“Stop that or it will be all over.” Though his words came out as hoarse commands, he sounded desperate, much like she felt with him between her legs.
When he grasped her hair and gently tugged her off his cock, she let out a sigh of protest. “You taste delicious. I don’t want to stop. Not yet.”
“We’re just starting,
chéri
. And it won’t be over after tonight, either. Hold that thought while I protect you.”
It won’t be over after tonight? Sometimes my sweet, serious doctor sounds like a Dom.
Deidre remembered how she’d thought his suggestion to come to him earlier had sounded a lot like an order. That had to be just wishful thinking.
Don’t let yourself get caught up in the moment, in his gorgeous smile and his hot body and his Cajun drawl.
She lay back and watched him roll a condom over his big, hard cock before putting her onto her back with insistent strength and kneeling between her legs.
She was milk and honey, peaches and cream, her pale hair spread over the pillow as she looked up at him when he sank into her tight, hot cunt. Bracing his outstretched arms on the bed, he lifted his upper body off her until his cock and her pussy were the only parts of them that were joined.
His skin, bronzed by years spent in the sun as well as his Creole heritage, looked dark compared with her sun-kissed paleness. She felt smooth, like satin caressing his rougher flesh. Beneath him the way she was, she seemed small, even though he’d noticed right away that she was above-average height for a woman, slender except for those generous, highly sensitive breasts. Her rosy nipples tempted him to swoop down and feast on them as he fucked her, his hips moving slowly, deeply.
Claiming her. Not exactly the way he’d claim a sub. More like the way he’d take a lover, and he hadn’t had a vanilla lover since before Jessica. Hadn’t wanted one, but damn, he wanted Deidre that way. Her little moans encouraged him to move faster, harder, and the soft look in her eyes seduced him even more now than it had the first time they’d met.
She was close, sweat glistening on her beautiful body as she met his increasing thrusts. She knew how to make a man desperate to come, milking him with her inner muscles and looking at him as though she thought he’d hung the moon. He stifled a burst of jealousy for the other men she’d fucked.
I wasn’t her first but by God I’ll be her last.
Where the hell had that thought come from? Les had sworn when his position as Jessica’s sex slave had ended that jealousy and possessiveness would have no place in his future relationships, and he’d stuck with that, enjoying sex play as a Dom at clubs but never claiming a slave. He’d rarely fucked the same sub more than two or three times before moving on, and he’d avoided vanilla relationships like the plague.
He would consider the implications of this unexpected emotional connection later. Now he was desperate to come. Afterward he would regain his sense of self-preservation. He hoped.
“Wrap those long, pretty legs around my waist.” When she obeyed he shifted and sank into her welcome heat so deeply that his balls nestled between her outer labia. “Come for me now.”
She clutched his shoulders, her short nails digging in. More arousing than painful, her touch helped him to focus, hold back for her. Her eyelids closed as though she was memorizing the sensation of his every thrust, willing his heat and desire to flow into her. Her breath came out in little pants and her cunt contracted wildly around his cock.
Then she came, a series of little screams that triggered his climax, long hard bursts of semen that seemed to go on forever. He was still coming when his arms gave way and he collapsed on her, seeking and finding her lips and ravaging them as he had just ravaged her cunt.
“That was good, Doc. Really good,” she whispered against his lips after he broke the kiss. “Thank you.”
Les didn’t want thanks. He wanted…
Fuck, he didn’t know what he wanted except more of Deidre. All of her?
“It’s I who should be thanking you,
chéri
.” Rolling off her, he disposed of the condom before drawing her close to his side and stroking her silky flesh. “Go to sleep and we’ll do it again later. I’m afraid I’ll need a little time to recover.”
For a long time he lay beside her, keeping one hand on her hipbone, listening to the slow, steady beat of her heart, watching the nuances of expression on her beautiful face as she apparently revisited something disturbing in her sleep. The degree of emotional connection he felt with Deidre so soon after meeting her scared him more than he’d admit to a living soul.
Though he closed his eyes sleep wouldn’t come. He thought about his fledgling career, not yet punctuated by any great accomplishments, the past he’d turned his back on out of an excess of Cajun pride. Who the fuck was he, thinking about a lifetime with a woman whose father owned practically a fleet of planes, a garage full of luxury cars, a mansion of a house and a ranch bigger than a few small countries he could name?
A woman whose father made his wealthy old man look like a pauper, never mind that he’d walked away from his inheritance and told Paul Fourchet to leave Belle Terre to the church he loved so much if he couldn’t accept Les’ lifestyle or the woman he had once thought he loved.
Fuck, he had belonged to Jessica, enough to let her chain him to a wall and make him service other Doms. Enough to let her make him her 24/7 slave, tattooed and pierced and humiliated for her pleasure. He’d even allowed her to taunt him, saying he deserved to be enslaved because he might be descended from slaves the way so many Cajun aristocrats supposedly were.
