Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (17 page)

Dan busied himself with
his food. “Christ almighty, it’s pretty damn amazing. And she was all about it.
I had her hands behind her back in handcuffs, bent her over that table, and
paddled her ass until I was scared enough to stop. She begged me, Alex, wanted
it, and when I pushed in…”

Alex shoved his chair
back with his legs and walked to the stove. He wanted to put his hands on the
fiery-hot surface, or jab himself in the eye with a stick, or do something so
painful that it would take Dan’s words out of his mind forever. He couldn’t see
anything but the furious red film that glazed his vision. His ears roared with
the blood pounding in his veins. Dan was still talking.

“…and it all fell away. I
told her how I felt, and she probably didn’t have a clue what I was talking
about. Hat’s off to you, little brother.
And to Bryn.”
Dan’s fork scraped on the plate.
“I’m not saying I’m a
hundred percent. I still feel anger and a lot of other things, but it’s
different. I seriously think I’m in front of it now.”

His chair scooted and
Alex heard him coming toward the stove. “At least,” Dan said, clamping his hand
on Alex’s shoulder, “I think I can keep from taking Cannon down, or myself,
maybe pull my fair share again. And maybe not kill every man I know who had
her.” He chuckled. “I’ve been an ass,” he admitted. “You should have knocked me
down sooner.”

Alex rubbed his jaw,
remembering scooping up the pill bottles and Dan’s fist coming out of nowhere.
“I tried, if you’ll remember. Your swing is meaner than mine.”

Dan had the decency to
look down.
“Yeah, not my proudest moment.
Some of that
was the Johnny Walker.”

“It wasn’t the whiskey
that was scaring the hell out of
me,
it was that
line-up of pill bottles. Where the hell did you get all that, anyway?”

Dan walked back to his
bed and started pulling on clothes over his thermals. He brushed off the bottom
of his socks before jamming his feet into his heavy boots. “I made a few
calls,
it was easier than you’d think.”

“Did you seriously…?”

Dan’s gaze locked with
Alex’s a few seconds. Alex saw the reality. Dan had wanted to die.  His
invincible big brother-cousin, always the strong one—it made no sense. But
then, lots of things seemed absurd lately.

“I think I was playing
with the idea, maybe wouldn’t have gone through with it. But it seemed like the
right thing at the time.”

“That bitch was never
worth that kind of reaction, Dan, surely you know that.” Alex closed his eyes
and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Not the pills, not the assault, none of
it.”

Dan stood up and pulled
on the jacket, sending a moist stare across the cabin to where Alex had begun
putting on the last of his hunting gear. “Okay, Alex, I can hear you now. Not
before.” He cleared his throat.
“So, your buck?
Are we
hunting?
Because while you were gone, I followed this feeder
creek down toward the river, mostly north.
You’re going to love it up
there.”

Dan waited with his gun
over his arm while Alex double-checked the state of the fire and jerked the
covers up on his bed. With a belted pack carrying water bottles, their sheathed
knives fastened to the clips, and extra shells in the orange vests, they went
out across the narrow cleared area around the cabin and pushed through sumac
bushes into the woods, following the land’s drop toward the creek. Fallen
leaves crunched under their boots. Crows called overhead in the brightening
blue sky.

Alex let Dan lead the
way, relieved to hear no more on the conquest of Bryn. Much as Dan’s
revelations enraged him, his cock thought otherwise. No, he’d never had a woman
in the ass. He hadn’t been able to let himself think of fucking her, much less
about having his cock in her ass. That Dan had done it, apparently with no
thought more than his own anger, made Alex sick at his stomach.

And, he realized as they
stumbled down a rocky, mossy bank toward the rushing creek, he couldn’t hide
what he was feeling behind a curtain of righteous indignation about the woman’s
protection. It was something he hadn’t felt toward Dan since college and
Cathleen. He was jealous.
Insanely.

***

Quiet ticked through the house as the
sunny cold day progressed. Sometime around one p.m. Bryn realized it was
Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. The holiday had registered in her mind when she
first circled the Cannon hunting dates on her calendar, but after that she had
given it no thought. Even if she had any plan to drive all the way to Virginia
to see her mom, which she did not, she would have given it up readily in
exchange for the money she was earning from the Cannons.

But Thanksgiving brought
some built-in knee-jerk reaction that the holiday should at least be
acknowledged with a special meal. A turkey was not to be found in her stuffed
freezer, however, and she stopped herself from planning anything that would
involve the Cannons. The men had not mentioned the day, seemed to have no
agenda for anything special themselves, and probably didn’t expect her to go
out of her way. Well, who knows what they expected. She hadn’t been able to
predict it before, so why did she think she could predict it now?

But by two o’clock,
sipping a fresh glass of iced tea and preparing the evening meal, she had
penciled in certain adjustments to Thursday’s menu. If she felt like making something
slightly special for Thanksgiving, she’d do exactly that. No need for an extra
trip to town—she moved a large frozen chicken to the lower fridge shelf to
thaw. She chopped green peppers, garlic and onion to sauté with the ground
chuck for the chili she would serve tonight. She dumped applesauce, raisins,
and walnuts into cake batter and poured it into the pan. Then she put on music
and ran the vacuum, straightened the living room, and cleaned the bathroom.
Most of the time she thought of nothing but Alex, too happy with knowing she
would see him again in a few hours that she could ignore her more pragmatic
side and its increasingly familiar cautions about her feelings for him.

She changed into a faded
lavender t-shirt and tucked it into her jeans. With her hair reorganized into
its ponytail, at five p.m. she poured whiskey and a splash of cold spring water
into the glasses and set them out on the table. Whether she liked to admit it
or not, she was going to miss the company of these two men at week’s end.

