Going Down on the Farm (Hell Bent for

Leather 5) MM Rain Carrington

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Going Down on the Farm

Rain Carrington
 Copyright © 2024 Rain Carrington
Cover Copyright © 2024 Rain Carrington
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The purchase of this ebook allows you to only one legal copy for your own personal reading on your own personal device or computer. You do NOT have resell or
distribution rights without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner of this book. Do not copy in any way.
Warning: This book contains scenes of sexual situations between two or more consenting men. There are also scenes of BDSM. Please to not attempt any of the activities
in this book without knowing how to be safe.
Agreeing to read this book, please understand that it’s fiction. Not all acts will be spoken about on page, but it’s understood that each act is safe, sane and consensual.
Edited and formatted by Double A Author Services

Trigger warnings: Bondage, spanking, guns, injury, hospital, blood, pain

Kinks: Bondage, spankings, pain, denial, toys.
 Contents

Foreword
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty-Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
26. Chapter Twenty-Six
27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
28. Epilogue
29. Also by Rain Carrington
30. About Rain Carrington
 Foreword

This is not simply the last book in Hell Bent for Leather, but it’s also a prequel for Big Sky Cowpokes, my next cowboy kink
series that will begin dropping in 2024.
So, it will be added to both series. There won’t be a need to read this to read Big Sky Cowpokes, but it’s here in case
someone needs to see how these three men got together.
Thanks for your support and love,
Rain
 Chapter One

SITTING ON THE SMALL porch of the cabin, I, Jace Conroy, thought of the day I’d had. Three chicks were found in the small
pen saved for roosting hens. Those were the first chicks of many that would be the next generation of workers that would
produce the eggs the company, Belish Eggs, would sell.
I was hired a year ago to manage the farm. My employer, Kenrick Belish, was newly married, had a little boy that was four
years old, and another that was just finishing his first year of college.
With so much going on personally, Rick hired me to take that burden from him. He’d also just given up his mayoral position.
For him, his family came first. I admired that, though I had no family, no partner, to put before my work.
I’d been invited often to hang out with the Belish men and their friends. They’d taken me into their friend group with no
question, and I felt for the first time in years that I belonged.
The only thing I hated about being with those men was the glaring reminder I was the odd man out, being I had no partner like
they all did. That was rough for me most of the time. Seeing the absolute love between the men made it more obvious that I had
no one.
I’d had plenty of fun at the club that three of the men owned in the area. Cowpokes was a BDSM club that had been built in a
barn on the property of Damon Street, Burke Monteleone, and Joel Barnes. They open a couple of weekends a month. Their
property was a resort for the men coming to play, inviting guests to walk the woods and fields, ride horses and enjoy the
country. Then, at night, they’d walk into the club and realize their dirtiest fantasies. I’d had plenty of fun there with several men
over the years , but no one stuck.
I’m not a braggart. I’ve never thought I was so great. As far as being a big guy, I was at six feet tall and muscled from
working farms and ranches all my life. There, however, I felt dwarfed by the men that were my new friends. Hudson McCleod,
or Hud to his friends, alone was six inches taller than me. Ryan Callahan was close to that, too. Burke was right on their heels,
so I wasn’t the biggest man in the room any longer unless I was alone.
I was alone a lot. Well, except for the chickens.
Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had my share of relationships, and they were all pretty decent, though none meshed with me
well enough to make me long for a partner. I enjoyed my privacy, but I missed waking up with someone.
That was down the line. For the moment, I was loving the new place. It was exactly where I wanted to be. The mountains
alone reminded me of my Wyoming upbringing. Being so free to run in the wild, I was nearly feral. Those old feelings came up
again, though it was nearly twenty years since I’d left the ranch at seventeen. Striking out on my own, I found out life wasn’t
what it had been on that ranch.
I saw a car driving on the old dirt road that was barely that. It was more of two dust trails in the weeds, but there it went, and
my defenses raised before I remembered. Chandler Belish was back from college and salivating to get his house built on the
piece of land his father had given him for his going away gift. A gift that screamed please come home when you’re finished
with schooling.
It was sweet, how Rick loved his boys. Kanan, too, had become a father to them since he and Rick had fallen for one another.
They were all about their little family and their new marriage. Chandler had already stated he was coming home when he
finished grad school, which was still years to come.
I got up and took the binoculars from the table just inside the door of the cabin. I wanted to make certain it was Chandler, so
when my lenses focused and I saw another man there, with long, curly hair, I hurried to get to my truck and start heading there.
After I pulled up to see the man more clearly, he looked terribly familiar. He looked over my way and gave a wave before
heading to me as I exited the big blue truck I’d had for a decade. His smile was warm, and his hair blew back in the breeze.
Beautiful, yeah, he was. He had a pair of glasses that kept sliding down his nose, reminding me of a bookworm I’d known in
high school. He had a tablet in his hand and was wearing casual business attire, button-down blue shirt and nice slacks. I
thought quickly he’d chosen the wrong clothing for such a trip in the woods.
“Hey there!” He called, coming within feet of me. “You’re…Jace, right?”
“I am. You are?”
I hoped I didn’t sound too aggressive, but if he had no business there, I’d be much worse than that.
“Roland Brady,” he said, closing the rest of the space between us to hold out his hand to me. “Architect that will be here
quite a bit, I’m sure.”
The architect that had designed Cowpokes. “Oh, hell, sorry, I just wasn’t sure you weren’t lost on private property.”
He flipped his hair over his shoulder before looking me up and down quickly. “I’ve seen you at Cowpokes,” he said, then
blushed wildly over his nose and cheeks.
That’s where I knew him from. He looked quite different, though. The last time I’d noticed him, his hair was straighter and
short. “Must be your hair.”
“I stopped fighting it and let it grow out some. I was surprised it darkened the minute it started growing.”
He’d been pretty blond, yeah, I remembered. “It looks good,” I said, then asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, right, well, Burke called me when his friend, Rick Belish, was looking for an architect. Seems his son is looking to
build a place here.”
Chandler. It made sense. “And you’ve got the job?”
