Carnal Compromise (8 page)

“But it’s your turn!” she said breathlessly, curling her shoulders off the bed and tugging on his hair when he touched the tip of his tongue to her clit.

He pulled back. “Right. My turn to go down on you.”

“No, your turn to come!” When he just grinned at her, she flopped back down with a resigned sigh. “Fine. But if you’re going to do it, do it right.”

He blinked. “Well, now there’s a challenge if I ever heard one. Just out of curiosity, what’s your idea of right?”

“Don’t tease me.”

“Define teasing.”

Squirming a little, she said, “You know, lots of, um…little touches that promise something but never satisfy.”

Well, now he knew something else about her—she’d never had oral sex from a man who knew what he was doing.

“Isn’t teasing part of the buildup?” he teased.

She propped up on one elbow. “Look, it’s called eating for a reason. You don’t play with your food, do you? I know you don’t. You just get down to business and eat it.”

He snapped a salute at her. “Yes ma’am.”

“That wasn’t an— Oh God yes, like that!”

He’d never laughed before when he was going down on a woman, but he laughed with Ariel Jane Pender as he got down to the serious business of eating her. Who’d have thought there was such a fiery, demanding sex goddess under those flannel shirts and Wranglers?

But she wasn’t the only one who knew what she wanted from sex, and while he didn’t exactly tease her, he managed to keep her on the edge for a lot longer than she was happy with, using sharp nips, aggressive suction and long, hard strokes of his tongue. He brought her close to orgasm three or four times, and finally she clamped her thighs around his head and twisted both hands in his hair to hold him in place.

“Quit teasing me or I’ll shave off one of your eyebrows when you’re asleep,” she groaned.

He smiled and brought her up one last time. When he felt her start to tremble and relax her body like she’d done with Joe, he stopped again.

Pay dirt.
She screamed with frustration—literally screamed at the top of her lungs while she tried to yank half the hair off his head.

Frenzied at finally having decimated her self-control, he launched himself up her body and rammed his aching cock into her with enough brutality to satisfy even the most jaded masochist. She screamed again and grabbed his ass as she arched off the bed, her cunt wringing his cock tighter than any fist.

Christ, it had been decades since he’d fucked a woman without a rubber between them—the sensation was incredible. He plunged in and out, growling with pleasure. There was nothing sweeter than fucking through a woman’s orgasm—except maybe fucking her wet, swollen cunt afterward while she lay in a state of boneless satisfaction. Brent paused long enough to hook her unresisting legs over his braced arms and then abandoned himself to his own animalistic quest for release, never taking his eyes off her face.

She watched him back through pale lashes, her lips slightly parted and her arms resting palms up beside her tousled head. Finally, when his breathing had turned to panting and sweat dripped off his brow, when his rhythm had grown ragged and his balls had drawn up tight, she touched his lower lip with her fingers.

“Come for me, Brent.”

He lost it, shouting hoarsely as he emptied everything he had into her.

Alone in the bunkroom, Joe lay in the dark with one hand on his dick and his other arm thrown over his eyes. The muted shouts of fulfillment drifted through the open door and he knew Brent had finally come.

He swallowed hard, yanking roughly at his erection until his come spurted onto his stomach. The tears that dampened his arm were the result of yet another long-overdue release.

Or at least that’s what he told himself.

Chapter Six

The sound of the camper door slamming startled Brent out of a sound sleep at the time they usually left for work, and he didn’t have even a few seconds to enjoy the bundle of warm, fragrant woman flesh in his arms before anxiety dropped like a lead weight into the pit of his stomach. AJ turned her head to look at him, wearing a frown that said she felt much the same, and they tossed back the covers without a word. While she rinsed off in the shower, Brent threw together three sack lunches, knowing Joe was so used to AJ taking care of it that he probably hadn’t bothered.

At the front door, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard, feeling that something important needed to be said but he couldn’t quite put it into words. Not surprisingly, she nodded when they pulled apart as if she’d received whatever message he’d sent.

And she thought he and Joe could read each other’s minds.

