Author: Roni Loren
She cringed. “Guess things haven’t improved with Jace and his father. They were always at each other when I lived with them.”
Andre snorted. “His dad’s a jackass. He has this amazing son who’s breaking his back to run a business he’s passionate about—with no help from the family fortune, by the way—and all his father can see is that Jace doesn’t fit into the mold he’s created for him. Jace would never admit it to anyone, but his father’s constant digs tear him up.”
She looked down at her soup. She’d woken up from her nap planning an escape route. The two men had stripped more than her clothes in that bedroom this morning. Her defenses had been left in a tattered heap on the floor, and she needed time to reconstruct them before facing either of the guys again. But the thought of Jace somewhere alone, feeling worthless in his family’s eyes, had her chest feeling tight.
She pushed her chair away from the table and looked up at Andre. “You need to go find him.”
Andre’s eyebrow quirked. “You want me to leave you to find Jace.”
She straightened in her chair, feeling more resolute by the second. “Yes. I’m not going to be able to relax and have fun here if I know he’s somewhere else feeling shitty. Go find him, take him out for a beer, do whatever guys do to make each other feel better. I’ll be fine spending the rest of the weekend in my cabin catching up on my reading.”
The corner of Andre’s mouth tilted up and he pushed off the wall. “Bella, I agree with you that Jace probably doesn’t need to be alone right now, but I’m not leaving you anywhere. You want me to find him, then you come with me.”
“What?” she asked, flustered at the suggestion of taking any of this outside The Ranch’s gates. “No, I can’t. I mean . . .” She scrambled for an explanation that wasn’t I’m afraid I’m falling for the two of you. “My agreement with Daniel is for here, not—”
He shrugged. “So don’t tell him you left. You can stay with us tonight. We have a guest bedroom if you need your own space.”
Stay with the two of them? At their place? The whole thing sounded stupid and ill-advised and way too enticing. “I don’t think—”
“Come on, bella. Let’s not pretend this isn’t the same thing under a different roof. Being at The Ranch doesn’t make what we’re doing any less real.”
She looked down at her hands. Real. That was exactly what this was. Too fucking real. “We’ll find Jace and then I’ll go home. I’ll tell Daniel I wanted to end the weekend early.”
He sighed. “How about we cross that bridge when we get to it? We need to track down Jace first.”
She nodded, feeling better now that she had an escape hatch rigged up. “Okay.”
“Get your stuff packed up, and I’ll call Grant. He’s not going to let you leave with me unless he verifies that it’s what you want.”
“What? I’m a grown woman. I don’t need permission to go with someone.”
“Here you do,” Andre said, crouching down in front of her and laying a light kiss on her lips. “Grant doesn’t mess around with people’s safety. He’ll just make sure that you’re going with me on your own volition and not because I ordered you as your dom to do so.”
She huffed. “I feel like I’ve entered an alternate universe.”
He nuzzled her neck, sending warmth trickling down her spine and beating back some of the anxiety that had crept in. “And what do you think of the natives?”
I think I’ve found my home planet. But she didn’t share that thought. “I think they’re cocky and high-handed.”
He laughed softly against her skin.
“. . . And pretty damn irresistible.” She let herself fall under the spell of his touch and laced her fingers in his hair, enjoying the satiny slide of his dark locks between her knuckles. “Well, two of them, at least.”
“That’s good to hear. We have a bit of a soft spot for you, too. In fact, I have something to propose to you on the way over.” He pulled back to look at her, his grin sly. “But if I don’t stop kissing you now, we’ll never leave this cabin. Jace will be on his own.”
She drew her hands down from his hair to his stubbled cheeks and sighed. It was really unfair for him to be so damn delicious. He made it next to impossible to hold on to her resolve. “All right, call the Grand Poo-bah so I can get permission to leave with you, kind sir.”
* * *
She and Andre didn’t have to search too hard for Jace. His little sports car was parked on the side of the building that housed both Wicked and the guys’ third-floor loft. Andre entered the code to open the gate for the private parking area and pulled into the spot next to Jace’s. “Let’s go see what the damage is. My guess is he’ll either be a total brooding pain in the ass or—”
“Act like absolutely nothing is wrong.”
He cut the ignition and smirked at her. “Hasn’t changed much since his teenage years, huh?”
She shrugged. “It always seemed like the harder his dad came down on him, the more devil-may-care he became. Like he was determined to show his father his opinion didn’t even make a blip on his radar.”
Andre’s brown eyes reflected the same sadness she felt for Jace. “Guess we’ll just have to go remind him that not everyone thinks he’s a jackass.” He pushed open his door. “Well, unless he is acting like a jackass, then all bets are off.”
She laughed. “Right.”
Andre led her to the front door of the store. “Let’s check his office first. He’s been spending a lot of time in there lately.”
