She frowned, still not convinced of this rare nirvana where men shared one woman. Who did that?
“How can you know there won’t be trouble?”
“Because we agree on almost everything. Because we agree to try to make you happy. In bed with each of us. Out of bed too. Because tomorrow morning, when you leave my room, you may decide you want a piece of Jed. Or a few hours with Harry. And we three will each be fine with it.”
“And I can go, ask for them, just like that?”
“Yes.”
A whole new world seemed to open up before her. Men, hers for the asking, the taking, the enjoying. “You are on drugs.”
He shook his head “We three agree, honey, that you are worth having. Worth sharing. Worth never complaining to give you every bit of us whenever you want us.”
Now she really was in la-la land. So was he.
“Want to be our lover, honey? Like who we are? What we do for you?”
“Oh. Do. I.” She wrapped her arms around his massive shoulders and giggled. “Lead me on, Mr. Will MacRae. I am ready for a night with you.” Days and nights with your brothers too. Many women would refuse. Many couldn’t and wouldn’t want to cope with the demands of three men. But having more than one lover was the fantasy of some women. Truly, she had daydreamed about it herself. Could she live the dream?
She rolled to her side an hour or so later and pressed herself into the curve of Will’s body. Though her body was deliciously sore, her eyes were wide open. Her mind working. The question that ate at her for long minutes was similar to the one she had asked of Will earlier in the day. Could she truly want only sex?
What if her mind began to drift to that old standby of many single women? The one that had done her in before? The one in which she wanted more than sex? More than abundant, ask-and-ye-shall-receive sex with any of the three of them?
Why did her mind go toward happily ever after? She’d expected that before and been badly disappointed. By a man who took her for granted.
Had she suddenly become a radically different kind of woman? One who could care for three men in the same household? In the same family?
But she had been raised in traditional ways. Even if her mother and father had divorced bitterly, Cara had believed in love and after that, marriage. Even if her mother had taken lovers, numerous lovers, and always been disappointed in their lack of constancy and their lack of honesty, Cara had clung to the idea that lovers married. And stayed that way.
She ran a hand over her face. Think! What have I done here? Have I fallen into bed with three brothers and expected, even subconsciously, some promise of a future that, to be realistic, is quite impossible? And ridiculously old-school romantic?
She had to be practical. When the sun came out, she had to leave. Go back to her life. Her new life here in a small town. She groaned.
What if the MacRaes told others about her little sleepover at their ranch? What if word got out what she had done, how she had been so utterly entranced by each of them? One after another?
She covered her eyes.
How could she hold her head up? Run her business here in town?
Get real, Cara. They would never talk about her like that. That’s not who they were.
Still, this affair would end. How could she survive her own failure to enchant them? That had happened to her once, losing a man’s interest. Even if he had not been worth her devotion, she had promised herself never to allow such a failure again.
Yet here she was. Totally fascinated, intrigued, enthralled by three men.
In the gloom of her musings, Will reached out and brought her face around so that he could kiss her nose. “You worry too much, honey. Tomorrow we can talk more, okay? For now, let me help you sleep.” And of course, he was an expert at that too, his thick fingers on her sensitive clit coaxing her to a juicy come all over his hand. Then coating his cock as he sank inside her, ramming her up high and hard again, giving her a smashing, over-the-moon orgasm.
Eager as a kid, she snuggled into his giant body and drifted in the euphoria of great sex.
Tomorrow. Like Scarlett. She’d think of her challenges tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
By noon the next afternoon, the sun shone in a cool, cloudless blue sky. She and Jed rode into town in the Rocking M’s 4x4. Her own pickup, Harry had told her, needed parts. A new undercarriage, a muffler and a radiator had all been blown by the flood and the boulder in the highway ditch.
Cara sat, her hands folded, noting the devastation of the downpour over the high plains. Nothing new in the Hill Country, where extreme changes in terrain caused runoff of torrential rain to flood days after a storm had passed.
“You are too quiet, Cara,” Jed told her and reached for her hand.
“I’m fine.”
“Warm enough? I’ll turn up the heat. You have no sweater and it’s turned so much colder.”
“No. I’m okay. Thanks.”
He squeezed her hand, then took his back to shift gears as the truck attempted to cross a fast-running stream. “Will says you are worried about this and us. He told Harry and me that you and he talked about it. But I think you and I should as well.”
She cast a glance at him. So tall, so striking in his crisp white work shirt, his padded denim vest and his denims. His profile resembled his brothers’. All had high foreheads, sharp Roman noses, square jaws and that luscious midnight hair. The eyes, so large. The winged brows, daring and wicked and downright dangerously seductive.
She smiled at Jed, pulling at his shirt, which he had loaned her because her own had suffered nobly in the interest of great sex with Harry. “I enjoyed my visit. With each of you. To say the very least.”
His wide mouth hitched up in a grin. “You needed to be loved and well.”
She shifted, uneasy with the reference to sex and trying to drown her fears about how she had been so open to making love to the three of them there at the Rocking M. “So did each of you, evidently. Although—”
He caught her reluctance to continue, then shifted gears again as they rose up a hill out of the creek wash. “Although you wonder why?”
