Breakfast was amazing, both the food, and the way Dylan was just so… attentive. I’ve missed him so much and hadn’t even realized it until I’d gotten here. All of those years cooped up in that New York tower selling my soul for the sake of the MacMillan name had really cut me off from all the wonderful things in my life.

After we’d cleaned up the kitchen and Dylan left for his culinary class, I started unpacking, thinking that the task would take long enough to fill up the rest of the night until he got back. Finishing in only 20 minutes instead made me realize just how quickly I had left the condo. I hadn’t even bothered arranging for any of my things to be shipped over; I was too caught up in the momentum of running away from that life I hadn’t wanted. Or maybe running toward this one, even if I still don’t know what my life will end up looking like here.

I already like it better, though.

The townhouse is home, and having Dylan back in my life is heaven. The food… the sex. I stop myself there, still not sure how I feel about how wanton I was with him.

Even if it did rock my world in a way that I’d honestly thought I just wasn’t built for.

I squeeze my thighs together, the memory almost making me decide to go for another round of self-pleasure, but the memory of Jack walking in on me… I just can’t. Not yet. I let out a slow breath, refocusing on settling in. At this point, retrieving the rest of my things from my former apartment would have to involve my mother, and I just don’t know if I can deal with that selfish, nasty woman right now.

Not here, not in this lovely place.

No, I decide, pushing the thought away.

I find myself smiling—not something that usually happens while thinking of my mother, but I’m really enjoying how comfortable I am right now. Earlier, after Dylan left, I stripped down to my panties and one of Dylan’s undershirts. More freedom… plus that intoxicating scent of his. Sexy, but safe, too. Comfortable. I’d never felt that way in any of the homes I’d lived in before, never allowed myself the decadent pleasure of walking around in just my underwear during the middle of the day. I was always too frightened that someone would catch me. Always so worried about what others would think that I’d never let myself just be me, under any circumstance.

Now, I just don’t care.

Even weighed down as I am with all of the townhouse talk, I’m still free of so much stress now that I’ve shrugged off my old life. It has only been two days, but it might as well be a million years for as light as I feel now. I don’t ever want to go back, and letting loose with Dylan—letting myself go and just enjoy what I wanted without feeling bad about it—that’s part of it, too.

I’d told him I didn’t want to complicate things, but really, I’m the only complication. I want to be the version of myself that’s free enough to have kitchen sex again. To act on an attraction that, honestly, has probably been brewing for years.

Jack watching me springs to mind again, and I shove the thought away sharply, doing my best to ignore the surge of heat that almost has me touching myself again. I just slept with Dylan, and yes, my reaction to Jack is a complication.

Doesn’t matter, though. Like I told Dylan, Jack has never liked me.

I push the thought away, and inhale Dylan’s scent again, hugging my arms around myself as I hold his shirt close to my body. He’s so big, so muscular compared to me, that this undershirt is just a tad loose, even at the chest. The boy definitely knows how to shop for comfort, though. This material is so soft and cool, smooth to the touch. It’s got none of the roughness that I’m used to when wearing men’s shirts, but that shouldn’t surprise me.

Dylan loves the pleasures in life, and has never been ashamed of it.

I grin. I’m totally on board with adopting that attitude.

I take a step forward and feel the fabric run lightly against my nipples, sending another spark of pleasant electricity down my chest to pool in my core. I walk over to the four-poster bed, savoring the feeling with every step and deciding I don’t need to ignore it completely. Haven’t I just decided that I, too, can enjoy the pleasures in life?

I lean in to rub my cheek against the well-polished wood of the bed frame, cool and refreshing to the touch, and let my eyes start to drift closed so I can focus on more sensual pleasures. I exhale slowly, bringing my hand down to the front of my panties and then extending my fingers, applying just a hint of pressure. Not enough, but I’ve got all the time in the world.

I can enjoy this.