They caught up with their erstwhile lover halfway to town and pulled over just ahead of him. He climbed in next to AJ without comment, and to Brent’s disbelief, he actually walked into the diner whistling.
Whistling
. He joked with the other guys, talked about work and demolished a plate of steak and eggs as if he hadn’t eaten in a week—none of which was strange in itself since he’d gotten both laid and blown last night, they had plenty of work to do today and none of them had eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. But he was acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them last night when they all knew something damn well had.

Sitting across the booth from him, Brent picked at his own food and exchanged WTF looks with AJ while he watched Joe dig into his pancakes.

When Joe finally pushed his plate away and looked as if he was about to stand up, Brent said, “We need to talk about last night.”

“Why?” Joe said bluntly, getting to his feet. “We all got what we came for.”

Brent glared. “No thanks to you.”

“Excuse me, but wasn’t that you I heard shouting last night after I went to bed?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Joe gave him a hard look. “You’re the one that started this, boss man.” He lowered his volume anyway, putting a hand on the bench behind him and leaning down next to his ear. “If you have a problem with the way things played out last night, we can discuss it later. Right now we’ve got work to do if we want to finish up here tonight and move on to Elton in the morning. If the three of us having sex is going to interfere with getting the job done, maybe we’d better call it quits right now.”

“We’re not calling it quits,” Brent said through clenched teeth.

“Good. So let’s go.”

When they got in the truck, Brent sat there for a moment, staring through the chipped windshield, and then said, “I just want to know why you left last night.”

Joe’s brows went up. “Because I snore like a damn freight train, that’s why. AJ’s used to it by now, but you wouldn’t have slept a wink all night and you know it.”

“I’d hoped to be up all night anyway,” Brent said with a meaningful look.

“Yeah, well, I’m not as young as you. I need my beauty sleep or I won’t be worth a shit on the job.” Joe’s grin looked forced as hell when he added, “You don’t want me harvesting the wrong field or running over Dietz with a tractor, do you?”

Brent studied him for a good ten seconds and then let it go with a sigh. “That probably wouldn’t be good.”

It should be a relief that Joe was playing it cool—he certainly wouldn’t betray the fact that they were all getting it on after hours. Hopefully Brent and AJ could be as casual in their interactions in front of the other guys. But dammit, he wanted more from Joe. He wanted what he’d gotten from AJ—if not love, then at least some small sign of affection once in a while.

In short, he wanted what he knew he couldn’t have.

Fuck.

AJ tucked her arm through his and squeezed his hand, and suddenly he felt like a selfish ass. If the way she’d kissed him last night was anything to go by, she had some pretty strong feelings for Joe, too, and the man probably didn’t want hers any more than he wanted Brent’s.

Which made him a damn fool. But then it was his life—he could fuck it up any way he wanted to.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of combining, hauling and unloading. By sunset, he was tired and irritable, and trying not to think about what he’d done with Joe only made him feel worse. When he returned to the field after unloading a wagon of beans into one of the bins, he saw Seth Dietz pulling stalks off the end of the bean head and just about blew a gasket. Seth stopped as soon as he saw him and headed for the cab but Brent leaned on the horn to stop him.

Seth leaned against the ladder in a long-suffering pose.

“That’s right, asshole, I’m gonna tear you a new one,” Brent muttered as he pulled to a stop.

Before Brent’s boots hit the ground, Seth went on the offensive. “I was just pulling the ends loose.”

“I don’t give a shit what you were just doing,” Brent said tightly, reining in his temper. “You know damn good and well you’re supposed to turn off that rotor before you clear any kind of clog.”

“Come on, Brent. This field’s tough as shit and I’ve been clearing clogs all night. If I have to keep turning the rotor off, it won’t get done before eleven.”

“Turning the rotor off and on only takes a second. You’re being lazy and careless, Seth, and that won’t wash with me.” When the kid didn’t have anything to say, Brent continued. “Since clearing clogs safely is too much of a chore for you, I’ll take care of the combining and you can do the hauling for the rest of the night. And for the rest of the week, for that matter.”

