AVA

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“You did what?” Kaitlyn asked, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

We were in her kitchen, in the house she shared with Duke and Jed. Scents of lasagna and garlic bread made me hungry.

I bit my lower lip. She’d heard me. I didn’t need to repeat it. Even now, I flushed at how bold I’d been. It wasn’t like I’d ever done something like that before. Maybe I should have started with a photo of my cleavage, or maybe just my boobs. But no. I’d felt their cum slip from me all morning while I’d been working and my mind kept turning to them. To what we’d done last night.

They’d made me so hot and horny and eager for them that I’d thought turnabout was fair play. I’d wanted to tempt them, get them all riled up just as I’d been. So I’d taken a racy photo. Sent it.

I went to the granite peninsula and peeked into the other room where the men were settled on the couches in front of an early season football game. They had beers, were kicked back and content until it was time to eat.

We weren’t the little women resigned to the kitchen. No, Kaitlyn had been settled on Jed’s lap but I’d pulled her out of the room under the pretense of checking the lasagna.

Taking hold of my wrist, she dragged me down the hall into the bathroom. She shut the door, leaned back against it with no escape for me.

She curled her fingers at me in a gimme gesture.

“What?”

She arched a dark brow.

“You want to see?” I flushed hotly. “No way! It’s a picture of my… of my, um… downstairs.”

She wilted, pouted. “Oh, yeah. No, I guess I don’t want to see. But, god, Ava. That’s… wow. I bet the guys found it hot.”

I grinned. Kaitlyn didn’t need to know everything. I had no intention of telling her what Tucker had done to me. My bottom clenched around the plug, which was still seated there. I’d barely been able to think about work after Tucker had left. I’d never had such a daring, wild sexual encounter before. I’d fiddled a pencil and played with paper clips daydreaming. Reliving. Imagining what he’d think of next. And that was all before Colton had burst through the door, his dick like a thick pipe down his thigh. He’d put out the Closed sign, locked the door and dragged me into the back room because he’d seen the picture I’d initially sent, then the ones Tucker had taken. He’d fucked me, just as Tucker had said he would, from behind so he could see the jeweled plug as he did so.

“They did. And I have a feeling they’re not done with me.”

“I don’t think I could get up enough nerve to do what you did.”

“You’re sleeping with two men, sweetie. You’re not a prude.”

She laughed, pushed her glasses up her nose. “I know, but what you did is just soooo…”

“Slutty?” I whispered. I needed a girlfriend’s perspective on what was going on with Colton and Tucker, and she was the one who wouldn’t judge for being with two men. Who’d understand the best. Who probably knew what it was like to walk around most of the day without any panties and a plug in her bottom.

She shook her dark hair, which hung long down her back. She’d used to wear it in a sleek, tight bun, but it seemed her men liked it undone and so she kept it that way to please them. I found it sweet. “No, not slutty. Doing hot and sexy things between consulting adults—whether it’s two or three—is not slutty. If that’s what you three like, then go for it. The stuff I do with Jed and Duke proves I’m not a prude.”

I grinned, having a pretty good idea of what they get up to. “You go, girl.”

We fist bumped.

“I was going to say wild,” she added.

“Yeah, that’s me, the wild one,” I grumbled.

My cell rang and I pulled it from my pocket, glanced at the screen, then groaned.

“Who is it?”

“My dad, I’m sure.” I swiped the screen to ignore the call. “I’ve blocked his cell so he’s resorting to other numbers. This is the right area code, so I’m guessing his office.”

“I better go get the lasagna from the oven before it dries out.”

I followed her back down the hall.

“He’s still calling you?” she asked, glancing at me over her shoulder.

“Who’s still calling you?” Colton asked, frowning at me as I came in the kitchen.

Duke had oven mitts on his hands and was pulling the tray of lasagna from the oven. Jed was cutting garlic bread on a cutting board. Tucker was walking around the table laying out silverware. All of them stopped, even Duke with the hot tray in his hands.

“No one,” I countered, grabbing the bowl full of salad and carrying it to the dining table.

“If an old boyfriend is still calling, I want to know about it. He needs to know you’re taken,” Colton replied.

“Off the market,” Tucker added. “Hell, one look at you and he’ll know you’ve got men in your life that know how to take care of you.”

I flushed hotly. Was it obvious I had a jeweled plug in my bottom? Did I look that well-fucked? I felt it, sure, but it wasn’t like I wanted to advertise the fact I was having hot, kinky sex.

“It’s not an old boyfriend,” I replied. They were jealous, and that felt strangely good.

“Who then?”

I sighed, not really wishing to chat about my dad. “My father.”

Both men relaxed, the tense lines of their bodies disappearing. “Tiger, isn’t that a good thing?”

Duke carried the lasagna to the table, set it on a trivet. “Time to eat while it’s hot,” he called.

We took our places and my father was forgotten. For all of two minutes. My mind had been on the press of the plug as I sat on a hard chair, but Colton…

“What’s up with your father, sugar?” Colton asked, placing his hand on mine.

