by Gigi Moore
Jax had always admired her cheek and quirkiness. They had been among her biggest attractions next to her beautiful body and intelligence. But more he loved that Muse had the ability to surprise him.
Jax thought predictability the worst kiss of death in a relationship. He liked surprises and variety in his life. He had never, however, been unpredictable or daring enough to take part in a threesome or a ménage the way Muse did. He had never even considered it before now.
The idea of sharing a woman with a man didn’t hold any great appeal or fascination for him, but the idea of sharing Tamara with his brother, intrigued him on a level he never thought possible.
He couldn’t explain why, but the thought of watching his twin please this woman, the thought of watching his mirror image bring Tamara to climax with his mouth and his cock, excited Jax as much as the idea of having Tamara himself. The imagery plain made his shaft twitch in his boxer briefs with renewed energy and desire. The hunger for a new kind of conquest, a new mode of satisfaction caused an exquisite ache to gnaw at his groin.
Jax stepped back and tried to give himself some breathing room. But he grasped her by the shoulders and didn’t know whether he braced her or himself when he asked, “You still have feelings for him, right?”
She didn’t hesitate to say, “I’m still angry with him, if that’s what you mean.”
“You can’t stay angry with him forever.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Aw, c’mon. You’re not the type to hold a grudge.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him as if to say he should know better than that, and Jax gave her a grim smile remembering her fallout with Bailey.
He wondered if she considered Jess’s transgression as unforgivable as Bailey’s then recalled the scene in the kitchen and realized she still felt raw inside. Her father still treated her like an outsider, and the man she’d trusted enough to sleep with had turned out to be not so trustworthy—at least not in her eyes.
Jax wanted to tell her just how trustworthy Jess was. He wanted to tell her how much Jess cared about her. He knew he had to take it slow, a serious stretch for someone as impulsive as him. But Tamara would see even a soft sell a mile away, so he had to play things safe.
He had to make some effort though otherwise the whole trip out here would be a total waste of time. “He acted like a lost puppy when you left.”
“My dad?”
“Him too, but I’m talking about Jess.”
She gaped, then quickly snapped her mouth shut as if she didn’t want Jax to know how much his revelation shocked her. “You were both nine—kids!”
“It doesn’t mean we loved you any less.”
“Jax—”
“Just hear me out.” He tightened his grip on her shoulders, not painfully so, but enough to get her attention. “When you left, he took it pretty personally. He blamed himself for Noah and you getting caught, and I think he thinks you blamed him too.”
“That’s ridiculous! You didn’t blame yourself, did you?”
“I’m not Jess. Jess has always been the responsible one, likes to carry everyone’s woes on his shoulders whether they want him to or not. And he just felt if we hadn’t been there horsing around shirking our duty that day, then Bailey wouldn’t have had any reason to come in the barn looking for us.”
Her eyes softened with an expression of sympathy, and Jax decided to push home his advantage. “When he found out you would be coming back, his past came rushing back to slap him in the face. He didn’t know how to feel about it, how to react. I’m sure when he went to the airport to pick you up he wasn’t—”
“What? He wasn’t himself? He wasn’t in his right mind?”
“That’s not what I’m going to say.”
“Good. Because if you think you’re going to turn this around and make it my fault that your brother’s an arrogant deceitful asshole, you’ve got another thing coming.”
He smiled at her prickliness. Clearly, she wasn’t used to and didn’t like being wrong about anything and would defend her stance against Jess tooth and nail. Changing her mind would prove tough, but Jax counted on her affection for and memories of Jess the boy, her little man, to help him over the hump. “Tam, when you left you took a piece of him with you. He had to figure out a way to get that piece back, figure out a way to get himself back. And Jess chose to bury himself in work. He threw himself into the ranch, into making it the best one around. Pop acted like a pig in slop when he saw at least one of his sons taking the initiative and taking to the family business.”
“I’ll bet.” Tamara smirked and Jax rushed on, trying to cover what he had revealed about himself without meaning to. “When Pop told Jess you would be coming back, he didn’t take it so well. He resented your coming back.”
“I see.” She nodded, her expression contemplative as she bit her full bottom lip, her eyes just a little sad. “Did he tell you all this?”
“Some of it. But most of it I got from just knowing him, and knowing how he thinks. And ever since he found out you were on your way home…I mean to the ranch he’s been all balled up inside.”
“And in order to work things out and unball his insides he fucked me?”
Jax dropped his hands from her shoulders and shrugged at her harsh tone. He tried not to wince and let her know she’d gotten to him with her blunt accuracy.
Tamara shook her head and chuckled. “The twisted thing is I understand why he did it.”
Jax’s eyebrows shot up with hope that Tamara instantly dashed when she held up her hand in a stop sign to head him off at the pass. “I said I understand why he did it. It doesn’t mean I forgive him for lying to me.”