Before I can really start in, though, I’m snapped out of my reverie by the doorbell. A jolt of shock goes through me, and my eyes snap to the clock. It’s early yet. Work for most people isn’t over yet, and Dylan would have told me if he was expecting someone.

I quell my body’s disappointment at being denied, laughing at myself a little when I consider the fact that the day before, I’d just had the two greatest orgasms of my life. Greedy, much? I can wait a minute, though, so I head for the stairs.

No way am I going to let anyone in right now, but I can at least look through the peephole and see if it’s a package delivery or something.

“It’s the Wildcat again,” Jack’s voice calls out as I take my first steps down the stairs, and I want to groan. Let himself in again, did he? What the hell is he doing here right now? His timing is too much, two days in a row, and I squeeze my thighs together again, telling myself that even if my talk with Dylan earlier had softened my outlook on Jack a bit, I’m still outraged by his behavior yesterday.

I’m definitely not remembering how it felt to have him watch me, no matter how my traitorous body might be reacting.

“Jack, you might own part of this house, but it’s still customary to wait for someone to answer the door when you knock, right?” I snap, putting an extra sting in my voice in self-defense.

“Yeah, well,” Jack says, coming into view as he rounds the bend in the stairway and pauses on the landing. And he’s making no effort to hide the fact that he’s raking his eyes over me. Again. He smirks, adding, “I don’t stand much on ceremony, you know that.”

I try to keep myself calm, but all I can think about is how much of a repeat this is… and how much it’s not. The man had seen more of me yesterday in thirty seconds than he’d seen over multiple summers, and even if my body was very okay with that—very, very okay with it—my mind can’t seem to make peace with it. I immediately regret not grabbing a robe, but I’m determined not to cower.

“Repeat performance?” he asks with a sly twinkle in his eyes, still ogling me.

“You’re such an asshole.”

Being brazen and unashamed with Dylan was one thing—I trust him—but Jack is a whole different animal. I give in to my insecurities and cross my arms over my breasts. I can’t do a whole lot about my legs, but I can at least keep his probing, intense eyes off of my nipples—hard nubs that betray my body’s reaction to him as they press against the fabric of Dylan’s shirt.

Jack’s eyes heat up, and I’m sure he’s just staring to torture me; I know how unattractive he’s always found me, which just makes how I reacted to having his eyes on me in the bath all the harder to bear. When we were teens, he always avoided me or poked and prodded at my emotions, like some sort of neglected toy. Not to mention how many times he swung by Sully’s with a perfect girl in tow; thin ones who looked like models and looked down their noses at too-curvy me.

Exactly the kind of girl my mother had always pushed me to be… all the while assuring me I’d never manage it, of course.

“Back off, Duchess,” Jack says, his face darkening at my asshole comment. “I just came over to talk about the townhouse.”

He takes a step toward me, but then he pauses, remaining on the landing. Shit. Could he see that I’m nervous? Not scared—Jack has always pissed me off. Hurt my feelings, if I’m honest, with his dismissive, sneering attitude lighting up every one of my insecurities—but somehow, for as rough as he’d always been, I’d always known Sully was right about him. Dylan, too, with his staunch support of Jack.

Jack had a good heart under it all… not that he’d ever wanted to share that with me, of course.

I swallow, telling myself to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Jack’s eyes rake over me again, and I realize nothing’s changed between us.

“I come into a house I own, and you get all high and mighty on me? Seriously?” he says, and now he’s stalking up the stairs toward me again. “You really wanna pick a fight, Cate? Now? After everything that happened yesterday?”

His tone had started out belligerent, but that last bit… it had dropped low and deep and done something to my insides.

“Do not remind me of that,” I snap. Self-defense. “I was there and I remember it just fine, thanks. And I wasn’t picking a fight—”

“Yeah?” he interrupts. “Couldn’t tell, what with the way you led with ‘asshole’ for a greeting, eh? Next time feel free to try, I don’t know, maybe ‘hello’ for once in your stuck-up life?”

