Liz knew she was dreaming about the day the Catastrophe hit. Knew she didn’t want to relive it, but as always, she was powerless to stop it. Helpless to stop the sadness that enveloped her at losing all of her patients. She struggled to push away the dark emotions. Tried to wake herself up, but she couldn’t. Everything played out like a puzzle. Pieces here and there, jumbled, confused. And as always, she knew they would sort themselves out, and that horrible day everyone called the Catastrophe would play out.
After the Catastrophe, she’d mourned all her patients, going so far as to bordering on clinical depression. She dare not think about the old days and her dependency on electricity, restaurants, and frozen dinners. Or her dependency on a car.
Gosh, of everything she missed, she missed her car the most. But her car hadn’t worked, just like all the rest of the cars Durango and she had tried to start. Durango had used his mechanic skills for months trying to get a vehicle going. Nothing worked.
Even vehicles that hadn’t been running the day the solar flares hit didn’t start. Durango had never been able to figure out why. No one had.
He’d tried to fix other modes of transportation that hadn’t started either. He’d tried everything. Tractors, all-terrain vehicles, motor boats. Nothing worked. Not even a spark.
She didn’t know the ins and outs of how the Catastrophe had played out, but the prevalent theory she’d heard was it had something to do with solar flares attacking people with certain types of genes. Those people had, according to witnesses, simply disintegrated after a flash of light had been seen in the sky. They’d turned into fireballs, self-combusting and ending up piles of ash wherever they’d been at the time the flares had erupted.
The flares had fried electrical grids, radio towers, satellites, some of which had fallen from the skies. Even airplanes had fallen out of the skies. Trains had crashed. Boats devoid of people had floated aimlessly in lakes and oceans.
She still remembered the day when their lives had changed. Durango and she had been having a magnificent bout of mid-afternoon sex. Their shades had been drawn, the room was pleasantly dark, and their central air conditioner had been pleasantly humming away, pumping out cool air that bathed their perspiration-soaked bodies. She’d been orgasming when she’d felt unusually hot for a second. Had vaguely noticed the central air stopping as she cried out her release.
After her orgasm, Durango had cradled her in his arms, and they’d lain quietly in bed, their breaths quick in the after-sex glow. It wasn’t until maybe an hour or so later that Durango mentioned the central air wasn’t working. She had forgotten about it after drifting off to sleep. She’d protested when he’d climbed out of bed, but he’d noted that it would start getting warm in here if he didn’t get it started again.
He’d played around with the buttons for a couple of seconds before frowning. “Huh, not working. The digital here is blank. Ever had a problem with your central air before?” Durango asked as he sat back down on the bed and gazed at her. Even in the dimness of the room she could see the love shining in his eyes for her, and it melted her insides knowing this guy with the nice bulging muscles was all hers. She had the engagement ring to prove it.
He gazed at the clock on his side of the bed. “The digital clock isn’t working either. Power must be out.”
“Probably because everyone and their mother has cranked up their air cons, too. Or maybe we were just so hot that we fried the electricity?” she joked and laughed and realized it was getting stuffy in the room.
“Maybe we should let some air in?” She looked to the window.
He nodded in agreement. “Just a couple of minutes though. All that humidity is just gonna come in and ruin the remaining coolness.”
She watched Durango get up and stroll across the room toward the window. His big cock was already at half-mast, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he wanted more sex. The man was killing her gently with all this sex.
Every weekend, it seemed, they spent in bed fucking each other’s brains out. And every night too after they came from work and then sometimes in the mornings before they showered and took off for work, they had sex. In the shower. On the kitchen table. Even on the dryer.
He was a highly sexual man, and until meeting him, she hadn’t realized how sexual she was either.
“I have to take a leak first,” he said and did an about-face and headed into the adjoining bathroom. A couple of minutes later she heard the toilet flush and noticed it sounded funny as if there wasn’t enough water pressure or something. Great.
“Toilet’s fucked, and so is the water. Meaning we don’t have any. Must be one hell of a power failure.”
Oh crap. She snuggled beneath the sheets and watched as he strolled to the window and lifted the shade. Sunshine washed into the room, the brightness hurting her eyes.
“What the fuck?” Durango said as he looked out the window. Something in his voice, maybe fear, or surprise, or both, sent creepy shivers of dread up her spine.
“Come here, Doc. Take a look at this.”
She joined him, grabbing a sheet from the bed and covering herself. Gazing out the upstairs bedroom window, Liz could still feel how hard and fast the disbelief had shifted through her like an evil snake.
