Bat returned to his seat in the corner, two walls against his back. Sarah wasn’t surprised when Caleb took the chair beside him and Joshua the one across from him. These western men seemed determined not to have their backs to the room.
Sarah perused the menu but already knew she needed to have some of that roast beef she could smell. The other aroma she identified as she’d been introduced to Mr. Masterson. Sure enough, checking the list of condiments, she saw Boston Brown Bread listed.
“Bob Winston, proprietor of this fine establishment, married an Irish lass from Boston Town, and so the fare is an interesting combination of east and west – East and West America, that is.” Bat said.
“What is it you do, Mr. Masterson? Bat,” she corrected when he raised an eyebrow.
“Well, until recently I was sheriff of Ford County, Kansas. My family settled in
He’d pronounced the place, K-beck, as if it were an exotic name, and Sarah had to admit she’d never heard of it. “A traveler, then. Until recently, I’d never been anywhere, or done anything. I was born and raised in Chicago.”
“Then you let one Texan into your life, and the next thing you know, someone’s shooting at you.”
Sarah felt a shiver course down her spine even as she chuckled. She’d never looked at her situation exactly that way. Sarah shook off the unsettling sensation. She did wonder that neither Caleb nor Joshua chose to comment on what Bat Masterson had just said. She slid them each a coy look, and said, “Is
that
what’s at the root of all my troubles?”
Masterson seemed to understand he’d stepped on delicate ground but didn’t appear to be too repentant. He signaled the waiter, who delivered a bottle of wine to the table.
“When I left my parent’s home, I started out as a buffalo hunter. Do you know what that is?” Bat asked her.
Sarah nodded. She wasn’t completely ignorant about frontier life.
“My brothers James and Ed joined me. We worked together for a time before going our separate ways. I wound up in some interesting situations.”
“One thing I’ve always been meaning to ask you, Bat,” Caleb said. He turned his gaze to Sarah and sent her a look that her body had no difficulty in translating.
“You can ask me anything, Caleb. Of course, if the answer is indelicate, I may decline to answer in the presence of the lady.”
“Oh, be indelicate,” Sarah said in a mock whisper. “I promise I won’t come down with a case of the vapors.”
Joshua laughed, a low masculine sound that had the same effect on her as Caleb’s look had.
“Nothing indelicate. I just have to know. Did Billy Dixon
really
make that shot?”
Sarah had no idea what Caleb just asked, but the question made Bat laugh. Then he looked at Sarah.
“Back a few years, Billy, Kit Carson, and I, along with a few others got caught in a bit of a situation against a much larger band of Comanche warriors. Things were looking a little bleak for yours truly. We were in the third day of a stand-off. Then Billy Dixon notices a group of warriors on horseback, heading toward us. Now, some say those warriors were a mile away, some say not so far. Billy raised his Big 50 Sharps rifle and fired, knocking one of those Indians clear off his horse. That shot ended the confrontation. The rest of the warriors turned tail and rode off out of there as if the devil himself were chasing them.”
“A mile away?” Sarah couldn’t imagine such marksmanship.
“So they say.”
The waiter returned to take everyone’s order. Sarah settled on the roast beef which came with potatoes and carrots. She was going to resist, but the molasses bread was brought to the table, and she gave in to temptation.
Content to let the men talk, she, sipped her wine, and simply enjoyed looking at the Benedict brothers. They seemed completely at ease with Bat Masterson, so she knew they trusted him. Her brow furrowed when Joshua asked about his brother who’d been killed recently.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! How horrible for you!”
“Thank you, ma’am. I can see you are as compassionate as you are beautiful.”
Being an only child, Sarah couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a sibling. But she knew of families who had lost loved ones in the fire, and as always, thoughts of such loss saddened her heart.
The men were soon talking of happier times. The food arrived, and Sarah’s taste buds told her this meal surpassed even what her father’s cook, Mary, could create.
“Bat and I are going to go for a stroll through the seamier side of town after dinner,” Joshua said.
Sarah cocked her head to one side.
“They’re going to look for information, see if anyone new has come to Denison, settled in that part of town,” Caleb explained. “Plus, if there’re rumors, they might pick up on them. They both like to play cards. Gamblers tend to gossip.”
Sarah sighed. Then she turned her attention to Bat. “Thank you for your assistance in this matter. I’ve had to accept that someone is trying to kill me because it definitely happened. I just can’t imagine who or why.”
“One thing I’ve learned in my years of being a lawman and something that I know Caleb and Joshua agree with, Mrs. Maddox,” Bat said. His expression had turned serious, and he leaned closer, his voice lowered. “There’s no such thing as human behavior without a reason. The reason may be plumb loco, but it will be there. Sometimes you uncover the reason first, and that always leads to the culprit.”
Sarah found she agreed with that analysis. She just wasn’t completely certain she was ready to face the answers.
* * * *
Sarah nestled closer to Caleb, the heat from his body instantly warming away the shiver that had awakened her. Wispy tendrils of a dream, already more than half forgotten, worried the edge of her thoughts.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Caleb’s voice sounded fully awake. Sarah blinked, looked up to meet his gaze. No slumber marred his expression. She realized that even now, holding her in his arms, he lay vigilant, on guard.
“A dream. A strange one but I can’t really remember what it was about.”
“Hardly surprising you’d have a bad dream, under the circumstances.”
Three light taps on the door followed by the turn of a key in the lock made her tense.
“It’s Joshua. That’s our signal.”
The door opened, and the faint light from the hallway revealed a familiar silhouette. Joshua closed the door softly behind him.
Sarah wondered that he could see his way in the darkened room so well.
“Learn anything?” Caleb asked.
