April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) (11 page)

Again there were some protests. They really didn’t care about the money. She silenced them down; she was their boss.

“Furthermore, from this point on all of your pay is doubled. Again, I can’t pay you what you’ll be earning this summer until we sell that herd, but when we do, you will receive not only your back pay, but your pay for this summer at your new rate of pay.”

“Raven, that’s a lot of money you’re talking about giving us,” Connor told her.

“You guys save the ranch for us and you’ll have earned it.” She didn’t just speak to Connor, she spoke to them all. “What I am asking you to do won’t be easy. We are all going to have to work like hell for the next several months. If any of us lets up even a little we are going to fail.”

“If you pay us that kind of money,” Roy said, getting up from the table and fetching a beer out of a cooler to the side, “we’re going to be making almost as much as some of those rich folks up in the city.”

“You’ll be making more than most of them, and you deserve to.”

Raven noticed that Roy’s old devil-may-care attitude had returned in full force. He opened his beer, walked up to her, and stared her in the eye. She could see the hunger in him.

“Why are you promising that to us?” he asked her, inches away from her face.

“Because you’re going to need it.” She came right back at him. “You’re going to have a girlfriend to take care of now, cowboy.” She gave him a big smile, flirting with him. “In case you didn’t know, girlfriends like you to buy them lots of presents. That’s how you’re going to be spending that extra cash, cowboy.”

She pushed him back. He fell backwards and ended up on his butt, spilling his beer over his shirt. The other guys laughed riotously. This was the first light moment of the whole night and served to lift the high tension in the air.

Roy picked himself up off the ground and took his seat back at the table. He had a smile on his face and was sharing in the laugh with the rest of them.

“How are we going to work this?” Bran asked, his deep voice bringing a quiet over the group.

“I just told you how it will work,” Raven told him.

“That’s not what I meant.” Bran cleared his throat. “I mean how are we going to work the personal arrangements?”

“That’s a good question,” Roy agreed. “What should we all do, just get naked and have at it right out here in the middle of the night? Or should we pick someone’s trailer and go inside and get down to business?” He was starting to unbutton his shirt, a devilish grin spreading across his face.

“That isn’t how it’s going to go down, guys,” Raven told them, and again all of them set back to listen to her. “I’ve never been into the group thing. We’re pushing enough of an unconventional thing here without breaking any more new ground than we have to.”

“There’s five of us, Raven,” Connor reminded her. He had been quiet but had been surprisingly accepting of everything she had proposed. Evidently he really did care for the other guys as much as he’d told her, and didn’t have any problems sharing. “None of us are jealous, but we are going to have some complicated sleeping arrangements to work out.”

“I’ve already worked it all out,” Raven returned. “I was just coming to that part. Here’s how it’s going to work. Remember I’m still the boss. No group sex. We do it one-on-one. You guys are going to start working six days a week. When you get your day off you’ll get to spend it with me.”

“Did you say six days a week?” Roy asked.

“You’re getting a raise, cowboy.” Raven said and laughed at him. “So quit your complaining.”

“Raven?” Tyler interrupted her from his position at the end.

“Yes, Tyler?”

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked, not sounding at all sure. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into? There are five men out here, each one hornier than the next, and you’re just one young, inexperienced woman”

Raven smiled, her smile seductive and lustful. She laughed and bent her head back and realized she hadn’t felt so good or so free at any other moment in her life.

“I know exactly what I’m getting myself into. Do you guys realize what you’re getting yourselves into?”

Roy and Bran laughed with her.

“If you talked to my ex back in Chicago, you’d probably all haul ass out of here and never look back.” She told them and laughed.

Connor reached across the table and took her hand in his. He smiled up at her. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known, Raven.”

“I’m just a girl who knows what she wants.” She raised her voice and spoke to them all again. “Now those are the ground rules, guys. Take ’em or leave ’em. They’re non-negotiable.”

There was a quick rush of assent from the collective guys gathered at the table.

“Say, who had today off?” Bran looked around the table, trying to figure who the first lucky man would be. They all shook their heads and laughed.

“We all worked today,” Connor told her.

“So who are you sleeping with tonight, Raven?” Roy asked.

“God, you guys are terrible,” Raven teased them. “After the day we’ve all just had, how can you even think about sex?”

“Ever since you entered our lives I think we’ve all just had one thing on the brain,” Connor told her, his shy smile returning.

“Well, I’m too tired for any of you guys tonight,” Raven said, brushing back her long hair behind an ear. “And since none of you had the day off I guess I’ll be sleeping alone tonight.”

“That’s not fair!” Roy yelled, but he wasn’t serious. The other guys all laughed.

“Now go get some sleep, guys,” Raven ordered, and knew she sounded like the ranch boss. “Tomorrow you’re all up before dawn. Tomorrow is the first day. We have exactly three months to put this ranch back on its feet.”

“So the games begin tomorrow?” Connor asked.

