Her face had that look but he knew it was only a vicarious thing.

Suddenly everything shifted into place and Cole almost came right off the carpet and levitated! He felt the beginning roar as the s.e.m.e.n began to rush down the constricted tunnel of his p.e.n.i.s and deep inside his wife's hotly submissive mouth! Oh Christ! A scream tore out his throat as he felt the exquisite pleasure take over his nerves and brain and loins and wash him in a tidal wave of agonizing bliss!

"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH ... OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH ... GGGGOOOODDDD.

... AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH ... AAAAHHHH!".

He was...o...b..ting the whole f.u.c.king universe! Rushing to the outer limits like a speeding light that lit the heavens with the birthing of a new sun! Cole felt the rush of ecstasy spew with the speed of light down his c.o.c.k, emptying his b.a.l.l.s in great bursts of hot roaring sperm that cascaded out like molten lava!

Kate was not prepared. The scalding stream of sperm hit her tonsils like a white hot searing oil that was drowning her in a fiery drink that would cauterize her very flesh! She bubbled and choked and gagged but it kept coming straight down her throat and Cole was jamming it in even harder until she knew she was going to die, drowned in his creaming c.u.m and burned by its heat to a charred cinder! Oh G.o.d!

She swallowed furiously and frantically tried to drink it down swiftly for her breath was gone and she was going to choke to death! She knew it!

Cole watched Kate's beautiful face as it contorted even more in a fevered effort to take all of his pumping hot c.u.m into her greedily accepting belly! Her Adam's apple bobbed and jerked obscenely as she gagged and labored to swallow all of it and she was choking and bubbling as the burning stream spewed on and on deep into her throat!

"SSUUUUCCCCKKKKKK it, baby ... OHHHH, suckkkkkk ... Jesus ...

suckkkkkk!"

Kate tried for she dimly heard her husband screaming as he frantically kept f.u.c.king into her upraised face and the great hosing continued, the whitely heated streams spilling into her mouth in hotly increasing gushes and she swallowed and gulped as best she could to take it all deep into her hungrily absorbing stomach! The guitar outside had gone mad and the hands drew out great crashing chords and intricate runs that were a cacophony of sound that beat against her ears as the flow of molten sperm spewed furiously down her working throat.

On and on, the rapturous explosions of liquid bliss erupted in Kate's still sucking mouth until at last, Cole could feel them lessening and the spurts were further and further apart and the streams smaller and smaller. Kate's beautiful eyes were blissfully closed and the sweat glistened on her forehead and he could see two tears stealing down her cheeks. He held her face tenderly, looking down at her naked loveliness, his hands still smoothing her face softly and one last twinging wracked his body and his hips thrust forward and his dying c.o.c.k spewed out a last few droplets ...

"d.a.m.n ... G.o.dDD ... ohhhh, baby ...!"

Kate looked up then tremulously proud of taking all he had, and she felt the wet of her tears trickling down her face. Cole straightened and his still heavily thickened c.o.c.k slipped from her lips with a soft wet popping sound and he stood looking down at her, his brown eyes unreadable, the pupils black and huge. A thin white line of his c.u.m still connected them where it looped from her so well f.u.c.ked mouth to the slowly deflating head, it was still almost hard even though emptied. Kate heard him groan again and then she was pulled roughly to her feet and crushed to his heaving hair covered chest and his mouth came down to bruise her mouth, his tongue plunging inside to taste the strength of his own o.r.g.a.s.m.

Kate's bones were limp and lifeless and she felt herself pressed into his hot flesh until she thought their bodies would melt together in the rapture of his homecoming! The guitar outside had lowered to a long rill that hung in the night air like a faint breeze across the prairie and somewhere a single owl hooted a lone and questioning "Whoooooo."

Chapter 2.

"For Christ's sake, haul your a.s.ses out of bed!" Cole roared from the doorway of the bas.e.m.e.nt bunk room. "If you're going to work for me you'd better know right now that we start at five!" He watched the two sleepy bodies spring up and begin to throw on jeans. "The pancakes'll be ready in five minutes. Get a move on."

