by Jade Cary
“…fuck you ‘til you can’t see straight…taught some manners, little girl…”
A long-hauler came up over the hill, and Jed yanked open the door of the backseat so that we were hidden between the two open doors. He lifted my hips higher and my heels dug into his back. He put a boot up on the side step for leverage and impaled me. A long, mournful bleat escaped from the truck as it passed. Of course it did; the driver was up high. He saw everything.
Jed circled his hips and thrust deep again. I pushed up to meet his hips. He stilled, wound his hand tighter into my hair, and yanked my head back, exposing my jugular. His words were clear and to the point.
“Move again and I’ll have you over my knee before you can take your next breath.”
He tilted me further and plunged deep. There was nothing slow or romantic about his delivery. He was relentless, his cock the whiphand. Every thrust was a shock and every grunt spurned me to rise up and meet him halfway, but I heeded his warning and remained still as he fucked me without mercy. This was truly a side of Jed I had indeed never seen. The harder he fucked me the wetter I became, until his cock was sliding effortlessly in and out of me. He tightened my legs around his waist and small grunts escaped his lips, keeping time with the jerk of his hips.
I caught his eyes as the little death crept through me. I was so close. So close. He plundered my mouth as he growled his orgasm against my tongue. His hips jerked as he spilled his seed, uttering undecipherable words against my ear until I’d squeezed every last drop from his body. Then he stilled. Eyes on mine, he withdrew with a pop, grabbed my hips and flipped me facedown over the premium leather seat. As an exclamation point, he delivered a blistering slap to each of my bottom cheeks. And as I lay there, dazed, he lifted one leg, and then the other and slipped them through the legs of my jeans. He pulled me to my feet, pulled my pants up over my naked bottom and fastened them up. Cock still out of his pants, still hard, arms around my waist, he pressed into my backside. An arm went under my legs and I was swept off my feet and deposited back into the seat. The seatbelt was fastened across my lap before I could fully digest what happened. He tossed my sandals on the floor of the truck and my pink panties stayed where they were, ripped and in a heap in the weeds.
Jed righted his clothes and walked with a purpose to the driver’s side, got in, and, pulled out onto the highway. I sat there, stunned and breathless as his semen trickled out of me and into the crotch of my jeans. The sting on both bottom cheeks was heightened by the fact that I was so close to coming. I shifted on the seat and parted my thighs in an attempt to use the stiff apex of denim that met between my legs to finish me off.
“You come, Chandler Elise, and I will pull this truck over, throw you over the hood, take off my belt, pull your pants down and whip your sweet ass until you’re speaking in tongues. Sit still.”
I stared straight ahead, all of my senses heightened now. I dug deep for anger and a touch of indignation. Nothing came.
“You got anything more to say to me?”
I shook my head, my eyes downcast as I counted the pores in my hands.
“You sure? No sarcasm?”
“No.”
“No sass?”
I shook my head.
“Anything you’d like to call me, any suggestions on how I can perform unnatural acts on myself? Anything?”
“No.”
“Good. Sit quietly.”
He pressed a button on the steering wheel and a ringing phone bled through the speakers of the car.
“Yeauh,” in a gravelly voice came over the truck speaker.
“Eddie,” he said.
“We’re still trying to figure this out, Jed.”
“Sherriff been called?”
“Yeah. On the way.”
“How many head?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Okay. I’ve got Chandler. We’ll be there soon.”
“Right. See you then.”
Silence, and then Jed reached over, took my hand and held it between us.
The issue of my father, Ramon and a gun paled in comparison to what awaited us at the ranch.
An Enemy At The Gates
I did not know what I was seeing. Dark lumps dotted the forty-acre pasture south of the paddocks and grain silos. Several ranch hands and three sheriff’s deputies stood in front of a branding station. No one moved.
“Jed,” I whispered. Cattle littered the pasture, lying on their sides, unmoving. They rose like the mounds of freshly dug graves. The rest of the herd had been moved into the paddock, but one lone calf escaped the exodus and its distressed caterwauling echoed through the eerie silence. Collin, God bless him, ran out into the pasture, dodging dead bovine until he came to the lost wanderer. The calf stood rigid over a prone cow, and the sound coming from the small animal was unlike anything I’d ever heard.
“Oh…” I sobbed as I moved from Jed’s side toward the pasture.
One hand snatched my elbow and the other gripped my waist. “No.” To Eddie Muenster, standing beside us, he said, “How many?”
“Thirty-two out of the sixty or so head that were out here. Eight of ‘em calves.”
I tried to twist out of Jed’s grip. “Let me go,” I sobbed.
“I said no. Come with me.” He led me away from the group and turned me so my back was to the horror in the pasture. “You don’t need that.”
“Stop shielding me. This is my land, and this is my business.”
“I’ll shield and protect you any time I see fit. You want a scene over that as well, woman, and I’ll give you one.”
His highhandedness was infuriating—especially after the last hour—yet I knew it came from a genuine place. I’d fight him another day over this annoying flaw in his character. “What’s going on here, Jed? Please tell me.”
