The crops had been doing pretty poorly for a few years, but I guess Uncle Jim just hadn’t let on how bad things had gotten until the bank man came out to give him his final warning in person. That’s when my aunt Mary had cried, and I’d hid my little cousins out in the barn and distracted them with hair braiding while my aunt and uncle had the big blowout. That was a rough night. I may have only been nineteen, but I was old enough to know that whatever was up was bad, and that we might have to move.
The man from the farm came the next day, right after breakfast.
I’d been up since first light, doing chores, milking our cow, and tending to the chickens, and I remember peering up and squinting as he drove up the dusty drive. He’d pulled up out front of the house, around the side from where I was working near the barn, and I scampered to the corner of the house to peer around at the stranger who’d come calling so early.
I’d had a bad feeling instantly, feeling my stomach sour and my skin crawl a little just as soon as I’d seen him get out of his truck. He was tall, and broad-shouldered in a way that should have completed that whole dashing cowboy look, especially with the jeans, the boots, and the big ten-gallon hat. But it was that sneer on his face — the way he’d spat in the dirt of the driveway when he’d stepped out. It was the way he’d turned instantly and looked right at me, as if he’d known I was there all along. I shivered — not in a good way — at that mean, smug look on his face.
There were two other men with him, but they stayed in the truck cab, faces obscured by cowboy hats.
I’d not been allowed inside when he and Uncle Jim talked, but as I’d tried to listen from outside the kitchen window, I’d certainly heard my name enough times, along with things like “only temporary,” “only option,” and “owe more than just the bank.” Still, it wasn’t enough to let me know what was up.
Eventually, the kitchen porch door opened, and he stepped out, followed by my uncle, looking ashen-faced.
“So, this must be Johanna!” He’d smiled that dark, cold smile at me, making me shiver again as his eyes wandered over me pretty freely.
“I’ve heard a lot about you Johanna, and I gotta say, you’re every bit of what I’ve been told.” He winked at me, and I felt my stomach knot.
“Jo, this is Mr. Pike, and he has an offer for yo— well, for us. For the family.” Uncle Jim was anxiously looking everywhere but my face as he stammered. “He’s got this fa—”
“I run a farm of sorts, little miss,” the cowboy said, cutting off my uncle. “And you can call me Jeb.”
“A farm?”
He seemed more a cowboy, less an actual working farmer.
“It’s — well it’s a might different that some of the other farms y’all might be familiar with. But honey?” He turned that chilling smile back to me. “Oh, I think it’s going to be a perfect fit for you.”
I frowned, looking at my uncle for answers.
“He wants you to work for him, Jo, and he’s gonna pay us all well for it.”
My eyes went wide.
Uncle Jim was my dad’s half-brother, and I’d been with him and his wife Mary for the last five years, after my parents had died in the car crash. There wasn’t a whole lot of family on either side, and as it turns out, Jim and Mary — as distant and as relatively strangers as they were to me — were the closest thing I’d had to family. They’d taken me in and given me a place to live and grow up after the crash, and in exchange, I worked on their farm and helped take care of my three much younger cousins. It wasn’t the warmest of Hallmark family situations, but it worked, and it’d certainly been better than God knows what I would have done without them. Plus, it kept me in the country, where I’d always been.
I looked at my uncle, my face falling. “You mean, leave here?”
“Tell you what, little lady,” Jeb said in his overly-friendly, yet cold-sounding voice. “What if you were to just come out and try it out? You come on out, be my guest of honor for a few days, and see if it’s for you. If it ain’t, I’ll bring right on back home.” He winked at me, and his eyes momentarily flitted from my face down to the open top button of my plaid shirt.
I shivered, and he winked again.
“I promise.”
I bit my lip, my eyes darting to my uncle, who was carefully looking away.
“But, I’ve got a pretty good notion that you’re gonna love it there. You’re a perfect fit for the place.”
I shifted again under his roaming eyes. Yes, part of it was that I wasn’t used to men looking at me, since I pretty much spent all time way out here on my aunt and uncle’s small farm. But it was also the icy intensity of his gaze — the way it felt like he was sizing me up, like Uncle Jim did when he went to market to buy a new calf or something.
“It’ll let us keep the farm, Jo,” Uncle Jim finally said, his voice stoic. “I mean, Mary and I have done a lot to take you in and all.”
This was the line he and my aunt both used when they wanted me to do something. Like I owed them something, despite being family. I mean, I got that they had helped me out, and that they hadn’t been expecting a fourth kid to look after, but it always felt like they were trying to leverage me or something.
“You really want Karen, Amy, and Susie to have to move away from their home?”
I looked down, feeling my gut twist at the thought of my three little cousins leaving the only place they knew as home.
“Okay,” The word tumbled from my lips before I could even think, and I saw my uncle swallow heavily and exhale slowly.
“Atta girl, little lady.” Jeb grinned broadly at me before turning and clapping my uncle strongly on the shoulder. “Mr. Carson, pleasure doing business with you.”
I frowned. Business?
“We’ll be by in a few days to collect her.”
