“Wanna tell me about it?” he asked, his sexy voice rumbling and making her wet.
She glanced at the people around her, and they all seemed to be busy with other conversations. “Well, it involves you tying me up and having your wicked way with me.”
“Mmm, it just so happens I have some brand-new rope that would be perfect on your pretty skin. Tell me what you want us to do with it?”
She talked nonstop, describing in vivid detail what she wanted them to do, and after a bit, she noticed the conversations on either side of her had gone silent.
Well, crap on a cracker. I must’ve been talking a little loud.
The guy on her left nodded at her and seemed a little distracted while the guy on her right, the flirt who’d tried to buy her a drink, toasted her and then sipped from his drink. Remembering the phone in her ear, she said, “Josh? Josh? You there? Hello?”
The line was dead so she hung up. Bad cell phone service. She wondered how much of her description he’d heard and shrugged as she placed the phone back in her purse.
“So…” the guy on her right said with a grin and twinkly eyes. “You like rope bondage, huh?”
“Oh Lord,” she said with a groan as she raised her glass to her lips.
He chuckled and said, “That’s okay. I know lots of people are into that sort of thing nowadays. I take it you like fantasies, bondage, and role-play. Would you be willing to add a ménage in the mix? I like to play, too.”
Whoa. “Sorry, um, what’s your name?”
“Mark, ma’am. My mom wanted all her sons to have biblical names. I’m the youngest.”
“Oh…okay. Um, Mark, I think you’re really a handsome guy,” she said, squinting at him and seeing double. “Wow, now you’re good-looking times two…But I’m really, really super attached to my men.”
“Men, as in more than one?”
She looked around and put her finger up to her lips and giggled. “Shhh. Not everyone is as cool as you are about it. Anyway, you’re handsome and all, but I’m in love, like really, really in love with my guys, and they do not share well.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “Tell me about it,” but her head was muzzy, and it might’ve been another conversation filtering through her tequila-soaked brain.
Warmth filled her, but it wasn’t an overheated sensation. It was comforting. Leaning back, she sighed happily and said, “Yeah, they’re the best, but very territorial, and I think their territorialness—is that a word?—yeah, their territorialness has already been stretched to its limits.” A little voice in her brain was telling her she was talking an awful lot, so she shut up.
Mark leaned slightly toward her and said, “So a pickup line would be wasted here, huh?”
“Oh, I’ve heard some doozies. Actually, that’s how my men got me to go out with them. I tell you what. Try out your best pickup lines, and I’ll rate them for you.”
Mark looked around the room, maybe looking for the bartender, grinning and nodding. “Okay. How about this one: ‘Did it hurt?’”
She snickered and rolled her eyes. “Did what hurt?”
“When you fell from Heaven because you gotta be an angel.” She shook her head. “No? Okay, lemme try another one on you. This one is gonna be good. Don’t make me laugh.”
Violet snorted and then made a zipping-her-lip motion. “Give it to me.”
He cleared his throat and gave her a come-hither look. “Did you sit in a pile of sugar? Because you’ve got a really sweet ass.”
She dropped her jaw and laughed out loud. “Find a girl with a sense of humor, and that one’s a winner. Okay, try another one.”
He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling, and said, “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”
“It’ll only work if you keep your face serious. She’s gotta know you mean it. Okay, gimme one more, and then I have to see about getting home because I’m in—hic!—inebriated,” she said and giggled when she hiccupped again. She was having a lot of fun, considering how much she missed her men right that moment. Just the thought of them made her feel warm all over.
“Hmmm,” Mark said, stroking his chin and looking at her speculatively as if he was searching his mind for the perfect line.
* * * *
“Do you want to fuck?”
Lucas wanted to bust out laughing at the look on Violet’s face when she turned her head and spotted them both standing behind her seat at the bar. Her eyes popped open wide, making her look all sweet and innocent, and the beatific expression on her face made him want to beat his chest, and Josh’s, too. Maybe give a little Tarzan yell. He nodded at Ethan over her head, grateful to him for calling them to come get her.
