“If I win…” he said slowly, “I want you to let me help you sleep.”
A breath hitched in Wren’s throat.
Roan continued, low and steady, every word anchored in something that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do withcare. “Let me sit next to you. Let me keep the others back. Let me be there while you rest. Just that. Nothing else. Not unless you ask for it.”
Wren’s eyes shimmered, and fuck,mythroat closed up, just a little.
There were a hundred things I wanted. Needed. A thousand ways I wanted to touch her, to lay claim to her scent now tangled with mine, with all of ours. But Roan…
Roan just wanted to guard her sleep.
And that…
Yeah. That did something to me.
To all of us.
Wren’s breath stuttered. Her lashes lowered. Her voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper. “So who gets to call it?”
Chapter
Fifteen
WREN
The clear-headedness was like a thread in water—visible for a second, then gone.
But I grasped it with both hands.
Rhett’s teasing helped. His playful charm cut through the suffocating swirl of need that had pinned me to the walls of my own body. Jay’s concern anchored me, practical and quiet, never crowding, never asking for more than I could give. And Roan…
Roan was bedrock.
I watched them now from where I sat, still trembling, still aching, but not drowning.
Notyet.
They stood in a loose triangle a few feet away from me, angled slightly toward one another, not speaking. But something passed between them. A look. A shift of breath. A weight of silence that said more than words ever could.
And I realized, all at once, that I’d neverreallyseen them before.
Not like this.
Not like someone whowantedthem.
Roan stood the tallest, broad and cut from glacier stone, pale blonde hair immaculately short, steel-gray eyes as sharp as ever—but softer, too. There was something in his stillness, in the calm he wrapped himself in, that felt like a shield thrown over all of us. That calm had always impressed me professionally.
Now, it burned.
Thecontrolhe wielded over himself… the discipline of a man who had locked away his instincts for years. I could feel it, pulsing under his skin like heat beneath ice. And still, he didn’t move toward me. Didn’t even shift his weight. His restraint wasn’t rejection—it was reverence.
And maybe that was the worst part.
Because I couldfeelhow badly he wanted to move.
My eyes dragged to Rhett, standing just slightly off to Roan’s left, coiled and twitchy. All fire and honey-brown skin, his dark curls a little unruly from the hat he’d worn, brown eyes still sharp despite the aching edge of desperation beneath his usual swagger. He was beautiful in a way that always made people turn around twice—and when he smiled, it was lethal.
Right now, he wasn’t smiling.
