Six Degrees of Desperation (Dirty Tricks) Read online

  The men holding her legs, stood straight and strong, each allowing a hand to rove over her naked breasts, tweaking a turgid nipple.

  O.S. leaned against her, his lips teasing her earlobe. “Did I tell you, I love you naked?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Her mystery cowboy touched his cock to her entrance. “Beg for it.”

  “Please come into me now?”

  “No regrets?”

  “Oh, God, no! I’m begging you, please. There isn’t much time.”

  Her sexy Zorro wrapped strong hands around her hips and slid into her hot, wet channel. With a man on each side, one behind her pressing into her anus and O.S. in front, Charli was surrounded by strong, sexy men and completely without a coherent thought in her head besides that of fucking each and every one of them. “Hurry,” she urged. She clenched her legs around Original Sin’s waist, her ankles locking behind him, forcing him deeper. The two cocks inside her fit so tightly, she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus—all she could do was feel.

  Original Sin thrust in and out, again and again, hard, fast and determined.

  Charli clung to him, the hands on her thighs and breasts reminding her there were four men making love to her, not just one, and holy crap, if it felt good.

  The pace increased until O.S. jacked in and out of her like a car piston.

  Her body on fire, the sensations tumbling one over the other shot Charli into orgasm so intense, she screamed, her fingernails digging into her mystery cowboy’s suit jacket.

  He thrust one last time, sinking as deep as he could go.

  The man behind her pushed deeper as well.

  Her breath caught and held, the exquisite pain echoing throughout her body as her Original Sin’s cock throbbed within, while the other stranger behind her slid free, releasing the intense pressure.

  O.S. brushed a kiss to Charli’s lips and lifted her off him, sitting her on a stack of boxes.

  For a long moment, she sat in a daze, her heartbeat racing, her pussy and anus tingling from the sweet, sweet torture. Then her world crashed in, reminding her where she was and that she wasn’t supposed to be making love in the storeroom, especially with her mystery cowboy.

  All the wind left her lungs as she pictured Connor, lying on her bed last night, telling her that he was a one-woman-man. “I can’t believe I did this. I can’t believe I let it happen again.”

  Original Sin zipped and buttoned his trousers, then reached out and caressed Charli’s cheek. “You are an amazing woman.”

  “I’m a terrible person,” she moaned, burying her face in her hands.

  “Should we dress her?” one of the men asked.

  “No, let me.” Her mystery lover moved behind Charli where she hunched over, wallowing in her horror at having succumbed yet again to the excitement and lust of multiple strangers making love to her. The man’s hands moved swiftly and surely, lacing the strings of her corset, pushing her breasts up and out. When he’d finished, he brushed her hair to the side and planted a kiss on her shoulder. “One minute to spare.”

  “Please leave,” she whispered.

  “Have we displeased you?”

  “Far from it. You all were incredible.” She sighed but kept her face buried. “I’m the one who failed.”

  “Not in our minds.” He tugged her off the boxes and into his arms. “You could never disappoint.”

  “Maybe not you.”

  “Do you have another lover?”

  She laughed, the sound closer to a sob. “Not anymore.” She tossed her hair and pushed against his chest. “Go.”

  “As you wish.” He nodded to the other three men, who rounded the column of chip boxes and exited the storeroom, shutting the door. O.S. faced Charli, lifting her hand to his lips. “Until next time.”

  “No.” Charli touched the gorgeous cowboy’s arm. “I can’t see you again. Any of you.”

  “Are you certain?” O.S. cupped her chin, staring down into her eyes.

  “I can’t.”

  “Ah, there is someone else.”

  She shook her head, her chest squeezing so tight she could barely breathe. “Not after I confess my sins. You being the biggest sin of all.”

  A grin spread across his face. “I’m a sin? I’ll take that as a compliment.” He kissed her again. “I promise that you will figure this all out and that I will see you again. We were meant to be together.”

  Before Charli could protest further, her mystery cowboy walked out of the storeroom, the music swelled and quelled as the door opened and closed.

