Owner of a Lonely Heart (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  In one fluid motion Crispin stripped off the wet nylon shorts and tossed them into his bag. It struck Taos, and not for the first time, that the sheriff and Bettina would make a stunning, powerful couple. He did not want to mention it lest it look like a suggestion or stick the idea into their heads. He did not want Crispin putting the moves on that feisty fed, even if Taos couldn’t have her himself.

  Crispin said, “I’ll try to keep her occupied, out of your hair.”

  Despite himself, Taos snorted with camaraderie. “Yeah. I’ll bet you will.”

  Crispin froze, about to step into his kimono pants. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that it wouldn’t be a rough job keeping that hot tomato occupied. Am I wrong?”

  A wave of understanding flooded Crispin’s handsome face. “I see. With a manly heartiness, you’re actually implying the opposite. That Bettina is a hot tamale.”

  “You say tamale, I say tomato.”

  Crispin continued pulling the pants up over his jock, cinching them tight over his taut abdomen. “I’d have to be blind to disagree. But we’re coworkers, associates. I’d bet you’d just love it if we had our heads so far buried in each other’s crotches we didn’t notice or care what you were up to, am I right?”

  “Partially right. But I’d rather be the one with my face in her redhead crotch.”

  That seemed to throw Crispin for a loop. He stood with his hands starting to form into claws at his sides, as though about to toss Taos against the wall of lockers. There was a tense moment, but the hardness in Crispin’s face softened, and he reached for the jiujitsu jacket. “Can’t blame you for that. But you know how pointless that would be for you to try. She’s a professional. The last thing a law enforcement officer needs is to get involved with a…”

  “Say it, Crispin. Criminal.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. And you’re wrong. I may have been affiliated with a notorious biker”—Crispin motioned for Taos to keep it down—”motorcycle club where a few members did illegal things, but I never participated. I was just the secretary, Crispin. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but the only club member pushing for the gun running business was Sirius. Okay, and maybe the president. But I feel confident that my testimony won’t take down any other brothers because they did nothing. The only one culpable is Sirius and his dealings with los malosos, the cartel.”

  “Even if I believe you, Taos, you’re still Bettina’s witness. She’d never allow herself to fall prey to your pressure, even if she wanted to.”

  “Oh? You think she wants to? Did she say anything about me?”

  The shadow came over Crispin’s face again, and he finished wrapping the kimono jacket around his torso. “No. Nothing. Not in that way, anyway. She’s a professional, Taos. Even if she wanted to straddle your hot, buff biker’s body and ride you until you screamed for mercy, she wouldn’t.” He took a comb from his bag and furiously began combing his shoulder-length hair.

  Taos couldn’t stop grinning. “Oh yeah? Well, I can tell by your description that she wants to. You wouldn’t have all those details if it hadn’t occurred to you before.”

  “Oh, it’s occurred to me, all right. Only you weren’t in the picture when it did.”

  Taos had to stop and think for a few seconds. Realization dawned hard on him. He didn’t like what he discovered. “Oh. Then go for it, buddy!” He lied with false cheer. “Put the moves on her! I know she’s never mentioned a boyfriend, and her partner Park told me she lives with one of her brothers. And I know that you’re a pathetic divorced loser who hasn’t had a date since the Clinton administration.”

  “Excuse me,” Crispin said haughtily, securing the rubber band at the nape of his neck. “The second George W. Bush administration, if you please.”

  Both men chuckled. Taos knew that Crispin had dated around a bit since his divorce from a woman who sounded like a callous gold digger. He wasn’t a thirty-year-old virgin. He even had a toddler son who seemed to barely know him. The ex made it difficult for him to see the son what with her new dating schedule.

  “No, I’m serious, man.” Taos slapped Crispin on the bicep with the back of his hand. “Go for it. You know mum’s the word with me. If you don’t get laid soon you’re going to atrophy. Nothing worse than a mummified old British law enforcement officer, running around taking it out on everyone else. Ah, never mind. I know you’re too professional to dare suggest a bit of the old rumpy pumpy with the hot tomato marshal.” He used Crispin’s own slang for “fucking.”

