Love Under Two Benedicts (2 page)
Read Love Under Two Benedicts Online
Authors: Cara Covington
Kelsey turned and faced Matt and his brother.
“I think I’m beginning to understand. It’s natural for you to think in terms of sharing a woman sexually. So you haven’t been playing some kind of one-upmanship game with me at all. You’ve both been, to use your word, wooing me, because you want to have sex with me. Both of you. At the same time.”
Matthew couldn’t read Kelsey’s mood or her state of mind. Her expression blank, she’d spoken almost clinically. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that, though he’d wanted to wince when she’d said “have sex” instead of “make love.” If another woman had said that, it wouldn’t have bothered him. But this was Kelsey, and while he knew that when he and Steven finally had her between them they’d be making love to her, he understood where her thoughts had led her.
So he nodded and said, “Yes. Steven and I both want to have sex with you at the same time.”
Steven nodded, then slipped his hands into his jeans pockets, a sure sign he was nervous. Kelsey looked from one to the other of them for a long moment. Finally, she nodded, a curt little jerk of her head that told Matthew her decision had just made her very nervous.
“I need to think about this. Obviously, the two of you have been planning…considering…” Kelsey waved her hands in the air almost, Matthew thought, as if she was trying to grasp something to hang on to.
Matthew stilled her hands with both of his. “No, Kelsey. We’ve been hoping, mostly.” He could have told her that in the last couple of months, as they’d talked from time to time, gotten to know her better, they both understood her resolve not to get involved romantically. She’d turned both him and Steven down when they’d each, in turn, asked her out on a date.
However, in the last few weeks especially, they’d each noticed a change in her reaction to them.
“I close up at ten tonight. You can pick me up then. We can go someplace and talk about this.”
“We can go to the ranch.” Steven exhaled and looked at Matt. “We’ll take you to the ranch.”
Before either he or his brother could say another word, Kelsey stepped around them and exited the museum.
Matthew looked at Steven. His brother’s brow furrowed, and he rocked back on his heels.
“Holy hell,” Steven said, his tone just above a whisper. “She still doesn’t get it.”
“It took her a few months of living here before she ever became aware of either one of us as
men
.” Matthew continued to look at the door where Kelsey had just exited. “After what she’s been through, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise either one of us she would think we only want sex.”
“You’re right. We knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but that’s okay. She’s the woman we love, so we’ll do what it takes. So now what do we do?” Steven asked.
Matthew grinned. “She’s so responsive to us both. We’ve both seen it in her eyes when we’ve talked with her. We’ll know when we see her tonight if she’s leaning toward us. If she is then there’s really only one thing we can do. We seduce her into our bed.
Then we fuck her brains out and get her body so addicted to ours that her heart has no choice but to join in.”
“Okay, that sounds like a pretty good plan.”
Matthew thought it did, too. He just hoped to hell it worked.
Chapter 2
Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that
.
Kelsey kept her pace brisk as she covered the distance between the Lusty Historical Society Museum and her restaurant. She didn’t think the men would follow her, not now when she’d agreed to think about what they apparently wanted.
She put on her business smile as she entered her domain, nodded to the patrons who looked up and gave her a wave or a howdy, but kept her demeanor all business. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. A fine tremor worked its way up from her belly, spreading out to her limbs. She headed straight to her small office, closed and locked the door behind her, then slid, nearly boneless, into her chair.
“Oh, damn. Oh, damn.” Her face flamed, and she covered it with both hands. Nothing to do but to wait out the shakes and the blush. Inhaling deeply, Kelsey closed her eyes, leaned back in her chair, and focused on relaxing her jittery body.
Not a panic attack
. No, what she felt at the moment wasn’t one of those. Relief washed through her. She’d not had a panic attack in the last year but had experienced them often enough just after the shooting that she’d come to dread them.
Her eyes opened, and she her gaze roam around her small office. This was her dream come true, a restaurant of her own, and while she didn’t own the building, she owned the business, and the menu, and the
essence
of it.
Business had been brisk since opening day. While Kelsey had braced herself for the possibility of failure, three out of five new businesses did that in the first two years, in her heart she knew her business would continue to grow and prosper.
Her eyes landed on the framed newspaper article on her wall. When the food editor of the Waco
Tribune-Herald
had contacted her last month, of course she’d said yes to the interview and the feature. What restaurateur wouldn’t? It had never occurred to her the reporter would mention her personal tragedy of years before. She’d cringed, reading that part of it. So far, though, the responses she’d gotten from that article had been positive. Lusty Appetites had experienced an influx of business from the larger city. People, it seemed, didn’t mind driving more than an hour to enjoy her food. She knew they did enjoy it because she’d developed a clientele from Waco and surrounding area. Her business was growing? Hell, at the moment, it was thriving.
Just as she, personally, had begun to thrive. She’d stopped believing herself capable of personal happiness in the aftermath of the shooting. In those dark first days after watching the horror unfold before her, she’d been tempted to end her own life.
Only the sure and certain knowledge that act would have disappointed Philip and dishonored Sean held her back. So she’d put away those thoughts and chosen life.
Not the full blown, all-out, grab-all-the-joy-you-can kind of life some seemed destined for and able to achieve so easily. No, her life would be measured and neat, she would set goals, achieve them, and then do what she could to give back.
So why the hell had she just told two handsome, buff men that she would seriously consider having sex with them both at the same time?
