Page 117 of The Widow and the Wanted

Like he would cross hot coals on his knees if I called him, and be grateful for every burn because my voice had led him there. My grip tightens.

“Look at you,” I breathe, praising him between thrusts. “Mon beau roi.” Thrust. “My beautiful king.” Thrust. “You pleased us so well.” Thrust.

“Yes— Okee, I’m so fucking close.”

His lashes flutter, heavy and dark at the edges, but he keeps looking at me. Worshipful. Shameless. Mine in a way no law could change.

But not weak. Never weak.

He is offering. Giving me the strong line of his back, the spread of his thighs, the soft, vulnerable look no living soul has seen but me—and now Lula.

I ease deeper, slow enough to feel every inch of him grip me tight.

He twitches around me, a deep groan tearing from his throat. Lula gives a startled gasp as he jerks in her hand, his spend spilling over her fingers in thick, pearled pulses.

“My goodness,” she says, wonder slipping through the tease as she keeps stroking him through it. “You have been saving that up like coin in a mattress.”

Despite myself, I laugh against Boone’s shoulder.

He has always been like this. All swagger and filthy mouth until pleasure takes him. Then his body tells the truth for him.

I remember the first time.

A shady corner of a shed beside the barracks. Midafternoon, sun high, two dozen men close enough that every sound mattered. I had sunk into him slowly, one hand clamped over his mouth while the ordinary noise of soldiers, horses, and work swallowed what it could of his cries.

But there had been no hiding the rest of him.

He had spent so steadily it slipped from his fist and drew a shining thread to the packed dirt below as I fucked him. I remember staring at it, half dazed, struck stupid by the proof of how badly he wanted me. How much of himself he could not hold back.

He trembled beneath me then just as he trembles now, undone and giving.

Boone buries his face in the blankets, but his body gives him away, clenching around me hard enough to drag a curse from my mouth.

That does it.

I shove in deep and come with his name caught between my teeth.

Lula rises beside me, sliding one hand over my chest as she pulls me into a slow, deep kiss. Pleasure crashes through me in heavy waves, Boone tight and shaking beneath me, Lula murmuring sweet encouragement against my lips until there is nothing left of me but breath, heat, and the two of them holding me there.

For a moment, none of us speaks. There is only the bed beneath us, our bodies quieting, and the three of us tangled together as though the world outside has vanished.

The fire crackles low in the small stove. The music downstairs has softened into something distant. Lula lies between us, her cheek against my chest, Boone curved along her other side with one arm thrown over both of us.

I stare at the ceiling, and a question appears that frightens me more than any sorcery: if we survive this ordeal, what will become of us after?

The question sits in the dark above us, unanswered. Perhaps there is no answer worth having yet.

As the three of us lie tangled and breathless, Boone and I gaze at each other over the soft curve of Lula’s body. Her head rests against my chest, one leg draped lazily across Boone’s thigh. The room is quiet except for the dull sound of drunken gamblers singing “The Girl I Left Behind Me” downstairs.

I lift my hand and brush a damp strand of hair from Boone’s forehead, letting my fingers linger there. I watch the worry cross his face like a storm cloud over the Ozarks.

His gaze drifts from me down to Lula. Without a word, he turns toward her and gently cups her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw as though she were made of something far more precious than flesh and bone. He leans in and presses a slow, lingering kiss to her forehead, then another to her lips. He pulls back, his voice gone rough.

“You are a wild card, ain’t you? Walked straight into the middle of us, and we never saw it comin’.”

Lula’s expression changes. Softens in a way I have not yet learned how to bear.

Boone looks back at me then, the conflict plain in his eyes. He has fallen. Hopelessly. And we both know it.