by Roma James
I smiled again. Why did it suddenly feel like my birthday and Christmas and Valentine’s Day all at once? Was I dreaming? Was this really happening?
“Yes,” I said, the only answer my lips would form. “I think we should try it. I mean… what could it hurt?”
“Exactly.” Cole nodded enthusiastically. “We can at least give it a try. Like you said, what’s the worst that can happen?”
It honestly felt like we’d already been through the worst that could happen over the past few days. All three of us.
Together.
So yeah, we might as well try and have a little fun.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still a little nervous, but that was normal, right? Because this?
This might be great. It might be perfect. It might be just what we need.
I was full and sleepy from all of the amazing food as I walked back to the big truck with my two guys.
My guys.
I liked the way that sounded almost as much as I liked the feeling that was bubbling up inside me from having both of my guys by my side.
“You’re sure you need to leave so soon?” Cole asked, giving me the most adorable puppy dog eyes I’d ever seen. “It feels like you just got here.”
I laughed as we stopped and stood next to the driver’s side door. “I’ve been here for three hours. The girls will probably send out a search party if I stay too much longer.”
“And you’re sure you’re ready to drive that beast back to the ranch?” Prescott asked, frowning as he looked from me to the truck. “I really don’t mind giving you a ride.”
I shook my head. “I appreciate it, but I’ll be fine. It really wasn’t that bad on the way over here.”
Which… wasn’t a lie, exactly. It wasn’t like I’d felt unsafe or scared. Just that I hadn’t been prepared for the rough-and-tumble ride. But now I was more prepared. And while I was grateful for the offer, I didn’t want anyone going out of their way for me today.
Especially not after the way they’d just spent the past few hours catering to me and waiting on me like I was some kind of princess.
Now that was something I wouldn’t mind a little more of from time to time. Finding one man to treat me like that would have been rare enough. But two?
Pure heaven.
“If you’re sure…” Prescott said, still not looking totally convinced. “But at least give one of us a call when you get back to the ranch. Maybe we can make some plans for tomorrow if you don’t have anything else going on.”
“Or you can call both of us when you get there,” Cole added with a wink. He stepped in a little closer until his face was just inches from mine, then whispered, “Only if you want to, though.”
I felt a shiver of anticipation run through my body as his lips brushed against mine. Oh, God. This. This was what I’d been waiting and hoping for all afternoon.
My mouth opened to him, and I couldn’t stop a little moan of pleasure escaping as I felt another pair of lips at the base of my neck, teasing and nipping playfully as he planted a trail of kisses up and along my jaw.
Cole pulled back and started kissing down the other side of my cheek as Prescott took his place. I could feel their hands on me—so many hands moving up and down my arms and my back, then teasing at the hem of my shirt. It was all too much but still not enough at the same time.
My legs started to get weak as little waves of pleasure rippled through me, but I didn’t worry about falling. Those strong hands held me in place as their mouths took turns claiming my lips, my cheeks, my neck.
I was panting and moaning and it took a few seconds for my eyes to focus when they both finally pulled back at the same time.
“Oh, my God,” I said, still holding onto both of them tightly as I regained my senses. “That was…”
“So good,” Cole finished for me, grinning as he helped me stand on my own. “So, so good.”
“It was perfect,” Prescott added, his voice deeper and more gravelly than usual. “You’re perfect, Daisy Lynn.”
“We should do this again,” I said. “Really soon.”
“All you have to do is name the time and place, beautiful.” Cole winked. “We’ll be there.”
They helped me into the truck and then stood to the side waving as I backed out of the driveway. I blew them a kiss, still feeling a little floaty as I drove away.
I was really tempted to turn back around and stay just a little longer with them, but I knew that would only complicate things. This… relationship? Situation? Whatever it was, it was still new and fresh and fragile. Kissing and touching had been fun and very hot, but more than that right now might be a mistake.
Still, it might be worth it. I definitely hadn’t ruled it out completely.
Between thinking about my guys and wrestling with the steering wheel, I was almost back to the Triple J Ranch before I knew it. At least the memory of those kisses had made the drive back a lot more tolerable—enjoyable, even—than the last time I’d sat behind the wheel.
I was scanning the tree line for the mostly hidden turn into Janessa’s long driveway when I saw the first glimpse of smoke. And then I smelled it—strong and acrid and burning my nostrils as I got closer to the driveway.
I could actually see the flames as I started to slow down. It looked like the whole pasture was on fire. Oh, my God. My only thought was making sure Janessa and Becca were okay as I turned my attention back to steering this monster of a truck toward the driveway.
Just as I was about to make the turn, something darted out from the side of the road, passing just in front of me. I gasped and turned the wheel hard to the right, my whole body coming up off the seat as the truck groaned and careened off the narrow road into the ditch.
It felt like the whole world slowed down. Someone was screaming. It might have been me. I saw the horizon trade places with the sky as pain exploded across my forehead.
And then… everything went dark.