“I do. Men as attractive, as fun, as well-off as you three do not need to be celibate. And yet you each say you’ve had no women in your bed for over a year. What’s up with that?”
He harrumphed. “Have you had a lot of men in your bed in the past year?”
“None.”
“Well, there you go. What’s good for the goose, and all that.”
She shook her head. “The men I know don’t sit around for months—hell, some don’t sit for weeks at a spell, hoping for the right woman to hop in the sack with them. What makes you different?”
“We’ve learned that kind of sex is not what we want. Not what we’re after.”
“And just how did you learn that?”
“Like you. Trial and error.”
Crossing her arms, she laughed then, truly and fully. “Amazing.”
“Not really. We’re all human, men and women. We do like comfort, security. We want someone to care for, about, someone worthy of that attention and devotion.”
Biting her lip, she turned away and watched the scenery go past.
“After a few years of investing time and effort in relationships that didn’t work, my brothers and I decided to save ourselves.”
She had to chuckle at that one. “Why can I see this? Easy. You are sweet. Each of you.”
“We heard around town you were coming back to Bravado. We remembered you.”
“You remembered me whistling. Me with my dog. Why is that so memorable?” Bullshit was something the three MacRaes had never given her. And while the story of them recalling her with Little Bit was cute, it wasn’t enough for her. She’d jumped in the sack with three men and she needed reassurance like crazy that this and she were special to them.
“I do not kid you.”
“I was years younger than you,” she objected, yet adored the compliment.
“But you noticed me? Jed, come on. I was fifteen when my folks moved.”
“Yep. And pretty as pink cotton candy.”
“Fat with braces!”
“Wide smile though. Flawless skin. Hair the color of the moon. Nice little breasts.”
“Lechers do like a kid underage.”
He shrugged. “A man can look even if he can’t touch.”
She shut her eyes, chuckling at the memories of herself panting after him and his brothers. “And I had the hots for you three.”
“You surely did,” he confirmed with a grin.
“You knew?”
“Baby, you used to follow us with your eyes everywhere. In church, at the grocery store. Harry and Will and I used to say if only you were older, we’d give you a whirl. But your family moved and our chance to have you was gone.”
She stared at him. “You are quite serious.”
“Dead on.” He checked her expression as he took them down another ravine crossed by a fast-running stream. “Dunno if the truck can make this one. The marker there says four feet.”
The tall white gauge, one of the flood markers on every road in the Hill Country, helped travelers decide whether to venture in a valley with their vehicles or turn back. “What’s our alternative? Go home?”
He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “Only one more road into town.”
“Let’s try it,” she urged.
“Don’t want to go back to the Rocking M?”
I do. Too much. “I can’t. I have work to do. The carpenter should have been at the store this morning, if he can get through the floods. And I missed my volunteer day at the senior center.”
“They’ll understand you got rained in.” Jed swung the wheel around and made a u-turn in the road, then idled the truck in the shoulder. “You will come back to us, hear me?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“But you will.”
He reached over and slid her along the leather seat of the cab. Fist under her chin, he raised her face. “I want you to come back. This weekend. Bring a few clothes.”
She gave out a little cry of despair. “Why bring any?”
“Yeah,” he whispered as his nose rubbed the length of hers and his fabulous warm lips brushed across hers. “You don’t need many. But for modesty when we’re not making love to you, you would want some.”
He cupped her jaw then and kissed her like a savage—tongue and teeth and raw claim.
And oh god, she answered him with the same wild need. She liked—no, loved—his tongue. His clever, artful tongue. Her pussy got all hot and bothered just recalling the way he ate her as though he had never tasted anything so yummy.
“Say you’ll come.”
She caught a laugh. “Now? Or this weekend?”
He cocked a brow at her. “Both, if that’s what you want.”
“Sit back, boy.” She slid over to her side of the seat. “I’ll come Friday, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Demanding cuss,” she groused, postponing her commitment to him.
“Friday at five.”
“Cocktail hour?”
“I’m sure Harry will whip something up worthy of the party.”
Her labia swelled at the idea of wine and hors d’oeuvres with the three MacRae men. Her nipples blossomed too. She wiggled, marveling at the mouthwatering mental picture of her pussy being eaten by one man, her breasts palmed by another while she sucked the magnificent rod of the third. She shook her head, truly mad now.
“Promise me,” Jed commanded, his look stern and domineering, brooking no rejection or prevarication.
“Promise.” God help me, but I want to go back now. Fill myself up with your cocks and your incomparable loving. “Drive me home, will you? I have a business to run.”
An hour later, Terrant Sommers stood in the new part of Aunt Bree’s store as Cara walked in. Jed was right behind her. She had asked him not to accompany her inside, but he would not hear of it. So there they were, she pretending Jed had just…what? Found her somewhere and brought her to work? Jed looking like the Incredible Hulk, so close behind her that you couldn’t get a hair between them.
“Hi, Terr,” Cara greeted the carpenter who had a pencil stuck over his ear, a level up to one wall, measuring for her new shelves. “Glad you got through the washouts.”
