Maxwell, Brandi - Colleen's Desire [The Lost Collection] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting)

by Colleen's Desire

  She had a way of smiling, Marc thought, that was completely without guile. He was unaccustomed to women smiling at him with such simple honesty.

  Marc looked at the wire chicken crate in the bed of the buckboard. In the ten separate cages there were a total of thirty chickens. “How were you planning on getting that big crate into the kitchen?”

  Colleen sighed and her breasts once again wobbled, a movement Marc found distracting in a way that was remarkably pleasing. “The crate’s too heavy with the chickens in it, so I’ll have to take them out two at a time.”

  Marc acted without asking permission. He stepped up into the buckboard and sat on the front bench, taking the reins from Colleen, who looked at him with confusion in her eyes.

  “In that case, Frank and I can do the lifting for you,” Marc said. Seeing Colleen up close, he was surprised at just how startlingly green her eyes were. They shimmered like priceless, wet jewels. “Hop on, Frank. You’re slowing the wheels of progress.”

  A moment later, while Marc guided the Belgian off Main Street

  and down the alley toward the banquet hall kitchen, Colleen was trapped between the men. When she turned her shoulders to look behind her at the chickens, the plump fullness of her breast rubbed fleetingly against his biceps. Marc found it entirely irrational that he, a man of prodigious sexual energy and no shortage of willing women to expel that energy with, should take such shocking pleasure from the innocent contact. He wasn’t a tyro when it came to sex, so Colleen’s innocent contact shouldn’t have affected him so strongly.

  But it did, and it bothered him that he didn’t understand why.

  Chapter Two

  Colleen felt jittery inside, and she didn’t like it at all. Her reputation had been destroyed several years earlier when she’d foolishly believed the smooth, facile lies of a rich man who looked upon her as a plaything, a toy to be enjoyed while convenient and casually discarded once the novelty had worn off. Though it seemed to her that Marc Andollini and Frank Bishop were cut from a much different bolt of cloth than Allen Carpenter, all three were undeniably rich, and their ability to entertain women, sexually and otherwise, was well-known in the territory.

  To view the men as anything other than trouble of the most egregious kind was foolishness. But it was impossible to concentrate on their bad qualities while being wedged between their powerful bodies on the buckboard seat. Their nearness made her distinctly aware that she hadn’t been touched by a man in years. That they had the faintest aroma of fresh soap to them, and cologne, only heightened her sense of caution.

  Colleen, at the impressionable age of eighteen, had fallen madly in love with Allen Carpenter, the eldest son of one of the territory’s nouveau riche families. With the naïveté of youth, Colleen had believed Allen’s claims of love. Though he hadn’t formally asked for her hand in marriage, he always had what seemed like a very good reason for not putting an engagement ring on her finger. He had convinced her that there was nothing wrong with spending nights of passion with him in his hotel room. After all, what difference did it really make what the shrewish, wagging tongues of Golden Valley had to say about her behavior when, soon enough, they’d be husband and wife?

  So Colleen, against her better judgment and the teachings of her pious mother and father, spent many nights with her lover. The man she was certain would soon be her fiancé and from there, her husband. She did everything she could to ignore the venomous-tongued gossip that accused her of being a “trollop” a “fallen woman,” and so much worse than that.

  Three years went by before Allen got around to proposing. Colleen would have thought the wait had been worth it, except she wasn’t the girl he decided to marry. It was Joan Singer, the then eighteen-year-old daughter of the town’s most prominent banker and a model of decorum and propriety, with the trump card of being an honest-to-goodness and verified-by-a-doctor virgin. She even sang in the church choir.

  Such impeccable wife material credentials were too much for Allen to ignore.

  Though it wasn’t intentional, to make Colleen’s abject humiliation complete, the Carpenters stayed in Golden Valley after the wedding. Allen had always talked about moving to Helena, a larger city where men with ambition really had a chance to make a name for themselves. Instead, he built a large home close to the bank. Almost nine months to the day after the wedding, he started his family.

