The Substantial Gift [The Sunset Palomino Ranch 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Rose did a spit-take, spraying her speckled Formica table. Violet smiled indulgently. People didn’t usually expect such a prim, exact, practical girl like herself to say words like “fatties,” she knew. It was amusing.

  She continued, “But I will take that strawberry milk, Rose, because I am clearly filling the void inside myself with food.”

  “Violet, Violet,” crooned Rose, covering Violet’s hand with her own. “One, you’re hardly a ‘fattie.’ Five pounds off and you’d be right as rain. Two, Bryan sounds like the biggest nozzle on the planet. Drake’s told me all about him. He never liked him, lounging around, frittering away your dad’s money.”

  Violet raised an eyebrow. “Like Drake didn’t?” But her goal wasn’t to defend the epic numbnuts that was her soon-to-be-ex, and she softened even more when the pink milk was placed before her. “Rose, did you know that fellow I was talking to in the lobby?”

  “Who? The guy who looked like a greasy fed? He did look familiar, but I really can’t place him. Probably ate here at the Cavern or something. Hey! Sinclair!”

  Rose waved to someone behind Violet, and she wasn’t about to turn around from sucking on her straw. As Sinclair ostensibly made his way to their booth, Rose crouched low over the table and whispered loudly. “Violet. Get a load of this guy. I swear, he’s the handsomest man in all of the land.”

  Violet sucked loudly on the straw and said, “Rose. You don’t need to do this. I don’t need convincing of anything, because I’m not in the market for—uh.”

  Violet found herself looking up at the handsomest man in all of the land. Her lower lip hung slack, and it wasn’t until what was undoubtedly pink milk started dribbling over it that she remembered to lick it, and closed her mouth.

  He was chiseled. That was the only word for it. Violet barely took notice of his Lacoste shirt and whatever else he was wearing. Her awareness stopped at his wide, powerful shoulders—the sort that hit golf balls and slalomed all day long. His chin actually had a deep dimple, as though an angel had pressed her finger there. His perfectly bowed cupid’s lips curled up at the corners with amusement. Yet his dazzling auburn eyes did seem to hold some sorrow that made Violet want to know more.

  No, Rose wasn’t full of shit. This guy was the handsomest, most dazzling, GQ motherfucker this side of the Andes. Violet was familiar with the type from the Gstaad circuit, the Côte d’Azur scene, the Sao Paolo set. They flung their sweaters over their shoulders, went yachting, produced movies, and pretended to like the opera. Violet knew the sort well. Hell, she probably was that type. She supposed this Sinclair guy—who had an appropriately rich name—was the Palm Springs version. Sinclair probably had a mounted bobcat instead of a Cape buffalo, but he still probably had a trophy wife, quoted Shakespeare, and drove a Range Rover.

  And now Rose was holding hands with Sinclair. “Sinclair Nieman,” she gushed, as though about to call him “darling,” “I want you to meet Violet, Drake’s sister. She’s just come in from Gstaad, too, and will be spending”—she looked at Violet finally—“well, we don’t know how long at Shining Lands. You’ll probably run into her, no doubt.”

  “No doubt,” Sinclair said without a trace of pretension. His eyes even sparkled as he shook Violet’s limp hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Violet. Drake speaks highly of you.”

  “Drake hasn’t spoken of you at all,” Violet said honestly. Oh, God. Maybe I do have Asperger’s Syndrome. Why do I always speak the truth? It’s called manners, Violet. “Because he’s just my older brother. I rarely listen to him.”

  “Well,” Rose explained eagerly, “Sinclair’s staying at Shining Lands too. You probably haven’t run into him yet because you’re staying out in the Water Buffalo Lodge.” Since Drake had married Rose, Violet didn’t feel it was proper to horn in on their privacy, although the main house boasted twenty-two bedrooms, some with Nixon, Kissinger, Capote, and Joey Bishop memorabilia actually left there by those people. So she stayed in one of the several “cottages” across a bridge that spanned one of the many reflecting pools. At two thousand square feet, it was more than enough for her.

  Violet asked, “So you’re one of Drake’s friends from…Anguilla? The Seychelles? Mt. Kenya Safari Club?”

