by Cheri Chaise
I holstered the gun, pulled Stella into my arms, and sought her lips against mine. She melted into me like honey on a hot August day. It took everything I had to tear my lips away from hers instead of throwing her to the ground and taking her right there in the open.
“That’s exactly how I felt when you came storming out of that house. I’ll never apologize for wanting to keep you safe, Stella. It took enormous restraint to not to shoot every single one of those bastards right where they were. Especially Jahan, after the way he stared at you like you were his last meal.”
Stella sighed as she stared up into my eyes. “I have a feeling he looks at most women that way.”
Of that, I had no doubt.
She tugged me again to her, and it was my turn to melt – more like go completely hard – as she deepened the kiss. The little vixen’s tongue sought entrance, and I gladly gave in to her as we explored one another with our clothes still on.
“Oh, Stella,” I groaned as she stroked my cock through my trousers, shooting practice a fleeting memory. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
“I want you, Cole,” she breathed. “Alive. Inside me like a husband should.”
“But Bret…,” I whispered against her tumbled hair as I fought against the buttons of my shirt she still wore.
She pulled away, the shirt gaping open to display her untethered and heaving breasts in the bright morning sun. The untarnished skin glowed in the light, and I ached to expose her fully to nature’s embrace.
“What is all this with who has ownership of what part of me?”
I stumbled around my thoughts to come up with a coherent sentence. “It’s just…when we…”
“What?” The fire in her eyes was back and was like flaming gunpowder to my cock.
“Until you get pregnant,” I finally spat out.
Her face paled. “Pregnant?”
“That way we’ll know who’s gonna be the father.”
Stella wrapped her arms around herself, pressing those twin mounds together so enticingly, even though she didn’t even realize what she was doing to me. “Between you and Bret, don’t you think we’ll be able to tell which of you fathered my child…if I ever get pregnant?”
Her words stopped me as I reached for her. “What do you mean if?”
She spun around and took a few steps away from me. When she turned back, she’d drawn the edges of the shirt together to cover herself.
“Do you remember in my letters when I told you about my former lover?”
A man I wanted to forget had ever touched my woman. “Yeah. That’s what made me realize you might be more accepting of our situation around here.”
The hint of a smile was draped in sadness. “Four months, Cole. We were lovers for four whole months. Never once did I come up pregnant.”
My mind stuttered on her words. “But there are things some women do…things to prevent…”
She shook her head. “If there are, I never utilized such methods. The chance of a child never even entered my mind during all that time. It was only after that I realized something must be wrong with me.”
The air left my lungs in a rush. All this time, I’d struggled against the heartache of losing a baby. Of thinking perhaps I’d leave that up to my brothers from here on out. But the idea of never being able to father a child from this union had never once entered my mind. I’d always assumed whether or not I fathered another child would be due to my choices.
I just never thought that choice would be taken away from me completely.
An unfamiliar ache pinched my heart. “Maybe the problem was with your lover.”
The expression on her face softened as she stepped forward and placed a hand against my cheek. “There’s only one way to find out.”
She grasped my hand and pressed the palm against her bare breast, arching into me with a moan as I teased the nipple. With nimble fingers, she freed my cock and stroked my firm flesh into a flame.
“It’s my body, Cole. Don’t you think I should get a say with who goes where?” She leaned in and kissed my chin. “And this time, I want you between my thighs.”
Stella didn’t have to ask me twice. I made quick work and bared us both to the fiery rays of the sun that matched the fire under my skin just raring to be released. The grass tickled my spine as she straddled me, sliding her hot and wet pussy along my hardness before lowering onto my cock.
The feel of her, the sensation of being embedded in her sweet pussy, surrounded by her heat so completely, was like an explosion thundering through my veins. Our hips moved together in perfect synchronization with a fervor I hadn’t experienced even through the endless hours of loving we’d had last night.
“Stella,” I whispered. “I’ve imagined this since the first moment I saw you.”
A deep, guttural groan punctuated the air between us as I pressed my thumb between her folds to stimulate her clit.
“Harder, Cole.”
I dipped my fingers between us and swirled her juices over that swollen nub. “Tell me what you need, Stella.”
Her pants made me even harder. “I need you.”
“You have me…now and forever.”
She met my bucking hips with her constant rhythm from above. Her beautiful breasts shimmied and swayed with each thrust as she rode me like a bucking bronco. Rode me toward the spasms of our pleasure.
As pressure built and threatened to spill over, I gripped those generous hips, so perfectly made for fucking, and slammed into her hard and fast before a final plunge sent us flying. As I filled her with my hot seed, Stella threw her head back with a cry of release that sent her pussy pulsing around my still shuddering cock.
I held her tight after she collapsed onto my chest, stroking the edges of her breasts, down along her sides, and over her sleek, smooth ass. Our breathing slowed as we soaked up the warmth of the sun and listened to the cooling breeze whisper through the pines along the edge of the meadow.
