Tangled Past

by Leah Braemel

  “Damn. I’d intended to finish inside you.” He held out his hand and lifted her to her feet.

  “I like doing that for you.” From the way her body pulsed deep inside, and the moisture between her thighs, her body approved too.

  “I don’t recall objecting to it.” The lines at the side of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. He swiped his thumb over her lips. “I want to pleasure you too, but it’s gonna take me some time to recover.”

  She ran a finger down his breastbone. “I can think of a couple things you can do in the meantime.”

  His eyes darkened. “So can I. Starting with getting you as nekkid as the day you were born.”

  She backed up when he crowded her, stopping only when the back of her knees hit the bed. “Seems fair, considering what you’re wearing.”

  He undid just enough buttons to be able to pull her dress over her head. Once he’d removed it, he dumped it on the floor.

  She crooked him a smile. “That poor thing really needs an ironing, the way it’s been treated lately.”

  “I prefer you dressed the way you are now.” His fingers trailed down her neck and around her breasts, tracing her areola that puckered at his touch. “I had no idea you weren’t wearing a chemise under your dress. If I’d known I’d have had you naked and flat on your back downstairs.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  She screeched when he picked her up and tossed her on the mattress. Before she could move, he was on top of her, the bandana in his hands and a feral look in his eyes.

  “Grab on to that headboard again, darlin’.”

  Her body aching in anticipation, she obeyed him without hesitation. Once he’d secured her, he began to tease and titillate every inch of her body, his lips latching on to her nipples as his hands found all those places he knew excited her.

  Nate toed off his boots in the front hall. He started to head for the kitchen to see if Sarah was there so he could talk to her about his plan, when he heard a rhythmic squeaking overhead. Instead of the normal guilt-ridden envy, love flooded through him.

  Last night, Sarah and Jackson had given him a gift he’d never be able to repay. Themselves and each other. Both had so much to lose by inviting him into their bedroom, yet they’d done it without hesitation.

  He debated going back outside and leaving them to complete their marital relations without an audience but instead found himself upstairs and halfway down the hall. He couldn’t stop himself from pausing in their doorway and watching.

  Was there anything as beautiful as Sarah? Her head thrown back, hands tied to the headboard with a red cloth that Nate recognized as Jackson’s favorite bandanna. They were both naked, with Jackson’s dark head nestled between her thighs. The muscles rippling along Jackson’s back, his butt taut, rocking against the mattress in search of his own release as he pleasured his wife.

  Though he couldn’t see Jackson’s face, Nate knew what he’d see. A look of ecstasy, of sheer animalistic carnality.

  The heady scent of sex filled the room. Sarah gasped the unique sound signaling she was about to find her pleasure. Hard. Moments later, her body arched off the mattress, her limbs shaking as her release overcame her.

  Not for the first time, he wished he was an artist who could capture their expressions, the sheer love they had for each other, for eternity. But he doubted anyone had that type of talent, not even if they had one of those newfangled cameras.

  Jackson raised his head, his cheeks and lips glistening with Sarah’s juices. “Go get that jar of ointment from your bedroom, will you, Nate?”

  Not even a hello. Obviously Jackson had known he was watching.

  Nate chuckled to himself as he did as Jackson bid. He handed the jar to Jackson. He already knew Jackson didn’t intend to use it on him. “Mind if I watch?”

  “You’re gonna do more than watch. Get your clothes off and get on the bed.” Jackson’s voice was rough, guttural, which Nate knew meant he was primed and ready and having a hard time holding off not burying himself in Sarah and fucking her brains out.

  Nate quickly stripped off his clothes and knelt on the bed beside Sarah. “What do you have planned?”

  “Lie down beside her. You’ll find out soon enough.” Jackson untied Sarah’s hands and chafed her wrists. “Turn over, darlin’.”

  A questioning look on her face, she lay belly down, her face turned toward Nate. She reached out and stroked his hip with her fingers as Jackson nudged her thighs apart and positioned himself between them.

  As Jackson liberally coated his fingers with the ointment, Nate remembered the night before, when Jackson had coated him the same way. He couldn’t contain his surprise when Jackson reached over and smoothed the ointment over Nate’s erect shaft.

  “I want you to be inside Sarah at the same time as me,” Jackson said, his voice getting even rougher.

  He dipped his fingers in the jar again and smeared a large dollop along Sarah’s crevice. He worked one finger into her rosette. He stopped when it was knuckle-deep. “Try not to tense up. Just breathe in and out, nice and slow. It’ll go easier that way.”

  Sarah’s eyes had closed, and her lips were pressed together. After a moment, her body relaxed, and the whiteness of her lips changed back to pink. The hand that had stopped stroking his hip resumed its motion, the softness of her fingers so different from Jackson’s rougher caresses. That she trusted them both was a testament to Jackson, and a gift to him.