He could not have prepared me for the devastation in this pasture I’d loved coming to as a child. I would sit for hours and watch the babies with their mamas, knowing they’d be sold, and wanting to get my time in with them before it happened. Just by watching them, I learned which belonged to which, and I’d conjure up a family life for them all, complete with a mommy and a daddy who never left.
“How…what killed the cattle?”
“They got to the feed somehow.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“The cattle you see out there were the first in the paddock to eat,” he continued. “We sent the whole herd out to graze, so only half of them were sent through the paddock and then out to the pasture.”
“How, Jed? I don’t understand.”
He looked down at me. “C’mon, let’s get you home.”
“No, I…”
“I’m taking you home, right now,” he said with grim authority. “You’re exhausted. This problem’ll still be here tomorrow.”
He got me seated in the truck. I was livid. I thought it best not to scream my fury at him in front of everyone, mostly because he’d be likely to act in kind, without the use of words, which I did not need. So, I sat quietly as he stood outside, talking to the ranch hands and deputies. It was becoming clear how much Jed had taken on—when my father was alive, and now that he was gone. This was my land, my home, my legacy. I would not let him do this alone.
Jed started the engine and took my hand as he drove down the ruddy dirt road toward the house.
“What is going on? Don’t play word games with me, Jed Brooks, and do not lie to me.”
“I’m not…”
I punched the door with the side of my fist. “If this conversation were reversed and I continued to play loose with the facts, I’d be counting the ridges in your floor mats right now,” I cried with new rage I’d never felt before.
His weary face sagged and he closed his eyes. “That is true.”
“Then talk to me, right now.”
I watched him think, form his words into soft language designed to placate a loved-one. I wanted to kick him. “Jed?” I was growing impatient, and once I was there, ful
ly, I planned to blow—and that would be a whole other thing between us. Still, I wasn’t above it. I wanted to suggest he talk soon, but never got to it.
“A year or so ago, a group of investors approached your father about selling the ranch—actually a portion of the ranch, the area south of Poppy Creek and the base of the Madison Range.”
“Okay. Why there?” It was useless land—beautiful but of no use. When it snowed, it was inaccessible.
“Your dad saw it the same way and said no thanks. After that, things started happening.”
“What kinds of things?”
“It started as small annoyances: equipment ordered that got shipped someplace else…”
“Your hay baler in Tulsa.”
“Yeah. Other stuff, too, like supplies we never ordered showing up at the ranch. This year the ranch was audited because, according to the IRS, taxes hadn’t been paid.”
“They had, of course—you handle that.”
“Of course. Then last year an entire field of unharvested alfalfa was burned—eighty acres.”
“And then the bunkhouse burned down.” I said, all of it coming together. It’s been a rough year…my father said in his emails more than once. So had Eddie Muenster.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”
“I know, I…”
“No. No, Jed! This is MY ranch, my land. I want to know everything, right now.”
“Okay.”
“Who’s behind this?”
“Outsiders. It’s hard to pin them down. There are layers upon layers of companies and names they hide behind. We think they have an office in town—a real estate office—that acts as a front for whatever else they’re up to. They’ve dug in. They’re getting nothing from us so far, and they’re going after other pieces of land. Can’t say how they’re faring.”
“Why us? Why our land?”
“Honestly, Chan, I think it’s oil.”
“Oil?”
He nodded. “I think they know something about that spot that we don’t. And they want it—bad enough to do something like this.” His jaw worked furiously as he calmed himself so he could think. I’d never known Jed to lose his cool, yet in the short time since I’d come home, I saw it plenty. I chalked it up to passion. He was smart, though. He knew passion would not win him this fight.
“Why can’t the sheriff just go pick these people up? If you have someone you suspect…”
“There’s no proof, babe, and you never want to tip your hand. You lay low and wait for them to make the mistake, which they always do.”
“You say they have a real estate office in town?”
Jed turned to me, his face like stone. “You will not, under any circumstances, confront these people, Chandler. Do you understand me?”
“This is my home, Jed, and they’ve fucked with the wrong Asher.”
“Honey, confronting them is not the way to handle this.”
“Just one opportunity to look in their eyes…”
“And you think the secretary and the receptionist in that real estate office are behind poisoning the cattle? If I’m right, and this company is a front, they are in this business to look for land they think will benefit them and they don’t care how they get it. They’ve got some perception that we’re naïve and homespun out here in Big Sky. Bastards have no idea who they’re dealing with, but it looks like they’ll do whatever it takes to get their hands on this land. And I mean whatever it takes. None of it is worth getting hurt, or worse, over. We lay low and let them make the mistakes.”
I stared out the window.
“Chandler?”
“I’m not promising a thing.”
“Let me be clear: I’ll lose the whole fucking place before I allow you to put yourself at risk.”
“Fine,” I huffed.
“I have no idea what these people are capable of, but all we can do now is take precautions and lay low. They’ll make a mistake soon enough. We have something they want. Ball’s in their court.”
Jed pulled up to the ranch manager’s house. As he put the truck in park, I grabbed the door handle.
“Get your hand off that door.” I pulled my hand back like I’d touched something hot, and met his eyes. “Don’t move.”
