Kemper moistened his lips. “My history isn’t important, Holly.”
“There you go dancing around the subject!” Kit screamed. “Damn it, Holly, if you’re staying here, this is the way it’s gonna be!” He glared at Kemper. “God knows I’m expected to lay down the law around here. Kemper won’t do it.”
“Shut up, Kit,” Kemper bit out, staring into her eyes.
She smiled then, realizing Kemper was so tuned in to her desires and needs that he already understood what she had in mind. “So the past turned you on, did it?”
“You turn me on,” he replied softly, parting his full and perfect lips.
“Yes, but what about the past?” she asked, placing her hand on his shoulder. She leaned against him and nipped at his ear. “Did you like bringing your women down here?”
“Yes, Holly,” he assured her, arching his neck. Perhaps he wanted her mouth to take a tour.
She could help him out there. She kissed and licked a short path around the middle wrinkle of his neck. “Did you like making them beg for penetration?”
He gulped. “I…uh…Yeah, Holly. Yes I did.”
“Did they grovel for sex?” she continued. “Beg you to fuck them?”
“Yes.”
“And that got you hot?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Bothered?”
“God, yeah,” he replied, shoving his hard cock against her, placing the weight of his erection between the natural spread of her legs.
“Damn shame I’m dressed,” she complained. Then, she pushed away from him and pointed to the curtain. Sashaying closer, she studied the material as if she half expected someone to yank back the divider and explain what they housed behind door number one.
Instead of stealing a peek, she took a deep breath and wheeled around to face the men who’d set up the perfect playing field. “So, boys, tell me. When you bring a gal down here, what are the rules to the games you enjoy?”
“There are no rules,” Kemper told her. “Only pleasure.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it, Kemper,” Holly said, cutting her sharp gaze toward Kit. “So? Mr. Dom, what do you make the submissive women do while they’re here visiting you?”
Kit stalked her then, and that hard and rugged cocksure image she’d long since fallen for sent her libido into overdrive. Her sex clenched. Her breasts throbbed. Her clit was on fucking fire. Desire settled in her core and held her snatch hostage.
She wished like hell she could stay mad at him. Instead she discovered a new truth. She was half a mile down the road toward forgiveness.
“Are you saying you might be interested in Domination and submission?” Kit asked.
“Why? Are you interested in training me for submission?”
“Maybe.”
Maybe, hell. He was foaming at the mouth.
“I wanted to make sure. You know, as wishy-washy as you’ve been these days, a woman must protect her heart.”
“Protect your heart, you say,” Kit muttered, shaking his head as if he’d never buy the fact she even possessed one. “Are we playing games again, Holly?”
She cracked a smile. Oh yes, they were indeed toying with one another. But if Kit or Kemper wanted to have a good time down here, it was time for Holly to let them teach her how to play their games correctly.
“I’ll be a sport,” she said flippantly. “We can role-play.”
Kit shook his head and walked over to the toy box, knocking the lid aside so she could see inside. “No, doll. If you roam around on my jungle gym, you agree to stay until recess is over. Otherwise, you’ll need to find your jollies somewhere else.”
“You’re right. I have that option.”
“Actually, it was recently presented in the form of an invitation. Remember? I told you to leave.”
“How could I forget?” she asked softly. “You broke my heart. Now, you can show me you’re man enough to repair the damage you’ve done.”
* * * *
Holly acted like she wasn’t the least bit interested in the gadgets and devices Kit housed in his adult toy chest. She struck a strut and waltzed over to the box. She stared down at the items found there. “What’s this?” she asked, kneeling beside the deep container and drawing out a hogtie-and-handcuff set.
Stretching the leather between her open hands, she rubbernecked, apparently trying to figure out how to operate the five-piece set. “What advantages are found by someone wearing such an item?”
“Slip it on and you’ll find out,” Kit told her.
“Would you like to try it?” Kemper asked, hopeful.
“No.” She smiled sweetly, dropping the outfit into the box again and dusting off her hands as if she thought she needed to wipe away any potential germs gathering there.
After fixating her gaze on a pair of nipple clamps, she turned to Kemper and said, “I know this is what your brother wants, but what about you? If we stay together can you live without all this, honey?” She cut her gaze toward Kit for a second and then strolled toward Kemper. Touching his cheek, she said, “You know I always want to please you, don’t you, baby?”
Kit cringed. Holly had a sweet streak that could granulate sugar and a mean streak that could stripe a snake.
At the moment, she was playing Kemper. Poor Kemper was buying her dose of syrupy goodness like he’d stood in line all day to pay the highest price.
“This pleases me,” Kemper said, a dark edge to his tone.
Kit resisted that nervous lip twitch he possessed. Holly would likely swear he was being a smug smart-ass if she saw him grin. Then again, she sort of had this coming.
Kemper’s dominant personality lingered right below the surface, his true Dom persona inching forward, taking hold of him as if Kemper fully transformed right before Kit’s very eyes. Probably without realizing it, Holly drew out Kemper’s dark side.
