Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Annie
The drive back to Ironwood feels strange.
Like something fundamental shifted while Duke and I stood outside Old Mill Café and talked about family legacies, emotional damage, and apparently my inability to stop running from things.
The truck hums steadily beneath us as dusk settles over Colter Creek in bruised shades of blue and gold. Pine trees blur past the windows. The mountains sit dark against the horizon like sleeping giants.
Beside me, Duke drives one handed, thumb tapping absently against the steering wheel in time with the old country song playing softly through the speakers.
Usually he fills silence instinctively.
Today he lets it breathe. Which feels more intimate somehow.
I keep replaying what he said.
Ironwood made us rich, but it also made us prisoners.
The words hooked somewhere under my ribs and stayed there. Because I understand prisons built from expectation better than I’d like to admit.
Mine just looked different.
Sharper smiles. Cleaner clothes. A mother who treated emotions like embarrassing stains on expensive fabric.
Same cage.
Different wallpaper.
The ranch gates appear ahead of us, black iron cutting across the fading light.
Ironwood doesn’t welcome you. It admits you.
Funny how different that sentence feels now.
Duke glances over at me as he slows the truck through the gates. “You’re doing the overthinking face again.”
“I don’t have an overthinking face.”
“Honey, your eyebrows practically file paperwork when you’re stressed.”
I snort despite myself.
“There she is,” he says softly.
Warmth spreads unexpectedly through my chest.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
By the time we pull up near the main house, the ranch is wrapped in evening quiet. Barn lights shine amber against the darkening property. Somewhere distant, a horse nickers softly.
Homey.
Which is deeply unfair considering this place has spent the last month trying to assassinate me.
Duke cuts the engine but doesn’t move right away. Neither do I.
The cab fills with soft music and tension.
“You okay?” he asks.
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
“I think your aunt might actually be a supervillain.”
Duke breathes out a laugh. “That’s probably the healthiest possible conclusion.” Then his expression softens. “She scare you?”
The honest answer catches in my throat. Because yes. Vivian terrified me. Like standing too close to a cliff edge and realizing gravity doesn’t care whether or not you’re ready to fall.
“She doesn’t get to decide who I am,” I say finally.
Duke looks at me for a long second. “Jeez.”
“What?”
“You really mean that.”
“I’m trying to.”
His smile is small and wrecked and so painfully fond it makes my chest ache.
Before I can recover from that, the front door of the house swings open. Silas steps out first with an expression on his face that suggests to me Duke has already filled him in. He must have texted him at some point.
Cody appears behind him a second later, expression stoic in that terrifyingly composed way he gets when he’s worried.
Instead it feels weirdly like coming home to people who noticed I was gone.
That realization alone nearly takes me out at the knees.
Duke climbs from the truck first.
“She’s fine,” he says before either brother can speak.
Silas’s eyes land on me anyway. Scanning, assessing, looking for damage.
The intensity of it hits hard after the day I’ve had.
I climb out slowly, shutting the truck door behind me.
“Nobody died,” I say lightly.
Silas doesn’t look amused.
“She had a private meeting with Aunt Vivian,” Duke says bluntly.
Okay. Apparently we’re going straight into warfare tonight.
Cody’s entire posture changes. “What?”
Silas steps closer, jaw tightening. “Why.”
“Because apparently I’m a disruptive influence on the family brand.”
Duke mutters, “Understatement of the century.”
Silas ignores him completely. “What did she say to you?”
“Can we do this inside?”
“Wait,” Silas demands. “Say that again. She offered you money?”
“She framed it like a favor. Quiet contract termination. Clean exit.” I laugh softly without humor. “Like I’m a PR issue.”
“The last thing you are,” Cody says with a growl as he tucks his finger underneath my chin, “is an issue.”
His lips are on mine before I can catch my breath.
The force of it steals everything out of my head. It’s not a kiss so much as a claim, a clean surgical cut between me and the words that won’t stop multiplying if left unchecked. Cody tastes absolutely delicious.
Silas watches us, eyes narrowed, jaw locked, but he doesn’t look jealous. He looks like he’s learning something new and dangerous and isn’t sure if it excites or terrifies him.
Duke leans against the refrigerator, arms folded, smiling in a way that could incinerate small villages if harnessed for evil. There’s pride there, and relief that makes me feel like I’ve been sewn into this moment.
Cody breaks away first but stays close enough that I can feel his words against my lips. “Nobody gets to buy you out of our lives.”
Duke presses into me in the hallway, his mouth hot and hungry against my ear. His hands are rough where they grip my waist.
