Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (8 page)

“I’m headed to town to
stock up.
Any special requests?”

“I could mention a thing
or two...” Alex began, his look shifting up her body to her face with a sly
smile.

She dug in her purse for her
list. She flipped over the crowded page to write. “What?”

“Shampoo,
soap?”

“Alcohol,” Dan said,
commanding her attention. “Add cocktails before dinner to our tab.” He gave her
a sideways glance with his piercing blue-gray stare, dragging her back to reality.

***

Her thoughts swirled as she drove
into town. She could hardly grasp the scope of her situation.
An orgasm, a pretty amazing one at that, with Alex’s hands inside
her, owning her.
Oh my god she wanted that man.

The idea scared her to death.
One thing to submit to Dan, trade his mastery and maybe a couple of deer for
much needed income.
Another thing entirely to pursue this
desire for Alex.
She didn’t know if her fevered brain could even grasp
all the things wrong with that. The last time she let herself fall for
somebody, things ended badly. And Ethan was so much less than Alex.

Think about the
possibilities
, she
muttered. He was probably married!
Or at least involved.
What happened in the kitchen was a tease, not foreplay.
Something
that caught him up on the coattails of her session with Dan.
More of the
same could easily occur over the remaining days of their stay, especially if
Dan pushed the envelope with more of the sex stuff. Her thighs clenched.

Yes, damn it, she wanted
it, wanted everything they would give her.
More.
Hurt
her,
fuck her, force her to degrading acts. She couldn’t
wait. But there could be no mistake on her part. It meant nothing. Whatever
happened, she had to keep reminding herself of that:
it meant nothing.

She loosened slightly on
the way to town. Their payment for the full stay swept over her like a body
massage, relaxing the knot that had been tightening for months. She wasn’t home
free, not by a long shot, but at least their money bought her more time. Maybe
there was hope she could find a way to survive.

She screeched into the
electric company office and paid her bill. Then she deposited the bulk of the
money in her bank account and told her loan officer to withdraw the money
needed to bring the mortgage current. She whirled up and down the grocery
aisles, ignoring the admiring stares of male shoppers and grabbing all the
things she had so carefully listed. One by one, she crossed off everything on
the page.

Her phone rang.
Steph
.

“Hey.”

“So…how’s it going?”

“I’m a little
stunned—these guys are so freaking gorgeous.”

“
Ohh
,
shit, tell me more.”

“I’m in the supermarket,”
she said, lowering her voice. “But Alex—I’m in love. Dan, not so much, but
Steph
, that man has
dom
skills like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, what
fun!
”

Bryn looked at canned
cherries, distracted. “I’m walking around
wet,
I’ll
put it that way.”

“Damn, that sounds
fabulous.”

She glanced up, shocked
to see Brent Thompson watching her with a smirk on his face.

“Damn it.
Gotta
go,
Steph
.
Later.”

She threw the cherries
into her cart and started to push away.

“Just a minute,” Thompson
said, gripping her arm.

“Get your hand off me,”
she said, her lips tense with anger.

“No,” he muttered,
glancing around before fixing his stare on her breasts. “Putting it out there,
huh?” He brushed his hand down the side of her breast.

She jerked backwards,
knocking his hand away.
“You son of a bitch.”

He smirked. “I’ve been
thinking about you, and the thoughts just got a lot hotter. I think you and I
have a great future.”

“No
future at all, you weirdo.
And where’s my paycheck?”

“I’m still broke. But I
haven’t forgotten you,” he threatened. “I might surprise you.”

“Nothing about you would
surprise me. A pig is a pig.” She shoved her cart past him and tried to stifle
her fury in the check-out line. How far would he go? Should she file a
complaint?

Yeah, that would work
great, have a deputy show up and find her half naked in the maid outfit. She
shook her head as she left the store, glancing around to make sure he didn’t
follow.

Why did he make her so
furious when he wasn’t acting that differently from Dan or Alex? No, that’s not
right. The situations were completely different. Dan and Alex asked
,
they had a business arrangement that she agreed to, that
she wanted. Thompson had never asked, she had never agreed, had specifically
told him to leave her alone. Besides, the difference between the men staggered
the imagination. Thompson was stupid and disgusting and she could never desire
contact with him like she did with Alex and Dan.

She hated that he’d seen
her in this outfit. She’d dressed with the Cannon cousins in mind, wanting to
contribute to the tension, assert her own weight in the scene. They knew it fit
into the play. Thompson knew nothing.

She refused to let him mess
up her day. She had waited so long, worried so much. Now the bank was paid. She
had bought herself time, put the mortgage back on its regular payment schedule
plus two months in advance. She needed to pat herself on the back and not think
about creepy men, foreclosure, or anything else negative right now.

On the way out of town,
she stopped at the liquor store and splurged on
good wine and top label
liquor. At the counter, with the man’s view glued to the front of her tight
sweater, she added a few six packs of premium beer. Ten days left with this
arrangement, and she felt great. Her body hummed with excitement.

Yes, Dan and Alex had
humiliated her and forced her to things she hadn’t expected to do, but it did
make her hot as a firecracker. Damn thing of it, she realized as she wrestled
the old truck back down the highway, she wanted more.
Lots
more.

The argument in her head
raged.
Should she would
take it as far as they would
go, and chalk it up to a fabulously erotic experience? Could she be that strong?
Or should she tell Alex to leave her alone, stick to the plan to only involve
herself
as Dan’s submissive, since that was the deal to
start with?

