Their Reluctant Bride (Bridgewater Menage Series Book 6) Read online

  “A woman marries for completely different reasons than a man. Look at these two.” Belinda waved her hand between the men. “They have money, looks, land, a successful business. They do not need to account to anyone. A woman, though, can’t work, but if she did, it would be at a backbreaking task and for a piddly amount. She would be vulnerable to less honorable men and her virtue would be constantly in question.”

  While Xander started eating again, he listened carefully.

  “As for you, a widow, I assume you had no protection once you were alone. Do you have family?”

  I placed my napkin on the table beside my plate. “No, ma’am.”

  Tyler stood, retrieved the coffeepot from the stove and filled his mug.

  “Marrying for protection is reason enough. A man must understand this and be gentle—” she looked blatantly at Xander, then at Tyler, “—and patient.”

  “Point taken, Mother,” Tyler said, sitting back down, his long legs stretched out beneath the table.

  She was so kind. How would she feel about me when she learned I was a killer? God, the guilt, the worry, it was getting worse and worse. My secret was a weapon for so many people. I didn’t intend to hurt any of them, but the list of casualties was growing.

  “You do not have any children?” She looked at me almost wistfully.

  I looked down at my empty plate. I was a liar and possibly barren. I was a terrible wife. The guilt about both riddled me. “No.”

  “I could only have Tyler, but I had Olivia to raise as well after her parents died. I’m sure these two will get you with child soon enough.”

  My cheeks burned at her bold words.

  “Mother!” Tyler shouted, rolling his eyes.

  Xander made a sound in the back of his throat.

  Belinda did not look mollified at all. “I want grandchildren.”

  She stood. Xander and Tyler did as well. “I will let you get to that task. You’re newlyweds. You don’t need your mother about, but I am glad you came here. You know the way to your rooms.” She came around and gave me a generous hug, the swirl of soft perfume circling about. She kissed her son, then slid her hand down Xander’s upper arm as she left the room.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Tyler told me. “If it means getting grandchildren, hell, she’ll lock us in the bedroom until our seed takes. One perk of a woman having two husbands like her is that she’s well aware of their needs.” He chuckled.

  “You mean fucking,” I replied, glancing between the two of them.

  “Hell, yes,” Xander added, running a hand over his beard.

  Tyler took a step closer, cupped the back of my head. “As for grandchildren…”

  “What if I can’t have any? I… miscarried once and then no success after that.” I worried my lip. What if I couldn’t fulfill the most important role of a wife, for not only one man, but two?

  Tyler kissed the top of my head. “I’m sorry to hear that, baby. That must have been very sad for you. Perhaps the problem with making babies wasn’t with you, but Frank. As for making babies with us, well, we’ve fucked you enough to have it be a possibility.”

  “Just to be sure, we’re going upstairs right now and we’re going to fill you up with our seed all night long.” Xander didn’t leave any room for confusion.

  “Damn straight,” Tyler added. Bending his knees, he tossed me over his shoulder and carried me up the back stairs. If I couldn’t have a baby, it wasn’t going to be for lack of trying.

  “But…” I couldn’t say anything more. I tried, but the air kept getting bumped and jostled from me.

  TYLER

  I dropped Emily onto the large bed. She bounced once and then settled. Her hair was falling from its pins, her eyes wide with surprise and her cheeks flushed. She looked wanton and decadent and I couldn’t wait to get her clothes off so I could touch every part of her. To make her cry out her pleasure.

  Fucking in the past had been all about the release, the ability to lose myself in the pleasure of it. With Emily, it was so much more than that. I wanted to please her. It was half the fun of it. Perhaps in about a decade or so we’d discover all the different ways to make her wet. In the meantime, we were going to have fun finding them.

  “It’s a good thing your ass isn’t ready yet for our cocks, sweetheart. We want every drop of our seed in that sweet pussy of yours until we give you that baby you want,” I commented as I began to undo the buttons of my shirt.

  Xander lit the lantern beside the bed, bathing the room in a soft glow.

