Saint James, Elle - Unbridled and Undone [The Double Men Rider's Club] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) (8 page)

His second realization was that Tessa was gone. Her seductive scent lingered, but even before he looked, Zachary knew she was no longer in the room. She’d been curled next to him when he dropped off, and now her warmth was gone. He didn’t know how he hadn’t stirred the second she left his side. He took another deep breath to memorize her evocative scent.

He glanced across the king bed to see Dell sprawled facedown on the far side of the bed and turned away. Wide awake now, Zachary rolled from the bed as quietly as possible and stood. He focused in on the bed-stand clock next to Dell’s head and read the numbers in disbelief. Four in the morning. He’d been zonked out for two solid hours. Unbelievable.

The curtains were still parted, and he flashed back to a few hours ago. Raw need. Insidious passion. Entering Tessa for the first time, his cock slamming deeply inside her hot, wet pussy was an indescribable pleasure. He’d never forget what she felt like.

Christ, he was making himself hard again from just the memory.

Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he made his way out of Dell’s bedroom and into his own to get more rest. Tomorrow would be busy. They’d already set up standing wake-up calls for the duration of their stay, so he crawled into his own bed for another couple hours of shuteye, the memories of sweet Tessa dancing in his mind.

Two hours later, after a fitful sleep at best, Zachary stepped into the shower and plotted the fastest and easiest way to locate Tessa. He wanted to ask her if she’d be interested in another night of decadent passion with them sometime this week.

Beyond that, he wondered what she was doing with the rest of her life. He knew it was too soon to be quite so attached, but God help him, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He already knew Dell was smitten.

It would be a long week without her. Worse, it would be a long, lonely life if she didn’t share their attachment.

* * * *

Dell woke up at daybreak to a ringing phone instead of his usual bleating alarm.

Where am I?

He reached for the phone with his eyes still closed, wondering why the sound was different. He didn’t recognize it. One eye slid open as his groping hand landed on the handset of a strange phone.

He lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”

A canned recorded message regarding his wake-up call from a hotel staff member repeated twice before his brain started working. Memories filtered through his mind at a fast clip. Not home. At a hotel. Time to get up. Thank God for the wake-up call he’d already set up. Why was it so difficult for him to wake up when he was away from home? Back on his ranch, he had no trouble at all waking up at exactly the same time each and every morning.

Dell sat up in bed, noticed the sheets in disarray and tangled as if three people had thrashed about in a rush of seductive pleasure. Then he remembered Tessa. Something else he didn’t enjoy back home on his ranch. Perhaps that would change after this week. Was Tessa their one?

He pushed himself up and looked to see if she was still here.

“Tessa?” he called out, hoping she was in the bathroom.

“She’s gone.” Zachary’s voice came from his doorway. Dell would have been startled if he’d been awake enough. Holding a mug with the seductive scent of dark-roast grind wafting from the top, Zachary took a sip of his beverage. “Want a cup of wake-up juice?”

“Stupid question. Of course I do.” Dell slid from the bed. “Did she leave a note or a number?”

“A nice note, but no number. Guess we’ll have to track her down the old fashioned way.”

“The old fashioned way?”

“We go back to the bar and lean on the manager who knows her. Think he can be bought?”

“No. But let’s try it anyway. Better yet, maybe Clay could
persuade
him.”

“Maybe so.” Zachary glanced at his watch. “I’m busy all day. Want to meet for dinner and then head for the bar later on tonight?”

“Yep. Meet me downstairs in the lobby at six. We’ll discuss our strategy for how we convince her to become part of a more permanent arrangement.” Dell shuffled into the bathroom intent on hitting the shower as soon as possible.

“For this week only or permanent as in why don’t you move with us to
Wyoming
?”

Dell stopped in his tracks and turned to face his friend. “Are you saying you want to ask her to see us after this conference is over?”

Zachary glanced at the steam wafting from his cup. “Are you saying you aren’t interested?”

“Oh, I’m interested, all right. But usually, you rein me in when I suggest outrageous things like chasing a woman we barely know.”

He shrugged. “We know enough. There’s something about her. Something subtle that’s difficult to dismiss so easily. She’s got an adventurous spirit, and I like her.”

Dell ran his hand through his hair and tried to pry his eyes open. Was he still sleeping or had Zachary just voiced more than an average interest in a woman? He wasn’t usually so expressive. “I like her, too. We should pursue her.”

“Excellent. See you tonight at six.”

Dell hit this shower with a dawning exuberance that had nothing to do with the conference he was about to attend. His mind strayed to a certain sexy female and all the seductive pleasures they could accomplish this week. The idea of pursuing her for after the conference put a song in his heart. He couldn’t wait to be with her again.

* * * *

Zachary left Dell semi-alert in the shower, assured his friend had enough time to make it to the private early-morning meeting. The topic of discussion had to do with trading bull semen, not something Zachary ever wanted to talk about over breakfast, if ever.

While Dell spent his time trying to meet as many fellow cattle ranchers as he could, so as to trade livestock, or bull semen, Zachary lent his attention to the business side of running their ranch. He was on his way to an early-morning conference session regarding business taxes as it pertained to the unique aspects of cattle ranching. And in his mind, a much easier theme to discuss in the early morning than farm animal secretions during breakfast coffee.

Luckily, Dell had a strong stomach.

Zachary thought they had a great partnership. Eight years after settling into this way of life together, they had accomplished quite a bit. The ranch had been solvent and out of the red for over five years. With their business growing more and more successful each year, it was understandable that Dell wanted to add a permanent woman to their comfortable life. Especially after spending last night with Tessa.