I started to open my mouth to ask what exactly I was going to be doing for this man, but just then, the truck pulled around to the side of the farmhouse. The engine idled, the doors opened, and suddenly, the two men who I hadn’t really got a look at before stepped out.
Whoa.
You could chalk it up to me being only nineteen. You could say it was because I basically spent all my time out here at my aunt and uncle’s farm, or that with being out here and with all the chores I had, I’d barely spoken to boys, let alone done anything else with them. But whatever you want to blame it on, I know one thing: when those two stepped out of that truck, I felt something like fire course through my whole body.
Every inch of it.
It was the two sets of piercing blue eyes, the two perfect sets of lips set into chiseled, square jaws covered in just enough to stubble to spark something aching inside of me. It was the way I could see arm muscles and broad shoulders and chests ripple and strain beneath plaid work shirts tucked into tight denim jeans.
It was the way both of them just stared at me with this intense, hungry look.
Jeb had looked at me too, but where his eyes had made my skin crawl, these two made my body come alive. I swallowed quickly, sucking my bottom lip between my teeth and feeling my pulse skip a beat.
The two of them just stared, eyes flashing and handsome, chiseled jaws tightening.
“See you in a few days, little miss.”
I pulled my eyes away from them at the sound of Jeb’s voice. The two gorgeous cowboys seemed to also pull away, both of them suddenly kicking their boots against the side of the truck, nodding at my uncle, and getting back into the cab.
Jeb started to turn to walk back to the truck when I cleared my throat.
“Uh, mister? What, uh, what sort of farm is this?”
His smile went wide, his eyes piercing into me like a shark spotting prey before they dipped back down to the open button of my shirt.
“It’s a perfect place for a girl like you. That’s what kind of farm it is.”
And with a final wink, he tipped his hat at me and walked back to his truck, leaving me drowning in questions.
2
J
ohanna
I cleared the dishes after dinner that night, scraping them into the trash while I waited for the hot water in the old sink to heat up. My aunt and uncle had been quiet during supper, but I could hear them now in the other room, speaking in hushed but fierce voices. My aunt Mary kept saying it “wasn’t right,” and that this “shouldn’t be on her.” But my uncle was insistent, and I definitely heard the word “money” enough to know what was at stake here.
Besides, what was the harm in going? After all, I’d spent my whole life on a farm — my parents’ one before, and now my aunt and uncle’s place. I’d certainly milked my fair share of cows, and mucked out enough barns, and fed enough chickens to know what I was doing. So, I’d stay a few days at Mr. Pike’s farm and see what it was all about. And yes, this arrangement might’ve been made behind my back and without asking me, but then, I did owe Jim and Mary a lot, and if working for this other man would help them keep their farm, who was I to complain?
Another deeper, darker part of me shivered in giggly excitement, thinking about the two other men from earlier in the day. The two rough-looking and yet totally gorgeous cowboys. I wondered if they worked on the farm too, and felt my face grow hot at the thought as I finished drying the last plate.
I went to bed that night feeling almost like I was buzzing, I was so anxious. I was excited for whatever newness this was, even if I was also more than a little nervous. I’d spent my whole nineteen years pretty isolated — first on my parents’ remote farm, and then the equally isolated farm that my aunt and uncle ran. Schooling had been at the tiny one-room school at the community center in the next town over. College had never actually been on the table, mostly for money reasons, but also because Mary and Jim needed me to work.
So really, this was me stepping out for the first time ever, and that idea both terrified and excited me like nothing else.
As I fidgeted, I slowly began to realize that my nervous excitement was quickly turning into something much more. And I knew why.
The two ruggedly handsome cowboys I’d seen earlier that day.
I couldn’t stop thinking about them, and the more I did, the more my inexperienced body started to react in…squirmy ways. I could feel the tingly achy feeling that I sometimes got down there, and I blushed scarlet as if felt my thighs squeeze tight. The need was getting bigger and bigger, like an itch that was begging for a scratch, and I could feel a dull throb there between my legs. I glanced over my shoulder at the three other beds in the small bedroom that I shared with my younger cousins. Their eyes were closed and I could see the rhythmic rising and falling of their shoulders as they slept. But no, not here.
Feeling a rush of adrenaline, and feeling so naughty and so alive, I jumped out of bed in my nightgown and padded slowly to the door. Quickly, quietly, I made my way down the creaky farmhouse stairs and through the kitchen, to the far door that led into the barn.
I kept the lights off, guided only by the milky glow from the moon through the side windows as I stepped gently in my bare feet over the floor and around equipment to the far corner of the barn. It was darker over there, and hidden from view around an old stall door. I felt my pulse thump in my chest as I approached, giddy excitement and gnawing arousal at why I was here pulling at my young body. Quickly glancing back towards the door to the house, I pulled off my nightgown, draping it over the stall door.
I looked down at myself and sighed as I let my hands drift over my body. I shivered as I brought my hands up my torso, up higher to cup the soft, creamy skin of my breasts. My fingers ran lightly up the curve, until I gasped as they rolled over my pink nipples.
Mr. Pike’s wandering eyes had felt icky, and uncomfortable. But the way his two helpers had looked at me — well, that was something else.
