by Becca Van
“Could you please direct me to the bathroom?”
“We don’t have a bathing room. The only way you can have a bath is if I pull the copper tub in here and fill it with water,” Clint answered.
“No, that’s not what I meant. Where is the toilet?”
“We don’t have any toy-lets,” Clint replied with a frown.
“I need to go, you ignoramus. What do you want me to do, go outside behind a tree?” Bella screeched.
“I think she just insulted you, Clint. I have no idea what she said, but the tone of her voice was enough.”
“The privy’s outside, about a hundred yards that way,” Clint answered.
Bella knew the three brothers watched her stomp out the back door and she winced when the door slammed hard behind her. She didn’t know why she was getting riled, but the three brothers were so damned sexy and her body was responding to them. She had never felt so turned on in her life.
Bella finished her business and headed to the pump outside near the house. She felt eyes on her, but she didn’t care. She was feeling decidedly grimy and wanted to wash her face and hands. She pulled her small handkerchief from her sleeve, wet it, and wiped it over her face and hands. She wet it again and undid the first three buttons on her shirt and washed her sweat-dampened skin.
She heard a noise and looked up to see the three men staring at her avidly. She could plainly see the heat in their eyes as they watched her clean up. She scowled at them and turned her back. She didn’t want them to see how those heated stares affected her body. Her breasts felt swollen and her nipples hardened. She took a few deep breaths, buttoned her shirt again, and headed for the house. She stood outside the door for a moment, listening to them as they talked amongst themselves. She pulled open the door at the tail end of their conversation.
“What’s her name, Clint?” asked Marcus.
“Bella. Bella McPherson.”
“She’s only a youngin’. Can’t be long out of the schoolroom,” Adam stated.
“Hmm, could be. Her eyes look like she’s seen a lot, though,” Clint stated.
Clint and his brothers were once again sitting around the timber table in the kitchen when Bella came back inside and they stopped talking. She knew she was making a lot of noise considering she was so small compared to them, but she didn’t care. They seemed to be able to ruffle her feathers just by looking at her. Three sets of eyes turned to her as she walked in the door.
“Did you enjoy the show, boys?” Bella asked facetiously, from just inside the door.
“Don’t see any boys ’round here, do you, Marcus?”
“Bella, these are my younger brothers, Adam and Marcus Aldridge,” Clint introduced.
“Marcus, Adam,” Bella acknowledged then turned her eyes back to Clint. “I thank you for taking care of me, but could you please take me back to Big Lake? I’m booked into the motel there and would like to get on with my vacation.”
Clint looked at Bella as if she’d lost her mind. She glanced to his brothers to see the same puzzled expression on their faces.
“What’s a motel?” asked Clint.
Bella breathed in deeply and let out the breath slowly. Her anger was beginning to take hold at the little game he was playing with her, and she didn’t like to be angry. She was one of those people who was slow to burn, but when she reached her limit, look out.
“It’s a place where you rent a room to sleep in at night.”
“We ain’t got no boarding houses in Big Lake. There used to be one, but the lady who owned it turned it into a whorehouse and saloon,” Marcus explained. “That’s where we were going, when we found you.”
“Marcus, shut it,” Clint snapped.
“Well, could you please give me a lift back to Big Lake anyway?” Bella asked.
“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow. We have too much to do around here to just drop everything for you,” Clint stated.
“Look, I’m sorry to be an inconvenience. I’ll just call for a cab on my cell and be out of your hair,” she stated and pulled her phone from her pocket.
“What’s a cell?” asked Marcus.
“What in tarnation is a cab?” Adam asked at the same time.
Bella felt the air whoosh from her lungs. The two sexy brothers didn’t look like they were playing with her. In fact, they looked downright confused. Bella let her eyes wander over the brothers. God, they were so sexy. All tall, muscular, and handsome, with similar features but different hair and eye color. Marcus had light-brown hair, and the sexiest green eyes she’d ever seen. And Adam—he made her want to drool. His black hair and blue eyes along with his great height made her feel so small and sexy. She just wanted to curl up in his lap and stay there. She dialed the numbers on her cell and put the phone to her ear. Nothing happened. She looked at her display screen and saw she had no signal.
