Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Abilene
Monday
This is a terrible idea.
Not objectively terrible. Just… situationally unhinged.
I stand in the hallway outside the guest room, barefoot, holding my boots as contraband, listening to my aunt’s very steady, very asleep breathing through the door.
There’s a floral throw pillow under her arm. She stole it from my couch like a raccoon claiming territory.
If she wakes up and catches me sneaking out in the middle of the night, I will simply pass away on the spot. Like I’m a teenager, and not a grown woman with my own damn life.
Because right now, I might as well be a naughty child.
I glance down at myself. Jeans. Sweater. Hair brushed but not styled, because I’m too wound up.
Okay. Focus.
I tiptoe past the guest room, avoiding the creaky floorboard near the bathroom. It betrayed me once, and I never forgave it. I freeze halfway down the hall, holding my breath.
Nothing.
She snores softly.
I live.
Outside, the night air hits my skin cool and sharp, trying to wake me up. The moon hangs low over the valley, everything silvered and quiet, Colter Creek pretending it doesn’t know exactly where I’m going.
I tug my boots on at the edge of the porch, laces loose, movements rushed and graceless. I almost trip on the last step and grab the railing, heart pounding as if I’ve just committed a felony instead of… whatever this is.
What is this?
A very bad decision.
A very good decision.
A decision made by a woman who kissed her stoic cowboy neighbor in an alley and then thought, Yes. More of that. Immediately.
The walk next door feels longer than it ever has. Every shadow looks accusatory. Every night sound feels louder than necessary. I half-expect Maeve Dunmoore to pop out of a bush with a clipboard and a knowing look.
Abilene Kentwood, caught sneaking to a group rendezvous at 11:47 p.m. Rate of gossip spread: catastrophic.
I reach the porch and hesitate.
The house is dark except for one soft light glowing from inside. Like they left it on for me.
Of course they did.
My stomach flips.
I lift my hand to knock and don’t even get the chance. The door opens.
Jesse grins at me like he’s been waiting with his ear pressed to the wood. “You made it.”
“I…” I glance over my shoulder reflexively. “My aunt is asleep. If she wakes up and notices I’m gone, I’m blaming raccoons.”
He laughs, low and warm, and steps aside. “We’ll swear we saw one. Big one. Very persuasive. We’re just lucky the twins are fast asleep and missed it.”
Inside feels different. Charged. The room itself knows what’s about to happen and is holding its breath with me.
Marshall is leaning against the counter, arms crossed, watching me with that intense gaze that makes my knees feel slightly unreliable.
Wyatt is perched on the edge of the couch, glasses off, hair rumpled, looking up at me like I’m precious and he doesn’t want to startle me.
They’re all… very awake.
Very aware.
Very focused on me.
“I feel like I should say something cool,” I blurt. “Like, casual. Very chill. Neighborly.”
Jesse snorts.
Wyatt smiles. “You can just be you.”
Marshall pushes off the counter and steps closer, stopping just far enough away that I still have space. Still have a choice.
That breaks the last of my nerves.
I step inside. The door closes behind me with a soft, definitive click, and my heart settles into place like it’s been waiting for that sound.
I want them so much I could scream. Instead, a ferocious kind of bravery takes root in my chest, pushing away every last scrap of guilt and shame and good girl modesty my house tried to use as armor against myself.
I grip hold of Marshall’s shirt and tug him toward me. His mouth crashes into mine. Hot, wet, urgent, and the taste of whiskey fills my mouth.
Marshall kisses like a man who’s fought himself ragged, making up for every day he pretended not to want this.
I rake my hands into his hair, and Marshall groans, pressing his whole body into mine.
I’m shivering all over, skin prickling, heart beating so hard it leaves glowing imprints on the insides of my eyelids. He slides his hands down to my hips, thumbs digging into my bones, and when I part my lips again, he licks into my mouth.
But he isn’t the only one I want.
I turn my head, my body, toward the bedroom, pulling away from the heat of Marshall’s mouth just enough to see Jesse and Wyatt waiting, pupils blown wide, both of them looking at me like I’m the last drink of water at the end of a week in the desert.
There’s hunger, yes, but more—a brittle, loaded tenderness, a desperate need as loud as a ringing bell. I want to drink that in.
Jesse crosses the space in three strides, crowding into my left side. He puts one hand around the back of my neck, his palm hot, the callused pads of his fingers pressing into my hairline in a way that makes my knees threaten mutiny.
I can smell the pine tar and the aftershave he borrowed from Marshall, and for a fractured second, I’m afraid I’ll combust from the simple, stupid animal joy of it.