Maybe Kit should’ve given Kemper a swift kick in the ass and shoved him down the cellar steps a long time ago. Instead, after Holly moved in and showed little interest in Domination and submission, they’d placed a lock on the door and given the extra keys to Grant and Blake, their sister’s lovers.
What dumbasses they’d been. They knew who and what they were but put aside their needs for a woman determined to play games from the moment she began living with them.
Some Doms they were. At one time they could’ve taught advanced submissive and slave training. Now, they should’ve counted themselves lucky they weren’t the bitches crawling around on the floor with studded collars wrapped around their necks.
Holly’s gaze jumped around the room, jerking from the wheel to a flat bench where they often used all sorts of toys and gadgets on the subs they trained. Kit didn’t believe for a minute she wouldn’t give in and gladly meet their demands. She’d follow their requests and succumb to pleasure like none she’d ever known in the past.
“Suppose I’m interested,” she whispered. “Suppose I said to you, ‘make me your slave’.”
“Slave?” Kit asked, rubbing his jaw. “Do you know the difference between a slave and a submissive woman?”
“Sure I do,” she replied. “Remember where I used to work, Kit.”
“How could I forget,” he grumbled, thinking now wasn’t the best time for her to throw out friendly reminders. He was about a minute or two shy of forgiving her. Then again, he could still kick her out on her pretty little ass if she didn’t see things his way.
And he’d miss her. That intrusive thought was the one haunting him the most.
He’d heard her in the bedroom with Kemper earlier. He’d listened as they fucked and he hadn’t been able to stay away. He’d stood outside the bedroom door with his ear pressed against the wooden panes, belittling himself for berating her as much as hating her for making him fall in love with her all over again. Day in and day out, he rose with Holly’s name upon his lips. He fell asleep with her smile embedded in his mind.
While he’d been telling her to leave, his mind all but for
bade him to let her go.
She closed her eyes and arched her brows, acting as if she were revisiting the past few days and her distant history all at one time. “How silly of me. I almost forgot how we ended up here. Kit Keesling is permitted a past, several former lovers, but he doesn’t want the woman he loves to have a shared history with anyone else.”
“We’re not talking one or two men here, Holly,” Kit told her, furious because a second before, he was already admitting, at least to himself, he possessed everlasting feelings for her. “And I never said I loved you.”
Now then. He felt better again.
She smiled, the sweetness running over the fill line. He shuddered as he watched her move toward him, a vixen on the prowl.
She rubbed her fingertips over his mouth and eased forward, taking a quick nip as she sucked his bottom lip. “You didn’t have to, lover,” she crooned, cupping his sac and squeezing his hard cock. “Your body tells on you every time.”
Chapter Six
These guys had never learned how to manipulate the player. That was the problem, and it had become a major one.
Holly was bored and would eventually lose interest in the Keeslings unless they stopped all this snooping nonsense. They needed to place their efforts somewhere practical. Perhaps physical challenges would create a delicious diversion. A doting Dom, or better yet, two, provided enough in the way of rousing a woman looking for new ways to be seduced.
Something had to give or else she’d lose them, and Holly knew, in her heart, she didn’t want to let Kit and Kemper go. Still, they were beginning to annoy her, and prying behind her back was only part of her nagging aggravation.
Their motives for asking questions about her in the first place irked her. And she didn’t think Kit acted entirely alone.
Kit and Kemper rarely broke bread without one holding the loaf and the other wielding the knife. They didn’t work alone. If one dug for information, the other stood guard while the investigation progressed. She wondered then how much they’d paid for the data retrieved.
She shivered with the thought and remembered the tips she garnered the first evening they were together. The Keesling brothers had been so impressed by their initial introduction, they’d convinced her to move to East Tennessee by flashing what they must’ve believed were irresistible temptations.
They didn’t break a sweat in terms of persuasion. They’d tossed cash and pitched promises but never once did they inquire about her past.
Maybe if they’d taken a moment to find out more about her on that first day, they would’ve made a more informed decision. They also might have discovered the real Holly, too.
She yearned for a sense of belonging, for a family to call her own. The money never mattered. Security was important. She wanted the safe confines of four walls, a real home.
She yearned for someone special, someone who’d be there in the mornings to share a pot of coffee, or perhaps wait up for her late at night. The little things. That’s what she’d always desired. The big expense account carried no weight whatsoever. Kit and Kemper could keep their money.
It was a real shame they never asked about her history before she left Nashville. They acted as if they were only interested in a short-term affair anyway.
When days turned into weeks and weeks into months, they made the typical inquiries, but never pressed for answers. They didn’t pursue the truth because whenever they did, she grabbed hold of their cocks and dragged them off to the closest bedroom.
Now, here they were. One year in and Kit suddenly insisted she tell them more about her life. Any efforts to change the subject and lead them astray would inevitably fail.
Kit was determined to find out about a past that didn’t concern him. Well, too damn bad.
Historical information would cost him, if she decided to sell. On second thought, no. She was too damned stubborn to let Kit win this battle. Her file was closed to interested viewers.