“A cab is a car for hire and this is a cell,” Bella began to explain, holding her phone out.
“What’s a car?” Clint asked. “The only car I know of is hitched to a steam train.”
Bella stumbled over to the vacant chair at the table and sat down heavily. She reached up to stroke the necklace she’d bought the previous day and nearly panicked. It wasn’t there.
“Did you remove my pendant when you removed my clothes?” Bella asked, pinning Clint with her eyes.
“No, honey. You weren’t wearing anything but your strange man clothes. Didn’t you have enough money to buy fully made garments?” Clint questioned.
“What?” Bella asked and released her cell as Adam reached for it to study it. He was pushing buttons indiscriminately, and she knew he was astounded by her phone from the expressions flitting across his face.
“Well, I ain’t never seen pants like those before, and your shirt doesn’t even have sleeves. You were scammed when you bought those things,” Clint said.
Bella looked down at her clothes, not seeing anything wrong with them, and then she turned her eyes to theirs. They looked like something a cowboy would wear in an old Western movie. She noticed that all of them were wearing gun belts tied around their hips, Stetsons, and black boots, which looked to be handmade.
Bella remembered feeling ill when the world spun around her as she touched her sapphire pendant. The scenarios running through her head couldn’t be at all possible. No, she was just dreaming, maybe even hallucinating. She licked her dry lips. Her heart was beating rapidly against her breast, and she was panting as if she’d just run a mile. But she had to ask anyway.
“What’s the date?” she croaked out from her dry mouth.
“October twenty-third,” Clint answered with a frown.
“What year is it?”
“1865,” he stated.
Bella felt the breath leave her lungs. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted for the second time in her life, within the space of twenty-four hours.
Chapter Two
Adam caught Bella before she slid to the floor. He picked her up and held her supine body on his lap.
“What the hell is wrong with her, Clint?”
“How the hell should I know?” Clint answered with frustration. He was hoping to be able to persuade Bella to stay on the ranch with him and his brothers. Now he wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea. She obviously had a delicate constitution. They needed someone in good health with a lot of grit, someone who could survive the rugged wilderness of Texas.
“Marcus, go get a jug of water,” Clint commanded as he moved from his seat to squat in front of his brother and Bella. He stroked a finger down her soft, silky cheek and immediately wanted to do it again, so he did.
She had a creamy-white, milky complexion, high cheekbones that had a natural rosy hue, a small, delicate nose, and a pointed chin, but it was her lips that seemed to draw his attention. Not that Bella was aware of this, though. Her bottom lip was full, and both of her lips had a natural red hue, and when she smiled or pulled her lips tight, the dimples on either side of her mouth had him staring
even more.
Bella moaned, indicating she was coming around and all the three men sighed with relief. She opened her eyes and Clint frowned down at her, hoping she was going to be okay.
“What happened?”
“You fainted,” Clint answered then reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep her where she was when she went to move. “Stay put.”
“Here, have some water, sweetheart,” Marcus said, placing a tin cup in her hand.
“Thanks.” Bella took the cup and drank the water. “Oh. My. God. Did you say it was 1865?” she asked tremulously.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It can’t be. It’s just not possible,” Bella stated firmly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, not realizing she was giving Clint a nice view of her cleavage, since the buttons on her shirt had popped open again.
“What year do you think it is, honey?” Adam asked from above her.
“Uh, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Just spit it out, Bella,” Clint encouraged.
“2011,” Bella answered and waited for them to tell her she was crazy.
“Hmm. Do they make those itty bitty bits of nothin’ you were wearing under your man clothes in the year 2011?” Clint asked.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Wait. Let me up. I can prove what I’m telling you is the truth,” Bella said as she tried to get up.