He’d still loved her after she’d called him “coonass trash” and dumped him. Even though he wasn’t and never had been trash. The Fourchets had earned success off the sweat of their brows, rebuilding after losing everything during the Civil War and achieving success in a world very different from the one where they’d begun.
He and Jessica had worked together, played together and fucked together, always her way because she’d asserted full control. Les had thought they were in love. He’d even persuaded himself he liked having her chain him to a wall and make him watch her service other Doms, and he’d meekly gone down on all fours later and held his ass open for the same Dom to claim him on her order.
She’d given him the punishment he had craved. He’d agreed to be her 24/7 slave, to let her have him tattooed and pierced and humiliated for her pleasure. He’d endured every indignity she’d forced on him, believing the punishment had been his due. He probably would still have been with her if he hadn’t awakened to how far he’d fallen under her command and backed away to maintain part of his soul.
Now it seemed he was finally on the right track with Deidre, loving a woman who could love him back for who he was, a woman who didn’t want to twist him up, at least on an emotional level. When he watched the silent rise and fall of Deidre’s chest he realized he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted Jessica.
Maybe he could have her, give her all she wanted physically and emotionally if not materially. Having been a slave, Les didn’t relish the idea of becoming one again, even if it were only to the Caden wealth.
Out here the social strictures weren’t as strong as those where he’d grown up. Marriages seemed to be for sex and love, not necessarily the dynastic matchups that were still common in Creole society. Les considered that Deidre’s brother had married the daughter of a ranching family the Cadens had supposedly been feuding with for over a hundred years. And that Liz Wolfe of the other huge property, the Laughing Wolf, had married small-town lawyer Jack Duval just before Christmas.
Maybe… Shit, the only hurdle Les would have to jump to be with Deidre was that small matter of the however many more zeroes in her bank balance than in his. Unless…
Les sighed, quietly so as not to wake his sleeping lover. He’d already decided Deidre was the woman he wanted, and he wasn’t about to deny himself like a cringing coward, even if that meant he’d suffer later if she or Four should decide he wasn’t good enough to be a Caden in-law.
As he was drifting off to sleep, Les realized that losing Jessica had bruised his ego. He was afraid losing Deidre might break his heart.
Chapter Four
Deidre had enjoyed nosing around the West End with Les, seeing familiar sights through his eyes, almost as much as she had loved having sex with him. They’d woken during the night and fucked, a sleepy, affectionate coupling that had left them both ready to curl up in each other’s arms, and later on they’d done it again. The last time had left her wrung out, breathless, still wanting more yet as sexually satisfied as she’d ever felt before.
He was a fantastic lover, skilled and as demanding as any Dom she could imagine playing with, but still considerate enough to see to her pleasure before taking his own. She couldn’t quite picture him playing with her at the Neon Lasso, though. He seemed too reserved for that, even if he had taken her over almost as thoroughly as she’d watched Doms do with their subs in club scenes.
The main difference between being dominated by him and by her imaginary Dom was that Les had controlled her without restraints and toys and in the privacy of a hotel room, far away from the heated gazes of eager voyeurs. No, he might not be a Dom but he knew how to ring her bells as well as any of the club Doms she had observed, who had fed her fantasies.
On the way home now, hoping to beat a threatening storm, she watched him handle the Cessna with efficiency and confidence. He hadn’t hesitated to take the controls of the unfamiliar plane when she’d admitted how much she hated to fly in the worsening storm. She had to admit he handled the plane better than she did and as well as Four or Bye would have, even though they’d all spent many more hours at the controls than he could have managed while qualifying for an instrument rating.
When his brow furrowed a little in apparent concentration, she took that as a sign of his strong sense of responsibility, not as an indication that he was anything but totally in command, fully confident in his ability to get them back home safely.
She studied his profile, wanting to capture it all in her mind—the classic features that reminded her of a Roman god, the slightly curly jet-black hair that could use a trim. His mouth. Oh, what he could do to her with that mouth, the full lower lip now compressed as he concentrated on flying.
He’d have a similar look on his face when he examined a patient, she imagined. Intent and focused. The man was responsible to a fault in a way she and Bye had never had to be because they’d always had Mom and Four to buy them out of whatever messes they’d made of their lives.
Les took responsibility seriously but still Deidre wished he’d lighten up a little, put the plane on autopilot and let her see to his pleasure.
That wasn’t going to happen. No more than he had risked distracting her by chatting as she’d flown them to Dallas. She had the feeling that no matter how much she begged and pouted, she wouldn’t be able to break his resolve. Still, she couldn’t resist reaching over and laying her hand on his muscular, jeans-clad thigh.