  For several long moments, Charli stood with a hand pressed to her breaking heart. The tryst in the storeroom with the dark strangers had been incredibly erotic, a total mind-blowing sexual encounter. Charli had been powerless to resist.

  Which told her what she should have known from the beginning—she wasn’t a one-man-woman. She craved excitement in her sex-life. If the past fifteen minutes was anything to go by, she’d never be true to one without thinking of what the experience was like with four.

  Knowing what she had to do, Charli adjusted her skirt, checked her corset to make sure everything was where it should be and sufficiently covered. Then she trudged out of the storeroom into the saloon, ready to find Connor and set the record straight, no matter what it cost.

  As she emerged into the ear-numbing din of loud music and cowboys hooting and hollering, her boss caught her arm and swung her toward the bar. “Oh, good, there you are. Time for the show.”

  Charli planted her heels. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t? You have to. The men are expecting it, and you’re our only singer.”

  “I need to find Connor.”

  “It can wait until after the show.”

  “No, it can’t.” Though Charli tried to argue, Audrey was already two steps ahead, dragging her behind.

  Someone jammed a microphone into Charli's hands and the band struck up the lead-in music. Jackson Gray Wolf grabbed her around the middle and lifted her up onto the bar where Lacey, Kendall, Bella and Libby waited, dressed like Charli in their matching red corsets and black ruffled skirts. With the weight of her transgressions on her shoulders, Charli choked on the first words of the song. Heart pounding, her gaze panned the crowd, searching for Connor’s open, honest face, half-afraid she’d find it…even more fearful she wouldn’t.

  Lacey danced over to where Charli leaned against a support column. “What’s wrong with you? The natives are getting impatient. Sing, girl, sing!”

  As the band got into the spirit of the bump and grind music, Charli shook off her morose musings and threw her voice into the song, making it as sexy and raunchy as the throng expected and deserved.

  The overwhelming majority of the crowd was randy cowboys, liquored up and excited from the adrenalin-kick of riding the rodeo. As the girls danced, the crowd of masked men surged toward the bar, some reaching out to touch.

  Jackson stood at the front, warning the men as best he could over the roar of the music and hollering, but they weren’t listening.

  One man grabbed Libby’s ankle and tried to yank her off the bar.

  A shout rose from the back of the room.

  Charli recognized Mark and Luke Gray Wolf attempting to swim through the crush to get to the bar.

  Resident bartender and tough-as-nails biker-babe Libby had it under control. She pressed her free stiletto to the cowboy’s forehead and pushed, sending him flying back into the crowd of rabble-rousers.

  A cheer went up at the same time as a scream rent the air.

  As if in a surreal dream, Charli sang on, as a fight broke out in the middle of the crush, the Gray Wolf twins at the center.

  In the sea of faces and cowboy hats, with fists swinging, loud curses flying and men stumbling into one another, one face stood out.

  Connor Mason stood to the side of the melee, dressed in a white shirt, white cowboy hat and pulling a white mask from his face, looking every bit the knight in shining armor,
come to rescue her from the storm. He glanced around, ducking to avoid a meaty paw of a fist and stared up at Charli, with a grin.

  Charli’s heart fluttered, her chest tightening until she could barely breathe.

  Connor was the man of every woman’s dreams, the sweetest, kindest, most predictable man she could ever hope to spend the rest of her life with. Why did she have to go and make love to the men in the storeroom? All for a little short-lived excitement.

  Singing from rote memory, Charli’s words choked on a sob. And how could she let Connor go? She’d have no other choice, because as soon as she told him what she’d done, he’d walk away, never to again grace her bed.

  She’d have to get a new set of batteries for her vibrator. More than that, she’d miss Connor’s smile and having someone around to talk to, to sleep with and hold her through the night.

  Control disintegrated and the room became a free-for-all brawl.

  Sheriff’s deputies pushed into the back of the room, one carrying a megaphone. He raised it to speak, but another man in a black business suit, wearing mirrored sunglasses, yanked the device from the deputy’s fingers and handed it to the man in the gray business suit beside him. The businessman pointed it toward the bar and yelled, “Elizabeth Stratton, get down off that bar!”

