He held…a nipple clamp. Well, two of them, strung together with a length of chain. They were…a sort of alligator clip, with rubber tips covering what surely were metal teeth and a screw that must be used for…tension control. He held them right in front of her eyes. With his fingers, he peeled back one rubber tip and let her see the teeth. “I guess this deal is removable, for more…bite. What do you think? On or off? Just how much punishment do you deserve?”
“O…off!”
Liberty moaned. She couldn’t believe she’d blurted that out. It wasn’t the word she’d meant to say.
Tag sniggered. “That’s what I thought, too, baby.”
He peeled both tips off and dropped them uncaringly to the floor—like her only chance at ever using them was gone. Then he pressed the clamp open, set it over the nipple he’d made red and erect already, and let it close.
“Oh, God.” It came out as another moan.
He tugged on the chain, and the clamp held, even as it delivered a stinging pinch. “Guess that’s tight enough. Unless you want me to give this screw a little twist.”
“No!”
Tag chuckled now. “Got the right word out that time, did you?”
But her relief was short-lived. He was flicking again, this time at her right nipple. Wordlessly, he tortured it until it was hard, then placed the other clamp. He squeezed down a little this time, making sure it had a good grip. Then he ran his fingers along the chain.
Each clamp was right at the tip of the nipple, and the movement caused by the chain brought exquisite stimulation.
“Oh.” She moaned with each tug at the chain.
“Put your arms up over your head.”
He looked at her as she yet again followed his instruction. He obviously enjoyed how that motion lifted her breasts, put them on display for him.
“You can bend your elbows.”
She dropped her hands behind her neck, knowing instinctively what he wanted to see.
Tag walked around the room now. He turned on a lamp, lighting her up as dark had fallen around them. “This is too good not to see.”
For him—or for whoever else might look into his room from outside. Liberty remembered how open the room was, windows bare. That tremendous view to the out of doors. Or, to the inside, into a lit room when it was dark on the ranch, from outside.
He didn’t seem to care that someone—a brother, perhaps—could be watching.
He’d moved to the top of his bed and bent, retrieving something from the floor. When he stood, he slid a varnished board into some sort of bracket on the bed so it was attached, perpendicular, standing a couple feet higher than the mattress.
From it, a pair of leather handcuffs dangled.
Watching her contemplate that, he pulled the top bedding back and dropped it on the floor.
“You get the idea?” he asked. “When I’ve got you cuffed there, face down so I can fuck your ass, your arms will be up. Your tits will press into the bed and work those clamps, and you won’t be able to get a bit of relief from it.”
Liberty moaned out another breath. Yeah, she got the idea.
“Unzip your skirt.”
She wore a short, white denim skirt with a front fly. She brought her arms down, unfastened the single button, and lowered the zipper.
“Good, baby,” he said. “Now slip your right hand in and play with your clit.”
His eyes dark and intent, he watched her do it. Because, of course, she did, following his commands like he held endless power over her.
“Run a finger along the chain with your other hand.”
Liberty wouldn’t have thought she could have enjoyed this—the bit of domination with clamps and cuffs, the performance, the voyeurism. But she did. She liked—loved—the heat in Tag’s eyes as he watched. She loved the stimulation to her nipples, the clamps adding an excitement far more than if she’d just been pleasuring herself. She loved the way the movement of her hand—slipping into her panties—drew his gaze.
He stepped close again, put his hands on her hips, and then jerked her skirt down to the floor. He sat at the foot of the bed and took in the view.
“That’s gorgeous,” he said. “Watching your fingers going down on yourself. Your pretty pink nails disappearing into your undies.” He leaned forward, hooking the band of her panties and tugging them down in a vee. “Now I want to see them disappear into you.”
Liberty huffed out a breath. And then…submitted. She slid her fingers further than her clit. Further…until she pushed them into her pussy.
“Open your legs more,” came the next instruction. “Let me see.”
She bent her knees and tilted her pelvis, giving him the view he wanted.
“That’s good, baby. Do it. Finger fuck yourself.”
It was so hot, imagining what he was seeing. Watching the pink of her nails slide in, and out, in.
“Come closer.”
She took a couple steps toward him. He kept his gaze where it was, watching her fuck herself. But he reached up with one hand and took hold of the clamp over her nipple. He squeezed, and she cried out.
“Come,” he told her. Like it was a thing he could command, just like everything she’d done for him already.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t rub herself and hold herself up and let go that much. But he gave the order a second time. He pressed one knee against one of hers and put a hand on her hip for support and told her once more.
Then she had to do it. She fell forward, her head burrowed against his. With him holding her, keeping her up, squeezing the clamp down on her tit. With her still tugging that chain to stimulate the other side and rubbing her clit, she came.
She shivered and quaked and cried out. Nearly falling to her knees, she let go. Let her body weight fall into his arms. Let him hold her as she whimpered out the last of it.
Then, mindlessly cooperating as he moved her, situated her, like she was willingly going to her own execution, she went up onto the bed. He pushed her down on it, right in the center. He walked around to the head of the bed and tugged her hands up until he had each one suspended from the cuffs. Moving lower, he put a forearm under her hips and lifted so he could stuff a couple pillows under her.