“Oh, my God.” Kelsey was still shaking. She held up her hands to watch them tremble as the unwelcome truth settled in her thoughts. She shook, not with embarrassment or dread, but with
excitement
.
More than five years had passed since she’d had sex, and while the grief counselor had told her she would eventually heal to the point where she’d seek intimacy again, Kelsey hadn’t believed her.
Having sex with two men at the same time was not life as Kelsey Madison had mapped it out when she’d decided to move to Lusty, Texas.
Still, she couldn’t deny the flutters in her belly or that for some time now just thinking about the brothers Benedict made her nipples tight and her pussy wet.
All right, time to regroup
. She knew if she wanted to, she could call Matthew or Steven and tell them no. She didn’t have to go through with meeting with them this evening just because she’d said she would. She had choices and options. No was always an option.
Obviously her body needed some attention of the sexual variety. Her female parts, overflowing with estrogen and with no place to put it, had begun demanding action.
Kelsey let her thoughts wander back to the museum.
What the hell would you call that, anyway? Serial menagerie?
Her giggles erupted as the reality that she’d pretty much decided to have sex with two men at the same time hit her.
She was a healthy woman with a healthy libido and what she’d always considered an average imagination. There’d been a time or two, before meeting Philip, when she’d brought herself to orgasm thanks to the fantasy of having two cocks all to herself.
Now here was the opportunity to bring those long ago, lusty fantasies to life.
Oh, yeah, I get the town’s name now
.
Kelsey’s mind circled back to the loss of her family and those long ago promises to herself. Recalling, too, the predictions of her therapist, she tried to set aside her arousal and think.
There was intimacy, and then there was
intimacy
.
Cut to the chase, Kels
.
Kelsey had always been honest with herself. She wasn’t about to change that trait now. She could have sex with those two rocking studs. It didn’t mean she was going to fall in love with them or that she would marry either of them.
So why not just go ahead and have sex? They were all three of them unattached adults.
Despite the reactions of her body, she knew falling in love with anyone ever again was simply out of the question.
Her heart had shattered as she’d watched a crazed killer gun down her husband and young son five years before.
There simply was nothing left of that part of her to give to anyone anymore.
* * * *
Steven turned to look at his brother. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he read the expression of satisfaction on Matthew’s face. He hated to play Mr. Obvious, but that was a part of his nature.
“Just because she said we could pick her up doesn’t mean she’ll come to bed with us.”
Matthew shook his head, but his smile didn’t diminish. “Yeah, I know. And even if she does come with us, and
come
with us, it doesn’t mean the campaign to win her heart is over.”
Steven looked over at his Aunt Anna, who seemed to be reading a magazine as she stood by the information counter. He knew his aunt very well, however.
“Let’s go,” he said to his brother.
Matt got it. They each waved good-bye to their aunt and stepped out into the afternoon sun.
“No,” he said to Matthew as they headed toward his Jeep, “I don’t imagine winning Kelsey’s heart is going to be easy.”
“I simply can’t imagine,” Matthew said. “I know what a blow it was for me when I walked in and found Linda in bed with another man.”
Matthew pulled his sunglasses out of the V opening of his shirt and jammed them onto his face.
Steven knew the shades weren’t only because of the bright sunlight.
“That leveled me, and I didn’t want to get involved with anyone for a long time. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see a wife and child shot to death in front of me,” Matthew said.
“No, neither of us can really understand the magnitude of that kind of loss.”
Matthew rested against the fender of Steven’s Jeep. Steven copied his position so they stood side by side. He nodded, as his brother did, to some of the passersby. One of the things Steven loved best about this small town showed itself now. People could see they were having a serious discussion and left them to it.
“I think it’s a good sign that she’s begun to notice us,” Matthew said. “That’s why I thought we had to begin our campaign right away. I didn’t want to take the chance that our beautiful butterfly would emerge from her cocoon and fall for someone else.”
Steven agreed completely with Matt’s assessment. “I also noticed her agreement to think about our offer lacked warmth. What do you want to bet the lady figures she can have sex with us to scratch her various itches, but that’s it?”
“Not taking that bet because that’s what I think, too. That means there’s only one thing for us to do. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.” Steven smiled. When it came to the important things in life, he and his brother had always been on the same page. He loved all his siblings, but it had always been Matthew, older than him by a year, with whom he’d shared the closest connection. He’d never doubted, even in those dark days after his brother had married Linda, that they would also one day share a wife.
Now, he turned and gave his big brother a wide smile. “You know what else I think? I think we need to give the lady so much love and affection and attention that she becomes addicted to us before she even sees it happening.”
Matthew straightened from the Jeep and clapped him on the shoulder. “That won’t be a hardship, brother. Well, I have another couple of hours to put in at the office.”
“I’m heading home to get things ready for tonight.”
They agreed that Matthew should drive out to the ranch—a 1950s home the family had built a couple of miles outside of town—and then ride back into town with Steven to pick up Kelsey.
Steven got into the Jeep and sat just a moment more. His thoughts were on Kelsey and the evening ahead. She’d said she was just going to think about letting him and his brother both love her. Even though she hadn’t said yes, Steven wanted to be prepared. That meant condoms. Steven didn’t need any more time to know that Kelsey was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A part of him wanted desperately to fill the hole in her mother’s heart with their child, either his or Matthew’s. It made no difference, but it was way too soon for that.