Wouldn’t Rachele love having someone to pummel at will.
Again dismissing safety matters, she relaxed or rather she tried to. Along with wakefulness had come renewed awareness of her body. Sighing, she slid her hands under the mid-thigh-length cotton cover-up she slept in. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling she couldn’t see. When she’d first roused, her head had been turned toward the window, but she didn’t want to do that anymore.
There was nothing out there. The dogs, despite being locked in the kennel for the night, would have let her know if someone had driven on to her property. Besides, Rachele was on the hide-a-bed in the office and Ona held down the living room couch.
Teeth clenched against her too-active mind, she nevertheless pressed her palms against her belly. Her hip bones were prominent, something she seldom thought about. Tonight, however, as her fingers slid lower, she wondered if Maco preferred women with a little more meat on their bones.
No, tonight wasn’t about Maco, a man she barely knew and had only a single emotional connection with! If insomnia had her in its grip, she might as well spend her time tamping out a certain primal inner fire. Once that was done—no drawing things out so she missed an entire night of sleep—she could relax.
Resolutely keeping her attention on the ceiling, she guided her fingertips into the soft hair over her mons. After learning that some women shaved themselves there, she’d tried sheering off what a bikini might reveal. Not only hadn’t she been able to talk herself into buying something that hit well below her belly button, her skin had started itching a few days later she’d done the awkward deed, driving her crazy. Nature’s hair was good, perfect for working her fingers into. It tickled and yet it was more than that, a fine anticipation. Foreshadowing what came next.
Her pussy cried out to be touched, but she held off. From experience she knew that the longer she denied herself, the quicker her climax would come and then, hopefully, she’d fall back asleep. Thinking about masturbation as a task to be completed was a little sad and took away some of her anticipation. There must be a better way, more spontaneous, more real.
Yes, she could do that! Wanted to.
These weren’t her hands, after all. Instead, they’d slipped away to be replaced by rough, masculine fingers. Specific fingers. The imaginary heavier weight and steady advance on her waiting/willing sex had her bending her knees and separating her legs so she could get to herself. Arching her head back on the pillow, she rolled her pelvis upward.
In her mind, a man lay beside her on his side with his competent fingers laced in her pubic hair. His warmth seeped into her as he whispered that tonight was going to be magic for both of them. Believing the nameless and faceless man, she slipped farther into this world of her imagination. Lust on both their parts had brought the hunk into her room. Earlier, looking down at her, he’d said his life wouldn’t be complete without her in it. Driven by sexual hunger and loneliness, she’d believed him.
Now the dark and maybe dangerous stranger was next to her on his side, silent and still, all except for his hands, which swept over her like magic, like water, touching everywhere. Learning and knowing at the same time. She’d created him and could make him what she needed him to be, more than human, potent, and powerful, putting her desire ahead of his own.
Oh yes, this creation of her mind existed to be everything she needed.
Moaning, she bent her knees even more, rolled to the side as she did, and placed her forefinger along her slit. Just like that her breath snagged, and her channel let down, flooding her fingers, inner thighs, even the bottom sheet.
Ghost man’s kisses lightly covered her mouth, cheeks, and the tip of her nose. Instead of doing the same for him, she burrowed deep into sensation. Clamping her legs together, she pressed against her now trapped forearm. At the same time, she spread her other hand over her breasts, cupping one as she did. She wasn’t alone, not in her mind and senses. Her ghost lover knew what she needed and wanted, the rhythm of her heart, the cadence of her breath.
That’s right,
she silently told him.
Forget yourself. Put me first. Exist to please me.
For several moments he did as she’d commanded. Then his hold on her breast tightened. Shocked, she tried to tell him to ease up. Ignoring her, he pressed closer to her.
Anticipation washed through her, bringing her closer to the point of no return. She silently begged him to wait so she could calm down a little. Instead, he blew his quick, hot breath over the hollow of her throat. Damp heat slipped between her breasts and stole her ability to breathe.
So fast! Foreplay left in the dust.
“Do it,” she muttered, no longer caring about her so-called time frame. “Fuck me.”
I can’t this way.
Distracted by the voice of sanity, she rolled on to her back again and planted her feet on the bottom sheet. Her now-bent knees splayed outward. Beyond caring about anything except getting off, she slipped her forefinger inside her so her juices coated it. Then, telling herself that the man and not she was responsible for this, she began stroking herself. Her labial lips were swollen and so sensitive that the line between pleasure and pain thinned.
