“Can I have coffee?” She peered over Harry’s arm, grinned at his eggs and sausage. “And god, am I starving.”
Will stood up and pulled out a chair for her. “Come sit. I’ll get your coffee for you.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “I need it before we talk.”
Jed froze, expecting she’d bitch about the cuffs. “Best to get started.”
She crossed one leg over the other, looking a bit too purposeful to be relaxed. Her breasts bobbed beneath the skinny tee.
Jed wished he could rearrange his cock in his jeans. She made him hard just sitting here, for god’s sakes. What to say to her? Thinking too much, he rolled his tongue around his mouth. “We hoped you had as good a time last night as we did.”
She absolutely beamed at him. “I did. Oh. I. Really. Did.”
“Yeah?” Will set her mug in front of her, then sat next to her. Leaning back in his chair, he began to massage her shoulder. “We gave you quite a workout, sweet thing.”
She seemed to test the tension in her arms and legs. “I can feel it in every cell.”
“If that was too much,” Jed began, “then—”
“Might have been,” she allowed.
Harry came to stand beside Jed. “We can be better.”
“We were eager,” Will pointed out.
“As teenagers,” Jed added.
“Yes,” she seemed to savor the word. “And I loved it.”
“You did?” Will asked, as if he always knew it was true.
“And I think if we’re going to be together again, I need to prepare.”
“Prepare?” Jed and Harry asked in unison.
Cara licked her lips, the look on her oval face pure wicked woman. “I need to get back to my jogging. For endurance.”
“Yeah, right,” Jed chuckled, relief coursing through his body. “That would help all of us.”
“Ya think?” She rolled her eyes at him and they all got a big laugh out of that one. Then she brushed the fabric of her pants and picked off imaginary lint. “I thought too, I might do a bit of weight training.”
“Sure ’nuf,” Will added. “We have a good set in our workout room.”
Jed shot him a warning glance, while Harry outright scowled at him.
“Don’t mind him, Cara,” Jed bit off.
“I’d like to use your weights,” she told them.
Jed groaned inside. “What the hell, why not?” he shrugged, giving up on trying to orchestrate this love affair with her. Too damn many brothers involved to keep order.
“Where is your weight room?” she asked. “I haven’t seen it.”
“There’s a lot to the ranch you haven’t seen, baby,” Jed told her to cover their tracks. The weight room was beyond the men’s bedroom corridor and attached to their dungeon. Cara would see it when she was good and ready for it. If that took weeks or months, so be it. “For now, let’s eat our breakfast.”
“Nothing strenuous for me today,” she told them, watching each man react and exhaling as each brother nodded in agreement.
Jed noted how she rubbed her wrists where she’d been shackled to the shower ceiling. “You can start your jogging tomorrow. Definitely not today. How about a movie after breakfast?”
“I brought one, in fact.”
Harry groaned. “Zombies? Spies? Things that blow up every two minutes?”
“None of that. You’ll like it. Promise.”
“Uh-oh.” Will made an ugly face. “I feel a chick flick attack comin’ on.”
“Stop that. It won awards for everything. Plus, I brought popcorn,” she added, as bright as a teenage girl on her first wild date.
“That’s what we’ve been missing.” Jed snapped his fingers. “Someone with good taste to choose our movies.”
“Maybe,” she taunted them, “someone who brings good popcorn. Okay, so we’ll watch it,” she said. “Then I have got to run home.”
“But you are coming back,” Jed told her.
“Am I?”
He nodded.
“Goody.” She grinned. “Next weekend sound okay?”
“Perfect.” Jed told her. The world was right for now.
“Before you go, we have presents for you,” Harry told her as he served her a plate of food.
“Oh come on, fellas. I don’t need anything.”
Will took a drink of his coffee. “We like these for you. You’ll have them. Use them.”
“If you like them,” Jed rushed in to add the conditional to Will’s statement, “please use them.”
“What are they?”
Jed’s mouth went dry.
Will and Harry focused on her face, and then as if drawn by magnets to her nipples and her crotch, they blinked and cleared their throats.
Cara was laughing. “Now I cannot eat until you show me what you have!”
Harry and Will rose as though someone had put buckshot in their chairs.
Jed shook his head, trying to ameliorate the situation. “We can wait.”
She got to her feet. “I can’t.”
Jed winced. “Baby, I don ‘t think we should show you these—”
“Oh come on, sweetie,” she urged him, her arm through his, her nipple rubbing his upper arm. “You can show me, can’t you?”
“But we won’t touch you,” Jed declared and gained forbidding looks from his brothers.
“Good. I’m not capable of surviving that without a meltdown.”
“No worries,” he promised to the polite echo of Harry.
But Will stood and said, “Take your clothes off.”
His tone swept over her like a sweet, warm wave of temptation. Her body tingled with expectation, the surprise of gifts a rare joy. Yet Will’s voice invoked a question in her mind. Could she trust him not to touch her?
Teasing apart what she knew of him, she swirled her top over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her breasts swelled at their exposure. Her nipples beaded, spilling up and over the edge of her lacey French demi-bra. At the men’s gasps of appreciation at the sight, Cara unhooked her bra. Her nipples tingled in excitement. Then she slipped her fingers to her soft cotton pants, pulled the string and let them puddle at her bare feet. Her panties, white and transparent, were a thin boundary. They too swiftly met the floor.
