“Close to heaven,” he answered when he weaned his lips from hers. The heat of his body against her side and the press of his penis against her hip aroused her nearly beyond bearing. He fastened his mouth on her neck. As she instinctively tilted her head back and to the side, needing to give him all of her, she found Joshua’s mouth. His kiss, fast and deep, fanned the flames of her desire.
“Close to the purest pleasure there is,” Joshua said. Then he kissed her again.
Hands caressed her breasts and belly. Hands stroked legs and thighs, parting them so that each leg draped a masculine hip. One hand crept upward, light teasing touches brushing the curls between her thighs.
“What are you doing to me? I feel wild and out of control. Something happened inside me when you touched me there last time and I…
oh
!”
“We’re pleasuring you…and ourselves,” Caleb said as he once more inserted his fingers into her. “We’re…being with you.” He spoke the words against her flesh, and they became like a beautiful concerto playing against her damp, fevered skin.
Sarah gasped as the delicious tendrils of excitement began to climb inside her again. Restless, her hips lifted. Rolling her head back and forth, she tried to grasp control of these sensations, but they slipped through and around her puny attempts as if mocking her.
Joshua took a nipple into his mouth and nipped it, the tiny pain adding to the thrill coursing through her. When he closed his lips around the sensitive bud and suckled, Sarah once more became conscious of the pull in her womb. Were her breasts and the place she hoped to one day carry a babe connected?
“You’re close again,” Joshua said. He brushed kisses against her breast and neck on one side of her as Caleb mimicked his actions on the other.
Joshua took hold of her hair, turning her head to him. His mouth captured hers once more. He kissed her fiercely, plunging his tongue into her mouth, stroking and licking, sucking and nipping in such a rapid rhythm she couldn’t keep up. She could only open wide and surrender.
She bowed her back off the blanket when Caleb’s lips settled on the feminine flesh between her thighs.
Sarah tore her mouth from Joshua’s. “Oh God, oh God, what are you…” speech sputtered into a deep groan as the conflagration once more roared to life, the excitement bubbling up, higher, then higher still until she reached it, that moment of
purest pleasure
, gushing from deep inside her womb, shooting through every part of her, a rain of passion nearly dripping out of her.
Caleb moved up her body, and she had one moment of awareness, of the sensation of his hot, turgid cock pressing against her folds. Then he thrust into her hard, fast, and deep.
Sarah screamed, the unexpected pain and the pleasure entwining to become one, shooting her to that pinnacle once more.
“Just the first time, Sarah. It only hurts the first time, I promise.”
Sarah opened her eyes, the shivers ebbing. Her vision cleared. Caleb loomed above her, his flesh on hers,
in
hers. Sweat drenched his forehead, glistened on his shoulders. He held himself impossibly still, a tautness to his face that looked painful.
He’s waiting
. Sarah had no way of knowing how she knew that, but she did. Another truth penetrated, that he needed more, that he’d not reached that moment she’d enjoyed three times. But he waited because he didn’t want to hurt her.
How simple it was to wrap her legs around him, to curl her arms around his neck. She wanted to give him the same gift he’d given her.
Arousal flared and she undulated her hips. Caleb hissed in a breath through his teeth.
“The pain is already nearly gone. Everything else has felt incredibly good. I want more. Give me more, Caleb. Take everything.”
His expression softened, and he held her gaze for one long moment. “All right, Sarah. Hang on to me sweetheart. Just…hang on.”
From the expression on his face, Sarah thought he was still controlling himself. He’d made her lose all control, and she wanted to do that to him in return, but she didn’t know how. Letting instinct guide her, she raised herself just a little, set her mouth on his neck, and began to lick him. Joshua stroked her arm. Reaching out to him with one hand, she twined her fingers with his and lifted her hips closer to Caleb.
And then Caleb began to move.
* * * *
He’d told her heaven, and maybe at the time he’d thought it a poetic exaggeration, but right at this moment, Caleb was certain he’d never felt anything as close to heaven as being inside Sarah.
