Owner of a Lonely Heart (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  “Oh, God,” he whispered against her mouth, as if something more powerful than himself was overcoming him.

  Bettina felt it. It was a new sensation, being quite literally swept away. Taos kissed and licked at her lips as though he’d never tasted anything so good. She ran a hand down his chest and felt hard, sinewy muscle. She was glad that jerk Crispin had taken up working out with this angelic stud.

  When she squirmed up and down the wall, she felt the mushy juice of her primed pussy as the lips rubbed together, creating friction. She moaned, too, encouraging him to slide both hands up to cup her throbbing tits. “Ah,” she sighed against his mouth. “You are one stunning, handsome heartthrob. You must’ve broken many hearts.”

  She caught her sigh in her mouth when she realized what she’d said. She had unintentionally bought up his girlfriend. His dead girlfriend.

  His breath caught, too. They stood with the tips of their noses touching, each waiting for the other to spring. Nobody breathed.

  Taos did. Giving a little chuckle as though to laugh it off, he lunged in for another kiss, this time squeezing just the lower mound of her boobs where the underwire cupped them. Bettina squirmed against him, encouraging him, but he wouldn’t jump to it like the cowboy had. She had to admire him for that, but at the same time, her hormones were twerking on the double trot.

  Now they grappled like two Muay Thai boxers. Taos lost the restraint he’d been showing and smashed her boob to her chest with one hand while gathering a hand full of her ass in the other. He slid his tongue down her throat and they kissed sloppily, no holds barred. He clamped down on her hip, capturing it between his two powerful thighs, rubbing his hard-on against her, horny as a devil.

  Until, for the second time that night, Bettina was rudely interrupted.

  “That’s it,” snarled Crispin, gripping Taos by the bicep. He tore the man from Bettina. Probably because he was taken by surprise by Crispin’s stealth, Taos allowed himself to be torn. “That’s fucking it, mate!”

  “What’s it?” Bettina yelled. She was feminine, disheveled, frustrated beyond belief. “What’s fucking it, Crispin? You don’t want me, and on top of it you’re late! What do you expect me to do?”

  Chapter Seven

  “That’s it!” Crispin finally yelled.

  The randy couple was going hard at it. Crispin was dumbfounded when he walked around the corner and saw Taos pressing the shapely marshal up against the wall. He’d been waiting inside when some cowboy he knew from a neighboring ranch came staggering in holding his throat, claiming someone had choked him and nearly broken his neck.

  “Did you get a look at him?” Crispin had asked logically.

  “Nah. He came up from behind when I was putting the moves on that hot redhead.”

  Hot redhead? “Can you describe her better?”

  “I saw her,” said another helpful cowboy. “She was packing some kind of semi-automatic pistol.”

  That’s when Crispin had torn out back to witness the shocking sight. That traitor Taos, who had just encouraged Crispin to “go for it” because he hadn’t had a date since the Clinton administration, was all over the curvy Bettina like peanut butter on bread.

  Crispin had stood silently for a few moments, making sure his eyes didn’t deceive him. Hoping beyond hope that Bettina would slug the lowly biker even without his intervention.

  It wasn’t about to happen. She squirmed her hips against him, smashed her bountiful boobs against his stupid chest. Crispin was slammed with a hundred conflicting emotions he hadn’t known that he had.

  Raging jealousy was the main feeling that asserted itself. He had blown his chance with Bettina, and now he was paying the price. He had literally run from her overture like a chicken with its tail between its legs. Like some kind of panicky schoolboy who had never been that close to a woman’s chest before. He had panicked, plain and simple. Crispin ran up against plenty of badge bunnies in his daily rounds. Plenty of women threw themselves at him. So why did this particular woman put the fear of God into him?

  Crispin didn’t stop to analyze it. He was a man of action, not a wimp lurking in the shadows, so he burst forward and shouted, “That’s fucking it, mate!” It was satisfying to physically rip his workout companion off the woman and toss him aside. Crispin’s macho instincts wanted to do more, but the situation didn’t really warrant it, and he certainly didn’t need anyone claiming police brutality. “You get your fucking greasy paws off her, Taos! She’s your fucking handler. You don’t handle her.”

