Davies frowned. Apparently, he wasn’t the only man who practiced extreme discretion. Mr. Lewis’s words, if overheard or recorded, would seem innocuous enough. He felt his anger spark. How dare anyone tell him what to do?
“Please convey my fervent belief that this particular activity is necessary to counter a threat beyond anything that could possibly be imagined. I am certain if they were aware of the full scope of the issue, they’d agree.”
He knew it for truth, for ever since Lewis had told him about the Jessop woman and the photographs she’d taken, he’d been weighted down with a sense of failure.
He had been indiscreet, and he had to make amends for that. If he didn’t, he would lose the grace which was necessary for him to fulfill his destiny.
“You’re wrong, and incredibly foolish. This path can only lead to ruin.”
Davies felt his temper begin to roil. How dare this servant chastise him? Clearly, this was a test. Yes, a test, and in that moment Davies understood that this messenger was not one who had been anointed for Davies’s purpose.
He chose his words, even his tone, for maximum effect. He would work on getting beyond Lewis to the source. It would take a few weeks, but he would be successful. So, to placate this false messenger, he said, “I see. Then I shall, of course, heed such wise counsel.”
“Good. Your other request has been granted. I’ll relate this exchange, and you should see the results within forty-eight hours.”
“Thank you.” Davies disconnected the call. It took every bit of his will to get control of his temper.
It galled him down to the bone, the way Lewis had just spoken to him as if he were nothing, when in fact it was Lewis who was nothing. Davies closed his eyes, seeking guidance. For several minutes he sat quietly, his mind calm, waiting for instructions.
When he opened his eyes again, he knew exactly what he had to do. His instincts had never led him astray. A new urgency filled him, for that surely was why this new revelation had come. He needed to move with all haste. Davies looked down at the cell phone in his hand. He would use it to place one more call.
It was answered on the second ring.
Here, he spoke as if to an equal. “It’s Reese. I have need of you.”
“I’m on my way. It will take me two days to get there. Park B, fifty-seven hours and thirty minutes from now.”
Davies looked at his watch, calculated the time. “Good. Thank you.”
He’d memorized the three preselected locations, and knew which one his father’s man had chosen. He set the time in his mind, and then sat back and took a good, deep breath.
He was on track, and all would go well. His father’s man would fix this minor setback. Davies’s destiny would be fulfilled.
* * * *
Rising from the depths of sleep, Nancy inhaled deeply and then sighed. The aroma of her men and the love they’d made in the night wrapped her in a blanket of contentment. As she neared full wakefulness, she felt them both, still in bed with her, their skin touching hers. She’d turned over in the night, but only awakened enough to know she was soothed back to sleep by Jeremiah’s gentle hands and even gentler voice. Now as she nuzzled his naked, delectable chest that had become her pillow, she smiled.
She felt certain that in time, she’d be able to identify who held her by her sense of smell alone. She brought her arm up and laid her hand on Jeremiah’s chest, her fingers splayed next to her face. She loved the feel of that light dusting of hair beneath her palm. As she listened, her ear pressed close, the steady sound of his heartbeat filled her with calm.
They would both be steady, always, these two men. Nancy realized for the first time in her life that some knowledge just was. She’d hoped for a similar kind of epiphany that first time, back in college, but, of course, that knowing never came.
He wasn’t the right one for me. These two are.
Well, maybe they were the right ones for her. How could a woman know without a doubt if it was to be, or not? How could she be certain that if she took that chance, and stepped out onto that limb, that everything would all work out in the end? Could she ask her mother? Her mother had married her fathers not long after she’d met them, and they had been together for years. Thinking of her parents, she could say they appeared to be as in love now as newlyweds. Mom must have the answer. Nancy knew from past experience that she could ask her mother anything at all.
Until she had that answer, she couldn’t tell Jeremiah or Eli how she really felt about them. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—dare to open herself up that final little bit. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk telling them she loved them, for fear of having her love tossed back in her face.
