At the top of the stairs, I took two steps and ran into a wall—a hot, steamy wall of muscle. I shrieked in surprise at the full-body collision, every inch of my bare skin connecting with every inch of his. Bouncing off, I did my best to steady myself while Holden gaped openly at me. The hallway was dark, lit only by one bedroom door standing open behind me. But once my eyes adjusted, I could see that he was stark naked, too. Steam curled up from his skin, still damp from a hot shower.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered.
“Wow,” I blurted out. I’d never seen so much skin, and it was glorious. Every muscle in his body was well-defined and bulging. Chill bumps covered his skin from the chilly air in the hallway, and his dark nipples were hard. I’d never wanted to touch something so bad in my life. Before I could think up a good excuse, I reached up and ran my fingers across the expanse of one of his massive pecs. My fingertips grazed one of his erect nipples, and we both sucked in a breath at the same time.
My eyes traveled down his sculpted torso, his narrow hips, to the dark patch of hair around his cock, which had begun to stir. I couldn’t tell for sure, but once it was hard, it might be even bigger than Sawyer’s. I gasped at the thought, biting my lip as my eyes returned to his. A long, silent moment passed.
“I was just going—” I broke off, gesturing to my room behind him.
“Me, too,” he said, his eyes fixed on the open bedroom door behind me. “I just got out of the shower, and…” He stopped speaking, his throat working as his eyes drank me in like a man dying of thirst, finally quenched.
“I better go,” I said, edging around him. He flattened himself against the wall, as if frightened we might accidentally touch as we eased past each other. As soon as we’d switched places, I dashed to my room. Closing the door, I dove onto my bed, stifling a shriek in my pillow. I’d never been so humiliated, and excited, and giddy at once, and I just couldn’t contain it. Sometimes, you have to scream it out.
At last, I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and texted Haley. “Call me asap.”
The next minute, my phone rang. “What happened?” she demanded in lieu of a hello.
“I just ran into Holden,” I said. “Naked.”
“You do live together,” Haley said. “And they’re guys. My brother still runs around naked sometimes.”
“Your brother is an animal.”
“Okay, true,” she said. “But they just don’t know how to live with a girl anymore. They probably trot around naked all the time when you’re not there.”
I swallowed hard at the thought of them all walking around naked. Together. Oh God. I was seriously in deep.
“I was naked, too,” I admitted.
“You were not!” Haley squealed.
“I was,” I said, covering my face. “I ran upstairs naked, and he was getting out of the shower, and boom. Full-frontal connection.”
“Can I trade lives with you?” Haley sighed.
“Wait, why are you even up?” I asked, pulling my phone away from my ear to look at it. It was four-thirty in the morning. “Are you out partying?”
Haley yawned loudly. “No, I’m binge-watching Supernatural.”
“I’m jealous.”
“Shut up, you have hot cowboys traipsing around naked in your house.”
“Who I can’t have,” I reminded her.
“I’ll take them,” she said. “All three of them.”
“Preferably at once,” I said with a shiver.
“Amber,” she said, sounding scandalized. “You’re supposed to be in Wyoming to get your ducks in a row, not to get your dicks in a row.”
“Oh, I don’t want them in a row,” I said, rolling onto my back and pulling the blankets up over me. “I want them in a circle.”
21
Waylon
The table was silent as we all sat down to eat breakfast. Finally, I couldn’t take it. That bastard was holding out on us.
“You gonna make me ask?” I growled at my brother.
Sawyer smiled, finishing his mouthful of eggs before answering. “Nah,” he said. “Not that. Just trying to put off the inevitable because I know you’re going to be pissed.”
“Did something happen?” Holden asked, not looking up from his plate.
I watched him as Sawyer spoke, though. When that cheating bitch had run off on me, I’d been fine. Holden had taken it hardest. He was the reason I’d shot down the women they’d brought home since then. But it was harder now. I couldn’t simply find a reason to send Amber home, though God knew she had made enough messes. I had blown off other women for far less legitimate reasons. But despite Amber’s mishaps, I couldn’t send her packing. She was here for two and a half more months, like it or not.
“I told her about Maria,” Sawyer said. “I didn’t mean to, not really. We got to talking, and she’s easy to talk to.”
“Dangerously easy,” Holden said. “You’re going to scare her off.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I reminded them. “She’s not a woman.”
“She sure looks like a woman to me,” Holden said.
A picture of her bending over with her ass in the air flashed through my mind, and my cock throbbed painfully hard. It did not agree with my brain on this one.
“I like her,” Sawyer said. “I think we should feel her out.”
“She’s our sister,” I reminded him.
“We’re all adults, and our parents happened to get married,” Sawyer said. “She’s not our sister.”
“I like her, too,” Holden said quietly. “And there’s nothing sisterly about her. I say yes.”
I’d been afraid of that.
“We all know we need a woman around,” Sawyer said. “And she’s already here. She seems to like us all, right? This is what we need. Someone who won’t come between us because we’re all there for her. She doesn’t have to hide it or run off with one of us. She gets all of us. And we get her.”