The events of earlier swarmed unwelcome into my thoughts as I held my wife protectively to my chest. Jahan. His posse. We’d not seen the last of that bastard, but I’d be damned if I let him get his claws into Stella. The visit today was merely a scouting party, designed to evaluate our weaknesses and strengths. Now that he knew for sure Stella was here, Jahan would certainly be back – sooner rather than later.
And we’d be ready.
Chapter Thirty-One
Estella
The musky scent of our lovemaking mingled with the rich scents of earth and the sweetness of grass. A breeze whispered through the pines and clattered like applause at our spectacular finish as Cole lightly skimmed his hands up and down my sides.
Bandits forgotten. Shooting practice dismissed in favor of more delightful pursuits. I reveled in the touch of my husband as we lay entwined together in the embrace of the prairie. Just the two of us. As husband and wife should be. Yet it was so much more.
The circumstances I’d found myself in here at Carston Ranch baffled me one moment and comforted the next. How could several men – brothers even – willingly share my body? Love me. Be willing to sacrifice themselves to protect me?
The myriad of emotions that swirled through my mind confused and awed me. How could I feel and share such intimacies with more than one man? In a single day, every time we came together my heart swelled bigger and higher with love for each of them. Bret, Drew, and finally my husband.
Would Evan ever be a part of loving me too? Yes, he’d allowed me to kiss his cheek today out of gratefulness at his efforts to chase that odious man away. I was also grateful for the accuracy of his shot those months ago in Fort Union, but he’d stayed far away most of the time, off riding around the acreage or sharpening the tools of his trade.
How could four brothers be so vastly different and yet stand together to protect me from the wilds of their world? My world as it stood now – one I never wanted to give up.
“Cole?”
“Hmm?” He sounded far away, as if his tho
ughts trailed along my same pathway. Or he neared sleep out here under the punishing sun.
“Can I ask you a question?”
His hands stilled briefly. Then he wrapped them loosely under my buttocks. “Sure.”
“Does…does everyone want me here?”
His brawny chest rose and fell with a sigh, carrying me effortlessly with it. “You’re asking about Evan.”
“I can see he’s protective, in his own way. But he still seems to avoid me whenever he can.” I raised my head to look him in the eye. “Rather like you used to do.”
Cole chuckled and trailed his hand erotically up and down my spine, leaving goosebumps in his wake. “Evan is Evan,” he stated, as if that explained it all. “He loves in his own way.” My husband leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose. “It’ll take time, but he’ll come around…eventually.”
I laid my head back down on his firm chest and lazily traced circles around the edge of his peaked nipple. “Can I ask another question?”
“You keep doing that, and I can’t promise to have the wherewithal to respond.”
It was my turn to giggle – until the following silence sent a clench through my belly. “I...I saw the cradle.”
His hand stilled. I think Cole even stopped breathing. “That wasn’t a question.”
“I just don’t know how…”
“Since we shared Sky too, you want to know why we don’t have a bunch of kids running around the ranch already.”
I pushed up from his chest to straddle his hips. Those beautiful green eyes sparkled in the sunlight like the blades of grass. “What happened?”
I shivered as his hands ran over my breasts and down my stomach before he tucked them under my bottom. “She got pregnant. Often actually. But she was never able to hold them inside for more than a few months. Except once.”
I traced my fingers through the curly thatch of hair scattered across his chest. “What happened then?”
“There was a drought.” His hand covered mine and squeezed. “The creek was dry, so she went farther away from the house to the river to wash out the baby’s diapering cloths.” The hint of tears glittered in his eyes. “The wolves got to them before we could.”
My heart wrenched and my stomach twisted in knots. The horror they must have witnessed.
I laid my head down again so as not to stare into the abyss of his still raw grief. “I’m so sorry.”
I felt the shudder of his breath just before his arms tightened around me, and he kissed the top of my head. “She had my son with her.”
“Oh, Cole.” I squeezed his shoulder and allowed the tears to fall.
“Bret tried to use what he’d learned in those books to save her, but she’d already lost too much blood. And knowing yet another child was gone, she didn’t have any fight left in her.” My hip stung when his grip tightened to just short of pain, his fingers digging into my flesh. “We were selfish bastards to keep taking her like that without thinking of how those miscarriages affected her.”
“Did she ever complain?”
“No.” Naked rawness was embedded deep in that word. “But we should’ve seen it. I should’ve seen it. Just like I should’ve seen your suffering on the way here from Fort Union.” He rolled us into a sitting position and tenderly cupped my face. “Promise me that you’ll tell us if all this gets to be too much. Don’t be silent like you were on the trail, Stella.”
“Cole, I…”
“Promise me!” Haunted desperation filled his eyes.
I leaned in and brushed my lips across his before drawing away to penetrate his stare with my own. “This I promise you, Cole Carston. I promise to complain…to complain every day if I have to. I promise to let you know when you or your brothers overwhelm me with your love and affection. I promise to tell you loudly and in no uncertain terms when you four are being too protective. When you praise me too much for my measly cooking attempts.” My cheeks stretched with a smile. “And I definitely promise to let you know when you’re acting too much like spoiled children come Christmas morning.”