  In one way or another, Colleen was reminded every day of her poor judgment.

  They exited the alley and came out onto a clearing behind the Golden Valley Community Hall. The kitchen was a squat building, as new as the hall itself, with a half dozen chimney tubes sticking out through the low-slung roof like cannons. Dried wood for cooking was stacked along the entire southern wall. In the summers, the kitchen might get sweltering hot, but the banquet hall would remain cool and breezy with its spacious windows open wide. The delineation between the have and the have-nots, the servants and those who were served, couldn’t have been more starkly detailed.

  This was not the first banquet that Colleen had been invited to work, so she knew from experience that when the evening was over, she’d need to take a bath before crawling into her bed.

  Marc jumped down from the buckboard, then turned and reached up to Colleen. She looked at him for a second, momentarily shocked because helping a woman down from her carriage was such a common excuse among sweethearts for rather subtle physical contact that appeared outwardly innocent.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. He’s got his choice of lovers, and you’re not one of them. Marc and Frank are charming out of habit, that’s all.

  She leaned forward and placed her hands on his shoulders. Marc put his hands at her sides, just above the rounded curve of her hips. She gave the slightest of hops, and he took her weight effortlessly.

  Colleen was neither a small nor slender woman, yet Marc held her as though she weighed nothing at all. He held her suspended in midair, her face slightly above his, his gaze meeting and holding hers, her feet dangling above the ground.

  The tip of her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips, and after trying for a couple seconds, she managed to say, “You can set me down now.”

  She tried to turn her gaze away from Marc’s. She really did. The warning bells of masculine allure were clanging and clamoring inside her brain at a deafening volume.

  Her feet touched the ground, but his hands stayed at her waist. Colleen kept her hands on his shoulders. She swallowed dryly before finally managing to say, “Thank you.”

  She turned away and strode toward the kitchen door purposefully. The sensation of needing to escape was strong, and she told herself that she was being foolish, quite silly for a woman of her age and experience, because men like Marc and Frank weren’t interested in a serious manner with women. Certainly not with women who had gained an unpleasant reputation in Golden Valley. After Allen had married a virgin, hadn’t the women in town been only too willing to explain that very fact to Colleen?

  Frank asked, “Where do you want it?”

  It was a harmless question, and Colleen intellectually understood this. But emotionally, it was quite another matter. When she had been Allen’s lover, he often teasingly asked her that very question. When he said it, the question was both sexual and literal, and there was nothing at all harmless in it.

  Colleen opened the kitchen door. She was the first one there, as she knew she would be, but suddenly she was aware of being alone with these men in a way she hadn’t planned.

  You’re being silly, and they’re just being helpful. Now get some sense in your head, answer his question, and then say good-bye.

  “In here, if you wouldn’t mind,” Colleen said, pushing open the door. “You’re sure it’s not too heavy?”

  Both men chuckled at that. As they lifted the cage out of the buckboard, they turned it so that its wide, flat, rectangular form was vertical instead of horizontal. Seeing the ease with which they held the crate, Colleen realized how silly her question must hav
e sounded to two men so obviously physically fit.

  “Put it over there, near the cleaning table, please,” she said. The men did as instructed, then turned to face her again. She smiled. “You’ve saved me at least a half hour of work. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Frank said, “You could dance with me tonight.”

  Colleen shook her head and took off her hat. She’d pulled her hair back in a chignon that morning to keep the thick tresses out of her way while she worked, but several tendrils had already escaped her best intentions, falling down her temples in loose waves.

  “I can’t do that.”

  It was Marc this time who, with brow furrowed, responded instantly. “Why not?”

  He spoke as a man unaccustomed to being thwarted in his wishes. Not getting what he wanted simply didn’t happen much in his life, Colleen understood, and though she envied him some for this fact of life, the emotion it elicited was not without its counterpoint.