Chapter 8
Daisy Lynn
Something was ringing.
My head?
No.
I wasn’t sure.
Everything hurt. Especially my head. And my neck. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. Tried to move but couldn’t. I felt… stuck. Trapped.
I was somehow on my side and something was holding me—pinning me—in place. Where was I? I couldn’t think through the fog of the pain and the… smoke?
The ringing hadn’t stopped. What is it? My phone? Maybe my phone.
My eyelids were still too heavy to open. Impossibly heavy. Unnaturally heavy. Eyelids weren’t supposed to feel this way.
The pain was almost too much to take. It got worse whenever I tried to move.
I tried to take a deep breath but couldn’t. All I could smell was smoke.
Everything was getting fuzzy again. The pain was receding.
Receding.
And fuzzy…
“Daisy Lynn…”
The voice sounded familiar, but so far away. Like it was calling to me from the end of a tunnel.
“We’re here, beautiful…”
Beautiful.
There was only one person—one man—who called me that.
Cole.
Cole was with me. Somewhere. Here in this tunnel, maybe.
“Wake up, hon.” Another voice. Prescott? Closer now. Was I still in the tunnel? Were they? I couldn’t tell. “Open your eyes for me. We’re right here with you.”
I tried to open my eyes, but they were still so heavy.
But no.
I had to try again.
For Prescott. For Cole. For my guys.
“I think she’s waking up,” one of the voices said.
Was I?
I still couldn’t see anything, but I was slowly becoming aware of my body. My mouth was dry. I was cold. My head hurt. A lot. Oh, God, where was I, and what had happened?
My eyelids fluttered and I could see a crack of light. It was just a sliver of dim, orange light—
the sunset? Brake lights? I wasn’t sure, but it was better than the dark tunnel I’d been trapped in since… I didn’t even know how long I’d been there.
Slowly, carefully, I finally opened my eyes. Even that tiny action made the pain in my head worse—like I was being hit with a million tiny hammers. Or maybe one big hammer.
“My head,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. It sounded like I’d been gargling with gravel. “I need…”
I wasn’t sure what I needed aside from an end to this excruciating pain.
“We’ve got you,” the voice—Prescott’s voice—said as he slowly came into focus above me. “Just hold on. Don’t try to move yet.”
Oh, right. I needed my guys, too. Needed both of them right now. And then, as if God was reading my thoughts, Cole’s face appeared in my line of sight. He was blurry, but it was definitely him. I would have recognized that big smile anywhere.
“What happened?” I croaked out with my new gravelly voice. It hurt to speak. Hurt to move. Hurt to think. But I was still regaining some of my senses and sensations with each passing second, so that had to be a good thing, right?
“You went into a ditch,” Prescott said. “You hit your head pretty hard, but you’re… you’re going to be okay. I promise. The ambulance will be here in no time, and they’re going to take good care of you while we clean up the crash site and help put out this fire.”
Right. The fire. I could remember something about a fire. Or smoke, at least. God, that smell. Yeah, it was hazy, but it was coming back to me now. The fire, the smoke, the… the person? Animal? The thing? Whatever it was that had run in front of the truck.
I wanted to tell them about all of those things, but I just didn’t have the strength. And anyway, there was something more pressing I needed to ask. “Do I have to leave? Can I stay here with you?”
I could see them both clearly enough now to see them both wince at my words. “We’ll be there before you know it, beautiful,” Cole said. “You’re just going to get a head start in the ambulance.”
“I’d keep you right here in my arms all night if I could,” Prescott added. “But we have to be sure you’re okay. You were pretty banged up when we pulled you out of that truck, and our number one priority is making sure you’re safe.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see the smoking, mangled front end of the truck sticking up at a weird angle from the ditch. I could barely wrap my head around the idea that I’d been somewhere in that wreckage.
Thank God for my guys. Thank God they were watching over me.
I could hear a siren and see flashing red lights. The ambulance? It must be. It was so loud. Too loud for my aching head to handle.
“I need to close my eyes,” I said. I was pretty sure I said it out loud, anyway. With the siren getting louder and louder with each passing second, it was hard to be sure. “Just… make it stop.”
Prescott’s lips were moving as my eyelids started to close, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
And then my whole world went dark and quiet again.
Something was beeping.
An alarm? My phone?
No… something else. It was a sound I knew, but I couldn’t place it. My head felt… tight. Fuzzy. But the intense pain was gone—well, not gone. It was still there, but for some reason it wasn’t bothering me as much.
Was I dead? Everything was so still and quiet and warm. If it wasn’t for that damn beeping, it would have been really nice.
But the beeping was still happening, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t something dead people were supposed to experience.
I opened my eyes—and they actually opened this time—but I couldn’t tell much of a difference. Why was everything so dark? Where was I? Why wouldn’t the beeping stop?
“Is she awake?” I heard a whispered voice.
“Maybe…” Another whisper. A second voice? “I thought I saw her eyes open for a second, but then they closed again.”