Evidently, Violet was affectionate and talkative when she was tipsy because Josh had let him listen to a portion of her description of what she wanted them to do to her. He’d also listened in on her sweet-as-hell drunken declaration of love over the phone. She probably wouldn’t even remember, but he’d get her to tell him again in person when she was sober.
Their youngest brother guffawed and slapped Lucas on the back as he got up out of his chair. “Now that is way more direct than I’d ever attempt. I don’t wanna get slapped.”
“I expected that to happen when I used it, too. Luckily, the woman I used it on had a great sense of humor. Thanks for watching over her, brother,” Josh said as he clapped Mark on the back as well.
“Brother?” she asked, gaping and then squinting at him. “Oh, yeah, I remember you now. You helped with the floors, right? Whoa, there’s only one of you, right? I see two.”
Mark removed his hat and nodded at her. “I gave you a hint when I told you our mom wanted us all to have biblical names.”
She giggled. “I’m a little slow on the uptake tonight, I guess. You were watching over me by flirting with me?” She turned to Josh and Lucas, and with brown eyes growing bigger, she said, “He’s a flirt.”
“He comes by it honestly,” Lucas said.
Her eyes seemed to cross a little as she looked from one to the other of them and said, “Wow, there really is a resemblance. Then she jumped up from her chair. “‘Girl Crush’! Oh my gosh, I love this song. Dance with me, dance with me!” she crowed as the opening verse of the Little Big Town song began to play.
“Come on, baby,” Lucas said as he took her by the hand and helped to extricate her from the tall bar chair. “You sure you can even stand up for a dance?”
“I’m good,” she said, purring as she snuggled up to him on the dance floor.
Their little bunny did a lot of things well, but she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Nevertheless, he smiled and kissed her cheeks and forehead as she sang the song to him. She got her feet tangled up a couple of times until he finally moved them to the center of the dance floor and swayed with her so she could enjoy herself.
“Ooh! ‘Games’! I love Luke Bryan. Can we dance some more?” she asked, rubbing the tip of her nose against his.
“Can I cut in?” Josh said as he joined them.
She blew a kiss at Lucas as he backed up, and just to hear her giggle, he caught her kiss in midair and stuffed it down the front of his jeans. She didn’t disappoint, and the joyful sound made the warm ache in his chest spread. She was easy to love.
Chapter Eighteen
Josh chuckled as Violet held out her arms to him from the passenger seat of his truck. He meant to lift her down to the concrete driveway, but she had other ideas as she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist once they were clear of the vehicle. Lucas took her keys, grinning and shaking his head at her antics as he let them into her house.
“Mmm,” she murmured as she nuzzled his throat. She lapped at his earlobe and he got even harder, thanks to the way she was rubbing against his dick. “You smell yummy, Josh.”
“But it’s you we want to eat up, baby girl. I’m not sure you’re in any shape to fool around though.”
“Nonsense. I’m fine. I o
nly had two margaritas. Let me go change into something sexy, okay?”
He squeezed her lush ass cheeks through her jeans. “Whatever you put on won’t be on you very long. Just warnin’ ya.”
She made a purring sound as he put her down and then wrapped her arms around his brother and laid a kiss on him while teasing him, rubbing her pussy against his cock, too.
“Tease,” Lucas growled, but the relaxed look on his face and his chuckle told Josh he didn’t mind.
“Are you gonna tie me up tonight?” she asked, looking between them.
Josh shook his head. “Not when your faculties are impaired, baby girl.”
She snapped her fingers and stuck out a pouty lip. “Shoot.”
“Bang,” Lucas quipped.
“But you will, right? You weren’t making emp—hic!—empty promises, right?”
Josh held back his laughter. Not only was she an affectionate drunk, tequila also gave her hiccups. “Yes. Soon.”
