Stony Creek Hero [Stony Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

“Yeah, she earned her spurs for a reason,” Cole said quickly then actually blushed. He was never comfortable with trash-talking women. He added, “She was a sweet girl though. I had a good time just being with her.”

Ben shook his head. Cole was a healthy man with an appetite, like most of the men in their family. They all were raised with respect but tended to enjoy the delights that a warm, soft female could offer on a regular basis.

Being ever the charming devil of the family, Troy taunted Cole.

“Sooooo, you got some. Now, don’t you want to know your new name?”

Both Brody and Ben groaned at the same time. Troy was so going to get a black eye on this one and they weren’t going to even try to prevent it.

“Just tell me already!” Cole yelled out impatiently.

“Pussy hound!” crowed an overly enthusiastic Troy.

Quiet descended over the barn momentarily, with only the occasional stomp of a horse’s hoof to break the sound.

Cole looked perplexed, Ben thought, as though he thought Troy had lost his mind. “That’s it? Really? I thought it was something bad. That was the best he could do? He really is getting old.”

“You don’t care that Jackson is going to call you a name of someone who needs a warm, wet pussy all the time? Where is your pride, man?” Ben asked humorously.

“Um, have we met? Can I help it if I need the taste that only a soft-scented, aroused pussy can provide?” Cole responded with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Nope, if that’s the name that he thought up, with such loving concern, that I would be so worried about, then I will take it proudly!”

The men all groaned and turned away to go back to their chores. Ben was particularly glad he was alone in one of the large box stalls. He had immediately gone hard as a rock when he heard warm, wet, and Lizzie’s name, although that was not how they were presented in conversation. Like a teenage boy, he responded simply to the thoughts of Lizzie as blood rushed to his brain and cock.

Speaking of, she was going to give him an answer today, he thought with a thrill. If she accepted, he would have access to her, in a personal way that no one else would. Wicked images of how else he could intimately know her ran rampantly through his imagination. How he could taste her, touch her, tie her up… Shit, he was going to have to control himself. This was Lizzie, not one of the visiting buckle bunnies. He couldn’t just fuck her and run, like he always did. Damn, he would have to figure out how he was going to control his hands and his hormones later. Maybe he could just run into town for lunch?

“We really need to do this more often!” Beth said with a giddy enthusiasm as she shoved another loaded nacho into her mouth. The unofficial Stony Creek women’s support group meeting was now in order. It had grown from just Lizzie and Billie trying to sort out the endless labyrinth of Jackson’s inability to commit, to now including the forever-suffering Beth Saunders, who had a non-verbalized
thing
for Hunter, and Dr. Madelyne Daniels, or affectionately known as Maddy, who claimed not to have a
thing
for anyone, ever. The café was hoping for a Monday lunch time but then again, Lizzie served some pretty damned delicious comfort food here. The town’s mayor and his wife, Elijah and Thea Carson, were chatting it up at a table next to one with three handsome men. The men weren’t from Stony Creek and were staring right at her, the interest in her apparent although not seemingly sexual. One was looking at her with a very scheming-appearing expression, as though she was the object of his irritation. Right next to their table was what the girls were going to look like in thirty years. Mabel Winston, mother to the town’s handsome deputy, Millie Braxton, wife to Gus and owner of the Feed and Seed, and Julia Morgan, Billie’s saucy and quite delightful secretary, were cackling with each other, probably over some dirty joke that Julia felt that she just had to share.

“Okay, let the Stony Creek Women’s Support League now come to order. That’s funny, we have already ordered! Right, Mimi?” Beth laughed out.

Lizzie laughed as both her talented cook, Vera, and her waitress, Mimi Fisher, responded with a resounding “yes!” from the kitchen.

“Have you been drinking already, Beth?” Billie asked with a grin. “That wasn’t funny at all.”

