by Mia Madison
“You’re just a tease, Rafe Millitant,” she snaps and storms toward the barn door.
I let out a chuckle because that’s exactly what I’d have said to her. I turn lazily, thinking to halt her escape but I don't get the chance. She throws back the high wooden door and strides through, guns blazing, like a filly broken loose from her stall. She struts her little body, all the pent-up desire translating to steamy vigor in her step. I almost make another dash after her to drag her back and crush her to me. I’m like a freaking pendulum swinging back and forth between going for it and knowing it’s wrong.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
But my body is a more powerful force than my reasoning mind. I can’t help myself. She’s too sweet a package to get away from me a second time. At the point I’m about to chase after her, pick her up for the second time and this time carry her back to my house and keep her with me all night long, I look through the door just in time to see her go hurtling into Dallyce’s arms. Shea’s girl puts her arm around Modesty’s shoulders and leads her away from me.
Chapter SIX
Modesty
“What happened?” Dallyce demands. “Why did you disappear? Did Rafe make some crude remark to you and scare you?”
“No, I just thought I’d remind myself of the ranch layout,” I tell her, my voice shaking. My cheeks getting hotter.
“You didn’t have to take off like that,” Dallyce says, pulling me along with her arm draped around my neck. She keeps looking behind us, back to the barn like she’s expecting to make a discovery.
Please stay inside just a little longer, Rafe. I don’t need a grilling from Dallyce.
“I know why you did it,” she says, laughing lightly so at least her suspicions are dying down. “Shea and I, well, sometimes we can’t get enough of each other. If you’re going to stay in the house, I guess you’ll have to get used to it.”
“I get it,” I tell her. “You’re soon-to-be newlyweds so of course you’re tightly wrapped in each other and no one else.”
She means well but she too is treating me like a child. Like I’m still that squealing girl that saw Shea’s huge naked thing hanging down when we first arrived at the ranch. Dallyce couldn’t take her eyes off it, even licking her top lip hungrily like a wolf eyeing up a lamb. And Shea stared back at her the exact same way.
I’m not at all horrified now. I get the impetus to be glued to a man every chance I get. But I was shocked back then at how lewd Dallyce was being. As rodeo princesses we’d been coached on decorum and even had a chaperone on the road with us, making sure those sorts of occasions never arose. I was as protected as I’d been all my life, my daddy drumming it into me that nice girls say no. Always.
Until they secure the promise of forever and the band on their finger to prove it. Not that that wedding ring did much to stop my mother running off with some guy she met at bingo. Daddy was livid about that most of all.
“What sort of real man goes to bingo?” he hollered through the house, shouting at the walls when no one else was listening.
Now I know that training made me act like a little girl far longer than was healthy and probably contributed to the situation I’m running from now. Women have desires as natural as any man, although they may not be quite so aggressive in their ways of getting them filled. If I had been a little more aware, everything that happened might have gone a different way.
“I’ll get out of your hair as soon as I can,” I tell Dallyce now. “I’m grateful you took me in.”
“Don’t be crazy, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
“I don’t want to be a third wheel crashing into your love nook.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t hold us back as you’ve already found out.” She grins, her happiness pouring off her like water over rock. “And I’ve got plenty of work to dump on you. This new job with Chloe is keeping me busy and planning a wedding at the same time as being wrapped up in my man, I’m up to my neck.”
“Anything I can do to help.”
“Hey there, little lady, I didn’t get a chance to say hello properly before.” Shea drags me into his huge arms and half crushes me with his bear hug.
Shea towers over me, making me feel small, dainty small and oh so safe and protected. Rafe is barely any shorter than Shea, there’s not more than an inch between them and if anything, Rafe is broader in the chest. Bluntly put, they’re both a pair of strapping hunks in cowboy boots and stetsons.
It makes my heart tug thinking how nice it would have been to be held like this by Rafe, instead of spanked like a kid and booted out.
Not that I regret the spanking, only that it ended with nothing more happening between us. My body is still pulsating with avid need for him. I shake off the wistful thoughts and steel myself against any more regret as far as that dick is concerned. He’s nothing but a player, an arrogant one at that. He doesn’t deserve any more of my attention.
“So you’re staying until the wedding, is that right?” Shea adds, setting me back down on the ground, where my toes had lifted off.
“If that’s okay with you,” I say.
I’m glad that I’m not afraid of him now. Now I see that behind all that muscle and commanding stance, he’s really a big gruff teddy bear.
“Whatever makes Dallyce happy is okay with me.”
“I’d be happy if we could eat,” Dallyce says. “I’m starving. Come on Mod, let’s get some pork chops out of the freezer.”
“Where’s Rafe? I promised him a steak dinner.” Shea calls from the porch where only the half empty bottle remains of the arrogant cowboy. “You scare him off, Modesty?”
“Maybe,” I yell back, giving as good as I get and joining in the joking with confidence. “That cowboy gets spooked easily.”
“You got that right,” Shea hollers. “Far as women go, he’s as skittish as a colt. Y’all need any help in there?”
“We’ll let you know, babe. You just set down and take a load off til dinner.” Dallyce grins at me with a wink.
