Clayton wore a gray suit, hand tailored raw silk, with a pale blue silk shirt and shoes of buttery soft Italian leather. He had travelled as far from his ranch roots as he could go without taking a rocket to the moon. He even highlighted his brown hair now.
Only Winston looked as if he belonged on a ranch; a silver-haired farmer in his sixties, he wore battered old cowboy boots, well worn jeans, and a denim snap-front shirt with a bolo tie clipped with a hunk of turquoise. And he had the good grace to look embarrassed at their intrusion.
So that was why his wife was suddenly overcome with passion for him, Ty thought with a dull throb in his chest. Because his brother had showed up to spy on him.
Anger and frustration boiled up in his chest.
“Excuse me? Can a man get some privacy in the bedroom of his own house?” He stalked over to the doorway.
Winston grimaced and stepped back. “Ty, I apologize. I’ll come back later.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. They staged it; the ranch hands must have tipped them off that we were coming. I’m telling you, their marriage is a fake!” Clayton snapped at Winston.
“Look up the papers at the county courthouse, Clayton,” Ty said coldly. “Our marriage is quite legal. And since we got married four hours before you did, the ranch is mine and you’re trespassing on my property. Go home…and try not to be a sore loser.”
Clayton shoved forward, trying to barrel past his brother into the bedroom. Ty shoved back, pushing his brother into the hallway.
He glared at Ty.
“Just because you said I do in front of a j.p. doesn’t mean this is a real marriage. You really expect me to believe that you’re doing it with Fatigail Wintergreen?”
Before he could say another word, Ty’s hand shot out and caught him square in the jaw, sending him staggering back out of the room.
Clayton’s wife wailed like a banshee. “You monster! You animal!” She howled, turning beseechingly to Winston, her hands fluttering in the air, her sparkling green nails glittering in the sunlight that poured in through the hallway window. “Look what he did to my husband! Call the police, call the police!”
Winston spun around and glared at Clayton and Ludmilla. “Clayton deserved what he got, and then some. If anyone had spoken to my late wife that way, I’d have done the same thing. I told you two I would speak to Ty about your accusations. I did not say I would stand by while you insult a man and his wife and barge into their bedroom.” He turned back to Ty. “Ty, I offer my sincere apologies for coming here like this. But we do need to talk later. After dinner tonight?”
“No problem,” Ty said, shutting the door.
Then he turned back to Abigail, who stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.
“One of the ranch hands called me to tell me that they were headed this way,” she murmured, glancing at the door. “I barely had time to get my clothes out of my bedroom and move them into your closet.”
“Good job.” He laced his hands together behind her back, and she didn’t protest, didn’t move away from him. “I’m sorry about what he said.”
She shrugged. “Not your fault. It’s Clayton. He was a dick in high school, he’s a dick now. Hey, remember when I snapped that picture of him and the head of the cheerleading squad having sex under the bleachers, and I showed it to that other girl he was dating, and she scratched his face so bad he couldn’t go to prom?”
Ty grinned. “I do recall that. I loved how feisty you were back then. How you always stood up for yourself. You were a force to be reckoned with.”
He was standing right over her now, looking down at her. He took a step closer, so he was pressing up against her, and she took a step back so she was backed up against the foot of the bed.
“Abigail, I think about you every minute of the day. I want you so bad it hurts. I know you want me too; I could feel it in the way you kissed me just now.”
Abigail bit her lower lip, and a blush crept over her the creamy skin of her face. His arms were around her, and she was pressed tight between him and the foot of the bed, with nowhere to go. That was exactly how he wanted it.
“Ty, I…”
“Tell me you don’t feel the same.” He cupped her breast in his hand and smiled at her sharp intake of breath, and the flush of desire that turned her ivory cheeks a rosy red. Squeezing gently, he ran his thumb over her nipple, and she whimpered.
“Don’t like it? Don’t want me? Tell me to stop, and I will.” He brushed his lips against hers softly, and then pulled back slightly when her lips parted to kiss him.
“Ty,” she choked out.
“What?” he said, all innocence, and then did it again, a hot, teasing kiss, longer this time, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and pulling away quickly when she started to respond.
With one hand he yanked at his towel and dropped it to the floor, and then pressed against her, his cock against her soft flesh.
“Damn you!” she hissed, and then she was on him, kissing him hungrily, and blood rushed to his head and he grabbed the waistband of her skirt and yanked it off her, and then peeled her shirt off over her head.
Then they were on the bed again, in a tangle of hot flesh and hungry, probing tongues, and he was sliding between her legs. His fingers slipped in between the wet petals of her sex, and she gasped in pleasure.
“Is this what you want?” His thumb traced a slow circle on her clitoris and she cried out.
“Yes!” She whimpered. He slid his index finger inside her, curving against her inner wall and stroking until he found the right spot and she cried out.
“Yesssss….there….oh, God, don’t stop.” His finger kept stroking, slowly, and she felt embers inside her flaring and she moaned and squirmed with pleasure.
“Like that?”
“Y-yessss…” she wailed, hands clenching the bed comforter.
And then abruptly he pulled his hand out. “Ty! Please!” she begged.
