
“I’ve waited too long,” he went on. “Too late. It’s my fault. I should have been watching more closely and kept you safe. I’m sorry this happened to you, sweetheart. I blame myself for it. Myself and him. You aren’t responsible. We are. And he’ll pay, just as I have, just as the other one did. Now move.”
I found my tongue at last, saying what was first and foremost in my mind with what wits I had left. “Who are you? Dusty hasn’t done anything wrong. I love him. I don’t want him dead.”
“You don’t know any better.” He sounded almost apologetic, like a father remonstrating with a beloved child, but the voice…the voice was all wrong. It was too youthful, too pure… “You’re too young to know. I trusted them, but they betrayed that trust, and so did he. He has to die, honey. Has to.”
Again, he sounded so patient and calm as he explained why he needed to kill the man I loved. How could he ever hope to convince me? The idea was ridiculous, laughable.
But I wasn’t laughing.
I was trapped in the middle of a surrealistic nightmare. This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t possibly be real. I was still asleep, and if so, I desperately needed to wake up, because I couldn’t see any way out.
“No,” I whispered. “No.”
“You don’t understand what he’ll do to you, darling. He’ll take you and hurt you, slit your throat, and leave you to die in a cold, dark alley. I can’t let that happen, honey. Not again. I couldn’t live with myself if I let it happen again. I can barely live with myself now.”
“What do you mean, let it happen again?” I clutched at that tiny phrase like a lifeline. Perhaps he had me confused with someone else. “I’ve never been hurt like that—never. And even if I had, Dusty wouldn’t have done it; he loves me.”
He let out a hearty laugh. “Yes, yes, that’s what they told me too. ‘We like her,’ they said. ‘We’ll take good care of her.’ And like a fool, I believed them. They were my friends. They wouldn’t lie. Not to me.”
“Angel.” Dusty’s voice sounded from behind me, quiet and steady, letting me know for the first time that the bullet hadn’t hit him.
It’s about time. I was slightly pissed at him for leaving me to wonder for so long. For all I knew, I might have been protecting a corpse.
“Do what he said and move out of the way.”
“And let him kill you?” I squeaked. “No way. I’m staying right here.”
“He’s right, you know,” the other man said from the shadows. “You should move. You should listen to him. He knows what he’s done. He understands the penalty.”
Although he stood in the shadows, I could still see the faint gleam on the barrel of the gun silhouetted against the darker outline of the open doorway.
“Angel,” Dusty repeated, more firmly this time. “Get out of the way. The gun might go off again. I don’t want him to shoot you by mistake.”
“Angel?” the voice from the darkness inquired with a curious inflection. “Her name isn’t Angel.” When he laughed again, the hair prickled at my nape. “You see, sweetheart, he doesn’t even know your name. How can you protect someone like that? Listen to me, listen to your brother. You know I’m right. He’s bad. They’re all bad. I know I failed you so long ago, honey. I let the others live after what they did to you, but I’ve kept you safe since then.
“Until he came. I stood it for a long time. You seemed happy enough, but then one day I heard you screaming. I knew he was there with you, hurting you, and I couldn’t let him get away with it the way the others did. He had to die. I killed him, just as I’ll kill this one. The first one was easier, though. This one is much harder—like a cat with nine lives.” He chuckled at his own joke. “But even cats aren’t impossible to kill. You have to be persistent.”
I keyed on what was apparently the most pertinent point in what he’d said, trying to ignore the fact that he seemed to be confessing to Cody’s murder. “I don’t have a brother. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Silly girl.” His quiet laughter grated on my nerves like the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard. “Always a silly, giggling little girl with long, shining braids. My lovely Adrian. So sweet, so loving, so trusting. I said I’d look after you, and I have. The nasty men can’t come near my girl. I’ve made sure of that—or tried to. I can’t watch you all the time, though.” His tone altered slightly, as though deepening with regret. “Too many of them…had to scare them…had to make them stay away. But you seek them out, don’t you?” His voice changed even further, becoming more accusing with each word he spoke. “You fight me every step of the way. You must want to die.”
Something in his voice finally struck a chord. Suddenly, I knew who it was—had really known all along. I sat up, leaning forward, trying to see him, to reason with him.
