The Climax Montana Complete Collection

by Reece Butler

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Trey recognized couples who were sitting the song out. Jane and Lila sat with their men. Jane looked up, waved, and tried to stand. Travis put a hand on her arm which made her sit down. Jet hauled Lila onto his lap before she could escape. Both women received stern looks, which Trey expected meant they were not to interfere. That suggested something was going on. He checked out the dance floor again. Couples parted and Trey saw a flash of short, fiery hair.

  “What’s Katie doing with Dare McInnes?” demanded Sam.

  Katie clutched Dare around the ribs, her face plastered against his shirt, eyes shut, lips curved up. Trey was a year ahead of Dare and his twin brother, Grant. The three of them, along with Riley Adams, had had their fair share of fun. Grant had often been the designated driver, the one to stay sober and keep their backs.

  “Dancing, looks like,” said Trey, all innocent.

  Dare looked up, saw the situation, and grinned. He bent over, pulling Katie closer. His hand inched down from her waist. Dare got his nickname for a good reason.

  “He’s going for her ass!”

  Sam snarled the words, both fists clenched, forearm muscles tight. Trey gave the thumbs-up to Dare. Though he’d rather be the one hugging Katie, he approved of Dare stoking his brother’s fury. Dare had found a new girlfriend in the next town. Since Sam didn’t talk about much other than ranch work with the cousins, he wouldn’t know Dare was no threat.

  “I’m going to wipe that grin off his face!”

  Trey swept out an arm, whacking Sam in the gut before he could move. “No, you’re not.” Sam bared his teeth in a growl. “Katie is over twenty-one and is obviously where she wants to be. You got here late so someone else beat you to her. Tough shit, cowboy.”

  The song ended. Dare, smirking at Sam, did not release Katie until she pushed back. She said something, keeping her back to them. Dare replied. Whatever he said caused her to plaster herself against him again. Dare leaned down, mouth opening.

  “He’s going to kiss her!”

  “So? Looks like the lady wants it,” replied Trey mildly. His easygoing tone was a lie. It was one thing to taunt Sam by holding Katie tight, quite another to kiss her. Trey made mental plans to take him down after Lila’s wedding. A fist would make sure Dare wouldn’t be kissing his girlfriend for a while.

  “To hell with this!” Sam shoved Trey’s arm out of the way and moved forward like a D-9 bulldozer at full power. “Get your hands off her!”

  The music stopped, as did all conversation. Katie swung around to face them. Holy Hannah! Trey knew Katie had a good rack. Now, thanks to her plunging neckline, so did everyone in Climax. Her dress, made of some soft material, settled above her knees.

  “Or what?” demanded Dare.

  “For God’s sake woman, cover yourself!” demanded Sam. Katie stared defiantly, hands on her hips, refusing to move. Sam ripped open his shirt, snaps loud in the silence. He hauled it off and shoved it at her. “Put this on!”

  Katie looked at Sam’s good shirt as if it was a filthy rag that had just cleaned a dog badly needing a skunk bath. Sam shook it for emphasis. Instead of taking it as ordered, she checked out Sam’s naked chest.

  “No, I think it’s best you keep yourself covered.” She turned back to Dare with an eager smile. “Now, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted? Oh yes, you were about to kiss me senseless.”

  “If anyone’s going to kiss you, it’s me,” said Sam in a low growl.

  Still cradled in Dare’s arms, Katie looked at Sam, and then Trey. His false jollity faded. Katie was no buckle bunny wanting to cross him off her rodeo list. She was an intelligent woman. Seeing her working, singing, and dancing in the kitchen had shown him what he was missing. It was one thing to think about finding a wife someday, quite another to watch a woman you cared about in the arms of a man other than Sam.

  “Did you get a good look at my cousins tonight?” Trey asked Katie.

  “Katie got more than a look, Trey, she danced with every one of us,” said Ty Gibson. Since Ty was too old for Katie, Trey didn’t mind his comment, or the friendly laughter that followed.

