Love Under Two Loners [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  Love Under Two Loners

  Iris Gibbs comes to Lusty to visit her best friend and discovers why she’s never felt at home in her own skin. Then Tamara thrusts her toward two Kendalls who are Doms.

  Rich and Donny know Iris is the perfect, little subbie for them. It’s just a matter of getting her to say, “Yes Sir!”

  Iris thinks some of the things she’s read about are definitely not for her—and then she goes with Rich and Donny to the Lyon’s Den, a private club where practically anything goes. Instead of being repulsed by what she sees, she’s intrigued. The men know Iris has a few issues to work through before she’s ready to trust them completely. They take small steps to that end, encouraged when Iris not only begins to share her inner-most insecurities, but her trust.

  And then Rich stumbles onto a sex-slave ring, and time for their happy ending might just be running out.

  Genre: BDSM, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 63,925 words

  LOVE UNDER TWO LONERS

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  Cara Covington

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  LOVE UNDER TWO LONERS

  Copyright © 2016 by Cara Covington

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-68295-440-9

  First E-book Publication: August 2016

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2016 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Love Under Two Loners by Cara Covington from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Cara Covington’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Cara Covington’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated, as always, to my husband David. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and love.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m so grateful for the ongoing loyalty of my readers. Thank you all so much for continuing to ask for more stories from Lusty, Texas. Your love of all things Lusty warms my heart, and makes everything I do worthwhile.

  Thank you to my amazing street team, led by Lisa Buchanan-Phillips and Tammy Faris. You ladies (and lad) rock! I have the best street team in the entire world. I’m grateful to each and every one of you, for the time you so generously give me, and for being my friends!

  Thanks go to my terrific Beta readers, Angie Buchanan-Jones and Tammy Faris. Your guidance and keen attention to detail are a blessing to me. You help me make each book better, and me, a better writer.

  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the professional women and men of Siren-BookStrand. Thank you all for your hard work. And especially, to my publisher, Amanda Hilton, for saying yes.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  LOVE UNDER TWO LONERS

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  CARA COVINGTON

  Copyright © 2016

  Prologue

  Five years before

  Rich Kendall wondered, for just a moment, if the secret to Damien Dragon’s obvious success was the fact the man was still single.

  As he stood before the wide picture window, looking out over the several hundred acres of near pristine rural heaven that Damien called his backyard, he decided the idea had merit.

  He took another sip from his glass of scotch, the liquor strong on his tongue and smooth going down his throat. Movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention to his brother, Donny, who approached with his own glass in hand.

  When their mutual friend joined them, Rich raised his glass to him. “Hell of a view you have here, Damien.”

  “Hell of a house,” Donny added.

  Damien nodded. “I can’t take all the credit, gentlemen. My grandmother left me a tidy fortune.”

  “Take the credit,” Donny said. “You turned that tidy fortune into a much bigger one—and you’ve avoided marriage, so you still have all you’ve made.”

  It didn’t surprise Rich that Donny was on the same page, mentally speaking.

  Damien’s grin hadn’t changed since they were in high school. It still signaled the arrival of trouble, Damien Dragon style.

  “It will undoubtedly surprise both of you fine gentlemen to learn that I don’t feel still being single a cause for celebration. I’m in my thirties now, and past the age I thought I would be married. Of course, when I do finally meet the wo
man who’ll win my heart, I can guarantee you she will be a woman who understands her own nature—and mine.”

  “You’re our best friend,” Rich said. “You attended our weddings, and remained steadfast through the beginning, to the beginning of the end, up to now—which is the end of the end since I am now as divorced as my brother. And during all that time, you never said a word against our wives or in criticism of our marriages.”

  “That surely must earn you a medal of some sort,” Donny said, “since we’re both pretty certain that staying silent wasn’t easy for you. We both have the feeling you saw our individual train wrecks a mile off.”

  “Donny and I have talked it over.” It wasn’t easy to ask for help, but Rich knew they had two choices. They could remain forever bachelors and grow old with only each other for company. Or they could ask someone they trusted to tell them where they’d gone wrong.

  That’s almost a no-brainer. Rich was pretty sure he’d seen certain knowledge in Damien’s eyes time and again when he’d come to visit.

  “And?” Damien looked from one to the other of them.

  Donny nodded to Rich. He and Damien were the same age, and had been friends the longest. His brother wanted him to take the lead, just like he had most of their lives.

  “And we want you to finally say what you never have said. We need you to tell us where we fucked up.”

  “If you’re sure? I won’t pull any punches.”

  “Yeah,” Donny said. “We’re sure.”

  “All right then, here it is. In my opinion, your marital difficulties can be traced back to the same root cause for both of you. Neither of you truly understood your own natures—and because of that, you didn’t know what to look for in a mate.”

  “And what are our true natures?” Rich asked the question, but he already sensed he knew what Damien’s answer would be. They were currently in the private living space of their friend and host, who was well respected on Wall Street as a venture capitalist and well respected in other circles for the fetish club he’d founded—The Dragon’s Lair—which took up the ground floor of the building they were in, situated on his vast rural estate.

  “Both of you are Dominants. You need to learn what that means, to you, and embrace it. And you need to understand the kind of woman you’d be happiest with—maybe a sub, maybe a switch—and learn how to give that woman what she needs. Both of you have very strong caretaking instincts. You need women who need and will appreciate that part of you.”

  “We’re Dominants and caretakers?” Donny looked confused. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “That’s because you don’t fully understand what it means to be a Dominant. There’s no ‘one true way’ to live the lifestyle, though there are definitely tenets that most of us adhere to. I believe that if you meet and get to know some of the Doms in my club—and some of the subs—you’ll come to identify those aspects of your own personalities that are most Dom-like. And you’ll learn how to be at peace with who you are and no apologies needed.”