  “You can’t dance with me tonight because I’m going to be working, not attending as a guest.” She put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo. The move caused her breasts to press just a little more firmly against the front of her blouse. In a softer tone, she added, “You know that.”

  “Then dance with me now,” Marc said. “A waltz, I think, would be nice.”

  “Here?” Colleen’s tone held an undercurrent of distrust. “Now?” She laughed then, very softly, but the move caused her breasts to tremble. She saw that both men took notice of her generous feminine charms. A subtle warmth went through her. The warning bells of reason and rationality clanged even more insistently inside her brain. “You’re teasing me now.” Her voice softened. “That’s not very nice.”

  Marc shook his head and stepped closer. “No, I’m not. I wouldn’t do that to you.” His put his hands in the proper dancing position, the right close to his stomach, the left outstretched. “I’ll hum the tune. Do you know Deliriums by Josef Strauss?”

  Colleen shook her head and thought, what an appropriate waltz for the emotions I’m feeling right now.

  “No matter. It’s a waltz, and I’m certain you can follow the tune.” He half-smiled and a dimple formed in his right cheek. “All you have to do is follow my lead, and our dance will be perfection itself.”

  A tiny fissure of emotion slithered through Colleen’s nerve endings. She tried to tell herself that the handsome rogue was merely discussing a dance, but her body and emotions read meanings into words that she wasn’t at all certain were really there.

  His tone was soft but clear in the near-empty, spacious kitchen as he hummed the waltz. Feeling a bit muzzy-headed under the intense scrutiny of two such dashing reprobates, Colleen eased one hand up to Marc’s shoulder and slipped her right hand into his left. When he took his first sidestep move, she instantly got in step with him. He was light-footed, and the hand at her back was a firm guide, directing her around a small table piled high with cooking utensils and another with coffee cups precariously stacked.

  They made two entire circles around the kitchen before Marc said, “You’re a delightful dancer.” They stopped dancing. “I really must dance with you sometime when we’ve got a full orchestra.”

  Colleen was aware of the places where her body touched his, uncomfortably aware, with a feminine consciousness that had been silent for three long years. Though her hand was only being held by his, it seemed that the heat of his body was going straight into her blood. The tips of her breasts touched his chest, and though the contact itself was innocent enough, her nipples had pebbled tightly anyway. She wondered whether their elongated state would be visible through her chemise and blouse.

  “My turn now,” Frank said, stepping forward. Colleen was grateful for the distraction. Marc’s allure, shockingly masculine and undeniable, was awakening instincts within her that had been dormant for three years. At a time like this, Colleen didn’t need her body to remember was it was like to be a woman. “Marc, since your voice is a hundred times better than mine, would you be kind enough to be our one-man orchestra?”

  In a tone that suggested, at best, grudging agreement, Marc answered, “Sure. Why not?”

  At six-foot-three, Frank towered over Colleen. In his arms, looking up at him as they waltzed around the kitchen, Colleen felt, for the first time in her life, almost petite and fragile.

  “For a big man, you’re wonderfully light-footed.”

  When Frank smiled down at her, Colleen became even more aware of how sensitive her nipples were as they brushed against the solid surface of his chest. They completed the circle, and though Marc continued to hum the waltz lightly, Colleen stopped dancing and extracted herself from Frank’s arms.

  “Thank you for a delightful dance, both of you,” she said, forcing herself to sound calmer than she really was. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is much work to be done, and if you look around, you’ll see that I’m the only one here to do it.”

  Marc’s dark eyes were glittery and bright as he stepped closer, shaking his head slowly as he tipped his hat back on his head with a fingertip. “One little dance just isn’t enough. A kiss. Just one small…harmless…kiss.”

  Colleen felt her heart suddenly accelerate alarmingly. “I can think of many words to describe you, and harmless isn’t one of them.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to rumors.”