The only other time she’d said those words to a man, the result had been like a sword to her soul.
That had been bad enough, but if it happened again? If she told these men she was forever in love with them and then they squirmed and told her they weren’t looking for forever?
If they turned from me after I handed them my heart, I simply couldn’t bear it.
Nancy felt ashamed of herself, ashamed of her cowardice. Worse than being a coward, she was, in essence, comparing these two men to the one who’d come before them. But God help her, she didn’t know how not to do that.
“You’re thinking awfully loud there, baby.”
“Am I?” Nancy opened her eyes, looked up, and met Jeremiah’s heated gaze. Until him, until Eli, no man had ever looked at her like that. No man had made her feel, with just a look, that she was the most important person in his life. Was it real? She couldn’t let go of her fear long enough to accept that, just maybe, it was.
Looking into Jeremiah’s heated gaze, she knew one thing. It was real right now, in this moment.
That she could accept, and believe in. She could trust in the now, in the moment. So she gave him as coy a smile as her lips could form. “Well, then, maybe what I need is to have someone close by render aid. Maybe I need to be…distracted.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea. I’m close by and not otherwise occupied at the moment. Hmm, I wonder how I could go about distracting you.” Jeremiah grinned, and then ran his hand down her back in a long, slow caress that rounded up again at her hip.
Just that simple a touch made Nancy wet with wanting and hungry with need. Beneath her ear, his heart beat heavier and faster than it had. She moved her hand down his body and found his cock, no longer flaccid as it had been in sleep, but awakening, and growing harder with each moment.
She wrapped her hand around his shaft. Here, too, his pulse beat strong and true. As she handled him, as she squeezed and pumped, his unique masculine aroma rose up, strong and manly, and actually made her mouth water.
She slid her thumb across the top of his cockhead, spreading the tiny drop of pre-cum she found there.
“Who’s distracting whom here?” Jeremiah’s voice had thickened and taken on that extra little bit of raspiness she’d noticed it did when he became aroused.
She lifted her head off his chest and looked down at him. “I do believe this is a case of mutual distraction. I have to tell you, it’s working, too.”
“And then some,” Eli said.
She felt him moving behind her and then she heard the sound of the bedside table drawer being pulled open. She blinked when a condom package sailed over her shoulder and landed on Jeremiah’s chest. Then Eli stretched out by the bottom of the bed. “I think I’ll just lie here and be distracted watching the two of you. And”—he held up the tube of lube—“play a little with that pretty ass of yours, sweetheart, at the appropriate moment.”
In her hand, Jeremiah’s cock seemed to have grown larger and hotter while Eli spoke.
Nancy grinned and released his cock. The covers pooled at her waist as she sat up and grabbed the condom. It didn’t take her long to get on her knees beside him. In moments she had the latex out of the package and was sliding it into place.
The extra silky sensation of Jeremiah’s sheathed cock in her ha
nd was fast becoming one of Nancy’s favorite things. Unable and unwilling to resist, she indulged her prurient desires by stroking his cock more, perhaps, than was strictly necessary to ensure the prophylactic’s placement.
He stilled her hand. “I want to come in you pussy, baby, not your hand. Are you wet enough to take me inside that wonderful body of yours?”
Nancy met his gaze. Her own heart kicked with excitement. “Oh, baby, you have no idea how wet I am. But you’re about to find out.” She straddled him, and then gasped in surprise when he lifted her and brought her down again, straight down onto his cock.
She closed her eyes and moaned at the sensation of that hot, hard shaft sliding into her.
Nancy braced her hands on his chest and took a bit of that initiative back as she rode him. He helped her, so that it felt as if they were just two, just in this moment, giving and taking, distracting each other. Because she could, she clamped her inner muscles, and squeezed his cock in a rhythmic grip. On each down stroke she shivered. Riding his cock felt so good.