He threw his head back and laughed. It swelled deep and rich. Captured my heart.
He pressed a hand to my belly. “And promise me that I’ll be the first to know when any of our seed takes root.”
“But what if I truly am barren?”
Cole shook his head. “We’ll cross that stream if we ever get to it.”
“Is what happened to Sky and your son the reason why you wanted to leave my womb for Bret?”
“One,” he admitted and then kissed me playfully. “But again, my insightful wife, you’ve proven a wiser woman than me. Between Bret and me, it’ll be easy knowing for sure who fathers our children.”
“But what about Drew?”
“A conversation for another time.”
One I was willing to wait for as his thumbs worked along the inside of my thighs. “Well, if ever I am able to conceive, I don’t want to be concerned about who is inside me.” I wiggled on his lap and giggled to feel him spring to life again. “At least not when it’s just you and Bret.”
He growled and gripped my buttocks. Hard. Pressed again against my opening as he sought to fill me. “There is a way we can both be inside you, you know.”
A moan slipped past my lips. “I’ll gladly take Bret in my mouth this time if you’ll keep doing that.”
“No.” A devilish gleam glinted in his eyes as he spread the cheeks of my bottom apart. “Yet another place we haven’t tried right about…here.”
I gasped at the bite of pleasure that erupted when he swirled a calloused finger around my tight pucker before pushing against it.
“That’s just…oh.”
“Doesn’t that feel so good?”
“Mmm.” The hum of pleasure was all I could get out as his finger slid just a bit past the resistance.
“Just think how it will feel to have both of us deep inside you.” Heat rolled through me as he pressed in a little deeper. Deliciously so. “One of us pumping your sweet pussy while the other takes your virgin ass.”
A ragged breath of shock escaped me right before Cole took my lips in a rough and feral kiss. I cried out into his mouth as he sank his hardness between my thighs again at the same time he fondled my other opening. The very idea of having him there – any of them there – was both scandalous and downright intoxicating as the pressure increased the pleasure that raced through my blood.
And then suddenly he stopped probing, leaving us both dangling on the edge of a precipice. “Not yet, my darling wife. But soon. It’ll feel so good, Stella. So much pleasure when you take us all in.”
I lay gasping in his arms as he laid me on the bed of grass, eager for the day these new sensations were allowed not only to grow but bloom into a perfect flower. In my wildest dreams, I could never imagine what fullness of joy that moment would bring.
But for now, I reveled in the love my husband lavished on me – and prayed my womb would open for these men who gave me their all.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cole
Several weeks passed after Jahan’s visit before the ranch quieted down from the tenseness we all felt. But even though nothing had happened yet, it didn’t mean we were gonna sit around unprepared for when it did.
After the showdown in our yard and making sure the gang had moved on for now, I sent Evan up the road to inform Russ and his boys about what had happened. He’d alert us right away if he noticed any strange activity along his part of the trail since his property was closer to what counted for civilization out here.
But I wasn’t about to take any chances they might come up the rear of the bluff overlooking our homestead either. Several hands took watch over the course of the days and Evan took most nights when he returned to keep an eye on the back side, just in case Jahan telegraphed his intentions to some lowlifes in one of the few towns down south.
Meanwhile, we also had to focus our efforts bringing in the rest of the crops as the days gradually shorten
ed and the evenings grew cooler. The first frost inched around the corner as September got underway.
Though there was no sign yet of Jahan, I didn’t doubt he’d be back. It was only a matter of when.
And after yet another month passing by, there was still no sign of Stella being with child either. But I wasn’t gonna worry about that. Between rotating watches from the barn loft at night, Bret and I hadn’t taken as much advantage of rotating our time with our cocks buried in Stella’s pussy.
Though we were making progress in that venue. After broaching the subject in the meadow, I’d shown Stella the glass tube Evan had brought back from the mountains after the winter trapping season one year. I never asked, and he didn’t tell.
The tube was made of thick, heavy glass with bulbs in graduated sizes to the largest at the end to help stretch her ass to prepare it for further penetration.
And she’d need to get all the way to the end to be able to take Bret or me there – when she was ready. In the meantime, it was fun to play with and enthralling merely imagining that moment when we’d come as one inside her every opening.
But so far, Evan hadn’t shown the slightest interest in participating. I suspected his disinterest was what kept him insisting on watch duty every night. I mean, I could tell my brother cared for Stella – in his own way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t work so hard to protect her.
I just worried that it’d been so long without a woman around the ranch, that he’d lost all interest in being with one again. The idea of any of my brothers not having children of their own left a hollow place in my heart – one that even Stella couldn’t quite fill.
For now, we had plenty of things to keep us busy from sunup to long past sundown. I carted several bushels of carrots into the house and down into the dank cellar before heading into the kitchen to see what Stella had planned for dinner.