Pain was good. Wild and clawing.
After filling her lungs, she concentrated on her clit, pressing and teasing by turn. Her cheeks flushed, and her mouth fell open. The hand gripping her breast tightened.
Never mind nails digging into flesh. Never mind the darkness beyond. Most of all, never mind yesterday.
Yesterday.
“No, damn it,” she hissed. Furious at herself for letting thought come between herself and satisfaction, she caught her throbbing clit between two knowing fingers. So swollen. So ready. Sensitive beyond belief.
Randy little thing, aren’t you. Just like I thought you’d be.
Shocked by the unspoken comment, she struggled to see where it was coming from.
You know who I am.
“What are you doing here?” she stupidly asked.
You called. I came.
Maco, touching her, understanding her needs, his calloused fingers on her intimate flesh, strong and easy by turn, rubbing and caressing, wanting nothing in life except to bring her to climax.
Climax!
Powering through her in a rage, shaking her so she thought she might pass out, forcing a cry into the night air.
“Yes!” Her sex cramped, relaxed, cramped again. “Yes!”
Don’t quit yet. Ride the sensation for all it’s worth.
Past questioning anything, she willed her mind to stop functioning. Her body danced; hot blood raced through her veins.
“You’ve never shucked corn? How’d you get this far in life without knowing that critical task?”
Looking up at Aunt Robynn, Shari started to shrug only to stop because the gesture caused her oversized T-shirt to slide off her shoulder. Her aunt was sitting in a massive wooden rocking chair on a porch while Shari sat cross-legged on the ground. The shirt was so big it covered her down past her knees. One moment there was nothing in her lap. The next it was full of ears of corn.
“Watch me now,” Aunt Robynn informed her. “It’s really very easy, even for your small hands.”
They were small, all right, child-sized. She had no breasts and her hair was in braids. Only mildly interested in how that had happened, she watched as her aunt showed her how to strip down the green leaf-like sections. The tassels stuck to her hand and pulling took most of her strength, but it was worth it. The yellow corn was large and fat.
“There you go, girl. I knew you could do it.”
Shari was going to ask how much corn they’d need for dinner. Instead, “Who all will we be feeding?” came out.
At the question, her aunt suddenly went from being in her thirties to looking a hundred. Wrinkles exploded on her face and most of her hair fell out, leaving only a little gray.
“He’s coming,” she said, and started rocking.
“He’s already here,” a masculine voice added before Shari could think of a response.
Looking toward the driveway, she noticed a pair of black slacks–encased legs heading her way. Forgetting the corn, she jumped to her feet and tried to scramble up the stairs so she could stand beside her aunt, only the stairs disappeared.
“Going somewhere, girlie?” slacks-man asked.
“You aren’t supposed to be here!” Her voice was high and childish.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re dead.”
Aunt Robynn laughed at that. Growing more scared by the moment, Shari debated whether she could jump high enough to get onto the porch.
“I know what you’re thinking,” slacks-man said. “I always know what you’re thinking.”
“You can’t,” she insisted. Her bladder was so full she knew she was going to wet herself. “You’re dead.”
“Do I look like I’ve died?”
Slacks-man was so tall she couldn’t see his head, which was lost in the clouds. She hated him looming over her like that.
“I saw you die.” Leaning down, she grabbed an ear of corn and threw it at the clouds. “This isn’t right.”
“Who did you see die, little girl? Are you sure who you’re talking to?”
That stopped her. She’d thought she’d known but now she wasn’t sure. It could have been one of two men.
“Tell me.” Tears burned her cheeks.
“I can’t. You have to figure it out. I’ll tell you what. Here’s a hint.”
The pistol emerged from his fingers like a balloon being blown up. It started small and unformed but too quickly expanded until it was huge. Massive and black. With smoke seeping out of the barrel and the barrel glowing red.
Sobbing, Shari started running. She was barefoot and kept stepping on sharp rocks. Still she ran.
Dawn. Just beginning. After rubbing her gritty eyes and pushing her hair away from her face, Shari stared out the window and waited for dream and reality to sort themselves out in her mind.