  Rose started to say, “Oh, Sinclair isn’t one of those—”

  But Sinclair himself interrupted suavely. “It’s all right, Rose. Maybe I am one of those Sloane Rangers. Lord knows, I enjoy yachting and scuba diving in Mombasa.”

  Violet got carried away with herself. “Oh, I adore scuba diving in the coral gardens of the Indian Ocean! Everyone talks about how superior the currents and royal polyps of the Great Barrier Reef are, but for my money the night diving off of Pemba can’t be beat—” Then she realized she sounded just as snobby as Sinclair, and she made her mouth a thin line.

  But she’d blown it. Sinclair was agreeing with her. “Yes, floating at night in a glass-bottomed boat with the brain and pencil coral all lit up was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.”

  “And I’ll bet you’ve had many,” Violet said thinly.

  Rose continued obliviously, “Sinclair thinks he can find an artifact that may have been somewhere in the Searchlight remodel, so he’s been talking to Willow Paige.” Willow was the owner of the Searchlight. Violet hadn’t met Willow yet, but she had married the owner of the neighboring Lone Palm Ranch, where decades ago a juvenile Troy Washburn had terrified and intrigued Violet about the splendors of male anatomy. “He thinks his father, heir to a department store chain, may have left a particular item—”

  Sinclair interrupted. “An old scrimshaw thimble.”

  Rose stopped. “Is that what you’re looking for? How valuable can a thimble be?”

  Sinclair chuckled. “It’s more the sentimental value for my mother. She called when I was flying from Gstaad to Palm Spring—”

  “Gstaad.” Violet spat the word as though she’d inhaled skunk. Was absolutely everyone in the world from Gstaad?

  “Why, yes,” said Rose pleasantly. “In fact, Sinclair here knows Bryan. You’ve skied with him, right, Sinclair?”

  That was it! Absolutely it! Violet hadn’t flown halfway around the world just to hear more partying stories about her wife-beating, cheating husband! What a great guy, what a sense of humor, how’s about traversing that powder on the slopes? It absolutely infuriated Violet that yet another Gstaad bling-bling dickwad with his head up his ass was going to be living a few yards from her!

  Without forethought, she slammed her palms onto the table and stood, clutching her purse close to her. She nodded tersely to Sinclair. “Nice to meet you. Rose, thanks for the pink milk. I just remembered something I have to do at the Modern Committee.”

  That was bullshit, pure and utter bullshit. Violet just didn’t want to be thinking about Bryan every time she looked into the handsome bastard’s eyes. Why did the entire planet have to be butt buddies with the violent, drug-addicted Bryan Hunt? She gave Sinclair one last narrow-eyed glance of disgust and stalked away.

  Rose was saying, “But don’t you want your jellied turkey mold?”

  How pathetic. A turkey mold. Violet had come hellaway to California, slinking back like the loser she hoped to never be again, just to be able to file for divorce here. She wanted half the money Bryan had earned since they’d wed over twenty years ago, what he hadn’t frittered away on drugs and women. She had raised his children and tolerated his comings and goings. She had laid under him passively while he bit her, humped her, tossed her around. She had lied to cover up split lips, black eyes, broken fingers while everyone around Bryan clapped him on the back with camaraderie. She wanted that damned money.

  She was going to talk to Drake about this guest. She didn’t want to be reminded of Bryan Hunt, seat belt magnate, every time she looked at the pearly whites of Sinclair Nieman.

  Chapter Two

  Sinclair Nieman was surprised and hurt by Violet Hunt’s abrupt exit.

  She had seemed to be warming to him when they�
��d swapped stories about snorkeling off Mombasa. She had abruptly shut him down when Rose had mentioned he was a friend of Bryan Hunt. Well, “friend” was a bit extreme. They had partied at the Gstaad Palace Hotel, had shared a couple of women—oh, and Sinclair had spent about a week at Bryan’s chalet there in a party haze of some kind. He had not met Violet at that time. He recalled her as being off in Israel digging some bones or other.

  But Sinclair felt truly offended as he got into his rented Jaguar and drove east down Barry Manilow Avenue. As wealthy and privileged as Sinclair—“Sin” to his many friends—was, he still had a deeply insecure need to be liked by everyone. Sure, he was an heir to the department store fortune. And he actually owned a nice spread over by Barry Manilow’s house. It was too lonely, so he rarely stayed there, preferring the company of friends. But Sinclair didn’t use his wealth the way that people like Bryan Hunt did—flaunting, reveling, boasting.

