Page 197 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

“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.”