Rosemary's Double Delight (5 page)
Read Rosemary's Double Delight Online
Authors: Heather Rainier
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Western, #Erotica, #General
Rosemary was cheered by that notion, but said, “I feel like there are all these threads of our lives together that were shredded and scattered, and now I’ve got to pick them up and start weaving them back together again.”
“I know, baby,” Evan murmured. “I feel that way, too, and it’s kind of…”
“Overwhelming?” she offered. He met her eyes when she said it, and he nodded. She looked at Wes with misty eyes and smiled.
“Remember? This is the moment I was hoping for. A chance to start over.”
Wes gripped her hand. “Yeah. Here we are.”
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Chapter Four
Late July, a few weeks later…
Wes groaned as his cock sat up and begged. He walked behind Rosemary as she flounced angrily up the back steps in front of him, completely oblivious to how her cute, little bubble butt swayed with each step. Under other circumstances, he would’ve had his hands all over her right now. Wes could hear her cursing under her breath between sobs as she opened the sliding glass door and stomped inside.
She stood in the sunshine streaming in through the door, her creamy skin glowing with coconut-scented tanning oil and the hint of a tan.
“Rosemary, I’m sure Evan didn’t mean to get so pissed off. You know that. He was upset that the customers were ogling you, is all,”
Wes interjected over her sputtering anger. Turning her so she faced him, he could feel Rosemary shaking as he held on to her upper arms.
Her face was tear-stained and flushed rosy with anger.
“Well, then why did he yell at
me
? On the one hand he tells me—
you both
tell me—I can come and go as I please, do what I want while I’m here. He knew I’d be here. I
told
him I was going to be sunbathing.”
Wes hated trying to second-guess what Evan was thinking and detested being in the middle,
again
. “Evan thought you’d be in the backyard, behind the privacy fence. It was probably the reason he took David and Steve around to the sidewalk on the west side of the house, so you wouldn’t be disturbed. His heart was in the right place, Rosemary.” He wasn’t looking forward to the coming confrontation, and he hoped Evan cooled down before he returned to the house.
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“His heart
wasn’t
in the right place when he embarrassed me in front of those men. Call me crazy, Wes, but yelling at your girlfriend does not make a good impression on customers. That much I
do
know,” she said sassily as she wiped her oiled hand across her cheek and let loose a hitching sob. She looked up at him with those brimming, angelic eyes, and he felt that goofy damned flutter he’d gotten in his chest when she looked at him like that ever since he was six years old.
But facts
were
facts. Wes put his hands on his hips and gestured to the cherry-red string bikini she was wearing. Three little triangles and a bit of string was
all
that the bikini consisted of. His dick twitched in voracious approval. “Rosemary,
look
at what you’re wearing. Hell,
I
don’t want anyone else seeing you dressed that way. I’m not happy David and Steve saw you practically naked,
either
.”
Rosemary gestured to the thickly treed yard. “But it’s the afternoon. There’s too much shade in the yard. Where else
would
I be? Evan could’ve called out for me to see where I was. I
never
would’ve been out there if I’d known people were coming over. He startled me so badly I jumped before I remembered my top was untied. I don’t think they saw much before I got it adjusted. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they ever saw a half-naked woman.”
Maybe not, but it was his half-naked woman they saw. “That’s
not
helping your situation, baby.”
Rosemary turned back to him and asked, “Would he really spank me, Wes? He was awfully angry, and I understand why. I can even sympathize with you both. I wouldn’t want any of my girlfriends to see
your
goodies, either. But
so help me
, if he ever puts me over his knee, I’ll neuter him,” she said sharply, sparks in her eyes. “He has to sleep sometime. He’d
better
be joking because that spanking would be the last you’d see of my happy ass.”
Wes wished Evan hadn’t said anything about spanking her. That was a conversation to have when they were all rational, not in the heat of the moment like this. Ethan Grant had been clear with them about
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that after Evan asked him. He’d evidently forgotten Ethan’s suggestion that they introduce erotic spanking to her first so she wouldn’t be afraid of it. The purpose of a chastisement spanking was to get her attention and motivate her to have a care for her own safety, not to actually hurt her. Now here she stood, thinking Evan intended to hurt her to teach her who was boss.
“I don’t think he really meant he would actually—” Now it was time for Wes to sputter.
Fuck a fricking duck, where is Evan? He’d
better get his ass in here before she gets wound up any tighter.
“Don’t speak for me, Wes,” Evan said quietly as he entered the front door and closed it firmly.
* * * *
Evan closed his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts as the image of the skimpy G-string she was clad in danced through his mind.
Rosemary stood grim-faced, her arms crossed under her generous, round breasts, pushing them up even higher, so they were barely covered by the twin triangles of her tiny, red bikini top. She might as well have been standing in front of him naked, the perfect silhouette of her torso and her supple thighs like a siren song to his lust-soaked brain. His hands clenched at the thought of stroking her perfectly curved ass, and his eager cock twitched in agreement.
He wished he’d kept his damn mouth shut. Then he might be doing something a little more pleasant than arguing with the little spitfire. Evan opened his eyes as Rosemary turned to face him. His heart lurched as Rosemary lifted her chin, and her lip trembled. Her tear-stained cheeks were red, and he could see more tears brimming in her eyes. He was not proud of himself at all.
Praying for wisdom, Evan said, “Wes, I need to talk to Rosemary alone. You reckon you could give us a few minutes?” Wes gave him a warning glance, and Evan nodded at him. He had no intention of
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spanking Rosemary now. That, in itself, told him he never should’ve brought the issue up in the heat of the moment.