Her position did exactly what he’d said. She couldn’t put any of her weight on her arms, so her tits pressed down into the bed, inciting the sting from those nipple clamps. The way he’d propped up her hips made matters worse.
Or better.
Made her, also, totally vulnerable. Exposed.
Made her helpless. Unable to resist. To do anything at all when he put his hand on one cheek of her ass. Anything but take it.
“Did you let Keegan fuck you?”
“What? No!”
He spanked her. Just like she knew he would, when he’d put his hand there. Something about the heat of it, the weight of his silence, the long moment when he’d done and said nothing.
She wasn’t surprised at the question, or at the spanking, either. The way her body responded though—tensing, heating, wetting—that came as surprise.
“Don’t lie to me.” His hand wasn’t touching her, but, still, she could feel the heat of it.
“I’m not!”
He leaned over her, his breath hot near her cheek. “Did you kiss him?”
“Yes!”
He spanked her again, hard.
He was moving over her, his hands busy. She groaned when he pressed something into her ass, distending her, filling her with a cold shock of lube.
“Did you let him touch you?”
“Yes!”
He shoved something—cold and hard, not him, but…a butt plug—into her ass. Then he spanked her again.
“Did he make you come?”
“Yes!”
Another spanking. On the same side, the same place, so it burned. Roughly, he tugged at each leg, opening her up, spreading her. He punched his fist into the pillow between her thighs, making room for…a vibrator. He set it there, buzzing hard
, nestled between the pillow and…her clit.
“Did you touch him?”
“No!”
“Did you suck him? Did you make him come?”
“No! No!”
He spanked her anyway. He was on his knees now, between her legs, the denim of his jeans still there, rough against the inside of her thighs. With no warning, he shoved his fingers into her cunt. Deep, hard. All of them, maybe, almost fisting her.
His hand came down at her left shoulder so he was looming over her, still fucking her with his hand. “I said you could. I said I’d love you anyway.”
“No!”
“I told you!”
She shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. She’d been so sure he couldn’t have meant that. But she could hardly think, hardly unearth a single, functional brain cell. There was so much distraction—too much. The clamps, the vibrator, his hand thrusting into her.
“I did!”
He took his hand out of her and abruptly tore the butt plug out, too. He pressed harder against her, gnashing, the zipper of his fly roughly scraping her most tender, sensitized tissues. Then his cock went to her ass and shoved in.
With his weight on both hands now, he lowered over her. He scraped his teeth along her shoulder until his mouth was at her ear. He fucked once, hard, into her ass.
“I wanted you to fuck him,” he ground out. “I wanted you to be with him.”
“Tag! I don’t believe you.” She shuddered as he fucked her again, and she felt exactly what he’d predicted. The rough thrust of his body into hers sent her tits chafing against the bedding, sent the clamps zinging into her nipples. The same thing happened at her clit, each thrust bringing her hard against the vibrator. She grasped at his words, barely able to process them. “You can’t want me to be with another man.”
“Not another man,” he said. He was fucking her now, hard and constant, a thrust for every word. “My brother. Brothers,” he corrected. “Keeg and Ry. I want you to want them. To—” He’d collapsed onto her now, his full weight bringing her down on those devices, driving her past what she could take. “To fuck them. To…love…them. And me. All of us. No one else. But all of us.”
She could barely hear over the ringing in her ears, the crazy, impossible climax he was driving her to.
But she knew. She knew now what he meant. What he’d wanted when he’d sent her away with Keegan. What he hoped for.
And she couldn’t. Couldn’t even think about it. But couldn’t resist him, either. Couldn’t hold back the explosive, shattering come. Couldn’t do anything but cry out. Cry and take it as he fucked her, rode her into a frenzy. As he burst into her, a flood of hot semen deep inside. His muscled body clutching her everywhere, filling her, taking her.
Making her splinter.
* * * *
Tag knew Liberty wasn’t sleeping. He’d drawn out of her, moved from over her, shortly after he’d lost his head fucking into her, coming in her ass, once again blowing his own mind with the intensity that seemed to happen every time their two bodies came together.
With the last of his energy, he’d reached up to unfasten the cuffs from around her wrists, then flopped over, taken her fingers with his, and lay there wondering what came next.
She didn’t sleep, and he was sure she knew he wasn’t sleeping either.
They could both pretend, though, so neither one spoke as she gently slipped her fingers from his without any kind of squeeze or acknowledgment. She rolled to the side of the bed, stood, and removed the clamps from her nipples, dropping them on the bed. Then she reached to turn off the light. In its place, she opened the door to his short hallway, put a light on there, and left the door cracked enough that she could see a little. Just enough, it turned out, to dress again, retrieve her suitcase from his closet, and fill it back up with her clothes.
Apparently, that was what came next.
He lay on his side, the pillow stuffed under his head, and let her do it. There wasn’t anything else he knew to do.
