Kansas Heat

by Kansas Heat (lit)

  Clawing, screaming, bucking, she gave over to her release and let it consume her body within ecstasy’s inferno.

  * * * *

  Knox watched as Amanda came apart in Cody’s arms. Pulling free of her lips to make sure she didn’t choke on her scream, he eased back off the bed to watch her find her release with his brothers. She was beautiful, and he was jealous. Knox, who had never before coveted a woman enough to envy his brothers, now found himself feeling the pangs of jealousy for a second night in a row.

  It wasn’t so much that envied them her pleasure, but he couldn’t watch and not want. Knox couldn’t hear her cry out Cody’s name and not wish to hear his own. He wanted his moment alone, and as the threesome on the bed collapsed with grunts and groans of release, Knox had already started to work on Amanda’s binds.

  He had her free before Cody could roll off her. Knox helped his baby brother with a shove then helped himself to Amanda. Lifting her off Jace, Knox earned a glare from his middle brother. For all the dirty looks Jace and Cody shot his way, neither appeared recovered enough to lodge any real complaint.

  Amanda didn’t even appear to be awake, grumbling and muttering as he carried her off to the shower. Only once the shower started to steam up did Amanda rouse herself to open her eyes even a sliver, or maybe it was his hands cleaning the scent of his brothers off her body. For several minutes she just rested there against the shower wall, watching him with those dreamy eyes shaded by her lashes. When he straightened, coming to a standstill in front of her, Amanda smiled and sighed his name.

  “Knox.” She lulled him with soft whisper, and her arms circled around his neck. “It was fun tonight, wasn’t it?”

  “Who said the fun was over?” Knox matched her grin.

  Still hard from the naughty kiss she’d given him earlier, it was time for him to claim his satisfaction right along with his woman. Holding her by the waist, pinned to the wall, Knox lifted her up, pleased when her legs circled him. He could feel her heat, her desire, as his cock lodged against the opening of her pussy.

  “Maybe it’s time to discover just who you really belong to.” Because he planned to make her beg.

  “Knox?” Amanda’s serious whisper had him meeting her level gaze. “I belong to me.”

  Something in the quiet statement unnerved him. Knox couldn’t help feeling like Amanda was telling him, no matter what, she’d never be his. It took some of his pleasure, and he scowled.

  “You belong to me.”

  “Only when it comes to sex,” Amanda instantly qualified.

  There came that painful prickle again. “Are you saying this is only about sex?”

  She hesitated, and in that second he hated her, but when her head slowly shook, his momentary rage began to fade. It left behind a determined kernel to defy her next words. “No, but outside the bedroom, I’m my own woman. You were right to put me in the guest room. Friends with benefits…it will work—”

  Knox didn’t want to hear the rest because her ass would be sleeping in whatever bed he tied her to at night. End of discussion.

  Knox hammered that opinion home with a hard thrust of his hips, cutting off words he didn’t care about. All he cared about was driving himself into the sweetest woman he’d ever held and making damn sure he didn’t lose her after the moment left.

  Just the depth of emotion driving him angered Knox, making him that much harder with Amanda, forcing that much more pleasure on her until she cried out his name. Deep inside, her little sheath pulsed with the rapid beat of her release, desperately attempting to milk the seed right from his cock. With every muscle tense and trembling under the strain, Knox fought to hold out for one more delicious dive into heaven.

  The sweat rolled down his back, and his balls burned as he slammed into Amanda’s tight sheath. It started as a shiver then snowballed into a tremor as every one of Knox’s nerves snapped under the strain. Like lava, his release scorched the inside of his dick as it exploded into the warm welcome of Amanda’s womb.

  In that split millisecond, as his whole body convulsed with the power of his release, Knox wished he had given her a child. A primal male instinct wanted to bind this woman, this pleasure, to him always and forever. Then even that insanity was wiped out as blinding, white-hot ecstasy obliterated everything in his world.

