Authors: Jenny Penn
Jamie's Revenge (2 page)
“And it ain’t your call to make,” Jamie tagged on to the end. “Who I spend my time with is actually of no concern of yours, given I don’t care to waste it with you any longer.”
There went the vein, the one right between the strained muscles of his neck. That was a yes. Any woman with a little bit of sense would have backed down, and quickly. Not Jamie. This is exactly why she’d come home.
“You’re playing a dangerous game.” The growl came low and deep from in his chest, barely allowing the words to form, but letting the aggression shine fully through. “I won’t allow it. You are not going anywhere with that boy.”
She knew exactly what he meant when he said he wouldn’t allow it. The last time she’d pushed him on that, she’d been twelve and pestering the crap out of him. For her stubbornness, she’d ended up hog tied and strung up from the loft of the barn until his brothers had appeared over an hour later to liberate her.
She wasn’t twelve no more. “You do realize Danny won’t let you stop me with anything short of violence. Do you really want to hurt that boy?”
“Do you really want to see him get hurt?”
They’d come to a standoff. A blatant test of wills, and this time, she wouldn’t flinch.
Chapter 2
Caelen had been whistling a happy tune as he made his way from the poker table. Ambling for Rebecca Boyd’s cabin, he’d been planning on some afternoon delights. By his reckoning, that would have only made a good day perfect. Of course, his definition of perfect had dropped remarkably over the past five years.
What he’d take as pleasure had sunk so low so long ago that he’d forgotten just how good this moment could be. Running for the barn and the horses, trying to keep up with Jamie as she flew out of town on Danny’s horse, the chase was back on.
God, but the only thing he loved more than the chase was spoils of victory when he won.
The arousal unfurling through his balls scorched in the most delectable ways, riling him into pushing hard, moving faster, determined not to lose his prey. Teasing him at every step was the image of Jamie all grown up.
That face, every perfect inch of that body had been burned so deeply into his mind that his every wicked fantasy revolved around her. His very flesh felt scarred, hard, and brittle as it thirsted for that one touch he’d never gotten. In so many hidden seconds and secret minutes, he’d fantasized about just what life would have been like if he’d made a different decision five years ago.
She’d been nineteen back then. Even then, Jamie’s curves had a soft roundedness to them, one that spoke of youth. While in his fantasies he’d filled her out into being all woman, he’d still not come close to the luxuries Jamie’s body had bloomed into. It helped too that the dirty boy clothes she’d always favored had disappeared.
They were replaced by, of all things, a riding skirt. Not once, not even to church, had Caelen ever seen Jamie in anything but pants. That day five years ago when Jamie had shed her clothes, both Brodie and he had been stunned and appalled to realize just how much of a woman had been tucked in under their noses.
Those times had apparently passed by. The curves that Jamie had once kept a secret she shared only with them, now beckoned a welcoming call to all men. It wasn’t just the clothes, for it was the fit that drew a man’s notice.
The soft cotton of her skirt had clung from the dip of her waist to smooth like a lover’s hand over the flare of her hips. A sweet zone wrapped in soft fabric, it made a man’s hands itch to rip aside that skirt and find the glories he knew would be waiting between those soft thighs. Thighs that pressed out of the folds of her skirt as she moved, teasing a man’s dry eyes with a hint of roundness.
It didn’t take much of man’s imagination to figure out what kind of sweet curves those folds hid. Especially not with her vest improperly unbuttoned at the top. The soft leather caught on the generous globes of her breast, highlighting her full curves indecently, which was just why Caelen’s gaze had lingered there.
Hard as he tried, though, he couldn’t see right through the white cotton to the most beautiful breasts he’d ever been tempted to take a taste of. He’d just have to rip the damn thing out of his way once they got a moment alone. That’s just what he’d do, because some things about Jamie hadn’t changed at all.
She still found trouble easy enough. The sparkle of green flashing in her gaze assured him she still enjoyed it. Knowing that, even knowing that the boy she’d rode off with was nothing more than a pawn, none of it helped with the surge of aggression snaking through the hard bite of lust gnawing on his balls, Jamie’s signature imprint on his soul.
* * * *
Brodie just couldn’t keep his growl behind his clenched teeth. It rolled out with no end in sight. Not even the hard pound of Geoffrey’s hooves could hammer it out him. Back in town less than a minute, and already Jamie Traynor had him pissed enough to chew through leather.
Aroused anger, her signature brand, burned through him. A fire of which he’d thought the flames had long burned out, leaving nothing more than ashes of his soul. The last time he’d felt the scorching lick of volatile emotions Jamie inspired in him had been five years ago.
Five years ago when he’d been fool enough to strive for honor, which just meant he’d been a fool. Brodie didn’t consider himself to be a noble man or even a good one. Life on the range made a man practical, but a practical man would have taken Jamie up on her offer.
Only a blind fool would have turned down the opportunity to ravish a girl as beautiful and exciting as Jamie. Especially given how she stripped down and offered herself up willingly for a man’s touch. It hadn’t been practical, though it might have been honorable. It certainly had just been plain dumb to say no.
Worse, he’d chased her off. All the way back East where he didn’t even stand a hope of getting a second chance, and that’s just what he’d been silently wishing for…
for five years
. As the days had passed into weeks, and the weeks had rolled on through the months into years, hope had begun to wane.
Brodie had stopped looking toward the horizon or glancing down the trails, waiting for his pigtailed rider to return. It figured that would be when fate finally answered. Brodie would get a second chance.
This time, no amount of tender feelings was going to hold back his desires.
