'That's what I mean. Danny's always had a way with 'em, ever since he started sprouting hair on his nuts.'
'I'm going to have her,' Pete vowed.
Cal looked at him. 'You sound like you mean it.'
'Damned right I do!'
'The old man would tar us if he caught us messing around with Danny's wife.'
'How old are you, Cal?'
'Why, twenty-four. You know that.'
'And I'm twenty-six,' Pete said. 'We don't have to take no shit from the old man any more.'
'Come on now,' Cal derided. 'You're the one who always hops to every time he yells.'
'Cause he's usually right,' Cal's slim elder brother replied. 'But when it comes to tail, a man makes his own decisions.'
'Yeah, but…'
'It's better if you lay off Millie anyhow,' Pete said as they entered the barn. 'That way I'll have a clear field for myself.'
'Think you can really make her?'
'Hell, I know I can!'
On the porch, Millie continued to think about Cal's arm around her waist and the way he had talked. She didn't like him, but she nevertheless had responded to his touch.
It's just that sex is such a new thing to me, she decided. Danny and I have only been married a week, and now – oh God, why did that accident have to happen?
At night the prairie sky was like a black velvet pincushion full of pinheads that glittered like diamonds. The air was still warm, but there was a slight breeze.
Millie had just made her young husband comfortable, helping him with the bedpan, then emptying it. She didn't like being a nurse.
She rounded the corner of the house and stopped on the small patch of lawn. She squatted and felt the grass. Noting that there was no dew, she sat down, tucking her skirt underneath her bare thighs.
The breeze felt good. From out on the range, she heard the faint intermittent bawl of the cattle.
'Feel like company?' a male voice inquired.
Millie jumped and looked up. 'Oh, you startled me, Pete!'
He lowered himself to the grass beside her. 'Sorry. I figured maybe you'd like to talk.' Pete snapped his cigarette in a glowing arc across the lawn.
Millie was surprised by Pete's attitude. He had hardly said a dozen words to her since she and Danny had arrived at the ranch the night before.
The fact was that she felt like talking. She smiled at Pete's dusky profile beside her. 'It's beautiful here at night.'
'I like the quiet,' he said. 'I spent a week in San Francisco once. I could hardly sleep for all the cars and sirens.'
Millie planted her arms in the grass and leaned back. Her full, firm breasts were thrown into startling prominence.
'The biggest city I've ever been in is Reno,' she said. 'That was kind of exciting.'
'Reno's okay – if a man likes to gamble and do that sort of thing.'
'Do you?' Millie glanced at Pete and caught him ogling her breasts. When she straightened up, he looked quickly away.
'I like it right here,' he told her. 'I'm gonna run this spread some day.'
'You and Cal and Danny, hm?'
'Ah, they'll probably take off.'
'Danny says he wants to be a rancher all his life.'
'What does he know? He's still just a kid.'
'He's two years older than I am.'
'But you're a girl. Girls mature younger.'
There was silence for awhile as Pete and Millie entertained their separate thoughts.
'How come you married such a young guy?' he asked.
She gave a little laugh. 'I'm in love with Danny. Anyway, he's the right age for me.'
'You sure about that?'
Pete looked at her closely, his eyes hard and sharp. Millie felt uneasy. She wanted to get up and return to the house, but she didn't wish to offend Pete.
'I'm sure that I love Danny,' she said.
Pete felt frustrated. His verbal gambit hadn't gotten him anywhere. That was how it usually was when he was with a girl. He could never seem to get around them by talking, and he didn't have the boyish good looks that they liked.
But he had what they needed, and he knew how to give it to them. Millie would like it, he was sure, once he put it into her. He'd never had any complaint from a girl whose resistance he had been able to break down.
Suddenly his hard, lean body crashed against Millie, his strong arms twisting her to face him. She gasped, but couldn't get out a cry before Pete's firm lips pressed hers, spreading her mouth open. His tongue crowded in.
Millie was horrified. As Danny's brother, Pete had no right to behave this way.
She began to fight, writhing in his determined embrace, trying to slide her mouth away from his. But Pete was pressing her backward to the ground, and her attempts to wriggle free only caused her breasts to wobble and rub against him, exciting him all the more.
Millie's brain reeled. Her brother-in-law's thrusting tongue, stroking hers as it churned in her mouth, gave her the kind of excitement which only Danny had been able to arouse before. Pete pinned her against the hard, ground, and there seemed nothing she could do to restrain him. One arm was free, and she beat at his back and side, but she knew the blows were having no effect. Pete was sprawled across her other arm and her legs, holding them down. She breathed gaspingly through her nose as the French kiss continued, causing her blood to race.
Pete slid a hand up her front to grasp a breast from underneath. He squeezed the large, pliant mound through her brassiere. A strong new thrill coursed through Millie.
Oh, this is awful! she thought. I can't let him do it!
Pete's hot breath was bursting against her cheek as he ground his open mouth on hers, hurting her lips with the brutal pressure. His wet, meaty tongue was flapping against her tongue and the walls of her mouth. Millie tried to move her jaws to bite him, but the force of his kiss prevented that.
His hand, which now covered her tit, was squeezing the warm, soft melon spasmodically, causing her nipple to swell against the cup of her bra.
Millie felt a flare of warmth in her loins. She hated what was happening, but her body couldn't help responding to it – almost as if she were with Danny. She was utterly dismayed.
Pete's hand glided down across her belly, blazing a trail of hot sensation. He pawed at her pubic mound through her clothing, and Millie quaked deep inside. Desperately, she twisted onto her hip so he could no longer touch her most intimate area. Pete's hand skidded over her thigh and across the hem of her skirt, onto her bare skin.
Millie's thigh tingled where he touched her. Gasping through her nose and making anguished sounds in her throat, the distraught girl raised her knee in an effort to dislodge his hand. But that hand glided up the back of her smooth thigh, underneath her skirt, and grasped a buttock through the clinging nylon of her panties. He squeezed the lusciously resilient mound, his fingertips pressing her panty fabric into the crack between her buttocks.
Humiliated and thrilled by the shockingly intimate contact, Millie writhed, shaking her buttock in Pete's gasp. He pressed closer to her, and she felt his cock. Hard as an iron bar, it seemed about to burst through the coarse