“That all sounds good to me,” Holden said. “Who cares what anyone else thinks? This is between us and her. No one else needs to know.”
“And if they find out, fuck them,” Sawyer said. “The only thing that matters is that she’s happy with it.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I like her as much as you do. Trust me, I do. But regardless of what we need, we have to put what she needs first. And the last thing she needs is more scandal. She came here to get away from that.”
“If we keep it quiet, there won’t be a scandal,” Sawyer said.
“But they will find out,” I said. “You saw how easy it was last night. You know what they’d say about her if they got wind of it. The senator’s daughter is living in sin with three men? Not to mention, her own stepbrothers?”
“You’re right,” Holden said. “They’d crucify her. The gossip about her arrest would be nothing compared to this.”
“If we’re not in agreement, then it doesn’t happen,” Sawyer said. “But I think you’re making a mistake.”
The picture of Amber flashed in my mind again, the look she cast me over her bare shoulder, how she bent all the way down to her toes so I could see every inch of her. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was right. But we couldn’t risk her reputation, no matter what we needed.
“Then it won’t happen,” I said. The legs of my chair scraped across the floor as I stood. “Do whatever you need to do to stop thinking about her.”
22
Amber
I needed to get laid. Instead, I was locked up in a house that was a hundred times worse than a convent. In a convent, I’d be around a bunch of other women, and we’d all be covered head to toe so no naughty thoughts could enter our minds. Here, all I had were naughty thoughts. Could you blame me? I was locked up with three irresistible men who were intent on resisting me, if the next week was any indication.
I hadn’t seen so much as a chink in Waylon’s armor. He’d been especially surly when I mentioned all the tourists I’d seen heading up towards the ski areas.
“I’
m just trying to help,” I said lightly, letting my gaze stray towards the empty cabins behind the house.
Even Sawyer met my attempts to flirt with stoic indifference.
The snow remained on the ground, a good foot of it. Instead of turning grey and being pushed into huge sooty mountains, as it was in New York, it remained pure white here. The first day, it blew in swirls across the fields, but after that, a sparkly crust developed on top of it. For the first time in my life, I understood where the term winter wonderland came from.
And it wasn’t from wondering when the slush would stop ruining my boots.
I went out walking every day, trying to cure my blues. I helped with meals and taking care of the house. While the guys were out, I read and looked at Pinterest for decorating ideas, so I could spruce up the house. Maybe I was only going to be there a couple more months, but it wouldn’t hurt the house to look a little more welcoming and less like a bachelor pad. At least they didn’t have calendars with naked girls or beer signs hanging around.
I even started ordering things to decorate. I called Haley every day. But it was lonely as fuck, if I was honest. Despair started to pull me down like quicksand no matter how many times I told myself I was only there for three months, and that their rejection was warranted and not thrice the equivalent of Charlie’s.
After all, Charlie had wanted me back. I’d finally fought through the haze of that night and recovered at least some of the memories I’d blacked out.
We’d gone out dancing, and as Haley’s brother predicted, I’d ended up schnockered. A large, sweaty man in too-tight pants was buying me drinks, which I happily accepted.
“I told you I was going to get laid,” I bellowed in Haley’s ear, draping my arms around her neck as I stumbled against her on the dance floor.
“Um, I’m going to have to veto your choice of de-virgination devices,” she said. “That guy has date rapist written all over him.”
“But I want him,” I moaned. “So it’s not rape.”
“You don’t want him, you want to forget Charlie, and you’re hammered,” she said. “So hammered that they’re going to kick us out if I don’t cut you off soon.”
“I’m not that drunk,” I screamed. “I can still stand on one leg!” And with that, I proceeded to demonstrate by pulling my leg straight up—thanks for those ballet classes, Mom—and hooking my foot behind my head. And then I fell flat on my ass.
A minute later, as predicted, the bouncers asked us to leave. “We should go find Charlie,” I said as I swerved out the door onto the sidewalk.
“You hate Charlie, remember?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “But maybe now that I caught him hooking up with another girl, he won’t have an excuse not to hook up with me.”
A transvestite hooker was standing outside smoking a cigarette, wearing a bandage-sized skirt and red heels even though it was October. “Oh, honey, that’s just sad,” she said, giving me a pitying look.
Haley and I started giggling madly, until the hooker moved further off down the street, casting us disparaging glances.
“But I know him, and I love him,” I said as I fell into a cab with Haley. “Shouldn’t he be the one I give it up to?”
“Shut up or I will hit you,” she said. “The only thing you’re giving to him is more soup burns.”
The cabbie dumped us off at Haley’s, and we ran up to her flat, making way more noise than was necessary. Mark stepped out of the kitchen wearing his boxer shorts, a carton of Chinese food in one hand. “Hey, look, it’s my sister and her drunk friend,” he said.
“Go die in a hole,” I said, heading for Haley’s room.
“Charlie called me,” Mark said behind me. I turned to see him leaning on against the island in the kitchen, digging through his food with a pair of chopsticks.
“What’d he say?” I asked, a ridiculous lurch in my stomach. I was pretty sure it was nerves, not the desire to puke, but I couldn’t be certain. I’d taken a lot of shots.
