Holy fuck. I put the rifle down on the table and went out the back door. No coat. I didn’t need one. My anger kept me warm. I trudged through the snow until I stood over the body of Carl Norman. In his hands was a rope with a fucking noose on the end, just as she’d said. I glanced back at the house, at Celia, at Luke standing right beside her.
It had been close. Too close. She could have easily died a gruesome, horrible death. Life was fragile. I’d learned that when Ruth died. I’d survived her death, the loss of her, our marriage. But it hadn’t been anything like what I had with Celia. What I shared with Luke. If Celia died, I doubted I would survive it. I’d be a shell of a man, lost.
And so I walked away from Carl Norman, left him and his insane hatred behind and walked back toward the house. Toward my family. My life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Luke
I saw the look in Walker’s eyes as he made his way back to the house. Resolve. Determination. Love. He’d accepted Celia as his wife back in Denver, but perhaps he hadn’t gotten it all sorted in his head until now. Until death almost took her from us.
He shut the door behind him and faced Celia. Lifting his hand, he cupped her jaw. “I love you.”
Celia stepped into his arms hearing that, and I looked to my brother over her head. I saw the truth of the words in his eyes, heard it in those three words. He was with us in this. Completely. Utterly.
“I love both of you,” Celia murmured against him.
Pride and love swelled my chest. Nothing mattered but our family. The three of us. Not Thomkins, not Norman. Nothing. This was what I’d hoped for from the marriage, but hadn’t expected it. Then again, I hadn’t expected Celia.
She reached out for me and I took her small hand in mine. Squeezed it. “This is crazy.”
I smiled at down at her, shook my head. “Sometimes it just works. This love, sweetheart, I’ve said all along, is perfect.”
It was. Absolutely perfect.
“I need you both,” she replied, her voice soft. “Please.”
“You’ve got us,” I assured her.
“Not like that. I need,” she repeated.
Walker pushed her back so he could look at her. “You don’t have to beg, doll. We want you, too. Always. But we can’t take you now. You’ve had a scare.”
She shook her head. “We all have. It makes me want you more.”
“We won’t leave you,” I told her.
While she was a grown woman, it would be a long time before either of us left her alone again. I knew how she felt. She wanted validation, to feel pleasure instead of pain or fear. “You want us to fuck you?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “I want you… together.”
I arched a brow at her request. “Together?” She wanted us both, to fuck her at the same time. That meant I would claim her pussy, Walker her ass. “It’s time?”
She nodded. “After what happened… what almost happened, I want to feel alive. Connected to both of you. I’m ready.”
She was. We’d prepared her body well over the past few days until her body readily took the largest plug, but we weren’t going to claim her like that until she truly wanted it. Now she did. Mind and body.
I took her hand and led her down the hall and up the stairs. Walker followed. We were ready to make her ours once and for all.
***
Celia
I wanted this. I needed this. I needed my men in every way possible. They’d been patient with me, preparing my body so I could take them both at the same time. It was the final act that would tie us together. I was the one to connect us, to make us complete.
But… there was something missing.
When Walker closed the bedroom door behind us, I knew I had to share my one last worry. The one thing that might tear us apart. “While we can come together like this, there’s one thing that would show our love to the world.”
“Oh?” Luke asked, unbuttoning his shirt.
I nodded, glanced at the floor. “A baby.”
The thought of a child that had dark hair like Walker or fair curls like Luke made me long for one so desperately, but I resigned myself to the truth.
“You want a baby, doll?” Walker asked, coming up to me. I could feel his heat, breathe in his spicy scent.
“So very much. But… but I can’t.”
He tipped my chin up so I had to look him in the eye. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “With John, it never happened. After five years.”
“He was a doctor. Did he tell you it was impossible?” Luke asked.