Chapter 15Buck

Chapter 15

Buck

"S he's going to ruin our lives!"

That's the first thing Luke says to me when he gets me outside. I'm about to ask him if he thinks he might be blowing this out of proportion just a smidgen, but what he said to Goldie before we came out is lingering in my ears.

"Why did you tell her to try to not start any orgies?"

His eyes go a li'l buggy. "Because she was five seconds away from starting a threesome with Lynx and Nash. She was putting the moves on them both."

My first thought is, Well, get down, Goldie.

My second thought is, Dammit, why wasn't it my day to go fishing?

I open my mouth, because Luke looks like he's expecting a response.

"Five seconds!" he repeats for emphasis before I can get anything out.

"Are you sure you're not being a little"—I clear my throat—"paranoid?"

She slept in my bed all last night, after all, and didn't put any moves on me. But maybe she just isn't attracted to me?

"I know what an impending threesome looks like, Buck!" Luke insists.

Wish I did.

Especially when Goldie Locke is one of the three.

But I don't even know what an impending twosome looks like.

Okay. That's not true. Though I've never seen one up close and in real life, and though I've never been a part of one, that doesn't mean I don't know what an impending twosome looks like, I guess. Hell, I can think of about nine hundred ways one could look between me and Goldie.

But even so, a threesome is hardly an orgy.

"Her pants were undone!" Luke says. "She was on them like a fuckin' leech."

Luke paces a few strides away from me and turns on his heels. He strides back again, turns away from me and back again, away from me and back again. He's using his arms like he wishes they were wings, and is babbling like he's having some kind of nervous breakdown.

Honestly, he's making me dizzy.

"They were supposed to be fishing! They were not fishing. Not unless they were fishing for compliments on the size of their boners, for cryin' out loud!"

I almost laugh at that, because Nash is a charming devil and if he wanted to get a compliment on the size of his boner, a compliment on the size of his boner he would get.

"She was smashed between them like the melted cheddar in a grilled cheese sandwich!"

I wonder if Luke might be just a tad jealous. He's clearly got his boxer shorts in a twist, but I can't figure out if he's only bothered in that typical, agitated way Luke always gets when there's a shake-up in our routine…or if underneath that layer of bothered, he's bothered in the very same way the rest of us are bothered. Hot and bothered.

Bothered in the way where we each want to strip our clothes off, howl at the moon, and pin that glorious shooting star of a woman to a tree, making her body and ours come together beneath the night's sky. My cock twitches in my jeans at the thought.

"They were all over each other!" Luke shouts.

I want to ask, So?

I press my lips together. I know my oldest, bossiest brother well enough to know this is a rant. And he's only just getting started when it comes to chewing my ear off. This is no conversation. Even if he did want my input, it's not worth the headache he's bound to give me if I said anything that even insinuated that he was overreacting. Besides, it would only make him double-down.

But in my opinion—and mind you, it's not based on experience—what's wrong with a threesome between three consenting adults? Not a damn thing, really. If the lady wants her pants off, by God, let's get those suckers off.

"So they've caught no fish and lunch is going to be late again and she's just affecting the whole lot of you in a way I've never seen a woman do and I don't like it! Ash was wrong about the weather! Completely wrong!"

Yeah, that was weird.

"Ash ain't never been wrong about the weather! That boy can always predict rain or snow as sure as the sunrise! Even if it's just gonna be a slight drizzle, he knows it's a-comin'!"

I stifle a laugh. It's been a very long time since I've seen him so worked up he slips and starts sounding like he's the reincarnation of our Great Grampa Bj?rnsson.

"He does tend to know when drizzles are a-comin'," I mock, deadpan. I start to make a joke about how the only thing a-comin' today was likely Nash, Lynx, and Goldie, but Luke shakes his head. I'm not Clay. I know when joking is appropriate and when it isn't. Now isn't the time.

"This isn't funny, Buck. I need you to be on my side with this. The others, they'll listen to you. You can convince them she needs to go ."

"I thought she was going today?" The thought bums me out. But we said one night, right?

"Lynx and Nash are thinking with their dicks and have changed their minds about that, and they're going to try to convince the others to let her stay until her so-called injury is healed up. But she needs to go now. Not when her ankle is better. Now. All you have to do is say you agree with me in that determined way you have, and one by one, they'll relent."