Seth looked as if he wanted to argue—most of the time combining was the cushy job where you stayed nice and warm in the cab, and hauling was the shit job where you went up and down the steps in the cold and wind a hundred times day—but he just sighed and nodded.

“And Dietz, this is your last warning. If I catch you clearing clogs with the rotor running again, you’re gone. Got it? I don’t need any dead or maimed workers on my crew.”

“Yes, sir,” Seth said glumly.

Brent watched the ease with which Seth took the steps to the tractor and wanted to call him back and chew on his twenty-year-old ass a while longer. Little bastard didn’t realize how good he had it. Just wait ’til he was over forty, carried twenty more pounds and had joints that crackled like a bowl of Rice Krispies every time he went up and down the ladder—then he could bitch about clearing clogs.

Feeling old and worn out, Brent climbed up and plopped his ass into the combine seat with a big sigh. Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.

Seth wasn’t exaggerating when he said the field was tough as shit. Brent had to get out and clear a dozen clogs before quitting time rolled around at ten. The other teams had already finished up and left for the evening, and since there were only three or four rounds left, he sent Seth and Tim on their way. There was no rule that said the boss couldn’t work after ten, so he’d just finish off this field and drive the tractor and wagons back to the staging area. He could take the ATV to the camper and come back for the combine tomorrow morning.

Wrapped up in an afghan on the couch, AJ gave one last disgusted sigh before she turned off the TV. How could there be over a hundred channels of nothing on?

She dropped the remote on the carpet and thought about going to bed. Joe had dropped her off at ten, saying he was going to town for a beer and a bite to eat, and she hadn’t argued or asked to come along. There hadn’t been time for a thorough shower this morning and it had been a long day filled with dirty work, so the last thing she wanted was to go hang out in the bar. AJ hadn’t argued with Brent either when he called and said he’d be another hour or so. She was thrilled to have the camper to herself for a while so she could bathe everything that needed bathing, shave everything that needed shaving and pluck everything that needed plucking in complete privacy.

Now she was clean as a whistle, smooth as a baby’s bottom and wearing a halfway cute camisole and pajama bottoms—and she was still alone at one-thirty in the morning. Brent had probably stopped at the bar, too. Just a few days ago, she’d have figured he and Joe were out someplace doing each other, but not anymore. Not after last night. More likely they were drinking manly drinks, slapping each other on the back for another job well done and ignoring the sexual tension between them the way they always had.

If she were smart, she’d go entertain herself with her vibrator and fantasies the way
she
always had, but the idea left her cold. Now that she’d had a taste of the real thing…

Her chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. Whatever they were up to, they obviously weren’t too anxious to get home to her, a state of affairs she was all too familiar with thanks to the way things had ended with Rob. It was a given that sooner or later the same thing would happen with Joe and Brent, but she hadn’t expected it to happen after just one night.

Maybe it
would
be best for all of them if they just called it quits now, as Joe had suggested. Despite her determination to keep her interest in them strictly physical, it already hurt to be so easily dismissed again, so readily forgotten by them both. She could only imagine how frantic and needy she’d feel after a few weeks of their sporadic attentions, and dammit, she just wasn’t ready to fall into that emotional sinkhole again. Would never be ready.

No falling in love.
It was her own rule and it was a good one, but clearly she was already in danger of breaking it. She should just pack up and move on now, take herself out of their dysfunctional equation while she still had her pride.

On the other hand, her pride wouldn’t keep her warm at night or fulfill her wildest fantasies, would it?

AJ stood up, giving herself a mental kick in the ass as she wrapped the quilt around her shoulders. She just needed to suck it up and stay the course. It would be totally self-defeating to let whatever chance of mind-blowing fantasy sex she had left slip away out of fear. She’d survived being hurt about as badly as a woman could, and by God, she’d survive when Joe and Brent made it clear they were done with her.

Yawning, she leaned down and picked up the remnants of her supper—a pear core gone brown and bread crumbs on a paper plate—from the end table. Maybe things would look better in the morning.