Colleen straightened on the bed, inhaled deeply as she summoned courage, and stood, turning slowly until she faced Frank.
His eyes were blue and vividly intense. Colleen looked away, simultaneously frightened and aroused by his desire.
“Take off your shirt.”
Colleen’s hands went without hesitation to the top button of her shirt, unfastening as they moved downward. Her breasts rose and fell with her deep and rapid breathing. She pulled the tails of the shirt out of the waistband of her trousers, finished with the buttons, and let the garment filter down her arms to fall to the floor.
“And now your camisole.”
Colleen could no more refuse Frank’s request than she could snap her fingers and suddenly become slender and dark and exotic instead of voluptuous and Irish and freckled. She pulled the camisole over her head, and the heavy mounds of her breasts swayed tautly.
“Now listen carefully. I want you to say, clearly and with confidence, ‘I am lovely.’”
“But I’m—”
“Say it!”
Never comfortable with her own body, Colleen unconsciously crossed her arms, cupping each breast with the opposite hand to conceal it from Frank’s scrutiny.
Softly, she said, “I am lovely.”
“Now say it again.”
“I am lovely.” She cleared her throat and said in a clear voice, “I am lovely.”
“And now, my lovely lady, finish what you started.” His mouth curled upward on the right side, forcing Colleen to resist the urge to kiss him. “And let me watch you doing it.”
The words were like a physical caress directly to Colleen’s clit. She sat on the bed and once again leaned sideways over Frank, though this time she turned toward him. Without delay, she leaned down and let the conical crown of his swollen cock fill her mouth.
I’m a very wicked woman.
Colleen used her tongue against the side of Frank’s pulsing shaft while looking straight into his blue eyes.
Frank makes me want to be wicked.
Reaching between his powerful thighs, Colleen cupped his heavy, egg-shaped balls in her hand. She gave them a firm squeeze. She received a groan of approval for her actions.
I want to make Frank happy. I want him impressed with me.
When her hair fell across her face, Frank twisted slightly in bed and used his uninjured left hand to smooth the strands behind Colleen’s ear. Then, twisting even more, he cupped one breast in his hand and squeezed. The sensation of his hand upon her breast caused fresh nectar to rush to the lips of her pussy, but she could tell that it was difficult in their current positions and with Frank’s right hand injured for him to caress her.
She let him slip out from between her lips with a sigh, kissed the knob, and said, “Now it’s my turn to say that you don’t need to hurt yourself.” Though her right hand was busy with Frank’s cock, she used her left to lift a breast invitingly. “You don’t think these are too big?”
What was unspoken was that Allen did think they were too large, and he didn’t make any effort to hide his displeasure from her.
“Everything about you is lovely.”
“A diplomatic response.”
“Especially your breasts.”
“A better response.”
She moved up on the bed, putting one hand on the headboard and the other on the mattress. Her breasts hung above his face, swaying freely as she gave her shoulders a shake. She watched as he opened his mouth and sucked much of her pink areola and nipple between his lips.
“Oh! Oh God!” she gasped as the heated caress of Frank’s warm, wet mouth suffused her senses.
The tingling in her clit, which had started when she had first looked at his naked chest, grew into a throbbing ache. Turning her shoulders, she pulled one nipple from his mouth and guided the other to those lips that were so incredibly skilled at giving pleasure.
As Frank sucked on Colleen’s proffered nipples, she resumed stroking his cock, running her fist from the base of his shaft all the way up to the tip. She could feel his mounting excitement, hear his breath coming faster and faster through his nostrils as he tantalized her nipples with an ever-increasing suction.
When the friction of her fist running along Frank’s cock became too intense, Colleen straightened a little, withdrawing her breast from his hungry lips with a sigh. She moved down in the bed and resumed sucking him lustily. By this time, her confidence, as well as her passion, was soaring. She positioned herself so that Frank had a perfect view of her profile and pulled her hair around her shoulders on the opposite side so there would be nothing to hinder his view of her wanton act.
