Monroe, Marla - The Hired Hands' Dilemma [The Men of Space Station One #3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

BOOK: Monroe, Marla - The Hired Hands' Dilemma [The Men of Space Station One #3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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“Be careful with her.”

Boyd stopped outside one of the horses’ stalls and looked at Keeton with a strange look on his face.

“Have I ever been anything but careful with a woman before?”

Keeton sighed and shook his head. “No, you’re always good to them. She’s someone who we are going to be living with the rest of our lives. I guess I want her first time to be really special for her.”

“We’ll make it that way for her, Keeton. I’m not doing this alone. You have to help me. Once I get inside her, I’m going to be lost. You’ve got to keep her going.”

“Fuck, I’m not an easy man and I don’t know the first thing about coddling.”

“You don’t have to coddle her. Kiss her. Play with her tits. That’s all it will take.”

Boyd saddled his mare and began checking her over. Keeton threw the saddle blanket over his horse and thought about what Boyd had said. Yeah, he could do that. It relaxed him some. He tossed the saddle up and on the horse then cinched it down. He checked the horse over then led it outside, where Boyd was waiting on him.

“Man, it feels good to be back on a horse after almost a year. I was beginning to think we never would.” Boyd rubbed the horse’s neck.

“Yeah, all that training was a bitch and then the fucking shuttle ride had me about ready to pull all my hair out.” Keeton mounted his horse and the two headed across the field to the big house.

As houses went, it wasn’t that much larger than theirs. But then the entire object of the colony was to populate it, so big houses for lots of children. Keeton hadn’t really cared much about that. Boyd was the one interested in a family. Keeton was all about working the ranch. The thought of a brown-haired beauty with a softly satisfied face entered his thoughts, though.

They slowed down at the edge of the yard where the fence was already up and walked the horses around it until they came to the gate. Keeton got down and unhitched it. Boyd walked his and Keeton’s horses through while Keeton fastened the gate back. Then they rode over to the hitching post that stood at the back of the house.

By the time they had dismounted, the back door was open and Danny walked out with a smile on his face.

“Come on in. You should have brought Ashley with you. Rachel is about to have a cow to meet her.”

“She was busy and we don’t plan to stay, but we just wanted to talk a little more about the ranch and this creature you mentioned. It wasn’t in any of our literature to study.”

Another man walked up and Danny introduced him as Andrew. “Come on in the living room and we’ll talk.”

Keeton and Boyd followed the two men to the living room and took a seat. The house seemed to be made up around the same plans, just a little larger than theirs. Keeton sure wasn’t complaining, though. He’d lived in nothing but bunkhouses for years. A real house was a blessing as far as he was concerned.

“So what about the creature?” Boyd prompted.

Andrew and Danny exchanged looks. Danny sighed and started talking.

“It looks like a cross between a praying mantis and a manatee. Weird, to say the least, but it has razor-sharp teeth and three claws on each leg. It can stand upright, but seems to run on all fours.”

“You’re serious,” Keeton said.

“Dead serious. It nearly killed our wife. She was lucky to have gotten away from it. That’s why the fences are going up. You need to work on yours every chance you get. You want to get it up around the garden and the house.” Danny unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off one shoulder.

“This is what it does to you when you heal.” He showed them a scar that was puckered up as if the skin had boiled. It had a strange tint to it, almost yellow.

“Rachel’s is much worse, but it’s on her back shoulder. We have no idea if there is any residual effect from it. Just that it seems to do something to the skin when it heals. Rachel’s is a much stronger yellow than mine is, but she had deeper cuts.”

Andrew stood up and paced. It was obvious talking about their wife’s injury bothered him. Keeton changed the subject.

“So how many cows are you running right now?”

The conversation remained on cattle and their progress with breeding. After two hours, Boyd called a halt with the excuse that they needed to get back to Ashley.

“Don’t want to leave her alone too much right now. She’ll have to deal with it when we start working regular.”

“Well, don’t worry about it for the next few days. You need to get settled in and recover from that shuttle flight. It takes something out of you. Plus, as I understand it, you didn’t know your wife before you arrived. You need to develop a relationship with her.” Andrew patted Boyd on the back as they walked back through the kitchen.

“Tell your wife we’ll bring Ashley over in another day or two,” Boyd said.

“Will do. She’s taking a nap. We were up late last night putting away some meat. Butchered a cow. And filled up the freezer. You have plenty of meat in yours, too.” Danny opened the back door and watched them climb on their horses.

They waved as they settled into a gallop crossing the pasture after closing the gate behind them. They reached the barn and climbed off their horses after walking them around the yard a few minutes. Once they had taken care of the horses, they headed to the house.

Boyd made it inside first, but he stopped in the doorway so that Keeton ran into him from behind.

“What’s going on? Why did you stop?” Keeton complained.

“Something’s wrong.”

Keeton immediately grabbed his knife out of his boot and pushed past Boyd. Once inside the kitchen, he could feel it, too. Something was inside that shouldn’t be there. Keeton carefully walked through the kitchen to the living room. There was no sign of Ashley, but the cushions were on the floor and her shoes were across the room as if she’d thrown them.

