Ella's Desire

by Ella's Desire (lit)

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone else thinks,” Ben replied, leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table. “I’m in love with Ella. You’re in love with Ella. Dirk’s in love with Ella. If this polite society you’re so all-fired concerned about doesn’t like it, then I say to hell with them!” Ella watched him smile, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. “And if anyone says anything nasty about Ella, I’ll call the bastard out. Do either of you know anyone whose faster on the draw than me?”

  “Stop it,” Ella said sharply. “I don’t want you men saying things like that. All this talk of gunfights scares me.” She shook her head and her blonde tresses swirled around her shoulders. “Our love, as unconventional as it is, shouldn’t be defined by guns and violence. It can’t be about that.”

  Ella stepped forward and placed her hand lightly on Ben’s shoulder, affection shining in her eyes as she looked down at him, then at Blue and Dirk.

  “I never dreamed that anything like this could happen. Certainly not to me,” she continued. All she wore was Ben’s oversized shirt, and when he slid his palm up the back of her naked thigh, she shivered. Her eyes drifted momentarily closed. “But no more loving. At least not for today.”

  “Sore?” Blue asked, his voice very soft, the tone colored with guilt.

  Ella nodded then nibbled on her lower lip for a moment as a faint blush colored her cheeks. “But I wouldn’t have changed anything about what we did.” Ben’s hand slipped up the back of her leg until his palm cupped her bottom. “And I can’t wait to do it all again.” A sigh escaped her lips. “Having all three of you inside me, all at the same time, made me feel things I’d never dreamed were possible. I felt it all. Your strength. Your desire for me.” Ben’s fingers tightened on her bottom, and Ella shook her head. “I felt your love for me. Love and lust. What can be better than that?” She turned so that Ben’s hand was no longer beneath the tails of the shirt, his fingers no longer caressing responsive flesh. “Start thinking, all of you. Figure out how we can live our lives together and not have my name be a byword for immoral behavior.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Dirk said. “Ben and Blue won’t let you go, and I damned sure won’t. So we’ll think of something, and your reputation won’t be tarnished because of your love for us, or our love for you.”

  Ella nibbled on her lower lip again, and a gentle, impish warmth came into her blue eyes. “Perhaps what you need is some incentive.”

  “Incentive?” Dirk’s brow furrowed. “Having your love all to ourselves is one hell of a lot of incentive.”

  As Ella sank slowly to her knees, she purred, “Perhaps. But just because I’m a little sore, that doesn’t mean my lovers should be deprived.” She opened Ben’s trousers. He filled her hand, growing quickly. “Don’t come,” she whispered, leaning over his thigh to plant a light kiss on the crown of his arousal. “None of you get to come until you figure out how we’re going to make this work.” She licked the tip, and Ben almost instantly swelled to full stature. Taking his erection between her lips, she nodded briefly, sucking lightly. Ben let out a low groan of pleasure before she released him, then crawled on her hands and knees over to Dirk. “Like I said, what you need is incentive. And you can think of me,” she took Dirk’s big hand and licked along the middle fingers, “as inspiration.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “As much as I hate to say it, I’d better get back home soon,” Ella said as she poured coffee into blue, enameled tin cups.

  “Will there be trouble?”

  Ben’s question had been casually delivered, but Ella sensed that all three men watched her very carefully, each wanting to protect her from a loathsome fiancé who somehow foisted his way into a decision-making position at the T-3 Ranch.

  “There’s always trouble but nothing that I can’t handle.” Ella sat on Blue’s lap and then took a sip of coffee. “Tim will complain for a while, so I’ll give him a couple hundred in spending money, and he’ll ride off into town. As for my mother, she’ll lecture me about my responsibilities to her, tell me I’ve got to set a date for the wedding, and complain that she doesn’t have enough spending money. She’ll be more expensive than Tim, and she’ll complain a lot more. Frankly, I wish I could pay her enough so that I wouldn’t have to listen to anything she says.”