Once the groceries had
been put away and the liquor lined up on the buffet, she put potatoes on to
bake and a peach cobbler in the oven and then rearranged furniture. With the
wood stove taking up center stage on the wall by the front door, the long
living room fell into more or less equal halves across the front of the house.
She dragged the small table from the living room into the kitchen, and the
larger table from the kitchen to the east end of the living room. She draped it
with her only good tablecloth and set out candles and cloth napkins.

In the west end of the
living room, she created a seating area with the old couch against the end wall
and the two overstuffed arm chairs facing it with the coffee table in between.
She spread out the day’s newspaper and a new hunting magazine. With only the
lamp turned on at the end table by the couch, the room took on a cozy dimness.
 

In the kitchen, she got
the rest of dinner underway—meatloaf, baked potato, green beans with toasted
almonds, crisp romaine salad with Parmesan.
Cobbler with ice
cream for dessert.
Music blared from her stereo and she wiggled her hips
as she danced across the kitchen in her favorite cowboy boots. This could be
fun, not that she knew exactly what she had planned. With their money in her
bank account and the relief she felt from finally having a bit of light at the
end of the tunnel, and no matter what she finally decided to do, she would be
taking on these Cannon cousins from a freshly invigorated frame of mind.

A stiff breeze had picked up as Bryn
walked back from the henhouse with a basket of eggs.
More to the
sky than just the approaching sunset, maybe a hint of snow in the air.
The distant crack of gunfire echoed up from the creek bottom. Maybe they would
have better luck this time. Another shot, and she distantly wondered if it had
been Alex or Dan squeezing off the rounds. She thought of them down there
shoving through brush and clambering up or down steep rugged land in pursuit of
a wounded buck. Tracking was one more element of hunting that had long since
convinced her she wanted no part of it.

Shivering, she shut the
kitchen door and put the eggs away. The thin black sweater didn’t go far toward
keeping her warm.
Except, she grinned to herself, on the
inside.
The recollection of Alex and Dan seeing her in this outfit
definitely turned up the heat. She loved that Alex wanted her. Even more
exciting was the prospect of punishment for not wearing the tacky little maid
outfit when she served dinner. She couldn’t wait for Dan’s anger.

But she did wait.
Past six, past six-thirty.
She built a small fire in the
woodstove to knock off the chill then ate her share of the food. Their portions
stayed warm in the oven. Finally she saw headlights through the back window as
their Ram eased its way up the lane. She flipped on the outside light and went
to the porch.

Dan sat behind the wheel
with the truck idling as Alex slid out and came around. The head of a mature
buck hung off the tailgate, its big rack reaching into the night air with at
least ten points.

“Nice buck.
Congratulations,” she yelled, walking toward the truck.

“Dan’s kill—he’s going to
get it tagged,” Alex said, heaving himself up into the truck bed. He yanked on
the buck’s back legs, dragging it in far enough to get the tailgate closed
before climbing down. “What’s the best place?”           

“The old Gulf station,
down past the pawn shop on Main.”

Dan gunned the truck up
the driveway and Alex came with her to the porch. She opened the door for him
as she went back into the warm house, suddenly thrilled and terrified about
what might happen with Alex here alone.

“Where do you want me to
wash up?” Alex held his hands out in the light, streaked with blood.

“Bathroom—
don’t
want that gore in the kitchen.”

Her mind raced. Dan would
be gone at least an hour. She loitered in the newly arranged living room, waiting
for Alex to come out of the bathroom.

“You changed things
around in here,” he said, appearing in her bedroom doorway. His observation
flitted up and down her body.
“Looks good.”

“Thanks,” she managed,
exhaling.

His blue eyes had
darkened to navy. He pulled off the orange vest and hat and rolled up the
sleeves of his
camo
shirt. “Not exactly fit clothes
for dinner,” he began. “We were
field
dressing in the
dark.” There were splashes of blood on the lower parts of his
camo
pants and across the tops of his boots.

“Did you bring a change
of clothes? Do you want to shower?”

He sighed. “I think I’ll
just strip down. I’m too tired to go back to the cabin for fresh clothes.”

She hovered at the
kitchen door as he stood on the porch and took off the
camo
and boots. He came back bare chested in only the tight white
Thinsulate
pants and socks, not a damn thing to hide the
arousal stretching the front of the form-fitting pants as he stalked to the
bedroom. She heard the bathroom door close and the water start then tried to
calm herself. He had to have the most perfect male body she had ever seen and
she wanted him so much she hurt.

She seriously needed to
have her head examined if she thought she could have some kind of casual dalliance
with Alex Cannon. Everything about him pulled on her, much more than sexual
attraction. How was that even possible? She hardly knew him.
Damn
it.

She hurried to the
kitchen where she fidgeted with dinner. Surely he would want to eat now,
instead of waiting for Dan.

“Miss McClure.”

He loomed in the kitchen
doorway in his pants, socks, and no shirt, his dark hair whirled into wet
peaks. What the hell could be wrong now?

“I have just showered and
shampooed without the benefit of the soap and shampoo I requested. Is there
some reason you didn’t get them?”

Shit. How could she go
through that entire list and forget to turn the page over? Damn Brent Thompson.
“I—thought I...it was on the back. I guess...I must have overlooked it. I’m
sorry...”

His cobalt eyes burned
into her across the room.