“Rufus,” I said gently. “You aren’t my brother. I don’t have a brother. I’m Angela Kincaid McClure. I’m not your sister.”
“You’re lying.” He spat the words at me. “I know who you are, and I can’t stand quietly by watching while they turn you into a fucking whore.” I heard the pistol cock again. “Maybe you need to die too.”
Dusty yanked me backward just before the gun went off. The bullet shattered the glass in the window behind me. Rolling me over the top of him, he flung me onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed. I heard Dusty’s cast hit the floor as he moved to attack Rufus with nothing but his bare hands. Shouts and running footsteps sounded in the hallway. Scrambling to my feet, I groped for the lamp on the nightstand, although I wasn’t sure if light would help or not.
I was still debating this question when someone else who apparently thought differently bellowed, “Turn on the light, Angie!”
I flipped the switch just as Dusty launched himself at Rufus, using his cast like a club to knock Rufus’s feet out from under him. Unfortunately, the momentum robbed him of his own footing, and he flipped over in midair like some bizarre karate leap gone terribly wrong, landing facedown on the floor. Rufus fell in the opposite direction, only to be pounced upon by Joe and Troy.
Where my father was in this melee, I had no idea, but I could hear him shouting. “Damnation! What the devil is going on here? Are you all drunk?”
Troy wrestled for control of the gun, banging Rufus’s knuckles on the floor in a vigorous attempt to get him to drop it. Apparently beyond feeling any pain, Rufus held on despite everything Troy was dishing out.
Joe was more direct. Seizing Rufus by the hair, he yanked his head back and flattened him with a roundhouse punch to the jaw that knocked him out cold.
I ran around the end of the bed to where Dusty lay prostrate on the floor, his legs tangled up with Rufus’s and his peachy little buns aimed right at the doorway. As I might have predicted, my father chose that particular moment to peer into th
e room.
“Good God, girl!” he thundered. “What the hell are you doing with a naked cowboy in your bedroom?”
The sheer irrelevance of his question struck me as hysterically funny. Dissolving into helpless laughter, I collapsed on the floor next to Dusty, who seemed to be recovering from his spectacular fall and was attempting to rise.
“Fixing to marry him, I guess.” Still shaking with a mixture of laughter and relief, I took Dusty’s hand and helped him to sit up.
“Fuck!” Joe swore from out in the hallway, rubbing his bruised knuckles.
“That too,” I agreed, smiling at my darling Dusty. “Every twenty miles and twice whenever we get to wherever we decide to go on our honeymoon.”
“I guess I’ll take that as a yes,” Dusty said, obviously recalling his proposal. “Although it sure took you long enough to tell me.” A carnal gleam lit his eyes as he appeared to realize what I’d meant by that. “How about we go somewhere like—oh, I dunno—Brazil, maybe?”
“Think you’re up to it?” In his current state, he didn’t appear to be capable of much at all.
“Maybe not, but I’ll die trying,” he promised.
“Don’t say that!” I exclaimed with a shudder. “I’ve had a hard enough time keeping you alive as it is.”
On that sobering note, I figured I’d better explain the situation to my father, who undoubtedly thought Rufus had been attempting to break up some sort of drunken orgy.
I nodded toward Rufus’s inert form. “Dad, Rufus pretty much confessed to killing Cody, and he’s also been trying to kill Dusty. Apparently, all this is because of something that must’ve happened to his sister.” I paused as another thought occurred to me. “Anyone have any idea how he knew Dusty was here with me? I mean, he might have guessed it on his own, but—”
“You can blame Bull for that.” Joe leaned heavily against the doorjamb, still massaging his hand. “He called Rufus wanting a ride home and let it slip that you and Dusty had left the bar together hours ago. When Rufus came looking for one of us to go after Bull, he realized Dusty wasn’t in the bunkhouse. He went back to his room, saying he’d go and get Bull himself. I didn’t think any more about it until I heard that shot coming from the house. Troy and I ran up here as fast as we could. Fortunately, Troy knew where to look for you since he’d…um…been here before. Sorry we didn’t get here sooner, but we’d both gone to bed already and had to at least put our boots on.”
Cowboy Heaven Page 24