Everything looked the same, but it looked different, too. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but the sky seemed to have changed to a deeper blue, and the air was breezy and cold. But just this morning she’d listened to the weather forecast, and they’d been predicting hot, humid, and hazy weather for at least another week with no relief in sight beyond that.
She hugged the sheet tighter around her and shivered at the cold onslaught. “Obviously the weather guys fucked up again,” she complained.
“Forget the weather, what the fuck is going on down on the street?”
Liz’s gaze dropped to the street which, usually teeming with people strolling toward the park down the road, was totally empty. Not only that, she noticed a couple of cars parked precariously on people’s lawns. One car was even parked in front of their neighbor’s house on the lawn directly across the street from them. The car had climbed the curb and come to rest in Carol’s flower bed and snapped their treasured Austrian pine tree right in half.
“Carol’s gonna be pissed,” Liz commented.
“I’m gonna call Bill and see what happened.”
Durango lifted the receiver and slammed it down. He grinned at her, obviously trying to play it cool, and her heart flip flopped all over the place. Such a sexy smile. She wanted to tell him to screw the phones and get back to fucking her, but he was already reaching for his jeans on the floor.
“No dial tone. Good thing we have cell phones.”
She glanced back outside and noticed a ribbon of black smoke around a mile to the north. The airport was up that way. In the distance she noticed a couple more spirals of dark smoke. Weird.
“Something’s on fire out there. And it’s way too quiet, too. Where are all the people?”
“My cell phone is totally dead. So is yours,” Durango said as he joined her at the window and peered out.
“Yeah, looks like something is on fire in a few places. I want you to stay here while I go over to Bob and Carol’s. Better check on what’s going on with that car running up their tree, too. Maybe they know what’s happened.”
“Something’s not right,” she whispered as icy shivers began crawling up her spine again.
A frown dropped onto his face again, and she silently willed him to smile. He didn’t.
“It’s okay. Just stay here, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Truth was, she’d kind of gotten the creeps and preferred to stay here where it felt…normal.
He grabbed his shirt, and a couple of minutes later, she watched from the window as he strolled across the street to the car that sat on Bob and Carol’s lawn. He peered in the vehicle’s windows. Something must have alarmed him because he’d quickly looked up at her and waved his hand signaling to her to stay put. She’d watched as he knocked on Bob and Carol’s front door and waited. He knocked a couple of more times, and then surprisingly he’d opened the door and disappeared inside the building.
Her gaze drifted to the increasing number of plumes of black smoke. She darted a look up and down the street. No traffic. No people. What the fuck was going on?
She reached for the clock radio on the bedside table and flicked it on. Silence. Shit! She’d forgotten the electricity had gone out.
Okay, so this was not good. Not good at all. She snapped through her memory trying to figure out where she’d put her watch. She found it on the dresser. It had died, too. What the fuck?
A few moments later, Durango had returned and their nightmare had begun…
Liz awoke with a jolt, her heart hammering and cold perspiration clinging to her clammy skin. She bit her bottom lip and forced herself to steady her breathing.
Just a nightmare. She wasn’t back in Calgary. She wasn’t reliving the Catastrophe. She was here, safe and sound, in this little century-old stone house. Durango was here and Landon and Tyrell. Everything was fine.
She burrowed deeper against her pillows and clutched the comforters tighter over her chilled body. Ignoring the gentle throbbing in her butt and pussy, she smiled. Yeah, she’d liked what had happened last night. Liked it a lot.
“When the time comes for us to leave, I’m staying,” Landon said. He was perfectly prepared to fight Tyrell and Durango on this matter, and he was surprised when Tyrell nodded his head and Durango didn’t so much as say a word of protest as he broke breakfast eggs and set them onto the frying pan of the woodstove Liz had in the kitchen.
“I’m not leaving her either,” Tyrell said from his perch where he stood on a kitchen stool, frantically searching the upper cabinet for some pepper. Tyrell loved his eggs sunny-side up and doused in pepper. Unfortunately these days pepper was virtually impossible to buy.
Eggs, on the other hand, were plentiful, since everyone and their mother seemed to pay Liz for her doctoring services with eggs instead of money.
“No one’s going anywhere. It’s not safe for Liz to be here alone any longer,” Durango said as he sprinkled salt onto the eggs.
Durango’s words diffused the pent-up anger Landon had been harboring ever since he’d awoken this morning. The three of them had roused around the same time and left Liz still fast asleep, despite the fact all of them wanted to take her again.
The woman was just perfect, Landon thought as he remembered how she’d eagerly kissed him and allowed Durango to guide her over his erection, effectively impaling her on him.
Man, she’d been so tight. Her kisses so hot and passionate, and her sweet body convulsing all over the place every time she’d orgasmed.