“
Chéri
, stop that. Be good, for God’s sake. The wind is kicking up now and I need to concentrate on flying. I want to get us back to the Bar C in one piece and I can’t think when you’ve got your hands on me.”
He’d attended to her sexual needs last night with equally single-minded concentration. She wasn’t used to being put off, but she didn’t mind it as long as she kept reminding herself the time would come for that as soon as he landed and taxied the plane into its hangar at the end of the Bar C’s runway. “Okay, as long as you promise you’ll take care of me once we get home.”
“It will be my pleasure.” He shot her a quick, promising smile, then turned his full attention back to the instrument panel before glancing out the window at the threatening clouds on the horizon.
Satisfied for now, Deidre sat back and followed his gaze. She watched fearsome clouds roll in from the northwest, grateful she could count on Les to get them home safely despite the worsening weather.
She had rarely had occasion to use the plane’s de-icing equipment except on short hops following the recent blizzard to drop feed to cattle. She doubted Les had either, since he’d told her he’d qualified at a flight school in south Texas, where it rarely dropped below freezing. When he scanned the controls and turned on the de-icers she realized he had learned more about bad-weather flying in a classroom than she’d picked up in years of casual wintertime flights under Mike’s watchful eye.
The wind was getting stronger, the ride rougher. She couldn’t have done any better than Les at holding the plane steady against the forces of nature. She probably wouldn’t have done half as well, she thought, as she watched him maneuver while the plane dipped and shuddered in the increasing wind. Snowflakes swirled around them, a horde of icy granules that pelted the windshield with fierce intensity.
Deidre wasn’t afraid because Les radiated an aura of competence and self-confidence.
A half-hour later he put the Cessna down smoothly on the Bar C’s runway, which Dave had apparently cleared of nearly two inches of snow judging from the piles on either side. The fluffy white curtain was now coming down so hard it was almost impossible to see the silver hangar with its green Bar C logo above the door.
Deidre let out the breath she’d been holding when Les taxied into the hangar and shut off the engines. “I’m so damn glad you were at the controls instead of me.”
When they climbed down from the plane Dave ran at them like a crazed man. “Thank God you’re back. Hop in the Jeep and I’ll take you up to the house.”
Deidre looked at the ranch’s pilot and plane maintenance man as though she thought he’d lost his mind. “I think Les’ car will make it. The snow’s not all that deep yet. What’s going on up there that has you chasing after me like a maniac?”
“They need Doc Fourchet, fast. One of the bulls gored Jorge Sanchez in the thigh about half an hour ago. The hospital in Lubbock can’t send its helicopter up in this weather and Doc Baines is on the other side of the county taking another call. By the time he gets through, he’ll probably be snowed in.”
Les looked at Deidre. “I’ve got a few supplies in the trunk of my car. They’re in a black leather bag. Would you mind getting it for me?” He dug his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her before giving the threatening sky a long look and turning to Dave. “It sounds as though Jorge may need to get to a hospital fast.”
He thought about the meager emergency supplies he had with him. “Can you fly him to Lubbock or is the weather too bad?”
“You ought to know. You just landed, and the storm is getting worse by the minute. It would be insane to take him up in this storm until the weather clears some, even in the Learjet. We’re having wind gusts at more than forty miles an hour and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. Besides, there’s a good chance that the Lubbock airports are already closed. They don’t have a lot in the way of snow-clearing equipment.”
Dave’s assessment was the same as Les’ had been. He climbed into the Jeep, took his medical bag from Deidre and held out a hand to help her climb in before Dave took off.
She looked terribly worried. “Exactly what happened, Mike?”
“Apparently the wranglers who usually help Jorge with the bulls both have the flu. They stayed in bed this morning, and when the weather turned bad Jorge decided to go by himself to get the bulls into the barn. The last bull charged Jorge when he went over the fence and into the pasture.”
Les tried not to sound as concerned as he felt. “How long ago was that?”
“Less than an hour ago.”
Deidre clasped Les’ arm with surprising strength. “Omigod, poor Jorge. And poor Maria.”
“Maria?”
Deidre turned to Les, practically in tears. “Maria is Jorge’s wife. She’s our housekeeper. She’s been on the Bar C since before I was born, so long that she seems like part of the family. I bet Four is frantic.” Deidre held on tight as Dave pulled off the road and crossed a field in what Les assumed must be a shortcut to the ranch house he’d seen briefly yesterday while picking Deidre up for the ride to the hangar.
“Yeah. Bye’s none too calm either. He called me just before you two landed to see if we dared to take the plane up.”