  “Says who?” shouted Bettina. She had never looked lovelier with her hair all mussed, her breasts bursting from her tight spandex shirt. “You don’t fucking want me, but you don’t want anyone else to take me either? Hypocrite much?” She jammed her hands onto her hips and sincerely seemed to want an answer to this.

  “That’s not the issue,” Crispin snapped. “The issue is that you’re here in plain daylight”—he couldn’t think of the proper word for what they had been doing—“consorting with the very guy you’re supposed to be protecting.”

  Taos pointed at the ground. “She is supposed to be a friend of the family, don’t forget! Makes perfect sense.”

  Crispin was speechless. He wasn’t sure if Taos was serious or not. Meantime, Bettina stepped up to Crispin and seethed at him.

  “I don’t see what business it is of yours. You didn’t want all of this”—she waved a limp-wristed hand at her entire body—“so you’re going to get pissed at someone else for getting on it?”

  Crispin seethed back. “It’s not the ‘getting on it’ part I’m set against. It’s the ‘doing it against a beer garden wall’ part.”

  Bettina stepped even closer. Crispin was familiar with the scent of Taos’s sweat, and it was unsettling that it now wafted up from Bettina’s bosom. Crispin wanted to just grab her by the arms, slam her against the building, and screw her until the cows came home. Of course, that would be even worse than what he was protesting. What a hypocrite. She’s right.

  “Okay. So we got carried away, Crispin. But that doesn’t give you a right to go tearing Taos away from me. What we do outside of the job is none of your concern.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Taos, his goonish hands on his douchebag hips. “You snooze, you fucking lose, pal.”

  “It is my concern,” said Crispin, “when your carousing draws the attention of the entire town, and they start wondering what the girl with the automatic pistol is doing mounting the biker who suddenly opened a casino.” It did make sense when he phrased it that way. Emboldened by this, Crispin continued. “You caused an uproar, Taos, and I should be arresting you for assault, not lecturing you about ethics and morals.”

  “He came to my aid,” said Bettina. “That asshat was assaulting me, and I didn’t want to blow my cover by pulling my piece on him.”

  “Oh.” Crispin sneered at Taos. “So it makes more sense for biker boy here to put him in a chokehold and break his neck.”

  The momentary silence let Crispin know he was onto something. Taos said, “Did I? Break his neck? Oh, fuck all.”

  “No, but you could have. I’m just telling you to be more circumspect. You’re a high-profile witness and if a different cop had meandered by he might see it differently, and then your mug shot would be all over the net. Am I getting through to you?”

  Taos looked as though he somewhat understood. All three heads swiveled to listen to male voices heading their way. It was probably that cowboy and his posse looking for his assailant.

  Crispin pointed. “You go that way, Taos. We’ll go this way. Split up.”

  Taos leaped into action, heading away from the voices. Crispin finally did grab Bettina’s arm and dragged her toward the side parking lot.

  “Hey, sheriff,” yelled the cowboy dickwad, “did you see the guy?”

  “No guy out here,” Crispin yelled back as he hustled the hot redhead along. Under his breath he steamed at Bettina. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinkin
g I might get laid without my father the sheriff coming along and arresting me.”

  “And you can’t get laid in private?”

  “So that’s your big concern? The fact that I was doing it where any moron might see me?” Bettina wrenched herself out of Crispin’s grip and faced him squarely. “That’s your big complaint? Has nothing to do with the fact that Taos was picking up your garbage, and you suddenly decided you want me?”

  Again, Crispin was speechless. Bettina was probably right. Jealousy had been driving Crispin ever since he’d first viewed Taos macking on the marshal. But the ranch hand and his goon squad were staring inquisitively at them, so Crispin again grabbed Bettina’s arm and shoved her toward his truck. “Get in.”

  “How dare you—” Bettina sputtered, but when Crispin got in the driver’s side, she relented and got in the passenger side. “Just what the fuck is all this about, Crispin? I was practically flinging myself at you the other day and you couldn’t wait to get away from me. Is it really all about being seen in public? Or are you pissed that you didn’t take me up on my offer?”