Her sheath felt so incredibly hot and tight and wet around his cock. He wanted to keep his thrusts measured, gentle. She’d been a virgin—his first. He’d known that, of course, but the sound of her scream when he’d breached her maidenhead had pierced
him
. He’d hurt her, and he never wanted to hurt her. At the same time, a sense of possession fell upon him.
No one had ever had her before. She belongs to us.
“Give me more,” Sarah whispered close to his ear.
Oh God
. His control snapped. Slipping one hand under her ass, he lifted her as he thrust into her. She felt so damn good he withdrew then pushed in again, and again. The slap of his balls against her soft cunt rang in his ears as the scent of their joining teased his nostrils. Her ripe, musky fragrance intoxicated him. Grabbing her hair, he tilted her face back and kissed her, plundering her mouth with his tongue as surely and forcefully as his cock plundered her pussy.
He felt it beginning, felt it building inside him, knew his peak was nearly upon him. In the past, he’d made it a habit to withdraw from a woman’s body before giving her his seed. The women he’d had were experienced, but he’d never fully trusted any one of them not to conceive his child.
This time, there lived a part of him that hoped his seed found a ripe and ready womb. His tongue swirled and dipped, drinking her. He angled his thrusts so that the hair around his cock brushed against the tiny bud hidden within her folds. Sarah shivered as that bud came awake, and Caleb did it again, and then again. Her sheath convulsed around him as her pleasure burst upon her once more. He held himself deep inside her as his bliss exploded, as his seed shot out of him, racing from his body into hers.
Caleb tried to hold his weight on his arms, but shook with the effort. He’d been in a near constant state of arousal since he’d first looked up and seen Sarah peeking over the banister down at him. He’d never believed he would actually ever get between her legs.
Sarah labored for breath, and he raised himself up to ease his body from hers and placed a kiss on her forehead. Her eyes had closed but she was smiling. He grinned. Beside them, Joshua laid on his side, one hand supporting his head, the other stroking up and down Sarah’s arm.
“You all right, Sarah?” Caleb asked.
“Mmm. Amazing. Simply amazing.”
“You certainly are.”
She popped her eyes open. Even in the soft glow of the fire, he could see the color kissing her cheeks. He grinned even wider, then swooped down and kissed her. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so happy.
Moving carefully, he eased himself from her body, ranging himself on her right side, across from his brother.
“You too tired for me, sweetheart?” Joshua asked. He bent over her and placed his lips on hers.
“I’m not tired,” Sarah replied.
“Sore?”
“A little,” she nearly mumbled the confession.
Caleb recognized that playful light in his brother’s eyes.
“Do you trust me?” Joshua asked her.
“Of course I do.”
Caleb bet it wouldn’t take Sarah long to figure Joshua’s moods out. In the mean time, he could only chuckle.
“Good!” Joshua got to his feet then reached down and scooped her into his arms.
“Where…where are we going?” she asked when, naked as the day he was born, he began to carry her away from the fire and into the darkness. Caleb got to his feet and followed, laughing out loud at Joshua’s answer and Sarah’s small scream.
“We’re going to bathe in the creek.”
Chapter 9
Tyrone Maddox wasn’t a man easily intimidated by anyone or anything. Once he set himself on a course of action, he let nothing dissuade him from it. He would never have been able to achieve all he had in life, otherwise. But the events of the last few days, as relayed to him via telegram, had him more than a little concerned.
He didn’t like it when events deviated from his plan.
He had a ranch that need running and other business interests he needed to tend to. He didn’t have time to go into Waco to speak to the law. Especially when the only available law was Adam Kendall. Unfortunately, he could see no way around this unexpected trip.
Maddox couldn’t say why Kendall rubbed him the wrong way. He had from the first moment they’d met. Maybe it was the eerie color of the man’s eyes. Watery blue, when he fixed them on him, Maddox felt as if the lawman could somehow see into his head, knew all of his secrets.
