Acres, Natalie - Sex Drive [Country Roads 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (3 page)

“I’m only saying this once,” Lucy began. “I didn’t come home for a quick romp with the good old boys who know how to do a woman dirty. I didn’t return for you or Rex. I damn sure didn’t come back to remember. I’m here because I inherited a nice chunk of change, a beautiful home, and some prime land. I’m staying because I have big plans for this place and quite frankly, wanted a fresh start, nothing more and nothing less, just a nice clean slate.”

“Starting over sounds good,” Luke said, arching a brow like he expected to hear more.

“So you approve?” she asked, not really caring either way.

Luke’s hot gaze dripped over her. “You know I do, darlin’. I always have.”

“Well then, what do you say we just go ahead and get to it then?” she asked, moistening her lips, implying a lot.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Luke replied, winking.

She grunted. This was bound to be a long first week so she might as well make a point.

Lucy rubbed her small frame against Luke’s much larger one, peering over his shoulder in order to look directly at Rex. “Now that we’ve groped and teased one another, why don’t you boys run on along and fetch Marilyn? She should be somewhere over at your place with her legs spread wide, a dildo in her pussy, a plug in her ass, and her small nipples clamped just the way you like them.

“At least that’s the way I remember her when I saw her last. I imagine things haven’t changed much. Sluts and whore-hoppers generally stick together, don’t they?”

“I hate to hear you talk about yourself like that. Best I remember, we used to spend a lot of time together,” Rex said, never copping a smile. “Come on, Luke. We should go. Mrs. Carpenter will want to know how many places to set for dinner.”

Luke released Lucy. He gave her one last head-to-toe appraisal with a downright wicked smile stamped upon perfect lips—full on the bottom and thin on top.

“I see some things never change. The two of you couldn’t wait to rush right over here and insult the hell out of me,” she accused, glaring at Rex as if he were the only McDavid to blame.

Rex tipped his cowboy hat and with smug satisfaction said, “You took care of that yourself. Besides, if birds of a feather flock together, I can’t wait to soar into forbidden territory.” A beat later he added, “Tell you what, Lucy, as soon as you get settled in, you let us know. We’ll stop by again tomorrow and see if you need anything. You watch for us, now, ya hear?”

* * * *

“What the hell were you trying to do—piss her off?” Luke asked, stomping into the house without wiping his feet on the welcome mat.

“If I’d wanted to do that, I would’ve told her to strip and bend,” Rex replied, walking to the refrigerator where he retrieved a soda can and popped the top.

“That’s great, Rex. I’m sure Lucy would’ve been happy to oblige.”

“When I heard Lucy inherited her granddad’s place, I made up my mind then. I won’t tiptoe around her this time. I’m not waiting to see how everything plays out. She already knows who and what we are. She’s old enough to know what she wants now. She acts like she’s repulsed by the idea of Domination and submission, but that’s all it is…an act.”

“We hurt Lucy’s ego and broke her heart.”

“Yes,” Rex agreed. “Now it’s time to kiss and make up. I’ve waited a long time to do that. I’m not taking things slow. I’ve missed her. I’ve needed her. And I damn sure plan on having her. I’d marry her tomorrow if she’d have me.”

“Well then by all means, let’s just go back over there, tie her up, and haul her off to the bedroom. After we get done tonight, maybe she’ll race us to the altar.”

“I think that’s a swell idea.”

“Perfect. Just perfect,” Luke muttered. “You really are a nut job when it comes to Lucy.”

“You’re the one who once said Lucy’s problem wasn’t that we banged another woman. Her issues with that incident revolved around the fact that we were with Marilyn in the very way she’d always envisioned us taking her.”

“Lucy is carrying around half a decade of anger, and that fury wasn’t fueled because we had sex with another woman. She had it in her blasted head that we were going to marry her as soon as she graduated from college. In her mind, we already belonged to her. She belonged to us. We betrayed her. She wanted a commitment.”