  “You want children?” she asked, looking between us. Xander stood beside me so we were shoulder to shoulder above her.

  “Hell, yes. A little girl who looks just like you,” I said, watching as tears filled her eyes.

  Xander flicked a look my way at her unexpected response. “I never thought it would be a possibility. The idea of your belly swelling with our child…” Xander groaned.

  To my surprise, Emily rolled off the side of the bed and began pacing the room, crying in earnest.

  I looked to Xander, who frowned.

  I knew women to be moody sometimes, but this… this was something different. I did know we had to tread lightly. I’d seen my fathers trying to soothe my mother before. It took a gentle hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She shook her head and began to mumble as she cried. I couldn’t understand her, but heard a few words. Liar. Trouble.

  I caught her as she walked by us and pulled her into my arms, but she struggled away and leaned forward, covering her face with her hands.

  What the hell did we do? Gentle persuasion wasn’t working. Kindness wasn’t working. Shit. I hated crying women. I ran my hand over the back of my neck. “Emily… shh.”

  “Stop,” Xander said, his voice booming in the otherwise quiet room.

  Emily sucked in a breath and she dropped her hands. She stopped crying. Xander had, perhaps, scared the tears from her, but it had worked. She stared at him, mouth open.

  “Take off your clothes,” Xander commanded.

  I put a hand on his arm. “What if she’s upset because she doesn’t want to fuck?”

  “That’s not it,” he replied. How he could be so sure, I had no idea. “Are you afraid to fuck us, sweetheart?”

  She shook her head, her cheeks tearstained and pale.

  “Take off your clothes,” he repeated. “All of them.”

  Emily paused for the briefest of moments, but did as Xander said. No, commanded. She was submitting to him. The problem wasn’t solved, but she was responding. Perhaps Xander was right. Perhaps even Emily was right. She liked rough and he liked to dominate.

  Quickly enough, she was naked before us, her dress, shift, stockings and boots a small pile on the floor between us. Her nipples tightened before our eyes.

  Xander lifted his chin. “Turn around and put your hands on the edge of the bed. Good. Now lean onto your forearms.”

  Emily settled into the position Xander expected, her head down, her ass up and out.

  “This is how you want to talk with her?” I asked, worried she might start crying all over again. “Earlier, she was in this position over a desk and thought we wanted to fuck her.”

  “This isn’t about fucking. Spread your legs. Wider.” Obviously, he was ignoring my concerns for Emily. “Good girl.” Xander’s voice, while deep, had an almost soothing quality to it and I couldn’t miss the way Emily sighed, her body relaxing.

  He looked at me. “Yes, this is how we’re going to talk with her. She likes it. I know because she’s wet.”

  Her bare pussy was exposed and I could see her folds gleam with her arousal, although Xander chose to swipe one blunt finger over them so even Emily was aware. She gasped, her hips twitched, but she remained in place.

  “She knows we won’t hurt her. Right, Emily?”

  “You won’t hurt me,” she replied, the sound muffled by the blanket. She sniffed once, then again.

  “We will spank you.”
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  She stiffened then, but Xander placed his palm on her lower back.

  “Have you been bad, Emily?”

  Xander’s hand moved lower, stroking over one pale globe.

  She nodded.

  Spank.

  “You’re going to give the problem to your men, sweetheart.”

  Spank.

  “We need to listen to her, not spank her,” I told him. He was pushing her too far.

  Xander lifted his hand, then spanked a different spot on her ass. The skin instantly turned a pretty shade of pink. Emily cried out, but remained in place.

  “She needs this. She needs to let it out.” Spank. “She won’t share. Whatever it is, she’s guilt-ridden over it.” He tilted his chin again. “Can’t you see? She needs me—us—to take over. She wants to tell us but doesn’t know how. We will take her decision away. It’s not her choice now, but ours.”

  Spank, spank.

  The strikes weren’t hard. She never once lifted up onto her toes or cried out in pain. Xander was careful, watching her reaction each time his palm struck.

