by Roma James
She held onto it, squeezing tightly as she drifted off to sleep.
I really, really hoped we didn’t have to leave before we were all ready for that to happen. But like Jaeger said, it had to be her decision.
And we would have to respect whatever decision she made.
Chapter 11 - Grace
The three guys—my three boyfriends?—filed into my office a little after noon. The three of them together was usually a loud, rowdy, quick-talking and sarcastic affair, but today they looked like they had just come back from a funeral.
“Did you decide?” Ty asked, breaking the silence.
I exhaled. I could respect that he wanted to get right to the point, but I hated that we even had to talk about it at all.
Damn Garrick Windram.
Damn anyone else who couldn’t mind their own business.
Damn them all.
“I did,” I said, finally, my gaze settling on each of them in turn. “I don’t want you to leave. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. When you finish the kennel, I guess we’ll have to have another conversation about it, but mostly I just want things to go back to normal—the new normal, I mean. The normal where we’re all happy together, like we were before…” I paused, my throat suddenly tight. “Before that incident last night.”
The relief was palpable as it washed over them. I could see it in their eyes and on their faces. They didn’t want to go any more than I wanted them to.
But if I had asked, they would have packed their bags without arguing.
It made me realize just how lucky I was to have the three of them in my life now. I still didn’t know what we would do when the time came for them to leave again, but that was a bridge we’d have to cross another day.
I was finished worrying for today.
“That’s good news,” Cody said, finally cracking a smile.
“A hell of a lot better than it could have been,” Jaeger agreed.
Ty hesitated, though, his arms crossed. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?” he asked. “With us staying, I mean. You’re not worried about the gossip?”
I opened my hands and shrugged. “What can I really do about it? It’s already out there, right? If people really are talking about the four of us, they’re going to keep talking for a while whether you’re here or not. I think I should at least get to enjoy having you here, if I’m going to get judged for it regardless.”
“That seems fair to me,” Ty said, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “As long as you’re okay with it, we’re happy.”
“Then we’re all happy,” I said, hoping to put that topic to rest. I glanced at the clock and frowned. “I have to leave soon. Do you guys need anything from town while I’m out?”
They all shook their heads and exchanged glances. “Where will you be going?” Jaeger asked.
I frowned. That wasn’t the response I’d been looking for. “I have a client who needs help birthing a calf.”
“How far is it from here?” Ty asked.
Now I knew something wasn’t right. I half-expected Jaeger to give me a hard time, but not Ty.
“It isn’t far,” I answered. “Maybe twenty minutes away. Twenty-five if you get stuck behind the train. Why? What’s going on?”
They all looked at each other again. There was definitely some sort of unspoken communication happening here, and I hated not knowing what it was.
Cody was the first to speak. “We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go there by yourself.”
“Or anywhere else by yourself,” Jaeger added.
I knew I must have been giving them all a look as if they had just grown horns or something, but I couldn’t help it. If these guys thought they were going to go all alpha-macho-caveman with me, they were mistaken.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” I began, “but I’m not some delicate little flower. I have a job to do, and I have to be able to make house calls sometimes.”
I felt bad for a split-second as I saw Cody’s reaction to my words. He looked as though I had physically slapped him. Jaeger just looked pissed.
Ty, always the peacemaker and the voice of reason, put a hand up and shook his head. “It’s not like that, Grace. We know you can take care of yourself. None of us are looking to control you… but this is something that needs to happen. At least for a little while.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “And furthermore, I don’t like it. You can say it’s not like you’re being controlling, but that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.”
“But it isn’t,” Cody said. “It’s for your protection. We just don’t want you going anywhere unaccompanied until we can deal with Garrick.”
My eyes went wide at that name. “What does that even mean? Deal with Garrick? Are you guys in the mob? Are you gonna break his knees or something?” I felt my eyes go even wider as another thought occurred to me. “My God, are you going to shoot him?”
“Jesus, Grace,” Jaeger said. “Do you think we’re a bunch of thugs? We’re not going to do any of those things.”
“I’d like to break his kneecaps,” Ty said, shrugging. “But you already knew that.”
Cody huffed out an exasperated breath as he looked over at his friends. “Not helpful, guys.” He looked back at me. “We don’t want to shoot Garrick, Grace. We want to arrest him.”
I looked over at Cody in the passenger seat as I drove the pickup that I used for work down the bumpy dirt road to the little farm where my client was waiting.
I still couldn’t believe what they had told me, but I didn’t have any reason to doubt any of them.
And the way Cody was constantly scanning the mirrors and the horizon?
Yeah, I could tell that he was not only prepared for the worst, he was expecting it.
I honestly wasn’t even sure what the “worst” might be, but from the things they had accused Garrick of—human trafficking across the border, forced labor, and who knows what else—I had to assume it would be pretty bad.
While I had initially been too shocked to worry about what all of that meant, the more I thought about it, the more worried I became.