He knew he loved her from the moment Durango had brought him here. Knew he would die protecting her if and when the time came.
“What about the gang? Aren’t they going to be pissed?” Tyrell asked as he stumbled off the stool and headed for the pantry.
“I’ve already sent word through Logan,” Durango replied. “Told him yesterday when I was helping them. He volunteered to take a ride up and tell the guys. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“Geez, first there were nine of us in the gang, and now only three left.” Landon laughed, but then blades of seriousness flowed through him as he focused his attention on Durango. “Are you going to be able to handle the boredom of surviving day by day, Durango? It ate you up the last time, to the point where you were snapping Liz’s and my heads off.”
There was a glint of excitement Landon had never seen in Durango’s eyes before as the man smiled. “That’s before I realized we can survive without the use of stores and cities, gentlemen. Despite this cold weather we are going to go into the farm business. We are going to become self-sufficient. If our neighbors Teyla and Logan and the guys can do it via a greenhouse, then we can, too. With animals.” Durango smiled at the two of them, and Landon could literally feel the man’s excitement zipping through him as well.
Durango continued. “And when we become self-sufficient, we’re going to become self-employed. How’s that sound? No more bosses. No more robberies. No more posses. Just us running everything ourselves and keeping prices reasonable so we can stay in business, but so we can also help out the people who most need it. Since every son of a bitch is out there charging so much for everything, we’ll undercut them and put them right out of business, compliments of their greediness.”
Landon nodded. “We can start by getting our hands on some wild chickens and rabbits. Knock together some buildings and house them. Chickens need warmth to keep producing eggs. So we’ll create that environment. It’ll take time to get the supplies, but with all the abandoned homes and farms in the valleys we should be able to piece together what we’ll need.”
Tyrell chuckled as he pulled out a small tin of pepper. “Yes! Liz is my kind of woman. She must love pepper on her eggs, too. She’s got a good stock of food in here, too.”
“She gets it from the clients she treats,” Durango replied as he grabbed a spatula from a nearby pitcher containing such utensils.
Landon grinned. “Perfect. Liz loves to cook when she’s nervous. With the three of us around, she’ll be nervous wondering when one of us wants to take her, so she’ll be doing a lot of cooking.”
“A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Tyrell said as he plopped down in his seat at the kitchen table, pepper tin ready in hand while Durango slid a couple of eggs onto his plate.
Yep, Tyrell was definitely on the mend if he could have sex with Liz so much last night without busting a stitch in his side wound and now getting happy over some freaking pepper.
“In the meantime, we can see if we can rent some greenhouse space from Teyla to grow some of the greens the animals will need.” Durango kept talking, but Landon began tuning him out as he spied movement in the hallway.
He looked up and surprise washed through him at seeing Liz standing there. In a split second, Landon forgot how to breathe. She looked spectacular. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were fever bright with arousal, and her pretty honey-blonde hair shone brightly in the early morning sunshine streaming in through the kitchen windows.
She also looked quite shy with her hands twisted nervously together in front of her as she watched them in the kitchen. When she saw him watching her, she smiled and the cutest dimples popped out in her cheeks. He swore his heart burst at the seams with happiness.
“I…I was hungry…I mean…um for food,” she said softly.
Upon hearing her sweet voice, Tyrell and Durango whirled around. Landon swore Tyrell’s cheeks blushed the slightest shade of pink, and Durango almost dropped the frying pan. The two men didn’t move an inch and simply stared at her as if transfixed by her beauty.
Landon shook his head. These guys were suddenly acting like a couple of starstruck teenagers.
“Come on, guys, give the lady a seat. She needs food. Serve her.” He was at her side within two quick strides, and grabbing her hand, he led her to a seat beside Tyrell, who actually stood while Landon seated her.
Fuck. Looked like chivalry wasn’t dead these days. Who would have guessed Tyrell would be so smitten with her?
“Here you go, baby. Some eggs to get some energy into you. You’re going to need it.” Her eyes widened at Durango’s comment, and Landon noticed a look of alarm splashing over her face.
“Give the girl a break. She needs to rest after last night,” Landon soothed. The way the two of them were drooling as they stared at her, she probably thought the three of them were sex maniacs demanding sex before she even had breakfast. But Durango was right. She needed the energy because he was dying to take her again. But he’d be a gentleman and wait until after breakfast.
Durango watched the two men gazing longingly at Liz while all four of them ate. Conversation was quiet and restricted to requests to pass the salt and pepper, to the weather outside which looked sunnier and more cheerful than ever. Of course that could be just him due to the fact he noticed a soft, satisfied smile curving the sides of Liz’s sensually shaped mouth as she shot quick glances at Durango.
