Dalton Boys Box Set Books 1-5 (The Dalton Boys)

by Em Petrova

  Witt slid a hand around her nape. She was still cool to the touch but some of the color was returning to her face. Witt bent and pressed his lips above her ear. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Witt…why?” Confusion knitted her long brows.

  “He was in my charge. You trusted me to keep him safe.”

  Alex pulled the towel—and Momma’s hand—away from his face. “I’m okay. But Mom looks terrible.”

  She laughed with more strength. Witt fetched her some lemonade and ordered her to drink it all before trying to stand. By the time she’d drained the glass and Alex had downed a cup of milk and two gingersnaps, Witt finally felt the tightness in his chest ease.

  Shelby pushed aside the glass and got to her feet. “I have to clean the porch. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Oh no, you won’t. I’ll take the hose to it in a few. You sit with Alex.” He sent Momma a look, and astute as always, she made excuses about the load of laundry and left the kitchen.

  The clock above the stove ticked and the refrigerator whirred. Witt pulled up a chair so the three of them were huddled together. “You’re okay, son?”

  Alex nodded and grinned around a mouthful of crumbs. “These’re good.”

  “The best.” Witt patted Alex’s shoulder and turned his attention to Shelby. “And you?”

  She covered her face with her hands. “That’s never happened before to me. I’ve never gotten sick at the sight of blood.”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t coming from your son. Sweetheart, please forgive me.” He gathered her face in his hands and brushed his lips over her crinkled forehead.

  “Nothing to forgive, Witt. How can you think that? You’ve done so much for us.”

  Their gazes met for a long heartbeat, making him wish like hell they were alone.

  “Who puked on the porch? Is the boy okay?” Beck called from the front of the house.

  The tips of Shelby’s ears tuned red.

  Witt chuckled. “I’ll clean that now. You stay with Alex.”

  She caught his hand before he walked away. Her eyes were wide and clear. Last night they’d grown almost black in the moonlight before she’d thrashed in bliss under his touch.

  He hardened.

  “Witt, thank you.”

  “You never really bond with somebody until you hold their hair while they puke.”

  From the doorway, Beck issued a laugh and clomped into the kitchen. “Hey boy, share some of those gingersnaps with me.” He raised his chin to Witt. “I’ll take care of your woman.”

  As Witt went outside to clean the porch, he shook his head at the situation. In a matter of half an hour, he’d run a gamut of emotions. From terror to tenderness to burning with need.

  It was inevitable—he was going to fight for Shelby and Alex. More than ever he knew his course.

  * * * *

  Darkness had descended slowly over the fields of Paradise Valley, making one thing at a time vanish—distant cattle herd, outbuilding, barn. Shelby let the calm settle over her and she snuggled deeper into Witt’s heavy barn jacket. It smelled of him and her body reacted with fierce need.

  The things he’d done to her the previous night in the field…she couldn’t stop reliving the moments. Had she ever known such strong releases? No, not even when she was in lust with Vonny.

  Automatically she fished her phone from her back pocket and looked at the messages.

  A dark rumble sounded near her ear. “No cell service here.” Witt sank to the Adirondack chair next to hers and stared into the fire. The rest of the Daltons were gathered around, talking and laughing. Beck strummed a guitar.

  She looked at Witt’s profile, aware of the hard set of his lips and the way he was avoiding her gaze. He was upset with her.

  Unsure how to breach the gap, she returned her attention to her cell and thumbed to the next message, which was a text she’d received from an old boyfriend she’d run into before leaving her hometown. He’d asked her to look him up when she came home for a visit.

  Witt’s hand closed around hers and he plucked the phone from her fingers. She could barely issue a gasp when he tossed it.

  She watched the device arc through the darkness toward the fire.

  “Holy crap, bro, what’d you throw in there?” Beck asked from the opposite side of the flames, never missing a chord of his song.

  “Cell phone.” His tone was deep and brooding. It raised shivers all over Shelby’s body and made her throb between her legs. But it also pissed her off.