The merry twinkle in her eyes and the bright flush in her cheeks as she danced a little jig didn’t make him laugh. It made him fall a little harder for her. She turned and sashayed down the hall. He had the insane urge to bite her. She was so adorable. Her blonde ringlets bounced as she hurried into her bedroom, calling, “Give me five minutes!” and the door shut behind her.
They could hear her bustling around in her closet, and her bathroom, and the bedroom while they took a few minutes to make sure the house was secure. It got quiet after a bit, and Josh checked his watch.
“It’s been more than five minutes,” Lucas said, already moving toward the hall.
They found her curled up on the bed. Dressed in a pink lace nightie, it was obvious she’d been setting her alarm clock because it was lying beside her, the cord stretched across the bed. She’d brushed out her hair and lit a candle on the dresser, so he doubted she’d forgotten about them. She’d just conked out.
His dick wasn’t happy about it, but his heart enjoyed taking care of his woman as he lifted her from the bed so Lucas could pull back the blankets and top sheet, and then he laid her, still sound asleep, in the center of her bed. The crooked smile on Lucas’s face told him that he felt as sappy as Josh did. She made a slight purring sound and tucked her hands under her chin, cuddling down in the bedding. Gazing down at her, he couldn’t find the resolve to leave her alone.
He glanced up at Lucas and was sure his face mirrored Lucas’s smitten look. “Let’s stay for a little while. Watch over her.”
Lucas quickly nodded his agreement. “She might get sick. We need to be here to take care of her.”
Josh chuckled, noting his brother’s eagerness despite the unabated erection he sported. “I’ll go hunt down some aspirin or something for her head.”
“I’ll get her a big glass of water. I think her bed could hold both of us if we squeeze in tight and don’t move around too much.”
“We shouldn’t get too comfy,” Josh said as he followed him and stood in the door of the kitchen. “She didn’t invite us to stay the whole night.”
Lucas’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded. “She told me she was going to work in the morning, to get a jump start on the week.”
“Until we can talk everything out, when she’s sober, I don’t want to be presumptuous.” One night’s abstinence certainly wouldn’t change what he felt for her.
“You think we should leave now?”
Josh shook his head. He couldn’t do it. They’d had a crazy weekend and little time to process any of it. Part of him wondered if she would’ve told him she loved them if she’d been sober.
“We’ll stay for a while and make sure she’s okay,” Josh murmured as they returned to the bedroom after finding what they needed.
He tried to wake her up to get her to take the Tylenol and the water, but she’d fallen too deeply asleep and only muttered and drifted off again without opening her eyes.
The bed was a snug fit for three, but they made it work, slipping off their jeans and boots and stripping down to T-shirts and boxers before climbing in on either side of her.
Lucas balanced his chin in his palm while he stroked her back, smiling when she made a happy moaning sound. She wiggled her ass against Josh’s groin as she snuggled against Lucas’s chest, oblivious to how her movements inflamed his already stiff dick, and sighed in her sleep.
He didn’t doze off, vigilant about being gone well before sunrise. Violet moved a lot in her sleep and the night was long as she lay between them, soft and squirmy, making kittenish sounds that made him want to bury himself in her sweet softness and fuck her into dreamless oblivion. He settled for placing his hand on her hip and breathing in the scent of her hair while she slept, the tether between his heart and her growing stronger by the moment.
* * * *
“Boss lady, I’m gonna run to Cassie’s place and get some lunch. Do you want some coffee or a kolache? Pain killers, maybe?” Lizzy asked as she leaned against the doorjamb to Violet’s office, the concern obvious in her eyes. She’d coaxed Violet back to her office, to get her out of the bright sunlight filtering in through the windows at the front of the store when it was obvious it made her head worse.