Clint stood, moved back a step, and held out a hand to help her to her feet. Bella let go of his hand as she reached into one of the deep pockets on the side of her pants. She pulled her wallet out and then her driver’s license from the plastic pocket she kept it in. She handed it over to Clint. The expression on his face was almost comical. He stared in awe at the small photo on the plastic card and then to her. Back down to the card and then to her again.
“Bella Jane McPherson, DOB. What’s that?”
“Date of birth,” Bella answered.
“Date of birth, April 24, 1989. That would make you twenty-two, if what you’re saying is true. I’ve never seen anything like it. Where’d you get this?” asked Clint.
“It’s my driver’s license. I got it the day I passed my driving test.”
“You have to take a test to drive a team of horses?” Marcus asked.
“No. I took a test so I could drive a car, a horseless carriage,” Bella explained. She pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet and handed it over to Clint.
“Well, I’ll be,” Adam muttered under his breath, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“What is this?”
“Money.”
“You shittin’ me?” Clint asked.
“No. Look at all the writing. It was printed this year, the year I came from, 2011. If you look at the bottom it tells you what date it was printed. It says on the bottom it was printed in 2010,” Bella stated.
“Well, I’ll be. You really are from 2011, ain’t ya, baby? How did you get here?” Clint asked.
“I have no idea. One minute I was sitting on a bench in the park in Big Lake eating my breakfast, and the next I woke up here. You said you found me lying on the ground just outside Big Lake. That must be where the park is in my time,” Bella mused. “Now all I have to do is figure out a way to get back home.”
“How are you going to do that?” Adam asked, walking up to Bella and placing his large hands on her shoulders.
“I have no fucking clue,” Bella said, her breath hitching in her throat.
“You sure have a mouth on you, don’t ya, baby? I’ve never heard a woman cuss such a blue streak before. I don’t like it,” Clint stated in a steely voice.
“And I don’t give a shit,” Bella replied.
The air around them grew dense with tension, and Bella could see the muscle in Clint’s jaw ticking as he ground his teeth. He moved in close to her and grasped her chin with a gentle thumb and pointer, keeping her eyes on his.
“While you are here, under my roof, you will follow my rules. I don’t like to hear a woman cussing, so you won’t. Is that clear?”
Bella was so mad she could feel her blood beginning to boil. He had no right whatsoever to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. She turned her head, making him let go of her chin, then turned back to glare at him.
“I am a grown woman and have been taking care of myself since I was sixteen years old. No one is going to tell me what I can and can’t do, least of all you,” Bella spat out.
“I don’t give a shit what you’ve been doing. While you are in my house, my rules will be adhered to. Are we clear?” Clint asked as he glared at her.
“Bite me,” Bella yelled and turned on her heel.
She didn’t get very far. She collided with a large male chest and almost fell back on her ass. Marcus reached up to steady her by placing his hands on her waist. She placed her hands on his chest, too, until she had her feet back under her, and nearly moaned out loud. His rippling pectorals and the warmth emanating from his big body was such a turn-on. In fact, if she was honest with herself, she’d been creaming her panties since she first laid eyes on each of the three Aldridge brothers. They were so sexy and masculine. The hard work of being on a ranch had honed their bodies and muscles to perfection. She had never met such masculine samples of males in her entire life.
Bella squealed when a slap landed on her ass. She removed her hands from Marcus’s chest and slowly turned to face the perpetrator. She knew it was Clint and pierced him with her meanest stare. It didn’t seem to faze him.
“I will put you over my knee and tan your ass if I catch you cussing again. And don’t get too sassy with me, little girl. You just might bite off more than you can chew.”
“Is that a threat?” Bella asked, spitting fire at Clint with her eyes.
“No, baby. That’s a promise.”
“I’m outta here,” Bella muttered then moved around the three men standing in the combined kitchen–dining room and slammed out the back door behind her. She had no idea where she was going, but there was no fucking way she was staying. She wasn’t going to let Clint or his brothers dictate to her.
