Acres, Natalie - Sex Addict [Cowboy Addiction 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (7 page)

And it was shallow, right? She decided on a short second, yes. Her past was best left in the yesteryears where those days belonged. Her life pre-Keeslings in no shape, form, or fashion determined quality time they could enjoy together in the future.

“If you plan to play the game like a sport, you can’t sit around and be a discontented spectator. You gotta be a team player, Kit,” she said suddenly, deciding the best course of action was pure arrogance. She wasn’t about to open herself up like a coffee-table book. The colorful pictures discovered there provided a private tour to events she didn’t want to revisit through the eyes of others.

“I am,” he promised her, dropping his gaze to her chest.

“Maybe I should refresh your memory on team play. No man is left behind and no one stands alone out front. That means, in team situations, everyone is on the same footing. If I tell you about my former lovers, you tell me about yours.” She had no intentions of doing that but took a gamble, realizing she was placing a safe bet.

“I’ve had relationships,” Kit bit out. “Your situation is different.”

Damn chauvinistic prick was what he was. He really thought she’d just crumble and tell him everything he wanted to know. He wasn’t man enough to handle her. “I haven’t seen sportsmanship out of you in a long time,” she continued, acting positively disagreeable. “It’s starting to bother me, Kit.”

“Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right places,” he said, glancing down.

“Ah, now, tiger,” she drawled. “Are you trying to tell me you keep your integrity in your breeches?”

He copped a smile. “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you, Holly? It would be so much easier if everything you thought about, all that you imagined, led you straight back to where the best of slippery goodness starts anyhow.”

“You mean in the sack?”

His eyes darkened. “It’s true. You don’t care about much else. Whether you’re stroking for honor or fucking for corruption, you believe you’ll find whatever it is you need between a man’s legs. It’s virtue that you have a problem with, baby, and that’s one area where I can’t help you.

“You ruined yourself years ago and no man alive can give you back the innocence lost, the fragile days you left behind long before you understood what your actions might cost you later.”

“Like what?” she asked, swallowing once.

“Your self-respect for starters.”

“What makes you think I don’t have self-respect?”

“You couldn’t,” Kit insisted.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she defied him.

“And what about love?”

“Love?” she drawled.

“Do you have love?”

“Maybe.”

“Admiration?”

“Perhaps.” She snickered. “Oh, Kit, and what do you have your hands on when you have hold of me exactly, hmm? You don’t know, do you?” A beat later, she ran her finger down the length of his cock and said, “You’re so male chauvinistic you can’t stand it that I’ve had you by the balls since the first day we met.”

“About like I’ve got my fingers stuffed in your tight little snatch.”

She’d let him have that one. “Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe to it. You’re as taken with me as I’ve been with you, but it doesn’t mean I’m a foolish man, Holly. I know what I want in a woman. In order to be happy, in order to feel complete, I have to know my partners or else I’m not interested in pursuing anything else long term.”

“What would you call us, Kit?”

“A fling.”

She laughed aloud. Kemper’s nose twitched, and he obviously thought the pronouncement was a little childish and immature, too. “A little over a year and we’re still barely more than a one-night stand?”

“I didn’t ask you for a commitment.”

“No, maybe not in so many words. I’ll give you that, but you made me feel like I was Keesling property, and if I put that to the test now, I guarantee I could stir more angst in this small town than the townspeople would know what to do with.”

“Are you threatening me, Holly?” Kit asked.

Kemper shook his blasted head like he was afraid of what would come out of her mouth next. She should’ve told him to chill.

“I don’t have to threaten. If I wanted a little something something on the side, do you really think I couldn’t walk down the streets of Blountville and find what I’m looking for?”

She wouldn’t dare. Surely they knew she cared too deeply for them.

“I wouldn’t advise trying that,” Kemper told her.

Apparently not.

“Me either,” Kit said, a little more vocal strength in his warning.

She was offended. “You two aren’t a couple of stupid cowboys. You know what it means to be in the Keesling bed around here. Doms from Johnson City and Bristol, hell, as far away as Knoxville, would search me out if they thought I was in the market to replace you.” A beat later, she eased their mind. “I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that and you both know it. If you’d search your hearts, you’d know why, too.”

“Yeah, well, just so you know. Those Doms you speak of? They’d be sorely disappointed seeing as we never trained you for submission.” Kit’s gaze worked her over like a tractor plowing fields. He took his own sweet time and covered every inch.

“My thoughts exactly,” Holly said, walking away. She was suddenly overcome with regret. She’d missed a lot of remarkable loving.

Holly sat on the bench, her palms flat against the cold leather surface. Why had she resisted being trained by them? Had she been afraid if she submitted to them she would give them too much power over her body and mind, or was it her heart she’d tried desperately to protect? Had she feared she’d lose a part of herself, or was she scared she might become so reliant upon them that she’d never be able to let them go?

“What are you thinking?” Kit asked.

“I may have made an error in judgment.”

“You make a lot of those.”

“Let her talk, Kit.”

Holly winked at Kemper. He was hers through and through, and yet other women had seen a side of him she’d yet to experience. Other lovers had enjoyed Kit and Kemper in a way she’d never seen. Subs and slaves knew things about them that she didn’t, and for some reason, all of a sudden, she was greatly troubled by the truth.

Other women perhaps knew the Keesling duo better than the one living with them for well over a year! She should’ve been ashamed of herself for denying them what they perhaps wanted most. Moreover, she should’ve been regretful because by refusing them, she’d denied herself a world of exquisite pleasures, the kind of satisfaction women rarely find in one lover, much less two.

Holly rubbed her arms briskly. “Someone should turn the heat on down here. It’s cold.”

