All Together Now

by Madelynne Ellis, Fleur T. Reid, Nan Comargue, Shannon Peters, Morticia Knight, Jordyn Mckenzie

  Isabel lifted herself onto tiptoe and completed the connection. The first warm press of his lips stilled her, as if he was calling out some great calm sea within her body. He cupped her hips in his hands, pulling her close, his touch warm and steadying. He held her mouth, suckling her lips, before probing his tongue into the space between them.

  She parted her lips in a moaned welcome and the sea became a churning ocean. He pressed his tongue to hers in a hot, parrying movement, writhing against each other to the sound of their mingled groans.

  Dex’s hand captured the nape of her neck, nestling his fingers into the tangle of her hair, while she splayed her fingers over the back of his head, urging him closer. His mouth tasted like peaches, sweet and tangy. She sucked his tongue deeply.

  Leaning her back against the fence, Dex prolonged the kiss. He moved his hand to seek her breast. She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the thin shirt and he moulded the peak to the shape of his hands until he found the taut nipple and squeezed it experimentally.

  A shaft of pure electricity shot through her body, starting at her swollen breast and pooling in her vagina. She could feel her pussy lips swelling and beginning to throb. It had been so long since she’d felt a man’s eager body against hers.

  But this wasn’t just any man. It was Dexter Armstrong.

  The bulge in his jeans was unmistakable, pressing insistently against her belly. She slid a hand between their bodies and fondled the hard swell, causing him to grunt deep in his throat. He was ready and so was she.

  As soon as she had given a fleeting thought to the mechanics of how this would happen, Dex had taken her into his arms, leaving her feet dangling a good foot off the ground, and brought her up hard against the smooth bark of an ancient tree.

  “Here?” she squeaked, already fumbling with the brass clasp of his belt.

  “Here,” he answered.

  He ripped two of her buttons from their stitches while trying to get her shirt open. Soon the creamy upper curves of her breasts were revealed to the sunlight.

  “Beautiful,” Dex muttered, ripping away the final buttons and letting the shirt hang unheeded from her shoulders.

  Her throat, her soft belly, her firm round tits, were all displayed for him. He cupped her breasts reverently, just a brush of sensation. He didn’t touch her nipples.

  Isabel was finally successful in opening the belt and worn jeans. The jeans were too tight to ease away from him and the dark blue boxers he wore beneath them stumped her for several moments, until she just stuck her hand down the waistband and grabbed what she wanted.

  Dex groaned. His caged cock was rock hard. Straining, Isabel could just feel its solid length and girth.

  “Nice,” she murmured, deep in her throat. Her mouth was watering and she licked her lips.

  Dex’s hips thrust at her as he leant down to kiss her again, this time with luxurious abandon. His hands curved around her breasts, barely thumbing her protruding nipples although she arched her spine, pushing them at him.

  “Easy, baby.”

  How he could sound so calm when his cock was huge and stiff between her fingers, she had no idea. She wanted to push her tits into his face, fill his mouth with her nipples, and then jump on his cock to fill her pussy the same way.

  She didn’t want him to tell her ‘easy’. She wanted him to be as frantic as she was.

  Removing her hands from his pants, she leant down, grasped the waistband of his jeans and pulled. The soft material slid over his lean hips and fell to his knees. His tangled boxers came down as well.

  His rose-coloured cock sprung free, swaying gently in the hot, still air. Isabel caressed it with both hands.

  “Now this is nice,” she told him.

  His response was a long groan.

  She whispered, “I want you inside of me.”

  “Am I interrupting?”

  The deep voice was like a splash of icy water.

  Isabel sprang away from Dex, her hands remaining a moment longer to slide across his stiff cock. She hastened to grip the sides of her shirt, closing them over her naked breasts, but not before she saw the silver glint of Cary’s gaze as he took them in.

  Dex straightened almost as quickly and started pulling up his clothes, readjusting them into some semblance of neatness. His brother watched him silently, a faintly scornful curl on his lips.