As he laughed, he said, “Yes, after ten sketches and their arguing over the size of the place, I’m finally allowed to come and
look it over to see exactly what both are talking about. I have to admit, I’d hate all the ones I did too, seeing this in person now.
The pictures really didn’t make a dent in how beautiful it is.”
“I’d imagine. This place is…heaven. Well, I’ll leave you to look around then.”
He shook my hand again, and while our hands were interlocked, he asked shyly, “Will I see you around here while I’m
working?”
“I’d imagine, as I work and live here,” I said, smiling a little shyly myself. That was strange, as I was rarely shy.
“And, maybe at…Cowpokes?”
The next open weekend was coming, and I had planned to go. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
I shook his hand again and smiled, a little less shyly. “Good,” I said simply, feeling a bit more myself.
I was a dominant, born and bred that way, as I figured. I always wanted to be in charge, make the calls and more than that,
when I had a man, I lived to take care of them. I’d seen Roland around and I knew he was submissive, and with his beauty, I
could picture him bound to a pole awaiting whatever I had in store for him.
In fact, that was exactly what I did on the way back to my cabin. I pictured it, his small wrists bound in leather cuffs, arms
above his curly head, sweet cherry lips parted as he waited for the pain I’d deal to him…
Yeah, bad timing that my phone went off at that precise moment, and after seeing the caller ID, the erection I was sporting left
me quickly. “Hey boss,” I said as I sat in front of my cabin.
“Jace, hey, can you maybe come to the house? We’ve had some issues, and I’d like you to be part of the conversation.”
“Anything wrong?”
There was a pause, but then he said, “Yes. A man who’s been trying to kill Eli and Noah is out of prison. And…he’s
coming.”
 Chapter Two

I ARRIVED AT RICK’S log mansion, and yeah, I know how that sounds, but that’s what the house was. It had two stories and
an immense attic with windows all around to catch every inch of the scenery. It just so happened to be made to look like a giant
log cabin.
I liked my tiny one just fine.
There were a half dozen cars and pickups around the drive, like they were having a party instead of a meeting. I got to the
front door and saw through the screen door Kanan coming to meet me. “Jace, hi, how are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I said as I entered the house.
Kanan shook my hand and lowered his voice to fill me in a little. “This man that has been plaguing Eli and Noah was
released because of overcrowding. They think it’s because he’s still got a lot of money, and paid off the right people, but…”
“Did he actually try to kill them?”
“He did. He went to their ranch with a gun, but Joel chased him off,” Kanan said proudly of his friend.
After he led me through the foyer and to the left, we were in their dining room. There was a table that would seat twelve, of
which I was the twelfth man there.
Around the table were Eli James-Oliver and his husband, Noah. To their right were Brett Lincoln, his husband, Ryan, and
their boyfriends, the couple, Hud and Theo Grant.
Rick sat next to an empty chair I assumed to belong to Kanan, then Burke, Damon, and Joel were down from that. I nodded
and greeted them all, then took a seat at the head of the table.
“I was just waiting for you,” Rick said as he stood once Kanan took his seat. “Thank you all for coming. Jace, I know you
haven’t been involved in this, but Eli and Noah are worried about everyone that frequents Cowpokes that live and work in the
area.”
Before I could respond, I looked to Eli, who was usually one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen. He was model pretty,
built well and always smiling, so happy he was with Noah. But that day, he was pale, drawn, and looked years older than his
thirty-five years.
Noah saw me staring. “He’s been through hell with the motherfucker. If he comes near here, you all call me first. I’m gonna
kill him.”
“If I don’t git ta ‘im first,” Joel declared. “I should’a shot ‘im dead that day I saw ‘im.”
“You saved my life and Noah’s, Joel,” Eli assured.
I held up my hand. “I’ve heard bits and pieces about this, but what’s the complete story with this guy?”
Noah started, “He’s a fucking prick,” but Eli stopped him by placing his fingers over Noah’s lips.
“You get too riled up, babe.”
“I got every right to be!”
Burke stepped in to say, “I’ll tell it.” I then nodded to Noah. “You’ve got the right idea, brother. Any of us that sees him first,
we will not stop ourselves from killing him.” To me, he explained, “Harvey is Eli’s ex. When Eli left him, he went a little
crazy. I think he thought he had Eli trapped. He didn’t allow Eli to work or have his own money. What Eli did was take a watch
from him. That was all the excuse he needed to get the cops after Eli, but instead of it being considered a theft, the police
figured it was a domestic dispute.”
“After that bombed to get Eli into trouble, he tried to come and kill Noah and frame Eli for it. Joel kicked that idea fast when
Harvey saw he wasn’t the only one with a gun in the place. That landed him in trouble and, once caught, he was convicted of
attempted murder. He was given twenty years. Even in prison, he’s tried to hire people to kill Eli and Noah, but Theo had
those…low connections, let’s just say, and he found out about it. Again, we stopped it. Now, he’s out, and the cellmate he had
before he got out got word to Theo’s friends, who’d had the prison wired for that kind of talk from Harvey.”
 “We were trying to get ahead of the next plan,” Theo said as he nodded along with everything Burke said.
“Sure, yeah, we wanted to know beforehand this time. Well, the night before his release, he spilled everything to his
cellmate. So now, we need to batten down the hatches and get prepared.”
Rick said to me, “He threatened Eli and Noah, of course, but he’s also threatened everyone that knows them. That’s all of us
in this room, and of course, you know us. You’re a part of our little family here, Jace, and you work on our property. If he can’t
hurt us, he could want to hurt our businesses. Kill Hud’s and Theo’s pigs, for example, or Eli’s and Noah’s horses and cattle.”
“I get it,” I hurried to say. “I’ll be on watch, or anything you all need. You know that.”
Eli sighed, like relief flooded him. “Thank you, Jace.”
Damon blustered, “If he gets near Cowpokes, he’s going to be really sorry.”
“Maybe you should cancel the weekend,” Eli whispered. “What if…?”
Burke said to his best friend, “Honey, don’t you worry about that. You and Noah, you go, have a vacation far from here.
