Butler, Reece - 1 Bed, 2 Weddings, 3 Husbands [Bride Train 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Reece Butler

  What if there was no next time?

  “You are not marrying that scum-sucking—” He broke off before he used words that a lady should never hear.

  Tears filled Victoria’s eyes. She pressed her lips closed, but they twitched and moved like she fought to keep from crying.

  “Ah, shoot. Don’t cry,” he murmured. “It’s just that I love you too much to see you hurt.”

  A hot tear hit his chest. Another followed.

  “You love me?”

  He lifted his head to gently kiss her lips. “I’ve never, ever, felt like this with anyone. I feel like I would die if you weren’t there to hold me at night.”

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She hadn’t yet taken it down for the night, but he must have moved her dang near a foot across the pallet by thrusting into her. It messed up her hair, but it felt so right.

  Another drop hit. She tried to force a smile, but it wobbled pretty bad.

  “What about the day?”

  The coiled tension inside him released. If she could joke, it might be okay.

  “I want hugs during the day, too.” He waggled his eyebrows up at her. “I want a few other things during the day as well.”

  “Such as?”

  He pushed his still-hard cock up into her pussy. “This.” He rested his hand on her ass with one finger right over her hole. “And this.” He snuck his fingers between their bodies and trailed along her breast. She inhaled a hiss. “And certainly a whole lot of these.”

  She pushed herself until she rode his cock, her back straight. Her beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous breasts stood out proudly. He reached for them, but she smacked his hands away. Smiling like an alluring siren, she reached into her hair and pulled out her pins. She shook her head, and golden-caramel strands tumbled down.

  Glorious. He could easily spend the rest of his life looking at her. If Smythe broke down the door and shot him, he’d die the happiest man in the world.

  But then the bastard would hurt Victoria, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  She faltered, her smile fading. “You don’t like me doing this?”

  “I absolutely love it.” Riley set his hands on her hips, hoping she’d ride him. His cock was ready and raring to go again.

  “But, you looked so grim for a moment.”

  “I was thinking how empty my life would be without you. Jed and Clint would be just as bad off as me.”

  When she dropped her head, her hair covered her face. She spoke through the curtain. “I don’t think I could live without you, either.”

  “Then marry us. Jed, me, Clint. Whoever you want.”

  She sank onto his chest. “You don’t understand. Smythe will hurt a lot of people if I don’t marry him.”

  He rested his arms over her back to soothe her.

  “What is that bastard hanging over your head?” He kissed the top of her head, all that he could reach. “If you get it out, he won’t be able to hurt you.”

  She turned her head to look at him. Her chin dug into his breastbone, but he barely noticed.

  “I said I’d go to that newspaperman, Hames, and tell him everything. But he said he would tell the governor about the valley. He called it a ‘nest of vipers,’ and said the governor wouldn’t tolerate it. That he’d send the vigilante gang after you, as well as the Elliotts and MacDougals.”

  He slowly rubbed her back in circles.

  “You want to tell me what the ‘everything’ that Hames wants to know?”

  She pressed her cheek against him again. He sighed and held her close.

  “I’ve got a secret to tell you,” he said. “It’s about my misspent youth.”

  “You don’t have to tell me—”

  “Victoria, I want you to be our wife. I don’t want old secrets to come between us. I was one of the nastiest, arrogant, stuck-up, lazy young thugs you could imagine.”

  “You?” She looked at him and laughed.

  “Me. You can thank Jed and Clint for thumping me into shape. Along with Uncle Pat and Grandpa Fortune. They could swing a switch like nobody’s business.” He winced and then winked at her. “Aunt Chrissie used a wooden spoon sometimes. But don’t tell Clint. He doesn’t know I sassed his momma a few too many times.”

  “That’s it? Your big secret?”

