His litany of questions was cut off as I shoved him backwards, the man landing heavily on the bed beside his brother, and that stopped me in my tracks. The two of them together, in the bed, one naked, one with large swathes of his chest revealed by the long arm holes of his shirt. It wasn’t hard to imagine a whole other scenario…
“See something you like, Riley?” Haze asked with a cheeky smile, patting the space between the two men. Colt’s expression of irritation at his brother quickly shifted to something much, much hungrier. “Come here, baby. We’ve got what you need. You already know that Colt boy and me, we’ll do you right.”
“I thought I told you to get everyone up?” Ryan asked, appearing at the door with a frown at his brothers, but when he turned to me, he smiled. “Hey, Riley. You sleep all right?”
“Um…yeah,” I replied.
“Come and have some breakfast then,” he said, then turned back to the boys. “Haze, what the fuck are you doing?”
He seemed to be doing his best to look up my shirt, prompting me to jerk it down with a hiss.
“Just seeing if the carpet matches the drapes—” Haze replied lazily.
Colt grabbed his pillow and walloped his brother hard with it, then used his body weight to keep the thing over his head, in the face of Haze’s hysterical cries. I smiled then despite myself, seeing a million pillow battles fought when we were kids. While they were distracted, I dropped down and retrieved my yoga pants, wriggling back into them lickety-split, Ryan and Colt looking on.
They stared like they were trying to store every movement, every glimpse of skin, away for replaying later, but my stomach put paid to any idea of working out what was going on there, rumbling noisily.
“Is that bacon cooking?” I asked. “I’m starving.”
I wanderedout into the big open plan living area and found Fen reading the paper while eating his breakfast and Blake puttering around the kitchen.
“Oh my god…” I groaned at the smells coming from it, drawn closer as if under a spell. Blake shot me a sidelong smile, retrieving a small bit of bacon from a plate with paper towel on it and offering it to me. It was the perfect mix of salt, grease, and a tiny bit of crunch, but not so crispy all the moisture was cooked out of the meat. I made the most disgusting noise of pleasure in response, chewing it down.
“Didn’t hear Riley making those noises last night, Colt,” Haze said as he strolled in, his brothers in tow. “Need to up your game. Or maybe bring food into the bedroom. You could try some fruit rubbed all over her—”
“Quickest way to get a yeast infection,” I replied, then placed my hands on Blake’s arm, looking up at him adoringly. “Can I please, please have some of that amazing bacon?”
He then said the words every woman wants to hear. “I made it for you. They can have whatever you don’t want to eat. How do you like your eggs?”
I put in my order and might have gushed a teeny tiny bit, but damn. Saturday breakfast was usually some dry toast or else something I just put off until I went out at lunchtime. This was luxury.
“Take a seat,” he said, leaning over and pressing the sweetest of kisses to my forehead. “I’ll bring it over to you.”
“This is why I had to wake you up,” Haze grumbled. “Julia Childs over there wasn’t gonna hand over the bacon until you two lovebirds surfaced.”
“I coulda waited,” Colt said, taking a seat next to me and then grabbing my hand. My breath hitched a little as I felt that now more familiar pulse of energy between us. “I had everything I wanted to eat last night.”
He shot me a smug sidelong look, one that was full of heat, but he wouldn’t maintain eye contact for long and I understood why. What this was, whatever it was, it was super new and fragile, and of course, that brought his brothers circling like sharks.
“Baby ate his first pussy?” Haze asked with exaggerated delight, slapping Colt on the shoulder. “How’d he do, Riles? Were you like one of those traffic controllers, having to use the paddles to show him where to go?”
He mimicked the motions with his hands, but he didn’t feel Colt stiffen, didn’t feel something inside me go ice cold. My fingers tightened around Colt’s, as if he would snatch them away or someone else would, and he looked up then, staring into my eyes easily now, searching my face for answers.
“Shut up, Haze,” Fen said in a terse tone, finally looking up.
There was quiet now, broken only by the sound of the bacon cooking, Blake hustling over with a plate full of food and placing it before me. I thanked him but didn’t reach for my knife and fork yet, needing to say something and wishing I didn’t have to.
“Look, you guys are brothers,” I said.
“Much as we might wish we weren’t…” Ryan hissed.
“And I’ve been watching you talk shit about each other for years. I get it’s part of your whole bro dude thing you do, but you can’t do that about anything that goes on between us. Last night…”
Everyone hung on my words, but I didn’t care much about what they thought right now, my eyes finding Colt’s, something inside them burning just as hot as what I felt burnt in mine.
“Last night is none of your fucking business for one.”
“Ouch,” Haze replied in a small voice.