Breakfast was very silent. Angel was sullen and his brow black with hatred. Eric tried valiantly to make conversation between bites of hot cakes and syrup and gulps of scalding coffee. Cole just grunted and ate, quickly and efficiently. Finally, even Eric's good nature couldn't surmount the chill and he ate in silence too.

Things had changed since last night. Kate had seemed so happy to have them here but her husband sure wasn't. It would help if Angel were a little more cooperative. If he didn't shape up they might just get thrown out on their a.s.ses. Eric determined then, one way or the other, he had to divorce himself from Angel for his own protection. The thought of going back to the city in the fall was already a dread prospect, but he'd be d.a.m.ned if he was going to be done out of his summer here. A plan was already forming. Eric told himself that if he worked well and hard enough to suit Cole that maybe he wouldn't have to go back to the city at all.

Cole got the boys started pouring the concrete footings around the new fence posts. There was a lot of catching up he had to do with his foreman, Frank. It felt so d.a.m.n good to be back home! He felt in control again. For a while he'd almost given up there in France, so bogged down in red tape he'd felt he was choking to death ... but he'd hung on and now he'd have the Limousin blood line he wanted.

He paused for a moment after he'd finished with Frank and looked out over the fields and corrals, one foot on the b.u.mper of the pickup.

Already in his mind's eye, he could see the field filled with the thick short-legged Limousins, the great humps of beef around their shoulders, the broad heads, the slightly s.h.a.ggy coats. The beautiful bull he'd bought wouldn't be there but his sons and daughters would. Cole had found a way around the G.o.dd.a.m.ned government regulations on bringing in foreign cattle.

For a while it had been nip and tuck ... but it turned out there was no restriction on bringing in sperm and by G.o.d, that's just what Cole would do. He'd had the Limousin bull shipped to Calgary, up in Canada, to be h.o.a.rded and cared for. That bull could do just as good a job of stud service there as he could here, thanks to artificial insemination.

Cole could bring in all the thousands of vials of sperm he wanted, impregnate his own cows and soon he'd have a whole new breed ... the first Limousins in this country. h.e.l.l, just selling the extra sperm at fifteen bucks a vial would bring in a lot of extra cash and he was going to need it. He and the two other ranches who were in on it with him had about $50,000 tied up in the bull but conservatively, Cole figured they could get $150,000 for the sperm alone ... not to mention improving their own herds enormously. h.e.l.l, they couldn't miss.

"Need a little rain but this country always needs some rain this time of year," Frank said as he ambled up to stand and look with Cole at the fields stretching away in gentle slopes.

"Yeah ... but we'll make it all right. Thought I'd better get over to Meacham's and Gardner's. They own a third of that bull and they'll want to know about it."

Frank gave him a curious look. "Didn't you hear? Old man Meacham had a bad heart attack while you was in France, Cole. He died pretty quick."

"Died?" Cole stared at him stupidly.

"Yeah. Just keeled over in his north field one day ... 'bout three weeks ago. We heard his daughter come back from Europe and aims to settle up the ranch ... probably sell it." Frank lit a cigarette and looked up at Cole again with the embarra.s.sed curiosity of country people.

"Sell it?" Cole's hands clenched and unclenched. It was as though Frank had suggested he sell Spring Hollow. He swung up into the pickup. "h.e.l.l, they can't sell it!"

He roared off in a cloud of dust. Why the h.e.l.l hadn't Kate let him know? Cole ground the engine through gears and took off down the gravel road to Meacham's. Christ! This could change the whole thing.

What if that daughter wanted her money out of the bull right away?

Sometimes Kate acted as though she didn't have a lick of sense. Not even telling him about Meacham dying and hiring those d.a.m.n kids for the summer. It was a good thing he'd come back. A few more weeks and he might not have had a ranch to come home to. It wasn't that Kate wasn't smart. She was ... but sometimes Cole thought it was all book learning. Well, by G.o.d, she'd learned something last night that wasn't in any book! And that's the way it was going to be from now on!