“Oh, baby, yes. Mmhmm, this is fucking wonderful.” He groaned, pleasure etched on every inch of his face.
Her inner imp came out to play. “Or wonderful fucking, depending on your point of view.”
Jeremiah bit off his laugh. His eyes glittered with a playful light. His cock, however, remained hot and hard inside her. “You need a swat on the ass, brat,” Jeremiah said.
“Oh!” Nancy’s ass tingled from the swat Eli gave her. Then she shivered as the added heat pulled her arousal higher. She made a few throaty sounds of her own, so that both men would know that had felt pretty damn good.
The feeling of fullness and the friction of flesh moving inside her cunt and the wonderful way he thrust so as to brush against her clit—all these sensations flooded her, bewitched her, and drew her higher, and higher still.
Nothing existed but this. Nothing mattered but this. Jeremiah pulled her down, and when her lips were close, melded his mouth to hers. His tongue delved and mastered her mouth just as surely as his cock mastered her cunt. Nancy surrendered complete control, her tiny whimpers the only way she had of begging for more.
The sudden chill of the lube against her anus, the masterful fingers that stroked and pressed, those sensations swirled into the melee of emotions and feelings, adding to the heat, feeding the flames of her passion. Now beyond her and outside of her control, her arousal took over, spilling over and out and through. Her orgasm swamped her, and she cried out as wave after wave washed away her fears and filled her soul. Unable to speak, to think, to move, she gave herself to the intense pleasure and surrendered to the moment.
Nancy reveled in the climax, in the physical thrill and the emotional surety, and wished it could last forever.
Chapter 17
It had been a long time since she’d had a “girl’s” outing—and an even longer time since one of the girls she’d been out with was Grandma Kate.
Playing chauffeur, Nancy’s new friend Emily Anne Richardson had filled her in on the latest go-to place for sexy garments and “other necessary things.” She’d winked when she’d said that, and Grandma Kate had turned her head to look out the window, but not before Nancy had seen that sly smile.
Our destination must be someplace really special to make Grandma smile like that.
“You’re going to absolutely love Discretion,” Emily Anne said. “And so will those two Feds you’re seeing.”
Nancy caught Emily Anne’s grin in the rearview mirror and couldn’t help but return it. Emily Anne Richardson appeared to be a woman completely comfortable in her skin. Poised and pretty, she carried herself, not like a beautiful plus-sized woman, but like a beautiful woman, period.
Nancy was looking forward to this shopping experience, as much as to the rest of the agenda Kate had planned. Then Emily Anne put her car’s signal on and executed a right turn down a very long lane.
Nancy read the sign on the steel pipe entrance gate—Divine Creek Ranch. Even without the sign, she would have guessed they’d arrived at her grandmother’s friend’s place. On both sides of the lane, horses ate and frolicked, some with tiny foals close by. She narrowed her eyes to get a better look, and recognized the handsome creatures grazing as Andalusians.
Nancy had never been to Divine, and had never met her Grandma Kate’s friend, Grace Warner. This trip today had been in the works for the last week, but she’d only learned about it this morning. She’d not wanted to go at first, because it was an overnight jaunt—to visit Grace, and to shop, of course. But also to visit with a distant cousin she’d never met, but whose books she’d read and loved—Veronica Benedict, now Veronica Stinson. Then Nancy realized that she’d been reluctant to accompany Kate and Emily Anne because she was afraid that Eli and Jeremiah would leave while she was gone.
Maybe she couldn’t step out on faith—all the way out on faith—where those two men were concerned. But maybe she could take this first tiny, baby step.
She’d asked them what they’d thought about Kate’s plans and whether or not she should say yes. They told her to go with her grandmother. They were planning to help a bunch of the men with a building project, working on a second barn for Cord and Jackson Benedict—Veronica’s brothers. Eli had told her that they’d likely do little more at the end of the anticipated long workday than shower and fall face-first into their beds.