She sucked hungrily and with greater enjoyment than ever before in her life. With Allen, she had felt bullied into giving him the pleasure of her lips and tongue. It was something she did out of a sense of obligation, not desire. With Frank, Colleen wanted to please him until he could withstand no more stimulation.
“Get me wet, then give me your breasts again.”
It sounded as though the words had to be forced out through teeth gritted in lust. Colleen positioned herself so that her breasts hung above Frank’s face. Her right hand, lubricated with her own saliva, pumped swiftly on a shaft that literally throbbed.
“You could make me climax,” Colleen said, looking down at Frank as his lips caressed her left nipple, “just from sucking on my nipples.”
She heard him grunt, and the suction he applied to her breast was very strong. A moment later the thick streams of white, creamy semen exploded from the swollen crown of Frank’s cock. Colleen continued pumping on his erupting flesh, watching as jets of cum were released, arching through the air to leave gooey lines over his chest and stomach.
Squeezing his shaft tightly in her fist, working her hand from the base to the tip, Colleen drew a final pearl of cream from Frank. The droplet glistened in the morning sunlight that filtered through the window.
With his orgasm complete, all the tension seemed to instantly vanish from Frank’s body. With a satisfied sigh, he released Colleen’s breast from his mouth.
Colleen had never seen so much cum in her life and nearly said as much. Instead, she leaned over and swiped her tongue against the tip of Frank’s softening erection, licking off the salty drop that remained at the slit. He flinched at the contact, and she smiled.
“It looks like I’m going to have to bathe you once more,” she murmured. In an unprecedented way, she felt both aroused and satisfied. She used the washcloth to clean her hand, then was about to put on her chemise before she stopped herself. “Close your eyes now.” Despite his satisfaction, Frank eyed her naked breasts lustfully, and his still-smoldering desire heightened Colleen’s confidence. She began cleaning him with the washcloth. “You need more sleep if you’re going to get better. Just close your eyes.”
He was asleep before Colleen finished washing away the evidence of his passion for her. With smile on her lips, Colleen put on her chemise and shirt and headed for the barn to milk her cow.
Chapter Eight
“Take a chair, Marc. I know you’re pissed as hell, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sit and have a cup of coffee.”
The speaker was Sheriff Clay Dixon. Marc had known him for years. He respected him as a man and trusted him as a lawman. Seeing Frank get shot and realizing just how close he’d come to losing his best friend to an assassin’s bullet had ignited a rage within Marc’s breast that would not be quenched until the men responsible were dead.
He sat in the chair facing the sheriff’s desk as Clay poured a cup of coffee from the blue speckled coffee pot resting on the iron stove. He took a pouch of tobacco from an inside jacket pocket and started rolling a cigarette.
“Tell us what happened, and start from the very beginning,” Clay said as he took his chair. He glanced over at Deputy Bruce Hastings, then back at Marc. “And don’t tell us again how you’re going to gut-shoot the bastards because even though you’re my friend, if you gun down anyone in cold blood, I’ll arrest you and
put you before a judge.”
Never in his life had Marc felt such a futile rage. He wanted revenge, bloody revenge, and he wanted it instantly. But all the rage in the world wasn’t going to help him learn the identities of the men who had made the surprise attack.
Slowly and methodically, he told the lawmen everything he could think of, searching his consciousness for even the most inconsequential detail of the evening. Clay and Bruce had built reputations for fairness and toughness, but even more importantly, they were known as men who pursued the truth and nearly always found out who was guilty, and just as importantly, who was innocent.
When Marc was finished with his story, the sheriff said, “Take Doc Hamms to go see Frank. Seems to me you owe Miss O’Malley one hell of a lot.”
“I know that,” Marc replied, getting to his feet. “She’ll get paid back, with interest.”
