Love Under Two Gunslingers (24 page)

Twin explosions blasted out in the small, enclosed room. Joshua felt a hiss of air as Maddox’s bullet passed within a hair’s breadth of his ear. Warren’s cry alarmed him at the same time the sight of the hole between Maddox’s eyes filled him with a deep, personal satisfaction.

Joshua hit the floor then rolled, coming to his feet, his gun trained on Maddox. The man had fallen back into his chair, definitely dead.

“Son of a bitch, that stings!”

Warren’s curse yanked his attention away from the corpse. Sliding his Colt back into his holster, he privately admitted he’d been tempted to give Maddox an extra couple of pieces of lead, just out of spite.

He went down on his knees next to Warren, who sat on the floor, his right hand clamped to his left arm.

“Let me see,” Joshua said softly.

The door to the office burst open, and there stood the same skinny Mexican man who’d answered the door when they’d arrived. He looked at Joshua and Warren, then swung startled eyes to where Maddox’s body lay sprawled. He crossed himself and began to pray in Spanish.

To the startled houseman Joshua said, “Vaya a abrir la puerta. Viene un posse.” Or the posse would be coming shortly, since Adam had only been willing to give them about ten minutes.

He looked down at the wound on Warren’s arm. “Only grazed you, thank God. Adam would kill me if anything serious happened to you.” He tore Warren’s already damaged sleeve, using the strip of material to tie off the wound. They’d clean it, and wrap it in proper bandages later, but Joshua didn’t think he’d even need stitches.

“That’s funny. Sarah threatened me with a fate worse than death if I let anything happen to
you
,” the lawyer said, smiling. Then his gaze tracked over to Maddox’s body. “Stupid bastard. Why did he draw? He must have known the odds were good that he was going to get off any charges we laid.”

“I guess we’ll never know.” Joshua said. “Come on. Let’s get you on your feet before Adam storms the gates.”

He helped Warren stand and would have said more, but the sound of Adam’s shout and running footsteps cut him off.

The Texas Ranger burst into the room, gun drawn. He took one look at Warren, hurt but obviously not seriously, then focused his attention on Maddox. Stepping forward, he looked over the desk. Joshua guessed he wanted to verify the presence of the man’s side arm, on the floor where it had landed from his death-slackened grip.

Slowly, Adam holstered his weapon and turned to give Joshua a level look.

“Seems our work is done here,” he said.

“Yours, maybe,” Warren asserted. He went to Adam, and giving in to the urge, brushed a light touch of affection over the lawman’s arm. “But my work is just beginning.” He made a show of looking around the room, at the carpet and the furniture, the trappings of ego and wealth with which Tyrone Maddox had surrounded himself.

He turned his gaze to Joshua. “Do you think Sarah will like her new home?”

Chapter 20

“You have to appreciate the irony.”

Sarah turned at the sound of her lover’s voice, her smile natural and free. Caleb stood beside her just inside the entrance of the huge house. When he reached up to rub absently at the ache in his arm, she frowned. Never far from her thoughts, and lurking just at the edge of her dreams, lived the memory of that horrible moment a few weeks ago in Denison when she’d believed Caleb had been taken from her forever.

That fact and the knowledge of the fate the former owner of this ranch planned for her effectively squashed any guilt she might have felt about moving in to his house.
No, not his house anymore. My house, and damned if I haven’t earned it.

“I do appreciate the irony. I appreciate my lawyer even more.” She turned as Joshua came into the house to stand on her other side.

“He did seem kind of gleeful when he got a copy of Maddox’s will. Then he complained about the lack of a real challenge.”

Sarah shook her head. As Caleb said, she had to appreciate the irony.

In his efforts to prove to the world that his marriage to Sarah had been real and valid—laying the groundwork, they knew, for the claim he’d planned to make on her death—Maddox had his will changed as soon as he returned home from their wedding in Chicago. That document not only acknowledged Sarah as his wife but named her his sole heir. That which he’d planned to use to support his crime served as a means, not only of recompense, but of ensuring a future for her and the men she loved.