  Collapsing against Amanda, Knox waited for the world to condense back into the pounding beat of his heart, the cool spray from the showerhead and the mumbled protests from Amanda. As he tried to right himself and release her, she almost fell to the floor before Knox caught her.

  This time Amanda really had passed out, putting an end to the evening, at least for a few hours. With her tucked into his bed, he might have a chance at another round before the sun came up. That’s just why, after cleaning her off a second time, he carried her back to his bed. It pleased him to see Cody had left, but Jace still remained.

  “Cody said he’s getting her in his bed the next two nights, and you can kiss his ass.”

  “Like I care what Cody said,” Knox grunted as he lowered Amanda into the middle of the bed. “And don’t think about bogarting the girl tonight.”

  Jace snorted, and a small tug of war ensued as they both struggled to claim the best position. In the end Knox won, pulling Amanda nearly onto his chest as he stretched out. Jace had no choice but to do the spoon from behind. Too bad for him, Knox sighted.

  Closing his eyes, he let his head sink into the mattress with that thought. He should have faded right off into sleep, everything was that perfect. Instead of relaxing, though, the feeling started to worry him. Things were moving way too fast. Just look at the wreckage Amanda already caused, and she hadn’t been there but one night.

  In her natural state, Amanda caused problems. In an agitated state, Amanda made tornados. One had obviously already torn through his room this morning...ah, the hell with it. Knox gave up.

  He felt too damn good to muster the strength for his normal worries. All Knox wanted right now was to slip into the sweet, restful oblivion of sleep. He almost made it when Jace spoke up, making Knox really regret having a brother in his bed.

  “You know she has feelings, don’t you?”

  Smacking his lips, Knox didn’t even bother to open his eyes. “What?”

  “Amanda. She has feelings,” Jace repeated. “You hurt them this morning.”

  Knox didn’t want to talk about that. It had happened, and it was over. He said what he thought Jace wanted to hear in order to shut him up. “Yeah. I know. Wouldn’t happen again.”

  “It better not, Knox.”

  There was a quiet authority in Jace’s tone that finally had one of Knox’s eyes opening. He looked over Amanda’s head to see Jace focused on the woman. A big, callused hand gently stroked her hair as he watched, apparently fascinated by his own caress.

  “You really love her, don’t you?”

  There was no hesitation in Jace’s response. “She means more to me than anything else.”

  “Even your brothers?” Jace looked up but remained silent. Knox didn’t like that answer. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon to be proclaiming your undying love to the woman?”

  “Sometimes things just click, and you feel what you feel.” Jace shrugged. “I know you don’t feel the same and might never, but really, Knox, who are you going to love? Sharon’s gone.”

  “You really want to pick a fight now?” Knox just didn’t have the energy for one. Jace didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “No.” Jace heaved a deep breath and shook it off. “Just promise me you’ll try to remember Amanda is as human as the rest of us and not some toy for you to play with.”

  “Fine. Sure. Whatever. Goodnight.”

  “Don’t ‘fine, sure, whatever’ me. I want you to swear you’ll not do anything more to try and chase Amanda off.”

  Knox had enough of Jace’s superior attitude and shoved up onto his elbow to confront his younger brother over the very woman they argued about.

&nb
sp; “You know, she’s not half as fragile as you act, and I’m not near as big an ass as you like to make me out to be. Did you notice I managed to get the girl back with absolutely no assistance from you? I think that says something.”

  “Yeah,” Jace snorted. “You overwhelmed her with passion when you should have been apologizing.”

  “I apologized, and you know what she did?” Knox gave Jace the moment to guess, but all he sent Knox was a dirty look. Jace knew. “That’s right. She threw it back in my face.

  “As for the rest, I certainly didn’t overwhelm her with passion. If anything, it went the opposite way.” Knox smirked, reveling in the memory. “Trust me, Jace, Amanda’s already figured out how to push every one of my buttons to get just what she wants.