“You really think something will happen on the way out here?” I asked, hoping for at least a little reassurance. “I’ve never run into Garrick anywhere besides in town.”
“We can’t be sure,” Cody said, still scanning the road ahead and behind us. “I hope nothing happens. But if something happens, I’d rather be prepared. The thought of you out here alone if something happened…”
He didn’t finish, but I didn’t need him to.
That thought scared the hell out of me, too.
“We’re almost there,” I said, for his benefit as much as for my own. “And then it shouldn’t take too long to help with the calf, as long as everything is good when we get there.”
Cody grimaced. “Do you think there will be problems with the calf?”
I shrugged. “I won’t know until I see for myself, but this heifer had a rough pregnancy last time, and I think it’s best if I’m on hand to assist with this one if anything goes wrong.”
He nodded and resumed scanning the road until I pulled into the long gravel driveway that led to the barn behind the big white farm house.
Willie, the farmer who owned this land, walked out to meet us as we stopped at the barn doors.
“I’ve got her in here, Grace,” he said. “The calf should be coming any time now, but she’s awfully restless. I think you’d better have a look.”
I glanced over at Cody. He had been completely in control when we’d been on the road, but now he looked a little out of his element.
“You don’t have to go in with me if you don’t want to,” I said. “It might not be the easiest thing to watch.”
“No,” Cody replied, shaking his head. “I’ll go with you. I’ll just, uh, stay out of your way.”
“Suit yourself.” I smiled. “Let’s go deliver a calf.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?
” I asked for the third time since we’d left the farm to go back home. “I could probably manage, I just…” I looked down at the mess I’d made of my clothes and grimaced. “I was hoping to avoid getting anything on the steering wheel or the door or… you know, just… everywhere.”
Willie had let me have a towel to wrap around my clothes for the ride home in an effort to keep the interior of the truck clean, and Cody had offered to drive so I wouldn’t be distracted with the towel and the mess in addition to the stress of a possible run-in with Garrick.
Now, though, Cody looked like he really might need to pull over at any moment.
“I’m okay,” he said, clearly lying. “I just wasn’t expecting so much, uh, stuff to come out.”
He sort of gagged on the last word and I couldn’t help but laugh. Poor guy. I wasn’t trying to be insensitive, but it was a little funny to me that this former Ranger with biceps the size of my head couldn’t handle a little afterbirth.
“I think you might have run outside before the worst of it,” I said, trying and failing to resist the urge to tease him just a little. “But seriously, if you need to stop for a minute, that’s okay with me. I won’t even tell the other guys.”
“Oh, man, please don’t tell them,” he said, glancing over at me with a pleading look that just made me laugh again. “Especially not Jaeger. He’ll never let me live this down.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, tossing him a wink. “Didn’t you ever have to watch one of those videos in Health class about giving birth? I mean, obviously it’s a little different with a human baby, but… you know, it might have prepared you a little better for today.”
“I must have been sick that day,” he answered, looking very much like he might be sick right this minute. “At least it’s over. Now I only have to worry about seeing it again every time I close my eyes.”
I nearly reached over to put a hand on his leg, then remembered why I was all wrapped up and thought better of it. I had washed my hands thoroughly, of course, but the memory of where they had just recently been might have sent poor Cody over the edge.
“Can you park up by the house for me?” I asked, as the clinic came into view. “And then, if you’re up to it, I might need your help with one more thing.”
He looked over and quirked an eyebrow, his cheeks regaining just a hint of color. “Oh yeah? What kind of thing?”
I only smiled and gave a coy shrug.
If I was being honest, he probably wasn’t going to enjoy what we were about to do too much, but hosing me down outside might at least take his mind off his upset stomach.
Either that, or it would make things worse. At least we’d already be outside with a hose if he had to be sick.
He parked the truck and we walked around to the side of the house where the garden hose was lying on the ground.
“Can you pick that up for me, please?” I asked, pointing at the hose. “And then turn the water on—not full blast, but we’re gonna need some pressure behind it.”
“Got it,” he answered, moving to do what I’d asked.
While his back was turned, I dropped the towel and shrugged out of my shirt, then quickly stepped out of my pants and tossed the soiled clothes to the side. When he turned back around to face me, hose in hand, I was standing there waiting in my bra and panties.
“Holy shit,” he murmured, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
For a moment, he just stood there, water hose soaking both his shoes as his eyes roamed up and down over my body.
“Cody?” I asked, doing my best nonchalant voice. “Everything okay?”
He nodded, his eyes flicking from my face to my breasts and back again. “Every—” he stopped to clear his throat. “Everything is… is fine. Good, I mean. Really good.”
“Perfect,” I said, nibbling at my lip to keep from laughing again. This was too much fun. “Could you just start from my neck and work your way down, please?”
He nodded again, looking down at the hose in his hand, belatedly realizing he was now standing in a puddle, then stepped aside and pointed the stream of water toward me.
“Oh, and Cody?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you don’t get it in my eyes.”