“Hey, Cara. Jed.” The tall blond acknowledged them both with a nod, then shook hands with Jed. “Me too. Tough going out there.”
Cara prayed Terr did not show any inclination to talk too long to Jed and vice versa. She had no idea how friendly the two men were, and she didn’t want to learn. Nor did she want any indication to pass between them that she had spent the past few days in the arms of the MacRae men.
“Hello there, sweetie pie.” Her Aunt Bree waltzed in through the hole in the construction plastic that separated the older woman’s shop from the new entrance to Cara’s boutique. Bree came right over and bussed Cara on the cheek. “Glad you’re here. I have been entertaining Terr this morning. He’s just gotten on with things. Well, hi, Jed. How are things up at the Rocking M?”
Cara listened to the chatter, her cheeks flushing with risqué memories.
“Couldn’t be better, Bree.” Jed gave her aunt a grin and a handshake. “Looks like things are moving along here with construction, Terr. Is that oak you’re using for the trim?”
“We are. Giving the shop that antique western look.”
“When will you be finished?” he asked, sounding all too proprietary.
Cara froze. What the hell? She hadn’t said much to Jed about a timeline to open her new section of the store. Why was he making it his business to learn?
“Give, take a week,” Terr told him easily. “Then we’ll sand, paint. Right on schedule, eh, Cara?”
Good. She had hired him. Not Jed. She’d have to set the boundaries here and fast. She whirled on Jed and to the others, she announced, “Jed was just leaving, weren’t you?” She smiled as if they were friends—just friends.
“I was. Just wanted to see you inside,” he responded, his eyes narrowed on her with sultry interest.
Oh no, no, Jed. What are you doing?
To her shock, he wrapped his arms around her and right in front of Terr Sommers, God almighty and her aunt Bree, he swept her up off the floor into his arms and kissed her like there was no tomorrow.
Her lips felt bruised and possessed as he let her toes gently hit the floor again.
She fought for sanity. Wow, would she give him a piece of her mind. “I’ll walk you out. Back in a minute, Terr.”
When they were standing in front of Jed’s truck, the door open and shielding them from any onlookers, she tore into him. “What do you think you’re doing talking to Terrant like that? This is my store. Mine.”
“Whoa, whoa, lady!” He had his hands up. “You think I asked that of him to take over your job, your store, your project? No. I did not.”
Arms akimbo, she lashed out at him. “The words were one thing. But that kiss showed possession. What else could it be?”
“You don’t realize yet, do you, the nature of this town?”
“What? The town? What are you talking about?”
“The number of men.”
“Yes. I saw that in the demographics when I did my research. I heard what you had to say about the ratio the other night. That has nothing to do with what you just said and did.”
“The hell it doesn’t! Half the men over age eighteen are bachelors.”
“So that means you assume because we’ve sle—” Glancing about, she lowered her voice. No one was around, but she wasn’t taking chances. “Because we’ve been together for the past two and a half days that you own me.”
“Never want to own you, baby.” He moved a step closer. “Just need you to know the nature of the town. The men who are married, stay married and—”
“The divorce rate is nearly zero. Big deal. But why act
like a male polecat with my carpenter?”
“Because Terrant Sommers is single. Looking for action. A woman. And I had to do something to show him I have a claim on you.”
“You have no such thing, Jed MacRae!”
To which he picked her right up in the air, pressed her against the body of his 4x4 and kissed her like she had no hope of ever coming up for air. Or finding any other man in town halfway attractive.
When he let her down to the ground minutes later, her lips stung. Her body ached. And her mind screamed for some relief from her quandary. To take Jed at his word—or to break it off now, before he and his brothers tried to dominate more of her than her body. Before they wanted her independence.
He thumbed her lower lip. “You belong to the MacRaes. We have staked our claim.”
“That kind of arrogance gets you nowhere with me,” she shot back.
“It already did get us somewhere. Inside that juicy little pussy of yours. Inside your mind. And, baby, know this about us MacRae boys, you’ve got us wrapped around your little finger too. So we are not about to stop fucking you until we all four agree where this is going.”
“Where this is going is nowhere. I will not be ordered around. Or claimed. Or—” She waved a hand toward the shop. “Or portrayed as chattel.”
He sputtered. “I have chattel. Believe me, you aren’t among them. Never could be. Never will. And I hear what you’re telling me and I understand your point. It won’t happen again. Promise.”
She glared at him, unused to men who admitted they had made a mistake.
“And the only way for you to see if that’s true is to come back to me. To us. So here.” He picked up her hand and slapped a slim black box into it. The box had a dial pad on it like a telephone keypad.
“What in god’s name is this?” she blurted, her fury still sparking, her ego smarting.
“The keycard for the Rocking M main gate.”
“What for?” she shot back at him. “If you think I’m coming out there Friday night so that you and your brothers can ride roughshod—”
“I promised I wouldn’t. Harry and Will won’t either. Come Friday night at five. And you will use this to let yourself in.” A wicked smile spread across his full lips. “Come early, if you can. We’ll be ready for you.”
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