  His voice was low, a little on the rough side, and it caressed Colleen’s senses. She looked at his lips and thought them too kissable for words. When she looked into his eyes, she immediately understood why so many women had abandoned their better judgment for him.

  “I shouldn’t listen to you.”

  There was a slight quaver to Colleen’s words. She felt the hammering of her heart against her ribs and, for the first time ever, literally felt the pulse in her clit.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  With the awareness came equal measures of exquisite anticipation and wrenching horror. The last man she’d ever kissed had been the first and only man she’d ever kissed. He was handsome, unattached, a few years older than herself, rich, and more experienced in matters of the flesh than she. She had trusted that man, and because she’d believed the seductive words, her reputation had been destroyed beyond repair. She was now an outcast in the haut monde world of Western society that the banquet tonight was to honor. Marc and Frank were all those things, which made them men she should stay away from.

  “One little kiss,” Marc said, slipping his fingers around the back of Colleen’s neck. “One kiss.”

  He moved slowly, a man in his element, at ease and sure of himself. Colleen was quite the opposite. Her breath first came in quick little pants, but as Marc bent at the waist, she sucked in a breath and held it. Then his mouth was pressing lightly against her own, his lips warm and firm, moving sensually. She felt the warmth of his palms through her blouse when he put his hands on her shoulders, and a moment later, when he gently but firmly pulled her toward him, Colleen’s arms unconsciously wound round his middle.

  Seconds ticked by without measure. The clanging warning bells were silent now, their shrill cries muted by a masculine allure that was much more forceful than any Colleen had ever experienced.

  Sanity returned, though Colleen was uncertain of how long her lips had been caressed by Marc’s. Bliss had taken the place of rationality. She took a half step backward, sucked in a halting breath in an effort to calm herself, and forced the most casual smile on her lips that she could manage.

  “There you go,” she said with strained casualness, as though the single kiss hadn’t awakened feelings in her that had been dormant for years.

  “And now it’s my turn.” Frank’s tone was crisp. Colleen sensed his possessiveness, and though a part of her wanted to complain, a more feminine part of her responded both romantically and submissively to his alpha male bearing. His diamond-hard, blue-eyed gaze swept up and down over her before he concluded, “After all, you wouldn’t want me to feel left
out.”

  He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled with controlled strength, forcing her pelvis to press against him and making it impossible for her to ignore the burgeoning length of his cock against her stomach. She was forced to bend backward when Frank leaned down to kiss her. Her arms went around his neck, partly out of some instinct and partly to keep her balance, as his mouth slanted down over hers. The kiss was firmer, more commanding, than the one she received from Marc.

  What am I doing? Oh, God, I shouldn’t do things like this.

  But logic and reason had seemingly abandoned Colleen. When she felt the wet warmth of Frank’s tongue against her lips, she moaned softly and opened her mouth. His tongue eased inside, its passage slow even though her invitation was unmistakable. As her tongue danced with his, Colleen moaned a second time, louder than before, and tightened her arms around his neck. No single kiss had ever been so provocative to all of her senses or had touched her so intimately.

  Colleen felt dizzy, and it seemed like her mind was spinning. She had been kissed deeply before, of course. Though the first time it had happened she hadn’t been in the least bit aroused by it, in time she had learned to tolerate Allen’s tongue in her mouth. She didn’t need to tolerate anything with Frank. His tongue was like a wickedly arousing serpent, touching here, caressing there, gliding along her teeth, sometimes moving in deeply, and other times hardly penetrating. She responded instinctively, realizing in a flash of awareness what she had been missing and why the previous kisses had done nothing for her passion.

  An unprecedented, hungry ache throbbed in her pussy, an emptiness that was different from any previous sensation Allen had ever managed to inspire. When Frank’s broad-palmed, powerful hands slipped from the small of her back downward to squeeze and fondle her bottom through her trousers, Colleen moaned yet again. A shiver of desire worked its way up her spine.