“You’ve been killing me for the past week. Making me suffer. Making me want you. Say you’re sorry.”
“I- I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
“Not good enough. Roll over. I think you deserve a spanking. Would you like that, baby?’
Heat roared over her like a forest fire ignited by summer lightning. “Y-yes,” she moaned, shivering in anticipation. “I would.”
She rolled over face down on the bed.
He reached his hand around front, slid his fingers inside her, and resumed stroking her. And he bought his free hand down on the white globes of her buttocks. The flat of his hand smacked her flesh, and red hot pain and pleasure swirled together, shooting through her whole body.
“Ohhhh!” She cried out, burying her face in the pillow.
He raised his hand again, and brought it down with a resounding smack, and then did it again, and again, all the time stroking inside her until she thought she’d die from the pleasure. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, to weep, to beg for release.
Oh, God, the past week had been so hard. She’d wanted him so badly. When he came in to the kitchen in the morning barefoot and tousle-haired, when he brushed up against her in the hallway and then walked by without looking back at her, when she smelled his cologne and his earthy masculine scent…
Ohhhh! He smacked her again. She could feel every handprint on her buttocks, stinging deliciously, and red hot heat roared through her body, and she shuddered, convulsed, and the juices of her arousal soaked his fingers as she came.
Then he was spreading her legs open with his rough, callused hands, and spearing her brutally with the thickness of his erection, shoving inside her while ripples of orgasm still convulsed her.
He lay on top of her, pinning her hands above her head with his hands and pumping into her, and his harsh rasps of breath in her ear were like music because it meant he wanted her.
His smooth skin and his hard muscles pressed into her.
Harder. He pumped harder, deep inside her, every thrust rocking her body, unt
il he finally exploded and filled her with his hot sticky seed. She felt his warmth filling her and oozing out onto her inner thighs.
“Hey,” she said suddenly. “You weren’t wearing a condom?”
“So what?” He hugged her up against him, kissing her shoulder. “You’re my wife.”
“But I –that’s-“ she protested.
He kissed her shoulder again and then nipped at it. “I loved being bare inside you. It felt so good,” he said. “I know I’m clean. I had a very thorough checkup recently and haven’t been with anybody since.”
“Me too. But…We…This isn’t a real…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Well, it’s true. What if I got pregnant?”
“We’d have a beautiful little boy or girl or maybe even twins, and they’d grow up on a ranch with a mommy and daddy that loved them.”
As he said it, she knew he was telling the truth. Good lord, he really meant it. He really wanted to be in this marriage. To be married to her. And he’d be delighted, not horrified, if she were pregnant with his child.
It was hard to wrap her head around, and she still only half believed it, but it didn’t matter right then, because he was rolling her onto her back with a look of deep, carnal hunger in his eyes, and the world melted away and only the two of them existed.
“I was going to take a shower before I headed back out. Join me.” There was a rough air of command in his voice, and instantly she was wet and throbbing with desire again. What kind of weakling was she, to crave her husband’s domination like this? Outside of the bedroom, she was a thoroughly independent, opinionated, take-charge woman, but when he took charge in the bedroom, she melted into a quivering puddle of lust. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.
A tremor of alarm ran through her as she realized that she’d just thought of him as “her husband.” Careful, Abigail, she thought. This marriage was never meant to last.
In the shower, he turned on a blast of warm water, squeezed some shampoo into his hands, and then began massaging it into her scalp. His fingers were strong and firm, and the feeling of his hands on her scalp was so sensual that she leaned her head back and moaned.
Then he was pressing up against her, his hard cock pressing into the small of her back, and his wet fingers spreading her open and sliding inside her, moving right to that spot again. Up and down, up and down…with every stroke, a white hot streak of pleasure shot throughout her whole body, and she sagged back against him, helpless.
“Ohhhh….ohhhh….ohhhh…” she moaned with each stroke.
“My god, do you know what it does to me when you moan like that?” She could feel his cock swelling even bigger against her wet skin, and then he slid his fingers out and his cock was inside her again, forcing his way into her tight tunnel.
“Touch yourself while I fuck you,” he ordered her, and cupped her breasts in his hands, squeezing and kneading her sensitive flesh.
With trembling fingers, she began to stroke her hard, swollen bud, leaning back and pressing against him. He was like a wall holding her up, supporting her with his strength.
“You like this?” He hissed, pistoning into her.
“I love it,” she moaned.
“Keep touching yourself. Do it faster. Harder.”
“Ohhhh, my God….”She moved her fingers faster, jerking hard at her clitoris as the thickness of his shaft stretched her, swelling inside her and filling her with red hot pleasure with each thrust. She was helpless, completely under his control.
Hot flames of ecstasy licked at her heated sex, and then spread throughout her body in a crackling inferno, until she exploded, muscles convulsively squeezing his cock, and she sobbed his name, tears of relief trickling down her cheeks. His arms tightened around her and he crooned in her ear, “Baby, baby, I love you. You make feel so good.”
His words stole her breath. He loved her? Did he really, or was it the heat of the moment fogging his brain?
