Ethan could feel his balls tightening, and lifted her off him to turn her and plant her on top of his cock. “Come on, Cowgirl,” he teased her. “Ride me now.”
Jessa’s hands shook as she frantically positioned his thick cock between her thighs, and lowered herself onto him with a stuttering sigh. As her pussy slid down the length of him, Ethan reached up to cup her lovely breasts, and squeezed them in time with the gentle thrust of her body over his.
It didn’t take long for her pleasure to burst, or for him to spill his cream inside her. Jessa collapsed on his chest as he stroked her back, and sighed as they cooled down.
“I like what you keep in the hay loft,” she whispered. “Could you move it to my bed tonight?”
Ethan chuckled and was about to answer when he heard the barn door slam open. “Liam, I’ll look after the horses,” he called out. “You and the boys check the cattle.”
“I’m sorry,” a smarmy voice said, “but Liam can’t do anything right now.”
Jessa froze and stared at Ethan with wide, frightened eyes. “That’s the man who took me. The psychopath.”
Chapter Five
Jessa wanted to scream, but she made herself pull back on the borrowed jeans and duck down as Ethan straightened his clothes. When she looked down she could see Liam and Caleb standing with their hands behind their heads, and the monster behind them pointing a shotgun at their backs.
“Stay here,” Ethan muttered to her as he went to the ladder.
“Come on down, too, Dr. Cooper,” the man said. “I know you’re up there, and if you don’t, I’m going to turn one of these rednecks into a quadriplegic.”
Jessa exchanged a look with Ethan before she followed him down the ladder and stepped off to face her abductor. “You don’t have to do this. I haven’t reported you to the police, and these men have done nothing to you. If you leave, right now, you can get away.”
“Have you fucked all of them yet, Doc, or just this one?” The monster turned to Ethan. “I bet the little whore was very grateful for the rescue. But be honest, neighbor – is she really any good in the sack, or shouldn’t I waste my time?”
Ethan’s expression turned to stone. “You’re not laying another finger on her, Demesse.”
Jessa eased her hand in her pocket, and curled her fingers around the suture scissors she’d used on Pete. She also noticed some movement outside the back barn windows. “Wait. I’ll go with you. Just don’t hurt anyone else.”
The monster leveled the shotgun at Ethan. “Never going to happen, Doc.”
Jessa stared desperately at her cowboy, and Ethan gave her a direct look before eyeing the windows and then the floor.
“Down,” Liam called out sharply, and Jessa and all three brothers dropped as gun fire shattered the windows.
“No, no, n—” the monster’s voice dwindled to a wet gurgle as he jerked a few times and then crumpled to the ground.
Ethan yanked the shotgun from his spasming hands and held it trained on him as he shouted, “Clear.”
Jessa pushed herself up and went to the kidnapper, who stared up at her in confusion as blood bubbled from the side of his mouth. Wet red stains blossomed on his white jacket from the three large gunshot wounds in his chest.
“No,” the man got out before a gush of blood erupted from his mouth, and he went still.
“It’s all right, darling.” Ethan held her close as the rest of his brothers rushed in, and Liam covered the corpse with an old saddle blanket. “It’s over now.”
* * *
While waiting for Jessa to finish giving her statement to the local sheriff, Ethan drank three cups of terrible vending machine coffee and paced the length of the lobby twenty times. Liam finally told him to sit down before he tied him to one of the flimsy plastic visitor chairs.
“Will you stop it already?” his brother demanded. “She’ll be fine.”
“She’s traumatized,” Ethan countered, and then dragged his hand through his hair. “I don’t think she’s going to forgive me for keeping from her that I knew it was Demesse.”
“What, for the fifteen seconds before he showed up and tried to shoot us all?” Liam made a rude sound. “If this is you in love, brother, you’re not going to be worth the powder and shot to put you out of your misery. Ask her to marry you.”
“After knowing her exactly two days? Yeah, sure.” Ethan got up to pace the small room again, but at that moment Jessa walked out to join them.
