It was the whinny of a horse that first warned Ben. The twisting trail made it impossible to see more than twenty yards, but the horse sounded quite close.
Then he heard another sound, a soft pat, pat, pat. Only a man who’d spent much of his life on horseback would have recognized the sound. It was the sound of a rider patting a horse’s neck in reassurance, wanting to prevent any further noise from the animal.
He heard the creak of saddle leather then saw movement in shadows. A moment later, he saw the outline of the rider. He was slump-shouldered, apparently exhausted from a long day in the saddle. Ben nearly smiled. All day long, he wondered whether or not he was actually being followed, and now he knew beyond question that his instincts were dead on the mark. The rider moved closer, almost within striking distance.
“My Bonny lies over the ocean...” sang Dirk with the enthusiasm and tone-deaf quality of a drunken sot.
The rider’s horse lifted its head and whinnied again. Perhaps it caught his scent. Ben couldn’t tell and didn’t have time to find out. Though the rider was farther away than he would have liked, he launched himself, kicking off from the tree, his lean body streaking downward and sideways like a pouncing panther.
Ben’s shoulder hit the rider high in the chest. Toppling backward over the rump of the horse, Ben landed on his prey and heard a reassuring “Uh!” as air rushed from constricted lungs.
“Bastard!” he hissed through clenched teeth, simultaneously putting a hand on the man’s chest to keep him pinned to the ground as he cocked his right arm, determined to put an end to the fight with one devilishly decisive punch to the face.
But something was wrong. In a split-second of time, Ben’s brain screamed that something was terribly, terribly wrong. His right arm quivered, but the signal from his brain to release the punch never came. His left hand flexed, his strong fingers burying into the rather extravagant mound of a very feminine breast. He squeezed again, and there could be no doubt. He moved his hand to the side and found another breast, equally as plump and firm and enticing.
She was groaning now, trying to catch her breath. Ben remained above her, straddling her body with his thighs, his mind in a whirl. He unclenched his fist and lowered his arm. Angrily, he knocked the woman’s hat aside and for the first time had enough moonlight to see clearly.
He looked down into the pain-constricted face of Ella Murphy.
“You stupid fool!” he spat.
Before he took his left hand from her breast, he squeezed one last time.
* * * *
“I didn’t say it before, but I’ll say it now,” Dirk said to Ella as he massaged her neck and shoulders, “you’re a damned fool.”
Ella wanted very much to tell Dirk that he was being a jackass, but she didn’t. She didn’t because, at heart, she knew that he was right. She slipped away from the T-3 Ranch without saying a word to anyone, not a word to her mother, not a note to her fiancé, or to any of the servants, because she wanted to be directly involved in catching the cattle rustlers. But when she was honest with herself, she had just been looking for an excuse to get away from her meddlesome mother and the greedy and dissolute man her mother insisted she marry.
But there was something else that compelled Ella to saddle up Queenie so early in the morning and ride away from all the creature comforts her ranch provided. That reason was Ben and Dirk. As annoying as they could be with their insistence upon taking masculine prerogatives, and as frustrating as it was to be aware that they’d had sex with quite a number of women Ella knew personally, their charm was infectious. When Ben flattered her at the Livestock Association dance, speaking so flirtatiously in front of two women who would undoubtedly tell everyone they knew what he said, Ella felt attractive and sexually appealing for the first time in months.
Sitting in the grass near the small campfire with Dirk seated behind her, Ella rolled her head on her shoulders. She landed hard on the ground with Ben on top of her, so now the muscles were knotted in her neck and right shoulder. Dirk’s slowly moving thumbs were massaging the tension away, and though she was still in pain, it felt heavenly to be touched with strong, masculine hands.
“You’re right, and I’m wrong. I am a damn fool,” she said, her voice low. “There. I’ve said it now. Are you happy?”
Dirk just chuckled.
Ben said, “You’re damned lucky I didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Yes, I am lucky,” Ella said, her eyes barely open as she looked at the dark, handsome man lounging on the opposite side of the campfire. “But if I was really lucky, I would have landed on you instead of you landing on me. You nearly broke my neck.”
