by Joyee Flynn
Callum must have pulled the plow out of the barn already so I rode right to the field. He hooked me up and we went to work. He never said a word to me, whereas before he talked on and on about his plans for the farm and everything he’d planted so far. Now the silence was deafening as if we were strangers… Or worse, I was just a horse to him.
Hours later we were done and he unhooked me from the plow. He gave my rump a firm slap. “Okay, I’m done with you.” I turned and bit him. He didn’t have to be cruel that we were ending! “Ouch, Taji! I didn’t mean it like that.”
I didn’t care. Yeah, I’d slipped up earlier but my words weren’t harsh. I raced back to the barn, ignoring his calls, and shifted the moment I was hidden. Then I bolted out the back door and down to the stream, diving right in.
“I said I was sorry!” Callum called out minutes later when he caught up with me. I flicked him off and kept swimming. “This isn’t easy for me either so don’t be a little shit about a slipup.”
“Fuck you,” I shouted and made my way to the bank. His eyes went wide at my words, never having spoken to him like that. “Yeah, that’s right. You heard me, Callum. Fuck you!”
“So you’re going to be like this now?” He growled, his hands balled into fists at his side. I stepped onto the bank and over to him, shoving him hard enough that he fell back and landed on his ass.
“I’m hurt. Is that what you want to hear? Fine. You fucking hurt me!”
“I hurt you!” he bellowed as he went to get back up on his feet. I shoved him again and he landed right back down. “Stop that!”
“No! You had your chance to talk. Now it’s my turn and I’m too pissed off to curb myself,” I shot right back. “You selfish prick! You really don’t love me. You were either kidding yourself or flat-out lying. If you really loved me that would be all that mattered. But it’s all about possession with you! You want me to be yours and yours alone. Don’t you care how that would hurt your brothers?
“If they had to see me be with you every day and I denied them after what we shared?” His face fell from anger to contemplating what I said and I knew I was getting through to him. “Dromio said that part of the reason he loves me is that I make his brothers so happy as well. That’s love. That’s a selfless man who accepts that I matter to all of you, that I want to be with all of you.
“I’m sorry this isn’t how you saw things going. I never thought I’d fall for any of you. It wasn’t in my plan. I just wanted to ease some of your worries. That’s all I thought about when I offered myself to each of you. If I had known this was how things would have gone I would never have shown myself to you.”
“You mean to any of us,” he corrected.
“No, to you,” I growled. “I wouldn’t trade the love I share with Dromio and Brix for anything in the world. But you and Ansel? I wish I’d never touched you now, never been in your arms because all I feel is regret when I look at either of you. I gave myself completely to you, all of you. I’m sorry that’s not enough and all you care about is keeping me as only yours.”
“Then you should just go if all you feel is regret,” Ansel said coldly from a few yards away.
“What?” We both gasped.
“Go, Taji,” he ordered and pointed off the property. “You wormed your way into our beds and our hearts and now you’re tearing this family apart. The only way I see to keep my family together is if you leave. Get some of Dromio’s clothes since he’s the closest to you in size and get the fuck off our property.”
And with that he left and my heart shattered into a million pieces.
Chapter 8
“He didn’t mean it,” Callum said as he got to his feet as I backed away from him.
“Yes he did,” I whispered as I turned towards the house. “And that makes me the biggest fool ever. This is worse than trusting the wrong people and being abused. So much worse.” I ran towards the house, going around to the front where I didn’t have to see Dromio in the kitchen.
The joke was on me because he was in his room trying to take a nap. “Taji?”
“I need a set of your old clothes, the smallest ones you have,” I muttered, not letting him see that I was crying.
“Sure, baby, but I have to say I like you walking around naked all the time,” he said with a chuckle as he got out of bed. “Why do you need clothes?”
“Ansel told me to leave,” I answered. Simply saying the words felt like daggers in my back and heart. “He said I was ripping this family apart and to get off your property.”
“What?” Dromio bellowed and was out of the room in a flash. I raced after him and tried to stop him. Dromio stormed outside and right up to his eldest brother. “You selfish asshole!”
“It’s for the best, Dromio,” Ansel said calmly. Dromio reached his brother and punched him in the face.
“I love him, you bastard! You can’t just send him away like a solicitor. This land isn’t just yours and you can’t just banish people from it.” He hit Ansel again and I landed hard on the ground, my legs giving out in shock. What had I done? I had wanted to make them smile and happyand all I’d done was cause pain and grief.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Brix demanded of Ansel. “Who are you sending away?”
“Me,” I whispered, staring at the ground as tears fell. “He’s right. I’m going to tear you all apart. I never meant for any of this. I swear I didn’t.”
“They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Ansel mocked. I looked up at him then and this time Brix hit him.
“Stop it, please,” I whimpered. “Don’t hurt him or hit each other.”
“No, even I think he deserves it,” Callum growled, shocking the shit out of me. It seemed Ansel didn’t get it either because he stared at his brother.
“I thought you agreed with me,” Ansel defended.