  “I thought we had agreed that you were with us now.” Dirk’s statement came out cold and defiant as he looked at Ella, and there was a distinct proprietary emphasis on the word us. “What the hell does it matter what Tim or your mother thinks or says?”

  Ella closed her eyes for a moment, summoning willpower. She understood that, as extraordinarily wealthy men, Ben and Dirk couldn’t possibly understand the restrictions society placed upon women—even women of wealth and social standing. Just the same, to hear their sense of possession and protectiveness of her filled her heart with love.

  “We discussed this before,” she said after several seconds of silence. “We’ll be together. All of us. Together. I don’t know how.” She took a deep breath. “I only know that it will be. But we can’t flaunt society so completely that we get ostracized.” As a woman, she understood the stratification of society so much better than men. And it was wealthy men who least understood the disadvantages of living outside of society’s acceptable standards. “We’ve just got to be intelligent and clear-headed.”

  “She’s right,” Blue said, his tone sharp, almost eliminating any possibility of dissention. “You men have been borne into privilege, which means you haven’t any real understanding of privilege. It’s always been so much a part of you that you can’t see it. Ella has wealth, and that gives her luxury and esteem, but if we do anything that makes her despised by society, we’ll have harmed her more than any of us can imagine.” He combed fingers through his long, silken hair. “I can’t imagine that any of us wants to harm Ella by our love for her.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” Dirk said in a voice hardly more than a whisper, but filled with sincerity.

  “So then it’s up to us,” Ben said, “to figure out how to make this work. There’s got to be a way where the four of us can be one. Some way to keep our love secret from the bluebloods from Boston who come here to buy all our land. If they find out about us, it’ll be a public scandal.” He closed his eyes briefly. “And the first bastard who says there’s something sinful about my love to Ella is going to get called out. I’m not the fastest man on the draw, but I’m faster than most, and I’ll shoot the first man who slanders my love for Ella.”

  Blue stepped forward, raising his hands. “Wait! Just wait a second. What we’re talking about needs clear heads, rational thinking.” He looked directly at Ben. “And clear thinking doesn’t include gunfights and duels!”

  Ella said softly, “I’ve fallen in love with three men. Would you please tell me what’s rational about that?”

  It was Dirk, the largest and most powerful of the men, and the least patient, who stepped forward. “Enough! Later on we’ll figure out how to keep our love alive and a secret. That’s for later. For now, there are bastards out there stealing our lady’s cattle, and I think we ought to do something about it.” He sighed and rubbed a huge palm against his face. “Besides, it’s a damned site easier thinking about cattle rustlers than figuring out how to be just one of three men in love with the same woman.”

  Seconds ticked by, and the men exchanged glances. At first they were deadly series glances, but then they all smiled. Ella stood back, observing them, aware that they had just—each in their own way—given a vow of love.

  There was a part of Ella that wanted to shout out of her joy, of her happiness. But there was another part of her that understood these men mustn’t be pushed, mustn’t be rushed. Whatever decision they came to individually and collectively, they had to believe that the decision was theirs, and not one that had been foisted upon them. Ben, Dirk, and Blue were men who faced challenges head-on. Ella understood, instinctively, that if she was to have a life with these men, t
hen she needed to let them make their own decisions.

  But, oh, dear God, how she wanted them all. And not just today and tomorrow and the day after that, but for a lifetime….

  Ben broke the silence with, “We’ll ride into town and check out the railroad station. Somebody there knows what the hell is going on, and we’re going to find out who it is.”

  For a moment, Ella closed her eyes. There was a lethal finality to Ben’s tone that frightened her. These men were undoubtedly compassionate with her, but she couldn’t imagine anything more frightening than getting on their bad side. While as individuals they were dangerous men that intelligent men didn’t rile, collectively, they were a deadly force only the most foolish would challenge.

  “When will I see you again?” Ella sent the question to all three men. It surprised her how much she wanted their companionship. Their attraction to her started out almost entirely sexual, but it evolved rapidly into something much more than physical.

