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Sam’s gaze sliced to Rick as Heather disappeared into the house. He could sense the tension in the other man, the suspicion in his gaze. Dismounting, he led the horse into the stables, ignoring Cade and Brock as they watched him curiously. They were tense, had been for days, and it was only building. He knew the cause and would have welcomed the relief. He needed the relief, the escape from the burning awareness inside his own body. The escape from the brutal memories, the twisting shadows, the knowledge that his escape from the hell of the past was about to backfire.
“I hate checking fences,” Brock muttered, as he threw his saddle over its rack and handed the horse into the capable hands of one of the ranch hands.
“Someone has to do it,” Cade growled as he did the same and began unbuckling the leather chaps he wore over his jeans.
“We have ranch hands, Cade,” Brock reminded him tersely as he removed his own chaps.
Sam could feel the tension building between the two men, and it tightened his own body. He sensed the needs swirling between them all. The effects of ignoring the past, and the need to understand the future. Weariness lay on all their shoulders, but it only served to strengthen the needs rather than to weaken them. It strengthened his own sexual aggression, his need to hear the trembling, erotic cries that poured from Sarah or Marly as they shook in passion.
“You’re getting lazy, Brock,” Cade snapped. “All this laying around the house is making you soft. You’ll survive.”
Sam unbuckled his own chaps and threw them on a convenient hook. He was silent, but he had welcomed the physical labor for a change. A chance to get away from the house, to ease the battle waging between himself and Heather. He grimaced. No, the fight wasn’t with Heather; it was between his arousal and his conscience, which was even worse.
“Goddammit, Cade, it’s dangerous to leave like this,” Brock finally snarled. “We left the women alone. What if the bastard strikes while we’re gone?”
“It’s not the women he’ll go after.” Sam raised his head, watching them both as he spoke softly. “They’re safe for now.”
He watched his brothers’ expressions tighten.
“And you aren’t making things any easier, Sam,” Cade said darkly. “Stop stomping around the house like a bear with a sore paw. Do something about it before you drive us all crazy.”
Sam faced them, aware of the building tension growing between them. It had been there before, he knew, but he hadn’t noticed it, hadn’t really been aware of it before now. It was an anger, a steady remorseless anger that was growing. But not at each other. Sam sensed no anger toward him from the other two men, and he knew he wasn’t angry with them.
It crept through them though, steadily building in strength until they relieved it with the cries and sexual release that spilled from the bodies of the women they shared. Then it would still. Quieting for a while before it began to build again.
“I can’t,” he finally answered Cade’s demand. “You know I can’t, Cade.”
He turned from them, leading his horse to its stall and a supply of oats and water. He could feel his body tightening, needing. In the back of his mind he could almost hear Heather screaming out her release for the three of them. It was a tempting thought, but one he knew would never come to pass. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, place her in danger again.
Behind him, Cade and Brock were silent. It wasn’t the first time he had refused to participate, but he knew the time was coming that he wouldn’t be able to deny it any longer.
“She knows, Sam,” Cade bit out.
Sam shook his head. She knew, but there was no way she could understand. Hell, sometimes he didn’t understand it himself and for months now he had been fighting to make sense of it.
“I know that, Cade.” He shrugged as he turned from them and headed back to the house, and hopefully a cold shower. “I’m more than aware of what Heather knows.”
As he walked away from his brothers, his memories kept returning to the first time, the very first time he and his brothers had shared a woman. It wasn’t after the abuse, but before. Several months before Joe had sent them to Utah. Cade had been more than a little drunk that night, and his partner was more than a little easy. They had all been skinny-dipping at one of the ponds several miles from the ranch house. An evening away from the callus, bitter old fool they called their father.
A little too much beer and raging hormones had triggered the sharing. But Sam remembered afterward more than anything. Something had changed within them. They had always been close, but after that, the bond had felt deeper, stronger. Then after the hell of that summer was over, it had been there to draw them together again.
Sam remembered the bleak isolation of those days, before Cade brought the first woman home. They made certain to never touch each other, so terrified that even the smallest touch would bring back the pain that they had been forced to inflict on each other. Not that it was ever forgotten. It was always there.
He jerked his hat off as he stepped into the house, breathing in a sigh of relief as the cool air slid around his overheated body. Sleep came hard most nights now, and he felt tired to the bone. Tired and horny and aggravated, a hell of a combination. As he closed the door, Sarah stepped from the stairway, looking toward the door curiously.
“Brock coming in?” She was dressed in one of those short, gauzy skirts that looked so damned good with her long tanned legs. A matching peach tank top brought out the honey color of her tan on her shoulders and neck.
“Yeah, he’ll be in soon.” His hand tightened on the brim of his hat. For all her sweet gentleness, Sarah was a wildcat, and he could use the aggressiveness right now. Her nails biting into him, her teeth nipping at him.
“You okay, Sam?” She walked to him easily, comfortably. There was no hesitation, no reluctance as she came into his arms. There was no fear. And it never ceased to amaze him.
“Whoa, I’m hot and sweaty, hon.” He dropped a kiss to her smiling lips. “I need a shower before I dirty you up.”
“You look so sad, Sam.” Her gaze was compassionate and a little aroused as she stepped back from him. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, darlin’.” He attempted a smile, but her expression never changed. “If you want the truth, I want to fuck you silly, but the middle of the hallway might be the wrong place for that.”
“Liar,” she whispered. “You’re after that hot little redhead that escaped into her room to apply her Pocket Rocket before you got here.”