“They’re going to have a special team come in and search his property,” she told them, her voice tight. “So they can see if they can find the remains of his other victims. They think he might be responsible for quite a few.” She looked up at Ethan. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
“Come on.” He put his arm around her and gave Liam a warning look. “Let’s go home.”
Once they arrived back at the ranch Liam took the rest of his brothers out to do their chores while Jessa went into the kitchen and helped Ethan warm up Buck’s pot of chili.
“I called one of my nurses at my practice, and she’s arranging to have a car delivered here for me,” Jessa said as she took down the plates from the cabinets. “I’ll need to get back to Billings as soon as the roads are clear.”
Ethan nodded, and then said what he really thought. “Don’t go back.” As she stared at him, he took the dishes from her hands and set them aside. “Stay here. Stay with me. I’ll buy whatever you need – clothes, shoes, I don’t care. Just don’t go.”
Jessa rested her hands against his chest. “Then when will you want me to leave, Cowboy?”
Ethan bent his head to brush his lips over hers. “Never. I know we just met yesterday, and we don’t know each other, and we live on opposite sides of Montana, but I don’t care. I want you here, with me.”
“Well, that means closing my practice, and giving up my apartment, and living with you and your six brothers on a lovely ranch in the middle of nowhere.” Jessa thought for a moment before she nodded. “Okay.”
He laughed before he could stop himself. “I’ll never let you leave, darling. You know that.”
“Cowboy,” she said, smiling up at him. “I’m never going to want to go.”
THE END
Protected by the Cowboy
Love in Ghost Lake Ranch
Book 2
(Can be read as a standalone book)
By: Amber Duval
Protected by the Cowboy
Chapter One
“You see those shoulders?” a female voice murmured behind Christopher Boone. “They’re like roof beams – and omigawd, that chest.”
“He’s so tasty.” A second woman made a lip-smacking sound. “I bet he’s got a six pack that won’t quit. Oooh, Shawna, look.”
“Okay,” Chris said to Lyle Jenkins, the owner of the feed store. “They’re checking out my butt now, right?”
“Yep.” Jenkins lost his fight to hide a grin as he finished ringing up the order. “Will that do you for this trip? We’re closing early next week for Christmas, remember.”
“We’re good, Lyle, thanks.” When Chris turned around, the two young women ogling him sighed in blissful unison. With a tolerant smile he touched the brim of his Stetson and said, “Ladies” before he headed out to his truck.
He didn’t mind the thrilled giggles that followed him, or the other looks he drew from people in town shopping for the holidays. He’d been stared at since a growth spurt in the fifth grade had shot him up to six feet. By high school he’d put on another six inches, and working his family’s cattle ranch had added heavy muscle to his broad build. Inheriting his Dad’s coal-black hair and Mom’s bright blue eyes hadn’t hurt, either. Girls had flocked to him like greedy geese around a grain spill.
Chris liked attracting women, too. He had a healthy sexual appetite, and on his downtime he enjoyed their company. He only wished he could have the same effect on the one girl he’d loved since the first time he’d set eyes on her.
In his min
d’s eye he could always summon the image of Rebecca Rose Carson, the prettiest girl at Crystal Valley: Long, silky-straight dark hair the color of sweet chocolate, solemn doe-brown eyes ringed with gold, and a petite, perfectly feminine body with high, pert breasts and a matching bottom.
Rebecca had also been the most unavailable girl in school, thanks to her strict father. One of the richest men in Montana, Big Bill Carson bred world-class race horses, but he flashed his money too often and was known to be a snob. Because he didn’t allow his daughter to date, and Rebecca hardly spoke to anyone, most people thought she was stuck-up. Chris knew from secretly watching her for years that it was shyness that kept her aloof.
After graduation Chris hadn’t seen much of Rebecca, and when Big Bill had remarried he’d heard she’d stopped coming to town altogether. People gossiped that it was because she was sickly, but Chris firmly believed her overbearing, controlling father was keeping her locked up in his fancy mansion. Every time he’d tried to call Rebecca, the old man had told him she couldn’t come to the phone.
