Unless I missed word that any of your hands got hitched.”
“Naw, none of ’em found a woman suitin’ for them yet. Now Mary-Beth, she stepped into Ma’s place right quick and takes care of us all. Seems to be happy doing it, too. James and me like to eat here at the house once in a while is all. When we get half a mind, one of us does the cooking.”
“I figured you would expect me to cook.” Sarah stopped on the front porch, not yet ready to go inside. “Seein’ as how I owe you and James for, well, you know.” She shrugged.
“Saving your pretty neck this mornin’,” Billy finished for her. “We didn’t do it so you’d have to pay us back, Sarah.”
“That’s not what James said.”
“James lets his pride get a little heavy on his tongue sometimes. All the turning down you’ve been doin’ to us these last years, it ain’t set well with him. He’s tired of playing games and, damnit all to hell, Sarah, so am I. As for the cooking, we figure you can see to that after you get settled in. I’m thinkin’ James has got a hankering to pamper you a tad first.”
“James, pamper me?” Sarah barely caught the laugh that bubbled in her throat.
“Man’s been known to do some crazy stuff for a spell.” Billy grinned. “Enjoy it while he’s got half a mind, ’cause there ain’t no telling when his mind’ll settle that way again.”
Sarah stepped over the threshold of the Cassidy house and marveled at the sensation of home that caressed her flesh. She’d been here before a time or two when she was a wee girl and a few times more shortly before her parents came up sick.
Nothing much changed, and she figured the Cassidy brothers aimed to keep it that way.
The sight of James in the kitchen with a plate of biscuits in one hand and a bowl of gravy in the other made a picture she never thought to see. He didn’t say anything as he set the food in the center of the table. Billy led her to a seat.
She caught a whiff of the food as she sat and her tummy gave another louder grumble.
“Nice to know I was right.” James grazed the back of his thumb down her cheek. When Sarah looked up at him in question, he shrugged. “Smudge of dirt. It bothers me when it’s messin’ up that pretty face.”
Sarah blinked, so unaccustomed to his sporadic comments of affection that it took a moment for it to settle in her mind. The brothers took their respective seats at the ends of the table, both propping their elbows on the table and taking up a pose of looking right at her. No plates sat before either of them.
“You aren’t gonna eat?” She glanced at both of them in turn.
“We got our bellies full before we rode out this mornin’,” Billy answered. “Go ahead, eat up.”
Hunger kept Sarah from caring that they took the time to eat before coming to her aid this morning or that they sat on either side of her now, watching her every bite. She reached for a biscuit, not taking the time to dollop the gravy before breaking off a piece and shoving it in her mouth.
Something intimate settled in the air around the table as she ate with the Cassidy brothers’ gazes locked on her. Several times, she caught the notion to lick her lips, to take a slower, smaller bite, and might’ve sworn she heard one of them inhale a sharper breath. Despite a woman’s place and the expectance for her to cower to her man, power lay in femininity. Sarah learned that from listening to the whores at the brothel and kept that treasured secret to herself.
“Was it so bad, spending the night in the jail?”
Sarah stopped in midchew, surprised by the concern in James’s question. It was different than when Billy asked the same question during their ride from town.
She anticipated such things out of Billy, whom she often thought of as the softer Cassidy brother.
“Knowing that I’d be hanged come mornin’?” Sarah rolled her eyes and went back to eating. His concern moved her but not enough for her to tamp down the spitfire responses he claimed to be accustomed to out of her. “Why ever would that have bothered me? I slept like a baby.”
“Hmm.” James clucked his tongue. “Why only send an invitation to us?
Sheriff would’ve let you send one to the whole town if you’d been so inclined.”
“Who says I wasn’t? The two of you weren’t the only people who showed this mornin’.” But they were the only ones she’d given a hill of beans about.
James slanted her a look that told her he wasn’t chewing on a single bean.
