Reese was pretty sure it was Sloan’s touch that kept Rylan talking.
“Bandits killed my parents,” he confessed. “Raped my mom and my dad and then killed them. Or hell, they could’ve killed them and then raped them. I only got there in time to bury the bodies after those bastards took off.”
Reese swallowed the words of sympathy that she would’ve been pissed if Rylan had expressed before. She knew he wasn’t sharing these things because he wanted them to feel sorry for him. He was sharing for the same reason Reese had just admitted to her desperate desire to have a child. Because the explosive connection forming between the three of them was somehow summoning these confessions.
“Hard to say,” Sloan agreed.
“I wasn’t too broken up about it,” Rylan went on. “Mom probably welcomed death, and Dad? Well, in a few years, I would’ve put a knife in his belly anyway.”
“He mistreat your mom?” Sloan asked.
“Is whoring her out mistreating her? Is making his son do it too so that we could eat and have clean water all that bad?” Sarcasm colored Rylan’s words.
“Yeah, that’s pretty bad.” Sloan tugged on Rylan’s head, turning it so the man could see the same thing he’d offered Reese earlier—acceptance with no judgment.
Rylan closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “First thing I remember thinking when I came back and saw the two of them dead was Good. Now she’s not hurting anymore.”
“You get those bandits?” Sloan asked in a low voice.
Rylan’s face took on a savage expression. “Took three years of tracking, but yeah, I did.”
Silence fell over the bedroom. Reese ran her hand over Rylan’s bare chest, and then, for the first time since she’d met him, she actually took the time to study the tattoos inked on his golden skin. She traced her finger over one name in particular.
“Is this your mother’s name? Julia?” It was the only woman’s name she saw, unless there were female versions of Connor and Pike she didn’t know about.
“Yeah,” he said sadly.
“I guess your dad’s name isn’t anywhere on here.”
“Nope.”
A wry smile touched her lips as she continued to read the random lines of black text. “What do all these things mean?”
He shrugged. “Just words of wisdom I picked up over the years. Names of people who saved my butt at one point or another. Some poetry I heard.”
Sloan leaned over Reese’s body and dragged his thumb along Rylan’s left side. “I know this one. My ma read it to me once when I was a kid.”
Reese peered in to take a closer look.
Do not go gentle into that good night, it read.
She laughed softly. “Suits you,” she told Rylan. “Nothing you do is gentle.”
“I can be gentle when I want to be,” he protested.
Then he rolled all the way over until the two men formed a wall on either side of her. He placed a fingertip at the hollow of her neck and began a slow trek down the center of her chest, stopping at the splayed fingers Sloan still rested on Reese’s pelvis.
“I’m done with this talking but I’m not sleepy,” Rylan drawled. “Anyone got any ideas?”
Sloan’s hand drifted between Reese’s legs. “I’ve got a few.”
*
Reese couldn’t get out of bed fast enough the next morning.
She slipped out from underneath Sloan’s heavy arm and quickly pulled on a pair of stretchy pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt. Sloan’s eyes tracked her every move, but thankfully he stayed silent. Rylan, meanwhile, slept on, shifting restlessly as if he missed Reese’s body next to his. When Sloan reached over and placed a hand on Rylan’s shoulder, the blond man immediately settled.
The two of them looking lazy and sated in her bed simultaneously made her want to break out in hives and rip her clothes off and go for round three. Or would it be round four? She’d lost track of all the orgasms they’d given each other last night.
The memory of their hot touch rendered her clothes tight and uncomfortable. Her body urged her to return to the bed and crawl between the two men, but her racing mind wouldn’t let her.
What was she actually doing?
Why had she slept with both of them?
How could she ever go back to the ordinary practice of sleeping with one man?
How could she ever go back to her ordinary practice of sleeping with men she didn’t care about?
She’d known Rylan was trouble from the very start. It was why she’d resisted his charms for so long. And she’d known keeping Sloan at a distance, physically anyway, was vitally important in order to keep up the pretense that despite everything they’d shared, he wasn’t necessary to her well-being.
So why had she let them both in?