“Oh, wow,” he said, laughing. “Jesus, you’re killing me here.” He shook his head again, as if he were coming out of a trance. “Are you ready? This is probably gonna be really cold…”
“I’m ready,” I answered, closing my eyes and bracing myself. “Go for it.”
I flinched when the water hit me. It was definitely cold. But it was a hot day, and this outdoor shower was very much necessary before I could even think about going inside and taking a real one.
Cody might have been looking at me like I was the best thing that he’d ever seen, the truth was that I was actually pretty gross after delivering that calf.
I let the water wash over me for probably a little longer than was absolutely necessary, but he just looked so cute and happy that I didn’t have the heart to make him stop.
But the water really was too damn cold to keep going like this.
“Okay, Cody,” I said, finally. “I think that’ll be good enough for me to make it through to the shower. But… do you think you could do me one more favor, please?”
He nodded as he walked over to turn off the water. “Anything. What do you need?”
“Do you think you could go inside to the bathroom and grab me a towel so I don’t drip water all through the house?”
He was moving toward the house before I even finished asking, and had returned with a towel before even a minute had passed. God, he was a sweetheart.
“Thank you so much,” I said, taking the towel from him and drying myself quickly before wrapping it around my body. “I should probably go in and take a real shower now.”
“Oh, right. Yeah.” Cody said, his eyes lingering on my body up until the moment I closed the towel. “I guess I’ll be going back to the tent. Talk to you later?”
“Of course,” I said, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on his cheek before he turned to go. I waited half a beat, just enough time to check out the way his muscular ass filled out his jeans, before I called out to him. “Hey, Cody?”
He turned on his heel and cocked his head to the side. “Yeah?”
I stood there for a minute wondering if I really should go through with the idea I’d just had. Then I remembered what it had felt like at that baseball game to nuzzle in close to his hard body and that was more than enough to make up my mind.
“I was just, um, wondering… if you might like to join me?”
He blinked.
Then he cocked his head to the other side like the most adorable puppy I’d ever seen.
And then he blinked again.
“I’m s-sorry?” he asked. “Join you… in the house?”
I smiled. “In the house, yes. But then also in the shower.”
That moment before, when I surprised him by stripping down before he turned the hose on me?
The look he had given me then?
Yeah, this one was about ten times hotter.
“You want me to take a shower with you?” he asked, finally, looking at me as if I might suddenly change my mind. “Me and you? Together?”
“Ideally,” I said, laughing. “I mean, I guess you could just watch? But I kind of hoped it would be more of a… hands-on kind of thing.”
His mouth opened and closed again, but no words came out for several seconds. He finally gave up on talking and just nodded enthusiastically.
Which, honestly, was good enough for me. We didn’t need to talk much for now, anyway.
“Perfect,” I said. “We’ll have to hurry before Nana gets home, but I think we’ll have enough time to, um, get clean.”
He followed me into the house and down the hallway to the bathroom, and I paused to close and lock the door behind him, brushing up against his body in the small space.
God, his body was rock hard, and ju
dging from the considerable bulge in the front of his jeans, so was his cock.
I wanted to see all of him. Now.
Grabbing the hem of his shirt, I lifted it up, exposing a strip of tanned abs. Thankfully, he took the lead and finished pulling it up and off over his head, because I couldn’t stop staring long enough to do much else.
His body was amazing.
Jaeger and Ty were sexy and muscular and toned, too, but Cody’s body was in a league of its own. I reached out and let my fingers trail down his chest and over the deep ridges of his abs. Every single muscle was perfectly, clearly defined, and each one bunched and flexed as my fingers moved over them.
“My God, you’re sexy,” I said, finally dragging my eyes up to meet his gaze.
He laughed. “That’s funny, because I was going to say the same thing.” He reached out and unfastened my towel, letting it drop to the floor until I was standing there in my soaked bra and panties.
“So sexy,” he murmured. “I could look at you just like this for hours.”
I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra, pulling it away and smiling as he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Holy shit,” he said, reaching out to hold my breasts as he bent his head and kissed one first, then the other. “Your body is like a work of art.”
He bent down again, letting his teeth graze over the hard pebble of my nipple and pulling a porn-tastic moan from the back of my throat.
“Oh, God,” I gasped. “Cody, ah—”
My legs nearly buckled as he sucked one nipple into his mouth while his free hand rolled the other one between his thumb and finger. His other arm was already wrapped around my waist, anticipating my every need.
I felt a surge of heat between my legs as he pulled back just far enough to look into my eyes.
“Jesus, Grace,” he whispered, almost reverently. “Your breasts are fucking perfect.”
“Let’s get into the shower,” I said, taking his hand and leading him over next to the tub. “And then I need you inside me.”
“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, his pupils blown with desire.
We stripped down quickly, his thick cock springing up and slapping against his stomach once it was finally free. He reached down to give it a couple of quick strokes as I turned on the water and adjusted the temperature until it was hot and steamy.