  Beside her, Libby, the tough-as-nails, biker-babe bartender turned white and toppled into the crowd of cowboys out cold.

  Her head spinning, her pulse hammering against her ears, Charli stared at the mayhem, the man with the megaphone and the jumble of bodies toppling one at a time. Her voice trailed off with the band as she struggled to find Connor’s beautiful, sexy face in the horde. Just as she did, a huge cowboy with the build of a professional linebacker powered a left hook into Connor’s jaw, sending him breaking through a cluster of men wrestling over a tabletop.

  Charli gasped, taking a step toward the edge of the bar. “Connor!”

  Another cowboy jerked Connor up by the collar and swung.

  Connor ducked his head to the side and the man behind him took the full brunt of the blow, bellowing like a poked bull. He shoved Connor around, balled his fists and landed an upper cut to Connor’s belly so fast, Connor, who was still twisted in his shirt from the other guy, couldn’t react.

  “You bastard!” Charli yelled, then screamed like an Indian on the warpath and launched herself off the corner of the bar and into the fray. She landed on top of the man attacking Connor, rocketing him into another’s gut.

  Apparently the guy whose back she rode had a girlfriend who was quick to jealousy.

  Before Charli could get her own legs under herself, the bleach-blond cowgirl shrieked and grabbed Charli’s hair, flinging her around and away from Connor, screaming, “You bitch! Get off my man.”

  Caught off balance, Charli fell face-first on the floor, the wind knocked out of her lungs.

  "Leave my man alone!" Blondie landed in the middle of her back, yanking and tugging at Charli’s hair, slapping her upside the head several times, making Charli’s ears ring.

  When she finally sucked in enough air to make a difference, Charli had just about had enough. She bucked once.

  The skinny-ass bitch on top rode her like a mechanical bull.

  Well, ride this.

  Anger spiked and adrenaline kicked in, giving Charli enough oomph, she bucked and rolled, twisting the vicious bitch over onto her back. She straddled her and pinned her arms above her head. “Don’t call me a bitch and leave me the fuck alone!” She wanted to, but she didn’t, slap the woman, although it took all her control not to.

  Before Charli could rise and put distance between herself and the crazy woman, men formed a circle around the women on the floor, shouting, “Cat fight!” The circle grew, hoots and hollering going up all around, drawing more spectators.

  “Sorry, fellas, this one’s over.” Charli stood and reached down a hand to help the blonde up.

  The woman clasped Charli’s hand and shot to her feet, her lips pulled back into a sneer as she yanked Charli forward and slammed a fist into her belly. “Not yet, it ain’t.”

  Doubled over, her hands clutching her belly, Charli gasped. “Oh, you did not just do that.”

  Blondie stood with her fists on her hips. “I sure did and I’m gonna do it again.”

  Her lips forming a thin line, Charli forced her back straight, despite the pain in her midsection. “Not in this lifetime.”

  The other woman took a swing. Charli leaned to the side just enough the woman’s arm sailed past her, her momentum carrying her forward. Charli stuck out her foot, pressed a hand to the woman’s shoulder and sent her flying into the arms of the men around her. “Don’t fuck with me.”

  The woman screeched like a wounded cat and spun to face Charli. “You want some of this?” She wiggled her fingers, urging Charli forward. “Come on.”

  All Charli wanted was to get to where Connor was and make sure he was okay, not lying comatose under a table. “I don’t have time for this.”

  When the woman came at her again, Charli braced herself, and waited until the last minute, then ducked to the right, raising her knee to Blondie’s belly, landing it hard in her breadbasket.

  The woman collapsed to the floor on her hands and knees, coughing.

  One end of the circle of men broke open and a deputy sheriff shouldered his way into the middle. “What’s going on here?”

  The man Charli had landed on pointed. “That bitch attacked me and then she tried to kill my girlfriend.”

  Without waiting to hear Charli’s side of the story, the deputy snapped a cuff to her wrist. “You’re coming with me.”

