Cade woke up to a room flooded with bright sunlight. Damn. No point in looking at the clock. It had to be early afternoon. Shit! Files were piled high on his desk, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of sleeping in. The last thing he remembered was being balls deep inside his wife’s luscious body. His cock twitched and his blood surged south.
Frustrated at his lack of control, he kicked the blankets aside and planted his feet on the floor. Where was Sara anyway? He had ridden her long and hard the night before and his dick had been looking for attention earlier that morning.
Cade licked his lips. Her taste still lingered on his tongue. Tangy and sweet. After creaming in his mouth she sank onto his dick, sucking him clear to her womb. With both hands he had seized her hips in a vise-like grip and slammed his cock deep into her body. He kept the pace steady, but when she stiffened and covered his cock with her liquid heat he had turned up the speed, driving his cock home again and again until he had taken his own pleasure.
Afterward, they had spooned for a while until he had gotten edgy. The dull ache in his wrist had turned into a full-blown throb and Sara had immediately jumped from the bed to fetch some aspirin.
He flexed his injured hand and frowned. Dammit! He had been way too busy watching her flit around the room bare-assed naked to notice the pills she had pressed into his palm. Fuck. The little brat must have given him one of his ‘knock me out’ pain pills the doctor had prescribed. That would explain why he was feeling so fuzzy headed. He gritted his teeth. She blatantly ignored the fact that he had voiced his dislike for prescription drugs since they clouded his thinking.
This Head of the Household marriage desperately needed some tweaking. He loved the woman more than life itself, but she needed a reminder of who was in charge and that lesson would be delivered with a firm hand to her backside. He eyed his injured hand once again and snorted. Not that he was in any condition to deliver a firm punishment but something had to be done.
He rubbed the side of his face. Tripping down the porch steps last week couldn’t have happened at a more inopportune time. Things were still in an upheaval since his father’s death a little more than a month ago. And on top of everything else, Sara had been walking around with her head in the clouds the past few weeks, but she desperately tried to pretend that all was well, and the more he dwelled on that the angrier he became. He’d grown weary of trying to guess why she was acting so melancholy. Perhaps she was thinking about her own father’s passing. If that was the case, then she should be honest with him, not lie and insist there was nothing wrong. He may be stern like his father, but he wasn’t as cold-hearted or downright nasty.
He often wondered how his mother had tolerated the bastard. Renee Dalton would not consider divorce as an option and claimed her husband’s dark moods and bouts of temper didn’t bother her, but Cade knew different. He and Reese had often heard her cry when she thought she was alone, but since he’d never seen any sign of physical abuse he had respected her decision, but he promised himself that if Charles Dalton ever laid a hand on her he wouldn’t see the light of another day.
Most of Cade’s childhood had been spent trying to please the old man. Charles Dalton’s penchant for being a grouch and finding delight in breaking his sons’ self-worth little by little had driven both boys out of the house as soon as they had turned eighteen. Cade had hopped a plane after high school graduation and joined his mother’s brother in California. He knew the move would piss off his father and he had been right. Reese joined up with him the following year, and between attending law school where they strengthened intellectually, they had also developed physically by helping at the concrete quarry their uncle owned and operated.
They returned home for visits during the holidays, and Cade noticed with each passing year that Sara Martin grew more beautiful than the last. As her long time neighbor, and a number of years older than her, he had always treated her like a sister, but the feelings she was stirring inside him weren’t anywhere near brotherly. Fifteen years had passed by quickly and then they got some daunting news—Charles Dalton’s health was failing. The Dalton Law Firm needed both boys at the helm. Cade and Reese knew they had to return home permanently.
But the past year and a half had turned things around. Cade had learned tolerance and patience during his time in California. Both he and Reese had made peace with their father before his death, and he had married Sara.
His heart pounded in his chest whenever he thought about his wife and the possibility of sharing her with his brother. He and Reese had shared women before and enjoyed doing it, but what had started out as a pleasant diversion from the usual one-on-one sex act had turned into a fierce desire to find the one woman who would fulfill their lives and make them complete. Cade was certain that woman was Sara, and before they were married he had suggested a threesome with his brother. He knew Reese would jump at the chance of being able to call Sara their own, but they both had forgotten about the pain her mother had caused by choosing two men and abandoning her daughter.
To say Sara had been a little upset with his proposition would have been an understatement, and he could have kicked himself to hell and back for being so fucking insensitive. Finally, months later, after he had sworn never to broach the subject of a threesome again, Sara had agreed to marry him. He made certain to reassure her that sharing her with Reese, or any other man for that matter, would never happen.
Cade’s thoughts returned to Sara’s peculiar behavior of late. What could be bothering her? He knew it didn’t have anything to do with her relationship with her mother, because that was the same as it had been when he had left so long ago—nonexistent. Sara had made it clear that she still despised the woman for walking out on her when she had been ten years old, so something else had to be bothering her, and by damn he was going to find out what it was.
Cade blew out a breath and got to his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him with such force he had to grab the bedpost and hang on tight until the room stopped spinning. Those blasted pills were going down the proverbial toilet today. He grabbed the gray sweatpants and white cotton t-shirt draped over the chair next to the bed and dressed. Mumbling to himself, he descended the stairs. He wasn’t going to let her know he felt like a piece of shit.
Entering the kitchen, he stopped abruptly. Sara was bent at the waist rummaging through a cupboard. Denim shorts hugged the curves of her ass and his cock pressed against his pants. The smell of freshly brewed coffee made his stomach growl. He cleared his throat. “You’re lucky I’m too far away or your ass would be on fire right now.” Was that his garbled voice echoing in his ears? Get a grip, man.