He’s pushing me so close to the edge right now, and I don’t know if I can keep myself from rising to the occasion. At least my nerves are gone. As is all the ingrained self-restraint I’ve cloaked myself with all my life. I’ve had it with him.

“What the fuck is your problem right now, Jack?” I ask, getting right up in his face. I’m done with retreating. “What exactly has your problem been with me for all these years? Am I that ugly to you?”

“The way you treat people is ugly,” he says, tossing his briefcase down. It tumbles back onto the landing, smacking the floor loudly and making me wince.

Or maybe it was his words that made me wince. They’re untrue, and unfair. God, are they unfair. I’ve always gone out of my way to stifle what I really think from showing, to present the world with a more acceptable version of me than the real one. And he says I treat people poorly? Oh, hell no. If anything, I’ve held back from speaking my mind so many times I could choke with it.

“Years, Jack. Years of this,” I grit out, dropping my hands to my sides and balling them into tight fists. I can feel my voice starting to rise with every word, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s like I’ve been uncorked. “One second you close yourself off to everything, the next you’re picking a fight. I’m done with that in my life, I’m done with people like you in my life!”

“There it is!” he yells sarcastically, raising his hands and taking another step forward, putting him just one step below me. Eye to eye.

Is that supposed to intimidate me? He leans in, getting so close I can feel the heat of his body on my breasts, but it’s not going to work. I’m not backing off.

I hold my ground, staring into his steely eyes.

“I knew it wouldn’t take you long,” he sneers. “Once a spoiled brat, always a spoiled brat. You’re such a piece of work, Duchess.” He sticks a finger in my face, and I swear to God, I almost bite it. “You treat me like I’m trash, Cate? I’m not the one who’s trash in this house right now, sweetheart.”

I smack his hand away, so worked up I swear I’m going to explode.

“Don’t you ever put your fingers in my face ever again if you want to keep them on that hand, you son of a bitch!”

He looks shocked for one split second before grabbing my wrists tightly in his hands. “Don’t talk to me like I’m nothing. I built myself from the ground up, I left that neighborhood behind, and I’m somebody now. You remember that, or else.”

I feel like we’re having two different conversations, but even now—even as I struggle in his grip—I can’t make myself feel scared of him. Pissed off? Oh, yeah. Hurt? Still that, too.

More turned on than I can ever remember being? I’m dying a little inside, because even if I try to lie to myself, I can’t.

Definitely turned on, too.

“Yeah?” I ask, wishing I didn’t like the feeling of his hand on me so much. I’m going for a haughty, dismissive tone, but instead my voice ends up coming out raw and husky. Even to my own ears, I sound like sex when I add, “Or else… what?”

I swallow as I watch the moment his eyes shift from one kind of heat to another. Oh, yeah. He definitely heard me. A second later, I’m in his arms. His lips claim mine in a fierce, passionate kiss that shoots through me like lightning. All that anger that he stoked as he stalked toward me up the stairs explodes out of the center of my chest, spreading throughout my entire body like fireworks as it changes into something totally different.

I can’t let myself think, or else I’ll have a million reasons to pull away, and oh God.

Oh… God.

I don’t want to pull away. I’m more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t even know who I am right now, and I wind my arms around his neck and pull him tighter against me, moaning into his mouth as all my softness presses against the hard heat of his body.

His hands slide up my back and caress my shoulders… my throat… then he takes hold of my face—hands strong and sure, coarse but yielding in all the right ways—and I lean in deeper, letting my tongue slip into his mouth and interlock with his. Moaning again when he takes it and makes it his own.

This is so completely unlike what I felt with Dylan.

Not better; Dylan was perfect. But so is this… in a completely different way. Despite our hateful words only seconds ago, this feels so right, like another piece of what I’d been missing. Another version of what I didn’t think was possible for me, but which feels inevitable now that I’m getting a taste.

I can’t help but let myself fall into it with everything I have, and my mind goes quiet as my body responds.

I’m lost in him.

