Chapter 2

"For Christ's sake, haul your asses out of bed!" Cole roared from the doorway of the basement 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 asses. 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 damned 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 damn 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 bumper 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 shaggy coats. The beautiful bull he'd bought wouldn't be there but his sons and daughters would. Cole had found a way around the goddamned 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 God, that's just what Cole would do. He'd had the Limousin bull shipped to Calgary, up in Canada, to be hoarded 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. Hell, 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. Hell, 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 embarrassed 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. "Hell, they can't sell it!"

He roared off in a cloud of dust. Why the hell 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 damn 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 God, 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, breasts 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 hell 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. God damn it! She was laughing at him, enjoying his looking like an ass! 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 breasts, 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 damned 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. Hell, 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, goddamn 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 God, 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. Hell, 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 passenger 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 cock 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 breasts heaving under the pink cotton shirt, from the hotly passionate kiss they had exchanged.

"This is crazy... you know that... let's get the hell 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 penis 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 breasts heaving against the shirt where a button 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 hell.

"Why lie, Cole? You want to fuck me here just as much as you did in Paris."

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

"Goddd..." 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 hell 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.

Fucking 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 breasts. 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 fucked her! That's what you did. You fucked 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. God damn! She was like a bitch in heat! He squeezed the soft firm whiteness of her breast, full and voluptuous and heaving with the rampant passion that rippled through it like hot summer lightning.

With a muffled moan, Mela tore her lips from Cole's and pulled his warm voracious mouth down to her excitedly quivering nipple. "Oh God... suck it... suck my tit... !" She jerked her shirttail out and fumbled with the remaining buttons 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... suck it!"

The heady sweet smell of crushed gardenia petals in the hot sun hit his nose as Cole buried his whole face in the soft pillow of her full heaving breast. His madly licking tongue and warm moist lips clamped down hard on the sensitive nipple, and he heard the lewd urgings spring from her lust-constricted throat. She acted as if she were trying to ram her tit down his mouth, he thought. Hell, he hadn't fucked a broad in a car since he was a green kid. Well, this one wouldn't wait and he couldn't! He could feel his balls, sperm-bloated and aching, his impatiently pounding cock almost bent double inside his pants. How could it have any conscience? It was screaming for release. It was like this was a last chance at life, at Paris, at fucking!

Pulling his hungry mouth into her desperately trembling flesh, Mela's head fell back against the hot leather seat, her throat, breasts, and upper torso naked to him. She could feel the expectant quivering extend down her rippling belly and deep inside her excitedly reverberating loins as Kate's husband's mouth drew on her goose-bumpled nipple and sucked it hard and viciously into his ravenously heated mouth. Two nights of fucking in Paris with him hadn't been enough. She was never going to get enough... not of this! Her hands flew to his belt and she struggled with the waistband as he leaned against her eagerly agitated breast, licking, sucking, and nuzzling. She felt his hot breath on her like a flame!

"Oh God," Mela cried; "Help me, Cole. Where is your big, beautiful cock?" The rancher heard the young, excitedly writhing girl moan in despair as her hands clawed almost maniacally at his crotch. He straightened up, ripped his belt loose, and then jerked the zipper down, frantically working his jeans down his legs. Cole felt her hands feverishly unbuttoning his shirt, and he heard little mewls and moans bubbling desperately out her mouth.

When finally his shirt was off and his Levi's down around his knees he turned to help the wildly excited young heiress, only to find she was way ahead of him. She was jerking her jeans and black nylon panties down but they had caught on her boots.

"Give me your foot," he panted. She turned to him in the seat with one boot toward him, and he could see the soft hair- fringed vaginal slit up between her firmly rounded young thighs open like a flower, showing the tiny dewdrops of moisture that welled from deep inside the depths of her love-starved pussy. Christ! She was all pink and swollen, with her glistening cuntal lips wide open in invitation.

Mela could see the giant throbbing penis jutting up from his loins like a bull's. The dark curling pubic hair was a mat above its long sinewy length, the fleece above the sword that looked as though it could service a cow or a mare with no difficulty. His prick was ridged and purpling, thick as her wrist and she couldn't even estimate its length. Inches meant nothing anyway. That prissy little Frenchman had been hung as well, but was so selfish and inept that he may as well have had a baby's prick. Her breath caught at the magnificence that awaited her, its cyclops eye drooling in anticipation.

"Ohhhh... lover..." she cried and pressed her suddenly hungering lips downward in subservience toward the hardened rod of flesh that pounded and beat as if it had a life of its own. Her widely ovaled, lipstick-rimmed mouth closed hotly over the warm spongy head of it and she plunged her head downward, trying to take all of his cock into her mouth at once.

"CHRISSSTTTT!" Cole almost came right out of the car. His hips lunged up, driving his thick, aching hardness almost through the back of her streaked blonde head. His hands came out to keep the greedily working mouth on his thick fleshy rod jerking deep now into the wetly waiting entrance to her throat. Jesus! She wanted cock as much as he wanted pussy! If only his wife had ever shown such enthusiasm. Hell, last night he'd had to make Kate suck him off, had even been forced to threaten her before she would do it. But not this hot little bitch. Christ, she'd eat him alive!