Silas is just behind us. I feel him before I see him, that immense gravity his body exerts in a closed space.
He waits until Duke’s lips have mapped their way down the side of my neck before pulling me back against his chest, one huge arm anchoring me there while his other hand grazes over my hips.
His heat and weight command total surrender and I give it up freely, uncaring that we are barely inside the bedroom before Cody presses past both of us and takes my face in his hands like it’s a priceless artifact.
He kisses me open-mouthed, brutally honest, as if apologizing for every moment I ever doubted my worth. I taste blood and sugar and the coppery static of adrenaline and want to climb inside his mouth and live there forever.
Hands, everywhere. I lose track of whose are whose.
Duke’s lips skate along my neck. Silas’s grip tightens around my waist until I think he might snap me like a wishbone, but all I can do is arch into it, greedy for friction. Cody’s hands rake through my hair, tugging just hard enough to send my skull humming.
Clothes disappear. Silas steps away only long enough to tug at the laces, dark eyes slitted and half lidded with intent, while Duke pulls me onto the bed, his broad shoulders and thick thighs swallowing the space beside me.
Cody kneels above, reckless and elegant, shirtless and pale as moonlight, the expanse of his chest a shallow map of old scars and new tension. He pushes my hair back from my face.
I’m acutely aware of my state: unshowered, sloppily dressed, mascara gone feral at the edges. If it bothers any of them, I can’t tell.
“You good?” Cody asks, thumb skirting the corner of my lips.
There’s a tremor beneath his calm. A tension, strung high and sweet.
I blink up at him, unsure whether to laugh or cry, so I split the difference and drag him down into a kiss, lips bruising together, fingers curled desperate into the hair at the nape of his neck.
There’s nothing tentative about the way I open for him, the way I meet every nip and slip of tongue with my own, hungry and reckless as a house fire.
My hands are everywhere—Cody’s back, Duke’s bicep, Silas’s thigh—and none of it feels like enough skin, enough pressure.
I want more, always more.
Duke’s hand finds my breast, kneads and flicks until my breath stutters and the entire world contracts to that point of contact.
Silas, smoldering, cradles my chin in his enormous hand.
“You’re trembling,” he says, and when I try to deny it, I realize he’s right.
Maybe I haven’t stopped shaking since Vivian’s words, maybe I never stopped at all.
He slides a blanket of his palm down my throat and over my racing heartbeat. It steadies, but only barely, under the pressure of his touch.
“Tonight,” Silas tells me, “you’re not allowed to think about anything except how much we want you.”
My cheeks burn, but the words knife straight into the core of me.
I’m sandwiched between raw muscle and need, the center of a maelstrom that only tightens with every second.
My hips grind helpless against Silas’s spread fingers, and he finally dips two inside in a single, slow push, catching the sound I make with his mouth. Cody’s tongue is in my ear now, murmuring filth.
Duke crooks a hand around the back of my neck, and I’m not sure if he wants to snap me in half or haul me closer for a kiss, but it’s both. He kisses me so hard my teeth clack, then shoves me forward so I bend at the waist, ass up, Silas’s big hand holding my hip.
Someone says my name, thick and urgent, but there’s too much sensation to parse who, or if it’s even real, or just my own mind keening apart at the seams. All I know is I want everything, all at once.
Cody’s brutal sweetness, Silas’s brute tenderness, Duke’s feral hands and filthy mouth.
Silas slides his fingers from my pussy and brings them to my lips. He waits, eyes locked on mine, until I open and take them in, the taste of myself, coppery and heady, making my cheeks go molten hot.
He fucks his fingers into my mouth deep enough to make me drool, and I realize I would let him do worse.
Cody kneels behind me now, his tongue greedy and precise between my legs, eating me out with a silent apology that makes me want to cry like I deserve better, or maybe worse, or maybe both at once.
He’s too much, licking and sucking and fucking me with his tongue until I’m a slick, sobbing mess, my knees gone to water and my soul excavated by want.
Duke shoves his cock against my lips, and I open without pretext, no hesitation.
He’s thick, heavy, and tastes like salt, skin, and sweat. Duke groans, one hand tangled roughly in my hair, the other bracing against the wall.
He fucks my mouth with a rhythm that’s desperate; every piston of his hips is a benediction. He curses, tells me how pretty I am, what a good little slut, then bites down on my shoulder and blinks hard, looking almost stunned.
Cody keeps eating me out, greedy and precise, my hips flinching, thighs locking around his skull.