“On sending Taji away like he means nothing to us? No fucking way. I understood how you didn’t want to share the one you wanted to marry and I did feel the same about that.” He turned and looked at me then. “But you were right. That was selfish of me. I knew from the beginning we would share you and there was enough love in you that none of us would ever feel slighted. I changed the rules, you didn’t, Taji.”
“What are you saying?” I whispered as I felt my stupid heart hope.
“That I do love you and that’s all that matters. I’m not sharing you with random men because you can’t help but spread yourself around. I’m sharing you with my brothers and it would kill them to have you choose me. But yet, that’s what I wanted because I was so wrapped up in how I saw a marriage. Fuck that. I’ve never believed that everything in life worked better if it was normal. I’m not changing my mind now.”
I watched as he kicked dirt onto Ansel and then moved over to me. I held my breath as he knelt down in front of me and cupped my cheek.
“Thank you for smacking some sense into me, my love,” he whispered. “I do love you and want you to be mine. If you’ll still have me, I’ll gladly share you with my brothers who love you and who you love. They’re lucky that someone as special as you loves their sorry asses.”
“You won’t change your mind again later?” I asked as he leaned in.
“Wild horses couldn’t tear me away from you or make me stop loving you.” He winked at me at the pun. “I’m yours forever as long as I only have to share you with my brothers.”
“Like I could take on any more sex or crazy men,” I giggled before kissing him. When we parted I saw Ansel get to his feet and brush himself off.
“Fine, then I’ll leave,” he grumbled. I shot to my feet and raced over to him, wrapping my arms around.
“Please don’t do this,” I begged. “I won’t take you from your home. I’ll leave.”
“No!” the other three shouted.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I whimpered. “I love all of you andI won’t see the man I love leave his home because of me.”
“That’s why you’d leave instead
of letting me be the one to go?” Ansel asked as he pried me off of him.
“Of course. I love you, Ansel. It would kill me to watch you leave your family farm. You love this place and do everything you can to make it better. I can’t take this away from you.”
He searched my eyes for something for a moment and then nodded. “I’ll stay and so will you.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, shivering as if cold from his swirling emotions when he stepped away.
“Real love is being willing to sacrifice what you hold dear for the one you love,” he said, his back to me. “You were willing to leave Callum, Brix, and Dromio because it would hurt you to see me unhappy and leave my home.”
He walked away and I stared after him as he went into the barn. A few minutes later I heard him banging his hammer.
“I still don’t understand,” I repeated as I stared at the other three. “I wasn’t willing to give any of you up. He wanted me gone or he was going to go. It’s not my house, it’s his. It’s not fair that me being here would drive him away.”
“He’s saying that if you left, you would have left us behind,” Dromio explained. I felt my eyes go wide as his meaning sunk in.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I blurted out.
“So you’d have decided for us that we’d all leave?” Brix offered, raising an eyebrow
“I didn’t mean that either!” Okay, now my head just hurt.
“What did you mean then?” Callum asked gently.
“That I didn’t want Ansel to hurt and leaving his home would hurt him,” I answered, scrunching my eyebrows together in thought. “I wasn’t thinking of anything else right then because all that mattered was making his paingo away because I caused it.”
“And yet you didn’t,” Callum said with a smile. “He did. But you were so focused on his pain you agreed to give up everything else you loved just to make it stop.”
“I don’t love you guys any less,” I whispered, his meaning sinking in.
“We know that,” Dromio said firmly as he pulled me into his arms. “Ansel’s and our point is that you love us so completely, so soul filling, that when you focus on one of us, it’s all about that person. You don’t bring the others into your thoughts of that person. So it’s not really sharing your love or focus because there’s so much in you that you have enough for each of us as individuals.”
“I think I get it but it’s still making my head hurt,” I mumbled as I snuggled against him. “And Ansel’s still miserable.”
“Go scream at him. It worked for me,” Callum offered as we headed back to the house.
“No.” I shook my head and looked up at him. “He just broke my heart in a way I didn’t think possible. I’m not sure I could forgive that. He just tried to banish me, toss me away as if I was easy-toreplace garbage. I don’t want him hurting but I don’t want him near me anymore either.”
“That’s more than understandable,” Brix said gently. We went to his room because it was the second to the largest with a bigger bed and talked about easy things, light topics.
Callum suggested that maybe we should knock down one of the walls of the room and make a bigger one for all of us.
Dromio was going on and on about getting some real clothes made for me so I could go out in public one day. But that I’d still have to race around the property naked all the time because it was hot.
And on and on they went, trying to comfort me and distract me. I nodded along, smiling and appreciating the effort, but there was still a huge hole forming in my stomach and heart. There was nothing that could be done about that.
* * * * Needless to say, Ansel and I avoided each other. But still it seemed like fate would bump us into each other at the most inopportune times. Like the next day when Callum was taking me down by the stream and I was screaming in bliss. I open my eyes and Ansel is standing off in the distance watching us, crying.
Then later on that day I walked into the barn to shift and help plow and walked in on Ansel having a small breakdown. He was sobbing in the corner of the barn, holding onto a blanket we’d made love on just a few days before. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to tell him everything was okay and that I loved him.
