by Tommy Twist
He does what she asks. He pulls out and then slams himself home once more, his body moving in perfect time, filling her up to the breaking point. She's close. She feels as if she's been close the entire time, every thrust threatening to send her over the edge.
But something holds her back. Something that she can't name, something she can't explain. Something that she wants very badly to go away. When his hand comes down hard on her round ass, unleashing a resounding clapping sound, and then he thrusts in again, it's like the veil has been lifted.
Her entire body goes tight, her fingers scrabbling on the countertop for grip that she can't find. Her body is moving on its own, now, her pussy squeezing to drain out every last drop of his essence.
And when he explodes inside her, the mistakes are complete, and she falls deeper and deeper into the orgasm, down to depths that she didn't know could exist, but now that she's got them, she's not giving them up for anything.
Chapter One
Philip Callahan swallows down his morning coffee, looking out at the morning sunrise. He shouldn't have indulged by letting himself sleep in. It's too hard already to get the work done that the day has in store for him.
The second he gets slack is the second that the rest of the world eats him up. It's threatened to twice now already, only days apart, and the damn ranch is the only thing he's got left at this point.
He tries not to look over his shoulder at the thought of his wife. He doesn't succeed. He can't see the little hill that she always loved to sit on through the house, and he can't see the little tree that he planted beside her.
But that doesn't mean that he doesn't know what he's looking at. Too many hours in the day, and too much time to feel sorry for himself.
Time that he could have spent fixing the fence, time that he could have been writing his damn congressman to stop sending their guys around trying to buy up the ranch.
He takes a deep breath. The boys will be there soon, and he'd better be at work when they get to the ranch, or they might think he's getting old.
The big stallion's broken a hole in the fence again. He's an ornery son of a bitch, and he likes to smash things. But he's got good racing blood in him, if anyone could get him reined in.
It was a project that he'd thought about, when the yearling had first shown some talent for running. The breeding was all there, but that doesn't always mean anything. It's a risk you take, raising horses.
The risk had paid off. The big, ornery, black-haired stallion was every bit the racing champ that you would want him to be. He could outrun damn near anything. Then again, so could any of them.
But once Sara had died, it didn't seem that important any more. It was hard to want to hurt for the work when everything already hurt so bad to start with.
So even though he should have done the breaking already, should have sold the stallion off to a proper owner, now he was letting a champion horse in its prime years lie around and waste away and turn into nothing.
Philip pulled the frown off his face. He didn't have time to be angry. There was work to do, and the boys would notice right away. He heard the sound of their truck pulling up as he shifted a stack of fence-ties onto his shoulder.
He'd make an impressive figure with that hundred-pound bundle on his shoulder alone there in the morning light, when they pulled up. Not such an old man, now, huh?
Philip wasn't that old, but when you're nineteen and full of dumb ideas, a man closer to his forties than his thirties must seem pretty damn old to be doing this kind of work.
What other work is he really qualified for, though? That's what he thought. None at all. Just running the ranch. It's about the only thing that he knows how to do. Even the damn computer was still too new for anything he needed to do with it.
The truck pulls up and the boys pile out. Three brothers, and it spares gas having them all driving together. Long as he doesn't need them running more than two errands at once, in which case it's a big damn hassle, but there's no way around that.
The boys scurry up and scoop the pile off his shoulder. All that in spite of him having carried it fifty yards from the barn, the damn idiots.
"You three take your sweet time getting here, or what?" It's supposed to come off like a joke, but Philip is unhappy to hear the very real annoyance in his voice that's overtaken his twisted-up mood.
The eldest puts on an apologetic face that's as deep and convincing as a puddle. "We're sorry, boss, it's just… when you're so young, time doesn't have any meaning at all, you know?"
"Exactly. That's the problem with you young people. No clocks."
"You see? So, y'see, if we could just get a raise, we could all buy a clock—"
Philip manages to maintain a straight face for a minute before letting out a snort. "Yeah, sure. Raises for everyone. What's a clock these days?"
There's almost a hopeful look in their eyes. Philip rolls his eyes. "The Black's busted up the fence. After that, back to the other'n."
He gestures vaguely off in the distance. He doesn't need to be specific. Some federal bull-shit says they need a fence for their grazing area, even though the property for miles around is his as much as anyone's.
Fine. Fence. Whatever. The boys can get busy digging posts and he can come around with stretchers between 'em after. Gives him more time to deal with the horses anyhow.
"You got it," they say.
The fence is important work. It must be done, or they'll face a fine at least as expensive as the new truck he bought last year, when the old one finally breathed its last breath. You always end up regretting it when you try to fuss with the government regulations, right or wrong.
But it's not the most important work. It's just necessary and needs to get done sooner than later.
The important work is making sure that the horses are in good spirits, making sure that you don't run into any trouble with them.
