“Lie down on me, now, woman.” Michael eased her into position and began to stroke his hands over her back.
Carson’s fingers continued to work over her anus, each pass with more pressure than the one before. When he stopped and pressed harder, Abigail hissed in a breath as the burn of his penetration skittered through her body. She felt as if tiny pinpricks of electric shock were setting her ablaze. Carson worked one finger in, moving it in and out and then in a circle. More lube and a second finger ratcheted the burn to a pain, but a pain like no other. The first pinches morphed into heat, and that heat teased and licked at every single one of her erogenous zones.
Motion on the bed alerted her just an instant before she felt Carson’s fingers withdraw and the heat of his body warming her back. His condom-covered cock nudged her rosette, and then, with a slow and steady force, he pushed inside her back channel.
“Oh my God.” The stretching, the fullness, was huge—huge and wonderful.
Carson froze. “Baby? Too much?”
Too much? Abigail realized there could never be too much, not ever! She needed… “More! Please, I need…”
“She just gushed all around my cock, brother.”
“Hang on, baby.” Carson’s voice sounded as if it emerged through clenched teeth. She felt him push in deeper, ease almost all the way out, and then push in again.
It was the sexiest, the deepest, the neediest arousal Abigail had ever felt. “More. Fuck me! Oh, please, both of you, fuck me!”
“You’ve got it.”
Carson pulled out, and Michael surged up, his cock going deep. Then he withdrew, and Carson plunged. She was never without a cock inside her, never without a cock moving within her, and Abigail completely surrendered to her men, to the need that joined all three of them. She felt they’d become something more than they’d ever been, that here, in this place and at this time, they’d truly become one.
Over and over they moved in her, fucking her, and Abigail felt helpless to help, helpless to do anything but feel. Her orgasm exploded in a white-hot flame of desire, a throbbing, pulsing, gushing joy of ecstasy that seemed to go on forever. Beneath and above, her lovers tensed, shouted, and then came inside her. She felt the heat of their semen against her most sensitive inner tissues and longed for the day when she could take their seed into her womb and gift them with a child.
They lay spent, a tangle of arms and legs. All she could hear was their breathing, all three of them winded and fighting for air. Perspiration covered her, hers and theirs, and the scent of all three of them perfumed the air.
Carson lifted himself so he supported his own weight and kissed her shoulder. “Don’t move, baby. I’ll be right back.”
All Abigail could muster in response was a grunt.
He was back in a heartbeat, which told her that maybe she’d drifted for a moment or two. Carson’s hands were gentle as he lifted her off Michael.
That man kissed her cheek. “Be right back, sweetheart.”
“’Kay.” Better than a grunt. I must be recovering.
Carson laid her on the bed, still on her stomach, and gently wiped something wet and warm through her folds and then over her anus. He took the time to remove all the extra lube she’d worn.
Michael returned, and Carson left. Abigail snickered, thinking of the way they’d fucked her in tandem.
Then Carson came back, crawled into the bed, and brought the covers with him. She sighed, the sensation of being naked and sandwiched between the men she loved the greatest definition of home she could ever imagine.
“We want us married tomorrow,” Carson said. “But Michael and I were talking just now, and we’d like to ask a favor.”
Abigail opened her eyes. She must have dozed off if they’d managed a conversation. She looked at Michael, who nodded, then looked to his brother. Knowing he’d leave discussing whatever it was up to Carson, she followed Michael’s example and looked at his brother. “What’s your favor?”
“We happened to overhear the grandmothers about a month ago, talking about the way the family commitment ceremonies were a special celebration for the entire community, back in the day. The older women would work together with the brides to make their wedding dresses…and we were thinking.”
Carson used a gentle finger to turn her face more fully toward him. His expression was as serious, and as hopeful, as she’d ever seen it. “We were thinking that the grandmothers won’t be with us a whole lot longer. And we thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could work with one more bride to make one more wedding dress?”
Abigail felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes. Oh, she had no doubt whatsoever that Carson and Michael both loved the idea of doing this for their grandmothers. But more, this really was a gift they wanted to give to her.
Knowing them, knowing Lusty—and their being very much aware of how she’d been raised—this gift they were offering her was the biggest, the best, of any gift they could offer. They might be rich as Midas, but this gift was richer.