  “Did you want something?” Isabel asked after Dex had restored his clothing to an orderly state.

  Her pert question earned another flicker from those incredible eyes. Lord, he was beautiful! A brief, passing desire made her want to loosen her grip and let him look his fill of her swollen breasts and stiff, aching nipples. Poor Dex had never got to finish what he’d started.

  A sudden vision, of both the Armstrongs crouching before her, each suckling one of her yearning breasts, made the colour flame up into her face. Now she probably looked just like Dex, red-faced and embarrassed.

  Well, she had nothing to be embarrassed about. After Jason, no man was going to make her feel ashamed of her sexuality.

  “What makes you think I want anything?” Cary drawled, his eyes again dropping to her covered breasts on the word ‘want’.

  “You followed us!” Isabel accused.

  “It’s my property.”

  The way he said this almost made it seem like he was referring to Isabel.

  “Fine, take it,” she said, grabbing Dex by the arm and hauling him back towards the path with her.

  “Isabel.” Dex’s quiet protest made her think of what he’d just told her about his brother, about people leaving him, but she shrugged off that bit of guilt with a toss of her head.

  If Cary wanted sympathy then he’d better start acting like a human being, not a tyrant.

  Chapter Three

  With Cary’s disapproval heavy in the house, there was no chance of rekindling the fire she and Dex had shared out on the path.

  Dex.

  Lying in her old bed, Isabel revisited the scene from earlier that evening. Bad idea. The memory only made her pussy ache. And only Dex could cure that particular ache. Yes, only Dex.

  She finally had the answer to the question her mother had asked her years ago. Cary or Dex?

  The answer was Dex. Definitely Dex.

  If only she could have them both. Her stomach tightened at the thought, her pussy suddenly drenched. Both of them. That would certainly be a dream come true. A fantastic dream.

  Isabel flopped over onto her stomach and tried to remember if her vibrator was buried deep in her purse or had been tossed into the big brown bag on the floor. She found it in the smaller black bag containing her cosmetics.

  The vibrator was a discreet pale pink. Not unlike Dex’s—

  A loud knock at her bedroom door startled her out of her thoughts.

  “Isabel?” Another barrage of knocks. “You in there?”

  She stuffed the vibrator under a pillow before she pulled open the door.

  “Yes, Cary, I’m here, as you can see. Where else would I be?”

  His grin was infuriating. “You mean after I disturbed your little rendezvous earlier?”

  “Rendezvous is an awfully big word for a cowboy,” she shot back, almost absentmindedly. She was so accustomed to railing against the older Armstrongs—always ineffectually—that she’d slipped right back into the habit without hesitation. “What do you want, Cary?”

  It was a version of the question she’d asked before, but this time he didn’t answer in his old mocking way.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Isabel sighed and nudged open the door fully. “Of course you do.”

  She perched on the edge of the bed as Cary entered the room a half-step, and apparently decided that that was enough. She couldn’t recall either of the brothers coming into her bedroom, even when she was a child. It was probably another Armstrong rule.

  “What you and my brother do is your own business,” Cary began.

  Isabel jumped to her feet. This was not
the speech she’d expected.

  “You bet it’s our business,” she told him, once she’d found her voice. “Nobody else’s.”

  And certainly not his.

  “Good.” A small smile played across his hard lips. “Then we’re both agreed.”

  She sat back down. That mocking tone of his had always held the power to deflate her. “Then I don’t see the point of continuing with this conversation.”

  “Well, I do,” said Cary. “Because that wasn’t what I came to say.”

  This time, she merely inclined her head. If she couldn’t scorch him with her anger, at least she could freeze him out.

  Except that it was nearly impossible to ice out a man who looked like Cary Armstrong, a man who’d received more than his fair share of female adoration almost since the day he’d been born.