  She was spot on the money. Crispin angrily gunned his truck down the main street. Traffic was too slow for his irate mood, so he cranked the wheel to take a surface road to wherever he was going. He had no idea. He hadn’t thought that far yet. He just knew he had to get away from the Toolbox and all those horny cowboys.

  Once off the main drag, Crispin could breathe again, and he drove slower to organize his thoughts. He stammered at first, but he soon got his bearings. “I–I didn’t realize it was an offer, Bettina. Listen, I’m naïve. I never dreamed that a worldly woman, a feisty tamale such as yourself, would have designs on me. Yes, I get the badge bunnies. Lots of women want to…” Here he trailed off, unable to bring himself to use a crude word.

  “Fuck you,” Bettina supplied.

  It felt awkward saying it. “Fuck me. They all seem to think I’m fit. Well, they want to fuck any lawman, basically. I avoid them like they’re mimes. Not sure why, really. Just being a regular ball-slinger isn’t my style. Never was. My wife was like the fourth woman I slept with.”

  “Wow.” His admission really seemed to impress Bettina. “Wow. That’s…remarkable. You’re not a player. I approve. But it only makes me even more attracted to you, Crispin.”

  He was cynical. “You desire what you can’t have.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re forbidden. Maybe I like forbidden trysts. Or maybe, just maybe Crispin, I like you because I like you.”

  Completely out of patience now, Crispin surprised even himself by turning onto an even dimmer back road that wound behind a bluff. The truck bounced over the shoulder’s rocky terrain before he braked to a stop and faced Bettina.

  “Bettina, you’re confusing me. Call me square, call me a straight-laced prig, but your actions confuse me. You seemed as though you wanted some kind of sordid bondage scene—”

  “It’s not sordid.”

  Crispin corrected himself. “Some kind of lewd and passionate bondage scene with me, but when you met the slightest resistance you moved right on to your witness. Don’t get me wrong. I like Taos well enough. We get along well at the gym and all that and he’s never posed a problem for me. But maybe I’m old-fashioned enough to believe there has to be love behind a rendezvous, and if there’s love, it should only be for one person.”

  Crispin realized it was far too soon to be bandying about the word “love.” He hoped Bettina would take it symbolically. He was being sincere. He had fended off those hordes of badge bunnies because he preferred to save it for a woman who incited his passion. He was starting to think Bettina could be that woman, but she had to choose between him and Taos. He didn’t want to compete with that handsome bastard. Taos had the “bad boy” thing going on that attracted so many women.

  Bettina blinked. “I…I didn’t notice I was playing the field until you just now mentioned it. You rejected me, and then Crispin presented himself. You’re right—maybe it is a kink of mine to desire being pursued by two men. Maybe I’m sick of being the domineering cop, always in control, bossing everyone around. Maybe I’d like the tables to be turned. Maybe I’d like to be pursued and captured by a domineering man who tells me what to do. When Taos saved me from that horndog, it just came naturally to…well, to reward him for saving me.”

  “And that’s Taos? He’s the domineering asshole that you want capturing you?”

  Bettina tilted her head. “No one’s ever forced me to choose. Maybe I’ve never had two men to choose from. But now that you mention it, it would be too difficult if I had to choose between both of you.” She was more confident when she said, “I want both of you equally. There. I said it. Color me a red-letter woman, Crispin. If wanting two men makes me that, then fine. But I honestly can’t choose between you. You’ve both driven a wedge in my soul. I spend my nights tossing and turning, thinking about both of you about equally. How can I make a choice like that? I figured whichever man wanted me more would win. I didn’t think that both of you were viable options. I didn’t even know Taos liked me in that way until an hour ago.”

  “It’s me,” Crispin heard himself saying. He ran his arm along the back of the seat behind her shoulders. “It’s me, Bettina. I’m the one you fucking want. Can I tip the scales in my own favor? You terrified me with your proposal the other day. Badge bunnies, fine, whatever, none of that affects me. I just brush them off and go my merry way. But you’ve affected me more deeply than any of them. I’m a man, Bettina. Taos is just a one-dimensional little punk stealing kisses from his teacher. For all we know, he really was involved with all that gun-running and just flipped to get revenge on that Sirius guy for stealing his woman. We don’t know. You said yourself ninety percent of your witnesses are criminals themselves. I’m an honest, sincere straight-shooter, Bettina. We have much more in common. We’re alike, you and I.”