Evan and Wes had talked recently about circumstances like this at Jack, Ethan, and Adam’s urging. Jack, Ethan, and Adam literally had the whole of their adulthoods to work out how they’d handle problems like this. It was a damn good thing the men had made the time to share their wisdom for dealing with problems and settling priorities. Adding to the mix that Evan and Rosemary’s personalities tended to be volatile at times, Wes and Evan knew they were going to need all the wisdom they could get.
Wes nodded quietly, went in the office, and closed the door.
They’d recently agreed between the two of them that in an argument between Evan and Rosemary, Wes had to make himself scarce.
Rosemary had the tendency to go to Wes for sympathy, which unfortunately, only made things worse. Reconciliation between the two who were arguing had to occur before she could have any contact with the other brother.
Rosemary stood there looking like she wanted to smack him in the face, but the tears in her eyes told him how much he’d hurt her feelings and embarrassed her. Evan wanted to be careful here and not screw things up more than he already had.
He held out his hand. Hesitantly, she took it, and he led her down the hall to his bedroom. For the sake of his sanity, he reached in a drawer and handed her a white T-shirt. She drew it over her head, after surreptitiously pressing her nose to it, breathing in his scent.
That little gesture on her part went a long way toward easing his nerves. Sitting down beside her on the end of the bed, Evan lifted her small hand in his grasp. He played with her fingers, drawing his fingers down the length of each one, before lifting her coconut-scented palm to his lips.
There was a point in their relationship where this would’ve been about the power struggle, pure and simple. Now, he could plainly see
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the important thing was coming to some kind of understanding and reconciling with Rosemary.
“I’m sorry, Rosemary. We told you this was your home away from home. I can’t very well get mad at you when you sunbathe where the sun is best. I had no idea
that’s
what you’d be wearing. I’m really sorry I startled you and made you jump up because it’s my fault you were exposed. I saw David’s and Steve’s faces, and it made me angry that other men saw you like that. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.
The truth is I love that tiny little bikini on you.” Just not when other men were around.
He must’ve done okay apologizing because she pressed her forehead against his shoulder and replied, “I’m sorry, too, Evan. I should’ve asked if there were going to be people coming over before wearing this. Next time I’ll stay in the backyard. I’m sorry I yelled back at you. They probably thought I was a real harpy.”
Evan grinned and said, “Harpy? No. Firecracker? Yes, probably.”
Truthfully, he loved that she was a little spitfire. It kept life interesting.
Rosemary crossed her arms under her breasts again, so the red material was visible through the white cotton. “About that spanking you threatened me with?” she asked, looking at him pointedly.
Cautiously, Evan turned so he faced her on the bed. “I can imagine how you feel about that. Making threats like that was not cool at all, I know, but hear me out, okay?”
She scoffed lightly. “
This
should be interesting.”
Evan didn’t reply in kind to her comment because she had a right to question his intentions. “From time to time, we have customers who want to see the shop, see samples of what we can do. A lot of our business is done on the internet but not all of it. Customers come from San Antonio and Austin, sometimes from Mexico. We’ve always welcomed visitors, but that doesn’t mean we do background checks on them. What if someone showed up and you were here alone and exposed like that? What if the visitor mistakenly assumed that if you
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were willing to expose that much flesh you might also be available for some uninvited attention? We’d never forgive ourselves if something happened to you.”
“I can see your point of view, Evan. But what does this have to do with spanking me?”
Evan noted that while she was still determined to get to the issue that concerned her most, she didn’t seem like she was ready to walk out over it. Maybe she was more curious than concerned.
Forging ahead, Evan asked, “Would you agree, now that you see it from a different perspective, that seeing to your safety should be a higher priority than finding a sunbathing spot with premium sunshine?”
“Certainly, but—”
“I’m getting there, baby. It was a mistake on my part to threaten a spanking in front of the others, and I apologize for doing that to you.
But now that you know you’re safer in the yard, if you ever endangered your safety like that again, I’d spank your ass bright pink.”
Her full, pink lips popped open in surprise. “You would
not
,” she whispered, her cheeks flaming with color. Evan noted that she didn’t immediately hop up and flounce out of his room. She sat there quietly, evidently thinking about what he’d said. Evan also noticed that she squirmed a bit where she sat. Was the thought of a spanking turning her on? He loved her enough that he’d risk offending her to keep her safe, but it hadn’t occurred to him when this discussion began that she might be intrigued by the idea.
“I would, baby, I promise. Your well-being and safety have become my number one priority. If you endanger either, I’d spank you to get your attention and teach you to be more careful. If I didn’t care about you,
adore
you, I wouldn’t care whether you laid out buck-ass nekkid on the front lawn. We’ll clear out some of the trees in the backyard to allow more sunlight for you if that’s what you want. Hell,
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we’ll put in a pool for you if it’s something you’d like back there, but I won’t tolerate you putting yourself in harm’s way.”
Uncertainly, she replied, “I’m used to taking care of myself and being on my own. I’m sure I’m going to do things you view as
‘endangering’ myself from time to time.”
Evan sensed that this was not the moment to equivocate. She needed the truth, and she needed to know where he drew the line.
“Well, you’d better start considering some of those things, Rosemary.
I’m not going to go looking for reasons to spank you. I don’t want you afraid of chastisement when we’re together. But you shouldn’t push it, either.” His last words drew her gaze to his, and he saw…something there before she looked away. Interesting. He could almost hear the gears turning in her head.