He grinned. “You understand though. That means you’re half-way there.”
“Have you always been such an optimist?”
He draped an arm around her shoulders and grinned. “You know me. The glass is always half full.”
“Seems to me that you’re the one who’s full…of shit!” She emphasized the last two words bumping her hip into his hard enough to knock him off balance and into the water.
Jax came up sputtering and shaking water from his hair. “You little witch!”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Jax swam to the rocks and leaned his forearms on the rock shelf at Tamara’s feet. He didn’t want to address her statement, couldn’t imagine what she might have done to elicit worse or why the idea that she had been at the wrong end of someone’s wrath or hatred bothered him so much. She was a big girl. She could definitely take care of herself. And so could his brother. So why did he find himself in the middle of their little fracas? Didn’t he have enough of his own troubles to worry about, his own disappointments and setbacks?
He admired her toes for a moment, the coral color flattering her dainty, flawless feet, feet he wouldn’t have minded kissing and coming back for more.
Jax had never had such an inclination but still licked his lips at the prospect of placing his lips right against the instep of her foot. Being around this woman and her and his brother’s relationship woes made him hornier than he’d ever been before. It wasn’t an exactly ideal condition for a so-called matchmaker to be in.
He reached up a hand and grinned. “Help me up?”
“Not on your life.” She winked and dove over his head into the water behind him. When she came up blinking water from her eyes, she completely caught Jax off-guard. “Race you back!”
Like a shot, she swam toward shore.
Jax took a moment to admire her graceful, efficient form, then took off after her.
Closing the distance as they neared shore, he dove under the water, caught her around the legs and pulled her under with him, before pushing up to break the surface and continue swimming to shore.
Jax pulled himself up onto dry land, listening to Tamara’s determined strokes as she made it to shore a moment after him.
He headed back for the horses several yards away where they had left them. He turned
just in time to watch her pull herself out of the water. She made a vision in her sexy underwear that perfectly complemented her smooth fair complexion and made him want to sink his teeth into and lick her from head to toe.
“Cheater,” she said as she caught up to him.
Jax braced himself for the light punch that she delivered to his arm and laughed. “I could have taken you without cheating.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“It wouldn’t have been as much fun.” And he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hold her for those brief moments it took him to pull her under.
She shook her head, and the smile she gave him had a tinge of sadness and wonder.
“What?”
“It’s just amazing how two people who look exactly alike can be so different.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Not at all. In fact, a woman could get used to the…”
Jax leaned closer as she let her words trail off, waited for her to finish, but she murmured her next word so low, he almost didn’t hear it—almost didn’t. “So you like variety?”
“You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“But I did.”
She shrugged and after a long silent moment said, “You know what they say. Variety is the spice of life.”
“And how much spice and variety are you looking for Tamara Carpenter?”
Chapter 14
The question took her totally by surprise, and it probably shouldn’t have, not with the direction her thoughts had been going in for the last couple of hours.
How much spice and variety did she want, indeed? And could she let the twins provide that spice and variety? Were they ready to provide that spice and variety?
Good question as Jess had already pissed her off, and she barely spoke to him since finding out the truth. In fact, and she suspected Jax just humored her.
God, she didn’t even know what she needed anymore!
Before her arrival, she had been pretty sure of what she wanted and needed in her life—a fulfilling career, someone who loved and cared about her, someone to share her successes and be there for her with tea, sympathy and a strong shoulder to help her get over the failures.
For a time, James had provided those, or so she’d thought. But James suddenly breaking off their engagement had admittedly left her confused and floundering, had left her reevaluating her wants and needs especially when it came to a man.
She had thought her future would be with James, a future of security and stability.
Yeah, stability. No excitement or spontaneity, no fire, all the things you’ve been searching for since you left home, all the things you thought you’d find in New York.
She stared at Jax, and his serious look made something come alive and flutter in her stomach. He looked like her answer really interested him, not to mention his eager expression said that he could and would fulfill her every wish and need.
If only life could be as simple and straightforward as telling him what she wanted and getting it. What would she do once she got what she wanted and would she able to deal with the consequences of getting her wish?
She already regretted her decision to sleep with Jess. But then she hadn’t made a completely informed decision there, had she?
Would the decision to get physically involved with Jax be more informed? It wasn’t as if she knew Jax any better than she knew Jay.
“That hard a question, huh?”
“I’m just trying to come up with the right answer.”
“There is no right or wrong answer, Tamara. This isn’t a court of law. I’m just asking you—man to woman—what you want.”
If he only knew even in a court of law right wasn’t always right and wrong wasn’t always wrong. Shades of gray abounded, especially when her job often involved twisting a situation to her advantage—especially when the situation involved emotions.