They were offering her family, their family, a chance to make memories, and a sense of belonging.
“I think that’s a wonderful idea. I can’t wait to ask them.”
“Well that’s a good thing,” Michael said, “because as soon as Caleb tells everyone what happened at the bookstore tonight, you can be certain that family—including the grandmothers—will come calling tomorrow. Likely leave town first thing and be here before noon.”
Abigail’s heart lifted at the idea of seeing everyone the next day. She sighed as she snuggled down between her men. “Then someone best set the alarm for six. I won’t be having company with nothing in the house to serve but store-bought cookies.”
“Grandmother Chelsea is fond of pecan tarts,” Carson said.
“And Grandmother Mattie likes peach cobbler.” Michael winked then kissed her cheek.
Fortunately, she had all she needed to make both. Knowing what the grandmothers liked in baked goods was handy, but it begged the question.
Turning onto her back, she looked from Michael to Carson. “What about you? What’s your favorite dessert?”
Both men flashed smiles that turned, simultaneously, to lust.
“You.” They spoke together, and Abigail felt her arousal re-awaken.
Michael kissed her, a very carnal kiss. Then Carson followed suit. He lifted his lips then licked across her mouth. “Our very favorite dessert, Abigail, is you.”
Epilogue
“Well.” Maggie Benedict winked at Abigail then looked at her husbands—Richard, sitting on her right, and Trevor and Kevin, sitting on her left. “Clearly, dangerous situations run in this family.” Then she looked at all her brothers-in-law. “How y’all could act so addlepated whenever something interesting happened to us women is completely beyond me.”
Abigail held her napkin in front of her mouth so they couldn’t all see her amusement. But of course, she realized they all knew she was laughing.
“Point taken,” Richard said. Then he looked at Carson. “Tell me, sir. Did Mother ever do anything else…interesting?”
Oh, how her oldest son had become so much more adept at dealing socially! His question had been phrased just right. She sighed. Marriage to Maggie had certainly been the making of him.
“No, son. I can’t say that we ever had another moment quite like the one when Neil Farnsworth held that gun to your mother’s head. A fact for which I am very, very grateful.”
Richard nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to his wife, and everyone could see the love on his face—and the laughter in his eyes. “You’ve had your one interesting time, Maggie-mine. Let’s not have any more.”
His announcement was seconded around the table by all of Abigail’s sons and sons-in-law.
“So what happened to Neil Farnsworth? He went to jail, right?” Maggie asked.
“He did,” Michael said. “But only for breaking and entering and assault. He was in the hospital for a good month, as that was quite a kn
ock on the head Abigail gave him. But while there, he had a visit from Cleveland Arbuckle’s attorney. Apparently, the man had sent a letter to him in England the month before that he’d never received. We’re not sure how the lawyer got word Farnsworth was in Houston.”
“And because of the severity of his injury, the court went a little easy on the man.”
Everyone sitting around the table knew what Carson Benedict thought of that by his tone of voice. Abigail could still hear the line of curses he’d spewed when Caleb had delivered that news. “Farnsworth only had to serve a few short months, and then he was on a plane and back to England. Later that same year, he reportedly retired to a very nice villa on the Isle of Capri. The last I checked, he was still there.”
“What did the lawyer want to see Farnsworth about?” Devon, Julia’s husband, asked.
“Now that’s a question,” Carson said. “And I can tell you, it was years before we found out. The investigators we hired were never able to find concrete evidence that the team of Arbuckle and Farnsworth were indeed cat burglars. So, no charges in that regard were ever brought against Neil Farnsworth. As to what the lawyer wanted, apparently it was to arrange for Farnsworth to receive a private bequest. It seems he was left the contents of Cleveland Arbuckle’s three—yes, three—safe deposit boxes that had been maintained here in the U. S. That lawyer never did fess up as to what had been in those boxes. Also, the piece of paper with numbers on it that Michael had found? Caleb discovered those numbers were for a Swiss bank account. Apparently, that was the second part of Farnsworth’s inheritance from Arbuckle. And again, we never learned how much money had been in that account. Those were secrets the lawyer took to his grave.”
“And the great-grandmothers did help you make your wedding dress.” Julia beamed at her mother.
