COLTON
* * *
“Answer it,” I said to Ava.
Her phone rang again from the bedside table.
I had my head propped up on my elbow, my hand on Ava’s hip as she lay naked between us. It had been two days since we’d had dinner with Kaitlyn and her men. Two days since we’d learned that Ava was a billionaire. Well, she had been until she gave it all up. Every penny. Her life must have been pretty fucking bad for her to walk away from cash like that.
I hadn’t been born in a Norman Rockwell family like the Dukes. There was no question Mr. and Mrs. Duke loved their kids. They’d do anything for them. And the four Duke kids in return. They’d all pitched in to keep the ranch running when Mr. and Mrs. Duke had been in that bad accident. When Tucker came home from college, he’d taken over the place and his parents retired. They had dinner together every week. Included me, Jed and now even Kaitlyn and Ava as part of the family.
I’d grown up just fine. A roof over my head, food on the table. I hadn’t been neglected, but I never remembered any I love yous either. No hugs, just… life. My dad worked at the factory outside of Billings, my mom at a diner by the highway. They’d had the same jobs for twenty years. I saw them several times a year, but I stayed in a hotel, my room a few years ago let out to a boarder for extra money.
I hadn’t been poor, but I couldn’t have bought an airplane either. No doubt Ava’d had several at her disposal. Yet somehow, the three of us, from three different kinds of families had come together, hopefully to become a new one. To forge our own home, a unit.
My life was content on the Duke ranch, working alongside Tucker. We’d met in college, been friends ever since. More than friends since we wanted to share a woman. And while it had been a dream to run my own ranch, being foreman for Tucker worked. Especially now, with Ava. If we had our way, she’d be spending every night in one of our beds.
The past three nights she’d stayed at the ranch, between both of us. I’d skipped the bunk house without a second thought. I’d take one of the other bedrooms in the big house as my own and Ava would float between. The Duke ranch house would be our home, where we raised the handful of kids we’d make with Ava. Someday. Now? We just enjoyed the hell out of practicing.
We were all greedy and didn’t want to be apart at night, so we fucked ourselves into exhaustion with our woman in the middle, right where she belonged.
“I don’t want to talk with my father,” she replied with a little groan. “Or my mother, if he tries to use her again to get to me.”
It was a rainy day. While Tucker and I had gotten up early to tend to chores, we’d returned and awakened our lovely Ava in the best way. I’d shucked my clothes, tugged back the covers and settled between her thighs. Tucker had played with her plump nipples, making them all hard like tight little raspberries. And then fucked her until she didn’t know her own name.
And now we were lazing the afternoon away, content to nap and fuck some more, make out like teenager
s and start all over again.
“He won’t stop until you do,” Tucker added, grabbing her cell and handing it to her.
She stared at it as it vibrated in her hand. Frowning, she sat up, propped herself up with pillows and tugged the sheet up over her nakedness.
“Hello.”
I could hear a deep voice over the phone, but the words weren’t clear. I glanced at Tucker, who didn’t seem thrilled to have our time with Ava interrupted, especially with something that bothered her. I climbed from the bed, tugged on my jeans I found on the floor, but didn’t do the zipper.
“Yes, Father,” Ava said. She gripped the sheet up by her neck but didn’t even notice that one of her tits was showing.
I ran my hand through my hair, sat on the edge of the bed.
“No. This isn’t a phase.”
Pause.
“No. I haven’t gotten this bout of rebellion out of my system.”
I wanted to kill her father just for the hurt and angry sound of her voice.
“We’re done talking.” She hung up, tossed the phone on the bed, a scowl firmly in place.
We stayed quiet, waiting to hear what she was going to say. By looking at her, she was more pissed than sad. I didn’t blame her. While my father had never gone to my little league games like T’s had—hell, he’d been the damn team coach—he hadn’t shamed me either.
She glanced at both of us. “The little bout of rebellion he was talking about? You two,” she grumbled.
“Rebellion?”
“Yeah, he said you guys were a fling,” she countered. “That I was just going wild. Whatever.”