Ella's Desire
Page 1
ELLA’S DESIRE
The Lost Collection
Brandi Maxwell
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
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ELLA’S DESIRE
Copyright © 2010 by Brandi Maxwell
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-158-8
First E-book Publication: April 2010
Cover design by Madison
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ELLA’S DESIRE
BRANDI MAXWELL
Copyright © 2010
Chapter One
“It was a good meeting, don’t you think?” Ella Thompson Murphy asked Gunnar van Gild and Antonio Stenacci, distinguished cattlemen who had been good friends with her father. Each man held a brandy snifter in one hand and a cigar in the other. The men were smiling with pride, as though Ella was their own daughter and not just the daughter of a deceased friend.
The official meeting of the Livestock Association had ended fifteen minutes earlier. Now it was time for brandy and cigars, and after that, the wives and daughters would be allowed into the ballroom, and the dance would begin. As a woman, alcohol and tobacco were forbidden to Ella. At least in public. Civilization was advancing westward in the Dakota territory, and so a certain decorum was expected, at least of the upper classes.
Ella was the only female member of the Livestock Association. With the death of her father, Arno, when she was nineteen, Ella’s husband of three months, Richard, became the official representative of the ranch at the meetings. Richard’s untimely death put the control of the ranch in Ella’s delicate but competent hands at the age of twenty-two.
She knew some of the members had bitterly opposed the inclusion of a woman into their masculine ranks. But Arno Thompson created the organization to lobby on their behalf in Washington, and even though he passed away, his friends argued that his daughter should be allowed to join. Some now thought that they should bring in Ella’s fiancé, Tim Cutler, to be the official voice for the T-3 Ranch. Condescendingly, they suggested that perhaps they would allow Ella a proxy vote. But since some of the more astute members of the Association realized that Tim Cutler was far more interested in spending money than in making it. Since the gap between the announcement of the engagement and the setting of a wedding date continued to get longer and longer, the lone female with full voting privileges remained the lone female.
Arno cut a wide swath when he was alive, and even in death, men didn’t want to be on his bad side.
“What about the rustling? Have they hit you again?” Gunnar, a Dutch immigrant, asked with his typical bluntness.
Ella’s lips pursed tight momentarily before softening. She liked these men who had been such good friends to her father, and she knew they were protective of her. But she was embarrassed at being so ineffectual in stopping the rustling and wary that these men might think her a disappointment at running the vast ranch their friend created.
“Sometime last week I lost another hundred head from the herd over near the bend in Darnow Springs. That makes it a total of six hundred since last winter.”
Antonio, always the more emotive of the two old man, waved his arms, sending cigar smoke swirling and more than just a little of his brandy sloshing over the rim of his glass. “We’ve got to find those rotten scoundrels!” he said, his Italian accent made more prominent with his heightened emotions. “We’ve got to string them all up. What’s your fiancé doing about this?”
At the mention of Tim, Ella glanced away. It was never easy talking about the man she was supposed to marry. At the time of their engagement, it seemed to everyone that Tim would be the ideal man to run the T-3 Ranch in place of Richard Murphy. But it was soon apparent that Tim vastly preferred drinking and gambling to overseeing one of the largest spreads west of the Mississippi. In the backroom of saloons, men wondered just how much of Tim’s profligacy Ella was actually aware of.
“He’s been sending out men armed to the teeth every night, looking for the rustlers,” Ella explained after a moment. She looked up into Antonio’s eyes and squared her shoulders. “He’s had the worst of all possible luck. If he sends men to watch the Blue Meadow range, the rustlers go riding through our spread near Danbury Pass. The next night he sends riders to the Danbury Pass, and the rustlers either don’t touch us at all, or they’re stealing our cattle at Darnow Springs. I know he means well, and that he’s trying to help me run the ranch, but it seems the rustlers know what Tim’s going to do even before he does.”
Antonio’s mouth pulled up on one side. His dark eyes twinkled with sudden amusement. In a low voice that wouldn’t carry to anyone but Ella and Gunnar, he said, “That’s tough to do, considering how little the man does.”
Ella smiled and blushed a little. “You’re a naughty old man for saying such a thing,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “and I absolutely love you to pieces because of it.”
Gunnar said, “Antonio, how about we send our eldest out to see what they can find out? Not to confront the rustlers, mind you, just to look at the problem with different eyes. Your spread and mine haven’t been hit yet by these rascals, but it is only a matter of time before we are.”
