The French doors are open and Ransom’s bent over the pool table, his head turned the opposite way as he sets up his shot, a devastating, lost expression on his handsome face.

Arsen sits in the chair adjacent to him, just inside the room but still close enough to be his shadow of support, pool stick loosely laying between his legs.

We take a single step inside, and as if we’re wearing bells, both of their heads turn toward us.

Ransom’s body grows visibly rigid, and it tightens the muscles in my own, but Beretta pulls his hand from mine and glides behind me as Ransom slowly straightens his spine.

Arsen looks over my shoulder, right as Beretta’s warm breath fans along the slope of my ear. His fingertips feather down my arms, making me shiver, but his touch is not for my benefit. It’s for the bronzy-haired boy thirty feet before me.

Ransom scowls, his eyes flying from one of us to the next, over and over again.

Behind me, the door is closed, the flick of the lock making my pulse jump.

Ransom’s fingers curl tighter over the wooden cue, his frown doubling the longer he stares.

And then Beretta is next to me. So, with my eyes locked onto Ransom’s, I lift my hair and turn sideways.

Beretta wastes no time, his fingers finding the zipper of my jumpsuit and the soft sound might as well be broadcasted over the house speakers, it echoes so loudly in my mind.

I spin, slowly allowing my hair to fall back over me, and Ransom’s eyes heat, pulsing before me as his chest stretches wide.

I’m prepared to allow it to slide from my body, to stand here in the middle of the day, the sun shining bright and straight through the open French doors, in my bra and panties before them.

Hot blooded males who share women... all to help their friend.

One could look at this and call it capitalizing, but I call it love.

They love each other.

This is what love looks like.

Being there for someone who needs it.

By any means necessary.

And here. We. Go...

Chapter 24

The soft silk falls to my feet and Ransom’s pool cue drops to the floor, and when he rasps my name with far more desperation than I’ve ever heard it spoken, I walk closer.

“What are you doing, Trouble?” he rasps, a wretched expression on his face.

Beretta moves ahead of me, placing himself at Ransom’s side, and he grips his friend’s shoulder when his body begins to quake.

He whispers something in Ransom’s ear that has his tongue gliding along his lips, and on my left, Arsen pushes to his feet.

No one stops him as he makes his way to me, and I don’t look away from the blue eyes glued to mine.