Yes, there it was, the slightest lightening in the horizon, proof that she’d separated herself from the nightmare. Some part of her insisted she revisit the dream so she could be done with it, while another part of her psyche insisted she didn’t want to go there.
She opted for distance.
Still, much as she could have used a few more hours in which to try to get some rest, she was grateful for the end to the night. Of course if she’d spent all of it having orgasms instead of freaking herself out over something she couldn’t recall, that would have been a different story. Unfortunately, after that one overwhelming explosion, her pussy had been uninterested in going another round. No doubt about it, Ona’s shooting had her off balance. No wonder she’d dreamed whatever it was she’d dreamed.
Okay, there was a second reason for the way the night had played out. The cowboy/contractor she’d met yesterday.
Reminding herself that Ona was snoring on the living room couch, Rachele was two closed doors away, and Maco Durant was at the dam site where he belonged, she turned from the window. The moment she did, however, frozen fingers touched her spine, forcing her to look outside again. She listened for a return of the motorcycle sound Maco and she’d heard yesterday, but only birdcalls reached her. A few were the sharp cries crows were known for while the rest belonged to songbirds. Everything sounded normal and peaceful out there. Angry at herself, she vowed not to let yesterday’s
accidental
shooting get to her any more than it had. The past was behind her. She’d embrace the future and thus erect effective barriers against any more nightmares. After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d done that.
“And yes, I’ll admit it. I’m not just talking about yesterday,” she muttered as she headed for the bathroom.
Bottom line to all bottom lines, her father’s killer was in prison.
The man who’d been wearing black slacks that horrid day couldn’t reach her.
5
D
ust kicked up as the truck carrying the two federal engineers Maco had been talking to departed via a newly laid-down gravel road that led to the ledge overlooking the gradual-sided canyon. Some hundred feet below where Maco and his brother stood lay the wide, sleepy stream that in approximately eighteen months would start to fill the Graves River Dam. Earlier in the week, first he and then Jason had piloted the aircrane as they brought in the massive lengths of corrugated steel they needed to form the cofferdam designed to divert Graves River during dam construction.
“Did you understand everything they said?” Jason asked. “I swear, engineers speak their own language. Pounds per square inch of water pressure was relatively easy to keep up with. After all, we’ve dealt with that enough. But when they got into comparing geotextiles to geomembranes, they lost me. Pretending like I was following along wore me out. Just tell me what to order and how to install it.”
Lifting his Stetson so he could wipe sweat off his forehead, Maco squinted against the sun. He had a headache but wasn’t sure whether the heat or complex conversation was responsible. “I checked out a bit part way through myself. The way I figure it, you and I worry about how much weight our aircrane can handle and how much equipment we’ll need. Let them deal with the specific materials. We know how to follow directions.”
Jason sighed and repositioned the holster that was nearly a twin of the one Maco wore. “It’s a shame that’s not all we have to worry about.”
“No shit. Everything from manpower to payroll to—”
“Hell, that’s the easy part. We’ve done that before.”
Maco wiped away more sweat, then settled his hat back into place. As often happened, touching the wide brim mentally returned him to the Durant Ranch of his childhood. Before winter, somehow, he’d return to the three hundred–plus acres of mostly fenced land and soak in the awe-inspiring Gore Range to the west. Fill the emotional well, so to speak. “Don’t tell me you’re talking about those letters to the editors.”
“Unfortunately. Those jokers call themselves environmentalists, but that’s because they’re hoping they won’t get labeled terrorists. How the hell many of them are there? Threatening to blow things up—does it occur to them that people could get killed, people like you and me? Besides, it’s not as if the water’s going to feed some damn urban sprawl.”
“We’ve had this conversation,” he pointed out. “The two of us aren’t going to change their minds. If we try, they’ll probably turn our words against us.”
“Which is why we decided not to talk to the press. I don’t know. Maybe we’re right to let the politicians handle the PR, but maybe we need to put a human spin on the whole situation. If we don’t step forward and present ourselves as two ordinary men who happen to be providing jobs for two dozen locals, the environmentalists won’t get that part. To repeat, someone could get killed.”
Reminded of the need to protect the site, he echoed his younger brother’s concern. “What about the guard dogs?” he asked. “Until yesterday it didn’t occur to me that they could be in trouble.”