>
“The perfect solution, my friend!” Antonio patted Gunnar’s arm, and in the process, knocked cigar ash onto the big man’s black gabardine suit coat. “Damn! I make such a mess no matter what I do!” A moment later, seeing his son, Ben, on the other side of the room, Antonio called out in a loud voice, “Benvenuto, I must talk to you! Come see me, and bring Dirk with you!”
Wherever Antonio went, people could always hear him. He was by no means a big or tall man, and Ella wondered if he thought he could make up for his lack of height with the volume of his voice.
Ella watched as the two men approached. In their mid-twenties, they were only a few years older than her. Having grown up in proximity to the men, she had watched the young princes of the prairie become the darlings of the wealthy and not-so-wealthy women in the territory. Their sexual dalliances were a favored topic of whispered conversation in the salons of the wives of the cattle barons, railroad magnates, and mining executives. Handsome, affluent, innately intelligent, and classically educated, Dirk and Ben had every possible advantage given to them at birth, and they carried their vaunted social position with the confident savoir-faire of men who objectively understood their place in the world.
Ella knew Ben and Dirk were insatiable rakes, men who merely played at love rather than taking it seriously. But she had heard enough rumors to know that the women who were “entertained” by either Ben or Dirk never regretted their indiscretion. Ella’s own friend Marian Ludgaard confessed to having succumbed to Dirk’s charms, blushing pink as she whispered of how she experienced a ”fire in the blood" she’d never experienced before or since.
When Ben and Dirk approached, they both gave Ella a polite smile and a slight nod of the head and said in unison, “Evening, Mrs. Ella.”
“Good evening. But, please, just ‘Ella.’”
When they smiled, Ella felt her heart do a little flip-flop in her chest, and she immediately reminded herself that she was engaged to be married, and she was not foolish enough to succumb to seductive charm. Not like her good friend Marian Ludgaard, who let good looks and ostentatious virility strip away sound feminine judgment.
* * * *
At just over six-foot-three, Dirk van Gild towered over most men, but he’d never before found his height to be quite such an advantage as he did just then at the Livestock Association meeting. He had known Ella Murphy most of his life, and though he always thought of her as a lovely woman, she was a young widow engaged to be married, and by all accounts, she did not engage in frivolous sexual activities. That significantly muted his interest in her. But while standing at his father’s side, Dirk watched as Ella bent to pick up a liquor decanter on a nearby table. Ella’s emerald-green velvet gown was trimmed in white lace at the U-shaped bodice and along the cuffs. The gown showed only a modest amount of cleavage, but since she was quite short and extremely voluptuous, when she bent for the decanter, her feminine charms were unintentionally put on display for Dirk’s enjoyment. It was enough to cause an immediate stirring in that part of his anatomy that was always primed for sexual conquest.
As Ella refilled the glasses of the four men, Dirk looked at her with an emotional mindset that was profoundly different from what it had been only seconds earlier. Dirk now realized that Ella Murphy wasn’t just the proprietress of the largest ranch in the territory, she was also one of its most beautiful women. Standing barely over five feet tall, she was all lush curves and feminine extremes, her breasts full and round to the point of extravagance, her waist narrowing significantly before her curving hips swelled outward. Dirk could not see the shape of her legs beneath her green velvet skirt, but his imagination conjured an image of tapering thighs sheathed in silk stockings held in place with lace garters. He wondered what her drawers were like. Would they be cotton or silk? Did she wear bloomers that went below her knees, or were they less cumbersome, coming down only to mid-thigh? The European flare for feminine undergarments, which were intended to be seen as well as being worn, had made its way to New York and was advancing westward steadily.
But there was one other thing to think about. Gunnar van Gild had several years earlier told his son, in a tone indicating there was no room for equivocation, that Ella Thompson Murphy was a widow who was most definitely not to be considered a potential bedmate. Period. End of discussion. When his father spoke like that, Dirk knew he’d better listen.
“Son, where’s your head? Is it still on your shoulders?”
His father’s stern voice shattered Dirk’s reverie. “Sorry, Pa. I was just thinking about the troubles we’ve had with the artesian well near McPherson’s hunting lodge. We really do have to look more closely into that.” Even Dirk realized how inadequate his excuse was. The glimpse of Ella’s bosom, though very fleeting, discombobulated Dirk more than he was willing to admit. “We were talking about the rustlers hitting the T-3 Ranch and where Mrs. Ella thought the rustlers might strike next, right?”