At the moment, she didn’t care. He held her in his arms and she was safe and warm and she felt like she was home and everything was right with the world.
Chapter Nine
Abigail served up a dinner of beef stew and garlic mashed potatoes. Clayton and Ludmilla sat at the mahogany dining table across from them, with plates of food which Ludmilla had picked up at a restaurant in town; Ludmilla was picking at an arugula salad and Clayton ate a steak and fries. Winston, Abigail and Ty dug into their beef stew with gusto.
Ty glanced across the table at Clayton. “I can’t think of anything much ruder than bringing your own meal when somebody’s cooked dinner for you. I see your wife wasn’t brought up any better than you were.”
Ludmilla’s green eyes glazed over with fury, and Clayton’s knuckles turned white as he gripped his fork.
“If I eat her food, then I will look like her,” Ludmilla smiled poisonously, speaking in her heavy Eastern European accent. “Like the cows that graze on these mountains.”
The temperature in the air abruptly dropped fifty degrees and Ty pushed his chair back, rising slowly to his feet, with murder in his eyes. Ludmilla scooted her chair closer to Clayton’s, sudden fear flashing across her face.
Lilly shrugged, picking up another forkful of mashed potatoes. “That’s right, I enjoy what I eat, and I’m perfectly happy with what I look like,” she said calmly. “And so is my husband, whose opinion is the only one that I care about. You have to starve yourself all day, every day, to look like you do, and I see you staring at food all the time like a chained up dog ready to pounce. That can’t be a lot of fun.”
And she put the buttery mashed potatoes in her mouth and smiled blissfully.
Heaven.
She was a damned good cook, and she knew it.
Ludmilla watched with hungry eyes, and swallowed hard.
Slowly, Ty sat down again, but his expression was like thunder. “Watch how you talk to my wife, or I’ll physically pick you up and throw you off our property on your bony ass,” he gritted out at Ludmilla, who glowered down at her salad, not meeting his eyes.
“This is my property, not yours.” Clayton leaped to his feet, hands clenched into fists, and Ty followed suit.
“You haven’t won a fight with me since you were sixteen, and now you’ve gotten soft, city boy. Let’s go,” Ty snapped.
Winston leaped to his feet, throwing down his napkin.
“Enough!” He barked.
They all turned to look at him.
“Ty, your brother contacted me with some serious accusations. He claims that you have entered into a fake marriage, a marriage of convenience, because you wanted to inherit the ranch. After your marriage, he hired a private investigator, who uncovered this.”
Winston had brought his briefcase to dinner with him, resting it on the floor against the table leg. Now he opened up his briefcase and pulled out a piece of paper, which he handed to Ty, who looked at it, expressionless.
Abigail leaned over to see, carefully keeping a neutral expression on her face as nausea swelled up inside her and threatened to choke her.
It was a printout of a society paper article from a Madison, Wisconsin, newspaper. It showed Ty standing next to a beautiful woman in a red gown, with her hair swept up into an elegant blonde updo, at a rancher’s charity auction to raise money for a children’s summer camp. The caption underneath the article identified her as Jeannette Little, his girlfriend.
It was dated a week before Ty had arrived in Cross Creek.
Abigail felt her heart drop into the bottom of her stomach. Was Ty’s girlfriend waiting for him back in Wisconsin, riding out this silly fake marriage until Ty had secured his ownership of the ranch? She looked so perfect next to him. The Ken and Barbie couple.
Abigail forced a smile on her face, but her heart hammered so hard against her ribcage that she was afraid that it was visible to everyone in the room.
Ty shrugged, and handed the clipping back to Winston. “I dated Jeannette off and on for a few months.
Our relationship was over a month before this picture was taken, but she’d already signed us both up to appear at this charity auction, and she begged me to go, said she’d be humiliated if I didn’t attend after she’d told everyone that I would.”
“She told me that you were still a couple when you landed here in Colorado,” Clayton said, his smile gloating, triumphant.
“I’m not surprised she’d make up something like that. She wanted more from me, and she’s a girl who’s used to getting her own way. It didn’t end well when she figured out that I meant what I said all along, that I wasn’t looking for anything serious with her.”
“She said you called her every day up until you got married,” Clayton plowed on, sneering.
“Really? I’d love to see the cell phone records that back that up,” Ty smiled coldly.
Clayton faltered for a minute. He’d gone too far. “You could have gotten a disposable phone…” he muttered.
“Right. Like that makes any sense. You’re not going to be able to dig up any calls between the two of us after the day of that charity ball, because there were none. And there were no calls from me to her the month before that charity event, either, although there were five or ten calls a day from her to me at the ranch.”
When Clayton’s eyes lit up, Ty added coolly “She left me voicemails begging me to call her back and give her another chance. Asking me why I couldn’t see that we were meant for each other. I still have the voicemails,” and Clayton’s face fell.
Winston turned to Ty, brow wrinkling. “You’ve got to admit that this marriage to Abigail pretty much came out of the blue. You arrived in town and married her, what? A week and a half later?”
Curvy Girls: Claimed By The Cowboy (The BBW and the Billionaire Rancher) Page 6