  Rich knew that Donny was as intrigued as he. They’d marveled at Damien’s control—and his self-assurance. Both were qualities Rich dearly would like to call his own. He took another sip from his scotch then nodded.

  “I’m in.”

  “Me, too,” Donny echoed.

  “Good. You won’t regret it. Let’s grill up those steaks. The club opens at nine. And enjoy your drinks in hand. We’ll be booze free for the rest of this evening.”

  Donny raised one eyebrow. “You don’t serve booze downstairs?”

  “No, I don’t. Some clubs do, but we don’t here.”

  “All things considered, that sounds like a reasonable precaution,” Rich said.

  Damien looked from Rich to Donny then back. He smiled, and this time, Rich didn’t sense trouble. “I’m glad you’ve made this decision. I truly believe you won’t regret it.”

  Dominant, financial wizard, and good friend. Rich soon learned that Damien could claim one more title—seer.

  Deciding to join the Dragon’s Lair and investigate their true selves was the single best decision he and Donny ever made.

  Until five years later, when they decided to move to Lusty, Texas.

  Chapter 1

  “This place has been vacant for how long, cousin?” Donny stood in the middle of the house, a good old-fashioned farmhouse, complete with a front porch and a back “mud room.” It was more house than he and his brother needed, but the land was key. There was plenty of space here to open a veterinary clinic, something the town of Lusty didn’t have.

  Jake Kendall, lawyer and one of his actual cousins that called Lusty home, just grinned. “Like I said, the Bachelor Uncles passed within a week of each other, back in 1996. So that would make it twenty years.”

  “Unbelievable. You people certainly know how to pay attention to detail.”

  “All the property hereabouts belongs to the town trust. We take care of what’s ours. Now, if you want to wait for Rich to get back from that certification workshop over in Waco…”

  Donny shook his head no. “He told me if the place was decent to take it. It’s a hell of a lot more than decent, so I’m saying ‘hell yes.’ I also need to see the outbuilding.” He’d been told the Bachelor Uncles—specifically, Peter and William Benedict, who’d been brothers to Grandma Kate’s husbands Gerald and Patrick—had farmed here. So there was an outbuilding, bigger than a shed but smaller than a barn. If it was in as decent a shape as the house, he’d see about getting a loan to renovate. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of months for his new clinic to be up and running.

  “All right, then. Do y’all have furniture in storage back up north you need to send for?”

  Donny couldn’t help but snort. “After the divorces, neither of us had much of anything left—not even the proverbial pot to piss in. Neither of us wanted to hang on to the stuff we’d shared with our wives, anyway.” Donny shrugged. He supposed he and Rich had been lucky because neither his wife, Ellen, nor Rich’s wife, Leslie, were the vindictive sort. Or, in the case of his former sister-in-law, Leslie, not overly vindictive. Donny pushed the thought away. “So when we got our apartment, we just hit some garage sales and the Goodwill to furnish our place. When we decided to move here, we call the Goodwill to come and take whatever they wanted. So, no, we have nothing in storage. We’re starting over from scratch again, and need to go out and buy everything.”

  “No, you don’t. We have a warehouse.”

  “Come again?”

  Jake chuckled. “The Town Trust has a warehouse that is open to the family. It’s got every damn thing you can think of and then some. The appliances here are all new, so they don’t need to be changed out, unless you’d prefer a different style.”

  “A fridge is a fridge is a fridge.”

  “I agree. My wife, on the other hand, has a different opinion, as does every wife in Lusty.”

  Jake hadn’t said that as a long-suffering husband offering commiseration. No, his tone had sounded downright happy.

  Then he seemed to bring himself back to the moment. “Most everything there is fairly new, so when Rich gets back, I’ll show you where it is. You point out what you want, and we’ll deliver it. Or, if you like, I happen to know that Mother would be over the moon if you asked her to furnish and decorate the place for you.”

  “Aunt Samantha has great taste.” Donny didn’t even have to think about it or consult his brother. “I’ll ask her as soon as we get back to the New House.” Which was where he and Rich had been staying for the last few days, ever since they’d accepted their aunt and uncles’ invitation and relocated.

  Richard was in Waco, taking care of getting himself certified to teach in Texas. Because he was actually Dr. Kendall—he held a Ph.D. in English Literature—the process of achieving reciprocity was fairly simple. Just a few workshops to complete, along with the police check, and he’d be good to go.

  There was a similar process awaiting Donny with the Texas Boar
d of Veterinary Medical Examiners. Thanks to their Uncle Preston, who’d researched all the steps and made the initial contacts on their behalf, getting certified here in Texas was easier than it might otherwise have been.

  “Good. Now, let’s have a look at that shed out back.”

  Donny marveled that not even the yard had been left to become overgrown. The lawn around the house was neat, and there even appeared to be a couple of small gardens thriving.

  They stepped into the building, and Donny looked at what was with a view to what could be.

  “The structure itself is sound. Jordan said he’d be happy to drop by and give you an estimate,” Jake said. “He does good work.”

  “I know he does. I need to make an appointment with a bank in Waco to arrange a business loan. Then I’ll have an idea what I have to work with.”

  “Actually, that won’t be necessary.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Town Trust makes it a practice to invest in local businesses. Let’s have Jordan give you an estimate, and then you figure out what equipment you need to purchase. Once you have the total figure, we’ll sit down and talk terms. I promise you, our rates are a hell of a lot better than anything you’ll get in Waco.”

  His father had told him that family really meant something in Lusty, but Donny had no idea it meant unconditional support. Jake must have misunderstood his silence. He met his gaze, and his expression was serious. “It’s not charity, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s family.”