We don’t break away from each other until we need to come up for air, both of us heaving breathlessly. His eyes scorch into me, and just from that, I moan again, clenching my thighs together when the sound makes the hunger in his eyes flare up, hot and primal and all for me.

He’s mine. Jack is mine.

I’m soaking wet, panting, and for now, I’m not worried about complications, or right and wrong, or a single blessed thing other than what needs to happen between us. What’s going to happen.

Jack’s going to fuck me—he has to—and oh God, I’m so ready.

A sound. A scuff down by the front door, bursting the bubble that had contained just the two of us. Just this, with no history between us and no need—no ability—to think beyond the moment.

Jack turns first, but the footsteps on the stair already tell me what I’ll see. And… yes. Oh my God. Dylan’s standing there, paused on the landing next to Jack’s briefcase, watching us.

“Dylan,” I say, forcing the word out from my suddenly dry mouth. A mix of horrified shame and hot lust spikes through me, and it’s exactly the same as when I’d opened my eyes to find Jack watching me come in the bathtub. Making me come. But now? That feeling is mixed with something that makes my stomach hurt.

I’d just slept with Dylan yesterday. I would never want to hurt him. What was I thinking?

I let out a shuddering breath. The answer is… I wasn’t.

I pull back from Jack, putting some space between us even as he jumps away from me, too. Talking two stairs down with one step, then pausing, caught between Dylan on the landing and me up above. He grips the rail, and I see his knuckles go white.

“Dylan, what the hell, man?” he says, his face going red. “Where did you come from?”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” I blurt out impulsively, although… God, isn’t it?

Dylan grins, and over the hammering of my heart, I start to realize that he’s the only one of the three of us who’s not freaking out.

“Mm-hmm,” Dylan says, arching an eyebrow. “Sure it’s not.”

He winks at me, then lets his gaze travel over both of us. It’s not a look of censure, though. He looks like he’s enjoying the sight, and for a moment, I almost preen, filled with the same heat I’d felt when he’d made love to me in the kitchen.

What is wrong with me?

“Why aren’t you at class?” I ask, wondering if I can get away with ignoring the elephant in the room. I clear my throat and try to smooth out the undershirt, suddenly self-conscious. I must look decadent. I’m so wet I wouldn’t be surprised if my thighs are slick, and I’m wearing his shirt. Dylan’s shirt… while kissing Jack. My nipples are hard pebbles, jutting out through the sinfully soft material, and even now, mortified as I stand exposed to these two men, every breath makes the cotton rub against me in the most erotic way imaginable.

I tug the bottom of the shirt just a little lower, as though I can hide from both of them, but the movement only serves to draw Dylan’s eyes.

And Jack’s.

God, who am I that having them both look at me turns me on even more?

“The chef no-showed today,” Dylan finally replies, bringing his eyes back up to my face slowly. He grins again, then cuts a glance between me and Jack, adding a teasing, “So, you two talking about the contract for the townhouse? Deep… conversation?”

“Um, Jack was…” I start, looking between Jack and Dylan but then letting my voice drift into silence. I’m not really sure how to end that sentence.

Jack isn’t any help at all; he just stares at me, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. His erection is still straining against the tight confines of his pants, and I’m suddenly flooded with guilt again. I just slept with Dylan, he’s gone out of his way to make me feel comfortable and at home, and here I am, starting in with another man.

One I don’t even like.

One who doesn’t like me.

I look back at Dylan, biting my lip as my eyes well with tears. He means so much to me. “I’m so sorry, Dylan, I wasn’t planning on any of… this.”

“It’s okay,” Dylan says calmly, smiling.

That rattles me more than anything. I know Dylan, and I know he doesn’t lie. He doesn’t have a dishonest bone in his body. How can he not think I’m horrible right now?

“I don’t even like Jack!” I shout, driven by the need to make my point despite the fact that Dylan isn’t asking.

My outburst snaps Jack out of his silence, and his expression immediately darkens.

It twists something up inside me to see, and now I feel bad for a whole new set of reasons. God, I was about to go to bed with him.