Nancy grinned when she recalled them tossing a coin that morning to see who got to sleep in her bed, and who got the bed in the master suite. The fact that it was her own bed that had been the coveted prize warmed her heart.
So here she was, two and a half hours away from home, about to meet someone new. She let her thoughts linger on her men for just one moment more. The last seven days had flown by. It had been a week spent getting to know Eli Barton and Jeremiah Winthrop better, a week that found her almost ready to believe that things might just work out for them, after all. It had been a week of fun-filled days and lust-filled nights.
She thought she’d done a good job of hiding her deepest fear, but they’d known about it anyway. Nancy had been on tenterhooks, wondering if the men were going to have to return to work, head back to DC sooner, rather than later. Every morning she wondered if one or both would receive a cell phone call, and that would be it.
On Thursday they’d sat her down and told her that once their accumulated vacation time had been used up, they’d be on indefinite leave, until they decided what to do next in their careers.
They’d been getting tired, they’d said, of the long assignments on the task force. They wanted something different, but they weren’t certain what. Their announcement had gone a long way toward easing her mind. She still didn’t know if she could take that leap of faith and tell them how she felt, but now she knew she had more time to figure things out.
It was, Grandma Kate had declared when she’d arrived at Nancy’s that morning, the perfect day to go shopping and visiting, as all the men would be busy, anyway. The jaunt to Divine would require an overnight stay and Kate had already booked them in to the Hourglass Inn Bed & Breakfast in Divine.
Nancy blinked when she realized they were getting close to what appeared to be a very large and very nice house.
“I had such a wonderful time when I stayed here last fall,” Kate said. “I brought Veronica with me—that’s Cord and Jackson’s sister.” Kate sighed. “And do you know, she found her heart’s desire in two wonderful men—Hank Stinson and Travis McDaniel. Hank is the Sheriff of Divine County, and Travis, his best friend, is just beginning a wonderful new position with a boys’ camp. He used to be a game warden. He and Veronica actually met years ago in Montana.” Kate’s eyes twinkled when she looked back at Nancy. “They each had a crush on the other back then, but were afraid to do anything about it. Now here they are, all these years later, married! As I always say, things generally work out the way they should.”
Nancy couldn’t help but smile. Grandma Kate was a true believer in destiny and happy e
ndings. Who could blame her? She and her husbands had shared more than fifty years together.
Emily Anne slowed the car and turned in toward the house. She pulled to a stop and Nancy took a moment to appreciate the beauty of Grace Warner’s home.
The exterior of the ranch house was a creamy limestone with a circular driveway in front. She noticed an apron off to the right where a couple of vehicles were parked. She got out of the backseat and opened Kate’s door for her, still looking around. The rose bushes were all full of buds, and the crape myrtles showed off their new chartreuse-colored leaves. The mountain laurel boasted purple blossom clusters that scented the air, a sort of a sweet, heady fragrance.
“Are you sure your friend won’t mind us just dropping in like this?” Nancy recalled Kate had told her Grace had been in a serious car accident recently. She knew Kate Benedict well enough to know that until she saw Grace for herself, she wouldn’t be completely assured her friend was all right.
“I did call her before we left Lusty. I think she’ll be happy for the company.” Kate grinned. “Her men are taking really good care of her, which means they’re watching she doesn’t overdo it.”
Emily Anne chuckled. “Knowing those three, I imagine they are taking such really good care of her she’s about ready to go stir crazy.”
Nancy followed Kate up the steps. Since her grandmother’s hands were clutched possessively around the box she carried, Nancy leaned forward and rang the bell.
Only seconds passed before a man answered.
Oh my goodness, this man has certainly been double-dipped in the handsome bucket! Nancy didn’t feel the least bit guilty enjoying the sight of such a good-looking piece of eye candy. There was nothing wrong with appreciating male beauty, even if, as she suspected, the male in question belonged to someone else.
Love Under Two Undercover Cops [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 16
