Chapter 3
Chapter Three
T urning off the car, Kylie sat in the driveway and studied her house. She was surprised to find it flooded with light.
She knew Colt had the weekend off and she expected him to be getting ready in his bedroom to go out on some hot date with the newest member of the Bimbo of the Month club.
Heath wasn’t due back for a few more days, so she had anticipated having the house to herself.
She certainly needed the time to evaluate where she was going so wrong in her life. The episode with Scott still haunted her and she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since then. That, added to the fact the bruises on her ass were only beginning to fade, kept her irritable and on edge.
Her damn roommates had ruined her. All their talk about sex and bondage and toys and spankings. She felt like she’d spent the last seven years in a fog of sexual frustration.
She wasn’t an innocent by any stretch of the imagination. Despite her lack of girly-girl genes, she dated fairly regularly, although she couldn’t recall having a real boyfriend since high school. Ever since she moved in with Heath and Colt, the men who drifted in and out of her life—and sometimes her bed—couldn’t compete. Her roommates were the yardstick by which she measured every man and sadly, every single one came up lacking.
She leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. She’d love to rail at the two men causing her all this angst, but neither one of them had a clue how much they affected her.
To make matters worse, the cocky bastards would have a field day with it if she told them. Teasing was second nature to all three of them and she could imagine the fun they would have at her expense with such knowledge.
Despite all her sarcastic comments about their cavemen attitudes, she desperately wanted them.
Both of them.
That was the other problem.
When she thought about sex with her roommates, both of them were present. Sure, some her fantasies involved one or the other, but always there was the knowledge that both of them were with her.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Like that will happen.”
She had no one to blame for her lonely state except herself. She’d rebuffed their flirting at the beginning, demanding to be treated like another guy and, as luck would have it, her demands were met tenfold for seven long years.
The front door swung open and Colt stepped out on to the front porch.
“You gonna sit in that damn car all night?”
She grinned at his gruff manners. Colt was a true cowboy, born and raised on a ranch outside of Dallas. He moved with a slow, country grace that never failed to take her breath away.
Climbing out of the car, she laughed as she walked toward him. “Waiting for me?” She couldn’t help but be pleased at the idea, no matter how unlikely.
“You’re late.” His voice was rough and she got the sense he was angry for some reason.
“I decided to get my grading and planning for next week finished at school, so I wouldn’t have to drag it home. Now I have the weekend all to myself. Are you going out tonight?”
“Nope. I’m in for the evening. Don’t you have a phone in that classroom of yours? You should have called. I was starting to get worried.”
Kylie felt a tremor of confusion at his words. Although they typically called if they were held up, there was no hard and fast rule about checking in. “Sorry, Colt. I figured you’d be going out for the night. I didn’t think it mattered when I got home.”
“It matters,” he grumbled.
As soon as she walked in the house, Heath emerged from the kitchen wiping his hands with a towel.
“Well, it’s about damn time. Where the hell have you been?”
“Welcome home to you too,” she teased as she walked over to give him a friendly kiss on the cheek. “We didn’t expect you back until Tuesday.”
She was shocked when Heath turned at the last second and her welcome home kiss missed his freshly-shaved jaw and landed straight on his lips. She tried to jerk back, but two strong arms wrapped around her and held her in place as he deepened the kiss before finally releasing her.
The entire embrace couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but she staggered back when it ended as if she’d drunk a whole bottle of wine.
“Now that’s worth coming home to.”
Kylie shook off his actions and words, thinking perhaps it was her roommates who’d been drinking. She caught the light scent of beer on Heath’s breath.
“Start the party without me?”
“Nope. We were waiting for you.” Heath winked at her and returned to the kitchen.
She stood for a moment trying to understand the unfamiliar tension she felt in the air, but before she could sort out her thoughts, she felt Colt’s strong arm encircle her waist. He pulled her back against his chest and his breath tickled the hair on the back on her neck.
“Colt?”
“You hungry, darlin’? We were about to throw some steaks on the grill.” At his words, he moved her into the kitchen with his arm wrapped tightly around her.
She glanced over her shoulder, uneasy with his casual closeness. Heath smiled at them as they walked in and acted like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with the way Colt was holding her.
“I picked up some T-bones on my way home from work. Hope you’re hungry.”
She was completely flummoxed. “Are we celebrating something?”
“The weekend.” Colt released her with a quick kiss on her cheek. He crossed over to the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of her favorite wine. When he reached for three wine glasses, instead of one, she narrowed her eyes. Colt and Heath never drank wine—ever. They were strictly hard liquor or beer men.
“Okay, that’s it. What the hell is going on here?” She placed her hands on her hips and tapped her toe in annoyance. Her mother was an angry toe-tapper and Kylie had, much to her chagrin, picked up the habit.
To add to her aggravation, both men merely laughed at her pose and continued about their duties as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
Once Colt had the wine poured, he carried a glass over to her.
“Watch your mouth, darlin’. Ladies shouldn’t cuss.”
“Lucky for me I’m not a fucking lady. Now what the hell are you all up to?”
Colt shook his head at her response, putting her wine glass down on the kitchen table. Then he even had the nerve to tsk at her. “I’m afraid that filthy mouth of yours is going to get you in a whole heap of trouble. What do you think, Heath?”
Heath’s expression flickered between amusement and anger before he turned his smoldering gaze toward her. “I think it’s a shame that ass of hers is too sore for what I’ve got in mind. You’re looking to get punished, Sunshine, but after that stunt you pulled the other night, you no doubt need more time to heal. Best not push us too far.”
Her face flushed with embarrassment and fury. She whirled on Colt. “You told him?”
“’Course I did, darlin’.”
“It was none of his business. Shit, it wasn’t any of yours. This is unbelievable.” She felt betrayed and mortified and completely out of her element.
“None of my business?” She flinched at Colt’s heated reply. “Is that what you just said? Let me tell you something, Kylie Halston, you made it my business when you brought that son of a bitch into our house and let him abuse you. You listen to me now and you listen good. Your willful, impulsive, reckless days are at an end.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She was taken aback by the anger in Colt’s face.
Never in all their years of friendship had he lost his temper with her and she didn’t doubt she’d tested him plenty. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Heath coming toward her and was shocked to see the same intense look in his gaze.
“It means,” Colt said, stepping closer, “that from this point on, you answer to us.”
She burst into laughter at his haughty reply. “Ha!” she yelled before common sense kicked in. Neither man seemed pleased by her dismissal.
Heath reached out and ran the back of his knuckles down her cheek. She gasped at how much the simple touch affected her. “Ah, Kylie. It would seem you need a bit of convincing.”
“Can you two please stop talking in code? I haven’t understood a word you’ve said since I got home. It’s like I’ve dropped into the Twilight Zone .”
Heath’s hand stopped caressing her face and ventured around the nape of her neck where his grip tightened and he pulled her closer. “You want plain-speaking? Fine. The terms of our friendship are on hold. For the rest of this weekend, you aren’t simply our roommate or our buddy. You’re going to become our lover as well. From this moment on, you’re ours.”
Speech deserted her. One word kept resonating in her brain. The only word she was able to process amidst the rest.
“Ours?”
Heath grinned as he repeated the word. “Ours.”
Then he bent down and kissed her.