The great Kit Keesling would learn the hard way. He’d process and accept the word “no.” Besides, he was far too obsessive anyway. If he knew everything about her, wouldn’t he later use it against her? Wouldn’t details of her past life drive him away rather than bring them back together? And why, pray tell, did he think her history determined what kind of future they could have? How shallow was that?
And it was shallow, right? She decided on a short second, yes. Her past was best left in the yesteryears where those days belonged. Her life pre-Keeslings in no shape, form, or fashion determined quality time they could enjoy together in the future.
“If you plan to play the game like a sport, you can’t sit around and be a discontented spectator. You gotta be a team player, Kit,” she said suddenly, deciding the best course of action was pure arrogance. She wasn’t about to open herself up like a coffee-table book. The colorful pictures discovered there provided a private tour to events she didn’t want to revisit through the eyes of others.
“I am,” he promised her, dropping his gaze to her chest.
“Maybe I should refresh your memory on team play. No man is left behind and no one stands alone out front. That means, in team situations, everyone is on the same footing. If I tell you about my former lovers, you tell me about yours.” She had no intentions of doing that but took a gamble, realizing she was placing a safe bet.
“I’ve had relationships,” Kit bit out. “Your situation is different.”
Damn chauvinistic prick was what he was. He really thought she’d just crumble and tell him everything he wanted to know. He wasn’t man enough to handle her. “I haven’t seen sportsmanship out of you in a long time,” she continued, acting positively disagreeable. “It’s starting to bother me, Kit.”
“Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right places,” he said, glancing down.
“Ah, now, tiger,” she drawled. “Are you trying to tell me you keep your integrity in your breeches?”
He copped a smile. “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you, Holly? It would be so much easier if everything you thought about, all that you imagined, led you straight back to where the best of slippery goodness starts anyhow.”
“You mean in the sack?”
His eyes darkened. “It’s true. You don’t care about much else. Whether you’re stroking for honor or fucking for corruption, you believe you’ll find whatever it is you need between a man’s legs. It’s virtue that you have a problem with, baby, and that’s one area where I can’t help you.
“You ruined yourself years ago and no man alive can give you back the innocence lost, the fragile days you left behind long before you understood what your actions might cost you later.”
“Like what?” she asked, swallowing once.
“Your self-respect for starters.”
“What makes you think I don’t have self-respect?”
“You couldn’t,” Kit insisted.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she defied him.
“And what about love?”
“Love?” she drawled.
“Do you have love?”
“Maybe.”
“Admiration?”
“Perhaps.” She snickered. “Oh, Kit, and what do you have your hands on when you have hold of me exactly, hmm? You don’t know, do you?” A beat later, she ran her finger down the length of his cock and said, “You’re so male chauvinistic you can’t stand it that I’ve had you by the balls since the first day we met.”
“About like I’ve got my fingers stuffed in your tight little snatch.”
She’d let him have that one. “Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe to it. You’re as taken with me as I’ve been with you, but it doesn’t mean I’m a foolish man, Holly. I know what I want in a woman. In order to be happy, in order to feel complete, I have to know my partners or else I’m not interested in pursuing anything else long term.”
“What would you call us, Kit?”
“A fling.”
She laughed aloud. Kemper’s nose twitched,
and he obviously thought the pronouncement was a little childish and immature, too. “A little over a year and we’re still barely more than a one-night stand?”
“I didn’t ask you for a commitment.”
“No, maybe not in so many words. I’ll give you that, but you made me feel like I was Keesling property, and if I put that to the test now, I guarantee I could stir more angst in this small town than the townspeople would know what to do with.”
“Are you threatening me, Holly?” Kit asked.
Kemper shook his blasted head like he was afraid of what would come out of her mouth next. She should’ve told him to chill.
“I don’t have to threaten. If I wanted a little something something on the side, do you really think I couldn’t walk down the streets of Blountville and find what I’m looking for?”
She wouldn’t dare. Surely they knew she cared too deeply for them.
“I wouldn’t advise trying that,” Kemper told her.
Apparently not.
“Me either,” Kit said, a little more vocal strength in his warning.
She was offended. “You two aren’t a couple of stupid cowboys. You know what it means to be in the Keesling bed around here. Doms from Johnson City and Bristol, hell, as far away as Knoxville, would search me out if they thought I was in the market to replace you.” A beat later, she eased their mind. “I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that and you both know it. If you’d search your hearts, you’d know why, too.”
“Yeah, well, just so you know. Those Doms you speak of? They’d be sorely disappointed seeing as we never trained you for submission.” Kit’s gaze worked her over like a tractor plowing fields. He took his own sweet time and covered every inch.
“My thoughts exactly,” Holly said, walking away. She was suddenly overcome with regret. She’d missed a lot of remarkable loving.
Holly sat on the bench, her palms flat against the cold leather surface. Why had she resisted being trained by them? Had she been afraid if she submitted to them she would give them too much power over her body and mind, or was it her heart she’d tried desperately to protect? Had she feared she’d lose a part of herself, or was she scared she might become so reliant upon them that she’d never be able to let them go?
Acres, Natalie - Sex Addict [Cowboy Addiction 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 5