Maybe if he doesn’t see you both here, he’ll leave.”
“Not a chance,” Noah started. “Eli is going, but I’m not leavin’ my place to that crazy fuck.”
Joel nodded, rose from the table, and started for the door. “I’m doin’ me some huntin’.”
Theo shouted at him, “I’ll ready the pigs!”
“Hold the fuck on, all of you,” Burke hollered. “Ever heard of premeditated murder? That is exactly what you all sound like
right now! We cannot hunt him down.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked cautiously.
“Well, we keep vigilant. We get more of the townspeople informed. Cowpokes is covered . I’ll hire special security for the
weekend. We’re making a ton of money from the place, so protecting it must come on the heels of protecting Eli.”
“I’m not leaving you all to fight my battles,” Eli said, and when Noah tried to argue, he fought harder. “This is my fight,
Noah. I brought him into everyone’s life because I was a coward and left him without telling him.”
Everyone argued with Eli except for Joel, who ran to him, dropping to his knees by Eli’s chair. “Not a damn word o’ that! Ya
ain’t no danged coward!”
I spoke then. “He’s right. You got out for your own physical and mental health, Eli. It sounds like he’s the coward. I’ll
volunteer for security duty, Burke, Damon. Extend my membership a bit, save me a few bucks, but I’ll be happy to watch over
the place. I’ve done security before.”
“Sign me up too, former and future boss,” Hud said to Burke, then to me said, “I used to work for Burke, getting sent out on
gigs for the rich and powerful.”
“Thanks, both of you.”
“I’m in,” Ryan said, too.
“Well, the three of us alone will deter most from so much as coming close,” I teased.
“What we’re worried about the most is Harvey sending in someone that we don’t know. We’ve gone over the new members
for six months, even though he didn’t know then he’d be released. So far, they all check out with their references, but we’re
keeping a special eye on those we don’t know well, regardless. As part of security, you’ll see everyone’s passes on the
computer, their faces and everything.”
I nodded to him as Ryan said, “We’ll make sure no one who isn’t on your list gets close. The thing is, everyone, well, I hate
to say it, but I doubt he’d hit with all these men around, security or not. It’s going to be when Eli and Noah are alone.”
Rick held up his hands and announced, “That’s why I would hope you all come here, whoever wants to.”
As everyone murmured discussions, Joel growled, “Not an’ ‘ave that lil one in danger!”
Kanan explained, “We’ve already contacted Chandler’s aunt, who acts like an aunt to Colby, too. She’s going to take both the
boys, though Chandler isn’t thrilled about it. When he wants to come home for break, he wants to be here.”
“It’s better he’s safe,” I said. “For now. He’s grown, and if he wants to be here, then I’d suggest letting him. If not, he could
come when we didn’t know it and he’d be in more danger.”
Rick smiled and told me, “Sounds like you know his stubborn streak.”
“I was nineteen once.”
“As were we all,” Damon agreed. “I say let him stay, but to make sure he’s always with one or more of us.”
“I’ll speak to him, but Colby will feel better with him there for at least a couple of days,” Rick assured.
Once the plans were set, Hud and Theo were hosting Brett and Ryan, who were their boyfriends anyway, and Burke, Damon,
Joel, Eli, Noah, and I would stay in the spare rooms of the mansion.
I hated it, truly. I enjoyed my privacy and the quiet of my little cabin in the woods. Still, the men not only employed me, but
they’d taken me into their circle of friends. They’d opened their doors and their lives to me, so I felt privileged I’d been
included in their plans.
After packing up enough for a few days, knowing I could head home if needed for the rest, I headed to the farm and checked
over the chickens and left word with the other farm hands to keep their eyes peeled for strange people creeping around the
place.
 Done with that, I went to the mansion, pulling in with my old truck that was dinged and rusted in spots. It didn’t fit next to that
house, but I’d move it once Rick told me where to park it.
Chandler was hollering into the house with the door open and then turned to me, smiling. “Oh! Jace, hey. I’m heading out, but
my dad thinks I need an escort. Would you talk to him?”
“I’m going nowhere near that, Chan. Sorry, but you’re on your own there. Never get between a lion and his cub, that’s my
motto.”
He laughed and agreed, “Probably wouldn’t end well. Gotcha. I’ll see you in a couple days,” he said before leaving, but I
stopped him by grabbing his arm gently.
“Can I ask you…about something?”
“Sure! Shoot.”
“You have that guy planning your house. Roland.”
“Yeah,” he said as his grin widened. “Does someone have a crush?”
I laughed as I ducked my head. The second time I felt shy in talking to or about him. “Not exactly, but he’s…interesting.”
“He’s that, and he’s also hot. He’s a little old for me, but for you, he’d be perfect.”
After righting my dropped jaw, I grumbled, “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem,” he said cheerily, not catching my sarcasm. “See you when I get back.”
“Bye, Chan.”
They were gathered in the family room as they all kissed and hugged little Colby. Joel was giggling exactly like Colby, and
together, they made a sight. “Ain’t he jus’ the cutest lil ol’ thing?”
“He is,” Damon agreed, pinching Joel’s cheek. “Almost as cute as you.”
“Oh, go on now.”
Eli was the only one not fussing over Colby, sitting on a sofa, head down, like he was exhausted. I went to sit by him. “Eli,
it’s going to be okay. We’re not going to let that asshole hurt you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s all of you. This is my fault, and you are all in danger now.”
“Your fault the guy has two screws loose? Your fault you didn’t want to stay with the prick?”
“No, but⸺”
“But nothing. I don’t want to hear you talking like you’re to blame. He’s a prick that thought he owned you. He didn’t, and
that hurt his fragile ego. Period.”
“Thanks, Jace.”
“And it didn’t help at all, right?”
He laughed a little and whispered, “It did…I just…”
“Worry for the people you love. That’s why they all love you.”
“I’ll try not to let my worry show as much. It makes them all worry over me more. I don’t want that, either.”
“Good. Now, where is the food? I missed lunch.”