“Are you…?” Jesse’s voice is a scrape, sliding across gravel.
He can’t finish the sentence, so I do it for him, kissing him fast, all teeth and tongue. He makes a noise that’s more animal than man, and his hand migrates, pulling me in while Marshall’s got my hips, holding me perfectly between them.
It doesn’t matter that my heart’s racing fast as a cornered rabbit. I let it happen, let myself be the rope in their tug of war, let new hands tangle in my hair and my clothes and my want.
Wyatt is still by the couch, but his gaze is pinned to me, molten with longing. There’s a tremor in his jaw, a pulse jerking in his throat. He’s holding himself at bay with nothing but academic restraint.
I beckon to him.
He doesn’t move, but the hunger in his eyes goes incandescent. He wants to be asked. Maybe needs it. Some shadow of old wounds or just that Wyatt thing of wanting to be sure.
I find the center of my strength, my need, and say, “Come here.”
He does. Of course he does. He stands, shaky but determined, and the three of them close the circle around me.
Wyatt is suddenly there, sinking to his knees, tugging down my jeans and panties, all heat and shadow and intent. His hands slide under my now naked thighs as he pulls me toward him.
I brace, breath caught, pulse hammering. His eyes meet mine as his scruff brushes the inside of my thigh.
My sweater is gone before I even notice, tugged up and tossed aside as Jesse’s mouth follows bare skin. My bra unhooks with a practiced flick. The lace slides down my arms in a sigh.
And then Wyatt’s mouth is on me.
He tastes me with a seriousness that steals the air from my lungs. My vision pricks with light.
His tongue is damn near overwhelming as he devours me. Every slow, sucking pull drags me toward the brink.
I whine, helpless, arching, and his hands hold my thighs, anchoring me to him. The rest of the world blurs out.
There’s only the heat and slick of his mouth, Jesse’s palm against my back, Marshall’s laughter, breathless and awed.
Jesse’s hands are nowhere and everywhere: in my hair, tracing my jaw, flicking along my ribs and the peaks of my chest. When he pinches, just a little, I gasp.
He answers with a low growl, and then his mouth is on mine again, tongue tasting the echo of my own want. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him into me so that nothing exists beyond the border of his body.
All three of them are so close, orbiting me, gravity gone wild.
Wyatt’s beard is the scratch of field stubble in early spring, a rasp dragging me back to the moment every time I think I might tumble out of it.
His fingers spread, thumbs pressed into the tendon of my inner thigh, and he holds himself utterly still between movements, as if orchestrating the next onslaught in the mind’s eye before committing to it on my skin.
I catch his gaze—it’s bottomless, dark, a plea and a promise at once.
A moan shivers through me, ripped from somewhere not entirely of this plane, and Marshall, behind, echoes it with one of his own.
He strips, clearly done waiting. Shirt gone, jeans shoved low, cock hard and flushed, glistening at the tip. My mouth actually waters.
The look he gives me is molten. He glances at Jesse, then at Wyatt, an unspoken question passing between them like a current, and Jesse answers with a grin, almost feral, wickedly bright.
“Give her your cock, man. Or are you going to make her beg?”
Marshall’s answering smile is a slow sunrise.
He lines himself up behind me, sliding his hand over my ass, the small of my back, the delicate edge of my hip, and when he slicks two fingers along me, careful, gentle, but still almost too much, I rock against his grip.
My mouth falls open around a fractured gasp.
Wyatt doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause, but Jesse catches my chin, turning my face to him for another bruising kiss, tongues tangling, breath shared and sharp.
The anticipation is a living thing, crawling up my spine, coiling in the base of my skull, the pit of my stomach, all the places that mark want from need.
The way they move around me, it’s choreography, yes, but more like a murmuration of starlings than any formal waltz, each movement predatory but together a kind of liquid grace.
Marshall’s fingers vanish, replaced by the blunt, insistent heat of him at my entrance. He pauses, hand still cupped under my hip, thumb sweeping soothing circles, and the waiting is exquisite agony.
I whimper, impatient, and he laughs against the nape of my neck. Then he pushes into me, slow at first, filling, impossibly so, and every cell in my body hurls itself toward the feeling.
I’m bracketed between the unyielding pressure of Marshall behind and the relentless devotion of Wyatt’s mouth, pinned like some wild, trembling creature. Jesse’s teeth graze my ear; he breathes my name.
Marshall finds my rhythm before I do, his hips an equation solved at some deeper level.