“You’re certain you don’t mind this? Moving into his house, taking over his ranch?” she asked her lovers now. She knew enough of the male ego to know that sometimes, it could be a fragile and delicate thing.

“Not one bit,” Joshua said, then looked at his brother. “What about you?”

“Nope. We were working as gunslingers, hoping to save enough to buy us a place of our own. I told you that, sweetheart, remember? We’re ranchers born and bred. Ma actually left the homestead to us, but we let Becky and her husband have it, since they’d kept it going all the years we were away. What about you, sweetheart? Our moving in here, especially into the house with you and not the bunkhouse means people are likely going to talk.”

Sarah smiled, then slipped her arms through theirs. “What do I care about talk? In case you don’t realize it, we’re rich. One thing I learned living in Chicago is that when you’re rich, you can get away with just about any damn thing. Doubt it’s any different here.”

“No, sweetheart, we’re not rich.
You’re
rich. We’re just a couple of leeches.”

Joshua said that in such a way she knew he teased her. She shook her head. “Nope, sorry. That amazing lawyer I have is drawing up a partnership agreement, and it’s going to include everything. Not just what Maddox left me, but my inheritance from my grandfather, too. An equal three way split, share and share alike.”

Her amazing lawyer, Warren Jessop, had contacted the lawyer in Virginia who administered her grandfather’s estate. By the terms of his will, her death would have guaranteed Maddox he would immediately come in to that money.

And Maddox’s death—making her a widow—had done the same for Sarah.

She felt both her men tense, knew protests were imminent.

“Don’t argue. You told me I belonged to you and that there’d be no going back. Well, I feel the same way. So what belongs to me, belongs to you.”

“You’re a bossy little thing, aren’t you?” Caleb said.

Sarah didn’t think he expected an answer, but she gave him one anyway. “I am now. Being docile nearly got me killed. From now on, you can expect that speaking my mind and having my way are going to be two of my most notable traits.”

“Is that right?” Joshua asked.

Sarah knew her men and knew when they were battling laughter. Another rhetorical question and another she chose to answer.

“That is right.” It was her first time inside her new home. She’d elected to stay at Warren’s until the legalities had been straightened out and finalized, but Caleb and Joshua stepped in immediately to see to ranch operations and clean out Maddox’s clothes and personal effects.

She hadn’t wanted to encounter anything the man might have worn when she finally made the house her home.

She looked around at the room she could just see off to the left, a parlor of some sort, and the room she could see to the right—Maddox’s office. She’d leave that one for last. Maybe tomorrow. She wanted to explore this new home of hers, especially the one room in particular she wanted to see above all the rest, first.

Before her sprawled as fine and wide a staircase as she’d ever seen. “Maddox spared no expense building himself a manor house,” Sarah said. She’d known her future home would be nicer than the standard frontier cabin, but she had no idea it would be this grand.

“He had a hell of an ego,” Caleb asserted. “And spent a damn fortune feeding it.”

She felt his sideways glance. “What?”

“Are you going to be all right sleeping in what used to be his bed?”

“As long as the sheets don’t smell like him and I’m not sleeping there alone.”

“The linens have all been washed and aired, as has the feather mattress,” Caleb said.

Sarah wasn’t one bit surprised Caleb and Joshua had thought of that. They both proved amazingly thorough in their quest to take care of her. That suited her just fine.

“As to sleeping alone? Not if we can help it,” Joshua said.

“Good. So…where is this bed?”

Upstairs, four bedrooms branched off a central corridor. Three were of a normal size while one appeared enormous—with the biggest bed Sarah had ever seen. Not only was the contraption longer than any she’d laid eyes on, it had to be nearly double the normal width.

“My goodness!” was all she could think to say.

“According to Jose, the houseman, Maddox had this bed built especially,” Caleb said. “Rather considerate of him, don’t you think, love? Saved us from having to do the exact same thing.”