“Kanan, feed us,” Eli hollered, then laughed. “We need to keep up our strength.”
 Chapter Three

AFTER EVERYONE GOT MOVED into Rick’s and Kanan’s home, we met in the family room again to set up security details.
Burke informed us all, “The security detail will be here by morning, three men and one woman, all coming in on their own,
so once they all are in, I’ll tell them where to patrol.”
Rick suggested, “The house is big with five immediate entrances on the ground floor. Have them cover the entrances they
can, and we can take turns covering the other and patrolling the grounds.”
“Sounds good,” Burke said. “If it gets too much for us, I have five more in the wings. This is gonna cost, but I’m waiving my
fees and most of them aren’t charging full price for their service. They’ve all gotten great jobs from my company, so they’re
here more as a favor.”
“I’d never let them do this for little to nothing, Burke. They’ll make their full wage, and I will pay you your fee as well,”
Rick insisted, and his stern voice made it clear he would not argue the point.
Burke teased, “Wow. Kanan, no wonder you fell for this guy. He’s so…dommie.”
Kanan winked at him. “Right? Sexy fucker.”
“Fucker,” Rick mused. “We never cuss in the house unless it’s whispered dirty talk in our bedroom. Feels…strange.”
I could tell, and so could the others, that Rick was missing his kids. I soothed, “They’ll be back, safe and healthy.”
“I know. They’re just…the life of this house, along with Kanan.”
Kanan went to his man and kissed him. “I’m still here. I think we’ll be fine, Rick.”
Once the mansion was set, I thought of the others. “I know Hud and Ryan alone are intimidating enough, but they have a big
spread, too. Is any security heading there?”
Burke laughed. “Oh, that was a fight you missed. Theo raised a fit. He said he didn’t want Ryan and Hud out prowling the
grounds all night, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. He insisted on more security, so three are heading there tonight. I’m
sending a rental RV over too, to house them. Theo and Hud don’t have the space like Rick does.”
“Good. They’ll be exhausted because I know Hud and Ryan won’t sleep, thinking their men could be in danger.”
“Seriously,” Noah broke in, “I’d be more worried about anyone else. Theo and Brett may not be the giants that Hud and Ryan
are, but they're feisty as a wild pig that just got stung on the ass by a bee.”
“Nice visual, babe,” Eli purred at him. He sobered and told the room, “I’m sorry for all this.”
“Not again, Eli,” Burke growled at him. “I’ll strongly suggest to Noah that he cuts you off for a month.”
“Burke!”
“Listen to him,” Noah whispered, then kissed Eli’s wide-open mouth closed.
The feeling in the room was less apprehensive than it had been. I knew the group was still worried, especially for Eli, but
together, they were stronger.
That was the thing about this group of men. In their presence, one could get caught up in that feeling of togetherness and
family. Some people in the LGBTQIA community no longer had the family they were born to. Being kicked out of homes was
an all-too-common occurrence for them, so many found families of their own. These men, some still had their birth families,
others did not, but they’d become a family. I was being brought into it, and though I was alone, I didn’t feel that way any longer.
Those times I felt like an odd man out left as soon as their concern for me was spoken. Being brought to the house, being told
to be careful if I had to leave…it stuck right into the center of my heart.
I patrolled the yard with Burke after we broke up the meeting. He pointed to places that would be worrisome because of the
lack of clear views. There were plenty of those, being the area around the house was heavily treed.
The mountains that surrounded the house were also an issue when I’d previously saw the mountains as things that made me
feel more secure. People could sit on one, pointing a rifle with a scope at the house, and if the rifle was right and the shooter
good enough, they could shoot someone right through the many windows in the home.
 “Fuck. That made things a little too real.”
Burke nodded his agreement. “I have walked my entire place a couple of times, which is no small feat. I have wanted to cut
down a dozen trees, put up security cameras, all kinds of crazy stuff. When you work in the security field, you tend to get a little
paranoid.”
“I can see that.”
Burke laughed and mused, “Damon took me by the hand and led me into the house, explaining to me that we were in the
country. Not everyone is out to steal or hurt us. Most around here especially just want to be left alone, like us. Then things like
this happen, and I want to cut down trees and put up a hundred cameras again.”
“And you’re sure this guy is coming? Like…how reliable is this cellmate of his?”
“Granted, he asked for credit for telling us, you know, lowering his time inside. That made me suspicious, but how would he
even know the names and places if Harvey hadn’t spoken about us?”
“True. Better safe than sorry.”
“I just hope that Eli can feel safe here again, once this is all over. That kid…and I call him a kid even though he’s not that
much younger than me, but he feels like a kid. I want to protect him. I can’t explain it. Anyway, he’s been through enough. He
had a rough time in the war, tough after too, mostly because of this fuck, Harvey. He thought he’d found love, found someone
that wanted the same things as Eli did. Harvey just wanted a trophy and a free housekeeper.”
As I gazed around at the mountains surrounding the place, I didn’t see them as threatening, but again, I wasn’t in security. I’d
never been in the military, and I didn’t have someone hunting me. “You can count on me for anything you need, Burke.”
“Thanks, man.”
To change the subject and ease some of Burke’s tension, I brought up Roland. “You used Roland Brady to design the club,
right?”
Burke chuckled and said, “Roland is fucking amazing. Yeah. Why? You gonna build a house?”
“Not yet. I’d love to, but I have a little more money to save and to find some land of my own. Right now, I’m happy with my
little cabin at the farm.”
“So…you like him,” he said with a cheesy grin.
I felt myself blushing, my face as hot as the desert in August, but I tried to play it off, anyway. “He’s…interesting, but he’s
gonna be around a lot, watching over Chandler’s house being built.”
“So…you like him.”
“Fucker.”
Burke slapped me on the back, then wrapped the same arm he slapped me with around my shoulders. “It’s okay, man, don’t
worry about it. Roland is…fucking sweet. If you guys get together, though, there’s something you should know.”
“You fucked him.”
“You knew?”
“I figured. You own a sex club, and he goes, what? Every time it’s open?”
“No, I think he’s missed a couple of weekends,” he said, then laughed.