  “I was so bad my parents gave up on me. We lived in a city in the South until the War of Northern Aggression. They got out with lots of money. I tried to fit in by being worse than the other boys. My parents finally drove me to Grandpa Fortune’s farm, complaining about me the whole time, and dropped me off. Uncle Pat says my mother, his sister, never really got along with Grandpa. She thought she was special, but she wasn’t nasty like Jed’s momma.” He winced. “Sorry, I can’t be telling Jed’s story.”

  “When did your parents return?”

  He forced a chuckle. “That’s just it. They never did. They went off on a trip somewhere in South America and never came back. We don’t know if they’re dead or still living the high life.”

  “What about your brothers and sisters?”

  “Never had any. I think my mother had to produce a son. After that my father stuck to mistresses.”

  Too late, he remembered what Victoria told Smythe. She sobered and quietly placed her head on his chest again. He sighed and held her tight.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Victoria knew she was a fool to think for even one moment that Smythe wouldn’t hurt her, use her against her friends, and then throw her away.

  It was the same thing her father did to her mother.

  She had to tell Riley because everyone would soon know. When she refused to marry Smythe, he’d tell that eager newspaperman all about her. Knowing his type, he’d make up lies far worse than reality. Perhaps people now knew her well enough that they wouldn’t judge her too harshly.

  When she arrived in Tanner’s Ford, she didn’t know that one of the respected women used to be a madam. That Sarah Unsworth, who would soon be working as a cook at the hotel across the street, had been sold by her fiancé to a brothel, where she was forced to work for a couple of weeks. And young Molly Sinclair was taken at age fifteen and held until her sixteenth birthday, when she was used, passed on to a beast, then sold to the same brothel.

  Yet these women held their heads high and were respected by most people. Could she stay and be respected, in spite of Smythe’s lies? She couldn’t face it before, but she’d been all alone. She had friends now. And maybe she’d have a trio of husbands as well. She took a deep breath.

  “My mother grew up the third daughter in a household which had enough of the necessities, but nothing for what her father thought of as frivolous extras. My mother had one good dress. She was wearing it when she met my father. He seduced her with promises, and set her up in her own home. She had all the pretty dresses, jewels, and servants that she wanted. She was seventeen, and loved the attention. She’s still lovely, petite with blonde curls, as is my younger sister. Unfortunately, I take after my father.”

  “Are you calling me a liar? And Jed and Clint as well?”

  His words, and the hint of anger, confused her. “Of course not.”

  “Victoria, you are beautiful. Inside and out, and I don’t mean that lovely pussy that purrs for me. You’re going to have to start believing in yourself the way we believe in you.”

  She had to look at him. He kissed her nose and smiled. A real smile, one that started with relaxed lips and ended with crinkles around shining eyes.

  “We love that you’re not so tiny we might break you when all three of us are loving you. When I’m kneeling behind you, holding those nice wide hips, staring at your plump ass cheeks…damn! I hope you want another round because that’s what I want to do before we sleep.”

  He leered as if he hadn’t touched her in months. His cock, which had rested beside her hip, surged into life. It nudged her, and her pussy responded.

  “I’m ornery.” She
watched to see if he lied and said she wasn’t.

  “Damn right, you are! And we wouldn’t have you any other way. A quiet little mousy wife would never survive out here.” He winked. “Now, how else do you take after your father? I guess he’s pretty smart, because you are. I think we have to teach you chess. We might be able to win you for a while before you get better than us. Then you’ll have to play with Doc. Now that the old sheriff, Frank Chambers, is gone, Doc’s missing a partner.”

  “I haven’t seen my father since he realized how pretty my younger sister was. My mother banished me from his sight.” The next part was hard to admit. “I don’t even know his name. He got married, and walked away from us without a second glance. Because she’d convinced him to sign the house over, we weren’t thrown into the street. Mother found another lover, and never spoke of him again.”

  “Growing up in the home of a mistress would explain how you were innocent, yet knowing. We wondered about that.”

  Riley’s voice sounded interested more than condemning.