It was Cole. And the other voice must have been Prescott. Even whispering, I knew my guys’ voices. And just knowing they were here with me gave me the strength I needed to open my eyes again, to fight through the floaty, cloudy, hazy feeling and try to make sense of where I was and what was happening.
With a little more effort this time, I opened my eyes again and tried to smile. I hoped I was smiling, anyway. My face was kind of numb. My whole head—my whole body—felt like it had been packed in cotton.
“Hey, beautiful.” Cole’s handsome face was smiling back at me. “Glad you could join us.”
“How are you feeling?” Prescott asked, stepping into view.
“I feel…” I paused and tried to clear my throat but didn’t have much luck. How did I feel? I wasn’t sure. Weird. Floaty. Different. “Am I floating?”
Because I really needed to know. And if I was, I needed my guys to help me down. Floating around like this couldn’t be safe.
“That’s probably the painkillers, sweetheart,” Prescott said, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “You have a pretty bad concussion and some bruises that are not going to be fun once you start to feel them.”
“No broken bones, though,” Cole added. “So that’s a plus. They might even be able to discharge you in the morning as long as you do okay throughout the night.”
A concussion? I’d be discharged? I tried to move my head but then thought better of it. Not because it hurt, exactly, but because it just took so much effort. And all of this floating was starting to make me feel a little nauseated.
So I moved my eyes to the left and right as far as I could, taking in my surroundings. It was dark, but I’d been in enough hospital rooms during my nursing training that it was pretty obvious that’s where I was now. And that damn beeping had to be my heart rate monitor.
Yeah. Ugh. I’d never realized how annoying those things were before. I suddenly had a little more empathy for all the patients I’d dealt with.
“Do you remember what happened?” Prescott asked, moving closer and pulling up a chair next to Cole. “Do you know why you’re here?”
No.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to think through the haze that was clouding my brain. Why was I here? What had happened to me?
“The truck,” I answered, an image of a mangled wreck flashing through my mind. “And… a fire? The field was burning and I… I think I hit something? And then everything went upside down.” I paused for a moment, trying to think of more details. Everything was still so fuzzy, and the effort it took to force each word out of my throat was exhausting me. “That’s all I remember,” I said, finally.
“You did a good job, beautiful,” Cole said, reaching out and gently stroking my arm. “Just rest. We’ll talk more about the accident later.”
“Okay,” I said, trying for another smile. “I think… I’m going to sleep now.”
They both smiled back at me, but the haze closed in before I could hear anything else. I knew they were with me, though.
That was all that mattered.
I knew for sure that I had been awake and at least mostly coherent during the time I was discharged from the hospital and for the long ride back to Cole’s house.
I didn’t really question why he wanted me there or why he insisted on taking care of me, but I very clearly remembered telling Janessa that I wanted to spend at least a few days with my guys.
No offense to my girls, of course. Janessa understood, though. If anyone knew how I was feeling about Cole and Prescott, it was her. And Becca might be super protective, but I knew she just wanted me to be happy.
Which I was, during the short but sweet moments when I had actually been awake over the past however many hours since I’d been out of the hospital.
Like now, when I opened my eyes and found myself in Cole’s bed with both of my guys napping in chairs nearby. It was just my luck that they would both be asleep while I was awake, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t actually slept much since the accident. They’d been
too busy taking care of me, right by my side the whole time.
I closed my eyes again, already starting to drift back off to sleep. This was definitely not how I’d imagined ending up in Cole’s bed for the first time.
And if I had my way, I’d have him and Prescott both here in bed with me, all three of our bodies pressed together under the covers.
Naked.
I knew I must already be dreaming because I could actually imagine the heat radiating from their bodies. Just like I could imagine their hands skimming down my sides, over my hips and thighs until they were both spreading my legs wide between them.
I was still conscious enough to know that a tiny moan had escaped my lips, but I was just far enough into my dream that I didn’t care. I might not have been able to move much in my current state—and definitely wouldn’t trust my arms and legs to function properly with all of these painkillers coursing through my system.
But there was one part of me that was still very awake and very needy—that most sensitive spot between my legs that I could imagine them taking turns touching and teasing until my whole body started to tremble.
“More,” I whispered, not knowing or caring whether it was still part of the dream or if I’d actually said the words out loud. “Please… need it…”
A finger dipped inside. My finger? One of their fingers?
Didn’t matter.
All I knew for sure was that it brought me that much closer to the release that was already welling up inside me, already threatening to overtake me.
Just.
A.
Little.
More.
I did my best to raise my hips as another finger slid inside, filling me, stretching me, slowly moving in and out just the way I liked it. Just the way I needed it.
And then I could feel it happening. Starting at my toes and working its way up, the pressure building until an explosion of wet heat radiated from my core.
In my dream, my guys were holding me tight, kissing and rubbing and saying the sweetest things as I floated down from what had to have been the best orgasm of my life.