She pulls a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and pours two glasses. I take a mouthful before she remembers that I’m a little behind her in years and strictly speaking, not allowed to drink yet.
“I guess you don’t have many girlfriends out here in this desert ocean of alpha cowboys,” I say.
“I only had Chloe and it’s not that easy to be real friends with your boss plus she’s the boss’s daughter. But now I have Edie as well, who’s amazing. I asked her to be my maid of honor. I didn’t know you were coming and she’s right here.”
“Of course, that’s okay. Just use me for the grunt work, honestly, I’m happy to take on all maid chores in return for a little bed.”
“Little is right,” Dallyce says. “Here let me show you the nook we carved out as a guest bed. Actually we thought it would be cute for a child.”
“Are you..?”
“Oh god no, not yet. I mean I want kids with Shea so bad, but not for a little while longer. This is it.”
She pulls back a really beautiful old blanket that looks hand woven. They’ve put up a forged rail to hang it from as a curtain. Behind there’s a single bed covered with another hand loomed blanket and a stack of pillows with old fashioned pictures of horses and little kids playing with old toys. A little boy without shoes chasing a hoop down a sand road. The bed fills the space and above the pillows a tiny alcove window looks down on the yard and the forge on the other side and the barn catty corner. A tiny vase of wild flowers sits on the ledge.
“I love it,” I say. “A child is going to be so happy here, someday that is.”
And I mean it. It’s such a cozy space filled with so much love, I’ll feel safe here with Shea and Dallyce and that’s exactly what I need right now.
“Okay great, and Shea already brought your bag up.”
I see it sitting neatly at the end of the bed in the only available space.
“Now, let’s get my man fed, he’s a tiger when he’s hungry.�
��
We eat dinner together, Shea and Dallyce chatting constantly about their day and their future. It makes me kind of sad that I don’t have any plans other than to hide out and feel safe. Shea insists on taking care of the dishes while we sit and catch up. But once everything’s put away, he heads for the door.
“You two carry on, I think I’ll go see what the boys are up to,” he says, giving Dallyce a kiss on the top of her head before disappearing.
Dallyce stays put for all of five minutes before she says, “Why don’t we go outside to the fire and hang with the boys.”
And before I get to answer, she also vanishes through the front door.
Chapter SEVEN
Rafe
I’m sitting with the other boys that work the land at the ranch, kicked back around a blazing firepit like always. We’ve moved on from beer to a shot of whiskey when Shea joins us.
“We hear you got two pretty young things in your house now,” Jessop joshes him, with a hint of envy in his tone.
“Aren’t you gonna bring them out to join us?” Lakin pushes him eagerly. “You keeping both ladies to yourself?”
“Leave the guy alone. Can’t you see he’s making an escape from all that feminine in the house?
“That right, Shea? Too many make-up kits and snap chats?”
“He can handle the women,” I say, yanking a lone stalk out of the ground beside me and sticking it in the side of my mouth.
“Not when there’s two in the house together. No one can handle that much girly,” Jessop says.
“Like you’re an expert on girly.”
“I got five sisters. Why do you think I’m out here?”
Shea pulls up a drum and takes a seat beside me.
“What happened to you?” he asks. “Thought you were joining us for dinner. Little Modesty didn’t scare you off, did she?”
“I had a couple of chores to take care of.” I lie.
“You missed some good home-baked pork chops,” he says.
“I had something at the house,” I lie again. I couldn't even be bothered to walk up to the ranch house after what happened in the barn.
I stayed in my own cabin and chewed on some jerky while I thought over what happened. And mostly tried to control my impulse to go have it out with that little girl again. The pull she’s exerting over me is something way out of my usual wheelhouse. Even sitting here with the guys, a time I can usually erase all thoughts of a woman out of my head and just chill out.
Tonight, all I’ve been able to do is think about Modesty. About the way her smooth round cheeks bloomed scarlet under my palm. How she stood there so still and took her spanking. Her small fingers clawing at the straw even as she arched her back to tip her gorgeous butt up for more. And mostly how the fire in her eyes stirred up my insides when she looked at me with all her anger glowing. It’s close to obsession.
At the time I thought she was a real daddy’s princess, just like Chloe Foxworth, getting her own way in everything and never being chastised or punished. Now I’m thinking I was wrong. Maybe she was enraged that I cut her off without giving her what she clearly wanted, if I judge by the juices coating her thighs.
I’m lost in my thoughts, going back and forth yet again over what could be really going on. And I’m wondering why it’s so important to me to figure it out. I’ve never been bothered by any invasion of the feminine before. I know what a woman wants because it entwines with what I want and if it doesn't at first, it soon does. All this is rolling through my head when all of a sudden, Dallyce emerges from Shea’s house and dashes across the yard toward us, making a beeline for her man.
I almost start up out of my seat, thinking something’s happened to Modesty. That she needs my help. Or maybe her and Dallyce had one of those girly fights and Modesty’s sitting all alone, unhappy and hurting. For some reason that stirs my heart to race.