“Occupational hazard? Forget I said that. It isn’t funny. It takes a long time to train a dog. No wonder they cost as much as they do. More to the point, we’re both saps for dogs. We’d hate to have anything happen to them.”
“What choice do we have?” He’d already been asking himself the question but wanted to run it past his brother.
“None,” Jason muttered. “Short of surrounding the place with armed guards, which wouldn’t exactly endear us to the locals and cost more than we can afford. Do you think ... ?”
“Do I think what?” Maco pressed.
“Shari Afton nearly lost a dog yesterday. Maybe she’s changed her mind about having anything to do with us.”
“Maybe. She said she’d be out here mid-afternoon. I don’t know whether to ask her that. I was afraid the engineers would still be here and I couldn’t give her my full attention.”
“Oh, I think you’d find a way.”
Catching the change in his brother’s tone, he turned from the canyon. Born fifteen months after him, Jason was an inch taller and maybe twenty pounds heavier with lighter hair and a nose that had been permanently rearranged during a college wrestling match. For reasons no one in the family could figure out, Jason was the only bowlegged one in the bunch. After all, they’d all spent equal time on horseback.
Beyond the physical, Jason was quicker to jump to conclusions and usually first to come to a decision—not always the right one but close. Jason also found it harder to admit when he’d made a mistake, not that that often happened. Although he’d never tell his kid brother, Maco believed Jason had more gray matter under his skull. That’s what had made Jason his first choice among the four other Durant sons to join him in Mustang Construction. As he’d once told their father, Jason could be scary smart, but that meant his sibling often knew what he was thinking.
“This is business,” Maco reminded Jason—and maybe himself. “The only thing that matters is making sure she provides us with the dogs we need and that they do their part.”
“That’s why you kept talking about her last night? As I recall, her reliability didn’t come up. Just your concern that she’s damn feminine for the job she’s taken on.”
“What are you talking about? All I did was tell you what happened at her place.”
“I’m talking about subtext, bro. The below-the-surface stuff.”
“You’re no psychic. Don’t pretend you are.”
“Just answer me one thing. Did she or did she not turn you on?”
“Go to hell.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A half-dozen workmen operated the backhoes, skid steer, and wheel loaders where the cofferdam would begin. Massive haulers lumbered under the weight of the dirt, rocks, and gravel that had been loaded into them. It took each hauler a good twenty minutes to crawl up the slope on the canyon’s far side and then another ten or so minutes to reach the offloading spot. All told, the dam site covered some twenty acres. No way could a pair of dogs patrol all that. However, after hours, almost all of the machinery was locked within cyclone fencing as a deterrent against vandalism. The operant word was
deterrent
because a determined vandal or vandals wouldn’t let fencing stop them.
“What are you thinking?” Jason asked, nudging him with his shoulder.
Instead of sidestepping the question, Maco opted for honesty. What he didn’t mention was how just speaking Shari’s name caught his cock’s attention. “She’s a one-woman operation. As far as I know, she’s never been involved in something like this.” He waved his hand at the activity. “Supplying a guard dog for a mama-papa grocery store isn’t the same as a multi-million-dollar controversial construction project. Once she sees what’s entailed, she might decide she doesn’t want anything to do with it. Her dogs’ safety will mean too much.” He paused. “If she makes that decision, I don’t blame her.”
“But you won’t like it.”
“I just said I understand—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Alerted by his brother’s tone, he again turned toward him. Jason’s eyes had darkened as they did when he was deep in thought. “Spit it out,” Maco said.
“Okay, maybe I have it wrong. Like you said, I’m not psychic. But when you say her name, you use a tone I haven’t heard in years, not since long before your divorce.”
“Tone?”
Jason shrugged. “Caring. Concerned. Yeah, that’s what it is. Crystal got under your skin, and you fell in love with her. Stayed that way for a long time. Now, however, you’re over her and finally ready to move on. Take a chance with another woman.”
“I thought we were talking about security and damn fools who think they’re saving the planet by kicking us out.”
“Were talking. Now we’ve changed subjects. Being in love isn’t a fatal disease. I’m willing to bet you’d like it more and longer the next time.”
He didn’t need to hear this. Damn it, he didn’t want his kid brother psychoanalyzing him! Putting Crystal out of his life had torn him into little pieces, but he’d had no choice. Their marriage had become dysfunctional at the core. If Crystal was ever going to stand on her own two feet, which she needed to, he had to stop propping her up.
