Cuffed to Him Page 5

“Then don’t write it. Your call. Work your career or not. Your call. But marry me.”

  She examined his lips. Firm and lush. The dimple at the corner of his left cheek. The changed and matured man who had never forgotten her. Just as I have never forgotten him or his brother.

  “What do you say, darlin’?” he urged her in a small desperate voice.

  Oh, the wonder of getting more than she came for. “One condition.”

  “Yours. Name it.”

  “Let me love Josh, too.”

  “All part of the grand bargain. I’ll be your legal husband. We will both be your mates.”

  “And will I have the honour of being ridden bareback by both of you?”

  “Forever and ever. We want our babies. We want your babies.”

  “Then take me back in the dungeon.”

  “How about I fuck you right here?”

  “To consummate the deal?” She giggled and opened her thighs. “Zip down your fly, sweetie. I need you inside me.”

  “And then it’s my turn,” Josh declared as he came up behind them and kissed her nape.

  “Funny,” she said as she spread her legs and Giff drove her up into bliss with his steady thrusts.

  “Mmm, what’s that?” he asked between rams.

  “I came here telling myself I was going to be objective.”

  Josh pushed her hair from her ear as he nuzzled her there. “What happened?”

  “I lost it when you took my equipment and my luggage. Then you cuffed me.”

  “Wanted you all fired up.”

  “Oh, honey.” She curled her arm up over Josh’s head as his brother fucked her nice and tight. “For you two, I will always be on fire.”

  Giff agreed. “And you’ll always be bound to us.”

  Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

  Tough Texas Hombres: Two Tough Hombres

  Cerise DeLand

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Looks were deceiving. Joy Delaney’s looks, anyway.

  Texas Ranger Rico Estrada marvelled at the sight of seemingly happy-go-lucky Joy clapping her hands and doing a line dance to Boot Scootin’ Boogie.

  Since when was she so freaking happy? She hadn’t been that way yesterday when he’d seen her in the Grain and Feed. She hadn’t looked that way in the tabloids or fan mags since her auto accident a year ago. Did coming home to her parents’ ranch do that?

  Grousing beneath his breath, Rico took another drink of his root beer. He wasn’t officially on duty, but he was tracking a suspect. Besides, he wanted his head clear to figure out what the hell to do about Joy’s reluctance to give him the time of day. Whenever she’d come home before for a visit, she’d been ready to hop into bed with him for a one night stand. Why had she come back into town just when he had the offer from headquarters to move? The irony made him see red.

  Worse, he never got mad. Cool had always been his motto. It was how he’d got his job, how he kept it, how he worked alone like any Ranger to always get his man. Getting his woman was another story. And the one woman he had wanted since they were in high school had been Joy Delaney—and for certain, she did not inspire any rationality in him. Never had. Not over a decade ago when she was the pretty little blonde nerd who sang country and western with the soul of a wronged woman. Not later, either, when she won the title of Miss Texas, sans the big glasses over her amethyst eyes, suddenly the well-endowed contralto with the killer bod.

  He hitched a boot up to the bar. His spurs jangled. His balls ached.

  Why had she come home to Brewster County? To recover from any remaining disability from that accident, do some R & R, and look him up. As ever, she’d come to him for a dose of good lovin’, then leave him yearning for more than one great fuck. He muttered his frustration. This time, if she came to him for a lube job, he vowed he’d find a way to show her he was done being her Convenient Home Town Lover. He was moving. Going to Austin. Drowning his addiction to her and the ridiculous hope that tied him here to this jurisdiction. His high school crush on her had grown during the intervening years into the biggest illogical hard-on for the unattainable, irresistible Country Singer of the Year. Time to call it quits. Time to make her see he was in charge of his own damn life.

  “Hey, there, Rico.” His buddy Dane Masters cozied up beside him—like Rico, keeping on his big white Stetson inside the Lonely Lady Saloon. “How long you been here?”

  “An hour.” He smiled straight ahead into their reflections in the mirror at the back of the bar.

  “I see we have company,” Dane said, looking nonchalant as he scanned the reflection of the room in the mirror, hailed the bartender and asked for a Coke.

  “Might we be tracking the same pack of animals?” Rico asked beneath his breath, his dark gaze shifting to touch briefly on the two gruff looking Anglos sitting at a table on the far side of the dance floor.

  Dane nodded, dropping his voice an octave. “Think so. I’m up from Del Rio. You?”

  Rico welcomed the inapproachability that came from being a Ranger. Few people ever spoke to one casually, let alone two standing together. He could speak frankly, but nonetheless dropped his voice a decibel. “One on the left took a room in the guest house at the Circle D three nights now.”

  “Hmm. From the looks of Joy, she doesn’t seem to be worried about who’s camping out at her ranch.”

  “Yeah, well, I am.”

