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Wes

Ihunchedovermydesk, a weekly expense report spread out in front of me, but the numbers swam together and didn’t make a damn bit of sense. All I could think about was Audrey. After I dropped her off at her condo last night, I went straight home and fucked my hand as I pictured her riding my cock while an electrical ice storm raged around us. I came so hard I almost threw my back out. Right there in my foyer like a goddamned animal. Then I stumbled my way to the bedroom and fucked my hand again, imagining Audrey the entire time. Her tight pink nipples when she stepped out of the spring, the way she looked at me outside the hotel, the way she begged me to make her come. Fuck.

I couldn’t even get peace in my sleep. My dreams were filled with her wrapping that soft, smart mouth of hers around my cock, the sweet taste of her pussy on my tongue, burying myself so deep inside her wet heat I’d make us both see stars. I woke up thrusting my hips into my mattress, so fucking desperate for release. I had to come twice before I could even climb out of bed to get ready for the day. Now here I was at the office. Getting yet another hard-on under my desk while I tried to figure out what the fuck I needed to do with these expense reports.

My brother Cole knocked on my open door, then leaned against the frame with a frown.

I didn’t bother looking up. “Are you going to stand there all day staring at me, or tell me why you’re hanging out in my office when I’m sure you’ve got better things to do?”

“Good morning to you too, asshole.”

I must’ve been in fine form, if between the two of us, I was the asshole. I rubbed my hands over my face and pushed back from my desk. “What do you want?”

He walked up to my desk and dropped a stack of papers on them. “What’s this about you signing over fifty feet of land behind the Secondhand Scorpio without talking to any of us?”

Goddamn it. I’d meant to tell Cole I’d given the land around the hot spring to Audrey. Not the terms of the deal, of course, but at least given him a heads-up that it would be coming through in the paperwork. But I got distracted by the cave and all the events afterward because I couldn’t get my shit together and my dick out of my hand long enough to handle business.

“Sorry. I was going to give you a warning about that yesterday, but something came up. Anyway, I owed a favor to Audrey. There’s a hot spring she likes out there, and we’re not doing anything with that piece of land, so I figured why the hell not let her have it.”

Cole studied me, his expression unreadable. “She’s Seth’s ex.”

My guard immediately went up. “And your point is?”

There were plenty of people who thought I was a piece of shit for being in love with my brother’s girlfriend, and didn’t think any better of me after they broke up. Maybe they were right, but I was well past the point of giving a damn about that anymore. Seth crossed the line first. He knew how I felt about her, which was why he pursued her in the first place. I stepped aside then, because Audrey said yes to him. Clearly, he was the one she wanted to be with. But now that he was gone, all bets were off. There was no way I’d let some bullshit guilt fuck me up again, and I sure as hell didn’t need Cole, of all people, to give me a hard time about it.

“I’m just saying.” Cole leveled his stony glare at me. “Maybe you should be careful.”

“Are you shitting me right now?”

“Hell, Wes.” Cole’s face clouded with impatience. “The whole island is talking about the two of you. No one tells me shit, and I still heard about it. Have you even talked to Seth and told him what your intentions are?”

“I don’t owe him an explanation.” Even as I said it, the words didn’t sit right with me. Regardless of how much he pissed me off when we were young and he was a competitive little shit, he probably had no clue how bad it had been for me. He was still my brother and I was very serious about marrying the woman he dated for five years. That at least warranted a phone call. The fight went out of me as I hunched my shoulders. “Yeah, alright. I’ll get in touch with him.”

Cole gave a short nod. “Good. And the next time you want to give away land that we all own for a piece of ass that caught your fancy, you need to have the rest of us sign off on it first.” He was lucky he wasn’t standing right in front of me, or I would’ve driven my fist into his face. Seeing my expression, he smirked. “You’ve got it bad, brother. Call Seth sooner rather than later.”

He rapped his knuckles on the frame, shutting the door behind him. His way of telling me to cool off. Hilarious coming from Cole, who walked around the office like someone shit in his lunchbox. He regularly sent the staff into meetings with HR because they thought he was pissed at them. But he was right about me calling Seth. I’d been avoiding that conversation for years, thinking it didn’t matter, Audrey would never forgive me. But things had changed. Once we went out to dinner tomorrow, there would be no stopping the rumor mill from reaching him halfway around the globe. He deserved to hear it from me first.

I picked up my phone and thumbed through my contacts. Last I checked, Seth had been in Belize, which was only an hour behind us. I had no excuse to keep putting this off.

He picked up on the first ring. “I’ve been wondering when you’d call.”

“You have?” I rubbed the back of my neck. I should’ve done this right after the earthquake. There had always been gossip about me and Audrey, but it had gone haywire in the last week. “Listen, I would’ve called sooner, but I’ve had a lot going on.”

“So I’ve heard. Benny Hall emailed me yesterday to let me know you were making out with Audrey in front of a bunch of tourists.” The laughter in his voice came through on the line. “Can’t say I miss that small town life.”

“Here’s the thing. I didn’t make out with Audrey in front of tourists, but these rumors aren’t coming out of nowhere.” I ran a hand over the top of my head. “I’m trying to pursue a relationship with her, if she’ll have me.”

Silence.

“You still there?”

“You’re joking, right?” The line crackled as if he was pacing in and out of a patchy service area. “You’re not actually serious about dating Audrey.”

“I don’t just want to date her, Seth. I want to marry her.”

More silence.

I huffed out a breath. “Am I just going to keep having a one-sided conversation here?”

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