Chapter 28 Ash #2
Boone is quiet for a moment, choosing where to start. "Do you really want that answer?"
"Yes."
"Four." He says it plainly, no apology in it. "Four men over the last several years. My boys and I figured out how we worked a long time ago. When someone came along that fit, we brought them in."
The number sits strangely in my mouth. Not jealousy exactly. Something closer to curiosity laced with a fear I can't name. "Four."
"Marcus was around for the first."
My head turns. Boone is watching the arena, this time.
"He despised it. The whole arrangement. He didn't like sharing, never understood why the rest of us were wired this way.
Hated the ranch in general, hated what it represented, hated that his brothers were happy here.
" Boone takes another pull. "That was the beginning of the distance between him and us.
Watching his family be with someone together and wanting no part of it. "
"How long did the others stay?"
"A few days. A week at most. Honest on both sides, good while it lasted, clean when it ended. Nobody went deep enough to reach the places where hurt lives."
"But you said two weeks with me."
Boone sets the beer on the railing and turns toward me.
His hand comes to the front of my throat, fingers curling gently around the side of my neck, his thumb resting against my pulse.
The touch is possessive in a way that makes my breath catch, his palm warm against my skin.
He draws me in, slowly, until I can feel his breath against my mouth.
"It would be like this every day you'd let me." His thumb presses against my pulse. "I said two weeks because I was hoping at some point you wouldn't want to leave. So I could do this."
He leans down, his hand wrapping tighter around the back of my neck, pulling me up to meet his lips.
This is the kiss of a man who's done calculating.
His fingers press into the tendons of my neck, holding me exactly where he wants me.
I open for him because there's no version of me that doesn't want this, my hands fisting in the front of his shirt, my body leaning into him until the railing digs into my back.
When he pulls away, his thumb traces the line of my jaw. "The others were a week because a week was all there was," he reiterates. "You were two weeks because I knew I'd need every day of it to convince you that staying wasn't something you had to earn."
My eyes burn. I press my forehead against his collarbone, his hand still on my neck, the arena noise washing over us. A woman walking past glances at us and looks away. I don't care. The man holding me just told me I was always the plan.
"Come on." He presses his mouth to the top of my head. "The boys are up soon. You should watch them work."
The team roping is first. Teague and Ledger ride out together, Teague on a red roan that moves like water, Ledger on a dark bay that carries itself with the same seriousness as its rider.
The chute opens, a steer bolts across the arena, and Teague's rope swings in a wide arc before snapping forward to catch the horns clean.
Ledger moves in from the other side, his horse cutting tight, his rope finding the hind legs with a precision that looks mechanical but can't be. The steer drops, the flag waves, the time flashing on the board fast enough that the section around me erupts.
It’s been so long since I came to one of these and I forgot how exciting watching these men in their element can be. I forgot how beautiful they are when they’re doing what they love, experiencing every freedom this life gives.
Freedom I’m now going to be part of.
I'm gripping the rail so hard my knuckles are white, my chest tight with pride, watching two men I've had inside me perform an act of such coordinated skill that the crowd is on its feet. Those same hands that just roped a steer were in my hair last night.
Cass rides in the open event an hour later.
His horse is huge, a gray that matches his size, and when it bucks out of the chute Cass moves with it like they're having a private conversation.
His free hand stays high, his body absorbing the violence of the animal beneath him with a fluidity that contradicts everything about the way he operates on the ground.
He's graceful up there, which should be impossible for a man built like a piece of heavy machinery, but his body knows this rhythm the way it knows mine.
The buzzer sounds and Cass dismounts with a grin I can see from the rail, fifty yards away. The crowd roars. I realize I'm cheering, my voice hoarse, my hands stinging from the metal.
Boone just laughs, laying a possessive hand against my back as his sons rush forward toward us.
They take kisses from me in turns until I’m laughing, nearly dragged over the railing into their arms. I wait for the shame to arrive.
I wait for the old voice, the one that tells me I'm making a scene, that I should be smaller, less visible.
I wait for the flush that always came when Marcus caught me laughing too loud in public.
It doesn't come. I'm standing at an arena fence with the taste of three men on my lips, my hair wrecked from Cass's hands, my shirt pulled crooked from Teague's grip. I don't care. Four men just claimed me in front of this entire crowd and not one of them checked to see who was watching first.
Teague swings back around, his hat resettled, his rope coiled over one shoulder. He slings his arm around my neck, pulls me against his side, and presses his mouth to my temple.
"Now, that work is done, let's go save you from the evil clutches of Marcus."