  “This will be Sarah’s first time having a man take her here.” Jackson met his gaze. “So you’ll need to go real slow when you enter her.”

  Nate closed his eyes in an attempt to hide the emotion swamping him. That Jackson would trust him to initiate Sarah—his wife—to such an intimate invasion was a gift beyond imagination.

  Jackson stretched out between them, the heat of his skin a brand where it touched Nate. “Come up here, Sarah. You’re going to be riding me tonight.”

  Sarah’s smile lit the room. She straddled Jackson, her skin glowing gold in the warmth of the late evening sun. If Nate could paint, he would have wished for a brush and canvas to capture the beauty of the two of them joining at that moment, the love filling Sarah’s face, the passion in Jackson’s. If he was a poet, he would have written sonnets about the scent of love filling the air, or the rugged beauty of Jackson’s muscles as he held Sarah above him, the thickness of his thighs, the crinkly nest of dark hair at his groin mingling with Sarah’s softer thatch. A musician would have composed sonnets in an attempt to immortalize the soft moan Sarah made when she lowered herself over Jackson’s hard shaft and took him completely into her body.

  Instead, all he could do was watch in awe, and silently thank whatever had brought them both into his life. Whatever had convinced them to let him share in this moment.

  “Hey, Nate? You just gonna sit there watchin’, or are you gonna scoot in behind and join us?” Jackson’s voice had lowered at least an octave, the roughness revealing that he was equally affected.

  Nate shook himself from his reverie and nodded. He rose to his knees and captured Sarah’s lips with his own. She tasted of honey and Jackson. He knew he’d remember that flavor for the rest of his life. They were both breathing hard when he broke off the kiss. “Now give that big guy a kiss for me, will you?”

  She nodded, but he didn’t miss the tightening of her muscles, or the way she licked her lips.

  “I won’t do anything that hurts you,” he said. “I promise.”

  “I know.” Her gentle acceptance as she leaned over Jackson started a shake in Nate’s hands. Had he ever been handed such a precious gift?

  “Help her relax, Jack. I’ll try to go easy on her. Sarah? If it starts to hurt, just let me know.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Jackson plundered Sarah’s mouth, murmuring soft words to keep her relaxed. His hands played with her breasts, his fingers plucking her nipples to hard peaks the way that he knew aroused her.

  Nate positioned himself at Sarah’s entrance. Swea
t dripped off his forehead by the time he’d sheathed his entire length in her tight canal. When Jackson’s cock slid along Sarah’s thin membrane separating them, his whole body shook.

  He closed his eyes and lost himself in the rhythm, relishing the feel of Jackson’s cock rubbing up against his as they worked out a rhythm of thrusting within their mutual love. The crisp hair of Jackson’s thighs rasped against the back of his thighs every time he withdrew from Sarah. When he thrust back within her, the soft satin of her behind cushioned his belly. Their mixed pants and groans quickened, and Sarah’s body convulsed around him. Unable to hold off his own release, he poured into her.

  As he slumped over them both, he suddenly realized they’d never given him an answer. Or was this it?

  Did this mean…had they decided to leave? Or to stay? Was this a welcome to the rest of their life together? Or was this their way of saying good-bye? He opened his eyes to find Jackson watching him. Whatever they’d decided, he would take the gift Jackson offered and treasure it for the rest of his life.

  Jackson swallowed against the emotion flooding Nate’s face. Though Nate cut off his view by burying his face in the crook of Sarah’s shoulder, there was no mistaking the half-choked breath, or the way his shoulders tightened as he held her tight.

  Unsure how to show his own emotions, Jackson leaned over Sarah and caught Nate’s mouth with his own. Nate seized on the kiss with an almost desperate intensity, thrusting his tongue into Jackson’s mouth. He tasted of Scotch, the good stuff, better than he could afford at the saloon. Cigar smoke clung to his skin. The scents reminded him he could be rougher with Nate, let his wilder side free. There was something empowering about not having to worry about Nate getting hurt, so he took command of the kiss.

  “Please,” Nate whispered. “Tell me what you’ve decided. Was this your way of sayin’ good bye?”

  Jackson couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling up. Wrapping Sarah in his arms to keep her close, he rolled onto his side, sending Nate sprawling across the bed. “You know, for so smart a man, you sure are plain dumb sometimes. Ain’t it clear what’s goin’ on here?”

  “Hush up.” Sarah prodded him in the stomach, jolting his breath from him. “It’s not funny.”

  “It is so funny,” he grumbled, rubbing his abdomen.

  “We’re staying, of course.” Sarah rolled on her back and covered the hand Nate had placed on her belly with her own. “We both love you, Nate, and Jackson belongs here, with you. With his family. And now you’re my family too.”