Sara spun around, her hand on her chest. “Geez, Cade. Don’t sneak up on me like that.” She blew him a kiss on her way to the counter where the coffee pot was, but he caught her by the elbow and yanked her back.
“You know better than that. Give me some sugar.” He bent his head and kissed her soundly on the mouth. Her succulent breasts pressed to his chest. He growled. “Go back to what you were doing before I fuck you right here on the floor.”
“Well good morning to you too.”
He arched a caustic brow. “You mean good afternoon.”
Taking the cup from her hands, he set it on the table, kicked out a chair, and sat down. After he sweetened his coffee and added a dash of cream he took a sip and sighed. His wife sure knew how to brew a pot of coffee, but her culinary talents weren’t the issue right now.
“You think I don’t know what you did?” he asked. Despite his agitation the corner of his mouth kicked up. At least she had the grace to blush.
“Oh, you mean the pills? I’m sorry, but you looked as if you were in pain, and I hate to see you suffer.” Sara took a step toward him, then, as if questioning what the consequences of such an action might be, she went back to the counter and began stuffing napkins into a wooden holder. “Okay, I admit I knew you’d refuse to take the pain pills,” she said matter-of-factly. When he didn’t reply she heaved a sigh. Spinning around, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I love you, Cade Dalton, and I worry about you. Since your dad passed away you’ve been putting in sixty hour weeks at the law firm, and you haven’t had a decent night’s rest. The fall you had last week hasn’t helped matters. Banging on computer keys all day yesterday wasn’t the smartest thing to do, you know.”
Well, she was right about that, but his father’s handwritten notes still needed to be dealt with and transferred onto the computer. Charles Dalton had been old school to the end. He grouched constantly about computers. To keep the peace, Cade and Reese had given up trying to convince the old coot to use a computer and suggested hiring another secretary to deal with the phone calls and filing so his long-time secretary, Corrine, could concentrate on sorting through his paper trails, but their father’s lack of trust in human nature proved to be just another stumbling block.
Despite the old ways in which the law firm was handled, cases kept coming in and now that his father was gone, Cade and Reese had decided it was time to get Corrine some much needed help.
Cade’s heart filled with tenderness at the thought that Sara was always worrying about him. Christ, she worried about everybody but herself. The desire to kiss the daylights out of her instead of continuing his stern line of questioning was tremendous, but he remained steadfast in his goal. He needed to find out what was going on with her.
“So switching pills was the only way to get me to rest?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Fretting about me to the point that you do something behind my back is not the kind of marriage we agreed on.”
Sara shifted from one foot to the other. Obviously she was uncomfortable with where this conversation was heading.
“Sara, you knew I was a dominating man when you married me. You were happy with me being the one to take care of the bills and make all of the decisions.” She opened her mouth and he waved his hand in warning. “Please be silent until I am finished. You were only a child yet you did a remarkable job at taking care of your dad until he passed away. That was a huge responsibility for a ten-year-old girl. A husband who handled all the worries was what you had been looking for. I’m that man, am I not?”
Sara nodded, biting her lower lip.
“And yet you’re not keeping up your end of the agreement, and that means I am unable to keep mine. We read the ‘contract’ and signed it. Now, there’s something bothering you and you need to tell me what it is.” He pulled her toward him and settled her between his wide spread legs. He lifted one of her hands and eyed her fingers in disdain. “You’ve chewed your fingernails down to the nub. What’s wrong? Am I the reason why you look so sad?” Cade held his breath. Yeah, he was stern and domineering all right, but this little lady had the power to rip his heart right out of his chest.
* * * *
Sara’s eyes welled with tears. That was the last thing she wanted him to think. “Oh, Cade, no, it’s not you. I love you so much.”
She dropped to her knees and laid her head in his lap as a surge of guilt washed over her. She had known about his non-conventional sexual lifestyle and how he had changed just to please her, and now she wanted that threesome, but shame prevented her from admitting the truth.
Sara squeezed her eyes tightly shut, but a tear managed to leak through and slide down her cheek. Aunt Helen may have been the only female figure in her life, but she had also been the one to label her mother a whore. There had been no phone calls from her mother. No letters or birthday cards. Christmas would come and go with no contact. Clearly her mother must’ve regretted having a daughter. Sara’s breath hitched at the thought. But Aunt Helen was always there to teach her right from wrong, and wanting sex with two men at the same time was definitely wrong.
This pent-up anger directed at her mother was driving her crazy. She hadn’t given a rat’s ass about her mother in twenty-one years, so why was it an issue now? How was she supposed to admit to herself that she wanted the same thing her mother had wanted and not feel like a whore?
She wasn’t a person to put much faith in rumors, but was it true that her father might have physically abused her mother? If so, that could explain why her mother had chosen to leave. Sara didn’t have the courage to ask her dad when he was alive, but she remembered the outrage on her Aunt Helen’s face when she had mentioned the rumors. Helen Martin was quick to defend her brother. George Martin had never laid a hand on his wife. Caroline Martin was a whore. Sara believed her aunt. What would her aunt gain by lying?
God, she was getting a headache. She had to get out of the house for a while. Sara squeezed her husband’s knee and scrambled to her feet. “Everything is fine. I need to run to the store for more cereal.” Not waiting for him to reply she went into the hallway and slipped on her sneakers. She poked her head around the doorjamb. “I’ll be back in a few.”