  “Why did you do that?” She jumped up and started toward the flames to retrieve her phone.

  He hooked her around the middle and hauled her back. “Don’t you touch it. In fact, come with me.” He started walking, towing her along like a naughty puppy. She ground her teeth together but waited until he stopped some distance from the fire and their voices would be muffled by a round hay bale.

  She set her hands on her hips. “Who do you think you are?”

  “The man who’s sick of you waiting for other men to text you. Last night when you were talking, you said you were finished with bad relationships.” His face was stony in the dim lighting from the moon.

  “I’m not looking for the texts because I want those men.”

  “No?”

  “No! Witt, I dread seeing another text. I hate having men who won’t take no for an answer. They just keep pursuing me, plaguing my life. They call, text, try to get dates and make promises I don’t want. I’m trying to control them, and the only way I can do that is to tell them I’m not interested.”

  “Is that so?” He crowded her against the hay, his big body heating her from head to toe. She looked into his eyes looming so close. His lips closer. She swallowed hard.

  What were they talking about? She couldn’t remember anything but his kisses. The cowboy was the best kisser she’d ever known and her body screamed for more. Nipples straining, panties flooding.

  “I’d say I’m sorry about your phone, but I’m not.”

  “Is that so?” she mimicked him and was rewarded with a crook of his lips. She drowned in desire.

  “Yeah,” he drawled, leaning closer until their lips were a breath apart. “Call me jealous but I want you all to myself. Especially when you’re on my ranch and when I can still taste you.”

  A full-body shiver racked her as she conjured images of him licking his fingers clean after she’d come on them.

  “I want to taste you properly, but I need to know there’s something between us. Something closer to what I want from you.”

  Words failed her. She could barely draw a normal breath.

  His eyes were shiny as he stared down at her. “You’ve got me so twisted up, sweetheart. I want to take you somewhere quiet and make you beg for more all night long, but I can’t if you don’t feel the same way I do.”

  “Which is?”

  “I love you,” he said plainly.

  Her passion was swallowed by fear. How many men had told her this? For some unknown reason, guys fell for her easily, but they’d loved her for all the wrong reasons. Witt did to.

  Wait—did he?

  Looking up at his chiseled jaw and strong brow, she felt her resolve slipping. Maybe he could be the one. He was fun to be with, adored her son—and he’d even held her hair while she’d been sick. More than she could say for any of the males in her past.

  His hardness jutted against her belly. If she stood on tiptoe, she’d be angled just right.

  “You don’t have to say you love me, sweetheart. But I’d like to hear you say you feel something for me. Do you?” His breath tickled across her face—mint and man. She craved him more than any chocolate, cupcake or milkshake.

  She was terrified to examine what she felt too closely. She’d given up trusting her instincts, but her gut said to give herself to Witt Dalton. “I do feel something.”

  “All I needed to hear.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and claimed her mouth. She opened to him and their tongues met
with greedy want. Need filtered into her system, along with emotion she couldn’t tamp down. She had no desire to try.

  “I want you, Witt. All of you.”

  “Try to stop me, sweetheart.” He strode toward the barn. She ran her hands over his warm, steely shoulders as she kissed his jaw and neck. He was salty and so good. Her pussy pulsated with his every step.

  When he got her into the quiet of the barn, it was so pitch black, she had no idea how he could see. He stopped at a wall and she saw the faint outline of a door. “Open it,” he grated out.

  It took her a moment to locate the handle and then she swung it wide. The inside smelled of fresh hay. He laid her on something soft.

  “Why is there a bed here? Do you boys have trysts often?”

  “Dunno what my brothers do, but I’ve never had a woman on this ranch, sweetheart.” He followed her down onto the narrow bed and pressed his forehead to hers. Holding such an intimate pose made her stomach flutter.

  She arched and bit his lower lip. His growl reverberated all the way through the layers she wore. With painstaking slowness, he unzipped the barn coat and pulled her arms free of it. Then he set to work on her shirt buttons. When the cloth parted, he burrowed his face between her breasts. Kissing, licking. Every swirl of his tongue tormented.