“Jose and his wife Rita have a small adobe on the other side of the saddle barn,” Joshua added. “There’ll be no one in this house at night but us.”

Sarah walked toward the bed, reached out, and tested the mattress with her hand. She smiled, then turned and sat down on it.

“It’s like sitting on a cloud!”

Both men grinned. As one, they began to unbutton their shirts.

“In that case,” Caleb said, with a voice that tickled Sarah’s pussy, “why don’t we take you to heaven?”

“Mmm.” She avidly drank in the sight of their naked chests emerging from the cover of their shirts. “Yes, why don’t you?”

* * * *

They stripped themselves naked and came to her. Before they pulled her to her feet she’d reached out with her tongue and given each of their erect cocks a good, long lick. Then, holding them off just a moment longer, she’d nuzzled each of them. Each
 
 
man had a unique scent that set her mouth to watering and her pussy to weeping. When they drew her to her feet and raced to undress her, she had already grown wet for them.

“You both smell so good to me. I can tell you apart by the fragrance of your balls,” Sarah said boldly.

“Can you?” Caleb’s words took on the edge of arousal. Reaching out, she fisted his cock, her hand gliding over hot turgid flesh that expanded the more she stroked.

“I can.”

“We can smell you, too, sweetheart. Your cunt just calls to us.” Caleb said.

“Even when you’re fully clothed, even when there are others around, we can scent you, and we want you. You’re our mate, Sarah.” Joshua, the least assertive of the brothers, could certainly have his moments.

This was the man who had killed her would-be murderer. Shot him dead, because the fool had drawn his gun, yes. Sarah knew, though, that under that, at the bottom of it, he’d done it for her.

They risked themselves to keep her safe. But more, they had opened her to the kind of loving and belonging she’d pined for all her life. When she’d discovered she had fallen in love with them both, they both took her, gladly sharing her, and wasn’t that a miracle?

“Yes. I’m your mate. And you, both of you, are mine. I need to smell your scent on my skin. I need to feel your cocks inside me, your seed coming into my body. Fuck me. Fuck me now.”

“Sarah.” Caleb brought her down to the bed, his body hot and hard against her right side.

“You’ll have our cocks. You’ll have all of us.” Joshua laid down on her left, his hand stroking down her body, mirroring the same caress his brother lavished upon her.

They feasted. Sarah could think of no word more appropriate for the way they used their hands and their mouths to take pleasure and return it tenfold. Every part of her felt on fire. Every inch of her skin craved their touch and burned for their kisses.

Stroking them, pulling them close, she kissed her lovers, one, then the other. Their unique flavor coated her tongue and filled her soul.
 
A new level of intimacy surrounded them. No longer did the shadow of another stand over them, threatening to end what they’d found together. Sarah knew that nothing, and no one, would ever come between them again. Nothing would stop them from spending the rest of their lives together.

“Mine.” She’d needed to say that just one more time. Then their touch, their passion, commanded her full, undivided attention. Fingers traced and pinched, dallied and delved and Sarah’s hips left the bed as her pleasure poured out of her like rain. The shivers and rapture took her so keenly, she cried out with sounds that came from her heart.

“That’s one,” Caleb whispered. “How many more can we give you?”

He combed his fingers through her hair, his hand gripping her head as his mouth came down on hers. Hot, wet, his lips sucked while his tongue swept and drank her.

He pulled her right leg up onto his hips, opening her wider to their whims and their wills. Joshua kissed his way down her body, giving little teasing nips, stroking with his tongue. He twirled his tongue in her navel.

Before she could draw a breath, his mouth settled on her pussy. Licking, tasting, he drove her arousal impossibly higher. Then she felt him penetrate her slick passage with his fingers. He thrust them hard and fast and stroked something inside her, something she could feel wrapping around his finger. The rapture flooded her once more, stronger, longer, so that Sarah wondered if the entire world had faded away and only these men, and this moment, remained.