Bella stopped when she came to the corral. The sight of another man being bucked about on a horse took her breath away. She knew he was breaking the horse in, but to actually see such a thing was like watching poetry in motion. The man’s muscles straining beneath the material of his pants and shirt and the striations of his muscular forearms were like nothing she’d ever seen before. The sight held her spellbound. She could have spent hours watching, and she probably would have if she hadn’t been interrupted.
“Bella, you have nowhere to go. You’d never survive around here on your own. I mean, look at you, you’re only half-dressed and in male’s clothes. You have no gun to protect you. I’ll bet you don’t even know how to shoot, do you?” Marcus asked.
Bella ignored the rhetorical question. In fact, she ignored Marcus, as well. She knew what he was saying was true. She wouldn’t get very far even if she did manage to leave the ranch and find her way to Big Lake. The people of this time would take one look at her and think she was a whore. She finally turned to face Marcus and had to take a couple of steps back to look him in the eye. The man was huge. He had to be at least six foot four. It was hurting her neck to look at him. She lowered her eyes to the ground and began to rub the pain from her neck.
“I don’t know what to do, Marcus. Your brother is an overbearing jerk,” Bella stated.
“Yeah, that may be, but that jerk only has your best interests at heart. He’s had to take on the responsibility of this ranch and look after me and Adam from the time he was eighteen years old. He’s had to become hard, Bella. We wouldn’t have survived otherwise,” Marcus explained. “He likes you, you know.”
“He does not,” Bella riposted, once again looking up at Marcus.
Marcus seemed to take pity on Bella. He placed of his large hands around her waist and lifted her up to sit her on the top rail of the corral fence. He held her until she was steady w
ith her feet on the lower rung. He moved in close to her until his hips were touching her thighs.
“He does,” Marcus reiterated quietly, “and so do Adam and I.”
“How can you say that? You don’t even know me.”
“Well, that may be true, but what we know so far has us intrigued. You’re feisty but compassionate. You have a body to die for, and your smile…Ah, your smile has to be your best feature. But, man, those lips of yours could put a man nearly on his knees just from looking at them,” Marcus whispered into Bella’s ear.
Bella couldn’t believe what Marcus was saying. He had her anger turning to desire in seconds. Her panties became damp, her clit ached, and her pussy clenched, begging to be filled to take away the emptiness inside. She squeezed her legs together, trying to relieve the ache, and squirmed on the fence rail.
“You want us, too, don’t ya, sweetheart? I can smell that sweet pussy creaming from here. I want to bury my head between those silky thighs and lap up all your juices.”
“Oh God,” Bella mumbled. What was the man trying to do to her? She was so turned on she could feel her juices seeping into the material of her cargo pants.
“Hmm, you like the thought of that. Don’t ya, Bella?” Marcus said breathily. He placed a finger beneath her chin, lifted her face to his, and slammed his mouth down onto hers.
Bella moaned under the assault of Marcus’s mouth. His lips were firm but soft. He slid them across hers, back and forth, coaxing a response from her. He licked across her lower lip, and her cunt clenched and released more of her cream. He slid his arms around her waist as he made room for his big body to nestle in between her thighs then pulled her up tight against his crotch. She couldn’t help but respond. Her whole body was one big puddle. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. She opened her mouth up and let him delve into her depths. She’d died and gone to heaven.
Bella loved the masculine taste of Marcus’s desire on her tongue. He ravaged her mouth. He slid his tongue along hers, and she answered his quest. She twirled her tongue over his, delighting in his delectable flavor. She’d never tasted anything so good in her life. She mewled in the back of her throat as he nipped her bottom lip and then sucked it into his mouth. She couldn’t get enough of him. He angled his head and thrust his tongue into her cavern once more. The feel of his tongue tickling her palate then sliding over her teeth and cheeks had her on the verge of climax. She couldn’t prevent the natural instinct of rocking her hips against his large erection and groaned into his mouth with frustration when she couldn’t feel him skin-to-skin.