  He sucked her nipple through her bra, and she rocked into his erection. She needed to see him naked and touch every carved inch of him.

  He wore no coat, obviously hardened to the night chill. She skated her hands over his shoulders then navigated his shirt buttons with shaking fingers and delved her hands against his warm chest.

  He hissed a laugh. “Your hands are icy.”

  “Someone dragged me away from the fire.”

  “I’ll warm them up.” The promise lingered in his eyes as well as his words. He took her hand and moved it over his chiseled abs to the waist of his jeans. The head of his cock stretched the denim. She closed her hand around his length, and he groaned.

  Throwing his head back, he let her rub him for two glorious strokes before he yanked her hand away. “I can’t last if you touch me like that. And I want to keep my promise to taste you.”

  In seconds her boots were off, followed by her jeans. When he slid her panties over her hips and cupped her ass, bringing her to his hungry lips, she stopped thinking and could only feel.

  Hot lashes of his tongue on her flesh. Running from bottom to top, tracing through her creamy folds. He licked and sucked her clit until it was stiff and throbbing. Then he released it and thrust his tongue into her pussy.

  Her hips moved on their own, her short nails worked over his scalp as he drove her up the steep cliff of need. Staring down her body, she watched pleasure cross his face as he tongued a figure eight around her clit.

  She wanted more—all of him. Too easily she pictured having this man for the rest of her life.

  Then again, she’d been in this situation before and those relationships hadn’t lasted.

  No one made me feel this way.

  While Witt loved her with his tongue, his gaze wrapped around her heart. Using short flicks, he ran his tongue down, gathering her juices, then back up to her clit. The scorching heat of his mouth on her button flipped a switch. She cried out.

  “Mmmm,” he vibrated against her slickness. She climbed, unable to breathe through the ecstasy he was giving her. Passion flowed as she peaked and screamed his name.

  He plunged his fingers into her soaking pussy, driving her higher as he lapped, licked, laved and sucked her pussy. Juices flooded his hand, and he pumped it in and out of her.

  “Witt. Yessss.” She rotated her hips, bringing her pussy closer to the burning heat of his mouth she couldn’t get enough of.

  Before she’d even hit earth again, he was standing beside the bed stripping. The whisper of his clothes hitting the floor and the thump of his boots slingshot her to the pinnacle of need again.

  She reached for him.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he ground out before blanketing her body with his.

  She sucked in a breath. Springy chest hair teased her nipples, and she ran her toes up his manly calf. Every inch of him was pure, sinful male.

  And she was about to go to hell.

  Bracing his arms along her body, he hovered over her, letting her get used to his length against her wet flesh.

  “I have a condom here, but I was hoping you’d put it on me.” His voice was edged, barely controlled.

  “I want to taste you too. Please.”

  He was shaking his head before the words were completely out. “Can’t, sweetheart. Having those beautiful lips around me…” He struggled for a minute and gave another hard shake of his head.

  “Next time?” She pulled him down into a brain-melting kiss while opening the packet. Gliding a condom over his thick length in the dark somehow made things more personal. This was happening—the gorgeous cowboy was going to make her forget her own name.

  His muscles rolled as she reached the base of his shaft and angled him toward her aching center.

  He looked into her eyes, his gaze sinking deep into her soul while he slid into her body slow inch by inch.

  Her body gripped him, inner muscles convulsing.

  “Hell, woman, you’re so damn tight. I can’t go slow and I want to.”

  She dug her nails into his backside, driving him on. “Don’t go slow.”

  “What I feel for you…I don’t…” upward thrust, “do this…lightly.”

  She cried out as his thickness drove into her again and again. She longed to see his gorgeous body. All she had was her sense of touch.

  Hard, lightly-furred buns met her fingers. Heat coiled in her belly. Close—so close.

  He withdrew and sank deep again. The bed groaned under them.