“Morning, Chris.” Lyle’s son Jimmy came out of the feed store with a handcart loaded with heavy grain sacks, and pushed them to the snow-crusted curb. “Hey, did you hear about Old Man Carson?”
Chris picked up a hundred-pound sack and toss it into the back so hard the truck rocked. “No, what’s he bought now?”
“The farm, man.” Jimmy grimaced. “Last weekend he got trampled to death. They just had the funeral yesterday.”
“Trampled?” As Chris began loading more sacks he tried to wrap his head around that. He’d never liked Rebecca’s father, but as an experienced breeder the man probably knew more about horses than Chris did. “How’d that happen?”
“No one knows for sure. They found him dead in a stall with Whiplash.” The boy shook his head and huddled deeper in his jacket as a cold breeze wafted around them. “Man, you couldn’t pay me to get within a mile of that crazy stallion.”
“Shame.” Chris looked down Main Street, which led directly to the hill where Big Bill Carson had built his mansion to overlook the town. “Maybe I’ll stop in and pay my respects to the family.”
“You might want to hold off,” Jimmy said. “My ma said they’re packing up his daughter to send her to the loony bin.”
Chris’s chest knotted. “What? Why?”
“Her stepmother, Holly? Told Ma that Becca’s all messed up in the head.” The younger man shook his head sadly. “Guess she couldn’t handle losing her dad like that.”
#
Rebecca Carson sat on her lumpy bed and stared at the Bible in her hands. She’d stayed in her room since her father’s funeral, and everyone thought she was too devastated to speak to the visitors who came by to express their condolences.
She couldn’t feel anything but afraid for her life.
For two years Becca had kept silent about the abuse she’d suffered so she could prepare for her escape. She’d squirreled away every penny of her meager allowance, and kept a hidden bag packed with clothes and provisions. She’d even figured out how to get away without being seen or missed immediately. All she had to do was go up in the attic through the access panel in her closet, crawl to the window that had never been fitted with an alarm sensor, and wait there until one of the local merchants’ trucks parked beneath it. She’d even gotten the rope she’d need to lower herself down to the truck.
She’d never worked up the nerve to actually go through with it, but she had no choice now. Just before the funeral, her stepmother had fired all of the household staff, replacing them with a bunch of men who looked like thugs and watched Becca with menacing eyes. Then she’d discovered all the phones were disconnected, and the mansion’s security system code had been changed.
After glancing at the door, Becca took out the folded yearbook page she kept in her Bible. Slowly she unfolded it and stared at the big, handsome boy pictured at the top. Chris Boone’s crystal blue eyes seemed to sparkle at her, reminding her of all the times she’d caught him watching her in school.
He’d always given her a sheepish, charming grin, but he hadn’t looked away. The few times he’d tried to talk to her, Becca had been too eaten up with shyness to mumble more than a few words. Still, there had been that one, glorious day, when she’d bumped into him coming out of art class. For a few, heart-racing moments he’d held her in his arms.
“Sorry,” he murmured, looking down at her as if he’d just won first prize for roping at the state fair. “You sure are a little thing, Rebecca Rose.”
He knew her name, and for a moment she forgot everything but the feel of his hard, muscular body against hers. “Everyone calls me Becca,” she whispered.
“That’s a shame.” His mouth curved as he tucked a piece of her dark hair behind her ear. “Because Rebecca Rose are my two favorite words in the whole world.” As the bell rang he released her with obvious reluctance, but then stood and watched her as she hurried off.
Becca refolded and tucked away the page. That had been seven years ago, and still it thrilled her to remember being in Chris Boone’s arms.
She jumped as the door to her bedroom opened, and Holly came in carrying a breakfast tray. Tall and thin, her stepmother hardly resembled the Vegas showgirl she’d been before marrying Big Bill Carson. Now she wore designer clothes, French perfume, and kept her blonde hair in a smooth bob. Rubies glittered in her ears and around her wrists, matching the blood-red lipstick she always wore.