  “What did you do, Emily?” Xander asked after a time.

  She was crying in earnest now, but she wasn’t tense any longer. She’d long ago relaxed into each spank, allowing it. Taking it. Giving in.

  “I did it!” she cried.

  Spank.

  I could see now that she responded to this unorthodox attention. How Xander somehow knew what she needed, I had no idea. Thank Christ he could read her when I couldn’t.

  “Did what, baby?” I asked. I matched Xander’s deep tone.

  “I killed him.”

  Xander’s hand paused in mid-air and he looked to me, his eyebrows going up. Did she say killed? Catching himself, he pulled his hand back and spanked her. I could see now she needed no reaction on our part besides domination. If we faltered, so would she.

  “Who?” he asked, his voice the same even tone.

  “Frank,” she cried as Xander spanked her again. Her crying came out in deep sobs now.

  Xander didn’t stop, but by the sound of his hand on her red ass alone, I could tell he’d lightened up a little. He peppered her flesh over and over until the entire lush surface glowed hotly.

  She’d killed her husband. He hadn’t died falling down the steps, drunk. What had he done to her to warrant her to do such a thing? There was no way in hell Emily would do something like that without being provoked. She wasn’t a murderer. She’d gone to Olivia’s rescue with a rifle, facing off against three big men. Simon, Cross and Rhys wouldn’t have hurt her, but she’d taken that risk to protect her friend.

  When her tears had subsided somewhat, Xander asked, “How?”

  “I… I hit him with a frying pan.”

  Xander’s hand fell to his side and for a moment, we just stared at her, bent over with her ass upturned.

  A frying pan?

  Xander scooped her up and sat on the bed, her head tucked beneath his chin. When she hissed as her ass came in contact with his thighs, Xander shifted her so she sat more comfortably.

  I knelt down before her, stroked my hand over her cheek, my thumb wiping away the remainder of her tears. Seeing her like this was heart-wrenching.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He was drunk.” She hiccupped, then sniffed. “He wanted money that I’d hid from him. He needed to give it to Ralph, but I refused. It was the money for food, for the house.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “He came after me as I knew he would. I used the only weapon I had at hand.”

  “You hit him with a frying pan?”

  She nodded against Xander’s chest. “He said he was going to… to whip me, then take his husband’s rights.”

  Jesus. I glanced up at Xander. He’d just spanked her and I hadn’t stopped him.

  As if Xander could read my thoughts, he murmured, “Not the same thing.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “So you were in the kitchen and he came after you?”

  She shook her head again. “I was upstairs in the bedroom. He woke me up. I’d taken the frying pan with me because he’d become angrier the more he gambled. I was afraid of him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Xander asked.

  Emily pulled back, looked between us. With her blotchy face and messy hair, she looked so lost, vulnerable.

  “I thought you wouldn’t want me,” she admitted. “Why would you want a murderer for a wife? But I had to find some way to save myself from Ralph’s plan to have me work in the saloon. I would have told you when you learned about Ralph, but Xander had said he hated liars and that’s what I am.”

  She sniffed again.

  I frowned. “Did you kill him on purpose?”

  Her eyes widened. “No!” she cried, then hopped up from Xander’s lap. She began pacing once again and I doubted she even remembered she was naked. “He was going to hurt me.” She spun to face us, her eyes wild. “He was, truly. You have to believe me. He’d hit me before and this time he was so mad.”

  “I believe you,” Xander said plainly.

  “I believe you, too. It was self-defense, plain and simple,” I added.

  “But I pushed him down the stairs, made it look like he fell.”

  Xander stood and walked over to her, pulled her back into his arms, his hand stroking up and down her spine. “That was smart. Most men, sheriffs, judges even, don’t see the gray area in the law. What you did was wrong, but you saved yourself.”

  Xander knew from experience that some lawmen did not work for justice.

  “We’d have killed him if we’d known how he’d hurt you. The Bridgewater men would have, too.”

