COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1)

by Amanda Boone

  Raine got to her feet and looked into Antony’s eyes, loving the bright red tint which she brought to his face as he came.

  “Do I get to wash you now?” She asked in a coy, little voice. He shook his head.

  “No. I will wash you.” Antony stepped out of the shower, guiding her under the warm spray and letting the water caress her flesh. His hands glided over her skin, massaging and rubbing her shoulders, back, buttocks and thighs. He squeezed gel into his hand and lathered her skin, taking his time to reach round and tease her nipples before moving down to her belly and then lower. Heat boiled from between her legs when his hand got there, and he circled his fingers round her thick lips, deliberately avoiding her most sensitive parts.

  Kneeling behind her impressive buttocks, Antony reached between her cheeks and gently stroked her clit, watching as her legs trembled. Pressing the tips of his first two fingers against her tight opening, Antony gently pushed up, sliding them deep into her wetness. Raine moaned her pleasure and leaned against the tiled wall, pushing her butt out to let his fingers find their way around. Antony levered his fingers forward, finding and pressing against the spongy tissue of her g-spot. He rubbed against it in small circles drawing quiet whimpers of joy from Raine, who had thrown her head back in pleasure. Rubbing harder, Antony built up the pace of his fingers until Raine was crying out with each breath and her thighs trembled in orgasmic shudders.

  Her breathing stopped and, he felt her clench around him, her ejaculate spraying out over his hand, while her hips jerked and her breath came back with a cry of delight.

  “Oh God, Antony. It feels so good when you do that,” Raine told him. “So amazingly good.” She leaned back into his waiting arms as he stood up, and they both relaxed under the shower.

  Once dressed, Antony ordered some breakfast and made a few calls, while Raine just watched him work. His tone was completely different than the way he spoke to her, commanding and authoritative rather than sweet and reverent.

  Raine wondered what it would be like for him to order her around like that in bed and concluded it might be quite exciting.

  “What?” Antony asked, as he turned to see her dreamy expression. She grinned.

  “Just wondering how it would be if you were to command me during sex.”

  “Command you?”

  “Yeah, you know, like you were on the phone, ‘Do this, get that, make sure I’m kept in the loop. That kind of thing.”

  Antony looked at her blankly. “I already speak to you that way.”

  She laughed. “No you don’t,” she told him. “You use your special voice to talk to me.”

  “Special voice?” He snorted. “Don’t tell anyone else I’ve got a special voice, I might get some kind of bad reputation.” After a knock at the door, the skinny, Mexican receptionist whom Raine had had a couple of run-ins with rolled a trolley into the room.

  “Your meal, sir.” He said, pointedly avoiding mentioning Raine.

  “Hey, Ru.” She purred using the nickname she had given him a few days before.

  “Good morning,” he said in a strained voice. Turning stiffly, he sashayed from the room, his skinny legs and back as stiff as could be. Raine chuckled, and Antony smiled.

  They ate in a comfortable silence, Antony skimming through something on his laptop as he chewed thoughtfully. Raine sipped her coffee and watched him contentedly. Antony glanced at her, his green eyes showing amusement.

  “Enjoying the show?” He asked.

  “Oh, yeah. And wondering when you were going to tell me about ADB Holdings and fracking.”

  Jesus Raine! Where did that come from? You’ve got a good thing going here, and you want to go and fuck it all up with stupid questions like that?

  Antony, meanwhile had frozen, his hand halfway to his mouth with a coffee cup. His eyes rolled towards Raine who almost flinched at the coldness she saw in them. His eyes, which were usually so large and full of wonder when he looked at her, so filled with passion when they made love and so full of happiness afterward, had changed to small slits hiding the feelings he had.

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “Lisa,” Raine blurted. “A friend at the local paper.”

  “A reporter?” He nearly spat the name of Raine’s chosen profession as if it tasted like poison to utter.

  “No, she owns it.” She told him in a frightened squeak.

  “This is how I said, once a journalist, always a journalist.” Antony’s lips twisted in a pained smile, “Quelle surprise.” Raine sat with her heart beating and an anticipatory pain in her chest as Antony sipped his coffee in contemplative silence. Abruptly he slapped his laptop closed, stood up from his seat and looked at her.

  “I have some things I need to attend to,” He told her in a business like voice, “Maybe I will need you later.” Raine noticed the lack of questioning tone in this statement but was left breathless, as if he had punched her, by the complete lack of a kiss.

  “Antony...” Raine whispered as he strode from the room they had made love in that very night.

  ***

  Carson pulled alongside Raine as she trudged along Main Street, her tear-streaked face and hitching breath a tell-tale sign of how she felt. He halted the car, opened the door and guided her gently into the backseat before closing the door and driving off. Raine lay over sideways as Carson drove. She didn’t care if he took her home, or if Antony had ordered him to make her disappear. It made no difference.

  Without him.

  Those two words rolled across her mind like driftwood in the ocean swells. One second they were gone, and she started to believe she would be fine. The next they would reappear, sluicing down a wave towards her, reminding her of what she had lost. Physical pain. His rejection and her loss caused physical pain.