  “As soon as we know something, we’ll let you in on it.” Ben looked at Blue. “How about we stay here for the next couple days? That way we’re all close together should the rustlers strike again.”

  “Good,” Ella said. “I like having all three of you together.”

  The men turned toward Ella, each with an instantaneously ravenous look in his eyes. Ella hadn’t meant the statement to be flirtatious. She simply liked their companionship collectively, but she couldn’t ignore the flare of desire that suddenly flamed into life within her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I d-don’t want to die.”

  The station manager was on his knees with his fingers laced together behind his neck. Blue stood behind him with a pistol pointed at his head. Ben and Dirk were in front of him with expressions that suggested death might be the only painless option the manager had.

  “Let’s hear the whole story,” Ben said quietly. “Don’t leave anything out. Think of this as the best chance you’ve got to talk yourself out of getting killed.”

  “It was Tim Cutler’s idea right from the start. He decides how many head we cut out of which of the herds. He’s got men from the T-3 and the GWR Ranch he sells the cattle to,” the station manager said in a quavering voice. “In Kansas City, they’re getting thirty dollars a head. Tim sells them to the men for twenty. They tell me how many empty cars to add to the train, and I see the cattle cars are added. We make a stop wherever they’ve got the stolen cattle, and they pack them in. Me and the boys get five dollars a head. When the cattle get to Kansas City, they’re sold for twenty-five dollars.”

  “Nice. Damned nice,” Ben said, scratching his chin. “The stockyards in Kansas City save five dollars a head. Everybody makes money all down the line.” He pulled his pistol and very slowly thumbed the hammer back. “Now tell me which of my ranch hands are in on this.”

  “Peg Leg Sanders, Wally Nichols, Bob Turnman, and some guy named Abe,” the station manager said quickly, staring down the black muzzle of Ben’s pistol.

  “When is the next rustling?”

  “Night after tomorrow.”

  “Say a word about this to anyone, and we’ll come back,” Ben said.

  * * * *

  Sitting in her favorite rocker, Ella took a sip of tea, crossed her legs at the knee, and looked out her bedroom window at the T-3 Ranch. She had been gone less than a fortnight, but in those few days, it seemed as though everything in her life had changed.

  Ella wondered if she had somehow subconsciously known what would happen if she surreptitiously escaped the T-3 Ranch and followed Ben and Dirk on their quest to discover the identities of the cattle rustlers. Had she somehow known that following them would be the first step, like a domino being tipped to start a chain reaction of falling dominoes, in simultaneously falling in love with three men?

  Three men. Not one. Not two. Three men. Each unique.

  She closed her eyes, remembering the last passion she shared with the men. When she first took Blue’s hard erection into her virgin bottom, it initially felt like she’d been skewered with a red-hot branding iron. The pain lanced through her, but she didn’t ask Blue to stop. She could have, and she suspected he would have relented to her wishes. But she hadn’t said a word because she knew she wanted him right where he was. Even if he hurt her, she wanted the pain he provided.

  Instead of begging Blue to stop, she asked for Ben to come closer.

  A shiver went through Ella. The awareness that she had taken three men into her body at the same time was not one that sat easily with her. But she had done exactly that, and the sensation of having a cock in her pussy and another in her ass, each pumping and driving, filling her completely, forced a climax upon her that made her feel as though her heart would explode right out of her chest.

  Another shiver went through Ella, but this one wasn’t from a pleasant memory. While she had been getting gloriously triple-penetrated, all attention was naturally focused on her. Dirk, on his back, had been pinned to the mattress, despite his great strength, beneath the combined weight of Ella and Blue. When he climaxed, releasing his sperm, he hadn’t disengaged from Ella.

  What would happen if she had gotten pregnant?

  A smile slowly curled the outer edges of Ella’s mouth. She discovered, to her delight, that the prospect of having a child with her men wasn’t as horrifying as she initially thought.

  It came to her then as an epiphany. She did not know how she would do it, but she would create a life with Ben and Dirk and Blue. Much of that life would, out of necessity, have to remain a secret from society. But she would make a life with her men somehow.