There's a fine line to be walked there, and it's hard to say which needs to get done first, but it's not hard to say which is more responsible for making him money.
You have good horses, you keep them trained, you make sure they're healthy, you make sure they've got good food to eat… all those things mean you get paid more. Every time you feed the horses, you might as well think of it as carrying a bag of feed straight into your bank account.
A fence, on the other hand? Nobody's gonna pay him for a god damn fence, no matter how good a job the boys do. It's just a reality of the ranch whether he likes it or not.
Philip takes a deep breath. He should have gotten rid of that Black a year ago. If he'd been picked up by a solid racing team, he wouldn't be here to kick down the damn fence.
But Philip had gotten funny about it after Sara, and when the time came to sell… well, he just hadn't done it. And now that he's thinking about it, he can't just keep ignoring it. The horse isn't as young as he should be, and he's not trained worth a God damn.
But he's going to get sold before all that money and time getting him here in the first place goes down the drain.
Chapter Two
Morgan Lowe settles back into her seat. She shouldn't be reading email. She should be making another call, another one that will be ignored. Just like the last seven.
After all, she'd said that she was going to do it after Brad—it's hard not to sneer at even the thought of his name—had gotten that damn condescending attitude about it.
So she owned the place. So what? She didn't know the first thing about real-estate. She didn't know the first thing about building and running a factory.
Never mind, of course, that she'd been instrumental in every single one that the company had built before her father had passed on. Never mind that she'd been on every build site, spoken to every contractor.
Not even her father could have said that before he passed on. But her father had been the boss, and the boys respected her father. Why couldn't she just get them to see that she wasn't some—ugh.
And of course, not being able to even
get in touch with the Callahan ranch…
Maybe they wouldn't make a deal. Maybe they'd been ducking her calls on purpose. They hear a female voice on the other end of the line, maybe they assume that they're just getting a call from some secretary.
Then again, she'd made herself very clear. There wasn't any disrespect going on. She was giving the entire case her full attention. Now if only they would at least think about listening to her proposal, she might be able to get everyone some money.
Morgan takes a deep breath. If she can't reach them on the phone, then there's only one answer. It's dangerous to leave her seat, though. If she leaves, it's like she's abdicating the throne.
Brad—and if not Brad, then Pete or Jake or any one of those boys outside—will pull some 'cat's away, mice will play' shit and by the time she gets back, they'll all be worked up that she ain't in charge any more.
The choice isn't a hard one, of course. She knows what needs doing, and what needs doing is that she has to go out to the Callahan ranch. Like it or not, that's the reality.
They may not respect her for any number of reasons. She knows of two, and they're visible when she looks down, pressing her shirt out in two pleasant-looking bumps. But there may be others that she's less aware of.
The one thing they're going to have to respect is when she tells them that the guy who was never gonna sell, Phil Callahan, had just talked to her, when he'd never been willing to talk to her father.
If she could come back with a hand-shake and a deal? She may as well be the damn messiah of Lowe Industrial. They'll have to respect her, then.
She pushes herself out of the chair and takes a deep breath. If it's a risk—and she can't think it's not—to leave the boys alone, it's one that will pay off in the end.
Because she won't ever be able to reach Callahan by phone. Her father had tried for six months, until he'd gotten sick. Now she'd been trying for a month and a half, and it wasn't getting anywhere.
The phones there obviously didn't work, and if they did, then they obviously weren't answering them. So what do you do when the phone is out?
You go there in person, you put on a polite-but-firm smile, and you make damn sure that you don't leave without either cutting a deal or getting thrown out on your ass.
Morgan opens the door.
"Oh, hey, boss." Brad's got his feet up. He's supposed to be out, watching the crews, or at least making sure the property's staying on track.
"What are you doing inside?" She tries to make herself sound intimidating, but she just sounds throaty and hoarse, like she's been smoking for most of her life. She has to cough at the end, because of the phlegm that built up as she did it.
If she's just going to sound like it either way, what was the point of avoiding cigarettes all these years?
"Well, I figured—"
"You figured, what? I won't come and check on you?"
Brad's jaw cocks off to the side the way it does when he's pissed off. Frankly, though, Morgan doesn't give a god damn if he's pissed off, if he's not going to do his job.
"And what do you think, exactly, makes you the expert on this?"
"You want to keep your job, Brad?"
"Sure, but tell me first. What makes you so damn smart, what makes you so damn special? You think, just cause you're a woman, I ain't gonna stand up to you? That it? Or because your daddy built a company for you to inherit, that makes you some kinda expert on crew management?"
Morgan's teeth grind together. She should fire him. But will that help? Or will it make her look weak? Maybe it makes her look like she's backing down to let him say that sort of shit. Or maybe, firing him makes it seem like she can't handle what he's got to say.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't—she'd rather go with 'don't' until she's got a better option.
