As I sat there in my office, I threw my pencil across the room. No matter what I focused on and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get Katie off my damn mind. It was getting so frustrating that I found myself cussing in front of my brothers, and I knew they were getting suspicious of me. Caleb was starting to ask what had crawled up my ass and died, and Andrew was shooting me all these funny looks. I had hoped that fucking Katie would have gotten her out of my system like it did so many other women, that finally figuring out what she would’ve felt like all those years ago would’ve put a stop to all this. I thought screwing around with her would swing me back into my single bachelor life.
But instead, it did the opposite.
This insane part of me that was considering settling down was more pronounced now. I was laying my head down at night and wondering why I didn’t have a woman settling next to me. I was cooking in the kitchen for one and getting angry that I wasn’t cooking for two. I was going out to bars, drinking and trying to find myself a woman to pick up. But all the women that approached me were more of the same.
The same, boring old shit I’d done in the past.
Not only that, but I was flirting with Katie a hell of a lot more. And I didn’t care if my brothers were noticing or not. I was wary of doing anything physical in front of them because I didn’t know how Katie would feel about that but, other than that, I didn’t care. I’d taken Katie as mine and marked her as my own in all the ways a man could. I’d pinned her down and tasted her. Taken her in my lap and fucked her until she moaned my name. I’d marked her inside and out, and I knew after I walked away from her that night, that no other man could make her feel the way I had.
That desperate look in her eye haunted me whenever I closed my eyes. I could still hear her pretty little sounds when I took control of her body. I could taste the beer on her lips and her pussy on the tip of my tongue.
A part of me wanted my brothers to know she was mine.
The problem? I knew I wasn’t the only one pining for her. I was well aware of the way Wyatt looked at her whenever she walked into a room. He’d always been shit when it came to hiding his feelings for the women around him. When Caleb and I had walked in that day with the pizza and drinks, I saw the two of them cuddled up to one another. I saw them holding hands. Wyatt was in the middle of professing something to her, and the sight had made my blood boil.
I wanted to know exactly why the hell he was making a move on my woman.
Wyatt wasn’t the only one, however. I saw Andrew’s lingering looks, too. Wyatt’s were more emotional, all romance and love and all that bullshit. But Andrew’s were more primal, eye-fucking her from across the hall. Katie deserved better than that. She wasn’t a piece of meat my brothers could toss around between them. Sharing women was one thing, but sharing Katie wasn’t going to happen. She meant something else to us. She was the culmination of everything we looked for in a woman. She was dedicated and kind, smart as a whip and laid back. She wasn’t high-strung or dependent on anyone, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone boss her around.
I liked that in her. I liked that spunk.
I also liked that it fled the room when I took control.
I tried to keep my mind on the numbers in front of me, but it was hard. The more I thought about Wyatt and Andrew, the more I got to wondering. If Wyatt was professing something to Katie that day, then that meant she’d probably given him a reason to feel the way he was feeling. Had they done something? Kissed? Had sex?
Holy hell, were my brothers screwing around with Katie, too?
The question thundered in my mind, and I couldn’t concentrate. I knew I had to talk to someone about this if I was ever going to get all this shit together by the end of the day. I pushed my chair out from behind my desk and stormed out of my office, not caring who saw me as I strode to Andrew’s office. I knocked on his door rapidly until he opened up, his cell phone pressed into his shoulder.
“The hell, Dylan?”
“We gotta talk. Get off the phone,” I said.
“I’m orderin’ shit for us. Can ya give me a sec?” he asked.
“Two minutes,” I said.
I stepped into Andrew’s office and sat down until he finished. I crossed my leg over my knee, bouncing it up and down. I was nervous. I wasn’t ready to hear that Katie was sleeping with anyone else. She was special and deserved to be treated as such. And if she was sleeping around with any of my brothers, then it would taint what he had together.
It wouldn’t be as special, and I wasn’t ready to tackle that idea yet.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Andrew asked.
“Have you slept with Katie?” I asked.
Andrew stared at me for a beat too long before I sighed.
“You have,” I said.
“Where’s all this shit comin’ from?” Andrew asked.
“Just answer the damn question.”
“The two of us had a date last night, yes,” he said. “I took her out to that massive bonfire that happens every year, and we had some barbecue.”
“And?” I asked.
“And we slept together. Yes.”