  Taos was surprised when the sheriff looked thoughtful. “You know, she did seem like she was putting the moves on me the other day.”

  “Whaaaa?” gasped Taos.

  Crispin’s eyes were genuinely warmed to a fiery glow by the memory. “Yes. She said she’d don a pair of stilettos and a black corset if I was the one who wanted her to.”

  No doubt Crispin had been saving that last little tidbit for his final coup de grace. He grinned inanely at Taos, slammed his locker shut, and strode away practically whistling a happy tune while Taos stood there openmouthed. “Can’t hit the weight room with you today,” Crispin called out. “I’ve got to meet Bettina at the Toolbox at eight.”

  “Well,” Taos whispered to himself. “Fuck me dry.” Stilettos and a corset.

  Taos had Bettina pegged more as a cowboy boots and chaps sort of gal.

  Chapter Six

  Crispin was late.

  Bettina sat in the Toolbox alone. The beer garden was lit by strings of lights festooned overhead, and she hogged one entire table to herself because she was the only one going solo. Men had dragged two of her four benches to other tables because the place was so packed, and Bettina was beginning to feel awkward. She stood out like a levelheaded person on a Fox newscast. She was the only person not hooked up with someone else.

  It would be the first time Bettina and Crispin had met up since the ill-fated DelHart encounter when she’d practically thrown herself at him. His rebuff still stung. Crispin may as well have flung her to the ground and stomped on her before tear-assing out to his truck in the parking lot. That was how enthusiastically he’d reacted to her proposition.

  She’d been kicking herself ever since. How could I have been so stupid? Bettina drank her Sam Adams faster than usual because she wasn’t paying attention. The next time she raised her mug to her lips, it was empty. If she got up to go inside and get another, she’d lose her table. She allowed the debate to distract her from kicking herself over the Crispin faux pas.

  But the Crispin disaster won out. I’m so fucking mortified. I may as well have just rent my shirt and stuck my boobs in his face. God fucking damnit. Now he’s late because he’s mortified, too. He doesn’t want to look at me again because all he can think about is how I threw myself at him.

  Well, who wouldn’t make at pass at that unbelievably handsome hunk? He’s handsome, isn’t he? But God, why did I have to tell him I was dying to put on some heels and a corset and whip his curvy, shapely ass? Shit, I’d let him do me. He’s the one who’s an expert with a whip. I’d sure like to sit on his innocent, handsome face.

  Look at that idiot over there. What a poseur. He’s a mail order cowboy if ever I saw one, not a real vaquero like Crispin. Look at that cowboy hat. It’s never had a spot of dust on it. But isn’t that what I wanted? To jump on some dumb potato like this guy who keeps glancing over at me?

  God, why did I come onto Sheriff Marwick? My hormones are raging out of control, that’s it. I want another beer. If I go get one, I’ll lose my table. Now I have to pee. That tears it. I’ll just lose the table.

  She hoped her Glock didn’t bulge beneath her jacket as she headed for the can. When she came out, the dumb rancher was lurking in the hallway, and he only had eyes for her. She could not have squeezed past him if she’d been as skinny as a ballerina. He ran his long arm up the wall and his body took up three-fourths of the hallway.

  He really was quite s
exy in a way that was normally too rugged for her. Bettina normally liked men a bit more refined and brutal, both at the same time. But she was in no position to diss this particular cowboy. Crispin had bluntly rejected her fumbling advances, and now he was late to boot. She played along. She hitched her thumbs in her jean pockets and cocked one hip.

  “What’s up? I saw you in the beer garden.” Lame, but it might do.

  He grinned, revealing that he was only missing one tooth. It was replaced with a gold one, and that was trendy. “Yeah. I noticed you’re packing. Are you a cop?”

  Great. The most attentive dumb cowboy in the land. “No. I just don’t think a girl should go around unarmed in the Wild West.” Good. If he’s a rapist, he’ll back off.

  He didn’t. “I agree. Especially not a girl as hot as you. You wanna go out back? Not too romantic standing by the bathrooms.”

  “Sure.”

  “Out back” turned out to be a little dirt path that led away from the beer garden to a couple of picnic tables—where normally people probably smoked weed. Bettina was feeling daring and vivacious, and the guy who’d introduced himself as Tom immediately backed her up against one of the gazebo posts.