The bottom floor of Wicked was more a lobby and didn’t have any products displayed. Instead, the most gorgeous black-and-white erotic photography Evan had ever seen adorned the dark maroon walls. Soft classical music filled her ears as well, but she had trouble dragging her focus away from the artwork. She touched the corner of one large piece—a collared woman was in the process of disrobing and in the background, two men sat in the darkened corner of the bedroom, leaning back in their chairs, their attention held captive by the display.
The photographer had captured the light so perfectly. The soft curves of the woman’s body gleamed, and the dark angles playing over the faces of the men she was undressing for promised wickedness to come. Something that could’ve looked pornographic under an amateur’s camera had been morphed into something stunning and pure. “God, I wish I was this good.”
Andre slid a hand onto her lower back. “I have no doubt you are. I can’t wait to see your photography.”
“I don’t do this type of work,” she said, looking at the price on the picture and trying to keep a straight face at the astronomical amount.
Evan let Andre lead her up the stairs to the main store. She paused at the glass door leading into the shop, which had poetry scrawled across it in calligraphy. She read it aloud, running her fingers over the lettering:
Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
Andre smiled. “That was Jace’s mission statement when he started Wicked. He wanted a place lovers could come to without shame. A place where desire and sex were simply seen as natural extensions of people’s love for one another.”
She reread the poem, absorbing the words. “I had no idea he was that much of a hopeless romantic.”
Andre pushed open the door. “He used to be, bella. Life can tear that out of you sometimes.”
Jace turned out not to be in his office so Andre led her to an unmarked door at the back of the building and typed in a code on a keypad to unlock it. “We have to trek up another flight of stairs, but the view’s nice.”
“No problem,” she said as she followed him up, though she wondered why someone who came from gaudy money like Jace chose to live in a walk-up above his business.
Andre peeked back at her and sniffed when he saw her expression. “Don’t ever play poker, Evan. You’ll get taken for everything you’ve got.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You wear your every thought on your face.” He started climbing the stairs again. “Jace lives here because he turned away his family’s money. They won’t give him access to his trust fund unless he returns to the family business.”
“Oh.”
“It’s also why we’re roommates. Helps both of us to split the expenses.”
She sniffed. “That’s not the only reason you live with him.”
He paused, looked back down at her again, his posture rigid. “What?”
“Your poker face isn’t in place all the time either, officer,” she said, her voice gentle. “But don’t worry, he has no clue.”
Andre shook his head, his expression resigned. “I knew you were going to be the death of me, bella.”
When they both reached the top of the stairs, Andre swung open the door to find the TV blaring ESPN and two empty beer bottles sitting on the coffee table, but the living room otherwise empty. She peered over his shoulder. “May have some brooding on our hands.”
They stepped inside the loft, and she locked the door behind her. The place was much bigger than she’d expected from looking up from the street. High ceilings with exposed ductwork, a solid wall of windows draped with simple white curtains at the far end of the place, and gorgeously aged brick walls flanking the left and right sides of the space. Every area was open to the next—kitchen, dining area, living room—with only a few supporting columns here and there. A metal staircase in the corner of the dining space spiraled up to an open second level where the bedrooms were located.
“Wow, y’all aren’t exactly slumming it, Andre.”
He clicked off the television, grabbed the beer bottles off the table, and walked toward the kitchen. “Jace worked a good deal for this when he leased the store space on the two bottom levels. Plus, believe me, it didn’t look like this when we first moved in. Someone had divided up all the space with cheap sheetrock. Took me a year to tear this thing down to the bones and get it in this shape.”
“You did all this?”
He tossed the bottles in a trash can and shot her a deviant smirk. “Haven’t you heard? All Mexicans know how to do construction. It’s like a requirement to be a card-carrying member.”
She rolled her eyes. “Smartass.”
“Nah, I worked at a Home Depot to get through college and took every DIY class I could. After the crap I see every day at work, sometimes it’s nice just to just zone out and hit shit with a hammer.”
“I totally get that.”
He pointed to the windows. “Jace is probably out on the balcony. You should go out there first. You’re better-looking than me, so there’s less of a chance of getting your head bitten off.”
She blew out a breath, trying to shore up her emotions. She needed to make sure Jace was okay and leave. That was it. “All right. Wish me luck.”
She pushed back the curtains and found the sliding door that led to the outside balcony. Jace was perched on the edge of a lounge chair, forearms braced on his thighs, looking off into the greenbelt that bordered the back of the building. His head turned in her direction when she shoved open the door and stepped outside.
His expression remained flat when he saw it was her. “You were supposed to stay with Andre.”
“He’s here, too.”
“Fucking Andre,” he muttered, turning back to stare at the view.
She took a tentative step forward. “Your mom okay?”