Inside, the tension wasn’t as heavy, and Theo and Ryan were there, without their own partners. Theo greeted Burke and me
with kisses to our cheeks. “Hey, fellas. How is it out there? Mysterious bad guys around every corner?”
“Smart ass,” Burke accused. “You should be used to this.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Those crazy mob boys were after my sweet, perky ass, but
my sweet Hud protected me, and he will again.”
Burke asked, “Where is he?”
“He’s not leaving the property alone. Like we discussed, we’re worried for our hogs.”
“Right. Good thinking. What are you and Ryan doing here?”
Ryan answered him, “I wanted to check in with you on the security issues.”
As they walked off together, Theo took my hand and led me to the living room. “Come and protect us while they’re gone.”
Damon puffed up from where he’d been snuggling with Joel. “Am I chopped liver?”
“You’re tough enough, I suppose,” Theo teased.
“He’s a tough’un,” Joel countered, then grabbed Damon’s crotch. “’specially here.”
“Joel, no groping in public,” Damon chided with a smile. “Later, we’ll do plenty of groping.”
“Hot damn!”
I had to admit, Joel was about the sweetest guy. He was fiercely loyal and defensive of not only his two partners, but his
friends as well. When he wasn’t rushing to shoot someone or feed them to Theo’s hogs, he was a teddy bear. A small, wiry
teddy bear.
“Remind me to tell Phoebe to speak to the maid about the sheets,” Rick chuckled. “That new maid…what the hell is her
name?”
“Lila,” Kanan reminded him. “It’s a simple name, babe.”
 “I don’t know. It’s my age, I guess.”
Noah grumbled, “I’m older ‘an you, son.”
“And you never forget a thing,” Eli said to him.
“Suck up,” Rick accused.
“You’ve never seen him wield a bullwhip. You’d kiss up, too.”
After everyone got a laugh from that, Joel asked, amazed, “Ya like it? Don’t ya?”
“Yes, Joel, I love it. Still, it stings like hell.”
Theo drawled, “Try getting thrown in a hog pen.”
Everyone knew the story. When Theo and Hud were first living at Theo’s farmhouse, he got on Hud’s nerves enough to piss
him off and ended up in the hog pen. “And now, you love the man,” Ryan reminded him as Burke and Ryan returned to the
group.
“I do, but I’m still plotting revenge.”
“Being your partner is revenge enough,” he teased and got a playful smack in the gut.
“Ya ne’er tol’ me what I was doin’,” Joel said to Burke. “Where am I gonna be?”
“In here, safe,” Burke told him with no room for argument, but Joel gave him one, anyway.
“Hells bells! Ain’t I the one saved ‘im ta begin with?”
Damon growled, “And because of that, and the fact he’s seen you, you’re in just as much danger as Noah and Eli. Don’t
argue! You’re in here, safe.”
“And stay away from the windows,” Burke ordered.
“Hells bells, ain’t that some shit?”
“Zip it,” Damon purred. “I’ll do fun things to you if you stay safe for me.”
“Aw, shit. In ‘at case.”
While they snuggled and kissed, I longed for someone. I wasn’t desperate for a relationship or anything, but once in a great
while, it stung.
Theo and Ryan were making eyes at one another, Noah was holding Eli close. The love in the room was suffocating me, so I
went outside to do a patrol to get away from it.
I felt like I could breathe again after heading around to the side of the house. The immediate landscaping was well-
manicured, but just beyond that, the forest took over, growing wild and free.
There was little noise compared to the city, but once you get past the difference, things could be heard that screamed life.
Critters of one kind or another could be heard scurrying around the forest, birds leaving branches and taking off in flight, mice
or other small creatures rushing over dried leaves.
The wind alone was a song that only those who love nature with all their being could sway to. Like a flute and soft brush on
a drum, the wind blew gently through the evergreen and coniferous trees.
Then, an unwelcome sound came to my ears, causing me to hurry back to the driveway.
Sure enough, the SUV was driving fast up the drive, heading right to the house. With my heart in my throat, I ran as fast as I
could to the backdoor of the house and knocked until Burke opened it. “Someone’s coming, fast.”
Burke went into motion, taking a gun from the back of his jeans that I hadn’t seen before that moment. Wishing for my own
firearm, I ran after him to the front of the house, as he yelled instructions for everyone to get lower than the windows and stay
put after that.
I followed him to the kitchen, where he sank to his knees as he dug in a cabinet, then withdrew another gun and handed it to
me. “Can you handle that?”
“I grew up with a Ruger. I’ve got it.”
We went out the front and crouched by the front bushes, but then Burke saw the SUV. He sighed, “My guys are early.”
As I rose to my feet, I was shot, but not with a bullet. A man got out of the back passenger side of the vehicle, and once I saw
him, I nearly couldn’t hold myself upright.
“Chaz,” Burke said, shaking hands with the wide, muscled African American who got out of the front of the SUV. “Tango,
how are ya?” He asked the man that had jolted me badly.
“I’m good. Ready to work,” he said with his smooth brow creasing. “Where you want me?”
He was smallish, dirty blond hair, nearly the same color as Roland. Suddenly, a picture entered my mind, unwanted but not
unappreciated, of the two of them lying in my bed, nude, ready to be taken by me.
I blinked away from that vision and was introduced to the four newcomers. “Jace, this is Chaz,” he said, pointing to the big
man to my right. “This is Marylyn,” he said of the woman coming around the back of the vehicle. She had short black hair and
wore black jeans and a camouflage T-shirt. She was pretty but looked like no one I’d want to tangle with, muscled as her bare
arms were and that look in her dark eyes like she’d rather stab me than be pleasant.
She gave me a nod and a firm, almost painful handshake and then Burke continued. “Finally, this is Felix.” The tall, thin
redhead came over to shake my hand and I saw his ice-blue eyes scrutinizing me. His thick beard couldn’t cover his mouth, it
was such a thin line. “Who’s this?” He asked Burke.
“Not officially security, but he’s helping us out, so be nice, Fe.”
