Staking Their Claim by Ava Sinclair

scrunched tight.
    “It hurts! It hurts!” She was bucking over his lap now, her legs gaping as she kicked. The inside of her thighs was sticky with their dried seed, but she was shameless in her flailing and Nigel wondered if Cody’s cock was as hard as his had become.
    After her bottom was a dusky pink, the cowboy stopped.
    “Are you going to be a good girl?” he asked.
    “Yes, sir!” she wailed, still writhing on his lap. Nigel shifted in his chair to accommodate his rock-hard erection. The sound of her submissive tone alone was enough to have him nearly unmanned for the second time that morning.
    “Up with you, then.” Cody set her on her feet. “Now, I trust you’ll do what we say so you can stay safe, right?”
    She nodded, whimpering, and rubbed her bottom as the men stood.
    Nigel looked at his friend. “I’m going to go see Doc and see if he has any advice. I bet our little love here would like a hot bath.”
    “I think I can see to that,” Cody said, and Nigel headed toward the door.
    Outside, he tried not to think about what else Cody might be doing while he was gone. But then he told himself, that they’d both take her separately as well as together, and jealousy could not factor into the equation except as a passing reaction. And as he walked, he realized that the feeling did pass quickly. With the two of them, Jenny would never want for attention, and he had quickly surmised that she was a woman with an unusual appetite. Yes, their little one could easily wear just one man out.
    Once in Coloma, Nigel noticed some folks staring longer, and whispering as he passed. Yes, word did travel fast—so fast, in fact, that Doc Martin already knew of Jenny’s presence even before Nigel arrived.
    “You’ve got every tongue in town wagging,” Doc said. “Rumors, too. When folks saw you coming out of Cora’s with that young lady, some assumed you’d bought yourself a girl to keep at your place permanently. But Cora quickly put that rumor to rest, and the magistrate tells me you and Cody Drake have an arrangement to keep that girl up there, and mine her claim?”
    “That’s so,” Nigel said. “But we’re worried about her safety. She’s a good girl, but innocent. But she’s with us and has no one else, so we are committed to keeping her where she is.” He paused. “That’s why I’m here.”
    “What can I do to help?” Doc Martin sat forward, putting his arms on his desk. A tall, bespectacled man of fifty whose dark hair was graying at the temples, he struck Nigel more as a professor than a mining camp doctor.
    “The shopkeeper told Cody that you have a couple of nurses. In my native England, sometimes such women could be employed as caretakers for children and even older girls. They were protectors and disciplinarians, and could even see to the health of their charges.”
    “Say no more,” the doctor replied. “I actually have someone who’d be perfect for the job. Her name is Mab, and like you she’s from across the pond, as we like to say. In her case, Scotland. She’s as tall as a man and as tough as one. She came over here with her husband, but he died in a rockslide and she’s stayed on with me. Personally, I think the work of stitching up cuts from fights or setting bones from accidents is boring her silly.”
    He turned and called out a door leading to a dark hallway. “Mab?”
    A moment later, a large woman entered the room. She walked ramrod straight, like a soldier. She wore her gray hair in a bun, and the apron over her dark uniform was crisp and white. Her nose was hooked and sharp, like a hawk’s beak, and she had a formality about her that reminded him of the world he’d left when he’d hopped a ship to America.
    Nigel listened as Doc Martin explained the situation to the woman, who nodded as he spoke, casting occasional glances at Nigel. Her mouth curved into a small grin as the physician explained the need of the two men who had taken the young woman in.
    “This is