Becca tried not to look at her mouth. Sometimes the lipstick rubbed off on Holly’s front teeth, and made her fake smiles seem even more grotesque.
“You didn’t come down for breakfast,” Holly said, setting the tray on Becca’s night stand. “You have to eat something, dearest.”
“I’m just praying for Dad.” Becca froze as the older woman reached out and stroked a hand over her hair. “Thank you, Mother.”
Holly had insisted Becca call her Mother, and at first she’d done so to be polite. Now using the affectionate name felt like trying to speak through a mouthful of broken glass.
“I know how hard this has been,” Holly said. “But tomorrow we’re going to get out of here and go on a little trip to Helena. There’s a wonderful treatment center there where you’ll be staying until you get better.”
Fear made her blood run cold. “I’m not sick.”
“Oh, but you are.” Holly sat down beside her. “I can’t let you go on hurting yourself, dearest. You need help.”
Knowing what was coming, Becca cowered. “Please, don’t.”
“Shhh.” Holly pressed a manicured finger against her trembling lips. “What have I told you about arguing with me?” When Becca remained silent, she slapped her. “Answer me.”
She stared down at her Bible and willed herself not to cry. “Mother knows best.”
“That’s right, dearest.” Holly caressed her throbbing cheek. “Now eat your waffles. You need to keep up your strength.”
As Holly sauntered to the door Becca reached under the covers, and then stood up. “Whatever you do to me, you won’t get away with it.”
Her stepmother turned around slowly. “With what, dearest?”
It took all her courage to say it. “I know you murdered my father and made it look like an accident.” She swallowed hard. “Why? He gave you everything.”
“Your precious Daddy was a pig. Pawing me every night, trying to get me pregnant so he could have a son – as if I’d ever ruin my body by having a brat. When he told me we were going to a fertility doctor I knew I had to get rid of him.” Her eyes narrowed. “All right, dearest, since we’re being honest, here’s how it’s going to work: you’re going to sign over your inheritance to me, so I can look after it for you.”
Becca lifted her chin. “You can’t make me do that.”
“Can’t I?” Holly advanced on her. “I made sure everyone in town knows how unstable you are. So when you’re found dead, they’ll assume that you killed yourself out of grief over Daddy.”
Holly shoved her back against the wall, and when Becca collapsed she kicked her over and over as she ranted, “I don’t care if you sign or you die, you stupid little bitch. Either way, I get everything.”
Huddling with her arms over her head, Becca didn’t move until she heard her bedroom door slam. Painfully she hauled herself up and reached under the covers again. She then hobbled over to the other side of her bed. With shaking fingers she pulled back the mattress cover, and reached into the hollow space she made, and began pulling out what was going to save her life.
Chapter Two
December snows had blanketed the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, adding a crisp white stillness to the rambling pasturelands of Ghost Lake Ranch. Even in winter the Boone brothers worked hard to keep their herds healthy and thriving, and maintain their reputation as producers of some of the finest beef and dairy cattle in Montana.
“Damn shame about Bill Carson,” Ethan Boone said as he helped Chris unload the feed order from the pickup. “Never thought he’d be fool enough get cornered by that loco stallion.”
“Yeah.” Chris tossed the last heavy sack into the bin. “I might go up to the Carson house tomorrow and seeing how Rebecca’s doing.”
“You mean, now that Big Daddy’s gone, you finally get to make your move on little bashful Becca,” their youngest brother, Caleb, said as he joined them.
Chris shook his head. “Something’s not right about this.” He told his brothers about what Jimmy had said, and saw the look they exchanged. “Now hold on. There’s nothing wrong with Rebecca. She’s just shy, is all.”
Caleb grinned and opened his mouth, and then caught Ethan’s stern look and backed up a step. “Yeah, I think I’ll go check on Pete.” He hurried off toward the stables.
Ethan came around the truck and leaned against the back end next to Chris. “We’ve all heard the talk around town about Becca. I know you care about her, but it’s been a long time since high school. People change.” He hesitated before he added, “They wouldn’t be sending her off unless there was good reason for it.”
MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) Page 131