I shook his hand and said, “Not here to step on toes.”
“Just doing my job,” he grumbled.
Tango came back over to me. “He’s fed gunpowder with every meal to keep him a fuckhead.”
“Fuck off, Tango, or I’ll swat you like a fly,” he said, cracking up a little. “A gnat.”
“I’m small, but I’d still kill you three times before you could get a punch in on me.”
“Okay, fellas, and lady, I’ll show you around and get you all stationed. Jace, will you please go inside and let them know to
relax?”
“Sure,” I said as I locked eyes with Tango. His eyes were green, a beautiful clover green, and they were pure steel. He was
maybe the sexiest thing I’d seen since Roland. “Sure thing.”
 Chapter Four

AFTER LETTING EVERYONE KNOW it was the security personnel there early, everyone relaxed. It’s then when I wondered
aloud, “I get Theo and Hud staying at their place for their animals, but what about the rest of you?”
“My mama is taking all of ‘em,” Joel informed me. “Trucked all o’ ‘em to her place days ago.”
“Oh, good. Even your dogs?”
“Millie ain’t happy ‘bout it. She loves Mom, though.”
“She’s taken all the animals?” I asked, incredulous. “The cattle and all?”
“Sure,” Noah answered. “I move ‘em to and from each summer and winter. Ain’t much of a stretch to move them a couple
miles over to her spread. Fresh grass from the pastures she hadn’t got to yet.”
“Hmm. Well, everything is covered? That’s…amazing. I don’t think this Harvey knows what he’s messing with, with this
group.”
Eli beamed when I said that and came to me immediately to give me a sweet hug. “That…makes me feel better. Weirdly so,
but it does.”
I was surprised at that, but pleased. “Good. I’m happy to help.”
Burke came back into the house and kissed Joel, who was bouncing nervously in the foyer. “It’s okay, baby. Stop worrying.”
“Can’t he’p it. Don’t wanna lose my men.”
“You’re not losing us, Joel. We’re fine and so are all our friends.”
Joel seemed appeased, but still apprehensive. “I wanna go wit’ ya when yer patrollin’ ‘round.”
“No. I appreciate that you know guns and you’re not afraid for yourself, but this is my area of expertise. Let me do my job.”
“Hells bells, Burke! Ya know I wanna he’p!”
Damon suggested, “Maybe, while still in the house, Joel can patrol the ground floor.”
“Joel,” I said, sitting in one of the comfortable white linen chairs, “You and I can take that job until I have to guard one door.
If that’s okay.”
“Iffin that’s all I git ta do, then so be it.”
Damon was proud of his suggestion, and finally, Joel stopped pacing and sat between his men. The pangs I usually got from
being the only one without a partner were lessened, and I thought I knew why.
Suddenly, there were two men that had caught my eye, and instead of loneliness, I felt challenged. No, at the time, I didn’t
want both as much as hoping to have two men to pursue, hoping one might stick. Though that vision in my mind of the two of
them on my bed…that lingered.
It didn’t help I was living with men that had a triad. I saw their love and devotion and wondered how it worked. I never
dreamed that could work, three men in a relationship, three sets of issues; of hopes, of likes and dislikes.
Joel was so in love with Burke and Damon, he couldn’t go a few minutes without searching them out with his eyes, and once
he found one or both, his entire demeanor eased.
The three of them went off to do some work on the computer. Both worked remotely with their own companies, Burke
placing security personnel with those in need, and for Damon, it was close, but not exactly the same. For him, security was a
one-on-one proposition. He had expertise in clearing names from the internet. If someone had things on the internet that shined
a bad light on them, or if they wanted less of an online footprint for whatever reason, they came to companies like Damon’s.
Their names are searched out on the web, even the dark web, and erased. I did not know how he did that, because as they said,
the internet is forever. Still, he made a very good living doing it.
It also left them all the time needed to manage not only their very popular club and resort, but also the growing farm. They
currently had over fifty animals, far more than Burke wanted, and not half as many as Damon dreamed of having. Xen, the little
quiet man who painted the mural in Cowpokes of the three and their animals, had run out of room to include them all.
 To think of all those animals being moved was amazing. I’d moved cattle, but never numerous goats, chickens, and other
critters. Also, I couldn’t imagine Damon’s place without his beloved critters.
I could tell something was bothering him, and it was suddenly clear what it was. He worried over his animals like they were
his kids.
Speaking of which, I asked Eli and Noah, “This all put a stop to you looking to adopt, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Eli said miserably. “We had arrangements already with an agency, and they were giving our file to women looking.
We had to tell them to put us on hold.”
I sat next to him and took his hand, staring at Noah, and I said, “I’m really sorry. I know how happy you were to get a kid.”
“We’ll get one, hell or high water,” Noah said, then took Eli’s other hand. “Won’t we, honey?”
“I hope so,” Eli said, then tried to smile, but it didn’t quite land. “It’s important to us, right?”
Noah hadn’t been the one that wanted it, at first. Eli wanted a kid, along with his home and husband, to complete his perfect
life. All it did when I saw the sadness and hope in his face was to make me three times angrier that fucker Harvey had done this
to them.
“We’ll get him. I swear, we will,” I whispered to them.
Speaking of Joel’s mother, Pam, she showed up then, knocking on the door and hollering in as she opened it before it could
be answered, “Sure’re scared if ya leave y’all’s door wide open!”
I jogged to the door, with Noah and Eli right on my heels. Eli kissed her cheek as Noah laughed at her. “Pam, we have
security now!”
“I saw ‘em,” she said, pushing her way through us. “Smart assed lil fucker tol’ me to wait. I ain’t waitin’.” As soon as she
got into the family room, she started hollering for Joel. “Where’s my damned kid?”
“I’ll go get him,” Kanan told her, rushing out. I thought, humorously, that he looked scared of the little woman in western
wear.
As she dragged her hat from her head, she looked over the place. “Fancy, ain’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rick confessed. “My grandfather built the place, and my father built onto it.”
“La-di-da,” she whispered.
Joel ran into the room and went right to his mother. “Ma? What’s ya doin’ ‘ere?”