“None of them would’ve did a thing to get that noose off your pretty neck, and you know it.”
“Seems I do,” Sarah agreed. “I believe I already told you why I sent the invitation. I even thanked you for coming.”
“You did.” He nodded. “I’m finding myself in half a mind to return that thanks.”
“Oh?” Sarah blinked at him. Did the man ever cease to surprise her? “How so?”
“Well, as I figure it, if you hadn’t gotten yourself branded as a cattle rustler, Billy and me would still be chasin’ after your sexy ass. I’ve become mighty tired of doing that lately. What I’d rather do is blister that ass for gettin’ into such mischief and move on settin’ stuff to rights.”
Sarah’s ass tingled with the promise in his words. She didn’t doubt for a second that if James got his way, she wouldn’t be sitting well for a week. A quick glance at Billy confirmed it might be two weeks, given how he’d already promised much of the same.
“Don’t you two have work to do? You’re burnin’ daylight sitting here threatening me.”
“What I’m telling you ain’t a threat, darlin’,” James drawled. “As for working, we’re leavin’ that to the hired help today, seein’ as how we’ve found ourselves with more important things to deal with.”
“I suppose I would be that more important thing?” Why on God’s green earth did that declaration make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Sarah couldn’t fathom it. She didn’t like being considered a thing, and his way of dealing with her would likely prove something she didn’t want.
Except she did want it. She wanted him, and Billy, too. The slickness of her folds and the burn in her channel laid weight to that.
“You would.” He nodded, his eyes turning that crisp, wintery brownish-green she associated with pure male arousal and attitude. “The more I think it over, the more certain I am that mine and Billy’s hands will be put to better use right here in the house today.”
Chapter Three
James bit back a grin and a groan at the flush that rose to turn Sarah’s cheeks pink. He embarrassed her with the implications of his intentions. Sweet, sweet Sarah, strong enough not to cower to any man, tough enough to hold her own in a society where in some minds women ranked lower than the cattle on the land.
Sweet enough to blush at the thought of having his hands on her slight body.
She swallowed, drawing his attention to her slim throat, to the smooth expanse of flesh he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into. His cock throbbed. His balls stung as if smacked with a whip. The need for her that settled in him too long ago wouldn’t be ignored much longer.
“How do you figure your hands will be put to better use?” James gave her credit for staying steady and holding her own despite the unease settling in her expression. He decided to show her a bit of mercy, at least where taking her tantalizing body came into play.
“Billy and I figured you’d need some help gettin’ settled in now that you’re home.”
Temper sparked like a tinderbox in her deep-blue eyes. Boy howdy, if he could be certain of nothing else about this spitfire of a woman, he knew her defiance would keep him on his toes.
“In case it somehow slipped your notice, Mr. Cassidy, I have a home.”
“Yes, it seems you do, Miss McLaury, right here with Billy and me.” James waited for her to argue and found himself half-pissed when she slowly nodded and went back to eating. What in damnation was she doing, giving in so easy?
“Payment,” she muttered an
d shoved the last bite of her biscuit into her mouth. “Well, I suppose there ain’t nothing that comes for free anymore. What about my stuff?”
James turned out to be the one wanting to argue. He couldn’t fault her for thinking that way. After all, he and Billy left her only two choices, become their woman or hang. That didn’t make him like it any more.
“One of us will fetch it tomorrow,” Billy told her when James didn’t answer.
Sarah sat up straighter. “I want to go.”
“No.” James didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.” Sarah held his gaze with a steady and determined one of her own.
“Sarah.” Billy made her name a warning, no doubt seeing the muscle ticking in James’s jaw.
“I’m going with you, whichever one of you goes, to get my things. I have a right to go.” Though she spoke to Billy, her stare never wavered from James.
“I understand why you feel the need to see your place tidied and closed up,” James said with so much patience in his tone it surprised even him. “But there ain’t going to be no time to dillydally. There’s work to be done around here, and neither of us can afford to take off two days in a row.”