“It’s cool,” Kemper told her. “It’s the perfect temperature. Believe me, on some nights, it’s hotter than an inferno down here.”

She’d like to test that theory out for herself. What she’d give to see the steam rising from a couple of hard bodies.

“I believe you,” she said, narrowing her gaze on Kit again. “So you never answered me. What if I wanted you to make me your slave? Where would we go from here?”

“Are you teasing or offering?” Kit asked, his lust-filled eyes trekking up the leg she crossed over her knee.

She hiked up her skirt and showed off a high panty cut with the imprinted slogan, “Eat me,” which was actually a new brand she’d just started wearing. For about a hundred bucks, edible underwear and lingerie were available in all shapes and sizes.

She wore a four.

“Tease,” Kit growled, staring at her pussy.

“I meant to show you guys these earlier,” she said, deliberately changing the subject. “They have them down at Mona’s Secrets. It’s that new place on the corner of Highway 75.”

“Yeah. I know the place,” Kemper said, a guttural pitch in his voice. “We should keep some panties like what you’re wearing on hand. Maybe I’ll pick up a few different styles and flavors.”

“Mona has an assortment. I’m sure she’d love to model for you.” Holly batted her eyelashes and half expected Kit to ridicule her for the blatant insinuation.

Oh yes, she knew all about Mona and her time with the Keesling brothers. If rumors were true, after Mona spent a summer at the Keesling farm, she opened a slew of businesses, parlaying her severance package—if that’s what they wanted to call their generous hit-the-road gifts—into a small fortune.

Kit massaged his neck. “Kemper, why don’t you give Mona a call and see if you can’t arrange one of those private showings?”

Holly gulped. Sudden rage zipped through her veins.

“Wouldn’t hurt. I don’t guess.”

“Like hell it wouldn’t,” Holly grumbled. “I’d hate for the two of you to show up without the proper equipment to enjoy the show. Mona would be quite disappointed, I’m sure.”

“With Mona running an intimate apparel store, it’s advantageous for us to reconnect, Holly. We’re old friends,” Kit explained, a grin tugging at his lips.

“With benefits,” she muttered.

Kemper winked. “You never know when we may need new gadgets. It’s hard to say what you might find down here from one day to the next. With Mona’s nearby, we shouldn’t run short on lubes and condoms. That’s for sure.”

“I take it you’ve been playing without me in recent months?” she asked, her gaze bouncing between brothers. If one of them—just one of them—brought a submissive woman or anyone else down there while she was living in the same house, she was out of there.

“Chill, doll,” Kemper said, laughing. “We’re teasing you. Mona isn’t in the picture. I promise.”

“Mona isn’t your type. I wasn’t worried.”

They observed her like they saw right through her girlish jealousy.

“You weren’t?” Kit asked.

“No. I wasn’t.” She cleared her throat. “Hell, you’d need to keep a dick in her cheek to silence the old gal. She is pretty but she is most definitely used-up merchandise.

“She proudly boasts about the men she’s left in her wake. To add to the ambiance of her new adult store, she keeps public records for all to see. The initials of the men she’s fucked are carved in a headboard propped up against the wall behind the cash register.”

Kit shrugged. “Can’t blame her for that.”

“Why?”

“Kit is right. The women in this town haven’t been kind to Mona.”

“No wonder,” Holly grumbled.

Her battle wounds were etched in wood and bold enough to cause some permanent scars. The occasional insecure woman who visited Mona’s often discovered her significant other was a memory worthy of merit on Mona’s wall of shame.

No, Holly wasn’t worried about Mona, but she was concerned about herself. Why was she suddenly jealous? Why was she outright possessive? She didn’t like that trait in others, and yet here she was thinking like, acting like…a girlfriend!

Maybe her distorted thoughts could be explained. Holly and unfaithfulness didn’t mix. She might have been a woman with a past, but her explicit road to present day revealed a history she couldn’t have done without. Most men wouldn’t want her to anyway.

Schooled women learned to function best on their backs—or their knees—after they’d had a couple of partners, and where the tools of the trade were concerned, Holly was taught properly. Her first boyfriend was the Dom of all Doms, or so he thought.

She hadn’t told them
that
. Maybe she should. Perhaps then they could decide on which way they wanted her to swing—slave or sub, sub or slave. At this point, that was the only decision they needed to make. Only thanks to her men living on a cowboy’s time, they hadn’t figured that out yet.

Then again, neither had she.

* * * *

Kemper’s fingernail was wedged between two bottom front teeth. He was lost in his own thoughts as he watched the way Holly eyed certain items scattered throughout the room.

Without a doubt, she’d seen, and probably used, most of the toys in their exotic toy box. The Catherine Wheel was another story. After she’d curiously studied the largest furniture piece in the room, there was little doubt in Kemper’s mind. Holly couldn’t wait to take her first spin around the wheel.

“Since you moved in,” Kemper said, deciding he should put his woman’s mind at ease, “there hasn’t been anyone else.” He stared at Kit, hoping he’d give her the assurance she apparently craved, but when he didn’t, Kemper provided the information anyway. “Kit hasn’t slept with anyone either. We only bring committed partners down here.”

Eyes as green as emeralds looked back at him. “Is that the truth?”

“Of course,” Kemper promised. “Why would you think anything else? Have we ever lied to you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Have we paraded girls in here, one after the other?”

“Well, no.”

“Did we force you to accept our lifestyle?” Kit asked, interrupting Kemper before he could ask another question of his own.

“No,” she replied. “In fact, you locked me out of it.”

“We what?” they asked in unison.

Kit rubbed his five o’clock shadow. “How’d you reach that conclusion?”

She simultaneously shrugged, rolling her shoulders forward and back, allowing her breasts to bounce as she shifted around, and acted like she was contemplating the best answer.