  No, Sinclair lived a fairly muted life, full of charity, elegance, and grace. Although at the age of thirty-two, he still wasn’t even close to marrying, he didn’t fuck all that many women. He didn’t use his inheritance as a way to entice women. He’d been there and done that pretty much by the time he was twenty-one. Ever since, he’d been searching for a deeper meaning, which was why he’d been drawn to Violet, eager to meet her.

  Bryan had mentioned she was constantly out scuba diving with whales or visiting ruins in the Sudan. Sinclair had even wandered into her home office in Gstaad where he’d viewed photos of her tromping through the foliage of the Mountains of the Moon and peering through a porthole at the wreck of the Titanic. That was a year ago, and he’d been smitten. Violet Hunt—now probably Violet Stinson again—was a hearty, elfin brunette with an upturned pug nose. Her obvious intelligence and quest for knowledge turned on Sinclair. She didn’t just rest on her laurels and coast off her wealth like so many did. She was constantly on adventurous vacations where one could parachute into a volcano or study elephants in Sumatra. She wasn’t a dilettante, either. He’d seen more than a few awards in her office that were for actual hard work on animal rights causes, not just throwing some cash at it like Sinclair did.

  He felt they were comrades in arms, with some of the same charities in common. That was why he was triply insulted when she rebuffed him. That was probably why, when he left the Cavern on the Green, he’d driven straight to The Racquet Club.

  He’d heard about this coed BDSM dungeon from comments tossed around by Drake and his lover Jesse, who had both been there. It was allegedly next to the Bee Line Bowl, the kitschy vintage lanes that were the current object of the Modern Committee’s largesse. Sinclair had been planning on becoming involved with that remodel, as he enjoyed midcentury architecture like the next guy, but after Violet’s rejection he just saw red. He had a restless, wandering void to fill, some sorrows to drown.

  And that was the first thing Sinclair noticed when he passed The Racquet Club lobby and ventured into the first audience chamber. The windowless hall—wow, it really was a dungeon—had a U-shaped bar that served only coffee, not booze. This is weird. Booze was wall-to-wall in Europe’s dungeons. Why would anyone want to sit here without a cocktail in his hand and watch one woman flog another who is wearing a spreader bar between her ankles and bent over a stool? Well, Sinclair could maybe see doing that, but he didn’t feel like drinking coffee. It would keep him awake all night. So after a few minutes in the hall that still smelled like decades of cigarette smoke that had been painted over, Sinclair drifted to the next room.

  Aha. This was even twistier than the welcoming hall where noobs could be voyeurs. This gallery was a bit more hardcore. The bolder lookie-loos were all standing pressed together, craning their heads this way and that to get a view of the stage. Sinclair eased himself past a dozen asses cradled in leather chaps and giant shelf bras holding luscious or plain old enormous bosoms. About half the people seemed to be collared, but nearly all were wearing some sort of fetish outfit.

  Sinclair was accustomed to this from the clubs of Paris and Sao Paolo, Brazil. This room had no bar, not even any seating. Everyone was crowding the velvet ropes, murmuring, watching…what? Sinclair was taller than most men, but even he had to put his hands on the shoulders of the guy in front of him and stand on tiptoe to see.

  Oh, wow. Two men were demonstrating a CBT device Sinclair had never seen before. Having long been interested in, and sometimes practiced, CBT, Sinclair struck up a conversation with the guy he was leaning on.

  “I’ve seen a sheath like that before, but just for solo pleasure.”

  “Right,” said the guy, who was shirtless, his back hairy beneath his suspenders. With his latex cap and bushy sideburns, he resembled one of the Village People. “I can’t wait to get my hands on this sheath for two people.”

  Indeed, the two bears onstage demonstrated a double-ended clear silicone sheath. With their naked cocks jutting from their jockstraps like the tongues of panting dogs, one guy sheathed his dick in the rubbery substance, his penis clearly visible from inside as he fisted it. He spoke into a cordless mic like a salesman, and people around them in the audience made comments of appreciation, but Sinclair spoke to his new friend.

  “Have you tried those? I swear they feel like real mouths.”

  “I’ve tried the ones that feel like real asses,” said the fake biker. “This one supposedly combines the best of both worlds.”