Mela swirled her tongue expertly around the hungrily throbbing tip and tasted with delight the pungent maledom seeping from the thin vertical slit of his cockhead. Her warm slippery saliva flowed freely as her head bobbed furiously up and down, and she sucked as though she were milking another woman's tit with her mouth... a mammoth, milk-filled tit that was oozing forth its slowly rising liquid of love. Her lips smacked hard together as her mouth in its eager passion slipped accidentally off the head and a lewd silver sheen of saliva shone glisteningly on her chin.

The young girl bent again, kneeling now on the white leather, and her hands came around the heavily pulsating cock as her lips touched it in a long loving kiss. The helplessly aroused girl feverishly worked at her partly loosened boots with her heels, rubbing them together and trying to scrape the offending leather from her.

"Ohhh... goddamn... goddamn!" The words grated out Cole's tightly clenched teeth as he felt her ovaled lips teasingly come down on him again. He could see the rounded half-moons of her naked buttocks quivering where she knelt over him; they had a narrow band of white, inviting flesh at the bottoms of them where her skimpy bikini bathing suit bottom was normally worn. Streaks of fire were spiraling up his rigidly swollen cock and his sperm- loaded balls felt as though they weighed two tons and were filling up more every second!

Thick hot moisture was drooling down Mela's smooth upper thighs on the inside, slipping from deep inside her hotly steaming loins like a seeping spring. The sun beat down on her back through the opened pink shirt, and her buttocks felt as though a blast furnace had been opened on them in the convertible for they were totally naked to the open sky. Her heavy breasts, dangling like ripe fruit, felt enormously full and filled with the growing seed about to burst open. The soft silken blonde hair swung down like a flaxen tent over the rancher's lust-tightened testicles as she sucked on the warm hard flesh of his cock. She could feel his darkly curling pubic hair tickling her nose.

Reaching down Cole caught her face and pulled her head up to him; "Ohh... Baby... !" He plunged his tongue deep into her warm moist mouth that still tasted pungency of himself. Now his own urgent screaming need created even more liquid inside his aching loins. The hoarsely breathing young girl's naked breasts felt incredibly warm on his chest as he pulled her excitedly quivering body to him, fiercely mashing the soft, fleshy tits against him, while he fucked her whimperingly imploring mouth with the hardness of his tongue.

Mela felt him effortlessly lift her and place her tremblingly bare buttocks in a sitting position on the top of the white leather seat. He kneeled between her wide-spread knees with his throbbingly erect cock pressed against the back of the seat, and ran his hands wonderingly over the smoothly rounded mounds of her ass. His tongue slid like hot lava down her throat while his hands jerked the flimsy pink shirt off her arms and threw it into the back seat of the convertible. The huge rough hands were all over her excitedly writhing body as he hunched down to rip the jeans the rest of the way off her long tapered legs for the obstinate boots had finally been kicked off. Then, she was completely naked!

Cole's eyes moved up the beautifully tanned flesh with the breasts and lower loins whiter than the rest of her sun-browned body. The panting young girl's legs were spread wide out to brace and balance her on the top of the car seat, and Kate's husband, his face inches from her nakedly pulsating vagina, knelt in homage between them, his hotly eager eyes devouring her like a starving man who hadn't eaten in weeks. Goddamn! What a broad! The muffled cries of his conscience were long since dead and silenced.

"Oh God, Cole... Do something soon... I'm dying..." Mela heard the moans coming out her own lust swollen throat as Cole's greedily working hands found her hotly seething breasts and held them up like two succulent melons to his voraciously licking mouth. He was up on his knees on the seat sucking them hungrily, and deep gurgling sounds of intense passion came out of his bronzed muscular chest. To him nothing else in the world existed or mattered as he squeezed and sucked and licked. Unbelievably sensual explosions, soft silent explosions, went off in the frantically moaning girl's flesh every time his teeth nipped teasingly at her eagerly erect nipples. "Ohh... yessss... bite them... bite them, lover... bite them hard..."

Supporting the twin peaks with his hands, Cole slid his rapaciously craving tongue down the heiress's smooth, tautly rippling belly to the curling blonde pubic hair below. His tongue dug through the soft fleece like a plow furrowing a field. He proceeded further, hunching down to get at the perfumed pink mouth of her passion drenched pussy and, with a low cry of victory, his hungry mouth found the proud, ruby little lips of her cunt, slickened and moist with the excitement of her secretions. His nostrils flared as they caught the scent of her cunted fragrance, and he could feel her hands twisting in his hair pressing him ever inward to the hotly hidden depths of her lurching young body.

"Ohhhhhh... God... God, Cole... ahhhh God!"

His hands moved to the nakedly silken hips and he eagerly pulled them to his face in order to get his tongue deeper into the trembling wet succulency up there between her smooth inner thighs. Mela arched up to him so strenuously that her feet kept slipping on the sweat streaked leather seat. Stiffening his tongue to a hard point, Kate's husband rammed it mercilessly into the young blonde's hotly pulsing pussy and felt the restlessly rippling muscles deep inside the frenzied girl's vagina begin to grab and clutch at it, trying to capture the wet, teasing invader and draw it deeper up inside.

Sweat was rolling down Kate's cheeks as she picked over the blackberry bushes. The basket was almost full now. Her hands were stained and her lips, too. The fat juicy berries were too tempting not to eat your way along. Hot with the sun and sweetly ripe, she ate another and moved on down between the tangle of bushes. She shouldn't have taken the time to go berrying. It was getting close to noon. Well, for once the ranch hands could eat sandwiches for lunch. There were plenty of cold cuts. For supper there'd be blackberry pies, and that ought to make up for the uninspired mid-day meal.