“I know that, too. You’re a good man, Marc, and what’s been done to Frank is bad. But if you become a vigilante, I’ll go from being a man trying to help you see that justice is done to a man who sees you as a lawbreaker in need of punishment.” He walked around the desk and patted Marc on the shoulder. “First thing I’ll do is ride out to where they set up the ambush. I’ll figure out my next move after that.” He smiled, but it wasn’t really a friendly expression. “Don’t worry, Marc. I’ll get these bastards. I’ll get every one of them, and they’ll pay the price for what they’ve done.”
* * * *
As though to further heighten Marc’s sense of impotent rage and futility, when he arrived at Doc Hamms’s house, he found the chalkboard outside had a message on it that read, I am at the Kroeger ranch. Mrs. Kroeger is having her ninth. Should be back in town by suppertime.
To make matters even worse, Colleen’s old mare was simply not used to making repeated trips back and forth from the homestead to town in a single day. The old mare was tired, so Marc couldn’t in good conscience hurry her along. He was tired himself, having gotten almost no sleep the previous evening.
The first real sense of relief he felt was when he crested the ridge of a hill some five hundred yards from Colleen’s homestead and saw the house off in the distance. The previous evening, the house had been a safe haven, a place where he could tend to his best friend who had severe wounds. And later, outside that house and under the moonlight, he had tasted the charms of a young woman who had, since those few blissful moments together, been almost constantly in his thoughts.
It was much better, Marc decided, to think about Colleen and not about the faceless men who had ambushed him.
The buckboard was loaded with sufficient provisions and medical supplies to feed and provide medical attention to a small army for at least a month. And trailing behind the buckboard were two well-trained roan geldings, just in case Frank was feeling well enough to ride back into town. Marc, though, was against that idea. He wanted Frank to stay in bed, at least until Doc Hamms saw to him and gave a pronouncement of being fit enough to travel.
Hopping off the buckboard, he didn’t bother untying the horses or doing anything else. First things first. He wanted to see how Frank was doing. Then he had to figure out some way of getting Colleen alone. He needed to talk to her, to find out what she thought about their entirely unplanned tryst of the previous evening. Unlike most of the women who traipsed quickly in and out of his arms, Colleen wasn’t the promiscuous type.
He needed to talk to her, but he wanted to do so much more than just talk.
He thought of knocking on the door but didn’t want to disturb anyone should they be sleeping. Instead, cautiously, he turned the door knob and slowly opened the door, feeling a bit like a burglar as he did so.
He took only a single step into the house. Like most small homes in the territory, it was designed to facilitate heating during the long, harsh Montana winters. Marc saw that Frank was sleeping peacefully in the big bed and Colleen was not in the house. Careful to keep his boot heels soundless against the wooden floor, he took another step into the room and heard the faint, steady sound of Frank’s snoring.
He smiled, and for the first time in hours, he felt confident that his friend would eventually recover completely. The nagging suspicion that the head wound might be more serious than just a flesh wound had never left him. But a man sleeping soundly and snoring softly had to be on the mend.
Feeling slightly annoyed that Colleen wasn’t watching over Frank, even though it was obvious that his friend was doing quite well, Marc stepped back outside and closed the door quietly.
Where would Colleen be an hour after sunrise? The barn or the chicken coop?
He decided on the barn, and as he walked, a smile played upon his lips and he nearly started whistling. Seeing Frank resting peacefully had taken an enormous burden off his shoulders. His friend had been injured grievously, but he would recover, and that was all that mattered.
So now it was time to concentrate on the other person who had monopolized his thoughts recently. A certain redheaded Irishwoman with a reputation in tatters because she’d fallen in love with a man who didn’t love her back. A curvaceous vixen who lived by herself and had the discipline and spunk to run her own business selling milk, cheese, and eggs. Granted, Colleen’s income wasn’t a fraction of what Marc and his family had, but she didn’t ask anything from anyone, and for that, his respect for her was enormous.
In fact, she hadn’t asked him for anything at all. He was indebted to her, not the other way around. The novelty of the situation pleased Marc but only because he knew that his burden would soon be taken out of the red and put into the black.