  It was working. She was going all melty at the edges. She practically purred as she squirmed in her seat. Her toying with his shirt buttons was practically sending him over the deep end. She was femininity personified when she spoke. “I know you’re right, Crispin. I just had no idea you wanted me, too. You acted like you couldn’t get far away enough from me. I was mortified, thinking I’d somehow offended you.” She was packing a badge and a Glock, but she managed to look like a tender, eyelash-batting princess. Bettina was quite talented in many areas.

  Crispin hadn’t made a direct declaration like this to a woman since he’d first courted Holly. His heart was pounding out of his chest. He swiped the curtain of hair away from Bettina’s open, vulnerable face. Was she right? Was it his competitive nature driving him to pursue this woman above all others?

  No. He’d been a bumbling, tongue-tied wazzock ever since she’d brought up the subject of bondage and discipline with him. It was Bettina who had done that to him. There was some chemistry between them he wanted to explore. “I’m not the most transparent of men, and it’s not customary for me to run around thinking about emotions.”

  “Feeling emotions. You don’t think about them.”

  “Feeling emotions. I’m not used to it, Bettina. I was rather overwhelmed when you started talking about whips and corsets. I’ve been in plenty of those clubs and it’s always intrigued me. Then when you mentally dressed yourself in heels and stockings, well, I just panicked.” There. I said it. Panicked. A fucking thirty-three-year-old sheriff, and I panicked.

  She had a feline smile. “Then we are on the same page.” She kissed him.

  Crispin hadn’t kissed another woman since his wife, and at first it was strange. It had been years since he’d recalled the rush of lust that swept over one. After all the days of arousal, enticement, taunting, and teasing, he was finally kissing the object of his desires.

  At first he was shy, tentative. But the woman moved fast, and she had soon pulled apart his shirt buttons and was running her hands all over his chest. She made quick work of the white wifebeater he wore
, yanking it up to his underarms so she could touch his bare skin. Crispin had completely forgotten how intense it was, being touched. He practically gasped and jumped when Bettina’s questing hands fondled and admired his pecs, and his prick leaped when she pinched a nipple.

  She mashed her nearly bare bosom against him now, and without forethought he clasped her to him, not wanting to let her go. She was halfway on her knees straddling his thigh now as they kissed raunchily, hungry for each other, licking each other’s mouths. It was a little eerie that the scent of Taos’s sweat wafted from her cleavage, and Crispin couldn’t help but be piqued to feel that they were in some kind of dangerous, lewd ménage.

  Crispin didn’t really think. One didn’t really think, per se, in these situations. He had the woman of his dreams in his very hands and all he wanted to do was please her, to outperform the bad boy biker. The competition brought out the best in him, and before he knew it, Crispin had the buttons of her jeans undone. His fingers smoothed over her satiny panties, over her mound to flicker over her bulging clit. Her panties were damp, and when he hit the right spot she uttered a loud “Ah!” that encouraged him.

  She squirmed so mightily it seemed that she wanted to slither out of his grip, so Crispin kept a firm hold on her arm while diddling her. She jerked and wrenched her hips back and forth every time his fingertips did a glissando over the sweet spot. She held his skull in her palms, breathing steamily against his throat as she dry-humped his hand.

  Crispin’s cock was up and panting for release, bulging uncomfortably inside his jeans, but right now it was all about Bettina. When he slipped his hand inside the panties and over the damp curls of her mound, she threw her head back and arched her spine like a cat on a fence. She even caterwauled like a feline in heat.

  Before he knew it he was finger-fucking the smexy US marshal. All holds barred, just racing like a madman to lift her to the heights of orgasm. He tickled her clit, gratified to see her eyes roll up farther into her head. His finger slid over the slippery button and he tried several different methods of tickling. There. She seemed to prefer the right side of her clit, so Crispin zeroed in on that target.