“Can’t a lady come check on her only kid?”
He smiled and took her hug, then asked, “How’s Millie?”
“She’s a-missin’ ya, but fine and dandy. He’ped me round up those goats of yourn.”
“She loves herdin’ the goats,” he said proudly. “Everythin’ else okay? Patches, Puck, all the horses okay?”
She plopped down on the sofa and sighed, “All well an’ good. How’re y’all?”
Noah sat near her and explained, “I can’t thank you enough, Pam. You have our world on your spread.”
“Eh, ain’t nothin’. I’ve had more ‘an them before this. Gives me somethin’ ta do. Worried over my boy, though.”
“I’m okay, Ma. Ya know Damon an’ Burke ain’t gonna let me git hurt none.”
“They’s good boys an’ all, but I can’t fer the life o’ me figer out why y’all didn’t come home to me for all this! Y’all’s stock
is there.”
“Ma, we wanted to, surely, but Burke set it up fer ‘ere ‘cause⸺”
“Oh, I know. That security team, that’s all I ‘eard from yer man. More room ‘ere, easier to cover. He tol’ me. Still, no one is
better than yer own ma to look after y’all.”
Joel got soft at that. “Thanks, Ma. Love ya, truly.”
“Yeah, that don’t feed the crows, Joel Everett.”
I quickly did the initials and realized Joel’s initials spelled J-E-B. Jeb. “I’m gonna have to call you Jeb now, Joel.”
Pam barked a loud laugh. “He used-ta insist on it. Call me Jeb, Mama, he’d say to me.”
As Joel blushed brightly, Damon and Burke came back into the room to hear everyone laughing. “That’s what I like to hear,”
Burke commented before leaning over to kiss Pam’s cheek. “Mom, how are you?”
“I’m a bitchin’ and complainin’, what else?”
Damon took his turn to kiss her cheek. “You? You’re a kitten.”
“Kittens got claws, boy.”
“Don’t I know it?” Damon laughed. “How are the animals?”
“Love that y’all ask ‘bout them and not me!”
“I can tell you’re fine, ma’am. You’re tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“The bullshit’s runnin’ deep in this ‘ere house,” she said, but blushed darker than Joel. “How’re y’all? Really?”
Burke sat on one chair and Damon sat on the arm of it as he said, “We’re fine. I hate this interrupting our lives, of course. If I
catch him…”
“Bring ‘im ta me! I’ll show him how a calf’ll chaw on ‘is tiny dick.”
Everyone was confused except for a few. Eli and Noah laughed, as did Joel and I, but the others were staring like they didn’t
understand. In fact, Rick asked, “Aren’t cows vegetarians?”
“Calves? Well, hell, mister mayor man, they suckle their mama’s teets! And what you got on you that is like a teet?”
Rick’s hand absently touched his chest over his right pec, but then his eyes grew wide as he realized what Pam was saying.
“You have the calf…suck there?”
Kanan and Burke both covered their dicks, while the rest of us cracked up laughing, and that laughter was good. It was
welcomed. “There ya go,” Pam said as he started to laugh with us.
“That’s…brutal, Mrs. Barnes.”
“Ain’t no missus, ain’t no bullshit man in my life, ‘ceptin’ some good ole boy that warms my bed. Call me Pam. Ain’t I
sumthin? On a first name basis wit’ the mayor.”
“I’m no longer the mayor, but it is an honor to be on a first-name basis with you, Pam.”
Pam went to the spare bedroom that Damon, Joel, and Burke were using while at Rick’s and Kanan’s home to speak to them
alone. I went outside while they were gone to take a spot at the one door not covered by the other security personnel.
While heading there, I passed by Tango, who was leaning back on the house, his eyes moving over the tree line. That look
just screamed he was ready to pounce on any threat, but it also gave me chills.
I walked over to him, hoping not to disturb his work. “Pretty quiet, huh?”
“For now. That could change in a heartbeat,” he said, the deadly stare gone and replaced with warmth. “Are you taking a
turn?”
“I am. Being the middle of the day, they’re not too worried, but I’m gonna hang out over there a bit.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll walk the perimeter soon and stop and say hello.”
I smiled in a flirting way that I hoped didn’t come across as cheesy or scary. “I’d like that.”
“Good. See you then.”
 Chapter Five

AS TWILIGHT FELL TO night, the woods grew eerie. I realized I was letting the tension of the situation get to me, as the
forest had never been menacing to me before, but still, it made me hear things.
A twig cracking, the brush of something against the branch of an evergreen, birds taking flight from a sharp sound, all of it
had me jumping. I hated it, but I was caught in that act of one such jump by the one I may have wanted to be caught by the least.
“Just forest sounds,” Tango said and smiled patiently. “I checked. Tonight, the night vision will come out. We’re covered.”
“You brought night vision? You’re thorough.”
“Not me. Burke made us bring all our toys.”
I didn’t doubt that a bit. Not only was his best friend in danger, but so were all his friends and his two partners. “Should
have figured.”
Wearing a leather jacket and dark shirt, if his hair didn’t shine in the dim light, it would be hard to see him. I thought that was
purposeful as well. “Changing of the guard. Burke said to grab you up and take you inside.”
I almost purred when he said he was supposed to grab me. “Really? Then grab away,” I laughed. “Sorry. That was a pitiful
flirt.”
“Not pitiful at all. If I wasn’t on duty, I’d grab you.”
I think I did purr then.
We walked to the backdoor, and he allowed me to enter the house first. Once he joined me in the kitchen, Burke came into the
room and shook both of our hands. “Got backup coming now. They should be here soon. I’m taking point tonight at the back,
and Rick and Kanan set up their guesthouse for security personnel.”
“Good, thanks,” Tango said. “I’m about beat. I came off a job three hours before heading here.”
“I know, and I’m grateful, Tango. Get some rest and then in the morning before you all take your positions again, I want to
discuss the weekend for the club.”
“You’re still having it?” Tango asked in a breath.