“Oh, just that you weren’t answering your phone,” Mark said.
I grabbed for my purse, rummaging for my phone, but before I could find it, Haley wrenched it from my hand and dashed into her room. I stumbled after her, protesting all the way.
“Just let me see what he said,” I said, grabbing for my phone, which she had extracted from my purse.
She thumbed through my texts. “He said…blah blah blah, bullshit bullshit bullshit, lies lies lies.”
“What did he really say?”
“He’s worried about you and wants to talk. I guess not too worried to stop getting a blowjob, though. Notice how he waited until he came to start texting.”
“You’re right,” I said, taking my phone. “I’m erasing his number…right after I text him.”
We were still wrestling over the phone when Mark stepped into the room, still munching on his Chinese. “That would be hot if one of you wasn’t my sister,” he said, holding up his phone to snap a picture. “I’ll send this to Charlie, tell him he turned you into a lesbian.”
We thought he was kidding, but fifteen minutes later, Charlie texted to say he was outside. Haley threw open her window, which overlooked the street. “Amber says to eat shit and die,” she yelled.
“I just want to talk,” he yelled back. “Amber, just hear me out.”
“What?” I said, sticking my head out the window next to Haley. I cupped my hand around one ear and leaned out further. “I can’t hear you. It sounds like you’re talking through a mouthful of pussy.”
“Come down and talk,” he yelled. “Please?”
Someone yelled at us to shut up, but I didn’t care. It was like a hole had been blown in my chest, and it was full of pain and anger and vengeance. And tequila. But the point is, I wanted him to hurt like I was hurting.
“Do you have any soup?” I asked Haley. “We could stick it in the microwave.”
“I have something better,” she said.
While Charlie howled for us to come back, we ran to the fridge to get the two dozen eggs she had there.
“Psycho,” Mark muttered. “I’m getting out of here.”
He went to his room, and we went to the window.
To be honest, I don’t think I hit Charlie with a single egg. My hand-eye coordination was not its best. But Haley had played softball for a while, and her aim was much more accurate. So I handed her eggs, and she threw, and Charlie swore at us.
And then the cops showed up.
23
Amber
After a week of weirdness with my stepbrothers, I couldn’t take it anymore. One night when the guys had gone to bed, I was creeping along the hall to the bathroom, careful to step lightly so I wouldn’t wake them, when I saw a light on under Holden’s door. He’d been the least weird to me since I’d hit on pretty much all three of them, so I figured it was my best shot. I gathered my courage and tapped on his door.
I heard him murmur something, so I pushed open the door. He looked up from where he was sitting at an easel, and his eyes went wide with shock. He jumped up, his big thigh knocking into his canvas, which went crashing to the floor, along with tubes of paint and brushes.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, flustered by the chaos. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought I heard you tell me to come in, but maybe you were just talking to yourself. No judgement, I mean, I talk to myself all the time.”
“It’s okay,” Holden said. He’d grabbed up the canvas and replaced it on the easel, but not before I saw enough to know he was painting a naked blonde girl.
“I didn’t know you painted,” I said, relaxing a little. I knelt to help him gather up the tubes of oil paints.
“Yeah,” he said, not looking at me. I was pretty sure he was blushing.
“That’s really cool,” I said.
“Uh huh.”
“I mean it,” I said, putting my hand on his. He paused in his frantic gathering and stared at our hands. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect a cowboy to be a painter, too. Bu
t that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
He swallowed, still staring at our hands. “I got a lot of shit for it growing up around here,” he said quietly. “Guys around here pride themselves on being tough. Not painting.”
“Well, I think it’s sexy,” I said. “It makes you…unpredictable. There’s more to you than meets the eye.”
“I don’t know about that,” Holden said. “I’m pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said, admiring his arms, clad in a t-shirt. He was wearing light blue flannel pajama pants with little horseshoes on them.
He looked slightly embarrassed when he noticed me studying them. “Our ma,” he said.
“Could you be any cuter?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
Holden finished gathering all the paints into his two giant paws and replaced them in the empty coffee canister that they’d spilled from.
“So uh…what’d you stop in for?” he asked, scratching his head and settling his huge frame onto the tiny stool in front of the easel.
“Can I see it?” I asked, nodding towards the canvas.
His face turned red and he shifted uncomfortably. “I usually don’t show people until they’re done,” he said.
I gave him a sly smile. “Even your model?”
If it was possible, his face got even redder. “I—I didn’t think you saw it,” he stammered.
“I saw a little,” I admitted, slipping across the room to stand beside him.
The painting wasn’t exactly beautiful. I didn’t think it would be displayed at the MET anytime soon, but it had a certain appeal. The kind of appeal that calendars with scantily clad women had.
The woman in the painting was definitely me. I thought. She had long blonde hair falling around her shoulders to her waist, long legs that were a couple shades paler than mine, and boobs that were maybe a bit exaggerated. Okay, more than a bit. A couple cup sizes. He’d put a bit of a fantasy spin on me, if I was honest. There were no problem areas on that painting.
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