I take a deep breath, shoving my hands into my pockets. On the exhale, I say, "But I don't want her to go." Another inhale, another exhale. "I don't want her to go," I assert firmly, my jaw setting with unwavering resolve. I'll find a way to make this work, no matter what it takes.

Not now. And maybe not even when she's healed up either. I know she'll leave, probably sooner rather than later. She didn't just wander onto our mountain from the ether. She's got a life, out there in the real world. She wouldn't want to stay with us forever even if we wanted her to. She's a city girl with a city life. Probably lots of sophisticated, city suitors who don't need her to make them over. Why on earth would she want to be here, with us, any longer than she has to be?

Luke is staring at me, eyes narrowed like he can read my thoughts, and I hope he fucking can't because if he knows I would lock, stock, and barrel let her stay forever if she wanted to, I have—in the words of Great Grampa Bj?rnsson—an ass-whoopin' a-comin'.

But.

Last night, when she was making me over, it felt like we were building up a real connection. The rapport between us was so good. She made me feel so at ease.

Then, when she was curled up in my bed, on top of me…

Damn, it felt amazing. I want more nights like that. As many of 'em as I can get.

And if she wants to have some threesomes with any of us, put me on the list of willing participants. I don't mind having lunch late every day for the rest of my life if it means finally getting laid. Hell, I'd forgo lunch completely for the rest of my life if it meant getting laid by our gorgeous houseguest. I'll take it anyway. Twosome, threesome, foursome, orgy. I just want her.

And this ain't just about getting laid, though I wouldn't mind. It's more.

"Please. Please…" Luke plasters his hand to his face, fingers splayed like a starfish. His voice overflows with exasperation. "Please don't tell me you're getting some sort of teenage puppy dog crush on this woman."

Before I can respond—to tell him no, even though I kind of think I definitely am, he takes off on another ranting tangent.

"I'm just going to be honest with you, Bucky. I think Goldie is a Sasquatch hunter."

I burst out laughing. But his expression remains serious.

"Oh, you weren't joking."

He had to have been joking.

"Of course I'm not joking! I'm deadly serious. Think about it. This is the reason she wanted to give us all makeovers, to prove her theory. If she is a Sasquatch hunter, she'll have heard the legend." He wags a finger at me.

I raise an eyebrow. "The legend."

"Yes," he growls.

"Like the story Pa used to tell us? That you can't shave a Sasquatch?"

Well, you can, but by the next day you won't be able to tell you did. Sasquatch fur grows right back in a snap, thicker and wilder than before.

"Exactly," he says emphatically, with a smug twist to his stupid mouth, as though he's just proven something. Then he squints his eyes, looking at me real hard. "You look different. She made you over!"

"Yeah, so?"

I don't for a minute think Rose-Gold Locke is any kind of hunter. I think she's a city gal who got curious about the great outdoors, wanted to experience a taste of nature and maybe a temporary change of pace, but has no idea what she's doing out here in the wilderness. Those movie star sunglasses and her cute li'l glittery pink camouflage prove it, and it makes me smile just remembering her in them.

Luke is not smiling. He goes off about Pa and I get this uncomfortable feeling in my belly, like someone is squeezing my intestines, flattening them out real good. I tune him out 'til I just hear the words Pa and Sasquatch and Pa and Sasquatch and a lotta blah blah blah in between.

He glances at the window of the cabin and I follow his gaze. Goldie is watching us with interest.

Damn, she is a sight. Just a glimpse of her and the squeezing feelings travel from my belly to my groin, but there it feels…pleasant.

Luke scrunches up his eyes at her and stalks out of her view, still ranting. I follow, counting backward from a hundred to keep myself from thinking about those big blue eyes of hers gazing up at me while those pretty pink plump lips of hers welcome my cock into her mouth.

I discreetly adjust myself, pushing that vision away. But what a vision it is.

Ranger rounds the corner of the cabin with a stack of logs. After adding them to the woodpile, he ambles over.

"Why are y'all talking about…" He pauses and lowers his voice. "Pa?"

He says Pa with reverence that makes me want to bow my head. But instead I steel myself, because I know Ranger's question will prompt Luke to take it from the top, which he does.