“Baby, I miss you already,” Dallyce purrs close to Shea’s ear but as he’s sitting right beside me, I can’t help but overhear.
“Then you just sit right here and keep me company,” he rasps at her.
He pulls her tighter into his lap and she wriggles around, making herself comfortable in a way that makes me completely the opposite. Instead of being sorry for Shea, that he’s never got a moments peace from the needs of a woman, I find I’m wishing that Modesty would come running out of the house behind Dallyce. I want her doing the same to me. I want her clambering up onto my thighs and nestling herself down, getting herself comfortable into a position she can curl up in forever like the little kitten she is.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I don’t do snuggling and I don’t do nestling or comfy. I do hard and I do fast and I like women that want it like that. Of which there have been more than a few, even if we are stuck out on ten thousand acre ranch with hardly a woman in a hundred miles.
My eyes are constantly tugged towards the corner of the forge behind which Shea’s house sits across the yard. Where is she? Have they put her to work cleaning up the house? Or is she sitting there alone, too embarrassed to face me after her punishment a little earlier? It must be hard for her to settle those reddened cheeks on the hard seat of simple wooden chairs at Shea’s kitchen table. Maybe she’s taking a warm bubble bath and that image has my cock unfurling, until I remember that Shea doesn’t have a tub in the house. That’s one of the things Dallyce is frequently complaining about.
Distant from the banter going on between the guys, I’m considering what excuse I can use to go over to Shea’s place and find Modesty. I decide I don’t need an excuse and am about to get up, when she comes creeping around the corner of the forge like a shadow. I almost miss her in the darkness. There’s no longer a late night fire built up in the forge where Quint always used to work until midnight. Since he got together with Edie, now he knocks off earlier and goes down to McDools bar to take care of his girl. But my gaze is pulled toward Modesty as though she lassos and drags it to her like an expert.
I’m certain her eyes find mine and as soon as she knows I see her, her body stiffens. She straightens up then, as though steeling herself for what’s next and comes striding out of her secret spot. I watch every step she takes, so fragile and beautiful and yet with a steel-like determination I never noticed before.
As she approaches the bonfire, a couple of the guys detect her presence and I sense their interest peaking as they too watch her coming closer. A sudden spurt of rage unexpectedly gushes through my veins. I have to clench my fists to keep from telling them to get their eyes off her. She’s mine. No man gets to ogle at my woman with those kind of wolfish stares.
Modesty comes right up and finds there’s no spare seats or even a vacant spot in the circle, we’re all packed tight. I resist the urge to reach out for her and pull her down on my lap, letting everyone know she belongs to me. I catch myself just in time, because what the hell am I thinking of? I don’t own her. By the way she’s glaring at me, she hates my guts and I never will.
Yeah?
That’s about to change if I have anything to say about it.
When the little spitfire reaches the circle and glances all around looking for a place to plop down, I stick out my left leg and give an inviting pat to my huge thigh.
“Here’s a perch for you, little girl,” I tell her, to a chorus of boos and laughter from the other cowboys.
In return she throws me the most intense glare of loathing any woman has ever flung my way.
Chapter EIGHT
Modesty
It isn’t easy for me to come out of the house at all. I’m not the kind of person that can go running into the middle of a crowd and demand to be admitted. Parties at school were always a bit of a nightmare for me. I’d hover close to a wall, scanning the room for some other solo outcast I could join onto. Anything rather than face the derision of the popular crowd. Not that I was bullied or friendless or anything like that. I guess I was pretty enough to join them, but I didn’t have the kind of social confi
dence I’d envy in most of the other girls.
When I was the rodeo princess, touring the country with Dallyce, I’d watch her moves and try to emulate her witty banter with men. She was even sure of herself with older men, big strapping men that dwarfed her, like Shea her soon-to-be husband. Whereas I was just terrified of them. Until that night when a kiss with Rafe opened me up. And then slammed me down again. Does everyone have it this tough? The adjustment into being an adult?
Now, I can’t stay hiding in the house while my hosts were socializing with the only group I’ll have available to me while I’m here. Despite my tormentor being among them, I pull up my available courage and walk across the yard. It’s easier than I’d imagined – my silly fears had been getting the better of me. And when I lock eyes with Rafe, that clinches it. A flare of irritation propels me straight toward the fire like a moth pulled in and seduced by the glow of the flame.
All the eyes are on me but I’m almost unaware of everyone else as I stroll confidently with my gaze fixed inside Rafe’s. I even add a little sway of my hips, when the blood rushing around my body heats up my ass cheeks and reminds me of the spanking he gave me before dinner. I should be mad at him, I am mad, so why is my body letting me down again? My secret folds are again pulsating with urgent throbs, same as always when I come close to Rafe.
And then he gives me that cocky one-sided smirk and pats his fat thigh for me.
“Have a perch, little girl.”
“No thanks, I’d rather stand,” I shoot right back.
“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug like he couldn’t give a damn.
“Trying to be a gentleman for once?” I snap. No way I’m letting him have the last word.
A round of jeering laughter goes around the guys. Suddenly I discover that I’m not merely accepted by the group. They think I’m witty, same as Dallyce.