But how could I say that when I wasn’t sure how I felt anymore or if I even wanted to love him? The day after that I walked over to the stream to wash and Ansel was sitting on the bank, pleasing himself. I know it was wrong to watch, but I was frozen in shock… Mostly because he kept repeating my name. When he finished he groaned out Taji loudly and then flopped back to the ground. He saw me standing there and I raced back to the house, unsure of what else to do.
It got worse a few days after that. I’d stretched myself, slicked up, and gone in search of Callum. He’d snuck out of the house while Dromio and I were baking and hadn’t even given me as much as a good-morning kiss. I planned on teasing him until he realized the error of his ways and then getting my good-morning loving.
I couldn’t see him in the fiel ds when I searched so I checked down by the bank, and finally the barn. But he wasn’t anywhere. Then I saw what I thought was his shadow behind the barn and crept up on him.
“And why did my lover not even give me a good -morning kiss?” I whispered as I got closer. “Do you no longer love me? Maybe I shouldn’t let you stick your fat cock in my tight little slicked-up hole? Hmmm?” I leapt onto him.“Gotcha!”
“Callum’s not here,” Ansel said after catching me. I was wrapped around him like a monkey, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable. “He needed to get something in the village but didn’t want to bother you to ride there.”
“Oh, well, that’s silly because that’s why you originally bought me so you’d have a horse,” I whispered, staring at the barn over his shoulder. His large hands were holding my ass and I still had my hands on his shoulders. It was like I couldn’t break the hold of being in his arms.
“But you’re not just the horse we bought anymore, Taji. You’re the man we all fell in love with,” he said quietly, sniffling. “And I’m the only one you don’t love anymore.”
“I don’t know what I feel but you’d done just about everything you could for me to want to hate you.” I pushed at his chest which was stupid because he was holding most of my weight. His hands changed positions to counterbalance me and his fingers slid up my crack, one landing over my hole.
He buried his face in my neck and shook as his finger swirled my hole. “Resisting you is something even the devil couldn’t do. There’s only so much a man can take and I’ve never wanted anyone, loved anyone the way I do you.” He plunged his fingers inside of me and tried to kiss me. I turned my head away and started crying. “You hate me, don’t you?”
“No, but you were going to throw me away like garbage the moment I didn’t do what you wanted.” I sniffled, squirming because the fingers inside of me had stopped moving and my body wanted more. “That’s not love, Ansel. That’s possession. That’s ownership and you just want to fuck me again.” I glanced up at him then with tears in my eyes. “All I am to you is a body you want to bury yourself in. You don’t love me or who I am. You couldn’t and then try to banish me like that.”
“I’m so sorry,” he choked out as he leaned his forehead down to mine. “You were telling Callum how you regretted our time together and wished it never happened. It was like walking forward and right into a sword. I was coming to find you to discuss my feelings and that’s what I heard. I never said no, Taji, I just left because I needed air. I said I didn’t want to share, not that I wouldn’t. I needed to think. And then my heart shattered at what you said to him.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you were saying no and it broke my heart. But either way, what does that have to do with throwing me off your land?”
“I lashe d out. I wanted you to hurt as I did in that moment hearing you regretted ever being with me. And what I said just came out before I even realized it.”
“But then you defended it after you stormed away when Dromio a
nd Brix hit you.” I didn’t understand how we had gotten here. Ansel was my strong rock and now both of us were falling apart.
“I felt like everyone was ganging up on me so I defaulted to defensive mode and stuck to my guns. No matter how stupid or wrong I was, it was like I couldn’t back down when everyone insisted I should.”
“You stubborn man,” I sighed and leaned against his chest, trying desperately not to move my hips. “We shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t touch me this way with how we’ve left things. I’m your brothers’ now.”
“Is it too late for me?” he asked as his other hand squeezed my ass firmly. I moaned and he helped me wrap my legs around his hips, his fingers going deeper inside of me. “Tell me I’m not too late and can fix this, Taji.”
“I don’t know, can you?” I leaned back enough to star e into his eyes. He pumped his fingers and I let out a choked moan as I moved with them. “Can you show me you really love me? I won’t choose anyone, Ansel. My choice is all of you. Would you be able to live with that?”
“I don’t know but I do know that I love you.” I froze at his words and tears filled my eyes. I was so quick to be ready to forgive him and he still didn’t know if he wanted me for real.
“Then let me go,” I said in a firmer voice than I felt. He nodded and pulled his fingers free, before setting me on my feet. “I can’t keep going around in circles with you,Ansel. Either you’re sorry and you love me, want to be with me, and share me with your brothers. Or you just want to be my brother-in-law. Decide soon, Ansel, before all there is between us is anger and angst.”
And with that I walked away, went into the house, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over my head. I wanted a redo on the day and my conversation with Ansel. I’m glad that he had only said what he said in anger, and not having really meant it. But that also wasn’t the same as everything being okay now.
Far from it.
Chapter 9
Callum and I were plowing the last plantable field the next afternoon when we saw Ethan riding towards the house at a pace that could only mean trouble. Luckily we had just finished plowing and I was already unhooked. Callum leapt up on me and held on to the handle that was on the simple pad strapped to me, and I took off as if the devil was on my heels.