Naked, she stood as the three MacRaes circled round her like animals on the prowl. She shook her hair over her shoulders, the ends curling over her hungry breasts. She stared at each man as he passed before her, her feet planted in a stance she would call warrior queen.
That they did not touch her aching nipples or her flooding pussy was a miracle and a mistake. Once stripped of every scrap of cloth, the music that sang through her body was the need to be touched and petted and claimed and loved by them. Yet she bit her lips, pressed her pounding labia together and let them look and admire. Let them tell her what to do.
Harry took from his pocket two silver clips in the shape of tiny birds. “For your nipples.”
“Clamps?” she asked, astonished, breathless. Other women got jewelry. Why not receive delicate birds for her breasts?
“Wear them when you think of me.” He winked at her then crossed his arms. “Put them on.”
Gulping at the thrill of self-stimulation, she preened when Jed and Will grinned at her. She clipped them on, her eyes closing at the delicious pinch of the clamps. What could Jed and Will give her?
Will pulled something small from his jeans pocket, rolled it between two giant palms and put a hot black bullet in her hand. “For your ass.”
She stared at him, shaking her head. “But I don’t know how to use this.”
He lifted his palms in the air. “Yes, you do. Use it this week. I have bigger ones for you, when you’re ready. And trust me, you will want to be ready.”
For your massive cock? In my ass? Yes. In my mouth? Absolutely! She shivered in delighted anticipation, her throat swallowing over and over to learn the last gift. “Jed?”
“This piece is from
me.” He took from the lower shelf of a kitchen cabinet a black leather belt, or so it appeared to be. Yet it was delicately braided, and as he draped it around her hips, his fingers barely touching her skin, his eyes only on his task, Cara felt how supple the leather was. Jed hooked it in the back, dragged it just to the points of her hipbones and then brought from his jeans pocket a silver chain. The oddest looking piece, the silver appeared to be a thong with two chains that Jed secured over her mound and under her labia.
“Spread your legs wider, baby,” Jed urged, his face so close to her cunt that she creamed for the kiss of his lips.
When she did open up, he reached under her pussy and up in back to another hook and clamped it. Then in one slow slide, he tightened the chain. She caught her breath.
The chain separated her pussy lips and held them open so that her clit, now full and eager to be cared for, protruded for the three men to see. Worse, or better, the chains went right up her crack, rubbing her asshole and driving her nuts.
She sank to her knees. Her eyes shut.
“Get up,” Will ordered her, his voice the bass command of one who was never refused.
Her gaze locked on his, his tone alone had her rising, tipping up her hips to settle the chain more comfortably and letting them see what kind of woman they had created here with their exquisite loving and their erotic presents.
“Thank you,” she managed in an even voice that sounded of more control than she felt. “I look forward to wearing your gifts. I’ll see you next Friday night.”
“Five o’clock,” Will seemed to warn against any tardiness.
She gave him and his brothers a satisfied half-smile, secure in the knowledge that they not only wanted her back, but liked her spunk.
“And if I need you before then,” she cooed and strolled past them, rolling her hips and letting her heavy breasts sway, then picked up her clothes from the floor. She opened the door to the bathroom to dress in solitude away from temptation, and turned back to smile at them. “I’ll call.”
Chapter Thirteen
She didn’t need to. Monday, while she was in the middle of unpacking a shipment of medieval-style satin and silk corsets from Milan, Jed strode into her back room.
“Hi there.” She beamed at him, overjoyed he had come to visit. “I didn’t think I’d see you until Friday.”
He walked right over to her, removed his black cattleman’s hat and hauled her into his arms. “Needed a little refreshment.”
And then he kissed her, all gone-to-hell possession.
Primed for more of his body, she wiggled against him. “Mmm. Glad you came.”
He nipped at her earlobe. “Thought I’d take you to lunch.”
She arched a brow at him. “Just lunch?”
“Just.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the door.
“No need to have the others here?”
“Is that what you got from the weekend? No,” he told her gravely. “We three have a pact. If you want us all together, that’s good. If you want us separately, just as fine.”
“Up to me then?” She had to learn.
“Not always. Sometimes, don’t you just want to be taken?”
How did he know?
“Yes.” But the cuffs and Will’s voice worry me. “I need to be clear.”
He swiped a hand over his mouth. “Today, I’m here because I missed you and I need to eat. So do you. Which means…?”
Relieved at the idea she could have a normal everyday relationship with him and his brothers, she said, “Wait. Let me lock up.” She caught her purse and turned the key in the lock, then let him take her a mile out of town to an old icehouse that served the best burgers in a hundred miles.
He did not touch her again.
More’s the pity.
She ached for it. Even tempted him with a lingering kiss at her backdoor.
But he ruffled her hair. “Take care, baby. Friday.”
“Friday.” She waved goodbye as he drove off in his 4x4, wondering why he didn’t ask how her chain fit. Or felt. Or drove her totally insane with desire when she dared to wear it at night alone in her apartment.