“In some ways my brother is as volatile as our dad. Especially in a medical emergency, when he’s the only one on the ranch who has any more than the most basic knowledge about first aid now that Mom’s not here. Where is Jorge now?” Deidre bit her lower lip, a gesture that Les had noticed her make whenever she was upset.
Dave steered around another bale of hay and detoured to avoid a pumpjack that was moving up and down, the drone of its motor making it momentarily impossible to hear.
“Bye had them take him to the big house.”
A few minutes later Dave pulled up in front of the sprawling two-story house constructed of white brick and native sandstone, with square pillars holding up wide balconies that circled the front and sides. “Go on, Deidre, take Doc inside so he can see what can be done for Jorge. I’m gonna head back to the hangar and get the Bombardier fueled up and ready to go in case the weather should decide to cut us a break.”
Les didn’t need to ask where his patient was. All he had to do was follow the sound of high, keening wails and listen to Four reassuring somebody that Jorge would be okay. He detected more than a little fear in the deep rumbling voice that was mumbling hopeful platitudes.
“This way,” Deidre said, taking Les’ free hand and tugging him past a curving stairway toward the back of the house. “It sounds bad.”
The moment Les stepped into the room he focused on the middle-aged man laid out on a bed near the window. He looked unnaturally pale, his eyelids scrunched up and his mouth tight with apparent pain, though he seemed to be unconscious—no surprise. It registered with Les that Jorge was in a hospital bed, not the regular sort of bed people usually had in their homes but a model he’d seen in the VIP suites at the Houston hospital where he’d done his residency.
Four stepped back from the right side of the bed and turned back the covers. Les knew right away why everybody seemed practically in shock. The linens were soaked with blood in spite of the tourniquet somebody had applied—correctly, thank God—above the wound in Jorge’s thigh.
“His blood pressure is eighty over sixty and his pulse feels weak to me. He wasn’t running a fever when I checked him a few minutes ago. The tourniquet has been on for five minutes since I loosened it for a minute.” Standing next to the other side of the bed, Bye draped the stethoscope he’d been using around his neck. “From the way the blood was spurting I figured the bull horn had nicked an artery, so I applied the tourniquet. I’ve been loosening it every ten minutes because I was afraid leaving it longer than that would cut off the circulation completely.”
Les checked the tourniquet and nodded. “You were right. I’ll loosen it again as soon as I take a quick look at the wound.” God help him—or rather Jorge. Les didn’t carry around IV fluids or surgical trays. He had precious little in his bag that would be much help in this situation and he doubted even the best-equipped of home first-aid kits would offer much of what he’d need.
“Will he lose his leg?” A middle-aged woman he assumed was Jorge’s wife looked down at Jorge then met Les’ gaze. Tears ran down her plump, ruddy cheeks. “
Dios
, it will kill him if he cannot work with the bulls.”
Les couldn’t promise anything. “I’ll do my best. We’ll need to get him to a hospital as soon as possible. Mrs. Sanchez, I think you should go outside. Deidre, please take her out while I examine Jorge.” One quick glance at Deidre told him he’d most likely have another patient if she stayed—and the last thing he wanted was to have to treat his lover.
When the women had left and he uncovered the wound, Les had to hold back a curse. Jorge’s thigh was opened up practically to the bone, muscles and tendons shredded by the animal’s undoubtedly sharp, thick horn. Blood oozed out from all around the wound field despite the tourniquet, which would have to be loosened shortly or Jorge would certainly lose the leg if not his life.
“Can I get you something?” Bye had Les’ bag on the bedside table and was opening it up. “Looks to me as though fixing Jorge’s leg with what you have here is gonna be a lot like trying to take down an eight-point buck with birdshot.”
Les already knew that. “I’m afraid you’re right. Hand me that bottle of Betadine and a pair of sterile gloves. I’ll do what I can with what I have. Somebody needs to go find more towels and some water—distilled if you have it. If you don’t, regular will have to do. Might as well get me the suture pack—it’s in the white wrap at the bottom of the bag.”
His only other experience with treating wounds anywhere near as serious as this had been in the emergency room during his rotation there last year. He tried to calm his nerves as he snapped on the gloves and probed gently at the mangled flesh, searching for the source of the heavy bleeding.
“The femoral artery is intact.” If it hadn’t been, Jorge would already have been dead from loss of blood. “Here. One of the bull’s horns ripped the obturator artery. I’ll suture it, but it will need to be redone at the hospital later. I don’t pretend to be a vascular surgeon, and I don’t have the type of suture material that’s usually used for work on veins and arteries.”
An hour later Les was covered in sweat but the artery had finally stopped spurting blood every time Bye loosened the tourniquet. Saying a silent prayer, Les removed the loosened tourniquet after cleaning the wound and suturing torn muscle and skin. Exhausted, he pulled off his gloves and dropped them into the basin where he’d discarded the used supplies.