  With her mind made up, Ella tugged the bell pull for her maid. More tea, and perhaps a celebratory cookie or two, was in order.

  * * * *

  “We’re going to have to kill them,” Tim Cutler said, his hands on his hips, his hat pushed back on his head. “That goddamned coward at the station told them everything. He says he didn’t, but I know the jackass, and if he got squeezed by men like Ben and Dirk and that goddamned half-breed, Blue, he’d spill his guts in a heartbeat.”

  Peg Leg Sanders took a drink of whiskey before passing the bottle, which Tim provided, over to Bob Turnman. “You figure killin’ ‘em is better than just riding out while we can?”

  “You don’t know the kind of men we’re dealing with here.” Tim inhaled slowly, forcing himself to remain calm. It was never an easy thing for him to do, especially not when he was dealing with inferiors. “Ben Stenacci and Dirk van Gild take these things really damned personal. They won’t give up until every last one of you gets his neck stretched. And as for just riding away, that half-breed with them is the best tracker folks around here have ever seen. Once he’s on your trail, it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught.”

  Peg Leg scratched his beard-stubbled chin. Trying to think gave him a distinctly pained expression.

  “I say, first things first, we get my men from the T-3 that have been in on this, and then we ride out to Blue’s place over in the valley. Since they’re not at the GWR Ranch or Dirk’s Circle Three Ranch, they’ve got to be staying at Blue’s. There’s what—nine of us? That’s nine against three, and you fellas are a damned site better at killing than you are at being cattlemen, so I’m liking those odds.” Tim smiled, and for the first time since he found out about the station manager being visited by Ben, Dirk, and Blue, he felt a surge of confidence. Until a minister officiated his marriage to Ella, he had to choose his actions with extreme caution. “We’ll all follow the Rule of the Three S’s, and everything will be fine. Just fine.”

  “What’s that rule?” Peg Leg asked.

  “Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”

  Peg Leg smiled.

  * * * *

  “I really can’t believe that you’d ride off like that when there are bad men rustling our cattle,” Rosamond said, her tone shrill. “You ought to consider yourself a lucky woman that Tim doesn’t just find himself another woman. A woman who appreciates him
! He doesn’t have to do all this work for the T-3, you know.”

  While writing a check for two hundred dollars, Ella made a face. “I’m not entirely certain Tim’s in great demand,” she said, keeping her tone indifferent. “Besides, what would he do for money if he ends his engagement to me? I’m his meal ticket, Mother. Yours, too, for that matter.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Ella. I don’t like it at all.”

  Ella carefully ripped the check out of the ledger. She placed the bank draft on her desk rather than hand it directly to her mother. When she at last lifted her gaze, she didn’t feel so much as a flicker of respect for her mother.

  “Will that be all?” she asked dismissively.

  It pleased Ella to watch Rosamond’s jaw drop open. The passionate days and nights she spent with her men (it gave her enormous pleasure to think of them as such) not only broadened her sense of what it meant to be feminine and gave her more sexual satisfaction than she dreamed was possible, they elevated her confidence in every aspect of her life to unprecedented levels.

  She simply wasn’t afraid of the bitter, old woman anymore. And with each tick of the clock, the promise she made to her father to follow her mother’s wishes seemed more like a promise her beloved father wouldn’t want her to keep. After all, hadn’t he always been devoted to her happiness? And hadn’t Ben, Dirk, and Blue brought her exquisite happiness and so much more?

  Rosamond rose to her feet, her face suddenly pale. There was hatred in her eyes. “I don’t like your tone.” She picked up the check. “And I don’t like your attitude.”

  Leaning back in her chair, Ella remained seated. “I guess it’s fortunate for me, then, that I don’t give a damn what you do or don’t like.”

  Rosamond strode out of Ella’s office. Ella remained in her chair, a smile touching her lips. It was the finest victory she had over her most vitriolic nemesis. She had little time to savor victory, however, because hardly had Rosamond left her office before Tim walked in.