Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“What’s that?” I whisper.
“A reason to be careful.”
Cade and Boone slide their arms around me and hold me tight. All three men touching me, all of us connected. Cade presses his forehead against the side of my head, and Boone rests his chin near my shoulder.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to us,” Boone says.
All I can do is whisper his name in response.
“Before you showed up, we were just working, keeping each other alive. Surviving, because that’s what we knew how to do.”
Cade’s hand tightens on me, and Rhett’s gaze drops for a second.
“But we weren’t living,” Boone says. “The house feels like a home now.”
A sound escapes me, something raw that I can’t contain.
“You made us want the future.” Cade whispers it against my cheek, and something inside me breaks wide open.
I pull Cade’s mouth to mine, then Boone’s, then Rhett’s, and I try to answer them with my kisses, because my heart is too big right now for me to form words.
Everything that follows is more than just bodies coming together. It’s a vow made with hands and mouths and breath. Mine, we tell each other silently, over and over again.
Mine, always.
We lie tangled together afterward, Rhett on his back with one arm beneath my head, and my hand on his chest, directly over his heart. Cade is behind me, his body curved along mine, and his breath warm against my neck. Boone lies on Rhett’s other side, reaching carefully across his brother to rest a hand on my hip, stubborn even in his tenderness.
Outside, somewhere beyond the blackened windows, men wait with rifles and radios, but we have a few more hours here in this bed.
I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of them and memorize the feeling of their hands on my body. The weight and the warmth of them, the roughness and the tenderness.
Rhett covers my hand with his, Cade’s lips brush my cheek, and Boone’s fingers flex at my hip.
All of us, together, always.
CHAPTER 41
RHETT
The dawn is cold and colorless. The valley still sits in shadow, quiet in the deceptive way places get before men start dying in them.
I’m lying prone beneath a screen of spruce and deadfall, with my rifle braced, and my radio against my shoulder.
It feels natural and familiar, except for the part where I’m constantly aware that Wren is two ridges back at Novak’s forward command post, close enough to hear the operation unfold, but too far for me to put my hands on her if things go sideways.
She’s with federal agents, well outside the projected engagement zone, but ready to help interpret the terrain in real time. She’s effective, but she’s also scared.
I saw it in her eyes before we left her there, though I don’t think anyone outside of my brothers and me would notice. While agents with rifles and armor moved around her, she had her eyes fixed on the topo map, pointing out drainage that could distort radio reception and old game trails that Turner might have widened into escape corridors.
Her head was up, and her shoulders were square, but when I stepped close, I saw that her pupils were too wide, and her mouth was pressed flat.
“Listen to Novak,” I told her quietly.
She looked up at me. “Don’t give me orders because you’re scared.”
“I’m giving you orders because I’m scared,” I said.
Just for a second, the hard line of her mouth eased. “Then take my orders: Come back.”
I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to drag her a million miles away and keep her there until this is over. I wanted things I had no business wanting, but I only touched the inside of her wrist with two fingers to feel her pulse beneath her skin. “We’ll be back.”
“All three of you,” she said, and it was also an order.
Boone stepped in, his medic bag already over his shoulder, pressed his mouth to her forehead, and said something I didn’t catch.
Cade stood behind him with a lethal quiet that meant he was already halfway into the work. He touched the back of Wren’s neck and squeezed.
I cupped her jaw and kissed her once, hard, but brief. A claim and a vow.
“Go end this,” she said.
Now, with the sun rising over the valley, I intend to do exactly that.
Static clicks in my ear. “Forward command to all elements,” Novak says. “Check in.”
The DEA assault team answers first in their units: Alpha One, Alpha Two, and Bravo set.
Then Cade’s voice comes through, “Smoke set.” He’s on the east ridge, tucked into an overlook with a scoped rifle and enough elevation to see the staging area’s northern edge. He picked the position, and Novak listened because he’s smart enough to recognize a man who understands the terrain better than a satellite image.
“Mouth set,” Boone says. He’s with the DEA entry team near the lower drainage.