Boyd cursed when he saw around Keeton. They headed for the stairs and took them two at a time. Keeton found the bedroom door shut. When he went to open it, it was locked.

“Ashley? It’s Keeton and Boyd. Let us in, baby.”

“Is it still out there?” her muffled voice came through the door.

“Is what out here?” Boyd asked.

“That thing. It tried to bite me.”

Keeton cursed. “Open the door, Ashley. Now.”

There was the sound of something moving in front of the door then the lock turning, and the door opened a fraction. Keeton pushed it open further and walked into the room with Boyd right behind him.

It was obvious that she had moved the chair in front of the door since it was out of place. The expression on her face was one of pure terror. Keeton’s heart thumped hard in his chest.

“What was it, Ashley? Tell us what happened.”

Boyd picked her up and carried her over to the bed, where he sat her down. Keeton sat on one side of her and Boyd the other.

“I was napping on the couch. I was so tired. I kept feeling something around my fingertips and figured I was brushing the rug, so I moved my hand under my chin. Then I felt something jump on me. I woke up all the way and screamed when I saw this weird animal sitting on my leg gnashing his teeth as if he couldn’t wait to take a bite out of me.” She shivered.

“What happened then, baby?” Boyd asked, running his hand up and down her arm.

“I started trying to get up and get it off of me all at the same time. It grabbed hold of my jeans with its claws and wouldn’t let go. I didn’t know what to do. I screamed and I shook my leg but it held on. Then it started trying to gnaw through my jeans. I managed to get one leg up, and I pulled off my shoes and started hitting it with them. When it squealed and let go, it jumped down and sat by the fireplace watching me. When I started to get off the couch, it took a step toward me. I didn’t know what to do, so I threw my shoe at it and ran up here and slammed the door shut. How did it get inside?” Ashley was shaking by the time she finished.

“Take off your clothes, Ashley,” Keeton said, standing up.

“What?” She looked over at Boyd with confusion all over her face.

“Keeton?” Boyd asked.

“Take off your clothes. I want to be sure it didn’t break the skin. We don’t know anything about this thing. It doesn’t sound like anything in our pamphlets.” Keeton was worried.

Ashley scrambled out of her jeans and stood up in front of Keeton and Boyd. Fear left no room for modesty, evidently.

“Which leg was he trying to bite?” Keeton asked.

“This one.” She indicated her left leg.

Keeton got down on his knees and searched her leg for any sign of a break. What he found worried him, though.

“Boyd, what do you see?” he asked.

Boyd squatted and looked over her leg. He turned worried eyes to Keeton.

“Baby, get up on the bed for us so we can see better. The light isn’t very good with you standing up.”

“He didn’t break the skin. I mean, there wasn’t any blood.” Ashley sounded on the verge of tears. She had held up so far.

On the side of her lower leg there were tiny raised bumps with a slightly yellow tint to them. It looked almost like a bubbly burn, like a much smaller version of what was on Danny’s shoulder.
Fuck
. Keeton needed to know where that animal was and what it looked like.

“I think we’ll clean you up with peroxide just to be safe, Ashley. Lie there and I’ll be right back.” Boyd walked to the bathroom.

“You don’t have any idea where it came from or where it went after you got up here?”

“No. I was asleep, Keeton. I’m sorry.” Tears began to roll from her eyes.

“Shh, it’s okay, baby. We’ll find it and get rid of it.”

Boyd returned with a towel and the hydrogen peroxide. He laid the towel under her leg and then poured the peroxide over the bumps. They bubbled like something was on them then settled down. He did it again until there was no more bubbling.

“Let me see your fingers where he touched you,” Boyd said.

Ashley thrust out her hand. Keeton and Boyd looked over her fingers and hand but saw nothing to indicate it had done any damage. It was all centered around the area on her lower leg.

Boyd took everything away and walked back in the bedroom with a serious expression on his face. Keeton knew they had a problem. Something had gotten in the house and they didn’t know how.

“Baby, I want you to stay up here with the door closed until we get back. We’re going to look around the house to see how it might have gotten inside. Okay?” Keeton held her head between his hands and looked into her eyes. He needed her to be calm.

“I understand. I won’t move.”

“Good girl. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He and Boyd walked outside the bedroom and closed the door behind them. They looked at each other but Keeton shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it this close to Ashley. She was going to freak out if she realized she had those bumps.

Once they were downstairs, they searched every room in every corner trying to find the thing. They turned over the couch and looked up in the springs, but found nothing in the house. They walked outside and began searching around the house for any sign of a breach in the foundation or the walls.

When they reached the cellar doors, Keeton noticed that they were unlocked. He went to raise one side and found it was ajar.

“Boyd! Come here.”

Boyd came running around the side of the house. “Look. The cellar is unlocked, and it was ajar when I reached to open it. What do you want to bet that’s how the little bastard got in?”

BOOK: Monroe, Marla - The Hired Hands' Dilemma [The Men of Space Station One #3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
9.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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