I sighed. They weren’t going to stop with this one, just like I had a feeling they’d be about anything else. Being in my life meant being in my life. I wasn’t used to that.

“My father is bossy like you,” I began. “Pretty much controlled my life.”

“Are you saying we’re controlling?” Tucker asked, a deep frown forming in his brow.

No one was eating, just waiting for me to answer.

“You’re bossy,” I repeated. “All men in this town are.”

Kaitlyn laughed. “She’s right.”

“You like it when we’re bossy,” Jed replied, taking Kaitlyn’s hand and kissing the backs of her knuckles.

Tucker and Colton waited quietly for my answer.

“You’re bossy. But… but I like it. At least most of the time.” I thought of them in bed—and out—how they took me as they wanted, even pinning me down sometimes. They knew I liked it that way, where I could let go and give in to whatever they’d do to me. And I succumbed easily because all they wanted for me was pleasure.

Colton grinned. “And when you don’t like it, you make it very known.”

“Yeah, your little tiger claws come out,” Tucker added.

“And there’s a difference between bossy and controlling. My father doesn’t think of anyone but himself. My mother’s a doormat to him and assumed I’d turn out just like her. Like I said, controlling.”

“Doormat? You?” Colton asked, grinning. He was teasing me and it was obvious.

I smiled at his playful tone. “I had to play piano, take ballet. He chose the private schools I went to, even my major in college. My friends, my activities. My schedule was always full of some enriching activity. The only time I was really free as a kid was the summers, when I was sent to the ranch to be out of his hair.”

“Ava here’s quite the cowgirl,” Tucker said. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “We might have to have our own little Duke rodeo one of these days.”

Colton told Duke, Jed and Kaitlyn about my lassoing, how I was a total ringer.

Jed whistled low.

“Didn’t you say your dad sold his ranch?” Tucker asked.

I looked down at my plate. Nodded.

“Instead of doing a summer internship at his company as I was getting my MBA, I’d decided to go to the ranch. To relax for the summer. Hell, lasso some steers. As his way of saying no to that kind of behavior—it had been fine when I was ten but not at twenty-two—and forcing me into the family business, he sold it.”

“Family business?” Colton asked.

“Yeah. Carter Financial Group.” I poked my fork in the lasagna on my plate as everyone remained silent. I didn’t share that I was rich. Like Midas kind of rich. I believed money couldn’t buy happiness and I’d walked away from it to find just that. I’d done so in Raines. A simple ag store. A simple life. And now, two men.

The Duke ranch was large and successful. The land alone was quite valuable. The family wasn’t poor. From the mineral and oil reserves that had to be on their land meant none of the Duke family had to work. As for Colton, I didn’t know the size of his bank account. I didn’t care. I just wanted him.

“God, Kaitlyn,” I said, filling the silence. “This conversation is depressing and ruining your delicious lasagna.”

“Your family owns Carter Financial Group?” Tucker asked, not paying any mind to my change of subject. “That’s not a family business, that was in… the New York Times last week.”

Clearly, he was well-read.

“Yeah, one I don’t want to run when my father retires, or at least co-run,” I added, not saying he’d wanted me to run it beside Perry. Side by side in corporate life, and married life, too. I had a feeling as soon as I popped out a kid, I’d be co-CEO in name only. “Can you pass me the garlic bread?”

Kaitlyn passed the platter to me and I took a deliciously greasy slice.

Tucker and Colton continued to stare. I sighed. “I didn’t intentionally not tell you about my family, but I didn’t really want to bring it up either. We don’t get along, to put it mildly. I was tired of being told what to do and I wanted out. They threatened to cut me off if I didn’t toe the line. I walked away, bought a little store in Montana. They cut me off like they said. It’s not that complicated. The Carters are nothing like the Dukes. God, your parents are so cool.” I took a sip of my iced tea. “Being a Carter doesn’t define me.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Tucker countered.

I bristled at that.

He stroked his hand down the side of my face when he noticed. “Easy, tiger. Let me finish. Your family, the huge oil company, all of that, it does define you. If it’s as bad as you say, it makes you see what you don’t want. What you don’t want to be like. It shows you what’s really valuable.”

“Tucker’s and Duke’s lives were shaped by what my dad did. Mine, too.” Kaitlyn took a sip of her iced tea. “But we don’t let him, or what happened, affect us any longer.”

“That’s right,” Duke added, leaning over to kiss Kaitlyn, who sat beside him.

“We want to know everything about you,” Colton said, taking my hand and settling it on his thigh beneath the table. His hold was gentle, but his thigh was hard, well-muscled. It reminded me he was many things. Soft and tender, yet strong enough to handle my heaviest burdens. “Good stuff. Bad stuff. All of it.”

I nodded, blinking back surprising tears. Sure, they’d been trying to get in my pants for the past month. They’d been hot for me. But I’d missed the fact that they really were interested in so much more. They’d said as much. Practically hit me over the head with it like a big cartoon anvil. But now? I understood.

This was the long haul for them.

And the way my heart opened, for me, too.