  She looked surprised, hopeful even. “You don’t hate me?” she asked, her voice querulous.

  I stood, too. “Hate you?” I tugged her from Xander’s arms, pulled her into mine. “We admire you. You’re so strong. So brave. You shouldn’t have had to carry that alone, baby.”

  “There should be no secrets between us,” Xander said.

  Emily reached out her arm and Xander grasped her hand. “Ralph. He knows. I don’t know how, but he knows what I did. He threatened to tell you. To ruin us.”

  I ground my back teeth together. How I wished Quinn hadn’t dragged him away. I’d have hit him with more than a frying pan.

  She’d said “to ruin us.” The sound of it soothed something inside me, the place where I worried that she wouldn’t want us, that Xander was too rough, that I was too mild, that we weren’t what she needed. But the use of the word “us” indicated that she considered us to be a family, a unit. She felt she was already ours.

  Looking to Xander over Emily’s head, I could read his thoughts. He’d caught that, too. But that wasn’t all. There was Ralph and he could affect us. The bastard would be back. He wouldn’t stop with just fifty dollars if he could have more. Bribery, extortion. It wasn’t beneath the likes of him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  EMILY

  “Morning, sweetheart,” Xander murmured from between my spread thighs.

  I looked down my body at him, his eyes hooded perhaps from sleep, but more likely with arousal. Just the sight of him there, his hands on my inner thighs, was so decadent. Frank had never put his mouth on my pussy, ever. If Tyler liked my breasts, then Xander definitely liked to lick my pussy.

  His finger was curled deep inside of me, pressing against that special spot, rubbing it so that my hips arched—directly into his mouth. How had I slept through him settling between my thighs? How had I been unaware of his blunt finger sliding into me? I could feel their slick seed still deep within. His beard rasped against my newly bare pussy and when he flicked my clit with his tongue, then sucked on it, I came.

  My eyes fell closed and I cried out. He could work my body so easily; I was so responsive to him. I wilted against the bed, ready to fall back asleep.

  As Xander kissed his way up my body, he murmured, “So sensitive after last night. I love the way your body responds.”r />
  Sitting back on his heels, he grabbed my hips and flipped me over onto my belly. I gasped at the surprise, but I was getting used to his more aggressive touch. Smoothing a hand over my bottom, he commented, “Not even red this morning. Is it sore?”

  Coming up onto my elbows, I looked at him over my shoulder. I was too sated and sleepy to feel embarrassed. “Are you referring to the plug stretching me or the spanking last night?”

  Xander had spanked me. I’d… I’d loved it. At first, it had surprised me, but his commands, his deep voice was like a rope keeping me tethered to safety. I’d been lost, overwhelmed, completely blanketed by guilt at what I’d done, what I’d subjected the men to. But Xander’s commands had altered my focus. The first spank had been like a bucket of cold water, jolting me from my thoughts and forcing me to focus solely on him. The sting of his palm, the tingling heat of my skin.

  I’d been able to think only of that instead, to give in to it. Xander hadn’t stopped. I couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but accept he had taken over. The truth had slipped from me easily then. Like my body, I’d handed the problem over to them. I’d thought they would hate me, but they hadn’t. In fact, from the looks on their faces, they’d have killed Frank themselves, and not by accident.

  He gave me a light, playful swat and grinned.

  Tyler came into the room then with a tray, closing the door behind him. “Leaving me out?” he asked.

  “After last night, you feel left out?” Xander asked.

  They’d both taken me, one after the other, again and again. While they’d each been given time to recover, long enough for the other to fuck me, I’d had none. They’d given me orgasm after orgasm and even now, I could feel their seed seeping from me. To say they’d filled me was a gross understatement.

  “We can’t leave the room before noon,” Tyler said. “My mother will think we aren’t attentive enough toward our new bride otherwise.”

  Xander laughed softly and shook his head. It was clear to me he wasn’t used to a mother any more than me.

  “Emily was just speaking about the plug in her ass,” Xander replied.