Page 234 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I don’t realize how tightly wound my body is until my knees suddenly threaten mutiny.

“Jeez,” Duke mutters.

“You okay?” Cody asks.

I laugh softly. “Define okay.”

And then Silas is in front of me, one hand sliding carefully along my jaw like he’s confirming I’m real. His thumb brushes beneath my eye.

“You stood up to her,” he says.

I shrug weakly. “I have unresolved authority issues.”

Duke barks out a laugh.

Cody’s mouth finally softens.

And then Duke kisses me, both hands wrapping around my waist like relief itself.

“You terrifying little menace,” he murmurs against my mouth.

He lifts me with that casual brute force I never stop craving and sets me on the edge of the desk. I hear papers crumple, a pen rolling, the quick gasping breath in my own lungs as all three of them crowd in.

I could swim in the heat radiating off their bodies.

I brace myself for Silas’s mouth first, but it’s Cody who kisses me. It’s always shocking, the gentleness in him now. The soft pressure, like he’s tasting a memory.

“You always taste like trouble,” he whispers into my mouth.

Always. Like I’m a flavor he invented.

A hand is already between my legs, shoving up the heavy wool of the borrowed sweater, tracing the elastic of the underwear I definitely did not pick for seduction.

White, ribbed, probably shrunken from a violent dryer cycle.

Cody’s fingers are long, methodical. He finds me wet with embarrassing ease.

I blush in front of all three of them and then Silas is behind me, sliding the sweater up and off so fast I barely register the cold breeze against my skin before his hands are there, covering me, stroking a thumb across the top of my breastbone.

It’s greedy and tender at the same time. Silas is anger, protection, and sex knotted together so tight it might detonate if he let go for one second.

I don’t get a chance to process because Duke is pushing between my knees, mouth hot, words hotter: “Lie back.”

The tone, low, hoarse, a twitch of violence at the edge, reminds me exactly why I’m soaking through the useless cotton barrier. I do it, sliding back across the polished wood.

A pair of hands cage my arms above my head. Cody again, holding me down, thumb tracing the inside of my wrist in time with my pulse.

“Relax, Annie,” he whispers.

I arch, meaning to twist away, but only end up grinding into Duke’s open hand.

“No,” I correct, “I can’t…” But whatever excuse I’m going to make is destroyed by the first sweep of his tongue.

His stubble scrapes the inside of my thigh, maddening and soft, and his hands clamp under my knees to anchor me.

Cody’s grip tightens on my wrists but he makes a shushing sound, soothing, a slow drag of his nose beside my ear.

I want to spit defiance but all I can do is whimper as Duke devours me, every lick calculated to drive me insane.