Only one of the two doors leading into the barn was open. He stepped into the dark interior and was momentarily unable to see much. He waited until his vision adjusted and out of habit put his hand on the grip of the Colt revolver. After several seconds, he saw a cow in a stanchion, contentedly munching on the ground oats in a bucket in front of her. Marc’s trained eyes told him the cow was a Jersey, a rather small one even for a small breed, and that she was quite old. She didn’t have many years left in her.
A bucket of fresh milk was off to the side, where it wouldn’t get kicked.
Not a second passed before Marc decided that in the very near future Colleen was going to own a purebred Holstein milking cow. And he’d replace her old mare with a young, strong gelding who could work for her for another twenty years.
This day was getting better and better for Marc all the time.
It was a small barn, and it took no more than a glance for him to see that Colleen wasn’t in it.
He had turned halfway around to leave when he heard the thud! of a boot heel overhead.
Marc’s grin broadened. Frank was sleeping peacefully, and Colleen was in the hayloft. And, unless his guess was very much incorrect, she was alone.
Though never a man with a heavy footstep, as he walked to the ladder, Marc made a point of not making any noise. When he began his ascent, he moved slowly, cautiously.
He stuck his head up through the square opening to the loft. He heard Colleen before he actually saw her. Hay was piled in the center of the roof. He heard her singing very softly behind the mound.
He heard the scrape of a pitchfork against the wood and saw the swirls of dust as hay was moved to the square feed holes in the floor, located directly over the pens for the animals.
Marc thought she seemed happy as she moved the hay into position. Marc decided he didn’t like seeing Colleen’s lush curves made less feminine by her wearing the coarse trousers more commonly associated with cowboys and a work shirt. They were utilitarian clothes meant to be functional, not attractive, and seeing them on the object of his most ardent feelings was suddenly irksome. Given the chance, he’d put her in the finest dresses from New York or Paris.
Colleen pushed loose hay with the pitchfork toward one of the feed openings. Marc watched with a sense of fascination as she worked. Certain that he should make his presence known but pleased that as yet she was unaware of being watche
d. In his entire life, he’d known only a few women who actually worked for a living. The society ladies of Golden Valley, Helena, and Virginia City were always busy with their charity work and altruistic deeds.
Colleen turned just enough to see that she was no longer alone. Startled, she jumped backward and squared up to the intruder, lifting the fork to waist level.
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just me,” Marc said quickly, raising his hands and turning his palms toward Colleen. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Well, you damned sure did!” she snapped back. She made a jabbing motion with the fork. “You’re lucky I don’t run you through just out of spite.”
“I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry.” He spread his arms wide in the universal gesture of harmless innocence. “What else can I say?”
“How about good-bye?”
Marc was willing to give Colleen some ground because he should have, in fact, warned her that he was approaching. More than a few men in the mountains had been shot because they’d approached a camp without giving proper warning of their approach.
“No. I think not.” His words came out clipped. “Actually, I’ve been waiting a while to be alone with you. The last time we were together, our time together didn’t exactly end the way I had hoped it would.”
He saw the color blanch from her face. Oh, yes. She knew. She knew full well what he was talking about.
“I…” Colleen began, then paused and cleared her throat with some difficulty. “I should go look after Frank.”
“How long have you left him alone?”
Colleen shook her head, and her coppery tresses swirled at her shoulders. “Not more than thirty minutes. I have chores. My chickens and cow are responsibilities that require daily attention.”
Marc smiled. He replied, “A trait of women of all species, I’ve learned.”
He watched as her spine stiffened. “Perhaps, but there’s not much difference between a hen and a strutting rooster preening himself endlessly, walking about like he’s something special when really he’s just another bird in the coop!” She laughed derisively. “I’m about finished here, so I’m leaving.”
Maxwell, Brandi - Colleen's Desire [The Lost Collection] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) Page 8