  “How much does it cost?” asked another guy, musing. “Did they say?”

  Sinclair finally looked around and noticed there were only a few women of dubious origin in the room. Oh, well. Although his prick was rapidly swelling, Sinclair didn’t have gay inclinations in the slightest. Just a few drunken experiences that came back to him in a haze during twisted masturbation sessions. No, he was getting hard just thinking about wrapping that molded flesh stroker around his cock. Any guy would get hard thinking about that. And thanks to his European experience, he had no homophobic prejudices.

  Men around him started rubbing and swiveling their hips against each other. That was all right, too. Europe was so much more open-minded about things. The air was pungent with the sexual desire of the horny men in the audience, and Sinclair’s dick strained almost painfully against his boxer briefs.

  “What’s the best of both worlds?” Sinclair asked, practically panting on his friend’s shoulder. The motorcyclist seemed to be missing his partner, just gyrating his crotch into the air.

  “Well, see? It’s a way both can get off while keeping another hand free to play with each other.”

  Sinclair practically stopped breathing when the second man, a massively muscled bear who proudly displayed his beefy pecs and bullet nipples to the audience, slipped his sinewy cock into the other end of the sheath. Both men now pumped the double-ended sheath, both cocks in sharp relief thanks to the harsh spotlighting.

  The beefy bear droned on about the benefits of the “ass and mouth stroker,” but Sinclair barely heard. The level of arousal in the room was reaching incredible heights thanks to the virility of the two models. The acrid smell of testicles tickled Sinclair’s nose, and his cockhead started to throb with yearning. When he tore his eyes from the stage for a split second, he realized that another guy standing to his right was squeezing the leather-clad dick of another. The remarks of the audience began to melt into moans as the onstage demonstration rose in intensity, heading to a stimulating crescendo.

  When the first model reached out to tweak one of the bear’s bullet nipples, Sinclair nearly lost his load just from sheer mindfuck. He knew they were merely showing off the hands-free aspects of the silicone tunnel. The biker finally turned to look fully at Sinclair, freely allowing his eyes to roam up and down Sinclair’s yuppie form. Sinclair knew he looked like a rich asshole, maybe because he was. Rich. Not an asshole.

  “You want to go into a booth?” asked the leatherman, as though inviting Sinclair for a cup of coffee.

  “What?” His head was foggy with the scent of sex. Booth?
He hadn’t ventured that far into the Racquet Club yet. “Oh, no thanks. I’m fine. I’m not gay.”

  The biker nodded politely and returned his gaze to the stage, where the mutual masturbation was reaching orgasmic proportions. Both men’s phalluses were unbelievably long, a tribute to the company who had hired them, or the enthusiasm they showed for the product. Sinclair found himself eagerly waiting for one or the other—hopefully the bear with the stiff nipples—to shoot his load. Why do I want to see that? I’m not gay. Oh, well. I’m open-minded. It’s the European influence.

  The biker said, “That delicious bear’s got the ass end of the stroker. It’s got to be tighter than the mouth end.”

  Just as Sinclair was contemplating how much tighter a woman’s ass was compared to her mouth, an anonymous hand clamped down on his prick.

  His pelvis was flooded with pre-orgasmic thrills as the faceless hand gripped his cock. It wasn’t the Village Person in front of him, who had returned to air-fucking and fist-pumping along to the driving beat of the music. Sinclair kept a hand on his friend’s shoulder, though, for support. The fingers knew just where to gently rub the corona of his glans, stiff and bulging beneath two layers of fabric.

  Sinclair looked from side to side, not daring to move his head for fear the groping would stop. Now the hard planes of a male form plastered to his back, and he gasped, unheard over the other hubbub of the hall. He dared gyrate his hips in imitation of the other men around him, pressing his cock into the pleasuring hand.

  Now the stiff ridge of an erection pressed against his ass. That was okay. He’d had a few dicks pressed up against him in the discotheques of Europe, where almost anything went. He wasn’t drunk this time, but he felt his balls tighten and rise as the guy behind him rolled his hips, imitating the act of ass-fucking him. Sinclair played it up, gyrating his own hips, thrusting his cock into the hand that now palmed and squeezed him fully, unafraid to be seen nakedly examining another man’s penis.