Acres, Natalie - Propositioned by Outlaws [Outlaws 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (7 page)

If Art and Lane hadn’t come along, she shuddered to think what might have happened. She could’ve died. She could’ve fallen ill and suffered a horrific death if that snake had gotten its venom inside her.

Maybe that’s what had gotten into her. Gratitude. Why sure. That made sense.

She’d been flamboyant and tried to get Art and Lane’s attention. Now, she wondered why she’d been determined to earn their favor. She also considered why she offered herself in such a way to perfect strangers.

“If you’ve got all this experience, and I’m imagining you do, then you might be able to teach me and Lane a thing or two.” A second or so later, he added, “We’ll be real gentle with ya. We’ll make you feel like you’re a woman who is cherished and loved.”

“How can you do that if you don’t love me?”

“Truth is,” Art confessed, “I ain’t loved a woman before. I’ve fucked aplenty, but I haven’t been in love, so I’ll pretend for ya. How’s that sound?”

“I don’t want a man who pretends,”
Victoria
admitted, turning her attention to Lane. “And I don’t think you want a woman who fakes it, either.”

Lane shrugged. “Depends on what you’re faking.”

At a loss, she struggled with her emotions. Her body was on fire from the moment Art walked out on the porch and suggested she accompany them to the barn for the night. Then, he’d even suggested they put aside the notion of sleeping in the stables. He thought it sounded like a fine idea to hole up together right there in her cozy cabin.

“What are you scared of,
Victoria
?” Art asked. “Let me put it to you this way. You got naked in front of us. I’ve seen those pretty tits of yours. They’re as full and ripe and as lovely as any I’ve ever seen. I want to play with you. I gotta tell you, I do. But you wanna play with me and Lane here, too. You started all this when you took your clothes off in front of two men who didn’t have anything else better to do than to gawk.”

“I suppose I did,” she muttered.

“Then what do you say?” Art pressed. “You don’t have to be afraid of us. You’ve done figured on that for yourself. It ain’t like you’re gonna betray yourself. So we may use you a little bit, but I’ll make it worth your while. Besides, it ain’t like you won’t be getting anything out of it. You’ll be using us, too.”

Art was right. She’d been in the heart of this prairie for so long, she knew better than to think about a romantic future. She knew better than to hope for a family, wish for a husband.

Even though Lane mentioned coming back for her, what was the likelihood he’d ever return? He thought he was due to hang. If there was a poster with his face on the paper, he’d probably swing.

Lane paced. She didn’t look at him, but instead turned her gaze toward the blatant idiot who thought he could rent her out by the hour, or as suggested, the night.

Then again, the bastard didn’t even mention money. He expected her to lie down next to the both of them for free! He said he’d make it worth her while, but she read into that line. He was sure of himself, all right. He probably thought a woman ought to pay him just to pull down the sheets and look at his naked ass.

“Well?” Art asked, hopeful.

Her heart pounded faster and faster. If she were a whore then she might understand, even expect this sort of proposition. But she wasn’t a whore. She was a prairie lady, an untouched woman, a woman waiting for the right man. She balked at that. Maybe she should’ve thought about her virtue and innocence when she’d been showing off her assets.

She’d never meant to become the kind of person who was taken straight to bed by a few strangers passing through on their way to the next town. Then again, hours earlier, that was precisely the kind of woman who’d intrigued her most.

Art inched closer. His full lips broke into an outright smile. He was smug, quite certain of himself. “What’d ya say, pretty lady?”

Victoria
should’ve slapped him. Instead, she placed her hands on his broad, solid shoulders and brushed the dirt off the sleeve of his shirt. Her fingers raked over the dusty collar, tracing the contour and shape.

“Your hands sure feel nice,” Art said, stroking his lips with his tongue.

She breathed him in and nearly choked on the stench. That’s when she decided to buy herself some extra time and study on the matter for a little while.

Smiling as sweetly as she knew how,
Victoria
said, “You know, Art…it is Art, isn’t it?” she drawled, dragging out his name as much as possible considering he had a very short one.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, poking Lane in the ribs and twitching something awful. “If you ever have trouble remembering my name, just think of me as an experience, a true work of art.”

Oh boy, now she would really enjoy this. “Well, Art, I have a suggestion for you. If you’ll take a bath or splash yourself off a good bit, then maybe a woman could stand you long enough to poke you. Then again, you’ll have to take your time and get all your parts real good and clean.” She deliberately looked down, studying the arch in Art’s loose-fitting breeches. “Good heavens, I bet you do charge a woman a right smart amount. If a lady is right interested in looking at that thing or touching it, you could probably catch a pretty price.”

“Do what?” Art asked.

Lane cleared his throat.

She gulped. “I didn’t mean to say that. I was thinking about something a little earlier.”

Art shifted his shoulders and grinned. “Thinking about me charging for my services, were you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I mean no. Never mind.”

After seeing the way Art filled his breeches with one hell of a sizeable bulge, she took a tour of his hard body and calloused hands. She quickly revisited the stout member pressing through his pants. Her mouth dried as she noted the size, the way the full imprint of his penis was outlined in the front.

How did a woman invite a couple of men into her bed when she’d never been intimate with even the first one? How could she pretend to know what to do, how to act, when she wasn’t sure of what to expect?

She strolled over to Lane and stopped in front of him. “Goes the same for you, too, I reckon.”

Lane’s left eye twitched. “You act like you don’t have the first problem with extending invitations, but planning for a night sandwiched between two fellas is completely different than finding yourself between them. Here’s a suggestion,
Victoria
. You study on the act itself. Don’t just think about lying down between two men but you focus on doing the deed with both of them. After a thought on the matter, you may change your mind about all this. I would if I were the gal wearing the skirt.”