“They did, indeed. And we wound up getting married on Monday, September 1, 1975, which was on Labor Day of that year.”
Abigail looked around the table. She had one more part of the tale to tell, something she hadn’t spoken of to anyone in all the years since her wedding day. She had shared it, at the time of learning, with those wonderful women of Lusty, some of whom were no longer here. She looked at her husbands—first Carson and then Michael. Both men took her hands, so that she was connected to both—so they were, as they had so often been over the years, one unit. It was time to pass on one more family secret.
“Carson and Michael’s suggestion turned out to be the blessing I needed, when I really needed it. A few weeks after we returned to Lusty, so that I could spend time with the women, making my dress and, yes, getting used to the idea of becoming a member of this family, I got around to reading all of my grandmother’s journal and the letters, including the last one she’d sent to her mother, the one that had never even been opened.”
“You learned why she left Lusty—and why she never married?” Rebecca asked that, and when Abigail looked at her beautiful daughter-in-law, she saw knowledge there. Because Rebecca was an artist, it didn’t surprise Abigail one bit that she would be aware of the nuances.
There was no easy way to say what had to be said. So she took a deep breath and told an old truth like the summary of a long-ago written story. “There’d been a man—a stranger, just driving through Lusty. He’d seen her, Maude, in the field off the road, as she’d sat reading on her boulder, something she’d always loved to do. He raped her on that bright and sunny June day, and when he was done, he walked away, got into his car, and drove off. But he didn’t go far because he stopped in at a farm—the farm her family owned. Likely, Maude wrote in her later years, simply to buy some farm fresh eggs. But as a wounded young girl, dazed and confused, she’d seen him on the porch, talking with her fathers, saw the man hand over some cash and shake her daddy’s hands. In her journal, she wrote how for years that image became tangled up with what had happened to her. It was only much later she realized that what she thought she saw wasn’t true. It wasn’t until after my mother was pregnant with me that Maude understood her fathers hadn’t sold her. She recalled then the sign at the end of the driveway and the number of times city folk, out for a drive, would stop in to buy eggs or produce, as offered on that sign. Maude wrote to her mother, telling her the entire story, asking for forgiveness…only her mother never read that letter.”
The mood around the table had turned somber, and Abigail was sorry for it, but such moments came in families.
Carrie shook her head. “She should have said something. I can kind of understand why she didn’t. I was about the same age when that happened to me, and I didn’t say anything, either, not for a long time, and that was in an age when discussion of those kinds of things was more out in the open. But here, in this place…” Carrie shook her head. “I suppose bad things can happen everywhere, even here in Lusty.”
“And everywhere, even here in Lusty, there needs to be open communication. I felt so sad after reading that, but glad, in a way, that her mother and fathers never knew what had caused her to change. That would have just added guilt, and for them, it would have been a pointless guilt. No way to assuage it or avenge it.”
“And everything came full circle because at the end of it all, you came to Lusty to live,” Cody said. “It’s not that this is a perfect place.” He looked around the table. He put his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and let the fingers of that hand caress Greg’s shoulder. “It’s that this is a place where people try harder to love without conditions or bargains, to love unselfishly. It took me a couple of years to finally figure that out. To finally accept and then celebrate the reality of Lusty, Texas.”
“Cody, I know exactly what you mean.” Abigail smiled at her family seated around this table. Just off, in the great room, the sounds of childish laughter as her grandchildren played washed over and through her. Here, the children she’d given birth to and the ones they’d married—the children of her heart—these wonderful adults, shared a common bond, a bond of love.
But at the heart of it all was family. Life carried on, and paths were traveled. Some paths stretched around the world and some just across this small town. But connecting them all was this deep, solid foundation begun more than a century before when those who would love who they loved and live how they lived sought to make a home, for themselves and for future generations.
Drew James, U.S. Navy SEAL, retired, raised his glass. “To family.”
“To family.” The toast was answered, and they sipped, and they chatted.
Abigail laid her head on Michael’s shoulder, held Carson’s hand in both of hers, and decided that life had turned out pretty damn good.
And she knew, without a doubt, that the very best was yet to come.
THE END
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Labor Day in Lusty, Texas [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) Page 18