And
then what?
Repugnant images of Brent Thompson loomed in her mind. The Cannon money had
caught her up at the bank and left enough for a couple of months, but that
didn’t mean she could relax. She bit her lip, stirring the bubbling chili.
Nothing had really changed, just the time frame. She’d go back to the
parttime
work at the dollar store and keep trying, but
there probably wasn’t a single job within driving distance that would provide
the income she really needed. Maybe she should give up, sell the farm,
move
back to St. Louis where she could get a decent
accounting job.

Face reality.

A familiar pang of
anxiety clutched her throat. A rat in a maze, all of it dead ends. The reality
was
,
she couldn’t have what she wanted. Hell, she
didn’t even know what that was. Alex?
Dan or someone like him
to control everything in her life?
No man at all? How many times would
she make this decision and then change her mind?

She set the chili on low
heat to simmer until time to stir in the beans. Everything else was ready,
including her favorite penuche icing on the cooled applesauce cake. Truck
lights flickered along the lane and surged to a stop outside the house. She
caught her breath. In seconds, Alex would be in the room, in her eyes.

A
diversion?
Yes,
she admitted it.
A pleasurable interlude in an otherwise
bleak outlook.
She hadn’t been able to dismiss the fantasy of both men
coming to her with lust in their eyes, determined to push her over the edge.
That would never happen. But for tonight, as long as she could, she would enjoy
what she had and worry about the rest later.

She watched the truck lights flicker
through the distant dark, and then the doors slammed. Dan came in first with a
brief nod before accepting the drink she offered and going to the couch to turn
on the television. She could see Alex in the yellow porch light, standing on
the edge of the step as if he was waiting for something. Wasn’t it going to be
a little obvious if he came in and found her waiting for him at the door? She
had been holding her breath. She let it out in a slow hiss as she turned back
to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, she
heard the door. Surely he would see his drink waiting for him on the table. She
finished washing the lettuce and shook it over the sink. The hair on her neck
prickled and she looked up to see Alex standing just inside the kitchen door.

“Your drink...” she
began.

An unreadable expression
masked his face. He stood there without saying anything, like he was caught in
some kind of time warp.

“Alex? Did you see your
drink on the table?”

Definitely upset. She
could read it on his face. He turned and reappeared a few moments later with
his drink, which he managed to gulp down in seconds. He held the empty glass
toward her.

With the lettuce draining
on a clean towel, she walked across the room and reached for the glass. He
grabbed her hand and pulled her next to his body. His lips swept over her lips,
lightly stroking her mouth from side to side before he crushed her tight against
him and devoured her mouth with his own. His tongue slipped past her lips,
invading with warm strokes against her tongue. Her breasts heated against his
hard chest as his hands ran down her back and pressed her buttocks so that her
hips shoved up against his groin.

What did he want? His
rock hard cock imprinted against her belly and her pussy clenched instantly,
oozing with a burst of moisture. This made it so easy to know what she wanted,
what she had to have. A soft moan formed in her throat as his scent filled her
nose, rich and fragrant with woods, fire, and cold air.

“Bryn,” he said, trailing
his firm mouth across her cheek toward her ear.

The whiskey glass slipped
out of her hand and hit the floor in a shattering crash. His hands grasped her
arms and he held her back from himself, his blue eyes locked on hers in a fiery
stare.

“Damn it!” Bryn stepped
back and tried to bring herself back to the real world. In those few moments,
Alex’s body, his mouth, his hands on her, had become everything, wherever he
took her, whatever he wanted. She stared down at the ice and glass scattered
across the floor. “I’m sorry...”

“No, my fault entirely,”
he muttered gruffly, stepping back a couple of steps from the mess. “You didn’t
expect to be molested.”

She hurried to the corner
storage area for the broom and dustpan, shaky and distracted. What had he
started to say? Did he want a scene like Dan’s? She had to know, it was as if
her whole life depended on it. She scraped up the wet mess and dumped it into
the trashcan. He grabbed paper towels and mopped the area, and they stood at
the sink to wash hands.

He could have taken her
anywhere at that moment, side by side at the place he first touched her.
Instead, he walked back to the sideboard and fixed another drink. She tried to
think of what to say. If he would step near her again, take her in his arms
again...her body leaned toward him. At least, tell her what he wanted.

But he simply took a sip
of the drink, his face an inscrutable mask. Whatever he nearly said, whatever
his eyes had tried to express, seemed to have slipped away. She almost sobbed
in frustration.

“I’ll leave you to
dinner,” he said finally, shifting his body toward the living room.

“Did you...was there
something you wanted to say, before?” Her words had taken on a
gaspy
edge. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“I...no,” he shook his
head.

The look in his eyes told
her clearly that this was not true. Her gut said there had been something. His
eyes lingered for a second longer then quickly scanned over her. His jaw pulsed
and he threw back his head to swallow half the whiskey before turning abruptly
to walk out of her sight.

Shit. Her mind vacated
her body and followed Alex into the living room. She burned herself dragging
the big pan of cornbread out of the oven and let the over door slam. The chili
had started to scorch by the time she remembered to stir it and add beans. Her
finely organized dinner plan disintegrated. As she carried dishes of sweet
pickles and shredded cheese to the table, she remembered she hadn’t finished
the salad. Again she got to the chili and had to scrape the sticky pan bottom.
The cornbread was getting cold.

She took butter to the
table. All she wanted to do each time she left the kitchen was go to Alex and
drape herself over his brawny frame, put her lips on his mouth for a ferocious
kiss, grip her hands over his wide shoulders. A sideways glance found him
watching television with Dan. She didn’t dare allow her gaze to linger on him,
on his body that she needed like air. Like little firecrackers, her excitement
kept zinging through her crotch and nipples and mouth where his lips had pushed
against her.
Bam! Bam!