He knew she wanted to speak privately to him. Could understand it in the way her eyes twinkled so brightly as if she were bursting with barely restrained excitement. Or maybe he was reading her wrong? Maybe the excitement had everything to do with her anticipating them taking her after breakfast?
That idea, of course, made his cock grow just that much harder, and it was harder than a son of a bitch already after awakening this morning and feeling her warm body pressed snugly against him. Funny thing was he hadn’t heard those sensual whimpers that she’d kept having every night until he’d finally left to join the Durango Gang. Those erotic sounds had tormented him into many sleepless nights, and last night he hadn’t heard a thing.
Unless, of course, she’d stopped with her fantasy dreams after he’d left? Durango shook his head and shoved the last forkful of egg into his mouth. No, he could read a woman, and instincts told him she was finally satisfied with three men fucking her. Hell, he was satisfied, too.
“Were you serious?” Liz said shyly as she reached for the mug of coffee Tyrell had brewed up for all of them in the antique percolator on the woodstove. Liz was staring straight at him, so it was obvious the question was aimed at him. “About?”
“You staying. You all staying.”
He’d been pretty sure she’d heard their conversation, but maybe she just needed to hear it from him.
“Yes. We won’t be leaving you again. Except, of course, on short trips to forage abandoned houses and barns for the supplies we’ll need to get us self-sufficient. In the meantime, Doc, we’re going to need to sponge food off you until we can set things up. Is that okay with you?”
She was smiling, and his heart squeezed with excitement. Yeah, she sure did look pretty when she smiled.
“I don’t have much, but please consider what I have as yours.” Her gaze widened to Landon and Tyrell. “All of you.”
The men’s breaths were starting to speed up, and Durango knew he needed to get the guys out of the kitchen before they started in on another menage. She needed to get washed up, and he needed to make sure she was really okay with all this, now that she had an idea of what was involved.
“Boys. Around back of the house, you’ll find a bathtub in a lean-to. There’s a pump and lots of pails plus a drum-style wood-burning stove. Doc would appreciate it if you set her up with a nice hot bath.”
Landon and Tyrell nodded eagerly, and they both tried to outrun each other as they headed into the living room. A moment later they both popped back with jackets in hand and headed down the hallway. A few seconds later they heard the back door slam shut.
Silence followed.
Liz couldn’t express the rush of excitement racing rampant through her at Durango confirming he was staying. Obviously he’d found what he’d been searching for over the last few months, or maybe it had just been an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” kind of thing. Who knew. Who cared. He was staying. Landon was staying, and she sensed this new fellow, Tyrell, would be additional icing on an already very sweet and yummy cake.
She shivered as he moved his chair right beside hers. His body heat splashed all around her, making her very conscious of him. Gosh, she’d always been so aware of him, and now with him back after all this time, the awareness had grown exponentially.
“You enjoyed last night?” he asked softly.
She could read the hope in his eyes. The need for her to finally admit that, yeah, she enjoyed having sex with more than one man, just as much as he enjoyed watching her with them.
God, of all the guys, she’d have to fall in love with a mechanic whose body was laced with awesome muscles, and who enjoyed sharing his woman. She wondered what would have happened if she’d never met him. Would her sexually submissive side have come to light? Or would it have stayed hidden beneath the modern morals she’d been brought up with? Thankfully she would never know, because she wanted to be dominated.
She wanted to be taken whenever someone else wanted to take her. She loved the anticipation of it. The erotic way it made her feel, just knowing a man wanted her. It made her feel…desirable.
Low self-esteem issues? No, she didn’t think so. She felt good about herself, about what she’d achieved in life. Becoming a doctor had taken all of her self-discipline to achieve her dream. But in doing so, she’d ignored her private life. Ignored her needs. Now she wanted to explore those cravings burning inside her.
She also knew that just because both she and Durango had kinky needs didn’t mean their relationship was meant to be. It meant they were a good fit. At least that’s what she thought. She could make his fantasies of sharing come true, and he could make her fantasies of menages and being dominated by more than one man come true.
Now with the removal of the social elements due to the Catastrophe, she was realizing there was a new type of freedom available to her. Her family couldn’t judge her. Pretty much all of her friends were dead, and her one true friend, Teyla, was living out Liz’s dream only a couple of miles away. She’d so envied Teyla that she’d been barely able to stand it.
“I really missed you, Doc,” Durango whispered as he took her hands into his. “I woke up aching for you every night. Kept dreaming about how sweet you would taste when I came back home. How I longed to bring you the pleasure I knew you craved. We both craved.”
And the pleasure she denied she needed.
“Now that you’ve had a taste, do you want what the three of us are offering?”