  “Good,” said Trey, stepping closer. He was glad she’d checked out the competition. It brought a level playing field. “Katie, did anyone tell you that around here, if you slow dance and then give a fellow more than a peck on the cheek, it means you’re planning to do a lot more? And not just for the one night,” he added.

  “Is that true?” she asked Dare, tilting her head up to do so. “If you’re wanting to kiss me like that, does it mean you want more?”

  “I want more,” said Trey. “And so does my older brother, though he’s being an ass.”

  “I can speak for myself,” said Sam in a low growl that penetrated the room. “Or I can speak with my fists,” he added, staring at his competition.

  Dare straightened. He took a half step back to set his feet. He kept his hands on Katie’s waist as he took Sam’s measure. Trey figured the quiet mutters were bets being placed. Sam and Dare were fairly evenly matched but Sam’s fury would add to his power and determination.

  “You’re actually suggesting that we go outside and beat each other up over who gets to kiss Katie?” asked Dare. “And you want us to do this right before haying?”

  Sam’s chest got even bigger when he inhaled. He narrowed his eyes. “If that’s what it takes to make you back off, then yes.”

  “Well, hell.” Dare broke out in a wide grin. “Looks like the pretty little lady is melting the Iceman.” He leaned over her shoulder. “It’s up to you, Katie. I like dancing with you, and I’m happy to sing a duet with you any time. But I don’t plan to settle down any time soon.”

  “Me neither!” Katie shared her glare between Sam and Trey.

  “Why don’t we start with a dance and see how it goes?” asked Trey.

  “With me,” said Sam belligerently.

  “Don’t stick your nose in someone else’s business,” she retorted, throwing his words back at him. Sam winced.

  “This is your chance to apologize,” said Trey to Sam. He kept his words low.

  “Here? In front of everyone?” Sam looked around. “Uncle Keith is here!”

  Trey shook his head, sighing at his idiotic older brother. “You just called out Dare McInnes, in public.” Sam jammed his teeth together. “Yeah,” continued Trey, “after losing control like that Uncle Keith might yank the honor of hay boss from you. And if you want Katie to do more than shoot daggers at you…”

  Sam’s top teeth met his bottom lip in the first syllable of a swear word that would get him tossed out if he said it out loud. Trey snickered to himself. Big brother had backed himself into a corner. For once the wild and crazy younger brother was bailing out Mr. Calm and Cool.

  “If you want Katie to do more than look at you in disgust, you’ll swallow your pride and tell her the truth,” added Trey.

  “What truth?” Sam kept his words low enough for only the two of them to understand.

  Trey stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and leaned back on his heels. “That you want Katie to be more than just another responsibility. Way more.”

  * * * *

  Sam’s gut and jaw hurt. So did his hands from clenching his fists and not hitting anything. This was not going the way he’d planned. Typical woman, complicating what should have been simple. Turns out she’d arrived early with Jane and Lila, then had fun with all the single guys she could handle. And now he’d acted like a jealous teenage chickenshit.

  Trey had almost made her scream last night. They’d wanted to stay with her, but had let her sleep. Neither of them wanted to trust their self-control that badly. They’d protected her, yet all day she’d treated them like they’d stomped on her puppy or something. And now this!

  He’d spent years proving his competence and control. He’d finally been awarded one of the top responsibilities in the Valley. And now he might have lost it because he’d almost caused a bar fight. He could turn and w
alk away, keeping the icy calm exterior that had protected him for so long. Or he could face Katie while everyone listened in, and spill his guts. He exhaled, dropping his head to stare at his boots. They were the good ones he only wore for special occasions. Occasions like asking a pretty woman he cared about to dance, hoping she’d let him kiss her, and maybe more.

  The whispers got louder. A few chuckles started. He had to do something!

  “Well?” demanded Trey, keeping his voice down. “Time to shit or get off the pot.”

  Sam dragged his eyes over to Katie. Dare still held onto her, but loosely. The son of a bitch had a smile playing around his mouth. She looked so damn good, but that dress! Just standing there she made all the blood head south where it had no business being. Not when damn near every one of his relatives was watching him—and smirking.

  He could do this. It would not kill him. It might hurt like hell, and be a bugger to live down, but he didn’t want to disappear back into that empty gray fog.