  “Did you…I mean, you were very much a virgin when you married Jed, but did anyone try to hurt you? Your mother protected you, right?”

  “My mother? Protect me when she could make money from me?” Victoria laughed, high and shrill. “I had to protect myself. That’s why I wore so many layers of clothes and covered my hair with ugly bonnets. I learned to disappear, and move quickly when I couldn’t. The only reason my mother allowed me to live there was because I ran her household, at no cost to her.”

  “That’s why you’re such a good housekeeper and cook.”

  “If I wasn’t, I knew I’d be tossed out like the trash. That’s how people treated me. My mother wasn’t married, and I had the same last name. I was, am, a bastard. Everyone knew it. No decent man would marry a woman like that.”

  “They spit on you.”

  “I didn’t think you heard that,” she said into his chest.

  “Why did you leave? I mean, why then?”

  “My mother auctioned off my sister’s virginity when she was fifteen.” She lifted her head at his gasp. “Oh, Cecilia wanted it. She’s the same as my mother, loving adoration and presents and not caring for the strings attached. Cecilia got a quarter of the purchase price, and my mother got half.”

  “And the other quarter?”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t ask that,” she whispered.

  “Don’t tell me. Your father.”

  She rubbed her face on his chest to say “yes.” He smelled wonderful, clean and crisp, with the slight tang from a hot day’s hard work.

  “How is Smythe involved?”

  “My sister found a patron who put her in a lovely new house. My mother, being old, couldn’t find a man with so much competition. She had to sell her house. Cecilia allowed her to move in with the understanding she would accommodate the gentlemen friends Cecilia’s patron brought home. Mr. Smythe was one of them.”

  “Did you take over as housekeeper there as well?”

  “Only until my sister could find one to her liking. She said I was too ugly to be seen. If Smythe hadn’t suggested I bring his furniture and personal things here, set up his home, and perhaps be his housekeeper, I would have been turned out.”

  Riley cursed in a language Victoria didn’t understand. At least, she thought they were curses. The way he said them was vicious enough.

  “Why didn’t you take the Bride Train by yourself?”

  Because she was a coward. Though she felt Riley’s strong arms around her, his heart beating against her own, she knew how evil men were. When she left her mother’s house, she was jeered, pinched, and touched, but the locals knew they couldn’t do more. She was relatively safe with her mother, but that all changed when they moved.

  You’re thinking so hard, my head’s hurting.” Riley tilted her chin up so she had to look at him. “Tell me.”

  “It’s hard.”

  He pressed her head back against his chest. “I won’t interrupt,” he promised.

  “It wasn’t too bad while I lived with my mother, but Cecilia’s patron liked to bring friends home, ones who wished to be well entertained. That’s why he kept my mother around. When I heard their drunken voices, I’d creep down the back stairs to the cellar. I spent many nights in a hidey-hole where no one would even think of looking for me.”

  He began to speak, and then stopped. His heart, under her ear, sped up.

  “He didn’t hit me, but Cecilia sometimes had bruises or walked stiffly. A few days later, the next time he came, he’d bring jewels, or an expensive bauble. She’d perk up and they’d disappear for a few hours.”

  Victoria would disappear as well. Because he owned the house, he figured he could take Cecilia wherever was convenient. She’d have to clean up the mess if he swept the crystal and china off the dining-room table in order to lay her sister on it to ease his cock. He didn’t care if red wine and roast beef landed on the hand-woven silk carpets. Once she was cleaning the morning room when he swept a giggling Cecilia in. If Victoria remembered correctly, he’d brought a diamond-and-sapphire necklace in compensation for the bruises around her neck.

  She crouched behind a corner screen, unable to leave until they finished. She’d learned that either her sister was easily pleasured or she knew how to pretend. Victoria figured it was the latter, by the way Cecilia cursed him later for releasing himself on her new gown.