  “You are one slinky, spicy mama.” That was probably Tom’s best line, but Bettina liked it. Especially the “slinky” part. She hadn’t been “slinky” in years.

  “Well, thanks, cowboy. Where do you cowboy, anyway?” She touched his chest between the bandana and the open shirt. Steamy and hairy.

  He told her something that had no meaning to her, and he kissed her throat. This would be a fine way to while away the time before Crispin finally stooped to meeting her. The idea that Crispin might be more than a little jealous also stoked Bettina. Yes, I’m bad. If Crispin is too prudish to enter into a scene with me, then he gets none of this.

  Tom made attractive growling noises against her throat while biting her tender flesh. At first, it made her shiver all over. She felt hugely desirable as a wave of pheromones swelled through her chest. She was always confident about her boobs. She may not have been the skinniest stick in the bundle, but her boobs never failed to entice men. She wore a push-up bra even when she was just going to be in the office all day, just to get a kick out of Park’s idiotic and dogged reaction.

  So she felt pretty good when Tom’s hand strayed to cup a tit. Bettina squirmed against the post, feeling the ultimate in feminine. Even so, she liked to keep up a conversation with a guy. “So what do you do with the cattle, Tom? Besides brand and herd it?”

  “Oh, there’s a lot to it,” Tom mumbled against her chest. “Swath grazing…crop residue…calving…pneumonia…”

  It was not sexy talk, but it certainly didn’t hinder Bettina from getting hot. Who wouldn’t while having her nipple tweaked between a hammy thumb and forefinger? It was merely a physical reaction, that was all. She had the same reaction to her battery-operated boyfriend, and the IQ level was about the same. Still, it felt warm and erotic being with an actual man again. The idea that Crispin might wander by and see them raised the stakes even higher.

  “Oh, yeah? Calves can get pneumonia?”

  “You bet,” muttered Tom, tugging at the neckline of her camisole while fiddling with her nipple as though dialing a radio.

  Bettina wasn’t so sure she wanted her naked tit bared to the world, though. Tom’s breathing was coming ragged and urgent now and he had started dry humping her thigh. Normally this was a fine thing, but Bettina barely knew the guy, and a hint of nervousness crept into the back of her mind. She raised a hand to encircle Tom’s wrist with her fingers.

  “Tom, back off. We can do this later in private, no?”

  “No,” growled Tom, burrowing his face in her cleavage.

  “Come on. You’re going too fast for me, Tom.” Bettina didn’t want to draw her Glock or anything. She certainly didn’t want her cover blown if she was going to hang at the Toolbox anymore while keeping an eye on Taos. She yanked harder on his wrist, but it was like a steel band.

  “Delicious. Nice big juicy titties.” Tom squeezed one boob from a bra cup as though it were a shrimp’s tail and her tit the yummy meat. He dove in for the bite.

  Now it didn’t titillate her in a good way. The tantalizing stimulus was the same—a gold tooth against an erect nipple—but now it irritated rather than aroused Bettina. “I’m serious, Tom. Back off.” She yanked harder on his wrist.

  But he was dead set on squeezing her boob as if it were a zit. Bettina knew that the sight of breasts turned men into crazy shithouse rats, but this was ridiculous. Tom definitely was a boob man, and one who didn’t know how to listen. He continued nuzzling at her boob, but the fucking gold tooth was so sharp it felt like it could cut her.

  So she kneed him in the balls.

  At least, that’s what she thought she did.

  Simultaneously, a knight in shining armor came out of the darkness and wrapped a brawny arm in a chokehold around Tom’s throat.

  Tom disengaged from Bettina’s tit with a loud pop. Bettina staggered sideways, so stunned she didn’t even stuff her boob back into her bra. Her savior didn’t stop at just choking the stuffing from Tom.

  Having stunned Tom with the chokehold, he now grabbed Tom’s skull between all ten fingers as though it were a pumpkin and made a sudden, economical twist. The twist came with its own popping sound, and like on TV, Tom collapsed to the deck like a cheap tent.