  Isabel looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes. He was gorgeous. Like Dex, his features were pure Armstrong—hard yet handsome, with stubborn character rubbed into every cool line. But, unlike Dex, who carried the features in a somewhat blurred version, Cary’s were as sharp as if they were carved out of granite. His grey eyes were often pitiless.

  “There’s something you should know about Dex.”

  Isabel met his gaze scornfully. She said, with perfect confidence, “There’s nothing I don’t know about Dex.”

  Her arrogance brought a gleam into his eyes. “No? How about we start with the way he’s been carrying on lately with Yvonne McGovern?”

  The cloak of conceit fell from her with an almost audible sound.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yvonne McGovern?” Isabel repeated. “Your Yvonne?”

  A sudden stiffness entered his stance.

  “She’s not mine.”

  She ignored the warning sign. “She was.”

  Isabel knew that she was crossing an invisible line. No one had mentioned Yvonne’s name in this house since Cary had brought her to dinner one night seven years ago and announced that they were engaged to be married. It was Isabel’s mother who’d heard in town that Yvonne had eloped with a Los Angeles businessman two weeks after that happy dinner. The businessman had had money, while there had been no telling how long Cary would have had to wait to inherit the Armstrong wealth. It showed how stupid the woman was, Isabel remembered her mother saying angrily, that she didn’t know that it was Dex and Cary who managed the family’s money. Carter Senior had always believed in teaching independence the hard way.

  “That’s enough, Isabel,” said Cary.

  No, it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. And the fact that he hadn’t left her bedroom told her that, on some level, Cary believed she had a right to ask a few more questions.

  “So, what’s Yvonne doing back in town?”

  “She’s visiting her family,” he answered tersely.

  “Bullshit. Her family moved to Arizona years ago, while she was in LA. Why is she really back?”

  Cary took another stride into the room, bringing himself closer to her. His presence in her girlish bedroom was disturbing. Everything about the man was disturbing. Irritation and something darker radiated from him like a heatwave. Was he irritated with her, or Dex, or both? Isabel didn’t want to consider that a woman like Yvonne McGovern still possessed the power to affect him so strongly.

  Sticking his hands into his jeans, he said, “She approached me first. It was only after I rejected her that she turned her sights on Dex.” A corner of his mouth hitched upward. “Turns out that her divorce settlement was next to nothing. They didn’t have any kids and her ex-husband was successful in defeating her claim for alimony. According to local gossip, he’s already planning his second marriage.”

  Unwillingly, Isabel felt sympathy for the other woman whose story was already fodder for local gossip. The Riding locals were insular. They could tolerate almost any peculiarity within their own ranks, but looked askance at the same behaviour from outsiders.

  “Why doesn’t she get a job?” Isabel demanded, forcing herself to reject the glimmer of sympathy. “Why did she have to come back here? There are millionaires all over the country.”

  Cary looked down at his boots. “Maybe she felt that coming back here would be easy pickings.”

  She hooted. “You? Easy pickings? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  He lifted his chin to meet her wide gaze. “You are good for the old ego,” he muttered, “but you’ve got to admit that I went and turned myself into a complete fool for that woman seven years ago.”

  “And you haven’t even dated anyone seriously since then,” Isabel pointed out just as softly. “Could it be that you’re so afraid of making yourself a fool again that you won’t even take a chance at happiness?”

  His eyes glinted silver. “I thought you were a designer out there in the big city. Not a psychologist.”

  “You don’t have to be a psychologist to see the pattern,” she insisted.

  Cary looked away suddenly. He ran a restless hand through his thick blond mane.

  Yvonne had the power to do that to him, to make a strong man look like a weak adolescent again. Yet Yvonne had also taken the trouble to hunt him out after her divorce—not for a moment did Isabel think that Dex was the other woman’s primary target—so that meant he possessed something more primal than what money could give her.

  What was it? Sex?