Even though she had the breath knocked out of her at the time, Ella remembered what it had been like to have Ben’s long-fingered hand squeezing her breast. She had been too stunned to push his hand from her, but that didn’t stop her from being intensely aware of his hand going from her right breast to her left, squeezing firmly, a little experimentally. Under other circumstances, his touch would have given her pleasure.
Ella watched as Ben rose to his feet, and a nebulous emotion went through her. He moved, she decided, with catlike fluidity. When he picked up the bottle of whiskey, Ella raised her blue enameled tin cup and let him add a little more, even though her cup wasn’t empty.
“I know as a lady I’m not supposed to drink spirits, but I have to be honest with you. Right now, this whiskey, even though it burns on the way down, tastes wonderful.” She smiled dreamily and took a small sip. “I can already feel it. It makes me feel warm.” But she knew that Dirk’s hands massaging her aching neck and shoulders were adding to that heat. “It also makes my neck hurt less.”
“Drink up. It’s good for you. It’ll keep your muscles from cramping,” Dirk prodded.
“If you’re trying to get me drunk,” Ella said then paused to take two small sips of whiskey, “I should let you know that you’re succeeding. I...I seem to feel the liquor in my cheekbones and in the backs of my eyes.” She sighed wearily and rolled her head on her shoulders once again. “Dirk, would it be very unladylike of me to say that your hands feel wonderful?”
“How can feeling wonderful be unladylike?”
Ella smiled dreamily. Ben, who was still standing, poured a little more whiskey into her cup then knelt on the riverbank in front of her.
“You know, if I wasn’t engaged, I’d be completely smitten with you men.” Ella closed her eyes to more completely enjoy the warmth of the liquor going through her veins and the deeply sensual heat that was caused by Dirk’s massaging fingers. “One of the last things my father ever said to me was to obey my mother. Such a pity she thinks it best to marry me off to...” Her words trailed away. She didn’t want to taste Tim’s name on her tongue or hear it in her ears. Not when she was with Dirk and Ben. “Well, to that man my mother said I should get engaged to before some other woman ‘snaps’ him up.”
Ben asked, “Do you always do everything your mother tells you to?”
“I used to without fail but not so much anymore.” The flickering flames of the campfire illuminated Ben in profile. Ella wondered why she had never realized just how handsome he was. “Can I ask you an intimate question?” When Ben’s gaze met hers, she queried, “What’s it like to have slept with so many women?” Her eyes suddenly opened wide. “Oh, my! Did I really just ask that? Now I know I’ve had too much to drink.”
Feeling her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment, Ella pushed Dirk’s hands off her shoulders and started to rise, but he quickly pulled her down so that she sat in the grass with her back pressed against his chest and his long legs surrounding her hips.
“Don’t go.” Dirk’s tone was low, seductive. It touched Ella like a physical caress.
“When I start asking questions like that,” Ella replied, feeling more embarrassed by the second, “then it’s obviously time for me to take a long walk.”
She started to get up again, but Dirk stopped her quickly. He pulled he
r until she was once again seated in front of him on the grass, his back propped against the trunk of an elm tree. As she struggled, he pulled her arms behind her, the fingers of his right hand easily surrounding both of her wrists. His left hand slipped over her shoulder to cup her chin.
“What are you—,” Ella began as Dirk forcibly angled her face up and to the side.
She would have said more, but Dirk slanted his mouth down over hers in a kiss that was nearly harsh. The kiss was heated and commanding but closed-mouthed. The hand on her face held her securely. The awareness that she was with two strong, dominating man was shockingly erotic. The sensation of having her wrists held together behind her back affected her in intimate, forbidden ways, and she experienced a spontaneous tingling in her clitoris she hadn’t felt in years.
Ella squirmed as Dirk feasted on her mouth. She knew she should scream, or at least struggle harder against these men, but that voice of reason was drowned out by the roar of her racing heart.
When the kiss finally ended and Dirk took his hand from Ella’s chin, she twisted around so that her back pressed against his thickly-muscled chest. Her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing, the mounds thrusting forward against her shirtfront because of the position of her hands.