“Why?”

“Well it ain’t as easy as it all seems,” Lane said. “Positioning is only part of the problem. A woman has to be in shape to handle two men.”

She knew the skirts made her look like a cow! This wasn’t about whether or not she could handle a couple of fellows. This was about whether or not she was physically able to accommodate them!

“How would you know anything about what a woman can or can’t do with her body?” She should’ve stripped again.

Maybe they didn’t take a good look at her. If they gaped a little longer, they’d see she had muscle tone and a good enough figure for loving on a man or two. They weren’t going to wear her out if that’s what they thought.

She should’ve brought it to Lane’s attention that she was clearly younger than him. Maybe then his issues about who could handle who would quickly be cleared up along with any other concerns he needed to put to rest.

“Well? Are you gonna stare at me or answer me? How do you know about these things?”

Lane glanced at Art, and Art said, “We know.”

“How?” she persisted.

“We’ve shared a woman a few times before,” Lane said.

“Thought you weren’t with another woman after your wife died,”
Victoria
reminded him.

“That’s a fact.”

She snickered nervously. “Then what are you trying to say? You shared your wife with Art?”

“That’s a fact, too,” Lane said, his gaze narrowing. His dark eyes pierced through hers, and she wasn’t about to look away first. He made her feel like he was reading her about as well as the great Doc Holiday was rumored to have read the best of poker players.

“You shared your wife with him?”

“On occasion, I allowed my wife to service him. I ain’t proud of that,
Victoria
, and we’ll never speak of it again because it’s a private matter. No, I didn’t go to bed with them, but I would have, if Sarah Ann had required it. Now, I vowed after she died, if Art and I ever shared a woman again, I’d be in that bed with ’em. Thing is, I’ve gotta decide if I want to go to bed with another woman at all.”

“So you’re saying you aren’t interested,”
Victoria
snapped, aggravated because Lane seemed to cling as tightly as possible to a dead woman, to a woman who wasn’t alive and wasn’t there to put up a fight for her man’s hand. Hell, if she’d been any kind of woman at all, she would’ve wanted her husband happy when she passed on.

“You’re making her uncomfortable, Lane,” Art said.

“Maybe so, but Victoria and I understand one another. Don’t we,
Victoria
?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, holding her head high.

“Yes we do,” Lane said. “Art, if I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up—or let anything else get out of sorts.
Victoria
here is an Indian giver. She’s gonna say one thing and do another if she has the chance to think on it.”

“You have no idea what I’m willing to do for a man,” she grumbled, thinking she didn’t have any idea, either. How far would she go? Was she willing to please a man at any cost? Was she willing to take two men to bed instead of just one?

“Well then, on second thought, you heard the woman, Art. If I were you I’d run on down to that river and get cleaned up.”

“The same offer was extended to you,” she reminded him, batting her eyelashes.

“Maybe so, but I’ll respectfully decline and make my way to the barn. I already told you, I had plans for ya. That wasn’t good enough. Maybe you and Art will have a nice time without me. Don’t worry, he’ll tell me all about it later.”

Before she could say anything more, Lane tilted his hat and disappeared into the night.

Chapter Five

“I’m not sharing a bed with your friend unless you’re in it.”

He heard her at the barn door as he snuggled into his scratchy blanket. “I never believed you would. Not for a minute.”

“I wanted time alone with you, a few more minutes to get to know you.”

“And just why would you want to do that?”

He heard the crunching sound of prickly straw rubbing back and forth together as she walked toward him. He rolled over, certain if he kept his back to her,
Victoria
might take the hint and disappear.

She didn’t.

“I think there’s something kind about you, something you don’t want the world to see, but it exists all the same. All you need is a good woman to understand you. That’s all.”

“I had one of those once. Believe me, her memory doesn’t do me a lick of good now.”

“But it might,”
Victoria
suggested.

“Don’t think so, Victoria,” Lane said. “Go on out there with Art. He needs a good woman. I hope you have yourself a fine time.”

“Are you pouting?”

“Me?” He grunted. “Hell no.”

“Yes you are,” she insisted. “You’re mad at me and Art.”

“I’m not,” he assured her, thinking that might be precisely what was wrong with him. He’d loved Sarah Ann better than he had a right to love, and along came Art. They took him in, gave him a place to stay, offered him good meals and conversation, and it wasn’t enough. Soon, Sarah Ann came to him telling him what Art needed most was a woman.

Lane stilled with the memory. He’d reluctantly shared Sarah Ann and listened to her cry out in pleasure the first night she spent with his best friend. He’d never been the same afterwards. He’d resented Art and pouted at Sarah Ann, sort of like he was stubbing up now. Only he really didn’t have a right.

Thing was, he wouldn’t have been so envious if he’d been allowed to join them. Sarah Ann never mentioned taking the two of them to bed at the same time, and out of respect for her, he didn’t either. But after he’d gotten over the initial shock of his wife in bed with his best friend, he’d had an unexplainable hankering to join them. It later became an obsession which was why he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, if he and Art shared a woman again, they’d enjoy her together.

“I’m not having relations with your friend unless you’re with us.”

“And why is that,
Victoria
? I asked you why, damn it!”

“I don’t know.”

“I do,” Lane said, forcing himself to calm down, realizing he didn’t have a reason for hostility. “You trust me, but Art comes on so strongly that you’re afraid to let him put his one most valuable possession into your most guarded treasure.”