  “You think that scene you walked in on tonight was me being in charge?” Knox laughed at the very idea. “Please, your delicate little lover intentionally riled me up and issued an almost outright challenge about not going on birth control. Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t the damn woman just tell me she was on the stupid pills?”

  Jace snapped at Knox with annoyance. “Probably because you pissed her off with how you asked.”

  “No,” Knox snorted. “Because she wanted to goad me into dragging her ass back out here and fucking it all night long. Believe it or not, your sweetheart likes it my way, rough and hard. So why don’t you just get over yourself and accept that two nights in a row it’s my bed she’s passed out in and me she snuggled up to.”

  The minute he said it, he stopped. Damn, that sounded more than a little possessive. It had Jace looking at him funny, too. As slowly as Knox relaxed back down into the mattress, Jace spoke.

  “Well, I guess I stand corrected.”

  Shit!

  Chapter 41

  Thursday, July 24th

  Thunder rolled over the plains, rumbling even as the window lit up with another blinding flash. Amanda held her breath and counted…One…two….three…

  BOOM!

  That one shook the house. She clenched the blanket tighter in her fist, pulling it just a little up over her nose as another streaking crackle of light blinked down to the ground. The window lit up with so much brilliance it hurt her eyes. There was no time to count before the house shuddered and quaked beneath the force of a boom so loud it could have easily signaled the end of the world. It actually managed to pierce the dead slumber of the man behind her.

  Cody muttered something unintelligible and shifted, tightening his arm around her. Daring a little lift of her head, Amanda looked over her shoulder to see if he’d actually woken up. Long black lashes fanned out, casting fingered shadows across his cheeks with another popping flash of lightning. The harsh white light cut around the handsome planes of Cody’s face, enhancing his very natural sex appeal.

  For all of his hard angles, there was still a softness about Cody, a smoothness to his skin keeping him from the league of ruggedly handsome. Instead, Cody had to settle for adorable. The king of adorable, really, given his personality. Over the past month, Amanda learned Cody really only had three gears. Work, play, and sleep.

  Play. All the brothers scheduled time for that in their days. It was actually a real schedule. In all their brilliance, Knox, Jace, and Cody had devised a rotation system for sharing her. It was pretty simple, each brother got her alone one night a week.

  The other nights were lady’s choice, which really translated into a free-for-all with each brother trying to persuade her to pick him. Amanda didn’t have the stomach to choose, so she tended to take all three at once. Everything was more fun that way.

  Of course, Cody had a tendency to disrespect the system and tried to claim any and every day as his. Amanda brushed a wayward curl back from his cheek and tucked it behind his ear. Knox had been riding Cody to get his hair cut every day for well over a week. The more he nagged, the less likely it became Cody would go see the barber.

  Being in a relationship with three men didn’t just make the sex complicated. All three brothers were so vastly different, and she enjoyed their company in all different ways, but sometimes it made her feel guilty. Like tonight, with the thunderstorm raging, Amanda wanted to be smuggled into the possessive embrace of a man so barbaric she could have put in a loin cloth and sent out to hunt buffalos with a spear.

  Cody may be a lot of things, but he was not a warrior. Disengaging from Cody’s embrace as gently as she could, Amanda slid free of the covers. She hesitated when Cody grumbled and rolled, but he settled back into his pillow without further fussiness.

  Jace’s door stood slightly ajar directly across the hallway from Cody’s. Stepping into the warm, leather and male-scented room, Amanda instantly felt at home. Not her warrior, but more like her Prince Charming, Jace was Amanda’s security blanket, and just being in his room made her feel at peace.

  Lured by his grumbling, Amanda tip-toed over to the edge of the bed. The sheet had twisted and knotted around Jace’s body. Normally a peaceful sleeper, he rolled and tossed tonight. Whatever night demons haunted Jace, she didn’t know, but as he begged and apologized, she didn’t really care.

  Settling onto the edge of the bed, Amanda tried to soothe him. With gentle hands, she stroked through his hair as with even softer words she assured him everything would be alright. It took several minutes for her coddling to wear through the noise of the storm and the chaos of his dreams, but eventually Jace settled down with a sigh.