Raven smiled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

She walked back to her trailer, surprised at the direction the night had taken her in, but not in the least sorry. She was convinced she had made the right call for herself, for the Lazy L, and for her five guys.

Already she knew she had more control over these guys than even her grandfather probably had, and she had more determination than she had ever known was possible. Suddenly she had a goal in life, was in complete control, and had a family backing her up, and it felt good.

“I have to work tomorrow,” she heard Roy tell the other guys. “Who has tomorrow off?”

“I do,” Chip said quietly.

Raven couldn’t sleep that night. The day she had just lived through had been the longest of her life and in some ways her worst, but she had pulled herself out of it and found a potential solution to her problems.

Her solution to take on all the men as lovers would not have been her first choice, not even her second or third choice. However, the moment she came up with the idea a great weight seemed to leave her shoulders. The dark clouds had begun to clear from the horizon of her future, and hope had returned to her life.

She lay in bed and listened to the wind buffet her trailer. What was she going to do with five boyfriends? Could she handle them all? What sorts of things would they want to do with her? These questions and a hundred others flooded her mind, the adrenaline pumped through her brain, and she knew she would not catch a wink of sleep.

She lay in bed wearing only her panties and smiled to herself, thinking about the possibilities. She had never been a sexually adventurous person, but she had always loved men, and now she was about to get her fill of them. She let a small laugh escape her mouth when she thought of the looks on the guys’ faces when she had told them.

The summer night was hot, and she reached up to open the window next to her bunk bed. Lying back on the sheets, she wondered for a brief moment if she had gotten herself in over her head. Could she please them all, and how would she feel after she had spent a few nights in their bed?

There was no turning back now, and as she searched her soul for how she really felt deep down, she realized that at the moment she was okay in having a physical relationship with each of the five guys working on her ranch. If they had been just any five guys she would have taken the offer to sell the ranch and headed back to the city to take her chances, but she really believed there was something special about each and every one of her five guys, and she found that she could hardly wait to get to know them better.

She realized that she was about to get to know them all…a lot better. Reaching down between her legs, she found she was wet just thinking of what lay before her. After about four in the morning she finally drifted off to a peaceful sleep, a smile on her face and her dreams very naughty.

Tomorrow was going to be a very unusual day.

Chapter Ten

Light streamed in through the window next to the bed. Raven’s alarm went off on the table next to her bunk bed, beckoning her to the new day. Despite having had little sleep the night before, she didn’t feel tired. Instead she felt a nervous anticipation and was anxious to start her day.

After her debacle with the shower a couple days before, she had learned to dress, take plenty of towels with her, and wait for the guys to leave for work before heading down to the showers.

She walked out into the morning sunlight and found another beautiful day had dawned over the range. Giving a long stretch to work out the kinks in her muscles from the night in the tiny bunk bed, she took a deep lungful of fresh mountain air and realized that she didn’t have a clue as to how to start the big day before her.

Well, a shower and a cup of coffee would be the best way to start, and it was still early, just an hour after sunrise, so she had all day and all night before her. Where were her guys, she wondered as she looked around the trailer yard. Their trucks were gone, so they had already headed off to the prairie to start their jobs.

She took a long shower. It was cold, but she had gotten used to the cold water already, and she even sort of liked it, as it served to wake her up. She found that she lingered longer over her body with the bar of soap than she usually did and used a bottle of sweetly scented body lotion, covering every inch of her body with the deliciously thick liquid.

After she stepped out of the shower she combed her long, black hair over her shoulders and down her back and watched herself in the mirror, assessing her face and the curves of her body. Her hair wasn’t cooperating, falling wild down her back and shoulders and flowing every way across her body that it pleased. Finding way too many imperfections to suit herself, she gave up on the mirror and headed back to her trailer to get dressed for the day.

She dressed in her best jeans. They were slightly too tight and showed off her butt very well, and she chose to wear a T-shirt she had gotten at a concert last year that said “Get Down To It” on the front. The shirt was too short on her to even tuck into her jeans, and if she moved just right her belly button was exposed under the shirt and just above the line of her jeans. Having no appropriate footwear yet for the ranch she choose a pair of open-toed flip-flops for her feet, but then looked down at her toenails and realized she hadn’t had time to paint them in two weeks.

What the hell was she doing, she asked herself. Preparing for a date with one of her ranch hands was the answer. She wanted to look nice. Maybe nice wasn’t exactly the right word. Appropriate for the occasion would have been a better phrase. The word
sexy
summed up how she wanted to look even better. However, Raven realized she wasn’t one of those women who had an easy time looking sexy.

Normally Raven didn’t care all that much whether she looked sexy or not, but today she found that she wanted to look attractive. Her appearance was important to her today, and the mirror captivated her minutes longer than it should have as she applied the tiniest hint of makeup and then dabbed a finger of perfume behind each ear and reached down her shirt to spread the scent across her chest.