“Oh, my!” she whispered, batting her eyes as though needing to clear her vision. “Gentlemen, I think things are going a little too far.”
Ben moved so that he straddled Ella’s legs with his knees. He took her face in his hands and said, “My turn.”
“No!” Ella gasped, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. “Wait! I can’t think.”
Ben’s voice was husky with rising passion as he said, “Don’t think. Just feel.”
Ella tried to pull her hands free. It was a futile effort. Dirk was far too strong for her to wrench her wrists from his grasp. An instant later, when Ben’s lips, warm and moist, sealed over hers, she uttered a soft moan. She stopped squirming. Ben’s lips might just as well have been laudanum for the narcotizing effect they had on her senses. A liquid heat flowed through her veins.
Prior to her marriage to Richard, Ella had been courted by two men, both of whom she allowed kisses and a few chaste caresses over her clothing, but nothing more intimate than that. She had been a virgin on her wedding night not so many years earlier. Though she succumbed to Tim’s advances, the occasions were few and far from memorable. So there was nothing in her personal background to prepare her for the experience of kissing, one after the other, two wickedly arousing, sensually-talented, handsome men. Their kisses were as intoxicating as the whiskey but much more dangerous than any distilled beverage.
Ben’s tongue eased between her lips, and Ella shocked herself by opening her mouth to allow his deeper exploration. She heard a soft, sultry moan of pleasure, and it shocked her to realize she made the sound herself. Her head spun, and Ella knew the liquor caused only a small amount of her disorientation. She was drunk with escalating passion, not with liquor. Her intoxicant had the names Dirk and Ben.
As her tongue danced with Ben’s, Ella thought, My God, this man can kiss!
It was not a comforting thought for Ella to have. She long ago resigned herself to living a life of little or no passion. Even her husband during their brief marriage hadn’t inspired heated desire.
When the kiss ended and Ben lifted his head, Ella breathed deeply, her heart pounding. She experienced versions of passion before, but her personal experience only hinted at possibilities. With Ben and Dirk, a thirty-second kiss stimulated more than intimate caresses from Tim.
To Dirk, Ben said, “I don’t supposed you’d be willing to take a walk for the next hour or so, would you?”
“Funny thing, you asking that. You see, I was kind of hoping you’d do the honorable thing and give your legs a good, long stretch.”
Chapter Three
Ben leaned back, sitting lightly on Ella’s knees. Like a fever that had gone instantaneously into his blood, his desire for the blue-eyed woman flamed to life when he watched Dirk kiss her. It was wildly irrational, he knew, to be either jealous or competitive with Dirk, but Ben couldn’t deny he felt those nasty emotions. He shifted his hips a little, trying to make it less uncomfortable for the formidable erection trapped inside trousers that bulged portentously.
“I told you last night that you’re the most beautiful woman in the territory,” he said in a husky tone, his gaze moving slowly up and down over Ella, lingering long on her breasts before settling on her eyes. “I meant it then, and I mean it now. You’re too damned beautiful to be ignored. Why in hell haven’t I ever kissed you before tonight?”
“Because I would have scratched your eyes out.”
Ben laughed softly, doubting her sincerity. The blatantly aroused, elongated nipples denting her blouse were a testament to desires she undoubtedly felt but was trying to ignore. “Keep a good hold on her, Dirk. This isn’t the time to find out if this she-cat will blind me if she gets the chance.” He put his palms lightly on Ella’s stomach, touching her through the blouse and camisole. “It seems to me she needs some more kissing.”
He saw it then, hidden in the depths of her blue eyes. Fear and desire. But it didn’t seem to Ben that Ella’s fear was the type one felt when faced with imminent physical danger. So what was she afraid of? Dirk and him? Or her reaction to what they were doing to her? With self-serving logic, he decided the best way to get the answer was to kiss her some more.
She struggled a little, squirming as she was forced to lean back against the hard-muscled expanse of Dirk’s chest. The movement caused her breasts to sway erotically from side to side. Ben noted, with a connoisseur’s eye for such details, that her nipples had become more erect in the past couple seconds. Had they hardened with passion, or was it fear that turned them into blunt pebbles? When he sucked on them, would they tighten with lust? The thought added even greater solidity to his throbbing erection.