  “Sharon…”

  She should have seen that coming. Whenever Jace had nightmares, he talked to Sharon. Amanda knew she didn’t have any right to hold it against him, to feel hurt and rejected by his devotion to his former fiancée, but as always, it drove her from his bed. Not that she could escape the woman’s ghost that easily.

  Sharon lingered everywhere, in little knickknacks, in pictures, in the way the brothers would go silent when something reminded them of her. While she’d never say anything, Amanda resented the ghost. Almost all her life, she’d borne the weight of her own past. She might have escaped her own personal demons at the ranch, only to be swallowed whole by the brothers’.

  The only place Amanda didn’t feel haunted was Knox’s room. As Amanda moved through the bathroom into Knox’s room, she found him in much more restful sleep than his brother.

  As much as it might have irritated Knox to be anything like Cody, they were like twins when they slept. Always on the right side of the bed, curved to the left, watches on the nightstand faced so they could roll over in the morning and see exactly what time it was with their first blink of the day.

  Unlike Cody, there was nothing soft or cute about Knox. As another bolt of lightning struck, his face blossomed from the dark shadows. For a second, the light clung to the edges and dips of all the little nicks aging Knox into the sculptured masterpiece he was today.

  The bump in his nose from when it had been broken on the hard shoulder of a bucking bull, the dent in his chin from barbwire whipped into his face when he’d been stringing it up as teenager, the scar hovering just over his right eye from when he’d been thrown from his horse on a cattle drive, all the little marks told the story of Knox’s life and just made him that much more sexy.

  Amanda smiled at the thought as she pulled back the blankets and crawled into his bed. With not near as much gentleness as she’d shown Cody, Amanda lifted Knox’s arm and fixed herself firmly into his embrace. Sluggish as it was, Knox seemed to slowly become aware of her presence.

  His arm tightened around her, tucking her even closer into the curve of his body. At least one part of him rose quickly to attention. Amanda squirmed, trying to adjust her position so he didn’t poke her uncomfortably.

  “Keep doing that and I’m going to wake the rest of the way up,” Knox grumbled into her ear. She went perfectly still, but feared it might be too late when Knox smacked his lips and muttered, “Aren’t you supposed to be in Cody’s bed?”

  “It’s after midnight, that makes it your day,” Amanda whispered.

&nb
sp; “And you were counting the seconds until you could be with me again, is that it?” Knox murmured as he began to string nibbling kisses across her shoulder and up her neck.

  Amanda couldn’t control the urge to roll her head and open more of her neck to his tasting. “I figured being the oldest, your bed would be the safest bet to find a good night’s sleep.”

  He bit her for that one. “You issuing a challenge?”

  “Knox,” Amanda moaned as his hand slid up to cup her breast. “Please, I really am tired.”

  That got her another stinging bite followed by a soothing kiss, before he lifted his mouth to respond. “Then go to sleep. Your participation really isn’t required.”

  Amanda laughed just because she knew he wasn’t kidding. Rolling over to face him, she tried one last futile effort to reason with Knox. She didn’t even get a chance to speak before his head dipped, and his wandering lips began their journey southward.

  “Knox, I have to get up early.” Even as she complained, her back arched, lifting her breast in an instinctive offering.

  “Call in sick, and we can spend the whole day in bed.”

  A whole day…with Knox. The idea was like a rare treat. The very fact he offered warmed her like nothing had in years. Getting a chance to truly spend time alone with any of her guys was rare. While three nights a week she got dragged off to a dark bedroom with just one brother or another, the rest of their time they hung together.

  The prickles of Knox’s midnight beard refocused her attention as he scraped his cheek up one side of her breast and across her sensitive tip. Sighing, she twined her fingers into Knox’s soft tresses and tugged. The contrary man actually obeyed. As his lips parted over her nipple, Amanda gave over all worries about tomorrow.