“Stop wasting daylight now and you won’t need to work tomorrow.” James shot Billy a look when he covered a chuckle with a cough. “You’re really lookin’ to stretch that curvy body over my knees, aren’t you, darlin’?” At the flare of heat in her eyes, he figured he hit one desire on the head, even if it wasn’t quite the one he needed to please right now.
“Take her with you, James. I’ll hold down the fort till you get back.” James exchanged a look with his brother. Billy would know James’s real hesitation in being gone too long. James suspected the whole rustling business wasn’t over yet. More, he had a good mind to believe McCoy was behind the thievery. Rock McCoy owned the ranch neighboring the Cassidy land to the west, a fact that really rankled the feathers of old man McCoy. He wanted the Cassidy land to add to his own spread and stopped at little over the years to drive the Cassidys off their property. Too bad for McCoy, Cassidy men and their hired hands were made of stronger stock.
And so was Sweet Sarah McLaury, James thought as he resigned himself to the fact that he’d have to bring her along with him on the morning ride across the way. He didn’t doubt for a second that Rock McCoy drove the cattle supposedly rustled from his land straight to Sarah’s. If James put two and two together, he likely had the one behind the missing heads on his own land, too. The yellowbelly bastard McCoy framed Sarah sure as the driven snow if for no other reason than to lash out at him and Billy in an all-new way. The whole town knew the Cassidy brothers had designs on Sarah. What better way to break a man than to set his woman up to be hanged?
“Fine,” James ground through his teeth. “We’ll ride out at first light.” Sarah gave him a haughty nod that nearly made him laugh, and she visibly relaxed. “I don’t suppose I could go down to the watering hole now. I could use a good washin’.”
James figured after spending a night in the jail followed by half the morning tethered to a platform in front of the courthouse, she probably felt ripe as a pig in slop right about now.
Billy pushed back from the table and stood. “I’ll get the water goin’. Won’t take too long, and you can get a bath in the tub.”
“Tub.” Sarah’s eyes widened. “You have a real tub?”
“Belonged to Ma,” James told her, enjoying the first real signs of true excitement and pleasure in her eyes. “Doesn’t get used much these days and ain’t gonna become a habit, either. We ain’t carting buckets of water back to the bedroom every mornin’ and night.”
“I can fetch my own water,” Sarah spat.
“Not today. This’ll be part of that pamperin’ thing,” Billy told her. “All you need to do is sit back and feel.”
Arousal mingled with fear in Sarah’s expression, and James knew exactly what she expected to feel from his and Billy’s hands today. The deep-blue need in her eyes stroked his cock as effectively as her touch. He would do whatever it took to rid her of the fear.
* * * *
Sarah folded her arms beneath her breasts as Billy dumped the last bucket of water in the tub they set in the corner of the bedroom. A real tub! She couldn’t believe it. She’d always wanted one but never saw the expense necessary when she had a perfectly good watering hole outside her house. Summertime offered a refreshing dip in the cool springwater. In the winter, she settled for wipe downs with water she’d warm in the basin in her kitchen. But she dreamed of one day owning a tub.
It’s your house now, she thought. Stands to reason that’s your tub, too.
“There you go.” Billy set down the bucket and turned to her.
When he didn’t move to leave the room, she shot a glance at the door, where she found James leaning a broad shoulder against the doorway, his gaze intent on her.
Sarah cleared her throat. “Do you mind?”
“Not a bit, darlin’.” James didn’t move a muscle.
Sarah bit back the smart retort that sprang to her tongue and went for a more polite one. “A little privacy, please?”
James shook his head. “Sorry, darlin’, but we’re still not sure you don’t plan to bolt at the first opportunity.”
“You left me standing outside earlier,” Sarah pointed out, flabbergasted. “I could’ve run then.”
“You wouldn’t have gotten far,” Billy told her. “I’d have caught you pretty quick like.”