A man didn’t rise as high and come as far as Maddox had without harboring a few secrets along the way. Maddox knew he had more than his share, and just the idea someone might know them irritated him beyond measure.
He’d heard more than one rumor about Adam Kendall. He sometimes knew things he couldn’t possibly know. The way others sometimes spoke of him in hushed tones, it wouldn’t surprise Maddox to find out the man had Indian blood and was in fact some mystical shaman.
Despite Maddox’s antipathy for him, he’d done his level best to make Kendall a friend. Only smart business to do so, really. But the Texas Ranger had remained aloof. Because he’d failed to get the lawman under his thumb, Maddox tended to steer clear of the man.
The information he’d just received dictated a change in policy. He saddled up early, wanting to get this business out of the way and get home again as soon as possible. He felt most secure at his ranch.
His wife had gone missing, taken into the wilderness by those two gunslingers he’d hired. That had not been a part of the plan. And even though this new ripple
could
work to his advantage, it was a ripple that found him somewhat in the dark and not in complete control.
Maddox liked to be in control of things. He maintained a poker face as he entered Waco as would befit a man in his situation, but he smiled on the inside. One way or another, he would reach his goal. Soon he’d be so far above everyone else he’d no longer have to worry about petty annoyances like Adam Kendall—or Gareth Peterson, for that matter.
In fact, if he worked it right, he might manage to be rid of them both thanks to this unforeseen development. A smart man made the best of the cards he got dealt.
Tyrone J. Maddox knew himself to be a very smart man. He just needed to wait for his instincts to tell him which way he should play this particular hand.
The Texas Ranger Station had been erected beside the county court house as a part of The Square. Unlike other days when he came into Waco, he made straight for there.
He usually stayed as far away from The Square in the morning hours as possible. The place had become overrun in recent years with newcomers, all engaged in the business of trying to separate men from their money. Mondays were bad enough, with an open market teeming with people. That at least served a useful purpose, and he knew his houseman sometimes came to market for supplies. Even on non-market days, a man could likely encounter his fill of charlatans here, some offering the latest in “must have” wares and others offering all sorts of dubious enterprises under the heading of legal services.
He’d never seen so many damn, cursed lawyers in one town in his entire life.
Maddox ignored the noise and the people, barely acknowledging a couple men who called out greetings. While he tied his horse to the hitch, he replaced his poker face with the visage of a man deeply concerned, verging on alarmed by the news he’d just received. Approaching the office, he caught a glimpse through the wide front window of lawmen huddled around the captain’s desk.
He hadn’t believed for one moment he’d been the only one to receive a telegram. That’s why he’d had to come to town right away.
“I received a telegram late last night from the sheriff in Springfield,” he said before the door had even closed behind him. “It would appear that those two gunslingers you introduced me to, Kendall, have made off into the open range with my wife!”
Captain Kendall looked up at Maddox’s accusation. The man appeared unruffled, and if Maddox didn’t know better, he’d swear the lawman seemed amused. Three other rangers had been standing by the Kendall’s desk, their attention fixed on the map he had spread out there. At Maddox’s thinly veiled accusation, they looked up and stepped back.
“I received a telegram from the sheriff as well,” Kendall said. “The Benedicts are doing what you paid them to do. They’re keeping Mrs. Maddox safe after an attempt was made on her life.”
“Maybe and maybe not. All I know is that they’ve deviated from the route I set out for them and are somewhere out on the trail between Springfield and here,
alone
with my wife. I’ll be the laughingstock of the county when they eventually arrive with her after all those days and nights isolated together, no chaperone, when word gets out. Did those two bastards have no thought as to the potential scandal their actions would cause? A woman in the wilderness alone with two hired guns.” Maddox let his temper show. What those two no-accounts had done was totally unacceptable, and he was determined Kendall would pay the price. A good strategy, even a righteous one.