“Well, it was a little funny,” the ever soft-spoken Maddy offered with a smile. Maddy was a wonderful addition to their little town. Pretty, intelligent, and with a gentle way about her that almost bordered on timid, until you saw her in action with any animals. Well, unless the animals were interested horny men like the Taggarts or the Saunders or especially one Mr. Troy Powell. Then she became downright ornery.

“I thought it was funny, too,” Lizzie said supportively. “Pass me the plate of French fries will you, Maddy. I need brain food to think. Benjamin Powell is frying my brain and I need to fortify it. What am I going to do about that big gorgeous brute, girls? Well I need your advice as I am going fishing for a very big fish.”

“Well, it certainly looks like you started off in the right direction, Miss Thing. I am just
loving
that sexy top you have got on today! Let me guess. It is all part of your fishing expedition, no?” Beth mused before taking a bit of the delicious juicy slider that Mimi had just placed in front of her.

“She is not lying. You look amazing in it. Are you, um, trying to, perhaps, hook Ben with a bit more femininity? Do you think that a change of clothes is all you need?” Maddy smiled sweetly.

Lizzie leaned her head onto her hand while she thought for a moment. “You know, girls, for a long time, my life was about taking care of my father. It was about responsibilities and trying to be what other people told me I was. I decided last night that I am going to attempt to be who I think I am from now on.”

Looking uncustomarily out of sorts, Billie looked her in the eye and asked, “So, who are you?”

“I am a woman who has not found love yet. I am a woman who has done what other people told me to do. I dressed as they suggested I dress and participated in activities that I was told were appropriate. That is not going to be me anymore, girls. Lizzie Carmichael is going to dress like the sex goddess that she hopes she can be. She is going to do what makes her feel good about herself. She is going to take the time to find out what it is that really makes her happy and going to do her damnedest to get that lug of a Powell to see me as more than a flavor.”

“Well, I am sure you won’t mind if he gives you a lick! Be careful, young lady, big fish have big equipment!” a voice from the next table drifted over. It startled all the younger women who suddenly turned to see and hear all the older women burst into laughter and smile wickedly.

“Julia Morgan, you mind your business. I don’t want you giving poor Mabel any more heart palpitations when I don’t have a defibrillator in here!” Billie barked out.

The older women looked down and grumbled to each other about Billie turning into a grouch in the last week.

“Well, they have got at least one thing right,” Beth chimed in.

Maddy looked up and asked, “What’s that?”

“Well, Ben certainly has a craving to taste our little Lizzie here but also loves to give some licks, in the form of a spanking!” Beth replied deviously.

Lizzie blushed as Maddy looked at her wide-eyed in shock. “Really, Lizzie? Is that true?”

“Um, I guess that my answer would have to be a yes,” Lizzie said with a grin. Truth was, she hadn’t minded Ben taking her in hand, nope, not at all. She felt herself becoming aroused just at the memory of being forced over his lap as he not-so-gently smacked her globes. He had her squirming from mixing the slaps with massaging caresses as he administered his
protection
, as he had put it those months ago. Yum, she hoped that she could get him to be protective again and soon!

Maddy still looked shocked and just said, “Wow! Billie, is there something you need to share also?”

“Ugh really, no! It’s not like it’s in the Powell family code or something,” Billie mumbled.

Again a more mature female voice chimed in. “Don’t get all high and mighty over there, Miss Doctoressa. You have come into work for the last two months like you were riding in the saddle for twenty-four hours at a clip! Don’t throw stones at other people’s windows, missy!” Julia whispered for the younger table to all hear. Mabel and Millie were nodding their heads with the naughty knowledge of why Dr. Billie was walking funny.

“You are so fired. Millie, you are hired,” Billie told Julia with a smirk.

“Why not me?” Mabel asked as though insulted.

“Because you keep going into fibrillation and then I will have no one to assist me. Oh wait, Julia can’t even stand the sight of blood so I have no assistance now anyway. Okay, you are hired, too!” Billie stated.

“You are really grouchy today, Doctor. Eat something,” Julia said before she turned around.