  “I see it. Thanks,” Dane acknowledged the bartender and the arrival of his drink. “You talked to her since she came home last week?”

  “Once. Yesterday. Soon as I learned where our friend over there had gone to ground.” Dane knew his friend had it bad for the local girl who had gone to Nashville and rocked the country and western charts for years before she lost her voice to an injury from an auto accident. “Over at the Grain and Feed.”

  “You tell her what kind of varmint she’s got in her guest house?”

  “Yeah. Says her manager deals with the guests so she’s not worried.” Not like I am. That coyote is not at her dude ranch for any good reason. “Now that we see her guest has a pal in town, I think it’s time to convince her to carry her S&W Lady Smith in her purse.”

  Dane, glass in hand, pivoted, his back to the bar, surveying the room. “I’d say that’s your job, Rico. I’ll play backup.”

  Rico hitched up one corner of his mouth. “I’m a shitty dancer.”

  “The right woman always makes you look good.”

  “You oughta know.” Rico gave a laugh, recalling how his buddy, the famous, rugged Texas Ranger was a marshmallow when it came to his new wife, Kandy.

  “Joy lost a lot in that crack-up, Rico. Her voice. Her road manager. She needs a man to romance her.”

  “I hear Luke Blackwell has an interest in her future.” He nodded towards the tall, sandy-haired sheriff weaving his way through the crowd in Joy’s direction.

  “Luke’s really fine with the ladies, my Kandy tells me. But you?” Dane challenged him with a lift of his chin. “I bet deep in your gut you want one more time with her before you head to Austin. Am I right?”

  “Dead on.” Truth is I need so much more than just one more night. Rico drained his glass, put two dollars on the bar, removed his Stetson and hooked it on the hat hook beneath the bar. Then he turned to view the only woman who had ever meant anything to him for longer than a month. “One Ranger, one woman.”

  As Rico strode towards Joy, he vowed to do justice to the motto of the men who served the Lone Star State with a reputation for single-handed conquest of criminals or the women they loved.

  Joy thrust her fingers through her long hair—damp with perspiration—as she walked off the sawdust-strewn dance floor. Hot in here with Rico eating me up with those miffed green eyes. Heading for her table, she caught a glimpse of Rico Estrada headed her way. She wasn’t in the mood to be brooded over. And his expression of stern command didn’t suit her need to laugh with her two friends.

  He caught her arm and
halted her in her tracks. The band began a Texas two-step whose lyrics spoke of love and loss. “I believe this is our dance.”

  Her gaze locked on his. His heavy-lidded eyes challenged her to refuse him. Since they had graduated high school, she had limited herself to one roaring night of sex with him each time she came home. Back now to recuperate from her accident, she had promised herself she would rebuff any advances from him until she’d figured out exactly how to approach him with a new idea for her future that he’d find shocking. Unwilling to risk his rejection and any more cracks in her fragile heart, she wanted to stay away from the tall, broad-shouldered lawman who’d been her hometown guilty pleasure. But minutes ago at the table, her friend Carole had told her Rico had accepted a permanent change of station. Could she roll around in the sheets with him for a few hours, satisfy her yearning for him deep inside her swollen wet pussy, for old time’s sake, and then let him go? “Just one.”

  He led her out a few steps to the edge of the floor, then took her in his arms. “Maybe it’s time you let yourself have fun with me.”

  She inhaled, the smell of leather and citrus aftershave mixing with the heat of his skin near his ear. “I didn’t think Rangers had funny bones.”

  He snorted, pulled her more firmly against him. The tempo permitted a rhythm that had his hips rocking against hers, fitting his cock against the seam of her pussy. “We have more than funny ones.”

  “I feel the proof.” She felt her own as her channel gushed with more cream.

  His hand around her waist drifted down to push her lower body flush to his. “And you need me.”

  She toyed with the edge of his shirt collar and considered what would happen if she did more than laugh with him. “I need a lot of things.”

  “Name them.”

  “Excitement. Forgetfulness.” Peace. She listed all those qualities vital to her survival here in Texas. Tilting her head to look up at his bronzed, square face, she admired the harsh, sculpted features women drooled over. Rico Estrada was every girl’s wet dream. From the small lines bracketing his slashing mouth to his hair, dense as starless midnight, he was the Lone Ranger, a bandito, and a tough Hispanic macho man. And from the time she’d looked at him with her adolescent hormones raging at age fifteen in her horse corral, he had always eroded her common sense. “Can you give me any of that? Take charge?”

  Can you make love to me so it isn’t so much a clashing of wills as it is a blending of bodies?

  He crushed her close. His nostrils flaring, he gruffed, “Name the day. The place.”

  “Tonight. My house.”

  His dulcet eyes snapped with surprise. “I’ll make arrangements.”

