Crushed Velvet (2 page)

TWO

Playing with Fire

Cabin on the Flat River

Kanda leaned her head and upper torso back and let out a scream. It was excruciating and the heat of it burned her.

Wade seemed to try and pull his pelvis back as if he could lessen the impact. He looked pale and concerned. “Is it bad?”

Bad?
Kanda heard the word, but couldn’t answer just yet. She sat very still and just allowed the shocks to vibrate through her body. She never felt so full in all of her life. She released a breath and leaned her head forward. “What—what do I do now?”

“This was your bright idea, and now you’re just gonna…?” His voice trailed away and he stared at her face.

Tears streamed down Kanda’s cheeks, she knew, but she ignored them. “I’m new at this. I don’t…” For the first time since she got this idea, she was at a loss as to how to proceed.

“Look at me.”

Kanda did immediately.

“Since you tied—my hands, I can’t—help all that much.” He seemed to be straining with each word. “But just hold still for a while until the pain passes.”

Kanda nodded, but she felt a throbbing and surprisingly it wasn’t painful, it was sort of like an inner massage. “Ooh, what’s that?”

Wade sighed. “It’s me…” He looked embarrassed. “I’m hard as stone. I should be soft because it hurt you, but God dammit, you make me hot!”

To say that Kanda was shocked, surprised and overwhelmed wouldn’t even be close to her true amazement. “I do?”

He nodded and bit at his lower lip again.

Abrupt like, she felt like teasing him to see if this was true. “So, if I leaned all the way forward?” Kanda stretched herself to lower her ample breasts close to his face. “It might help?”

Wade seemed to gulp as her nipples grazed softly across his chin.

She felt him hardened even more inside of her “Oh! I can feel you so well!”

He nodded while looking distracted as he licked at his lower lip.

Seeing that velvety tongue and remembering how this Aussie kissed, her body gave an involuntary shiver.
Yep, this is the right thing to do, whether he knows it or not
. Kanda suddenly found that she loved feeling this kind of power. She’d always been confident and the like, but this felt different, it was…sexy. “Go ahead and—”

Not waiting for the invite, Wade latched onto a nipple. He suckled it and played with it over and around his tongue.

Her body jerked with immediate pleasure. She took a deep breath and the tingling from her breast seemed to grow along her body. “Ahhh…” she let out with a moan.

The moan seemed to echo through to Wade’s body causing a shiver to pulse through him and he arched his powerful hips.

Kanda slid up and down over his cock. Her gasping was loud to her ears. “By all that’s holy—what is that glorious feeling?” The sliding was so delicious and all her pain had inexplicably vanished.

Wade let go of her breast with a breath of air. “That? That is fire, woman.” His accent sounded thicker than before and his voice was low and raspy. He raised his hips again and filled her all the way. “Pure—fire.”

Kanda was shivering and panting now. Her body came alive with tangles of nerve spasms like she was plugged into an electric body vibrator and she couldn’t seem to speak.

Wade gave her a slow, sexy smile. “But you just had to play with matches didn’t you, Kandy girl?” He raised and lowered his pelvis again and latched onto her other nipple.

Her skin was ablaze while her body sang with ripples of pure aphrodisia. It sang like an instrument that was in tune with a sensual song she’d never heard, never dreamed existed. “Oh—oh…” Her pants were cutting off her words. “Holy hell!”

He teased her nipple with his teeth and let go. “You took charge—like you wanted to break a bronco…” He was panting too now as he repeated the lifting and lowering of her body with just his hips alone. “But, you’re mine now and you’d better hang on if you wanna bust this beast.” He plunged up again, harder and with more force.

Kanda felt him touch her deep and he swelled up inside her pussy. The air left her lungs as her body grew rigid with a burn that made her dizzy. Then, she remembered the words to a song she thought was stupid when she heard it. Toby Keith sang it.
I even think I saw a flash of light…
It was like the most glorious torture, as she wanted—needed—something she couldn’t define. “Unh.” She bit her own lip now. “Please…?”

Wade was panting with her, but his smile grew as he watched her writhe in ecstasy.

Feeling the throbbing pulse inside her body, it seemed to match the rhythm of her waves of ecstasy.
It felt like electricity.
“What—wha…?” Her body seemed to spasm on its own as it grew taut and she closed her eyes. A flood of heat and tightening ran along every muscle as she peaked over a sensuous crest she never knew she could even climb. Her pussy seemed to grab him and the squeezing was so delicious. “Ahhh!” she practically yelled as she climaxed.

Wade’s body tightened. “Open your eyes,” he whispered.

Gulping for air, she squirmed with the sweetest pleasure she’d ever felt and looked into his blazing blue eyes.