  “Whatever you’re upset about, I’m sorry it happened.” He held his breath while she took it in. She opened her mouth.

  “Katie Winterbourne, don’t you dare say a thing!”

  He turned. “Lila? What the—”

  “Let me go!” Lila elbowed Jet in the gut and escaped his grasp.

  “You’re already skating on thin ice for sneaking out dressed like that,” said Jet in a clear warning. “I suggest you set that sweet ass back in this chair.” He pointed to where she’d been sitting.

  “Sorry, honey, no can do,” said Lila, slipping between the tables. “Katie’s new here, and needs some guidance from a woman who knows about big men who think they’re in charge.”

  “Think?” asked Jet. The ice in his voice matched that in his eyes.

  “Whoa, you’re not going anywhere!” Riley Adams held tight to his wife as Jane struggled to escape his lap.

  “This pregnant lady has had three glasses of juice,” replied Jane, still struggling. “Keeping her from the facilities is not a good idea when she’s sitting on your lap!”

  “Let her go. This is the best entertainment in weeks!”

  “Mom, you’re not helping!” said Riley after Jane escaped his grasp. Travis grinned, cracking his fingers in obvious anticipation of providing punishment.

  “Aggie,” warned Keith, staring across the table at her, “another word and you’ll be face down tonight, same as Jane and Lila.”

  “Oh, goody!” Aggie shoved her chair back and stood up. She popped her fist in the air. “You go, girls! Show them who’s the boss!”

  Jane and Lila had reached Katie. Dare lifted his hands free and took a step back, grinning down at the women. Aggie’s shriek filled the room.

  “Put me down!”

  Sam had seen his aunts tossed over their husbands’ shoulders all his life. Katie’s stunned expression proved she had not.

  “What is he doing?” She watched, open-mouthed, as Keith, one hand on Aggie’s upraised bottom, the other holding her legs from kicking, strode for the front door. He smacked her well-rounded bottom when she struggled, causing another shriek and a few cheers. “Where’s he taking her?”

  “Wherever he wants,” said Jane, shaking her head and sighing wistfully. “To do whatever he wants, however he wants.”

  “We’ll explain everything.” Lila tugged on Katie’s arm. The two women hustled Katie into the ladies’ room before Sam could intervene.

  “That was the last thing Katie needed to see,” said Sam bitterly. “She’s going to hightail it out of here first chance she gets.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Trey, far too cheerfully. “Lila and Jane will calm her down. Or even better, rev her up.” He lifted his head. “Hey!” he yelled over the chatter, “what does a man have to do to get a whiskey around here?”

  “Show me a man and I’ll tell you!” yelled Dorothy back, just as loud. Cheers and jeers erupted.

  “Make it two,” said Sam.

  “Since when do you drink the hard stuff?” demanded Trey.

  “Since Katie blew up my life. Beer just won’t cut it tonight.”

  “Women! You can’t live with them—” yelled Houston, Lila’s other fiancé.

  “And life’s not worth living without them!” replied Travis, Jane’s younger husband. “I’ll buy you a whiskey, Sam. About time you joined the living.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Katie’s damp thighs rubbed sensuously against each other as she followed Jane and Lila. The chain strap of her purse was so long it banged against her bottom with each step. Just like Sam and Trey’s hands might later.

  She hadn’t realized how aroused she’d get from a pair of cavemen pounding on their chests over her. Strong, muscular chests which she’d leaned against and danced with all evening. Sam had done the gorilla thing because he wanted her. After being ignored or pushed aside for most of her life the attention was both thrilling and arousing.

  If he wanted her this badly, why had he dumped her on the bed and walked out, hauling Trey with him? Because if there was one thing she knew, it was that Trey would have wanted to cuddle against her all night. She’d found the box of expired condoms stuffed in the trash. She’d been too furious at the time to think, but it was an explanation for why they’d left her alone. Maybe they couldn’t trust themselves to sleep beside her without needing condoms?