Not that we would have made it as far as the bedroom.

I draw a shuddering breath, quelling the surge of heat that the thought sends through me, even now. Jack, pushing me up against the wall. Pulling off my panties and balancing my ass on the railing while he…

I blink. No. God. Jack’s face is like a storm cloud, and here I am, imagining things that can never happen between us, no matter how ready I was to have him take me exactly like that a few minutes ago.

I owe him an apology, even if what I’d just said was true. Well, sort of true… but clearly, it isn’t the whole truth.

“Jack, I didn’t mean…” I trail off as he turns hard eyes on me, his expression totally closed off again. I try again, “It’s not that I… Shit.” I give up. Jack isn’t giving me an inch, and I don’t know what to say, anyway. I wanted him. I wanted Dylan, too. And I’m so fucking tired of feeling bad about what I want. I throw my hands up in the air, exasperated. “I just didn’t want this to be complicated!”

Jack’s lips tighten into a thin line, but Dylan laughs.

“I mean, it doesn’t seem all that complicated to me,” Dylan says, smiling at me warmly before his eyes move over to Jack. Dylan looks him over slowly, and even watching it, his gaze feels like molten honey to me, lingering on that mouthwatering erection that—despite Jack’s angry scowl and closed-off expression—is still at full mast.

God, Jack wears suits like nobody’s business, and this one looks particularly sexy against that strong, lean body.

I have no doubt that my own expression matches Dylan’s at this point, but I only realize it when Jack looks back and forth between the two of us, swallowing hard as his scowl turns to a sexy brand of confusion.

“What?” he manages, crossing his arms as if he can shield himself from both of us.

It’s almost cute—not a word I’ve ever associated with Jack—and a part of me wants to laugh. This is the man who’d just taken my mouth like he owned it?

Dylan looks over at me, the same warm heat I’d seen in the kitchen flaring in his eyes.

“Not complicated from where I’m standing, Wildcat,” he says. “I mean, hell. Jack’s hot. I’d probably kiss him, too, if I got the chance.”

I suck in a sharp breath as his words make do something wicked to me. These two men… I bite my lip, stifling a moan. So hot.

Jack makes a small sound, and my eyes snap to his. His confusion has turned into something close to terror.

He shakes his head, holding up his hands in front of him. “Jesus fuck, Dylan!” he shouts. “Why would you think that’s an okay thing to say about me?”

Dylan’s open expression suddenly goes dark. It might be the first time in my life I’ve ever seen him looking anything other than easygoing and relaxed.

“Jack, I’ve never hidden my feelings. If you can’t handle it, get over it, but I’m an adult now, and I don’t have time for that kind of bullshit anymore.”

Jack takes the last few steps down to the landing, his body hugging the wall as if he really is scared of what Dylan’s saying, and he almost trips over his own briefcase as his eyes dart toward the front door. Toward escape. He’s obviously embarrassed and upset, and when he snatches his briefcase up from the floor, he makes a break for it. He doesn’t say another word to either of us, just storms past Dylan and clatters down he stairs to let himself out.

The front door slams hard after him, and I wince at the sound.

“Guess we aren’t talking about the house tonight, eh?” Dylan says, joking lightly as he looks at me with concern. “Are you okay, Cate?”

I draw in a shuddering breath, trying to will my body to ramp it down and my mind to kick into gear. I want to talk to Dylan about… all of it. But complications? Yeah, here they are. In spades.

I just nod, and Dylan—perfect, perfect man that he is—lets me get away with it, not pushing for more.

I’m grateful.

For now.

But oh Lord, as I turn and head back up the stairs, trying to focus on other things—like figuring out what I’m going to do for work out here, how to get my belongings from New York, how on earth the three of us are supposed to sort out the details with the townhouse on top of everything brewing between us—I know that not talking about what happened with Jack… what was said between Jack and Dylan… what happened with Dylan and me…

That reprieve isn’t going to last long.

And, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I want it to.