She cringed. “Guess things haven’t improved with Jace and his father. They were always at each other when I lived with them.”
Andre snorted. “His dad’s a jackass. He has this amazing son who’s breaking his back to run a business he’s passionate about—with no help from the family fortune, by the way—and all his father can see is that Jace doesn’t fit into the mold he’s created for him. Jace would never admit it to anyone, but his father’s constant digs tear him up.”
She looked down at her soup. She’d woken up from her nap planning an escape route. The two men had stripped more than her clothes in that bedroom this morning. Her defenses had been left in a tattered heap on the floor, and she needed time to reconstruct them before facing either of the guys again. But the thought of Jace somewhere alone, feeling worthless in his family’s eyes, had her chest feeling tight.
She pushed her chair away from the table and looked up at Andre. “You need to go find him.”
Andre’s eyebrow quirked. “You want me to leave you to find Jace.”
She straightened in her chair, feeling more resolute by the second. “Yes. I’m not going to be able to relax and have fun here if I know he’s somewhere else feeling shitty. Go find him, take him out for a beer, do whatever guys do to make each other feel better. I’ll be fine spending the rest of the weekend in my cabin catching up on my reading.”
The corner of Andre’s mouth tilted up and he pushed off the wall. “Bella, I agree with you that Jace probably doesn’t need to be alone right now, but I’m not leaving you anywhere. You want me to find him, then you come with me.”
“What?” she asked, flustered at the suggestion of taking any of this outside The Ranch’s gates. “No, I can’t. I mean . . .” She scrambled for an explanation that wasn’t I’m afraid I’m falling for the two of you. “My agreement with Daniel is for here, not—”
He shrugged. “So don’t tell him you left. You can stay with us tonight. We have a guest bedroom if you need your own space.”
Stay with the two of them? At their place? The whole thing sounded stupid and ill-advised and way too enticing. “I don’t think—”
“Come on, bella. Let’s not pretend this isn’t the same thing under a different roof. Being at The Ranch doesn’t make what we’re doing any less real.”
She looked down at her hands. Real. That was exactly what this was. Too fucking real. “We’ll find Jace and then I’ll go home. I’ll tell Daniel I wanted to end the weekend early.”
He sighed. “How about we cross that bridge when we get to it? We need to track down Jace first.”
She nodded, feeling better now that she had an escape hatch rigged up. “Okay.”
“Get your stuff packed up, and I’ll call Grant. He’s not going to let you leave with me unless he verifies that it’s what you want.”
“What? I’m a grown woman. I don’t need permission to go with someone.”
“Here you do,” Andre said, crouching down in front of her and laying a light kiss on her lips. “Grant doesn’t mess around with people’s safety. He’ll just make sure that you’re going with me on your own volition and not because I ordered you as your dom to do so.”
She huffed. “I feel like I’ve entered an alternate universe.”
He nuzzled her neck, sending warmth trickling down her spine and beating back some of the anxiety that had crept in. “And what do you think of the natives?”
I think I’ve found my home planet. But she didn’t share that thought. “I think they’re cocky and high-handed.”
He laughed softly against her skin.
“. . . And pretty damn irresistible.” She let herself fall under the spell of his touch and laced her fingers in his hair, enjoying the satiny slide of his dark locks between her knuckles. “Well, two of them, at least.”
“That’s good to hear. We have a bit of a soft spot for you, too. In fact, I have something to propose to you on the way over.” He pulled back to look at her, his grin sly. “But if I don’t stop kissing you now, we’ll never leave this cabin. Jace will be on his own.”
She drew her hands down from his hair to his stubbled cheeks and sighed. It was really unfair for him to be so damn delicious. He made it next to impossible to hold on to her resolve. “All right, call the Grand Poo-bah so I can get permission to leave with you, kind sir.”
* * *
She and Andre didn’t have to search too hard for Jace. His little sports car was parked on the side of the building that housed both Wicked and the guys’ third-floor loft. Andre entered the code to open the gate for the private parking area and pulled into the spot next to Jace’s. “Let’s go see what the damage is. My guess is he’ll either be a total brooding pain in the ass or—”
“Act like absolutely nothing is wrong.”
He cut the ignition and smirked at her. “Hasn’t changed much since his teenage years, huh?”
She shrugged. “It always seemed like the harder his dad came down on him, the more devil-may-care he became. Like he was determined to show his father his opinion didn’t even make a blip on his radar.”
Andre’s brown eyes reflected the same sadness she felt for Jace. “Guess we’ll just have to go remind him that not everyone thinks he’s a jackass.” He pushed open his door. “Well, unless he is acting like a jackass, then all bets are off.”
She laughed. “Right.”
Andre led her to the front door of the store. “Let’s check his office first. He’s been spending a lot of time in there lately.”
