I glanced out the big windows, studied the mountains in the distance. The sun was working its way down to them. “Didn’t work out? You could say that.”
I wasn’t going to get into the fact that he shouldn’t listen to our sister, who was the worst sort of gossip.
“What was she, a clinger? Liked two dicks too much? Texted you thirty times so far today?”
“Fuck, no.” I had to assume that had happened to him if he was bringing it up as a possibility.
Tucker was two years younger than me, the Duke wild child and the one to make my mother’s hair go gray. He liked the ladies and liked them wild, especially with his buddy. And they liked him in return. A lot. He took after our father with his blond hair and lean body. I was built more like a brick shit house, easily weighing forty pounds more and was an inch taller.
Julia had called all three of us—adding Gus to the mix—her beefcake brothers. Again, the damned cattle ranch analogy. Tucker, or T for short, had a relaxed nature to him. He was more easygoing, more approachable in comparison to me. Perhaps that was why he looked all relaxed and sated like he
’d gotten fucked the night before and again this morning. Women didn’t call him T-Bone for the family’s steaks.
“Jesus, say you used a condom.”
“What the fuck, T?” I asked, going around the counter to drop myself down into my chair, the big recliner that was perfectly aligned to face the fireplace and the big-screen TV just the way I liked. While my brothers often dropped in, they knew never to sit in my chair. “I’ve never gone bare. Jed, either. We’re saving that shit just like you are.”
We’d agreed when we were teenagers—after our father scared the shit out of us with the ways going without a condom could ruin our lives—that we’d only go bare once each of us found the woman we wanted to claim.
“Then you didn’t get laid. That’s the problem.”
“Will you lay off?” I all but growled.
He raised one fair brow and just waited because his answer was obviously no. His blue eyes met mine, held.
I sighed. “I met Don Leary’s daughter.”
Pulling his feet from the coffee table, he sat up, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, stared at me with a rare seriousness. “I thought she’d moved away when her dad went to jail.”
“I thought so too, but she’s obviously back now.”
“What did she want?”
“Want? Nothing. I was the one to toss her over my shoulder.”
He frowned. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“I didn’t know who she was at the time.”
“I wouldn’t know what she looked like either. She was what”—he did the mental math—“around twelve back then?”
I’d had all day to think about how old she’d been when her father hit my parents’ car, tried to remember what she’d looked like. I only had vague memories of a quiet girl with brown hair sitting in the courthouse. Alone.
“Ten, I think.”
“And now?”
I thought of her lush little body, how tight and wet her pussy was, and shifted in my chair. “Now she’s around twenty-five and hot as fuck.”
The front door slammed and Gus came in the room.
“Who’s hot as fuck?” he asked, settling his hands on his hips, grinning. He was a vet and shared a practice with two others, but I had no idea if he’d come from the animal clinic or if he had the day off. He wore the same thing—jeans, plaid shirt and boots—whether he was working or not. And if there was a hint of a pretty woman, he wanted to know about it.
The idea of Gus getting his hands on Kaitlyn had me clenching my jaw, my molars ready to crack. She was too innocent for the kind of kinky shit he did with his two buddies.
He might be the youngest of the three of us, but he was the biggest, an inch taller even than me. I had the bulk, but he was pure, lean muscle.
“Oh,” T said in response, glancing Gus’s way. Suddenly, his head whipped around to me, eyes full of awareness. “Oh.”