  How is that even possible? I was upset when Sam and I broke up, but this feels as if someone died. As bad as when daddy died. I can’t take this. I can’t live with this.

  I won’t be seeing Suzie again, so thanks for that. Her mother scalded her when she arrived home. Raine looked at her mother blankly.

  “Go watch TV, mom,” she said automatically. Dutifully, her mother did so. Raine laboriously climbed the stairs to her room, laid on her bed and wept until sleep claimed her.

  Every waking moment for the next few weeks saw Raine operating on a kind of automatic pilot. She looked after her mother and the house, even tended the garden a little but didn’t really notice any of the things she did. Her mind was wholly focused on her loss and the pain it caused. The abyss, which had opened in her chest, could have been used for landfill and never brimmed over.

  A bottomless shit-pit. Just try and fill me with junk, waste, or garbage. It’s what I deserve for losing the best thing I ever had. I always was a big pointless waste of air, and this proves it. I’m worthless.

  Raine howled. A huge despairing cry, screaming her pain and loss to the uncaring world.

  I only really knew him for a couple of days, but it feels like we loved a lifetime’s worth.

  Raine woke to complete blackness a month after seeing Antony for the last time. Something had roused her from her sleep, and she listened for what it might have been. Despite her depressed state, she dragged herself from her bed and flicked the hallway light on, squinting against the glare. Her mother lay at the bottom of the stairs, one arm folded at an impossible angle.

  “Your mother has suffered a stroke due to the pressure from the tumor in her brain,” The polite Nigerian doctor explained. “She broke her arm in two places when she fell down the stairs, and three of her ribs are punctured.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” Raine asked in a little voice.

  “It does not look good for her,” He said in the same calm voice he used before. “I would be very surprised if she regains consciousness.” He shook her hand and offered his condolences before taking her to her mother’s bedside.

  Three hours later Raine’s mother stopped breathing.

  Somehow Raine man
aged to get home. Walking into the empty house was almost calming. This had been her mother’s space for so long, her mark was indelibly printed in a thousand different ways, and it felt comfortable to Raine. She sat in her mother’s old spot on the sofa and sighed.

  She can’t suffer any more. No more pain for mom. Just me.

  Raine had no idea how long she had been there or how long the hammering sound had been coming from the front door, but she eventually roused herself from whatever waking coma she had been in and shuffled towards it. She didn’t even consider who it might be, just opened the door as her mind told her to, years of human conditioning taking over.

  She didn’t recognize the man standing on her porch at first. He was tall and dark with rain slicked hair and sodden clothes, disheveled and dirty.

  “Yes.” Raine said to his filthy trainers.

  “Raine?” The voice tugged at her mind as if caught on a fish hook. “What is wrong?” Raine raised her eyes as if in slow motion to study this stranger’s features. His green eyes jolted her memory, and everything cruelly shot back into focus.

  “Antony?” she asked pointlessly. “Antony!” Raine launched herself at him, making them both stagger out into the rain. She wrapped her arms around his chest and laid her head against him, listening to his heartbeat. “Real. You’re real.” She assured herself.

  “Allez, we should get out of this, Raine.”

  “And this rain. When did it start raining?” she asked.

  “Who cares?” he asked.

  Inside, Raine handed him a towel and started brewing coffee. As soon as he had dried himself a little, he pressed himself against her back.

  “This is where I need to be,” he whispered into her ear. “Where I belong.”

  “Crutch Junction?” Raine asked, smiling. “What happened to you?” she asked then, seeing his rumpled and dirty state properly for the first time.

  “I...crossed the family.” Her eyes widened, “I was doing some business of an...extraneous nature.” He added cagily. “They cut me off like they did my cousin, and I have been working my way back to you ever since.

  So now that you’re broke you come see me?

  Raine stepped away from him, turning and searching his face.

  “I went through hell when you threw me away,” she barked at him. “I wanted to die. Now you come back because you need somewhere to stay? And you think I’m just going to let you waltz back in here?” She patted her chest unconsciously. Antony took her hands and knelt on her kitchen floor.

  “I am so deeply sorry for everything I put you through, but I needed to protect you from them. I suffered too. I wanted to see you, speak to you every day.” His words caressed their way into her heart, warming it a little. “You must believe me. I did this for us, so we can be free, together, without the DuBesne family controlling us like puppets.” His voice was strained, as if he believed it at least. Raine lifted his chin and looked deep into his eyes, seeing the honesty there.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Make love to you for the rest of time,” he said in a suggestive tone.

  “Tempting as that is, normal people have to work for a living, baby.”

  “You think I am normal?” he asked with mock seriousness. Raine smiled. “You remember Celine?” She nodded, “We have been friends since childhood, almost as soon as I was sent to France.” He moved closer to Raine, taking hold of the dressing gown she wore, “Celine owns ADB Holdings, not I.” He pressed his lips to hers, flicking his tongue across them and lighting fires in her belly. “So I have plenty of time to make love to you and a little time to work with Celine.” He grabbed her hair and tugged gently, turning her face up to his, “I love you.” He growled, “And we are rich.” He smirked.