  “You’re thinking, not talking,” he joked. “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “I didn’t have to when I was with my mother. I didn’t like Cecilia’s patron, at all. Unfortunately, that made him want me all the more. He wouldn’t touch me in Cecilia’s house, but he said if I took one step outside, his men would take me.”

  Riley’s heartbeat thundered in her ear.

  “Tell me all of it, Victoria. No matter how angry I get, it won’t be at you.”

  “He boasted about it, said I was a challenge. He also boasted that he’d enjoy breaking my spirit and making me more amenable to his friends.”

  “You were held prisoner.” He sighed. “And Smythe knows all this?”

  “Yes. For some reason, Smythe wanted to make Cecilia’s patron angry, or perhaps he just likes hurting people. Anyway, he visited my mother when Cecilia was on a weekend trip to a country house with her patron. He offered the contract, a way to escape. Of course, I said yes. The train left the next day. You know the rest.”

  She waited for Riley’s reaction. He said he loved her, and she believed him. For now. Men changed their business partners, and lovers, all the time.

  At least he still held her in his arms, the same way he had before she started talking. It felt so good to stop hiding who she was. Nothing could change the family she was born into. It was up to her to choose the best one to grow old with.

  “Smythe knows who your father was.”

  His words chilled her. She pushed herself up to meet his eyes.

  “You said that as if you know.”

  “I apologize, but I was so worried for you. I heard you talking with Smythe.”

  She blinked, her body and mind frozen.

  “You made me speak of those horrible things, and you knew all along?”

  His expression confirmed it. She struggled to get away. She knew he was far too powerful, but she didn’t care. She flailed at him, hands, feet, elbows, and knees.

  “You had to say those things to be free of them,” he said. “Don’t you feel better now?”

  She got one hand loose and smacked his chest. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “The way Smythe fondled his pocket watch, it means a lot to him.”

  “My mother had it made for my father. If Smythe has that watch, it means he killed my father.”

  “We shall add that to his list of crimes.”

  Riley rolled over, taking her with him and pinning her under him. He settled between her legs, his cock hard on her belly. Her breasts and pussy lips filled, all worry forgotten. Her brain kept thinking, however.
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  He drew his fingers along the side of her breast. She quivered, and he leered.

  “You’re trying to distract me.”

  He took her nipple into his mouth and rolled it over his tongue. She pressed her lips together to hold back a moan. He saw and moved his hand down, shifting to allow his fingers between her legs. He inserted the longest in her slit and felt for the rough patch inside that felt so good. All the time he stared at her, nostrils flaring, daring her to complain.

  “Is it working yet?” he drawled.

  She couldn’t think of anything but his touch, but refused to let him know that.

  “No,” she said in as bored a tone as she could manage. “I was just thinking that the corners of this room need sweeping.”

  His eyes widened, and he growled. What would he do to her?

  She shrieked when he flipped her over and lifted her to her knees. He knelt behind and pressed his cock inside her. She brought her knees together to make it tighter. He growled and hit bottom. His balls dangled against her thighs, the fuzzy hair tickling her. His hands massaged her breasts.

  “Still bored?”

  “Yes,” she panted. “Perhaps I should scrub the floor while I’m on my knees. At least I’d get some benefit from this.”

  He roared, pulled back, and filled her deep. She put her forehead on the pallet and arched her back to get the right angle. She used the fingers of her right hand to play with her engorged clit. Had he lost control because of her goading? Would he make sure she came first?

  She twitched her fingers either side of her clit. It wasn’t as good as a tongue, but she had only one man with her at the moment. One that grunted every time his balls slapped her thighs. She held herself still, clenching her pussy muscles, as he shafted her, filling her with his need, and perhaps, one day, his love.

  “Mine!” he growled.

  She felt a slippery finger press into her bottom. She tightened, catching it along with his cock. Her clit tingled, eager for more. He spiraled his finger in her bottom, pinched her nipple, and yes! It triggered her clit, and pussy, and, oh yes!

  Five minutes later, lying on her side with Riley still inside her, her head still spun.