His face was sweaty as he gazed back and then his eyes slid slowly and heatedly over her lush body as he watched her orgasm.

Her body seemed to have a will of its own as the undulating through her tummy increased and her torso was stretching out. Kanda gasped for air as she felt heat filling her.
This ain’t like no bronc riding I ever heard of!

Wade groaned as his body tightened too.

She knew by the way he shuddered that he was peaking too. Mesmerized, she gazed into his electric blue eyes while their bodies came together and lights danced before her eyes.

What started out as a no nonsense idea to rid herself of her unwanted virginity became an adrenaline pounding, sexy rush ride on the freakin’ Six Flags Matterhorn of…‘Fuck yeah’! Nothing had ever prepared her for this—nothing on God’s green earth. It was better and more than what she’d heard about. She was gonna want more of this!

Kanda, sturdy ranch-woman and badass cowgirl, never felt more vulnerable, powerful or more…beautiful.

THREE

Faster than a knife fight in a phone booth
!

Plush Rooster ranch, Victoria Texas

Daisy Plush had said and done some truly outrageous things in all the years Bren was growing up, but this was the most astonishing…the worst…unbelievable stunt to date. Bren clenched her fists and felt Trev’s warm breath on her cheek as he held her from behind.

“Now, doll, just listen, okay?”

“Don’t call me doll!” Bren huffed at her mom. “How can this even be true?”

“It is. I just never thought I’d see her again, so I figured…why tell ya?”

Bren was floored by this secret. “When—how?”

Daisy sighed. “You remember that photo on my dresser?”

Bren nodded.

“Well, years ago when I was on that trip… Remember, I was gone for three months? That’s where I met him.”

Bren sort of remembered; it was one summer when she was about 6 years old.

“Well, that’s when it happened. I tried to resist that man, but he went through my defenses like
perfume through a prom.”

Trevor chuckled a little under his breath.

Still huffing with anger, Bren listened impatiently.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did.” Daisy shrugged. “That’s always the way, ain’t it? I swear though, when I was with him, I’d never been that happy. I ain’t been either—before or since. Like I was on cloud nine. Then, when the baby happened? It was like
I dropped my harp, plumb through the cloud.”

Stunned, Bren dropped her arms from her chest as her anger turned to astonishment.
My mama in love? Impossible.
Men had loved her, but she always ran away when it got too heavy. Just like with Bren’s dad.

“Well, I went on vacation again the following year, if you’ll remember. That’s when I had her.”

Bren released a breath. “So, all these years I had a sister and you never thought to even tell me?”

Daisy looked uneasy and reached up nervously to touch her blonde curls. “I knew I couldn’t raise her. Hell, I barely did right by you. I was wild as a weed and about as loose as ashes in a wind.” Her smile showed again. “No sensibilities, ya know? Well, I told him I was probably gonna put her up for adoption. Well, he didn’t like that none, and so we agreed he would raise her.”

Bren shook her head.

“Then, well… One day a few months back? Mags just shows up in my life, looking as excited as a twister in a trailer park, ya know? Telling me she wanted her mom. I just couldn’t turn her away.” Daisy looked sad for the first time in a long time. “I done turned her away once already.”

Bren felt all discombobulated. Despite her hiding the truth for all of this time, she suddenly felt kind of sorry for her mama and she sure never thought that would ever happen.

~~
****
~~

Maggie stood close to the door in the hall, her ear like a suction cup to the wood. Her eyes rounded when Daisy finally told Bren.

“You bad girl!” whispered a voice from behind her.

Flipping around, she saw someone tall in front of her.

Wearing an expression full of mirth, Fernando stared down at her. “Tisk, tisk.” He shook his finger back and forth in her face.

Maggie released a relieved breath. She knew
he
wouldn’t tell on her. He worked for her mom too, doing lots of things and when he felt like it, he would take the stage. He was like a big brother to her, though her feelings were hurt sometimes when he never made a pass at her like he did all the women who came here.

“You should have better mannerisings,” he admonished in a thick Latin accent.

Maggie gave him her brightest smile. “It’s
manners…
Nando, and it’s about me, so I have a right to hear it.”

“What are you two doing?”

Gasping, they both flipped around to see Mr. Morty, Mama Daisy’s tailor and dress designer, standing there with his hands studiously behind his back.

Maggie gulped. This little man with his loud voice and demanding tone reminded her of the iguanas that lived in the bush that her dad was always talking about. Mr. Morty was like a cross of that and a leprechaun, maybe? She always waited for him to slither a long tongue out, lick her, then dance an Irish jig. She tried to suppress her giggle.