  THE END

  Billionaire Seduction: Possession

  A Billionaire Romance

  Possession

  For Raine Daniels the last six months had flown by like a shot. Since that rain soaked night when Antony had shown up, drenched and dirty, with rumpled clothes, and told her he had managed to get away from his controlling family the DuBesne’s, they had moved and created a new life for themselves.

  Both had wanted a clean break and chosen to move north to Connecticut, choosing a large house nestled between an area of forested woodland and a sandy beach offering views out across the bay.

  Raine woke each day to the bright, warm sun pouring through the huge windows and looked down at the garden below her with wonder. It was the same as it had been the first time she saw the place. Antony had come and wrapped his arms around her while she gazed longingly out at the view across New Haven Bay.

  “Could you be happy here?” he had asked, his French-American accent like an aphrodisiac in her ear.

  “We could be happy here.” She corrected him. That short sentence had been all it took for Antony to put in a bid for the place, and after a few weeks, they had bought it.

  It still felt new to Raine, far detached from her previous life in Texas and Illinois, far from her mother’s modest home back in Crutch Junction, where she had grown up among the dust and cacti of rural Texas. Everything was clean and shone with the obvious love and care, which had gone into its construction and maintenance. Marble surfaces complimented the wood flooring throughout, and the bathroom suite looked as if it had come from heaven, with sunken bath – big enough for both of them – and a shower in the corner with a wet-room floor – again, big enough for both of them – and every conceivable convenience already fitted.

  Raine padded through and took a shower, sadly alone as Antony had left early that morning to attend a business meeting in Detroit and would be away for a few days. Her body ached for him, even though he had been inside her a few scant hours ago, and she hated how she felt when he was not here.

  The whole place seemed far colder, much more spacious and vastly empty when he had to leave on business. Even when their friend, Celine, came over for coffee and a chat, Raine felt his absence like a physical ache, a loss she couldn’t describe. It probably didn’t help that she had fallen for him so hard and fast, meeting in a gym in Crutch Junction, where he had rented an entire hotel to ensure his privacy, and she had crashed in. A smile crossed her face as she showered, thinking back to the first time they met.

  Once dressed, Raine made her way through to the kitchen, filling and switching on the coffee machine – her caffeine intake had become legendary in these parts already – and the TV for the morning news. She busied herself, while the machine brewed her stimulant and took the pot out onto the deck to enjoy the morning. A quarter of the way through her latest read, Raine jumped when she heard the doorbell ring but made her way through to the front door, smiling as she recognized Celine’s perfect figure through the panes of frosted glass.

  “Bonjour, darling!” Celine greeted when Raine opened the door, leaning in and kissing her on both cheeks.

  “Hey, Celine,” Raine said with a giggle, happy to see her friend. Raine had been worried at first by Celine’s perfection, with her angelic face and tight, blond curls – especially as they had met when Celine was almost naked and in the suite of rooms where Antony and Raine had just spent the night – her figure could grace the catwalk of Paris, Milan or Rome, and her French accent merely added to her overall appeal. Her saving grace, for Raine at least, was that she was gay, and she had known Antony since he had been sent to France as a child to stay with relatives and get an education abroad.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Everything all right?”

  Celine nodded. “Oui, mon cher.” She began, “Well I suppose not everything.” Raine grabbed her hand and led her through the house, grabbing an extra cup as they went through the kitchen. Outside, Raine poured her friend a cup and slid it to her, the midnight liquid contrasting with the bone white porcelain starkly.

  Raine said, “Spill the beans.”

  Celine pouted and crossed her lightly tanned legs, letting the light brown, Loubout
in simple pump dangle from the toes of her right foot.

  “I have split up with Betsy,” she said in a small voice.

  “Oh no, babes.” Raine managed to strike the right tone. “What happened?” She prepared herself for a dramatic recounting of the tumultuous relationship Celine had been having – for at least a week – with her latest girlfriend. Raine had come to love Celine in the short time they had known each other. The fact she had helped Antony get away from his family and kept his money safe from them aside, she was just a loveable person. But she couldn’t seem to work in any kind of long term relationship, and Raine often had difficulty in keeping up with which girlfriend she was with at the time. The simple fact was that Celine was irresistible to both men and women, so had no difficulty in finding someone else, and that merely added to the problem.

  “I don’t know, darling,” Celine began. “My main problem was she didn’t keep herself clean.” Raine’s eyebrow shot up, and Celine laughed. “She washed but...fuck it. There are only so many times you can go down on a woman and get toilet tissue in your mouth.” Raine just managed to turn her head before spraying her mouthful of coffee onto the lawn.

  “What?” She demanded after choking for a minute or so. Celine laughed her throaty laugh and fixed Raine with a disapproving stare.

  “Come on, darling, you are a woman. You know what things are like down there,” she said indicating her crotch, “If you don’t get a wax or shave or something you get a stubbly pussy.”

  Raine laughed but felt a flush creep up her neck. Celine was many things, but open and vocal about her sex life was certainly one of her major traits, and sometimes she embarrassed Raine with her tales.