Ben smiled. He had a lot of questions regarding Ella, and he intended to get the answers.
He took her face between his palms. Ella tried to turn away, but Ben held her tightly as he slanted his mouth over hers. He tried to ease his tongue between her lips, but she refused to open her mouth. It was a small, futile act of resistance. Ben traced the circumference of her mouth with the moist tip of his tongue, and Ella moaned softly, though she kept her jaws clamped shut.
Pulling away only scant inches, Ben looked into Ella’s eyes. This time he recognized the unspoken emotion he saw. In an epiphany, Ben realized Ella was aroused by his domination. Her husband had been kind but milquetoast. He lacked the strength to harness a strong spirit like Ella’s. She was a woman in control of one of the largest horse and cattle ranches between Texas and Canada, but when she was with a man, she didn’t want to be the decision-maker. Ben understood it all in an instant, though he doubted Ella had the self-awareness to understand her own chaotic emotions.
“Damn, just look at you,” Ben whispered, his fingertips trailing slowly downward from Ella’s face. “So damned beautiful but you’ve been put up on a shelf and ignored like some priceless porcelain doll everybody’s too afraid to touch.” He looked at Dirk. “She needs more kisses, my friend. A lot more.”
Dirk again cupped Ella’s chin in his hand, forcibly turning her face to the side and upward so he could kiss her. Despite the considerable number of women Dirk and Ben had both been intimate with, Ben had never before watched his friend behaving wantonly at such close distance. He found it unsettling. On a warm evening on the banks of a slow-moving stream, Dirk and Ben traveled into sexual territory that was completely new for them and for the woman sharing their journey.
Seconds passed as Ben watched Dirk kissing Ella. His groin ached, drawing his attention. Earlier, his erection had been uncomfortably trapped. Now it was painfully imprisoned. He moved a little further down Ella’s legs until he was sitting lightly on her ankles, then he unbuckled his gun belt and set his holster aside but within easy reach. He hastily unbuttoned the fly of his
trousers. His erection, quite long and fiercely erect, sprang away from his body, angling sharply upward. He groaned with relief when his cock was freed.
Ella had on knee-high, square-toed black riding boots. Noting they were brightly polished, Ben wondered caustically which of her numerous servants had the responsibility for seeing that her boots were never scuffed.
“These fancy boots have got to go.”
At his words, Ella started fighting against Dirk. Though a powerful man himself, Ben knew Dirk was much stronger still, so the idea that a short, curvaceous woman like Ella might wrestle her way free of his grasp was not to be taken seriously. She couldn’t even turn her face enough to end the hot kisses that Dirk was pressing to her lips.
While remaining seated on one ankle, Ben pulled off Ella’s opposite boot. She started kicking her feet, but her efforts accomplished little, and in just seconds he was again seated on her knees.
“What kind of a person wears English style riding trousers while on the trail for rustlers?” Ben asked in mock disgust, his fingers already working open the polished brass buckle of her slender belt. “I know you can ride a horse as well as any man, maybe even better than most, but when it comes to picking clothes to wear on a trail, you don’t know a damned thing.”
As her belt buckle came unfastened, Ella managed to wrench her chin free from Dirk’s palm, while Ben concentrated on unbuttoning her fly.
“How dare you?” Ella hissed.
Both Ben and Dirk chuckled softly at the insult. “Dare? Dirk and I dare to do quite a lot.” His smile added spice to the statement. “But then, you know that. You’ve heard the stories of our...um...excesses. You said so yourself.” He curled his fingers into the waistband of her riding trousers and began pulling them down past the curve of her hips.
Ella’s struggles became more heated, but her actions were at cross-purposes with her intentions. As she writhed on the grass, her efforts to free her wrists from Dirk’s steely grasp only made it easier for Ben to pull her cotton and leather riding trousers completely off her right leg, leaving the garment bunched at the top of her left boot.
Ella's Desire Page 3