Maddy confessed to Lizzie that she found the people in Stony Creek to be just charming if a bit more open than she was used to. She would just have to adjust to the change, she whispered.

“So you like a spanking. Ask him for another one,” Maddy said, making it obvious to Lizzie that she wanted the whole table to hear so she wouldn’t have to be the focus of the conversation.

Beth just stared at her, smiling as though she thought it was a good idea, too. “I support you wholeheartedly. I support the Lizzie refurbishment, I support you needing to feel happy, and I support the ‘get Ben to spank you and fall for you proposal.’”

“But, girls, I don’t want to have to ask. He is going to have to come to me. It’s all part of the new being myself project. I want to feel secure, in all ways. I don’t want to wonder if it is because I asked or because he really wanted to be with me.”

Billie turned her head and whispered conspiratorially, “I think you are about to get your chance, Lizzie, because look who has just entered the building.”

* * * *

Ben stood in the doorway of the café, his hand pausing in midlift to take off his black cowboy hat as he felt the eyes of almost a dozen women staring in his direction, with not a sound in the room. He raised his eyebrows in complete confusion as he heard Julia clink her water glass with the other ladies at her table as they all turned their chairs to watch the start of a show. What the hell was going on? Darned women, they were all nuts. He shifted his gaze over the room mostly filled with very few men, save for three big guys he didn’t know, for support. He caught his breath as Lizzie started to stand up.

She was always gorgeous with her rich chestnut long hair and blue eyes but something was different. She had a more, well, sensual look to her since yesterday. She wore a wrap V-neck blouse that accentuated the fullness of her breasts as they pressed up into his view and the small span of her waist. She almost looked coy and appeared slightly nervous as she momentarily returned his gaze before she almost stumbled, if not for Beth hooking her arm while shaking her head mischievously. Ben felt his body tighten in anticipation as she almost sauntered over his way, with her hips gently swaying. Who was this vixen and where was Lizzie? It was as if she wanted him to know that she wanted him. Did it mean that she accepted his offer, that he had seen all her delicious charms that had been accidentally but thankfully displayed for him, or was he hallucinating after spending the morning cleaning out horse dung and listening to his family’s inane conversations? He had to lower his hat over the evidence of his now raging arousal as his mouth watered. Ben suddenly had an urge to plunge his hands into her hair as he pulled her to his body. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he just waited for her to walk his way.

In the sultriest voice he had ever heard her use at him he heard her say, “Hello, Ben.” Hello, Ben, yup, that was all it took for him to go from really aroused to needing to fuck her senseless against the nearest hard surface. Wow, something had gotten into her and he liked it. He hoped that soon he would give himself leave to be the one getting into her. Ugh, he had to stop thinking like that or go mad.

“Hello, Lizzie. You are looking positively beautiful today. Well, you always look beautiful to me. So, are you going to torture me with only small glimpses of the bountiful charms I was privileged to see yesterday?” he said as he deliberately lowered his hot gaze to her abundant cleavage. He felt his heart clench as she began to blush at his reminder. Ah, so she was still a bit shy with him about that intimacy. He liked it. He liked it a lot.

“Shall I seat you at your usual table or would you like to sit with Mabel and the girls?” she questioned him saucily, giving her head a tilt.

“The only girl I am interested in sitting with is the gorgeous owner of this establishment. She is the only one who will satisfy my hunger at the moment I am afraid, no matter how tempting the more mature matrons of our town are. Hello, ladies!” he called out.

A chorus of feminine laughter was heard throughout the restaurant. Now it was Ben’s turn to blush as he usually was a bit more reserved and quieter than most, unaccustomed to being the center of attention. Lizzie smiled at his embarrassment and led him to his table. When she went to walk away, he gently grabbed her hand, pulling her to sit across from him while he placed his order with a very interested Mimi.

Lizzie felt electric sizzles run up her arm as Ben’s thumb swiped the sensitive flesh on the inside of her wrist before letting go. She looked up only to notice the unwavering attention of all the ladies at the nearby tables being centered directly on them.