Finally, thank the big man in the blue sky, Ranger interrupts, "Well, I think you're wrong, Luke. But if you're not, and if she is a Sasquatch hunter, in a couple of days, she'll see that Rusty and Bucky here are staying made over and that'll convince her we aren't Sasquatches. In fact, maybe I'll let her make me over too, shave my face clean, shave my head bald and prove it for a fact. Because if Goldie were to make me over, she'd have to touch me a lot, right? And I don't particularly want to be bald, but…having her touch me a lot…yes, ma'am, sign me up for that. In fact, I wonder if she'd shave me down there . You know. Mow the old lawn, as it were."

Luke blusters up, his face getting real red and looking like steam is actually about to come out of his ears.

"Luke," I say, "it's just a few days. At most, she'll stay 'til she's healed up some. Then she'll leave, and our lives will go right back to how they were."

Will he be miserable while she's here? Maybe. But I don't have the heart to tell him that's the way the rest of us feel a lot of the time. Miserable. It's not something we even acknowledge or admit out loud. But sometimes, when we're all sitting around at night, reading before bed, the dissatisfaction kind of rises off of us like a steam. Luke likes things just the way they are, but the rest of us are missing something.

I wonder if maybe that's what he's really scared of, with Goldie being here, that he's going to have to admit to his own damn self he's missing something as well.

"Now," I carry on, pushing aside the turmoil, "since lunch is going to be late anyway, I'm going to go out to the shed and finish working on my latest gnome." There's no time to waste—I need to focus and get this done.

"I have three words for you, Bucky," Luke says. "Susie May Jones."

My chest tightens, and I feel the old wound opening up. I've heard that name enough to last a lifetime, and I don't need the reminder of how it all went to hell. Not now. Not with Goldie here, stirring up the same feelings I swore I'd never let back in.

I'd started to walk away but turn back to face him. My hands fist. "Don't even bring up Susie May. This is completely different from Susie May."

"Aw, hell, I'm not getting involved in this." Ranger throws up his hands and walks away, back around the corner of the cabin.

After he's gone, Luke says, "Sometimes I still catch Lynx looking at you like he wants to squash your head like a bug because of Susie May. Both of y'all gettin' sweet on the same woman is a bad idea. We've seen how it turns out."

"I'll be in the shed," I say.

Luke doesn't know shit about me and Lynx and Susie May. All he knows is she left us both heartbroken. He knows about how it ended, but not about how good it was before it got bad.

Susie May loved me and Lynx both equally. She said so herself, her green eyes sparklin' like emeralds when they were all welled up with tears. She didn't want to have to choose. She wanted us to make that call, to decide which one of us loved her more.

But we wouldn't do that. How could we? We both loved her. Neither of us could give her up. I wasn't going to take her from my brother and he wasn't going to take her from me. Or maybe he had wanted me to back down and never said so and that's why he occasionally looks at my head like it's a bug he wants to squish. Or maybe that's just Luke's overprotective imagination.

At any rate, Lynx and I were perfectly happy with her seeing both of us, but she thought that was weird and that's why we never did anything more than some kissing. One of us had to back down, she said.

And what happened was that she tore us apart, unable to choose between me and Lynx on her own, and it escalated into this unspoken competition, each trying to prove who was more deserving of her love and, eventually, every single one of my brothers choosing sides. But for what? We were both broken by her ultimatum, wounded by a love clearly none of us were ready to handle, and the tension that filled the house because of it was unbearable.

Days turned into weeks, and as I tried to move forward, I realized that Susie May had left us all wounded. Every single Bj?rnsson brother.

And now we are all wary of ever loving again.

Or we were .

Now that Goldie is here, it might be time to face my old heartbreak head-on and mend what was broken. I don't need to fall in love again. But if I do, I'll be careful.

And unlike what Luke might think, no matter what, this is different, because I wouldn't ever dare do anything that would put tears in Goldie's beautiful blue eyes. If Goldie asked me to, I would back down without question. For some reason, I just want this girl to be happy, even if it means she might pick someone other than me in the end.

I shake my head, trying to knock any notions of Goldie being here for the long haul out of my brain. We just met her yesterday. Why is it so hard to imagine her gone already?