* * * * *
“Come on in now. What do you think?” Cara led her aunt Bree through the plastic sheeting entry to her new part of Bree’s boutique Thursday night at six.
Bree examined every inch of the room, turning in a slow circle to take in the bisque-colored walls, the blush satin on the French Rococo chairs and the deeper rose draperies framing the fitting rooms. “Stunning. You’ll have every woman in five hundred miles in here clamoring for a complete wardrobe.”
Cara had her hands clasped before her, proud at how well her ideas had come together. “God, I hope so. I’ve sunk so much money in this that it better be profitable quickly or I’m in the bread line.”
“Jeffrey owed you more than fifty grand, honey,” her aunt said with a sneer at the man they both could take apart with their hands. “After what he put you through.”
“I’m over that,” Cara told her.
Her aunt leveled her dark-green gaze on her. “The MacRaes helped you through it too, haven’t they?”
“They have.” Although I do ask myself if I’m ready for the complete transformation of my character that their actions seem to be demanding.
“Hmm.” Her aunt pursed her lips and walked around the store fingering the fabrics that shimmered and teased. The bras and corsets, the panties and nighties were all works of art few Texas women ever saw except online.
“What bothers you, Aunt Bree?” Please don’t tell me I’ve made a bad choice in these men.
Her aunt faced her. “They are good boys. Well brought up.”
“Why do I hear a ‘but’ there somewhere?”
“They are gentlemen. But you must realize that with the male-to-female ratio here, our men are a bit different in Bravado.”
“How different?” Cara moved closer to read her aunt’s minutest facial expression.
“They are starved for good women to love them.”
“Are you saying that makes them unable to choose good mates for themselves?” If that’s the case, then does that mean I am deluded in thinking the three MacRaes are kind and caring of me especially? Or would they do that for any woman who came along with a smile and a body they wanted to play with?
“No. The men here in Bravado know what a good woman is. I’m concerned that these three men, who were known to be wildcatters as recently as a year ago, are the right men for you.”
Men. Her aunt had said men, plural. Cara didn’t know whether to be calmed or in despair that Bree knew she was seeing all three of them.
“Are they?” her aunt pressed.
“Right for me? Yes. I think so. I’ve been with them only a few days, but—”
“Long enough, sugar pie. And if you like a man after the thirty-second thrill in the sack is gone, then you can place odds he’s gonna be fine outside the bedroom.”
Cara stared at her aunt. “And three? Do you think a woman can control three?”
“Control?” Bree looked at her as though she had grown three heads. “Sugar, you will not control three men in all ways. But you can make them your own. If you have half a mind to…and they don’t scare you off.”
The cuffs in the shower. Her gifts from them. Will’s gruff tones of command. Those sent warning shots up Cara’s spine. Put those together with the box of black leather whips and masks, the huge harness and some other contraption she couldn’t discern—and she wondered if Aunt Bree had more than one reason to speak of Cara being scared off by them.
“I’m not afraid of them,” she told her aunt.
“Good. Like I said, they are fine boys. But Jeff did a number on your self-esteem with his criticisms.”
“And all the women he had while we were married.”
“Exactly. So take your time, Cara. These MacRaes seem well-taken with you but make certain you get what you want from them just like they get from you.”
&nb
sp; “Thanks,” Cara said, grateful for the advice. What did she want from them? Aside from the opportunity to have three different lovers separately or in a fantastic a quatre?
“You’re welcome. Best to get yourself grounded and rested before your grand opening next Saturday afternoon. I’ve heard every customer of mine this week say she’s coming and bringing her friends.”
“I’m so excited. The marketing firm I hired out of San Antonio has done a great job of getting the website set up. I have more than three hundred orders already.”
“Gonna be a huge success,” a booming voice told them from across the room.
“Harry MacRae,” Bree greeted him. “Are you boys coming to toast our girl here in her new venture?”
“Yes ma’am, wouldn’t miss it.” He winked at Cara as he tipped his Stetson to her. “I came to take you for a drink.”
Cara clapped her hands at the victory that he too, had come to see her before the week was out. “Great. I am thirsty and we’re closing up here. Why not come with us, Aunt Bree?”
“No indeedy. I have had a long day. I am going home to put up my feet and have a vodka tonic. Maybe two. You both go. Have fun. Good night.”
Cara and Harry watched Bree disappear back through the plastic sheeting.
“I’m coming out to the ranch to see you all tomorrow night,” Cara told him when he didn’t move from the back door.
“And you didn’t call.”
“Like I threatened?”
“Yeah. Just like.”
“And so you are here because…?”
“Had to come lay eyes on you.”
“Oh?” She couldn’t resist toying with him. To learn if she could lead him—or any one of them, she had to test the reins, didn’t she? “Couldn’t wait?”
His dimple deepened as he gave her a half-smile and turned on his heel. “Guess I’ll go if you’re gonna be—”
She caught him by his long hair.
“Hey!” He whirled around and had her in his arms in a split second.
She chuckled, wrapping her wrist in his silky mane and brushing her mouth against his. “Hey,” she whispered. “I missed you too. Kiss me.”
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