A slow smile spread over Mela Meacham's face when she saw Cole Sutherland alight from the big pickup truck and come toward her automobile. She'd known it wouldn't be long. She leaned her elbows on the window frame of the red convertible and waited, her long legs thrust out, b.r.e.a.s.t.s straining at the cloth of her filmy pink shirt.

What fun it would be to see Cole's face when he got close enough to recognize her.

Like most Americans in Paris, Cole had been anxious to establish right away just what part of the country he was from. It was as though in identifying his small section he could be accorded something more than the anonymous label "Yankee." He'd even thought she was Parisian at first ... since she'd been with a somewhat international group at the nightclub. Cole had left his party of stolid French cattlemen from the provinces and cut her out of her party as though she was a cow in a herd. The young blonde heiress had known from his first three sentences who he was, for her father never wrote anything to her that wasn't ranch news. It had been a game then not to let Cole know who she was. She'd even refused to tell him her name and insisted he simply call her M.M.

Mela looked up at Cole striding toward her purposefully. When he was almost to her he pulled his creased old hat off impatiently as though he didn't have time for any nonsense.

"You must be Meacham's daughter. I'm mighty sorry to hear the sad news, ma'am ... you see, I've been gone for ... a ... while ... Jesus Christ!" His voice trailed off incredulously as he recognized the mocking smooth face with the big green eyes and the straight streaked blonde hair that hung over one speculative eye. "What the ..."

"I told you we were destined to meet again," Mela said slowly, her smile spreading. "I'm never wrong."

"But ... But ... I mean ... I--"

She laughed at his confusion and the complete consternation in his face. It was fun to get any man that off balance, so taken aback that his mouth fell open like a beached fish. Mela looked him over, taking in the dusty boots, the tight jeans, the plaid shirt. Even in his work clothes he looked better than the fairies and pseudo fairies she'd run into all over Europe. He moved like a man and those two nights in Paris had proved beyond any doubt that he was a man ... a real man.

"I could think of something better to do with your mouth than just let it hang open like that." Mela laughed deep in her throat as she saw a slow flush redden Cole's face from his open shirt up to his forehead that was striped where his hat cut off the sun.

"I don't like being made a fool of. Why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me?"

"You'd gone to Paris for something you couldn't get at home ... there was no point in telling you I was from home ... now was there?"

Cole could feel the blood heating his face, the fury pounding in him.

G.o.d d.a.m.n it! She was laughing at him, enjoying his looking like an a.s.s! The memory of the feel of the young heiress's body came into his hands even though it was only his eyes that touched her. The jutting b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the sensuously slender body with the curved hips and long legs in the tight jeans that left nothing to the imagination, the narrow hands with the long pale pointy nails like claws. He felt the blood begin to pulse in his loins just looking at her, despite his discomfort. A thousand confusions and difficulties sprang to mind.

She was Paris ... there was no place for her in South Dakota or the part of him that lived here. To make matters worse ... now that Meacham, was dead ... she even owned a third of his bull.

Mela reached down behind her into the car seat and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it slowly, watching his confusion turn to anger and frustration and dismay. Blowing the smoke out in long wreaths, she looked up at him and felt the jolt again of his frowning eyes.

"It's d.a.m.ned awkward," Cole blurted, putting his hat back on to shield his eyes from Mela's green ones that glittered and mocked him in the sun that was beginning to beat down on the prairie. "I mean ... well, your Pa and I had formed a corporation. That bull I went to France to buy ... it was for the corporation."

"Then that makes us partners, doesn't it partner?" Mela whispered softly. Abruptly, she turned and twisted the door handle and slid into the white leather seats of the convertible. "I was just going to take a drive ... look over the place. Come along and give me some advice.

Since I haven't been home for years, I don't really know what Pa has now.

"There was some talk of your selling the place."

"That's one of the things I have to decide, maybe you can help me."

Kate took a huge basket of fruit out to the station wagon. It was hot already and she wasn't sure she could even be back in time to get the big meal on the table right on time at noon. Well, if she didn't finish with the old ladies this morning she'd just have to do some of them tomorrow. After last night Kate didn't think she'd better invite her husband's wrath about anything for a while and he wanted his meals on time.