  “Doesn’t your fellow Ranger over there have other ideas for how you spend your evening?” She tipped her head towards the officer Rico had talked with for a few minutes.

  “Yes. But your invitation is one I don’t get often.”

  “Are you really that interested in that stranger in my guest house?” she shot back, her pride demanding an answer before she took him home and lost herself in him. She hoped duty was not the reason Rico was here, dancing with her, resurrecting memories of how he commanded her to do such delicious things in bed with him. If she was going to relent tonight—because she knew she would sometime before he left town for good—she had to be certain he wanted her for herself. As he always had before. She had to be sure his desire for her had not diminished while she’d stayed away this past year. She had to know that he was hot to fuck her now and didn’t want entry to her bedroom just to trail a suspect. “Or do you just want to put another Joy Delaney notch on your belt?”

  He came to such an abrupt halt on the floor, his spurs jangled. “All these years, all those nights we’ve hopped in the sack, be honest—who conquered who, lady?”

  “I hear you’ve never wanted for bed partners.” She avoided his question and drove home her own. “You’ve got a reputation for giving a woman every fantasy she ever wanted. Even asking other men to join you both.”

  His look turned narrow and threatening. “Are you jealous or nuts? Tell me! You come home—what? Once, twice a year? Not last year at all! You think a man can live on that alone?”

  “No,” she whispered, while couples danced around them, brows lifted at Rico’s raised seething tone.

  “Damn straight. I learned the value of fucking a woman any way she wants, any way I want, making every second count, because she might just disappear on you the next morning. You make me crazy,” he growled, as he pulled her through the crowd, his determination a living beast she felt in the wrench of his hold.

  Muttering something that made no sense to her, he kicked open the side door and let it bang against the jamb. She grinned. This was the power and control she had always wanted from him, yet he’d never shown her. She hurried to keep up with him as he led them towards the back of the parking lot. The August night was a scorcher and the heat covered her like a wool blanket. But nothing compared to the fire in his body as he whirled and pushed her against the steel hood of his 4x4, thrust one leg between her two and pinned her there. With one meaty hand, he lifted her chin and swooped down on her mouth.

  His lips sipped and drank, licked and sucked at hers. Her knees buckled. He caught her up against him. “Oh, no. Not getting away from me. We do it my way this time.”

  At last! This domination was what she craved from him. Always had. She ran her fingers up his spine, held him close and kissed him back. Laced with the sweet root beer, his mouth tasted of his anger and desperation.

  He yanked her shirt from her jeans, then pulled it up at the front. Bending her to one side, he lowered his face to skim his wet mouth over her ribs. Her nipples stood tall in her lacy bra. Her stomach quivered. Her pussy throbbed while her fingers found his zipper and the bulge of his cock.

  Moaning, she felt the reverberations of his bass voice as he cursed. All at once, he shoved down the fabric of her bra and took one of her nipples in his mouth. She bit her lower lip. His big hot tongue was rough and fierce. Her legs were jelly. He half picked her up, put her to one side and yanked open his truck door. “Get in.”

  “My purse,” she objected for what she’d left inside. “Your hat, too. They’re—”

  “Our friends’ll get them to us.”

  “Are we going to my house?”

  “Hell, no. You want excitement? We’re going to get you some.” He gave a sharp nod towards the inside of his truck.

  Unsteady on her feet, eager as a kid, she threw him a wobbly grin. “And what about my forgetfulness?”

  “I guarantee, lady, what we’re gonna do, you won’t forget.”

  She scrambled inside, a thrill of desire coursing through her. She’d wanted it edgy and dangerous. Apparently she was finally going to get it.

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  About the Author

  What’s a gal to do to if she lives deep in the heart of Texas, travels often everywhere, and adores Paris, Florence, London, Tokyo and all points east and west?

  Ah.

  She becomes an author who can write about those romantic places. With a passion for cowboys, spies, rakes, knights in shining armour and their gutsy women, Cerise DeLand is an author who adores an alpha male with a tender heart and a need for a smouldering erotic love affair with the right woman!

  Cerise is a Top 20 Best Selling author on Amazon with more than three dozen works published in erotic romance, and she is also an award-winning author of mystery, mainstream and romance with St Martin’s Press, Pocket Books and Kensington. Her books are on numerous book clubs, including Featured Selections of The Mystery Guild, Doubleday and Rhapsody. And when she isn’t dreaming up fiction or travelling? Cerise is a fabulous cook and an avid history buff.

  Busy lady. Happy writer.

  Email: cerise.deland@ymail.com

  Cerise loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.

  Also by Cerise DeLa
nd

  Hard Drivin’ Man

  Swords of Passion: At Her Service

  Swords of Passion: For Her Honour

  Tough Texas Hombres: One Tough Hombre

  Tough Texas Hombres: Two Tough Hombres

  Sharing the Billionaire: Cuffed to Him

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