Page 200 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

The sensation of him emptying inside me, so impossibly deep, drags me to another edge and I topple over, coming so hard I black out for a heartbeat.

Silas follows, a low growl in my throat, almost a sob. There’s this moment where I feel him shaking beneath me, every inch of him alive and locked, and then he lets go, filling me with a pulse I feel clear to my scalp.

He holds me, impossibly gentle, as if afraid I might fly to pieces if he moves. I could. I want to.

Cody’s hand slides up my neck, thumb stroking at the hinge of my jaw, and I realize he’s barely holding back, his own need a tight coil. His cheeks are raw, his eyes terrifyingly soft.

He watches the whole thing like it’s sacred, and when Silas finally collapses backward, pulling me with him, Cody is the one to cradle my head, to shush and kiss me while he continues to fist himself until I’m covered in his ropes.

Duke peels away to sprawl on the bed, laughing. A muscle cord of a laugh, actually, ragged and unbrushed by shame, so pure I want to wrap myself in it.

He rolls to his side, props his head up on his fist, and watches as I collapse, boneless, into Silas’s lap. My body is stitched together by exhaustion and still wound tight with aftershocks.

I have never felt so thoroughly unmade.

So thoroughly in heaven.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Silas

Traps only work if the prey feels safe enough to move.

That’s the mistake most people make.

They think pressure forces exposure. Usually it doesn’t. Pressure makes people cautious. Careful. Predictable in the wrong ways.

No, if you want someone intelligent to reveal themselves, you give them opportunity. You give them confidence.

Then you wait.

The fake vendor account takes me and Cody six hours to build properly.

Not because the structure itself is complicated, but because it has to survive scrutiny from someone who understands Ironwood’s systems intimately.

If the bait looks artificial, nobody touches it. If it looks too clean, too convenient, it becomes suspicious immediately.

So we build it the same way the real fraudulent accounts were built.

Layered routing, seasonal operational overlap, timing attached to livestock transport fluctuations. Enough legitimacy to pass casual review. Enough temptation to invite interference.

Cody sits across from me in the office, glasses low on his nose, eyes moving rapidly between screens.

“Transfer path?” he asks.

“Embedded under deferred maintenance.”

He nods once. “Good.”

The room smells of stale coffee and tension.

Outside the office windows, Ironwood moves through another gray afternoon. Ranch hands crossing the yard. Horses moving through the paddocks. Trucks pulling feed deliveries toward the north barn.

Normal.

Everything keeps pretending to be normal.

That’s the part I’m starting to hate most.