She knew the back roads so well that she drove automatically. Getting the hand crafts from some of the local women had been a good idea, despite Cole's derision The old fashioned quilts and the real Indian beading she ferreted out around the countryside were selling well in the little gallery she'd started in town. For the hundredth time she wondered why Cole always seemed to deride her efforts.

But Cole had always done that. It was as though he couldn't bear for her to have anything of her own. A child was the one thing he was going to make sure she didn't have of her own--or anyone else's.

He'd changed though. Cole was harder, more defensive than ever. Last night hadn't proved anything really except that he could terrify her with his temper ... that he could force her to abandon any principle just to placate him. Mostly it had proved that she was willing to go to any lengths to get a child ... any child. She wondered what he would demand next, knowing she'd do anything that might change his mind about a child. Kate blushed and shuddered a little remembering the perverted act Cole had forced on her. It was as though he had the whip hand and wouldn't hesitate to use it now.

But a woman shouldn't have to plead and cajole and connive to talk her husband into a child. He ought to want one too. It wasn't natural that a man didn't want children too ... if he cared about his wife.

Kate caught her breath. Maybe she'd have to face that too. Maybe Cole was behaving naturally for a man who didn't care about his wife. No.

It wasn't possible. They'd been married ten years. They'd worked so hard together to build the ranch.

Sandy Gayman looked up as the red convertible went roaring out the driveway. Looked like Cole Sutherland's pickup parked out there.

h.e.l.l, he wasn't due back 'til today, Kate had said. Must have come home early on account of Meacham dying like that so quick.

Sandy walked out of the barn doorway into the blazing sun, watching the red car become a speck. The big sandy-haired man wiped the back of his hand across his forehead leaving a streak of grease from the tractor he'd been repairing. Mela probably had to go into town to see the lawyer again. Probably Cole had to go along on account of the deal on the Limousin bull. But, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Mela ought to tell him what she was doing and why. A foreman couldn't handle things properly if he didn't know what was going on.

Turning back to the barn, Sandy wiped his hands on the greasy rag.

Maybe he'd been too careful of Mela's mourning over the old man. He hadn't wanted to rush her and ruin everything but maybe it was time he made his move; after all he'd done all the work for a long time now.

Meacham had leaned on him more and more until Sandy couldn't imagine the ranch suddenly belonging to someone else. By G.o.d, it wasn't going to either! He'd always known that someday Mela would come home and he'd marry her. She just had to get her running around over with ...

and he had accepted that. h.e.l.l, she wouldn't make much of a ranch wife if she didn't. He'd seen many a good woman ruined in ranch country because she married too soon before she'd had her fill of seeing the world.

But the time had come now for him and Mela. Sandy lit a cigarette and it dangled from his wide mouth as he went into the barn to get rid of the grease. Old man Meacham had thought they'd marry too. Made a whole lot of hints in that direction ... had sort of advised the foreman to be patient and he had. But there was something about Mela going off like that with Cole without even telling him that stuck in his craw.

Kate moved the blue and white quilt she'd picked up from old Mrs.

Watson to the back seat of the station wagon and slid across the seat to the pa.s.senger door, feeling the heat of the leather against the back of her bare thighs. The blackberries along here were too tempting.

The bushes along the road here were heavy with them. They'd make really good deep dish pies for supper tonight. Sliding down the little ditch with her basket she made her way into the thicket and began picking.

The sun was so hot and the air so Still that Cole could hear the whine of the flies and the bees. It was as though that buzzing whining urgency was in his loins and the heat and strength of the sun had gone straight through him all the way to his painfully hardening c.o.c.k locked inside his tight jeans.

"Funny, isn't it," Mela whispered, her hand quivering on Cole's sun- bronzed neck, "how you think you'll find just what you want a long way from home. I kept looking and looking and I find it right here in South Dakota ..." The young blonde heiress was still trembling, her full, melon-like b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving under the pink cotton shirt, from the hotly pa.s.sionate kiss they had exchanged.