He folded his arms across his tuxedo-clad chest. “You two better explain.”

Fernando shook his head. “Come on, Morty! Who you think you be, Chief?”

Maggie took Fernando’s hand. “We weren’t doing anything. Nando was just telling me I was needed in the kitchen.” She tugged the frowning Latin hunk down the hallway.

“Asta, Horty-torty, Mister Morty!” he called back at the little man, who scowled as he watched them head toward the stairs.

Maggie giggled. “You shouldn’t antagonize him, Nando.”

“I don’t savvy what that means, but I would like to squish him like a chinche!” Fernando scoffed, then tilted his head at her. “Antagon…?”

Maggie laughed. “Never mind. You’re too good at it to stop. And chinche is a bug, right?” That was another thing she had a problem with. Half the time around here, no one knew what she was saying and vice versa.

She was raised in America, but it sure didn’t feel like it. Bostonians were very different from Texans. Her high school was a private one and they taught her on a higher level than regular schools. Then again, Texas had all kinds of words she didn’t understand.

She’d even compiled a list of things that she didn’t get—the Nonsense List of sayings that were true Texan. One of these days, she was going show it to one of them and ask what the heck most of it meant. Like calling someone
sugah.
Or one that really baffled her was
stomping a mudhole
into someone. She’d heard that in the kitchen the other day when the cook was threatening a delivery man.

She often wondered why southern women, at least the ones she’d met as clients here, talked about beauty parlors, the mall and church as all being equal as holy places or something.

One said to another the other day, that there were three religions in Texas: Baptist, Methodist and football. Maggie didn’t get how that could even be true.

Maggie remembered one night how a guest said she had to get home because ‘there
ain’t nothin’ open after 12 a.m. but the hospital and legs’.

She shook her head when she heard it.
What the hell did that even mean?

“Later, chica.” Nando waved at her and headed down the other hallway.

Smiling at the hot-bodied stud who acted like her protector, she waved back.

When he left, she felt a little twinge of shame and her smile disappeared. It was bad the way she acted over Bren’s boyfriend. How could she befriend her sister if she acted like a hussy over Bren’s man, as her mom would put it?

Her thoughts changed pace with the memory still fresh in her mind of Bren’s cowboy. I can apply to him the best saying from here and one that I now understood after seeing him in the raw…
Hotter than a stolen Tamale! I never knew a man could look like that.
Even with all of Mama Daisy’s studs coming and going, she’d never thought most of them were anything special.

The fact that Bren said there was someone out there just like him?
Oh, wow. I wonder
… She shook her head.
Fat chance I’d ever get to meet him!
Big sister wasn’t gonna have anything to do with me now.

A group of men were going up the stairs and she stopped to lean back onto the banister to let them by. They smelled of cologne and sex. Maggie did giggle then. They were sex toys and they seemed to enjoy it. Some of them were even college boys or from rich families. They chose to do this for a living to have women fawn and faint over them.

The funniest time was when the women arrived and attended the ‘steak auctions.’ The terms those women used for some of the guys who worked for Daisy? Maggie had even taken to quickly jotting them down whenever she heard a good one.

At the last auction there’d been some doozies.
Hot as a Billy goat in a pepper patch.
Or,
hot as the hinges of hell.
The one she didn’t really get was,
Hotter than a fur coat in Marfa?
Maggie supposed that as hot as Texas was, Marfa must be the worst?

Working at a Stud ranch was exciting for Maggie too, even if mama didn’t let her in on most of it. She had to sneak around and finally found ways to see the auctions and even some of the strip shows.

If mama ever caught her? The one expression she did understand would definitely come to pass. Mama Daisy would lock her up
faster than a knife fight in a phone booth
! Her grin spread. Yeah, some of the sayings were truly funny.
Maybe I’m beginning to learn Texan! Or should I say, I dun learnt Texan speak?

Still, even though she came here to get to know her mother? She could fit all she found out in the last three months on one piece of paper and even then, it would take some skill to fill that much space up. Daisy Plush was the strangest puzzle. She could write three words about her and those originally came from her father
: Leather, Fireworks and Daize.

Oh yes, she was outgoing, flashy and quick-witted. However, Maggie hadn’t been able to find out much more than what her dad had told her. That also wasn’t much.
An American woman, headstrong and beautiful. Someone I just couldn’t hold onto.
Maggie made her way down the stairs. Well, that did describe Daisy though.

She hoped that she could get the real lowdown from Bren. But now that she heard how mad she was about Daisy having another kid? It didn’t look likely.

Maggie sighed. Maybe coming here had been a mistake—a fun, exciting adventure, but a mistake nonetheless.