Maybe he hadn’t used the best way to let her know what he wanted, the one thing he could think of that could keep him and his brothers happy together on the Bluff. But it had happened that way. He knew she’d wanted to tell him, to confess about the little indiscretion that had happened in Salt Lake. The thing that was less than he’d wanted to have happen, but more than her guilty conscience could handle.
The devil had taken hold of him, when he’d seen the way she thought she’d been bad, tempting him to punish her. Not that he thought she needed it, of course, but she thought she did, and that was just way too appealing to resist. It had been wild—being a little rough with her, spanking her. Crazy wild.
But now she was going, and he thought he might have to let her.
He wasn’t done with her.
She could leave, but he wasn’t done.
Her bag set, she wheeled it through the door and closed it behind her.
Tag got up then and followed behind her.
Outside, she loaded up, backed out of the parking area, and waited for the house fence to open for her, which it did automatically. Once she’d driven through, she stopped, waiting for it to close behind her, already familiar with the Chimney Bluff routine. Already following it, on the lookout for their animals. Already caring.
He was willing to bet she hadn’t swiped an opener for the outside gate, the one that let her off the Bluff, from one of the other vehicles. He bet she knew he’d have to open it for her. That she counted on him doing it, watching the video screen until she got there, and letting her go.
He stood on the terrace until her taillights disappeared, aware that one of his brothers—Ry, he thought—watched, too, from the far corner of the house.
He waited at the door then, until the camera showed her approaching the gate. He hit the button, watched her drive through and wait again until he closed it, and let her go.
* * * *
Liberty’s taillights were long gone, the dust of her exit no doubt settled long before Orion moved from the fence where he’d watched.
But when he walked up to the front terrace, he saw Tag still stood there, as though there were some trace of her yet to be seen. To be…held. Keeg was there, too, his shoulders filling the doorway, his eyes on Tag.
More minutes passed as the three of them stood together, a silent tableau in the swath of light from indoors.
“You let her run,” Orion said, a statement. Or an accusation—because there was something there, with Liberty, he’d begun to want.
“I thought she was it,” Tag murmured quietly. “For all of us.”
Orion looked at Keegan, who nodded to a question Ry was unable to frame. “What did you guys do?” That was one he could ask.
“We failed. I failed.” Tag stepped off the terrace and walked out into the dark. Orion’s place.
Chapter Ten
Liberty had more time at home to prep for her upcoming classes than she’d expected. That didn’t mean she did it.
She’d gotten home before midnight, then found she couldn’t sleep. She’d made every effort during the drive to not think about Tag and what he was proposing—if that was a correct term for it. She thought it was. Tag had already proposed marriage—or, at least, he’d commanded her to marry him. The man did like to issue commands.
If he wanted Liberty to be with his brothers, too, then that meant…what? Some sort of shared relationship?
She turned the light on in her bedroom, fetched her laptop, and spent a couple hours with it.
First, she learned that the Wyoming state legislature agriculture committee had not held a meeting on Friday afternoon.
Humph. It didn’t exactly surprise her, but it was a good confirmation of what she’d begun to suspect. Tag had arranged a perfect date for her—romantic dinner, great show, lovely hotel room—and had deliberately passed the whole package—and her—off to Keegan.
He’d lied to her in the process, though that seemed like small potatoes in th
e big picture of the deal.
He’d set her up to cheat on him. And, she realized in retrospect, he’d given her permission—encouragement, even, maybe—ahead of time.
Except he wasn’t thinking of it as cheating, was he? That led her down another Google track—to terms like polyamory and ménage. She learned what Tag seemed to want from her wasn’t unheard of, just—out there. Though not much further out there, maybe, than dressing up as Spock and going to a Star Trek convention. Because there were those—poly conventions, and workshops, and local societies with meetup potluck picnics and winter cabin parties.
Who knew?
Polyandry, she discovered, was what Tag seemed to be intending—a marriage in essence if not legal fact between one woman and more than one man. Fraternal polyandry, in the case of brothers marrying the same woman. It occurred in certain areas of the world, often where it was meant to protect inheritance of the land. If all brothers in a family married one woman, then the land did not need to be divided to support multiple families.
Or in settings where the ratio of males to females was out of whack—in modern China or India, say, where population control measures and the value placed on having a son conspired to produce a relative shortage of females.
Or, historically, perhaps, in the American frontier, including the Great Plains, where men outnumbered women by sometimes significant amounts. Where wives were a valued and often rare commodity. Where a man’s work often mandated lengthy absences from home, and it might have behooved him to have a second male to protect his land and his woman.
Who the fuck knew that?
Well, a couple women historians working on their dissertations, it turned out. At least, they surmised it.
When Liberty closed her laptop and turned out the light, she still didn’t fall immediately asleep. She was thinking about her great-great-grandmother Liberty, and the greats beyond her, women who’d chosen to live as they wanted, who’d settled the Plains, who’d traveled long and difficult distances to march for women’s rights.
She thought about loving Tag, about liking Keegan so much.
Three Men and a Woman: Liberty (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 11