  Isabel’s eyes focused on his other hand, which remained in his pocket, distending the front of his jeans. The bulge made by his fist was mirrored by a distinct bulge at his crotch. She wondered if his cock would look like his brother’s, with its delicate colouring and more than satisfactory length and girth, just enough to fit nicely into the palm of her hand. Or would his cock be paler, to match his colouring, and even longer and thicker because of his greater height and size?

  She swallowed uncomfortably and tried to pick up the thread of conversation. She shouldn’t be thinking of him that way! Not when she was involved with his brother—if that was the term used for having come to the brink of fucking and been interrupted.

  What would Cary’s cock taste like? Would his cum be tangy and slightly sour like Jason’s, or faintly sweet like her first boyfriend’s?

  Lord, it was hot in this bedroom! She suddenly wanted Cary to get out of the room so that she could dig out her vibrator from under the pillow. Or he could just take those two steps to her bed and show her what his cock looked like, how it tasted, how well it filled her pussy.

  Isabel stood up quickly and went to the window, yanking it open to the fresh air. A mild breeze blew up from the fields where she could see horses cropping. The sky spread blue and infinite above them.

  She leaned against the edge of the window frame, acutely aware of the drying sweat on her forehead and the dampness between her legs.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  He was right behind her, having finally breached the boundaries he’d clearly set in his own head of where in her bedroom was an appropriate place for an unrelated man.

  “I’m okay,” she said over her shoulder. The air was just cool enough to feel good on her face, but Cary’s body behind her felt like it was giving off the heat of an oven.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “You’ve been as jumpy as a cat in—as a cat since you got here.”

  Unseen by him, Isabel smiled. No, he’d been right the first time. She felt like she was in heat. After the sterile environment she had become accustomed to with Jason, she was now in constant close contact with two devastatingly attractive and virile men. Being in the same house without giving in to her sexual fantasies was starting to feel like torture. She knew suddenly that her vibrator wouldn’t do the job. And now, according to his big brother, even Dex was off limits.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked without turning around. She clamped her fingers onto the window frame. “To promise that I’ll leave Dex alone and let him go freely into the clutches of your ex-mistress? I don’t know if I can do that. You know better
than I do that Yvonne is poison.”

  Strong hands settled onto her slender shoulders, making her shiver despite their warmth.

  “And you would be better for him?”

  Isabel closed her eyes, blocking out the ranch and its natural beauty. “I don’t know,” she told him, “but I would try to be.”

  “Maybe I can’t let you do that.”

  His voice sounded oddly hoarse.

  Anger welled up inside her and she spun around to face him. “When are you going to realise that I’m not a chi—”

  Cary kissed her. Hard.

  His lips were hot and firm against her softer mouth. Every protest flew out of her head. All she knew was what her body was feeling, and it felt right.

  This was her man. Cary. Cary. Cary.

  She pushed him away, gasping. “Dex!”

  It took a full second for the sardonic look to appear. “No,” he drawled, wiping his mouth with the side of his hand. “It’s the other brother. Carter.”

  She shook her head swiftly, a part of her heart breaking to see that familiar expression again after what she’d just felt…and tasted. She wanted more.

  “I meant, we have to think about Dex. He and I—we just…”

  Cary suddenly grinned boyishly. “Come on, Isabel, we’re all adults here. I think we can handle it.”

  “How?” She demanded sarcastically. “By learning to share?”

  An odd expression passed fleetingly over his face, to be swiftly replaced by the grin. “I don’t know about that. I’m not a generous man. Not when it comes to my women.”

  “I’m not your woman!”

  He shook his head in mock regret. “Not with that attitude.”

  “Cary!” She screamed out in frustration, unable to make sense of his strangely exuberant mood.

  “At least you remembered my name this time.”

  Isabel did the only thing she could. She pointed at the door and cried, “Get out!”

  He left. And she went back to her pillow and retrieved her vibrator. While she used it, her fantasies alternated between Dex and Cary, Cary and Dex, in such rapid succession that she eventually got them mixed up. Still, her climax eluded her.