The bottom floor of Wicked was more a lobby and didn’t have any products displayed. Instead, the most gorgeous black-and-white erotic photography Evan had ever seen adorned the dark maroon walls. Soft classical music filled her ears as well, but she had trouble dragging her focus away from the artwork. She touched the corner of one large piece—a collared woman was in the process of disrobing and in the background, two men sat in the darkened corner of the bedroom, leaning back in their chairs, their attention held captive by the display.
The photographer had captured the light so perfectly. The soft curves of the woman’s body gleamed, and the dark angles playing over the faces of the men she was undressing for promised wickedness to come. Something that could’ve looked pornographic under an amateur’s camera had been morphed into something stunning and pure. “God, I wish I was this good.”
Andre slid a hand onto her lower back. “I have no doubt you are. I can’t wait to see your photography.”
“I don’t do this type of work,” she said, looking at the price on the picture and trying to keep a straight face at the astronomical amount.
Evan let Andre lead her up the stairs to the main store. She paused at the glass door leading into the shop, which had poetry scrawled across it in calligraphy. She read it aloud, running her fingers over the lettering:
Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
Andre smiled. “That was Jace’s mission statement when he started Wicked. He wanted a place lovers could come to without shame. A place where desire and sex were simply seen as natural extensions of people’s love for one another.”
She reread the poem, absorbing the words. “I had no idea he was that much of a hopeless romantic.”
Andre pushed open the door. “He used to be, bella. Life can tear that out of you sometimes.”
Jace turned out not to be in his office so Andre led her to an unmarked door at the back of the building and typed in a code on a keypad to unlock it. “We have to trek up another flight of stairs, but the view’s nice.”
“No problem,” she said as she followed him up, though she wondered why someone who came from gaudy money like Jace chose to live in a walk-up above his business.
Andre peeked back at her and sniffed when he saw her expression. “Don’t ever play poker, Evan. You’ll get taken for everything you’ve got.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You wear your every thought on your face.” He started climbing the stairs again. “Jace lives here because he turned away his family’s money. They won’t give him access to his trust fund unless he returns to the family business.”
“Oh.”
“It’s also why we’re roommates. Helps both of us to split the expenses.”
She sniffed. “That’s not the only reason you live with him.”
He paused, looked back down at her again, his posture rigid. “What?”
“Your poker face isn’t in place all the time either, officer,” she said, her voice gentle. “But don’t worry, he has no clue.”
Andre shook his head, his expression resigned. “I knew you were going to be the death of me, bella.”
When they both reached the top of the stairs, Andre swung open the door to find the TV blaring ESPN and two empty beer bottles sitting on the coffee table, but the living room otherwise empty. She peered over his shoulder. “May have some brooding on our hands.”
They stepped inside the loft, and she locked the door behind her. The place was much bigger than she’d expected from looking up from the street. High ceilings with exposed ductwork, a solid wall of windows draped with simple white curtains at the far end of the place, and gorgeously aged brick walls flanking the left and right sides of the space. Every area was open to the next—kitchen, dining area, living room—with only a few supporting columns here and there. A metal staircase in the corner of the dining space spiraled up to an open second level where the bedrooms were located.
“Wow, y’all aren’t exactly slumming it, Andre.”
He clicked off the television, grabbed the beer bottles off the table, and walked toward the kitchen. “Jace worked a good deal for this when he leased the store space on the two bottom levels. Plus, believe me, it didn’t look like this when we first moved in. Someone had divided up all the space with cheap sheetrock. Took me a year to tear this thing down to the bones and get it in this shape.”
“You did all this?”
He tossed the bottles in a trash can and shot her a deviant smirk. “Haven’t you heard? All Mexicans know how to do construction. It’s like a requirement to be a card-carrying member.”
She rolled her eyes. “Smartass.”
“Nah, I worked at a Home Depot to get through college and took every DIY class I could. After the crap I see every day at work, sometimes it’s nice just to just zone out and hit shit with a hammer.”
“I totally get that.”
He pointed to the windows. “Jace is probably out on the balcony. You should go out there first. You’re better-looking than me, so there’s less of a chance of getting your head bitten off.”
She blew out a breath, trying to shore up her emotions. She needed to make sure Jace was okay and leave. That was it. “All right. Wish me luck.”
She pushed back the curtains and found the sliding door that led to the outside balcony. Jace was perched on the edge of a lounge chair, forearms braced on his thighs, looking off into the greenbelt that bordered the back of the building. His head turned in her direction when she shoved open the door and stepped outside.
His expression remained flat when he saw it was her. “You were supposed to stay with Andre.”
“He’s here, too.”
“Fucking Andre,” he muttered, turning back to stare at the view.
She took a tentative step forward. “Your mom okay?”