“Maybe she would’ve gotten one if she hadn’t taken off out of here like a bat out of hell,” Rex pointed out.

“She was a devastated young woman, you nitwit,” Mrs. Carpenter said, entering the kitchen. “She’s also a woman who will be seated at our dinner table this evening.”

“Ya think?” Luke asked.

Mrs. Carpenter rolled her eyes. “The two of you better act like gentlemen or so help me I’ll tan both your hides when she leaves.”

“Promise? You know I got a thing for older women.”

“Don’t you go and get a flappy mouth with me, Luke McDavid. I’m old enough to be your grandma, and I sure ain’t takin’ kindly to your form of jokin’. It’s disrespectful.”

“Lucy can’t make it tonight,” Rex informed her, changing the subject before Mrs. Carpenter threatened to beat them both with a small switch, something she’d been promising to do since they were children.

Mrs. Carpenter stuck her hand in her apron and retrieved her cell. “She’ll be here. I figured she’d shoot the messengers, so I called and invited her myself. I still had her sweet grandpa’s phone number saved in contacts. After I tempted the little thing with my broccoli casserole and mashed potatoes, she couldn’t say no. She’ll be here at seven. You two owe me a few days vacation after this. I’m fixing your dinner and then taking the weekend off.”

“This weekend?” Rex croaked.

“That’s right. If you don’t behave yourselves with Miss Lucy, I may not come back. Then what will you do?”

“Celebrate?” Luke suggested.

“Don’t sass me, Luke.”

“Why not? I sure have a good time devilin’ you.”

“Yes, but you’d better be brushing up on your charm rather than tarnishing your manners. Now you and Rex get on out of here. I got a mess of cookin’ to do before Lucy gets here. If you wanna make yourselves useful, set the table.”

Rex and Luke started for the dining room.

Mrs. Carpenter cleared her throat.

“What now?” Rex asked.

“If I were you, I’d plan on entertaining in the sunroom. After what Lucy watched in that dining room all those years ago, she might lose her appetite if you make her pull up a chair in there.”

“Nah,” Rex said. “If anything, by the time she picks up her fork, she’ll be famished. And I just love an insatiable woman.”

Chapter Three

“Why do you insist on getting Mrs. Carpenter’s blood pressure elevated?” Luke asked, strolling ahead of Rex as they headed out to the barn.

“Do what?”

“Mrs. Carpenter. Why do you like upsetting her?” Luke asked again, grabbing a halter and lead rope someone left on a nearby bench.

“She’s an old bitty with too much information about our personal lives.”

“And she gets her ears full how?” Luke accused, thinking Rex didn’t necessarily say too much but rather chose the wrong things to share when he spoke in the first place.

“She eavesdrops
and
she makes nice with the women we’ve had in our beds. Marilyn told her anything she ever asked, or have you forgotten that?”

“Marilyn is impossible to forget.”

“Says who?” Rex argued.

“Come on now. Marilyn wasn’t that bad.”

“She wasn’t that good, either,” Rex said, chuckling.

“Marilyn was all right on a rainy day.”

“Thank God she only stayed around during the drought. Can you imagine waking up to her mouth every morning?” A beat later, Rex added, “We had to keep our pants down so we could keep her busy. I hate to think about the trouble that woman would stir if the men in this town didn’t keep her jaws working for the right reasons.”

Luke headed for the far end of the barn and started sorting grain buckets and grumbling about the prices of horse feed. “Why did you turn on her?” Luke asked.

Rex frowned. “Marilyn was a diversion. She kept our minds off Lucy, at least for a second. In the beginning she never expected anything more than what we were willing to give. In the end, she left bitter. She knew what she was to us, and we were good to her while it lasted, but it wasn’t enough. I don’t feel anything for Marilyn. Tell me why I should.”

“We spent the better part of four years with her,” Luke reminded him.

“The relationship was on and off again. She was here one day and gone the next. She was no good, and you know it. She’s the reason Lucy doesn’t belong to us now.”