  Then he kissed her. Emotion clogged her throat even as her body quivered with his every movement. He dragged his cock back through her squeezing walls then jerked his hips. He filled her fully, the tip of his head brushing a trigger point.

  “I can’t get enough of you,” he rumbled. Withdrawal, plunge, withdrawal, shallow thrust.

  She locked her legs around his back and dragged him where she wanted him again. “Kiss me.”

  His mouth slammed into hers, and the bed gave a mighty creak. He drove into her wildly, stealing all conscious thought. Her body spasmed, sweat broke out all over her.

  One thrust, two. Then she was floating, clinging to molten-hot man as he stared into her eyes and roared his release.

  * * * *

  “Why don’t you try baking some of these, dear?” Nell pointed at a recipe in the book she’d brought from home. The pages were stained by past cooking experiments.

  “I don’t know, Nell. Will they sell?”

  “You bet they will! If I know anything it’s the people of Vixen.”

  “Maybe I’ll try them another day. Right now—”

  The door burst open, bell jingling violently. She snapped her attention to the big, broad hunk of cowboy storming into her shop. Witt eyed Nell from under his hat. “Darlin’, would you mind taking Alex out for a spell?”

  The older lady pressed a hand to her chest at his drawled endearment. “Why, of course, Witt. We’ll just head to the playground. Alex!”

  Shelby gawped at what was going on in her shop. Suddenly she realized she had no control over the man, her friend or even her son. Alex skipped out the door ahead of Nell. The minute they were alone, Witt turned the lock.

  “But I’m open for business,” she protested almost weakly. Her body hummed with anticipation.

  He turned the sign to CLOSED and came at her, eyes dark, hat tipped low. Had his jeans always fit him so tight? And had his chest been this broad the other night?

  As he locked her in his hold and his mouth crashed over hers, she swayed against him. He lifted her, hitching her legs around his hips.

  “The window,” she whimpered between flips of his tongue.

  “Can’t have all of Vixen seein
g me ravage you in your own shop.” His smile spread under her lips a split second before he dragged her to her knees. She laughed and shoved him onto his back, straddling him.

  The layers of denim between them were too much.

  “Damn, you look hot in this apron. Maybe I’ll make you keep it on.” His playful tone ignited her. She flattened her palms on his chest and flicked her pinkies over the tiny buds of his nipples under his shirt.

  “Witt?”

  “Yeah, sweetheart?” His drawl sent shivers up and down her hot skin.

  She tensed over him, her lips hovering a breath from his tanned throat. “It’s time for me to taste you.”

  Behind the counter, no one could see when she unbuttoned his western shirt with the pearl buttons and cast it aside. His hat tumbled off and his mussed hair begged for her fingers. But not yet. First she was keeping her promise to taste him.

  She latched onto the skin under his jaw and sucked. His cock hardened under her, and they shared a moan. She traced a path of kisses over his neck and chest to his brown nipple. When she licked it, he pushed out a forceful sigh.

  “You drive me crazy, woman.”

  She liked him calling her that—woman. It made her feel powerful.

  She moved to the other nipple and sucked it, watching bliss cross his rugged features. Her own nipples ached for his touch.

  Not yet.

  With purpose she placed bites down his ridged abs to his waistband. His belt buckle was one she’d admired since the day she’d set eyes on him. She loved that he bore the family’s crest with the steer head. His pride in his work and his ranch was boundless, and that was sexy as hell.

  Holding his gaze, she flicked the buckle open and worked down his fly. A glimpse of the white cotton barely harnessing his cock sent her into a whirlwind of want. She sank her teeth into her lower lip to restrain a moan.

  He threaded his fingers into her hair, his Adam’s apple moving sharply down his throat and back up.

  She tugged the denim and cotton down his hips and his cock sprang free. The purple head glistened with a bead of pre-come. She wet her lips and he shivered.

  “A shop full of treats and I’ve finally found what I want.” She swallowed him to the root. Flavors of man and musk burst on her tongue. She closed her eyes and relished the sensation of him in her mouth.