Like with her mother, Tamara thought. She had so many questions still, didn’t believe half of what Paula and Jeremiah had told her about her mother. She supposed she still held out hope that she would meet the woman one day and that she would look on Tamara with love and pride and not the negative emotions and situation that must have driven her away.
God, she hated admitting that the woman’s desertion still stung, even after all these years, hated that she needed that maternal validation.
She closed her eyes when she thought about all the compromises she had made in her life—staying with James when all logic told her that he wasn’t right for her, taking on certain cases when her conscience niggled at her, wanting to believe in and forgive her mother when all signs said that she didn’t deserve any of Tamara’s tender mercies.
“What if I said that I…” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to stare at Jax as if to make him pluck the thoughts and feelings from her heart and mind so that she wouldn’t have to say the words out loud. “What if I want both of you?”
Jax didn’t even blink or miss a beat. “Do you?”
God help her she did, and she knew her father wouldn’t approve, not one bit.
Noah had only been one man, and her dad hadn’t approved of him. Of course Noah had been a decade older than her and, according to her father and to a lesser degree, Jeremiah, he didn’t have a future, whereas she did. She was going places that Noah would never reach. They’d claimed he would have held her back, but at eighteen, she hadn’t wanted to hear any logic. No one could have gotten past her fog of teenage certainty and lust to convince her that she was in love, or that she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life with Noah.
She could claim age and wisdom now, though.
And the wise decision would be to cut her loses and spare herself the heartache rather than wade into uncharted territory with two men almost a decade younger than her. Not to mention the fact that they were cowboys attached to the land and who lived in Colorado while she toiled in a purely white-collar job as a lawyer and lived almost half-way across the country in New York.
Jax stepped closer and caught her by the arms. “Do you want both of us, Tamara?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“You do. You’re just afraid to say it.”
“Of course I’m afraid! I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“You think I have?”
“I don’t know, Jax. Why don’t you tell me since I really don’t know all that much about you beyond your having a wicked sense of humor and a smile to match.”
“You know me better than you think.”
She wanted to believe that, but more, she wanted to believe she could trust him not to hurt her the way James had, not to hurt her the way his brother had.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me or Jess. And contrary to what you think, Jess didn’t set out to hurt you. Neither of us would ever hurt you intentionally. You know that.”
“I know.” But it didn’t mean that this situation suited any of them, and it didn’t mean that they wouldn’t hurt her at all, just not intentionally—small comfort.
Her father already thought her a jezebel and a fallen woman. What would he think of her if she went through with this madness, if she, Jess and Jax got involved? What would Jeremiah think?
She should have been over this by now. She had been living on her own for more almost two decades, without the approval of either parent or Jeremiah. She didn’t need their approval.
But she wanted it.
Jax slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close to nuzzle her throat. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m afraid too.”
She pulled back to look at him, eyebrows arched.
“Don’t look so shocked. I’ve never done anything like this before either.”
“What do you think Jeremiah will think about it?”
Jax shrugged. “I’ve never based any of my relationships with women on what Pop thinks. If I did, I’d never be with anyone.”
“Speaking of which, exactly what is your status woman-wi
se?”
“I’m not with anyone right now, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
“I guess that’s comforting.”
“I wouldn’t have made a play for you if I had an attachment to another woman.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Making a play?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
She grinned and returned his hug, loving the way his skin felt so warm and firm beneath her touch, loving the way his hard muscles felt pressed against her.
“I might have known this is what you’d be up to.”
Jax dropped his arms from around her and jumped back as if he’d been burned.
Tamara turned and followed his gaze to see Jess sitting up on a black stallion. He looked majestic and so damn gorgeous she had to fight not to release the estrous sigh that teased the edges of her vocal cords. She had to fight not to allow her panties to completely flood with her juices.
He also looked pissed, which made her pissed. Who the hell did he think himself, judging anyone, much less his brother who hadn’t lied to her the way he had?
But there he sat, self-righteous and indignant and just so damn fine she wanted to slap the smirk off his face.
Had he always looked so cocky or did she just notice it now because he’d angered her?
You can’t stay angry with him forever.
Jax’s words haunted her, poking her conscience. She couldn’t stay angry forever, except in Jess’s case, she wasn’t willing to forgive him so fast and easy either.
Why did she assess him so harshly? She’d forgiven James for repeated affronts just as bad or worse than Jess’s. Why didn’t he deserve her forgiveness when James had?
She’d expected so much more from Jess that’s why. He had disappointed her, skewed her perception of the sweet if also somber little scamp she used to remember. And these, more than any lie he could have told her, hurt the most.
Jess smoothly dismounted his horse and made his way over to Tamara and Jax.
He didn’t hesitate to haul back his fist and strike his brother in the jaw.