That was something entirely new to me, and I had to say, I liked it.
A lot.
I’d never gotten looks like that. Sure, I’d gotten the odd lingering leer from boys at school, but the farm boys from the one-room schoolhouse had never remotely interested me. I’d even gone on a date, once, with Bobby Mitchell, who’s pa knew my Uncle Jim. Bobby had taken me to a drive-in a few towns over, which was fun and all, until his hands started to reach for more than popcorn. He’d gotten under my shirt and over my bra before I’d asked him quietly to stop and drive me home.
That was literally the entirety of my experience when it came to sex.
I sighed as I brought my hands up over the soft curves of my breasts, letting my fingers tease over the nipples rapidly hardening at their peaks. I could feel the heat and the slippery wet feeling between my legs, and I grinned shyly as I let one hand drop down there. My fingers pushed through the soft, downy patch of light hair covering me there. I pushed my finger lower, and moaned as it moved over my clit, bringing a little shiver to my body.
I stopped myself from going further just yet, as hard as it was. Instead, I moved to the darkest corner of the little space and pulled the oilcloth cover from the piece of machinery there, and my breath caught a little bit with excitement.
The machine was a milk agitator, which Uncle Jim used to use back when we were making cheese to sell. But in the slow decline, we’d left off that part of the business, and the machine had sat around in the barn since we’d no more use for it.
Oh, but I’d found a use for it.
Feeling the throb in my pussy, I grabbed the thin blanket from the back of the stall door and draped it over the flat, low top of the machine. Feeling my heart pounding, I turned and hopped up, scooting my bare butt back so that I was sitting astride the machine with my legs dangling. I felt my pulse jump and I reached back and found the on button, and with a giddy gasp, I pushed it.
I moaned instantly, louder than I’d meant to as the machine rumbled to life between by thighs. Oh goodness, did that feel good. I’d discovered this by accident, when I’d bumped into the machine while trying to clean up back here, but I’d certainly learned quickly how perfect it was.
My brow furrowed as I brought my hand back up to my breasts, squeezing them and pulling at my nipples as the machine hummed and rumbled between my legs. The pulsing, vibrating waves went crashing through my body, and especially through my pussy, and I gasped and moaned as I ground my pelvis down onto the machine top. I brought two fingers back down to my slit and let them press against my little button, rubbing it in slow circles as the machine hummed beneath me. I threw my head back as I bucked against the vibrations, rubbing my clit and pulling and pinching my nipples as I gasped into the dark stillness of the barn.
My mind wandered to the handsome, built, rough and sexy cowboys from earlier and I groaned. I pictured it was one of them — maybe the slightly taller of the two with the darker hair vibrating and bucking between my legs, or maybe the one with the sandier hair and the broader shoulders, holding me tight as the vibrations crashed through my body.
I sometimes came out here when I need to play with myself like this, but there was just something about tonight that seemed more — like I just needed it more desperately than I’d ever needed that release before. I felt like I could feel everything more tonight as the memory of those two sets of piercing blue eyes and rugged faces crept through my thoughts.
The rumbling vibrations were radiating through me like caresses — like hands rubbing and massaging every inch of my body and making me feel so good! I thought of one of the cowboys, and then the other, and then back to the first, repeating this again and again and loving how dirty it felt.
But then, I stopped switching. In my head, suddenly it wasn’t one man or the other, it was both rough and gorgeous country men taking me at the same time.
The thought was so utterly filthy and so dirty, but it sent what felt like lightening sizzling through my body. I bit my lip and rocked my hips forward, and as my little button pressed down against the soft blanket over the top of the rumbling machine, I went off like a shot. I threw my head back and arched my back as I bucked and moaned against the top of the machine, think
ing only of the two men taking me together and rubbing my clit against it as my climax hit me like a ton of bricks.
Fumbling around behind me for the button, I shut it off with a rumble and a sigh from my lips as I collapsed panting and gasping onto the machine.
Eventually, I got up and straightened everything out and slipped my nightgown back over myself. I shivered as the cloth made contact with my still tingly, erect little nipples and made me moan. Just the simple feeling of my clothes touching my breasts made me want to jump back on the machine.
I was exhausted though, so with a last hungry look at the milk agitator, I slipped back to the house and back to my bed.
My dreams were just as dirty.
3
Roman
“Think fast.”
I glanced up, and my hand jerked up on instinct to catch the beer Colt chucked my way.
“Thanks for shaking it up, dick.”
My buddy grinned at me as he cracked the top of his own can. His boots thumped across the floor of the bunk-house porch as he strode over and plopped into the chair next to me.
“Cheers, hombre.”
I was quiet as I tapped my beer to his and then opened it, frowning at the hiss and froth of foam that dribbled over my hand.
“Fucker.”
Colt chuckled and sipped his beer, and I did the same to mine, easing back in the chair and kicking my boots up on the railing. The rolling Montana hills stretched out in front of us, the stars glinting up above, and the cool night air breezing over us.
Shit, couldn’t complain about the view, that’s for sure.
“Weird day, huh?”
I nodded.
“She doesn’t know what the fuck is about to happen to her, does she?”