"This is crazy ... you know that ... let's get the h.e.l.l out of here,"

Cole growled, not really sounding sincere.

"For a man who lives close to the earth you've got a strange uptight conscience," she whispered, her green eyes burning him. Cole tried to look away from that mocking expression daring and teasing him.

"Look ... we had our fun in Paris ... I didn't expect ..."

"You didn't expect to find me here. I know ..." Mela's pearl-lacquered fingernails slid down Cole's shirt front coming to rest right on the thick bulge of his p.e.n.i.s straining against the prison of his jeans.

"I thought a big hard-on like you've got had no conscience," she whispered, her hand closing around the throbbing hardness that beat telltale beneath the cloth.

A strangled groan tore out of Cole's mouth as he felt her soft hand close on him. He could see the upthrust curve of her full young b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving against the shirt where a b.u.t.ton had come loose. She leaned against him on the hot leather seat, her breath coming quick and unevenly, her eyes like a jade green fire beckoning him into the depths of a fiery, unknown h.e.l.l.

"Why lie, Cole? You want to f.u.c.k me here just as much as you did in Paris."

The h.e.l.l of it was, he did! Sitting so close to her he could almost smell the excited female heat of her eager young p.u.s.s.y. Still, though, he hesitated. The bees buzzed and droned monotonously by the blackberry thicket and the whole world was still and waiting.

"G.o.ddd ..." He groaned suddenly and his muscular arms snaked around her pliant body and his lips came down hard on her half-opened pink-lipped, moist mouth goading him and laughing at him. He had to crush that smirk off her face ... wipe it out ... obliterate it!

Mela could feel his hand bury itself in her soft hair as his hungry mouth sought hers. She took his tongue gratefully. To h.e.l.l with the Latin lovers and French lovers and English gentlemen, she thought.

There was nothing like this roughneck South Dakota rancher who used her like a bull did a cow. She would have come home even if Pa hadn't died, for Cole Sutherland was here and none of those sweet smelling pansies in Europe could ever match the likes of him. She knew. She'd tried them all.

f.u.c.king his tongue into her soft wet mouth, his hot lips bruising her unmercifully, Cole's hand slid up her rib cage to lift the heavily trembling softness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The shirt was all she wore on top, for he could feel the soft resilient warmth, the yielding, melting flesh quiver under his palm. Jesus Christ! What did you do with a woman like this? You f.u.c.ked her! That's what you did. You f.u.c.ked her 'til she screamed for mercy!

Crushed against him, Mela kept her hand on his slowly rising hardness, growing and swelling obscenely in his pants. She trembled and gasped, feeling the heat of the man blazing far hotter than the sun that beat down on them in the field so harshly. The muscles in his arms were bunched into hard chunks of rock, and she whimpered deep in her throat.

The fevered, vertical little mouth up between her legs was growing into a hotly pulsating opening that had to be filled with the hardness that was springing from his loins.

Their tongues dueled for long minutes, their eyes closed against the brilliant sunshine, hands busily exploring and caressing and smoothing.

Cole's hand slid inside the cotton shirt to cup the magnificent swell of the heiress's eagerly palpitating breast. He trembled like a stallion in spite of himself at the feel of the hot naked flesh against his palm, the hardened nipple leaping out to nuzzle into his gripping hand. G.o.d d.a.m.n! She was like a b.i.t.c.h in heat! He squeezed the soft firm whiteness of her breast, full and voluptuous and heaving with the rampant pa.s.sion that rippled through it like hot summer lightning.

With a m.u.f.fled moan, Mela tore her lips from Cole's and pulled his warm voracious mouth down to her excitedly quivering nipple. "Oh G.o.d ...

suck it ... suck my t.i.t ...!" She jerked her shirttail out and fumbled with the remaining b.u.t.tons of her shirt as his head began to burrow into her chest and his hungrily seeking mouth found the ripe succulency of the hardened erect nipple. As his wetly ovaled lips enclosed the luscious half-sphere and his rapacious tongue flicked hotly on her flesh, Mela screamed softly, "Oh ... baby ... that's it ... suck it ...