“That’s right.” Gunnar’s tone was a little warmer than it had been moments earlier. He had never shown any ability to stay angry with his son for more than a few seconds. “Now Ella is saying that her fiancé is sending men to her pastures by Buffalo Creek, so I think you boys should head out at dawn to see what you can find out at one of her other ranges.” He nodded to an eight-by-ten foot map of the territory spanning millions of acres. “Let’s see what kind of options we’ve got.”
As the men stepped closer to the map covering a large portion of the wall, Ella stated nonchalantly, “I’ll be going along with you, of course.”
Dirk chuckled. He knew he shouldn’t laugh, but the notion of riding after cattle rustlers with a woman along stretched the boundaries of credulity.
All four men stopped walking and turned in unison toward the curvaceous but diminutive woman.
“Ella, my dear,” Antonio said, his eyes alight with endearing protectiveness, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, “let our boys take care of this matter. These men you seek have no regard for the law. Ben and Dirk have been raised to understand such men.”
“I have no doubt all of that is true. Just the same, I’ll be going with them.” When Ella characteristically squared her shoulders, the move caused her breasts to push a bit more firmly against the bodice of her gown, which did disastrous things to Dirk’s rapidly faltering self-control. “I can ride as well as any man. You know that, Mr. Stenacci. My father taught me to ride almost before I could walk.” She smiled warmly. “Remember that gentle pinto you gave me for my fifth birthday present?”
Even though his better judgment screamed for him to remain silent, Dirk said, “All childhood presents aside, you’re still not going.”
He looked directly into her navy blue eyes for the specific reason that it prevented him from ogling her cleavage. Though her gown was perfectly fashionable and quite modest, Dirk found her bosom profoundly distracting. His cock, not coincidentally, found her charms magnetic.
“Those are my cattle being rustled.” Her words came out clipped, precise, and more than just a little imperious. Ella had been born into wealth, and Dirk knew she wasn’t in the least bit accustomed to men outside her family telling her what she could or could not do. America was a land of wealthy princesses who had all the privileges of class but lacked the official title. “I think that gives me the right to have a say in this.”
Dirk grinned. “You have the right to say whatever you wish. You just don’t have the right to ride with Ben and me.” He looked over at his good friend, pleased to see he wasn’t the only one finding Ella’s statement without merit. “The odds are that we won’t actually find the rustlers. It’s a very big territory, and if men want to disappear, there are a thousand places to do just there. But in the event that we do find the rustlers, there could be gunplay. Only a very foolish woman would willingly get involved in something like that.”
Ella’s dark blue eyes widened. “Dirk van Gild, are you calling me a fool?” She squared up on him testily.
Dirk raised hands, turning
his broad palms defensively toward Ella. “That isn’t what I said, and you know it. You’re twisting my words.” The amused glint in his eyes didn’t elicit particularly benevolent emotions from the feminine scion of one of the territory’s largest fortunes.
He watched as a muscle clenched in her jaw.
I never realized she was so feisty. In bed she’d be the type to leave claw marks down a fella’s back and bite marks on his neck and shoulders.
The thought did absolutely nothing to stop the slow, relentless swelling of the cock trapped inside the trousers of his tuxedo. Dirk knew that if he didn’t soon get his mind on something other than the luscious Mrs. Murphy, he’d have to make a hasty exit from the Association’s meeting even before the dance got started. His erection wasn’t something easily hidden nor comfortably contained inside trousers.
“Ella, my dear,” Gunnar said paternally, getting her attention. “We can hammer out the details later. Let’s all work together to figure out where those damned rustlers will ride next. Doesn’t that make the most sense?”
Quietly, and after one last scathing look at the annoyingly placid Dirk and the smirking Ben, Ella said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
* * * *
Ella was dancing a waltz with Gunnar. She had been dancing with him since the days when she would stand on the toes of his boots as he moved to the orchestra’s rhythm. She was pleased to note that though he was now in his sixties, he was still nimble footed.
Earlier, she’d said only a few words with her fiancé before he excused himself. It wasn’t until later that she realized he extracted five additional twenty dollar gold coins from her purse when she wasn’t looking. After that, he settled into the card room for a round of five card draw poker. Though Ella had broken the gender barrier by becoming a member of the Livestock Association, it would take an act of God for her to be admitted to the poker room, that impregnable bastion of male dominance. Being excluded didn’t annoy Ella. Her father was a lousy poker player, and all he ever taught her about card games was that playing poker was a good way to lose the ranch. Besides, she loved dancing. She looked upon Gunnar and Antonio as wonderfully attentive uncles, and she could dance with them without causing vicious tongues to wag. Nasty rumors were a constant source of consternation and amusement among the well-heeled folks of the territory.