Jed got out and came around to my side. He opened my door and held his hand out to me. I wondered if he was being gallant, or if I was still on some sort of time-out for my actions earlier. He set his hands at my waist, one corner of his mouth cocked in an arrogant smirk.
“Allow?”
Jed raised his brows. “Pardon?”
“You said you’d lose the whole place before you’d allow me to put myself at risk? You’re allowing and not allowing now?”
“That’s right. Problem?”
“You punished me with your…your…penis,” I hissed. “On the highway.”
“Damn right I did. Anything else?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Excellent. Get your ass up to the house and say hello to Maria and your brother, then we’ll deal with the problem in the pasture. And Chandler,” he said as I made my way to the porch. I turned around. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Oh, boy.
I sat in the big leather chair with a chenille throw around me and stared into the fire. As declared, Jed was indeed not through with me. After spending hours down at the pasture, until it was too dark to see, we left the men and their bulldozers to dispose of the dead animals. I cried through dinner. Charlie seemed destroyed—at what happened, and my reaction to it especially. It took hours to settle him enough so that he could sleep, and that was when Jed led me back to his place, stripped me and put me in his bed. I lay next to him like the dead, eyes vacant, staring off into space. Nothing he did could arouse me. Finally, he got up and took a call in the other room, while I found a chair and something to stare at. For the first time since I arrived to bury my father, we were at a loss for words.
“What?” he finally said. He had returned to the bed and now sat with his back against the headboard, the top sheet pulled up to his waist, one knee bent and one long, thick leg sticking out of the sheet. His wrist hung limp over the bent knee, and his heated stare burned me.
I shook my head and stared into the flames. I like the blue parts. Those were the hottest. Jed got out of bed crouched down in front of me. Still naked, I watched the gooseflesh sprout on his arms and shoulders.
“I’m angry, Jed. I’m so damn angry. You should have told me about this right away, when I arrived to bury Daddy.”
“I know.” He stood and gave my hand a tug. “Stand up.”
“No.”
“I’d like to hold you in my lap, Chan. That’s all.”
“No.”
“Please.”
Jed communicated by touch, in all ways and in all things. He was not a walk-awayer, or a pouter, nor did he believe in the silent treatment. For all of his macho, Montana-man ways, he was a very good communicator. And he was most effective while he was touching me—whether it was delivering a blistering, making love to me, or holding me in his lap. I stood, he sat, and nestled me on his lap, tossing the throw over both of us. I rested my head on his chest and the deep-rooted anger of a moment ago gave way to a settling in my soul. That made me mad, too. I wanted to stay angry; it was where my strength lay.
“I didn’t know if you were staying after the funeral. I didn’t know what your commitment was to this place. I didn’t need other opinions or thoughts about what to do, especially from someone who had no skin in the game. And, I was trying to protect you. Telling you I’m sorry implies I’d do it differently if I had the chance, and that’d be a lie. Would you accept that I understand why you’re angry now, and that I’m sorry about that? Can I say that I know you’re committed now, and that I promise I won’t keep anything from you again?” He kissed my forehead, then tipped my face to kiss my lips, tender, with grace. “Can I remind you that I love you more than I’ve loved anything
in my life, and ask if that is enough to get us through any misunderstandings?”
“Damn you, Jed!” I slugged him somewhere, and not hard because I had no swing available to me. “You’re too good at this.”
“Can you answer me, or do you plan to stay mad?”
“It’s enough.” I looked up into his eyes. “Lord, do I love you.”
He smiled for the first time since he picked me up at the Hollow O. “I love you too, darlin’. I’d like to show you, if you’ve settled down some—although I’m not opposed to having an angry woman in my bed. Definitely makes things more interesting.”
“If it’s all the same to you, honey, I’d just like you to hold me tonight.”
“I can do that.”
The next night, after a long day on horseback herding cows from one section of the ranch to another, and taking care of a large shipment of hay that was going to Saudi Arabia, the man got nasty. I’d just taken a long soak in the tub. This city girl was not used to spending all day on a horse, or tossing hay hither and yon. I could hardly move.
“Spread those legs—wide. I want to look at you while I undress.” He’d hauled me out of the tub, dried me off and laid me down across his bed.
“Jed!” Honestly, the man had me in a constant state of embarrassment. Before I could put together another thought, I was airborne and lying over his lap. He sat sideways, knees pressed against the side of the bed.
“You don’t mind.” He delivered a sharp swat to my right cheek. “That’s your biggest problem.”
“I have problems much bigger, I assure you,” I screeched as he swatted my ass again. “And that mouth. I swear to God, Chandler, you will live draped across my knee with your ass bare if you don’t curb that tongue.”
“Oh, that’s the last thing you want—OH! Oh, my goodness, that stung.”
“Did it, sweetheart? Let me fix that.” My hips rested over a raised knee, my upper body across the bed and my legs hovering suspended over the hardwood floor. Jed placed tender kisses over my bottom, starting at the top, then down and around the crease between thigh and bottom, then up on the left, his touch sending me into a headspace that was unfamiliar to me. I pushed my hips up into his hand, and my legs fell open of their own accord. I had no say in the matter. A light caress of his finger from the top of my slit to that forbidden place between my cheeks had my hips bucking.