No more playing the big protector with a woman or thinking of her as a newborn calf or foal. Particularly one with the ability to, as Jason would say, get under his skin.
“I’ve pissed you off?” Jason asked.
“What? No. I’m just thinking about what you said.”
“No shitting. You are?” Jason rubbed the back of his neck. “My sunburn’s getting a sunburn. What I wouldn’t give for a few clouds. So do you think there’s something to my attempt at pop psychology?”
Working up a smile, Maco punched his brother’s shoulder. “I think you need to get a life so you’ll stop trying to mess around in mine.”
“I’ve got a life.”
“Do you?”
As he suspected, Jason didn’t answer. Instead his brother turned away and headed for the travel trailer that served as their on-site office. Studying Jason’s attire, which was a clone of his cowboy hat, western shirt, jeans, and sidearm, he recalled how the governmental engineers had kept switching their attention from one brother to the other. On the surface, the Durants looked as if they were copying each other.
They weren’t. They simply held true to their upbringing.
To his way of thinking, the biggest difference between them was that Jason had been a widower for over a year, and the wound caused by the fast-moving cancer that had taken his wife’s life was still raw. If there was one thing Jason didn’t need, it was his older brother rubbing on that wound.
Once his business with Shari was over, he’d go to his brother and apologize.
The noise from the machinery made it impossible for Maco to hear anything else, but he saw the dust before he recognized
Shari’s Bronco. She stopped near the travel trailer with OFFICE written on the door in red paint but didn’t get out until the dust settled. The afternoon sun beat down on the hard-packed ground. Despite the activity below, he felt isolated. It was just him and the land—and Shari Afton.
She acknowledged him with a short wave, but instead of walking toward him, she headed toward the back of the Bronco. When she opened the rear door, two large, muscle-bound, mostly black Dobermans jumped out. Instead of giving in to the impulse to study Shari, he concentrated on the dogs. They had a dignity about them, a restrained curiosity as if they knew they weren’t here to play. Because his family had always had working dogs, he’d never confuse the Dobermans with spoiled pets. Just the same, the mostly Border collies had the run of the house when they weren’t with the cattle. He wasn’t sure the same held true for the four-legged security force that had just arrived.
Shari, wearing faded, tight jeans, a T-shirt with a picture of a Doberman plastered on the front, and dusty tennis shoes, headed his way. The dogs, looking regal and alert, kept pace, one on either side of her. Even before the trio reached him, her presence swept over every inch of him.
Still approaching, she pointed at the darker of the two dogs. “Bruce,” she said. “The other’s Tucker. You want to get to know them?”
What he wanted was to pull her shirt tight over her breasts and study their contours. What he wanted was to get her out of those jeans so he could run his hands over her bare thighs and memorize the contours. Most of all he wanted to stare. Touch.
Followed by asking her what the hell she’d done to him.
“Sure,” he said, wondering if he sounded as distracted and dumb as he felt. “Something I should have brought up before is how they are around horses.”
“Horses?”
He pointed toward the small, tree-shaded corral where Jason and he kept their two quarter horses when they weren’t using them to get around the site. “Silver and Broomtail. My brother and I prefer them to dirt bikes.”
“Oh.” Stopping, she stared at what she could see of the dozing horses. They were saddled and bridled. “Not a problem, once I make the introductions, so to speak.”
“Good.”
Instead of checking out their new turf, the two dogs remained near Shari and watched her every move. She waited until only a few feet separated her and her companions from him. Then she swept her right hand, palm down, in his direction. That must have been some kind of signal because the dogs walked over to him, heads high so their gazes met his.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Let them smell the back of your hands. They’ll understand you’re a friend.”
“That’s what that movement of yours was about?” he asked. “Giving them the all clear?”
“Pretty much. Go on. They won’t bite.”
“I didn’t figure they would.” As the dogs investigated first his hands and then every part of his anatomy their noses could reach, his respect both for them and what Shari had accomplished with them grew. Most dogs lost whatever minds they possessed around strangers while this pair seemed to be simply assessing him. Of course maybe he just wasn’t that interesting to them. How would they react if they knew he’d like nothing better than to discover what their mistress was like in the sack?