* * * *
Jamie smiled as Danny spurred his horse further out of the city. Few moments in life were worth savoring the way she’d on the memory of Brodie’s face when she’d accepted Danny’s arm up onto the horse. He’d blinked and let them go.
The move had surprised her about as much as it had disappointed her. Jamie always knew that Brodie had to be half full of shit with all his threats. The overgrown brute just relied on all those muscles to make sure a person wouldn’t test him…
all those muscles.
God, but he still looked just as good as his brother. After four years spent running a parlor house, Jamie now had experience to make a comparison. Not like it had been five years ago when she’d left thinking that there would be a vast supply of men just like Brodie and Caelen for her to pick from in the city.
Not that there hadn’t been some men that filled out their breeches and shirts just about as nicely as Brodie and Caelen, but for the most part, the pickings had been slimmer, paler, and they rarely smelled as ruggedly good as the MacAuley brothers. Leather and musk, sometimes tinted with the rich scents of tobacco, that’s what a man smelled like.
The city gents that weighted in as big as Brodie and even managed to smell right, didn’t have that true hint of feral aggression that made a woman bristle with danger as they moved in close. Not one man back East had ever looked at her the way Brodie did. None of them ever gave her half a thrill either.
Today that spark flared higher than ever because sweet-faced Caelen’s gaze had held the same dark warning. Over five years ago, Jamie had spied the beast lurking beneath Caelen’s angel smile and knew he had the same wildness running through his blood. She’d just never figured out how to prod his lust over the edge. Even when she’d watched him with other women, he’d always been controlled.
That’s just why she’d given him her well-practiced smug smirk when she’d let Danny lift her onto the horse because she could scent the change in him. That smile had assured her that this time they would most definitely be racing after her and that pug-nose whore Rebecca would just have to find her some other man to warm her sheets.
The game had begun.
A little earlier than she’d planned on. It had been her intention to get settled into her daddy’s house before she moved onto tormenting Brodie and Caelen, but she’d learned to adjust to the random events life threw at her. Adjust she had and the first round had gone to her. The second round?
Well, that would probably go to whoever could get to her daddy first.
Caelen had always been really good at getting her daddy to bend his way. In fact, he’d never lost an argument with
Now she had money, and money bought freedom. Not to mention her daddy thought of her as a married woman…soon, sadly, to be widowed. A widow with money had the right to make her own decisions, but that didn’t change some of life’s basic tenets.
Once Jamie stepped under her daddy’s roof, she stepped under his control. No amount of money or number of husbands, dead or alive, would change that. Her only option would be to leave or stay. Leaving again wasn’t an option, so it all came down to just what the MacAuley twins would show up demanding of her daddy.
The white and brown speckled horse Danny rode cut off the rutted path that defined the road into town and began trotting through the green lit pastures that fed off the banks of the river. It might be a new summer, but all the old landmarks remained the same.
Jamie gave over her scheming to let the warm rush of memories wash over her. It could have been ten years ago, her sitting up front with one of her brothers taking her home. The only difference was she didn’t have to listen to one of their well-rehearsed lectures about not getting into so much trouble.
Right around the curve of the old grove of trees, any one of her brothers would have been winding down. Except for Gillian. As the oldest, he tended to yawn on, taking his duties a little too seriously. Now, though, she couldn’t wait to show Gillian what kind of proper woman she’d blossomed into.
Even if it was all a lie, lies served a purpose. Her family knowing the truth wouldn’t serve any good. Actually, it would do just the opposite. Not one of the men would even be able to conceive just how great her life actually turned out to be. No. They’d focus in on all the difficulties and dangers.
Jamie couldn’t lie about that. They existed, and she confronted them, but that just made the adventure all the more fun. Once she finished, she’d be heading back there, too. All she had to do was make sure Brodie and Caelen were so focused on her, they forgot all about their plans to marry that flea-infested, light-skirt back in town.
If she couldn’t have Brodie or Caelen, then neither could Rebecca. It didn’t matter that Jamie didn’t really want to wear their ring now. Jamie didn’t want to wear any man’s ring, but she wanted to finally know what it meant to be with one. That wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, she had very high hopes given everything she knew.
Knowing and doing though…Jamie had tried a little here and there with other men, but it just didn’t feel right. Every time she knew she was supposed to be overwhelmed with lust, her mind just kept churning away, wrecking the moment. What she needed was a man, or two, to make her forget just how…
icky
sex actually could be.
When Bridgette had written that Caelen and Brodie had built their own little cabin on the ranch and everybody expected them to marry Rebecca, Jamie realized her time had run out. Caelen and Brodie wouldn’t stray on a wife. If she ever wanted to spend a night in their bed, she had to get home.
Now the trick would be getting what she wanted and getting the hell out of town. If Caelen or Brodie ever got a whiff that she’d never been with a man before, they might not touch her, or worse, they might force her into marriage. Neither end would be acceptable to her. She wanted to use them just as they’d used every woman before her. Then she’d walk away. Walk away no matter how much it hurt because that’s what they deserved.
Even if they married Rebecca after she left, all three of them would know the truth. Jamie would own Brodie and Caelen, heart and soul, before she left Head of Elm.
Heart and soul…
The slowing of the horse’s gallop to a trot and then to a complete stop under the strangling shadows of the forest edge had Jamie’s attention perking back to the moment. Three more feet and they’d be standing on her daddy’s land. It felt somehow symbolically wrong to be so close and to come to a complete stop.
Casting a questioning look over her shoulder, Jamie still didn’t resist as Danny pulled her to the ground.
“I think Marve’s got something stuck up in his shoe.”