Normally, Violet loved the sausage-stuffed pastries Cassie made by hand at Divine Drip, but that morning the thought turned her stomach. “Nothing to eat, but I’d love a cup of coffee. Hot, black, with lots of sugar.” She pulled a bill from her purse and slid it across her desk. “Thanks, Lizzy. How’s your arm?” she asked, watching as Lizzy absentmindedly stroked the bandage on her forearm, where she’d required a few stitches from the flying glass the day before.
“It’s fine, just a little sore. I talked to the billing department at the hospital, and they told me you’d already settled the emergency room bill. Thank you for that.”
“It was the least I could do. I’m grateful all you needed was a few stitches.”
Lizzy shrugged, steadfast as ever. “I haven’t seen Tex yet today.”
Violet snorted. “He’s still sleeping off his binge.”
Lizzy giggled and made a sympathetic sound for their irascible feline mascot. “There’s no one in the shop right now, so you can stay back here if you want. You could leave after I get back if you need to. This was supposed to be your weekend off,”
“I know, but I needed to contact the hospital and the insurance company and ask for the police report. All that’s taken care of, but I still have orders to handle. I’m expecting the Abbott brothers after your lunch, and I’ll probably leave then.”
“The Abbott brothers, huh?” Lizzy asked with one eyebrow cocked while she tried to hide a smile. “You need them to do something?”
Yeah, mainly me. “I see you smirking,” Violet said with a slight giggle. Even that little expression made her head hurt. “Stop making me laugh. And, for your information, they are paying me a personal visit.”
Lizzy giggle-snorted and said, “’Bout damn time, too. One hot, black, sweet coffee coming up.”
The front doorbell rang a few minutes later, and she welcomed the relief from focusing on the columns of figures on the spreadsheet in front of her.
She was thankful for whatever long-ago downtown beautification project had been responsible for the mature crape myrtles lining Main Street because the leafy, flowering branches filtered the sunlight shining in through the transom windows. Even so, her head ached as she strolled through her store. Spotting movement in the bookstore, she made her way in that direction.
“Hi! Welcome to Violet’s Emporium,” she called, trying not to cringe.
“Hi, I’m looking for some information, and I thought maybe—” The woman turned around and paused when she saw Violet. “Do I know you?”
The sun was in her eyes, and Violet blinked, finally using her hand to shade them so she could see without pain. Her head pulsed as recognition dawned. There was no mistaking her red hair or that pretty face. “Yes, you do. I’m Violet Tyler, and you’re Bunny, aren’t you?”
“Yea
h, I am. Man, what are the odds, huh? I—that is, I hope I’m not putting you on the spot or anything.”
She darted a gaze around, but Violet waved away her concern and said, “It’s just you and me in here at the moment, only…I need to be careful what I say because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed.”
“I understand. I have a few questions, and I’m looking for answers in your bookstore. I won’t ask you any personal questions, I promise. Are you okay? You don’t look so hot.”
“Well…it’s like this…”
She explained her night out and hangover, leaving out the part where Josh and Lucas had brought her home and tucked her into her bed. She had been mortified to discover she was still in the nightie she’d put on to entice them before she’d evidently nodded off. She’d awakened to find her bottle of Tylenol and a tall glass of water on her bedside table. Beside the items they’d so thoughtfully set out for her was a note telling her they would come by the Emporium early that afternoon.
“I know an excellent hangover remedy recipe. If you’ll help me find the right resources, I’ll run and get you what you need and you’ll feel one hundred percent better in no time.”
“I hate for you to go to so much trouble—”
“I don’t mind. And I could really use your help. I wasn’t even sure how I was going to ask for what I need before I came in here. It’s my good luck you’re here. You need to drink some water. I’ll be right back.”
She was about to stop her, but Bunny was already out the door into the glaring sunshine.
“Please, Lord, let it work because I’m dying here.”
She stumbled back to the counter and looked at her reflection in the mirror. A tired face with shadows under tired, murky eyes and dull skin looked back at her, and she gave herself a halfhearted smile. You did this to yourself, so no whining.
Lumberjack Weekend [Divine Creek Ranch 21] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 19