  Jackson reached across and placed his hand over theirs. “Our family.”

  Epilogue

  Circle Star Ranch, 1928

  A little girl’s shriek of joy rang clear across the pasture and floated into the kitchen. A deep unmistakable chuckle joined the laughter. Unable to resist the temptation, Sarah left off kneading the biscuit dough and headed to the corral. She slowed when she saw Jackson leaning against the fence with one foot on the bottom rail. In the distance, two of their grandsons raced their horses against their fathers. Their whooping and hollering carried over the recently mown fields in a song of sheer pleasure she wouldn’t trade for anything. But Jackson’s eyes were on Nate riding his latest acquisition, a gelding named Lightning, his arm carefully wrapped around their granddaughter, Ruth.

  “She’s going to be a natural rider, that one.” Pride filled Jackson’s voice.

  “Just like her granddaddy.”

  His hands gnarled with age, Jackson slipped his arms around Sarah’s waist. She rested against him as they watched the duo trot a slow circuit around the corral. It wasn’t just pride for their granddaughter Jackson felt, Sarah knew. Despite the doctor’s gloomy predictions he’d never ride again, Nate had wrestled his way back into the saddle less than a year after his accident. Though his hair was now completely grey, he sat as strong and proud as he had when she’d met him.

  Her father’s turquoise and silver band glinted from Nate’s hat, a gift she’d given him the day they’d made their decision to enter into their unusual relationship. His secret wedding ring, he’d called it.

  “Lookit me, Gammy, I’m riding with Pawpaw Nate,” Ruth called when she noticed Sarah watching them. Sarah’s heart did a leap at the joy in Ruth’s small face with its pointed chin, tiny replicas of Nate’s eyes twinkling back at her.

  “So I see, darlin’.”

  “I swear, that girl’s got Uncle Nate wrapped around her finger. She’s already been riding once today.” Alice, Ruth’s mother and Sarah’s daughter-in-law, took her place at the split rail fence beside them. “How’d she manage to talk him into taking her up with him again?”

  “All she had to do was ask,” Jackson said without taking his eyes off the pair. “There’s nothing Nate wouldn’t do for our children.”

  Our children. Their children. Sarah wondered if Alice realized that her husband was actually Nate’s child, and Ruth his granddaughter. Not that he’d treated any of their children, or grandchildren, any differently—he loved them all equally.

  “She’ll be wanting to gallop all by herself next, I wager,” Alice continued. “I swear that child isn’t afraid of anything.”

  “You can blame her grandma’s influence for that.” Jackson’s smile shone bright beneath the shadow cast by his hat. “I ain’t never known Sarah to back away from a challenge. Seems like all our young’uns inherited her backbone.”

  To punctuate his point, the Kellar grandsons raced into the barnyard, closely followed by their fathers. Though each loudly claimed victory from their race, Sarah suspected her sons had let her grandsons win. One day in the not-too-distant future, Jackson could tell them, they’d be hard-pressed to win against their strapping sons.

  As her boys, young and old, led their horses into the stable, their daughter appeared on the porch, one hand carefully holding her swollen belly and her soon-to-be born child. Jackson grunted his approval when her husband immediately handed his horse’s reins to his brother and headed to the house.

  “Looks like our young Martha’s getting ready to deliver your next grandbaby, Mama,” he whispered in her ear. “Betcha if it’s a girl she looks just like you.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sun, her grandchildren’s laughter echoing from the barn, the scent of hay and horse, and Jackson, filling her senses.

  Though all their children had dark hair and dark eyes thanks to her heritage, she’d always known who their fathers were. While others might not notice, their youngest son favored Nate, while their eldest son held his head at exactly the same angle as Jackson. But she’d never been able to determine just who her daughter took after. Not that it made a difference to either Jackson or Nate.

  Or her. She loved them all equally. As they loved her.

  About the Author

  Growing up in rural Ontario, Leah Braemel learned to lose herself in the make-believe worlds she found in her mother’s books. At the age of seven, she realized she could write her own stories, and in her early teens she discovered her love of romances. Soon all her stories revolved around giving her heroes and heroines their Happy-Ever-After.

  Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of two sons, Leah is the only woman in a houseful of men—even their cat is male. Shoving her writing in the closet while she raised her family, she gained some varied and interesting insights while working with a security firm liaising with Toronto’s Emergency Task Force and bomb squad and later teaching computers to women escaping abusive relationships.

  After a conversation with her eldest son about how he needed to follow his dreams, Leah decided she needed to follow her own advice and make her own dreams of becoming a writer come true. She was thrilled when her first sizzling romance was published in 2009.

  Leah loves hearing from her readers at Leah@LeahBraemel.com. You can also follow Leah on her website, www.LeahBraemel.com.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4268-9168-7

  Copyright © 2011 by Leah Braemel

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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