  When Lila and Jane had walked in the Roadhouse it erupted in wolf whistles. The two women had posed, turned like models, then stepped aside to reveal Katie. The room had gone silent until Dorothy announced that Katie Winterbourne was working at the Rocking E and, due to Stella Elliott’s injury, would be responsible for food during the haying. She’d received cheers, much to her surprise. She’d barely sat when she’d been swamped by men. Handsome, tall, muscular men who knew how to dance. So did their parents, who’d welcomed her as well. She’d had a great time until Sam and Trey walked in.

  It was flattering to be wanted, though there was a strong undercurrent of sexual tension. Strangely, it was the married ones that had her wondering what was going on. She’d overheard comments that matched some of what she’d read in Marci’s books, about getting spanked, and tied up, and punished. She’d told herself it was her overactive imagination until Keith Adams carried his screaming wife out the door. It was one thing to read fiction and fantasize over it. Seeing it happen in front of you was a shock.

  “What just happened out there?” demanded Katie as soon as the door hit her bottom, closing out most of the raucousness.

  “You were slow-dancing with Dare McInnes, the Valley’s undisputed playboy now that Trey’s hung up his spurs,” said Lila. “That shot Sam’s blood pressure sky high. And then you demanded a kiss from Dare.” She raised her eyebrows. “Didn’t Sam give you the reaction you wanted?”

  Katie waved the question away. “I meant Mr. Adams throwing his wife over his shoulder and hauling her outside. You said he’d do whatever he wanted to her.” They both looked at her blankly. “You don’t have a problem with that?”

  “I thought you read Aunt Marci’s books?” said Lila.

  “That was fiction!”

  The two pregnant women shared a snicker. “It was just as much a surprise to me when I first got here,” said Jane. “I now enjoy the attention two demanding men can provide.”

  Part of the reason Aggie being tossed over her husband’s shoulder bothered Katie was that it both frightened and aroused her. It was dangerous to lose control in a family who attacked any weakness, so fear of it made sense. Her arousal at the possibility was less easy to explain.

  “Aggie has been pushing my fathers-in-law, especially Keith, since they got back from Europe,” said Jane. She cleared her throat. “The trip was a very belated honeymoon. Now that they’re back, Keith and Donny have spent a lot of time working rather than playing. Aggie wasn’t pleased about it, so she pushed Keith. If you hear her screaming—”

  “Screaming?”

  “—it won’t be a complai
nt.” Jane primly pressed her lips together.

  The women in the erotic ménage books often screamed when they had an orgasm. Fictional women got amazingly intense orgasms. At least she’d thought it was all fiction until Trey put his tongue and fingers on her and the world had exploded. When she touched herself, which she only did when securely locked in her own bedroom, she made sure not to make any noise. She’d be mortified if anyone noticed. Yet last night she hadn’t cared that the kitchen light was on, there were no curtains on the window, and Trey had spread her on the table like a Thanksgiving feast.

  “What will he do to her?” she asked.

  “Whatever he—”

  “I got that,” said Katie, breaking into Jane’s repeated comment. “I mean, how does this Dominance and submission thing work?”

  “How much do you know about BDSM?” asked Lila.

  Heat immediately flashed over Katie’s body. “Just what I read in your aunt’s books,” she admitted.

  “And?” prompted Lila. “Did you enjoy what they did? Want the same thing?”

  “Yes, I enjoyed reading about it,” she admitted. “I like that the heroes respect the women, though they dominate them. But it’s fiction.”

  She’d learned about kinky things in one of her abnormal psych classes. It had not prepared her for what she’d read in Marci’s books. The heroines had knelt naked on the floor beside their men, or waited on their hands and knees, back arched and knees wide apart so their nether parts were available. They were spanked, flogged, and had other things happen that she didn’t want to think about in front of others but made her hot and wet.

  “This valley is full of Dominants, including our husbands,” said Lila.

  Katie noticed color on Lila’s pale cheeks and, looking closer, the same thing on Jane’s.

  “You two are embarrassed by this as well,” she said accusingly.

  “Not embarrassed for admitting we enjoy it,” said Jane, fidgeting. “It’s more that I’m unsure what you’ll think about me now that you know.”