CHAPTER 34
Maxie
Two days. Forty-nine hours and fifteen minutes if I was being specific. That was how long it’d been since I’d lost my virginity. A little less since the last time I’d had sex with my bullheaded roommates. I wanted to strangle them or mount them but I wasn’t sure which I wanted more. They’d lit a fire in me that I couldn’t manage alone and then they’d just cut off the water supply. I was in a constant state of arousal, thinking of all the ways we could have sex instead of working. After being a sheltered, sexually constipated husk of a woman for nearly three decades, my body was awake and it needed more.
After Shep spanked me and told me to do my worst, they hadn’t touched me again. I could feel their eyes on me, always on me, but they kept their hands to themselves. They were punishing me for not accepting what they wanted as law. It felt like they were waiting on me to come crawling to them on my hands and knees telling them I’d been wrong. It wasn’t going to happen. The same way they’d awoken my sexual desire, they’d awoken the fight in me.
Shep wanted me to do my worst? I would show him just how bad my worst was. He was acting like we were married but I’d show him that he didn’t really want me. Not for keeps. I’d show them all and then they’d get over their tantrums and we could get back to the good part. I just needed them to accept that I wasn’t their forever. I had a thousand lessons from my mother banging around in my mind, all of them of her, telling me all the things I did that would stop anyone from ever loving me. I had the playbook on how to show the guys they were confused and didn’t really want me.
I wanted a few months in the warmth of their arms before I left and they were impeding that with their flighty dreams of me being the mother to raise their children. The sooner they accepted that I was temporary, the sooner I could find their heat again and settle into it for a while. I wasn’t so blind to my own feelings that I didn’t know I felt the same fanciful things they felt but I knew the end already. My heart would be shattered into a million pieces just like the first time. I just it shattered wanted it to be under my own terms.
Once upon a time, I’d had little ideas here or there about things I wanted or didn’t want. I’d never been brave enough to think past that first initial thought because I’d always known what Mom would say. In my attempt to be perfect and not rock the boat, those little ideas had faded until I thought they were all gone but something about Shep demanding I do my worst had triggered a landslide of those ideas.
At the back of my mind, it felt silly and childish. I was a grown woman finally thinking of doing things most teenagers did to rebel against their parents. I also recognized it was twisted to try and make my mother’s abuse a self-fulfilled prophecy. I was planning on doing the things she said would make me unloveable, to make me unloveable. Making her right? It made my stomach hurt and my head throb but only if I actually thought about what I was doing.
My first act of rebellion was the easiest. My clothing had always been more about coverage and convenience, even if that meant wearing a flannel to cover my chest in the middle of the summer. I couldn’t do much about parts of my clothing because there was no way I was riding Bob in a dress but I gathered up all the flannel shirts I owned and tossed them in a trash bag. They went to the back of my closet and sat there with whatever dust bunnies had been left over from the Mays.
Without my flannels, my tank tops were a little more scandalous. My curves weren’t easily hidden in just a tank top. I put my new uniform of choice to the test when a team from the auction house showed up to unload the cattle we’d purchased. Too nervous to attempt having breakfast with the guys, I’d stayed hidden until it was time to help with the cattle. The guys saw me for the first time that day at the same time as the four men who’d arrived in two semi-trucks.
I felt the energy shift as I approached and a strange beat of arousal hit me. The things I was learning about myself and couldn’t begin to understand were unlimited since sleeping with the guys. My body, or my brain, seemed to find a lot of things appealing that never would’ve crossed my mind before. Like walking towards a group of men in a tank top that clung to my chest, while the men I wanted watched with dangerous scowls on their faces. A part of me wondered if Mom had been right about me because knowing I was making them mad sent an excited shiver down my spine. There had to be something wrong with me.
Instead of Mousy Maxie I pushed my shoulders back and greeted the new guys.
“Thanks so much for transporting the cattle for us. I’m Maxie Hellstone. I’ll help set up the run and then we can get these girls to their new pasture.”
A lanky younger guy stepped forward, taking his hat off as he did, and stretched out his hand to shake mine.
“Ma’am. I’m Lestor—”
A strong arm wrapped around my middle and lifted me off the ground. I yelped and looked over my shoulder to see Arlo glaring at the poor guy before turning that hard gaze on me. Fury tore through me and instead of clamping it down until my teeth hurt, I let it out.
“You put me down right now, Arlo. I have a job to do and you’re not getting in my way.” I tried to elbow him but he locked his other arm around me, too, trapping my arms as he marched me towards the house. “Dammit, Arlo!”
He pressed his mouth to my ear and growled.
“You want to get that little shit killed? Let me tell you, baby, if he’d managed to actually touch even the tip of one of your fingers, I would’ve ripped his fucking arm off. You can’t come out there without a shirt on over this. No fucking way.”
I grunted and tried to kick him but he flipped me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing and jogged up the stairs, the motion leaving me breathless as his shoulder bounced into my stomach. That didn’t mean I lost any of my fight, though. As soon as Arlo carried me into my room and tossed me on the bed, I was up on my knees glaring at him.
“You can’t tell me how to dress. There’s nothing wrong with this. I’m completely covered but you’re acting like I stripped down to my bra and panties to parade around in front of those men.” A shiver of pleasure worked its way down my spine at the look on his face.
“I can appreciate you getting more comfortable but I’ll be damned if some fuckers from Dallas are going to get to look at you. This is for us only, baby.” He gripped the door so tight that I thought I could hear the wood cracking. “Put a shirt on before you come back outside unless you want those men to lose their eyes.”
“You’ll be lucky if I don’t strip down to a freaking bikini before coming back out.” Did I own a bikini? Nope. Did he know that? I doubted it. Especially judging by the way his face turned red with anger. “You three don’t seem to want me anymore, so maybe I’m on the hunt for a few men who will give me what I want without demanding the world for it.”
Too far. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth but it was like I’d removed the filter between my brain and mouth. I was shocked by my own words but I did my best to play it off. Arlo didn’t seem to care if I’d scandalized myself or not. He didn’t seem to care about anything in that moment besides getting his hands on me.
He slammed the door shut and locked it before yanking his shirt over his head and coming at me. I panicked and tried to crawl to the other side of the bed but he was too fast. He grabbed my ankles and yanked me to him.
“You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?”