"Get out there, and get to work." She bores holes in him with her eyes. "I want those grounds inspected. Crew three and four are mostly new guys, I want you there making sure that they're doing solid work."
He looks like he's got something to say, but Morgan's expression doesn't leave any room for being questioned.
"Yes, sir," he says. He says it in a way that tells Morgan that he neither thinks of her as 'sir' nor as someone who he particularly has to be polite or respectful towards.
She lets out a breath as he goes out the door. He could be a good worker. He could handle most of it. The problem is, he thinks he's sitting at her desk, making her decisions and doing her job for her.
Well, he isn't. He's crew manager, and that's not the same thing as "owner." Not even in a large company like this one. Not even when the new plant has yet to open and she technically still has overseeing to do back down in Nevada and Colorado.
Because she's got to be up here to make sure that the plant gets built right. The managers in Nevada and Colorado know what they're doing. Morgan's father wouldn't have hired them if they didn't. And Morgan wouldn't have kept them on if they didn't know how to handle themselves without too much supervision.
Because she was expanding, and that meant that the work back home needed to watch itself for a while. Just like the work here did, today.
And if the crew manager, who's supposed to be keeping an eye on the new guys to make sure that they're not fucking it up, is hanging out here inside the trailer waiting for someone to bring problems to his attention, she can't exactly trust him to do his job when she's away for a day or two getting the Callahan ranch.
Morgan takes a deep breath. Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't be leaving. After all, proof right there—the man apparently thinks having tits took too much brain power by itself, so she doesn't have much left to run a business with.
But there are plenty of bigger mistakes that she could be making, and the biggest one would be not going to close this deal, and do it fast.
The Callahan ranch would mean being able to double or triple the size of the Lowe Industrial campus, because they own the land to the east, and they own the land to the west.
You own the space right in the middle, and now it's not two small campuses. It's the largest campus in the country, and for someone who only took the company over, officially, four months ago…
That would be a real feather in Morgan's cap, no doubt about it.
Chapter Three
Visitors to the ranch aren't common. So though he can hear the sound of the engine driving up, Philip Callahan doesn't see much need to go out and see what was going on.
The boys are already here, after all. He hadn't called anyone to come out and take a look at the horses, and nobody had called him to schedule something, either.
That means that they were some kids who'd gotten hopelessly lost and were trying to find some space off the road to look at a map, or it was someone trying to sell something. In either case, Phil wasn't interested.
He shifts another bundle of stretchers onto his shoulder. The weight hits him all at once, and then his body adjusts. Nice and easy, and then it's just a matter of keeping his steps short and his stride even on the way out to the truck. No problem.
The problem comes in when you damn near take some woman's head off with your hundred-pound bundle of ties. She lets out a yelp and Philip jerks to a stop, steps back, and dumps them off his shoulder. They land with a loud bang that makes her yelp again.
"Jesus! I'm sorry, I didn't see you, on account of the—"
"No, I'm sorry. I'm Morgan Lowe. I've been trying to reach you?"
Philip's face hardens. He has been avoiding calls from a woman, that's true.
And what a woman. If he weren't a married man—well, once a married man—then she'd be somebody he would certainly want to talk to. His breathlessness might not entirely be the result of the exertion, nor entirely the result of the scare, either.
"I'm not selling. Sorry you had to waste your time comin' out here. You need directions back to the highway?"
"I'm not leaving without at least talking to you."
"We've talked. I'm not
selling. I've got work to do."
Almost as soon as the words are coming out of his mouth, she's shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on one of the hooks, over the horses' bits and bridles.
"Fine. We'll get this taken care of, then we'll talk."
What exactly she intends to do isn't immediately clear. The woman probably only weighs as much as the whole bundle. How she plans to carry it is beyond him.
"I don't need any help."
"You're gonna take that from the ground onto your shoulders?"
He looks down at it.
"Well, I guess I'm gonna have to, ain't I?"
She picks up one of the ties at the far end. "Two people, half the effort. Come on."
Philip rolls his eyes. "Fine."
She seems to think she's proving something. Fine. Let her prove whatever the hell she likes, it's not going to matter in the end, because regardless of how many bundles of stretchers, no matter how much she probes that she can do the work, he's not selling. That seems to have gone right over her head.
Philip grabs the other end and stands up with it. She grabs hers, and they walk together. She seems to be struggling a little bit with it. The ties dig into her fingers—Philip has a good position to watch everything she's doing.
The way her hips are swaying as she walks, the way her knees move together, the view of just the start of her thighs under that charcoal-colored skirt…
And so, with all that on display, he's very careful to keep his eyes on anything else. The ties are digging into her hands something fierce, but when they finally lift it up a little ways more and she dumps it into the bed of the truck, she hops up into the back to guide it into the corner.
And, to his surprise, aside from a little rubbing, she doesn't make any mention or hint at her hand hurting. Even though he knew it must have. There'd been a time that Sara might have helped that way, too.