Joshua had been taking pains to move silently. Now he exhaled, tossed his hat onto the small table by the window.
“Only that it’s not wise to try and bluff Masterson in a game of five card stud. The man has killer instincts when it comes to poker.”
Sarah joined in Caleb’s laughter.
“You should be asleep,” Joshua said. She knew he spoke to her, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she focused on what she could see of his body as he peeled the clothes from his lanky frame. Even seen mostly in shadows his body made her mouth water.
“I was.”
“Bad dream woke her up,” Caleb said.
“What was the dream about?” Joshua asked.
“She doesn’t remember,” Caleb said.
“How nice that I don’t even have to speak for myself these days.” Sarah’s ire stirred to life. She didn’t know why it should. All her life she had been used to the way men treated women.
Somehow with her men, that treatment felt different.
The bed dipped behind her, and Joshua slid beneath the blankets, snuggling close to her back.
She’d been right. If they all three lay on their sides, they fit in the bed just fine. She didn’t worry about having pillows beneath her head, as Caleb kept her propped up just fine.
“I bet if we try, we can think of something to take Sarah’s mind off her bad dream—and her choler.”
“I’ll have you know I’m right here…” the ability to speak suddenly left her as Joshua slipped his hand between her legs. Caleb, facing her, pulled her left leg over his hip. The action pulled her closer to him so that his hot, hard cock rubbed against her woman-flesh. Inhaling sharply, Sarah tilted her hips forward to caress Caleb, then back to rub her slit against Joshua’s hand.
“I’m going to fuck your ass,” Joshua whispered.
The words inflamed her, arousal being fanned into flames, a fire reduced to embers but never extinguished, now reborn. Joshua’s words and the sensation of his finger bringing her own dew to caress back and forth against her anus worked like a soft sigh against those embers. Her growing arousal demanded all her attention. Sarah thought in these moments civilization melted from her, reducing her to a feral creature whose only desire, only purpose, was to mate.
“Yes. Fuck me. Please.”
Caleb’s fingers teased her clit while Joshua shifted so that the head of his cock nudged against her opening. Leaning forward, he nipped her ear at the same time he pressed into her.
“Yes. Just like that.” His words, a growl of need and arousal, made her heart thud in her chest and her flesh pucker. The invasion of his cock into her darkest part became delicious pleasure, spiced with a hint of the forbidden.
“Now take me,” Caleb whispered. He flexed his hips forward. Sarah felt the brush of the back of his hand against her moist folds as he placed the head of his penis where it needed to be. Then he slid his cock into her, one long steady thrust until he was buried to the hilt.
She felt full to bursting. Satiny ribbons of bliss began to shoot out from inside her, a tiny spot where it seemed her two lovers nearly touched. They both proved intent on caring for her and pleasuring her.
“You’re mine.” The words emerged from her, a declaration, a dare, a sentiment almost beyond thought.
“Yes. And you’re ours.” Joshua spoke for them both. He reached around, cupped one breast in his hand, and squeezed the nipple between his finger and thumb. “Now and forever, Sarah. Now take what we give you.”
Every time before, there’d been a fine gentleness to their actions, a restrained passion that she’d worked hard to loosen.
Not tonight.
Tonight, looming over her, leaning into her, Joshua began to thrust in and out of her, his pace steady and building.
Caleb growled, wrapped his hand around her leg, and levered himself up just slightly.
“Yes, take us, sweetheart.”
His thrusts became hard and fast and deep.
“Let go,” Joshua hissed. “Let go. Surrender completely.”
Sarah nearly yelled out that she didn’t understand. And then she felt it, that strand of tension, of force, that seemed to run through her very being. She’d held on, she realized, held on to protect herself, to perhaps try and forge some sense of control in these acts of physical joining.
Holding on and holding out.
Sarah collapsed against the bed, every muscle in her body relaxing as she gave over that control, as she gave them that submission.
Immediately, Joshua’s passage in and out of her eased, became more fluid. Liberated, he plundered.
Caleb reacted with no less force. She felt the velvet caress of his cock inside her tunnel, reveled in the brush of his groin against her clit. Rapture began to bubble from deep inside her, a rapture that promised to be more than anything she’d ever felt before.
“Yes, like that. Reach it, sweetheart. Reach it while we’re inside you.”
“
God
!” Sarah cried out, the eruption a bottomless volcano of desire and passion, as spasm after spasm wracked her. Eyes closed, throat taut as a high, mewing cry tore from her throat, Sarah’s body quivered and quaked as she felt both men shoot their seed into her, as their fingers dug into her flesh and they, too, lost themselves to the rapture.
Only when they stopped moving, only when they leaned close to her, breath heaving, did Sarah notice a slight discomfort from their loving. The passion had felt so huge, took over so completely, that her eyes leaked silent tears.
“Did we hurt you?” Anxiety laced Caleb’s voice. She tried to answer but could only shake in the aftermath of her sexual frenzy.
“Sarah? Sweetheart?” Joshua’s voice sounded just as pained as his brother’s.
She tried to shake her head, and managed one word. “Good.”
“We were both too greedy,” Joshua said. He eased himself out of her body, and she winced, for the arousal that dulled her senses to discomfort had ebbed.
He moved from the bed, and she heard the sounds of the chamber set being used. Water splashed into the bowl, then dribbled from a cloth dipped and squeezed out.
Caleb slowly withdrew from her pussy, and the wetness of his seed flowed after him. Sarah shivered.
“Here, sweetheart, let me.” Joshua cleaned her, his ministration so gentle she barely winced.
“We should both be shot for letting our lust get the better of us,” Caleb muttered. He fished around on the floor until he came up with her chemise. Once Joshua finished, Caleb gently eased the garment onto her.