“You could at least stand out in the hall.”
“And you could go out the window,” James countered.
Infuriating man. Sarah seethed. “If I remember right, there’s a briar bush right outside that window, too.”
She recollected seeing it a time before when she’d taken a stroll around the Cassidy spread. When she’d spent some time imagining what it would be like to be the woman of the land.
She gave her head a quick shake. She didn’t need to think on that now.
“Your memory is servin’ you just fine.”
“Then if I tried to go out that way I’d land my fanny right in that bush and you’d be around the house to catch me before I ever got the first thorn out of my tail.” James’s lips twitched. “I’d be more than happy to pluck them thorns out of your pretty tail, too. But how about we save you the stickers and me the fun and just get into the bath?”
Sarah heaved a sigh. “Would you at least turn your backs so I can get undressed, please?”
James lifted a brow. “Please? Well, now, Sweet Sarah, that’s twice you’ve said that. It’s nice to know you’re already familiar with the word, seein’ as how I plan to make you use it more often.”
Sarah’s belly exploded in a blast of sensational arousal. To her utter shock, he and Billy turned their backs where they stood. She started to undress, her attention shifting from one man to the other as she unbuttoned her dress.
“Sure you don’t want some help?” Billy asked.
Sarah’s gaze snapped to him, half expecting to find him watching her. He stood with his back straight, his hands loose at his sides, his head forward and unmoving. She studied his back, taking in the way his dark curls flirted with the neckline of his shirt. It made her hands itch to bury themselves in the silken strands while he settled his strong frame between her widespread legs and…
She jolted, heat rushing to her face. “I can manage just fine,” she snapped.
“Are you sure, darlin’?” James’s slow drawl drew her attention to his back. He remained in the doorway, leaning the opposite shoulder against the frame, his feet crossed at the ankles, making a picture of a cool, confident cowboy.
“I’ve been undressin’ myself since I was a wee girl. I think I should be able to handle the chore by now.”
“I don’t know.” James clucked his tongue. “Seems there’s always somethin’
new to learn. A special way to untie a bow…”
“An easy way of sli
din’ a dress off the creamy flesh of the shoulders,” Billy chimed in.
“A careful way of shuckin’ them knickers down those shapely legs,” James continued.
Sarah’s breath caught in her throat as her body sizzled with sensations both foreign and familiar. Desire, acute and all consuming, raced through her bloodstream.
Somehow they knew without looking what part of her clothing she was removing.
Did they know without hearing the thoughts that were going through her mind? Did they know without feeling how slick her slit became when they talked to her in such husky, promise-filled tones?
“I bet your mother didn’t teach you proper,” Billy guessed.
“My mother taught me just fine,” Sarah shot back at him.
“Some things just can’t be taught,” James said. “Some things have to be learned through experience.”
“Oh, and I bet you’ve gotten yourself plenty of that,” Sarah ground out, not wanting to think of James or Billy with the whores at the brothel in town.
“Sweet Sarah, is that jealousy I hear, darlin’?” James’s mocking tone infuriated her as much as the envy that curled in her belly. “I’d be happy to show you.
Billy and I both will.”
Sarah thought she’d had about enough lessons for one day. She didn’t answer him as she moved to the tub. The water steamed, warning her of its heated temperature before she dared to touch a toe to the surface. She drew a breath through her teeth as she slowly lowered one foot into the water and then the other, allowing her body to adjust to the hotness a fraction at a time.
She sighed in contentment as she settled into the tub, flipping her long braid over the side as she leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Feel good?”
Something about the clarity of James’s voice raised her alarm. She opened her eyes, releasing an undignified screech when she saw that both men now watched her.
She bolted upright, one hand flying to cover her mound while the other arm attempted to conceal her breasts. Water sloshed over the side of the tub, splashing to the floor in audible drops.
Her Dominant Saviors Page 3