Today included a torrent of meetings. He’d be cramming his head with the latest information this conference offered—if he could even keep his brain focused on business instead of the spectacular activities of the night before and most of all Tessa.

Her laugh filtered through his memory like a piece of favorite music he’d forgotten and hadn’t heard in way too long. The tempo of her enthusiasm and the little sound she made right before she climaxed threatened to keep his mind in places reserved for non-business hours. He glanced into the surface of the mirrored elevator wall and checked his appearance.

His tie carefully knotted and his suit carefully pressed for today’s meetings, Zachary was perhaps a little overdressed given the clientele here, but he’d always felt being the best-dressed man in a room afforded a certain extra respect.

Folks looked at him differently and treated him with more reverence if he dressed better than they expected. They also listened to and agreed with his ideas more readily if he put on the mantle of success and played the role of powerful business broker. Pretending he didn’t need anyone also helped in business, not so much in his personal life.

He’d taken to this ranch life better than even he’d anticipated. Business manager and lawyer for a thriving cattle ranch was certainly a far cry from the way he’d started his adult life in the military but was certainly a hell of a lot more satisfying. While ranching was lots of work and sacrifice, Zachary loved the cowboy life he found himself in.

The landscape afforded a sense of wonder almost every time he turned around and looked at any piece of the property. At the end of the day, it was gratifying to sit on the porch, feet kicked up on the rail, and watch the sun make its way to settle over the majestic mountains from a place he knew was his, land that would stay in his family for generations to come.

It gave him a sense of roots he’d lacked growing up.

A childhood spent in foster care sent him into the military at the tender age of eighteen. While he’d made that life work as a young adult, he much preferred life on a ranch and owning property. He liked making his own decisions instead of following others’ orders—not that he wasn’t grateful for his exemplary military experience, because he was thankful. That life had disciplined him to hard work and helped him understand sacrifice. He never regretted his time in service. Never would.

Zachary exited the elevator on the upper landing of the lobby. He wanted to grab a cup of coffee before heading downstairs to the meeting rooms below, but unless there wasn’t anyone in line at the coffee stand he’d noticed the day before, he didn’t have time.

On his way toward the kiosk, he saw the long line at the same exact time the scent of rich, dark-roasted coffee floated across the space like a siren call meant to lure the unsuspecting away from their duties. He glanced at his watch and once more at the line and decided a delicious cup of coffee wasn’t slated for his near future. Perhaps later, between meetings.

He hurried past the long line of fellow high-end coffee lovers and endeavored to make it to his meeting on time. He’d stepped on to the first stair of yet another moving conveyance when, out of the corner of one eye, he caught a flash of hair that made him take a second look. At the coffee kiosk, there was a familiar figure wrapped in a barista’s apron scurrying around behind the counter. After this important meeting and the lunch he seriously couldn’t get out of, he was definitely making time for coffee later in the day.

Wearing the same type of shirt she had last night, Tessa rushed around the small coffee area, making coffee for the line of caffeine lovers he’d foregone.

Later on he planned to get some coffee from the busy kiosk. Hopefully, a chance to talk to a certain elusive brunette would also materialize. A part of his soul relaxed a notch now that he’d found her again. The immediate discussion would be to discover if she was as interested in a permanent relationship as they were. He glanced back in the direction of the coffee place even though he couldn’t see it anymore. Zachary pulled his cell phone out and sent a text to Dell.

The simple words “I found her” were all he wrote.

Then the words
afternoon delight
popped into his head for some reason.

Chapter Six

Tessa spent the morning stumbling through her work very sleep-deprived. Her fatigue was for a great reason, but she was foggy from lack of enough rest, nonetheless. She had only been in bed for three hours when a desperate call from her boss at the coffee shop rousted her out of bed at the unholy hour of six-thirty in the morning. The emergency call she barely remembered was urgent enough in tone to get her out of bed, showered, and to the hotel.

The employee who’d agreed to work at the hotel kiosk during the convention had a sick kid and had to leave the hotel. One other worker had broken her hand while rock climbing over the weekend and was a no-show. That left Tessa and two other regular workers to man a place where a crew of five people didn’t stop moving to take a break for the entire day.

Not only would she be hopping busy for the entire shift, but Tessa would be working in the hotel where she’d spent a salacious night making love to two men. It was impossible for her not to worry about seeing them. Or wonder about seeing them. Or wish she were seeing them instead of working a wild, hectic shift making coffee all day.

The only good news this morning was that since her car had been towed home, she hadn’t needed to call a cab. The price of early morning cab rides, both to and from this hotel, would have dug into her meager finances and almost wouldn’t have been worth the effort. Last night’s extravagant taxi fare pissed her off, but she’d deal with her father’s imperious antics later. No surprise, but he also didn’t approve of her working for a coffeehouse. He was a snob when it came to her having a blue-collar job.

The unexpected work hours today and in the coming week would give her checking account a nice boost, and she knew she’d come out ahead.

She operated on pure caffeinated adrenaline right now. She’d slammed down two shots of espresso upon her arrival and figured she had a few more good hours before the effects from the lack of sleep intruded on her late afternoon.

Internally, she wanted to see Dell and Zachary more than anything. Externally, she didn’t need the distraction since she’d be crazy busy all day. The owner of the chain was on hand to lend assistance during the rush, but one of her first customers had been someone who looked a lot like Dell. She saw lots of cowboy hats in the hotel. Each one made her smile on the inside and remembered the night before.