“You can’t blame Marilyn for what we did. Our timing sucked. We’d just been with Lucy the week before.”

“And after I was with Lucy, I never felt the same again. I had no business taking Marilyn to bed,” Rex admitted.

“Technically? We didn’t lay her down and love her. Anyone watching us would’ve known from the get-go. We were drunk, and she was a mistake, a party that got out of hand. We had her on the dining room table because we couldn’t find the bedrooms in our own damn house. Plus, we weren’t married. We never discussed commitment. We didn’t do anything wrong. Most women would’ve forgiven us.”

Rex looked outside. “Lucy wasn’t most women. Fucking Marilyn was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as saying that, but we did make a mistake. We forgot to shut the curtains.”

* * * *

Lucy approached the McDavid house with a photo album in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other. Walking up the crooked path, she listened to the crushing pebbles under her feet and focused on the beauty surrounding her.

An avid gardener, Mrs. Carpenter had always cared for the McDavid grounds like she might take pride in her own home. In fact, the farm was her home. The McDavids’ housekeeper spent more time there than at her
Main Street
cottage. Rex and Luke, she’d once confided in Lucy, were the sons she never had.

By the looks of the elaborate concrete statues and an abundance of blooming geraniums, butterfly weed, and multicolored roses, the McDavids and Mrs. Carpenter continued to care for what they’d long since referred to as an angel’s garden, in memory of Mr. and Mrs. McDavid.

Rex and Luke’s parents were killed in a car accident when the boys were still in high school. After they died, their ashes were scattered there, and small marble memorials located under a pair of weeping willows marked their passing.

A trail, about a quarter of a mile long, led straight to a massive gazebo and then split like a fork in the road, the left path leading to the barn and the right circling through another courtyard before looping around the front of the house. Lucy followed the broken trail to the right, strolling along a recently constructed cobblestone walkway.

Halfway there, she stopped and stared at the house. Beyond the trimmed hedges and large, white rockers scattered across an elaborate country porch, a picture window drew her eye.

Swallowing once, she forced herself to put aside the days she’d lost because of bad memories lingering behind that glass. Mrs. Carpenter had invited her to dinner, and she wasn’t going to disappoint her.

“This, too, shall pass,” she said softly.

“I hope not,” Rex said, stepping away from a large oak tree.

“You startled me!”

Reaching for the bottle of wine, Rex smiled easily. “I try to do what I can to keep a woman on her toes.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I thought the McDavid brothers did everything they could to keep a woman on her back.”

“Come on, Lucy. Let’s move past this. What’d you say we pick up where we left off when things were good between us?”

Lucy shook her head, taking in the man before her. Dear God, when had Rex McDavid turned into a walking billboard for country sex? Dressed in a fitted white shirt, white-washed denim jeans, and snakeskin boots, Rex was something else all right.

His eyes followed hers as her gaze settled on the window where everything went to hell and betrayal—along with life lessons—unfolded. “I’m not the same man, Lucy.”

 
“Mrs. Carpenter invited me for dinner. I brought her a photo album,” she rambled, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I thought she’d like to have some of these pictures of you and Luke. There are dozens, all laminated and dated. I don’t know why I kept so many, but here they are.”

The reason she owned such an assortment of glossies and black-and-white images was pretty clear. She’d grown up with the McDavids, and from the moment she noticed they were boys and she was a stupid girl—something Luke used to call her—she’d been obsessed.

“You look beautiful,” Rex remarked, taking a step toward her and apparently uninterested in scrapbooks and bottled alcohol. “I’d forgotten how sexy you are.”

His voice was low, his eyes hooded, and his steps were deliberate as he inched closer, taking a cowboy’s sweet time. Oh yes, Rex McDavid’s notions were clear.

He planned to claim her. He wanted to seduce her. There wasn’t a question in Lucy’s mind. Rex McDavid had every intention of possessing her.