  Chapter Five

  “That man’s lying,” Charli cried out, but her voice was lost in the cursing and yelling going on all around. She yanked away from the deputy, determined to find Connor.

  “Sorry, lady, but you have to come with me.” The deputy dragged her toward the front door.

  “No, I need to check on Connor. That baboon could have killed him. He could be lying under a table dying. Let me go!”

  As she kicked, scratched and clawed her way toward Connor, the deputy lost patience and slung her over his shoulder, pushing his way through the thinning crowd near the front entrance. Once outside, he dumped her into the back of his SUV, clipped the other end of the cuff to the wire mesh separating the front of the vehicle from the back.

  “You can’t haul me in. I didn’t do anything,” she called out.

  “Tell it to the judge.” He shut the door and left her sitting there and went back inside the saloon. A few minutes later, he returned, leading a big man in a black suit with a bloody nose, his hands zip-tied behind his back. The deputy loaded the man into the other side of the SUV, then slid into the driver seat and drove away from the Ugly Stick Saloon.

  “Don’t leave! I need to go back in,” Charli insisted.

  “No can do," Deputy Dense said with a southern drawl.

  “But people are getting hurt. I could help.”

  Sirens screamed past them as more county sheriff cars and the local volunteer fire department arrived with the Emergency Medical Technicians and ambulances.

  “Let the professionals handle it.”

  “But—” She pulled against the manacle on her wrist.

  “Not listening.”

  Charli sat in the back next to the big guy with the bloody nose, who didn’t fit into the usual crowd at the Ugly Stick Saloon. “Who are you?”

  He stared straight ahead, without answering.

  “I get it. You’re one of the strong silent types.” She huffed. “Good, didn’t wanna talk anyway.” She twisted around trying to look over her shoulder as the SUV pulled off the short road to the saloon onto the highway. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To Hole In The Wall. The jail in Temptation is going to be too full to handle everyone.”

  Red, blue and yellow lights flashed, strobing the night with color all around the saloon. “You wouldn’t have to fill up the jails if you�
�d just let us go.”

  Charli was ignored again, by both the deputy driver and the man sitting beside her, blood drying on his lip.

  As the colored lights faded, all Charli could see was the big Texas night sky filled to overflowing with bright, beautiful stars. Her vision blurred with a wash of tears. “I never got to tell him.” She sighed. “It’s just as well. He wouldn’t understand.” She snorted softly, leaning her head onto her arms. “I don’t even understand.”

  Her silent seat partner harrumphed, the first sound he’d made since he’d been shoved into the back of the SUV.

  Charli tipped her head on her arms and stared across at him. “What would you do, if you thought you were in love with someone, but that you might also be in love with another?”

  The big guy’s gaze shifted toward her for a nanosecond, then back to the front again.

  Charli sighed again. “I know, it all sounds wishy-washy, but they both have great qualities. On the one hand, Original Sin knows exactly what buttons to push to make me so hot, I swear my hair lights on fire.”

  Those dark eyes shifted toward her. “T.M.I.,” he muttered.

  “Ah, so you do have a voice.” Charli sat up straight. “You’re a man, answer this—"

  “No.” He cut her off before she got any farther. “I don’t get involved when it’s not my business. And you, little lady, are not my business.”

  Her brows rose. “Just what is your business?”

  “I’m a bodyguard.”

  Charli’s brows rose further, a smile lifting the corners of her lips. “Did you lose something?”

  His brows furrowed. “I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t throw the first punch. I was only protecting my boss.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Another sob story.” The deputy glanced in the rearview mirror. “Cry to the judge.”

  “He’s not very sympathetic, is he?” Charli stuck out her tongue at the back of the deputy’s head.

  “I saw that.”

  “So what are you going to do, arrest me?” Charli chuckled and turned back to the bodyguard. “Anyway, what would you do if you fancied yourself in love with two people? One the exciting, blood-stirring spontaneous type and the other, the steady, you-can-bank-your-life-on-me type? Which would you choose?”