Hope glittered with such magnificence in his gaze that Liz swore if she hadn’t been sitting her on the chair, her knees would have buckled from the intensity. That Durango would even ask her instead of seducing sex from her again meant he’d turned a serious curve in the road of seduction. She sensed if she said no, he would accept her decision. And maybe leave like he’d done before?
She hoped the threat of him leaving wasn’t what was influencing her decision to give in to what he wanted. No, it was what she wanted. She needed to remember that. It had to be what she wanted because in the end she would be living with the consequences, despite having no family or friends to judge her. She had to be comfortable with her decisions.
“This isn’t something I can just agree to, Durango.”
Hope deflated in his eyes. She felt bad, truly she did, but what he’d given her a taste of was an entire change of life for her. Being here for three men who she would sexually submit to whenever they wanted. God, just thinking about it was turning her on big-time.
She licked her lips, tried to quell the visions of what had happened last night. Being tied down, three men fucking her. It had been awesome, and she realized she was truly beginning to accept this idea.
“I can’t be at every man’s beck and call in the bedroom and out. Things need to be done, like preparation of meals, house work, yard work, farming. I can’t help with all that if I’m lying in bed all the time getting my brains screwed out.” And loving it.
“It won’t be in the bed, always,” he teased and leaned in. She shivered as he brushed his mouth against her lips again in a feather-like kiss.
“Durango, I’m serious.”
He pulled away, a gorgeous grin tipping the sides of his luscious-looking mouth. A mouth she wouldn’t mind having between her legs at the moment. Her lower belly clenched at the thought of his early morning shadow brushing erotically against her inner thighs.
Oh goodness, they’d turned her into a sex maniac already. Liz blinked that thought aside.
“All three of us have two arms and hands, Doc. We know how to do housework. It’s not just a woman’s job. We are modern men. We’ll make up a schedule of chores for all three guys.”
“Domesticated already,” she teased.
“Doc, for you, anything. I love you. I need you. You are the lifeblood that runs through my veins, baby. I realized that when I left. I was a stubborn fool for not coming back sooner.”
“Yes, you are.”
His grin widened. “As opposed to I was. Not past tense?”
Happiness bubbled through her at his teasing. Lifting her arms, she wrapped them around his neck and curled her fingers against the back of his head.
His eyes twinkled. He had the most beautiful eyes. It was like looking into the dark blue sky at twilight.
“I have demands, too. I have needs,” she began as she remembered what Teyla had told her when she’d been here for a visit yesterday.
“Lots of needs,” he whispered and brushed his mouth against hers in an intoxicating featherlight kiss that had her breaths increasing in speed.
“The agreement goes both ways. When I want a man to submit to me, then he must. Or all three of you for that matter.”
There was an explosion of emotions in his eyes, and for a second Liz swore she forgot to breathe. She could read the emotions clearly. Excitement. Arousal. Want. They all swirled like a tornado threatening to suck her right up.
“And I want something from you right now,” she said softly.
She felt him tense against her. Saw him lick his lips in anticipation.
“Anything, baby, anything.”
“Go outside and help Tyrell and Landon fill the tub. I’m dying for a hot bath.”
His face flopped into disappointment. She wiggled her fingers against the back of his head and struggled to keep a straight face as she knew he’d been expecting her to say, “Let’s have sex.”
“Can you do that for me, honey? Help the guys draw a nice hot bath for me? Oh, and when you’re finished with that, there’s more wood that needs chopping so that tomorrow morning when I need my bath, the wood will be there for you to toss into the drum stove.”
His frown deepened, and she seriously wanted to start laughing. The man still had to learn to put his money where his mouth was, didn’t he? Oh well, training him and the other three would be fun.
“Oh, and after my bath, I want you guys to get right on a ‘honey do this’ list for all three of you. I want you to figure out who is going to do housework and what chores you guys prefer to have. You may as well take the ones you enjoy the most. Each of you. Then at least they’ll get done if you enjoy doing them.”
She ignored his raised eyebrows and the puzzlement on his face, stood, and headed for the hallway. She expected him to protest, to demand she get back into the kitchen and have sex with him. He didn’t, and oddly enough she was disappointed. But yeah, Teyla was right. Liz needed to make demands of her own from the three men, and now would be the time to start.
Slipping into the bedroom, she closed the door behind her, and a couple of minutes later she heard the front door creak open as Durango left the house. Moments after that, she heard the men talking behind the house in the general direction of where the outdoor tub was located. Then she heard the sound of someone chopping wood.
Liz smiled. Huh, that was easy.
Too easy, a voice warned as she began to gather the things she would need for her much-anticipated bath. Way too easy.