  Bettina had seen this rear naked choke before in jiujitsu. Which was why she was doubly surprised to find that her defender wasn’t Crispin but Taos, who now loomed over the fallen cowboy like a victorious David. His usual costume of white T-shirt and loose Ben Davis work pants now added to his heroic, biblical stance, and he lifted his upper lip in a snarl.

  “Learn to listen to a lady,” he growled.

  Then he reached a hand out to Bettina.

  She took Taos’s hand over the fallen Goliath. She had not felt this feminine in months as she accepted the hand and daintily stepped over the cowboy. As an officer of the law, she should have cared more about poor Tom’s status, but she was swept away in the moment. She happily traipsed alongside Taos back up the dirt path.

  “As much as I enjoy the sight,” Taos said in a low voice, “you might want to put your tittie back into your shirt.”

  “Oh.” Her lack of embarrassment shocked her. It looked like they were heading back to the rear beer garden, but the next thing she knew, Taos had pulled her off to one side of the building, around the air conditioning unit.

  He backed her up against the wooden building, one hand on the wall on either side of her head. Her heart hammered in the pit of her throat, partially from the thrill and unwanted excitement of Tom, but increasingly just from Taos’s presence.

  “How’d you get down there with that lunkhead, Bettina?”

  She hadn’t bothered tugging her tight shirt very high up on her bosom, and her nipples still came within a hair’s breadth of popping from her bra. She luxuriated in the way Taos’s eyes couldn’t stay fixed on her face. They bounced between her face and her tits, face and tits.

  She shrugged. “I got bored. Crispin’s late to meet me.”

  “And that’s what you do when you get bored?”

  Shrugged again. “So sue me. I’m a woman with woman’s needs.” God! How many romance novels have you been reading?

  “Do you know how close you came to blowing our cover?”

  “He knew I have a piece. I just told him it’s for protection. How long were you watching me?”

  That threw Taos for a loop. He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Without removing his hands from the wall, he took a step closer to her. Mere inches of heated, electric space stood between their bodies. Bettina dared reaching up to tug on his plain white T-shirt.

  He murmured with a devilish grin, “Long enough to admire your style. That Tom nozzle was right. You’re a slinky, spicy mama.”

  Bettina was panting so fast she was becoming light-headed. Taos’s ey
es sparkled with amusement and lust. She rattled him by the T-shirt. “I’m just on some sort of hormonal rampage,” she said silkily. “You can’t rein me in when I’m like this.”

  “Who’d want to?”

  Bettina looked down demurely, but it only gave her a view of the erection tenting the crotch of his Bens. That wasn’t demure in any shape or form. Pulling him closer, she squirmed seductively. “I’ve got a giant libido and it’s had no outlet lately. Normally I wouldn’t bother with that doofus, but I just broke it off with an ass gasket salesman and my loins are screaming for release.” By putting it humorously like that, she could always shrug off the encounter later on.

  Taos didn’t take it humorously, though. All hint of a smile fell from his face. “Loins? Why don’t you admit that big fuckwad got you all hot and bothered?”

  She repeated dutifully, “That big fuckwad got me all hot and bothered.”

  Taos squeezed his eyes shut hard as though trying to erase her image. “All right, that’s it.” He talked more to himself than to her. Finally he lunged his entire body against hers, pressing her to the wall, and he closed his mouth over hers.

  Immediately, Bettina flung her arms around Taos’s neck. All sense of propriety was out the window as she suckled on his mouth. He wasn’t even a biker, or a protected witness, or even a potential scumbag as she slanted her mouth over his sweet, cherubic lips. He was just a hotter-than-hell stone cold fox, no more, no less.

  It was beyond delectable to thread her fingers through his streaked blond hair and breathe in his essence. His essence turned out to be an arousing combination of fresh sweat and the sweet, clean desert air. He kissed her so tenderly, as though holding himself back, afraid to get carried away. It was Bettina who encouraged Taos, not the other way around. She had only herself to blame.

  The vibrations of his deep groan rushed down her throat and flushed her chest. Rotating her shoulders in a shimmy, Bettina ground against the wood wall, encouraging Taos to hold his impressive erection against her hip. He spread his fingers wide and held her rib cage with respect, not the clumsy and overeager fumbling of Tom.