“Yes. It was a little short notice to cancel for some. Some men take off work to be here, arrange babysitters or whatever. We
plan to have plenty of security.”
“I’m one,” I told Tango. “We have a small crew volunteering to help you guys.”
“I’m fine with it,” he bragged with a shrug of one shoulder.
“Thanks, Tango. The others are ready to split as soon as relief gets in, but you can head over now.”
After a glance in my direction, and a smirk, he said, “Thanks. I’ll go get some shuteye.”
After he was gone, I mentioned, “I didn’t even think about relief for them.”
“I have to think of these things. It’s my job. They’re doing fourteen and ten. The guys coming for nighttime are here
temporarily, so I want this done soon, or we’ll have to take their shifts. They’re also here for more security for the weekend.”
I saw the frown lines were deepening between his brows. “You’re worried about having it at all.”
“I am. Don’t tell the others, but what better way to get back at all of us, all at once? We had him in the club once, tied up, and
Joel threatened to kill him right then. He knows where it is, which is why we and our animals aren’t there. I’m worried about
Damon and Joel.”
“You…damn, Burke. No wonder.”
“I’ve called in all my favors, called in men that were in between gigs, but barely. None of my guys are between gigs for long.
My company is trusted, so if they don’t take their new posts soon, my reputation gets a good knock.” He sighed. “Sorry. I
needed the vent, I guess.”
“Always here for you, man. Whatever you need. Right now, though, I need to get over to the farm and check on things.”
“Yeah, right, right. Take someone with you, please,” Burke pleaded .
 “Rick and Kanan are coming along, though Rick didn’t want Kanan to go, and vice versa.”
“I get it. I want to lock my guys in a bunker. Oh, but…did I see some spark between you and Tango?”
I ducked my head and admitted, “You did.”
“And Roland, too. Well, well, well, you might not be alone for much longer.”
I stared, mouth gaping. “Both? No, no, no way.”
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, but be warned, they gang up on you. A lot. Damon and Joel with their damn animals? I never
have a chance.”
“You look tortured.”
“I really am,” he laughed. “Go get the chicken plucked or egged or whatever you farmers do, and I’ll hit the hay for a couple
of hours. Listen, if anything happens at all, you wake me.”
“No worries.”
Rick and Kanan were ready by Ricks’ big F-250, the one he only used for work. I climbed into the back of the crew cab and
Rick sighed noisily. “This…sucks.”
“Honey, stop worrying over the boys. They’re safe.”
“You’re not. None of us are.”
I spoke up from the backseat. “Burke is stressed enough for everyone. He feels it’s his job to keep us all safe. Rick, I know
that doesn’t help your worry a lot, but he’s pulling out all the stops.”
Kanan turned in his seat as Rick started down the drive. “Rick is…well, it’s not us he’s worried for. The boys, sure, but he’s
gotten close to Noah. They are of similar age, they both come from the area. They knew each other a little, but now?”
“That fucking prick has made their lives hell,” Rick growled. “If I get my hands on him…”
“How is he even financing all this? I thought they…took all his money,” Kanan asked with a glance back at me.
I stared ahead at the two, Rick whispering a shh to Kanan.
“Joel already let it slip, if you’re worried,” I told Rick, so Kanan wouldn’t be in the doghouse. “Theo is related to some
mobster.”
Rick chuckled a little, but Kanan rushed, “Not exactly a mobster, but…”
“Kan, it’s fine. He’s family now.”
“He is,” Kanan admitted and smiled back at me. “Well, it’s really not as bad as all that. I guess they’re…not exactly the most
lawful people, but really, it’s a family business. Mostly all legal!”
“Kanan means they are an old mafia family, but are trying hard to be on the straight and narrow. I don’t know if you heard the
story of how Theo and Hud came to be here?”
“Something about someone being after Theo and Hud was his bodyguard.”
“Exactly,” Rick confirmed. “His cousin, though they’re not exactly related. I don’t know how that all works, but anyway, he
sent him here to hide.”
“And Hud and Theo fell for one another,” Kanan told me. “Then they sent Brett and Ryan here for…I guess it was supposed
to be a place of transition from one place to another. I’m not exactly sure how that worked.”
“Me either,” Rick confessed. “But I don’t really want to know.”
Kanan continued, “Well , Theo’s cousins have since found that Harvey had multiple accounts for money and was involved
with criminals. He was totally up and up on the surface, and even Eli didn’t know about all his business partners. Harvey kept
a lot under wraps, even to his partner.”
“Eli wasn’t his partner; he was his live-in houseboy. The man is scum,” Rick spat.
“Rick hates him, as we all do,” Kanan explained. “Theo is adamant about not calling them for help with this. His cousins,
that is. He fears they’ll make him leave the area completely, but Theo has a life and business here now. He refuses to leave.”
“Fight fire with fire, I say,” I told them. “If he’s got mobster friends, so do we, in a roundabout way.”
“Theo would kill us, but we all feel the same. I believe Burke called his connection to them, his name…I can’t remember…”
“Javier, I believe.”
“Right! Javi, they call him. Anyway, I believe he called him, just to keep him informed. Theo can’t know, but it was
important to Burke. I think if he needs them, they will be here.”
“Theo is right. They’d likely make him leave, but we’re all dealing with our farms and ranches in ways we hate. I think he
needs to suck it up,” Rick grunted.
I could agree with that. I hated not being near the farm enough that I can’t hear the chickens, can’t check on them any time I
felt I needed to do so. “Rick, I’m with you there.”
“Even his partner and boyfriends agree, but he’s a stubborn thing.”
Kanan also agreed, but added, “He’s never felt empowered or important like he does now. I think he’s terrified of leaving his
farm because he might slip back into that angry, lonely person he was. He was…very nasty when he first came, I’m told.
Everyone adores him now!”
“I get it, Kanan. I’m hearing all your stories after the fact, but I feel you were all a little lost until you came here. That’s got
to be a fear for you all, being torn from the place and people that have made you a part of something this big and this
important.”
Rick grunted again. “Damn, Jace! That made me feel about two inches tall for being annoyed with Theo. All very true. We
were all a mess until we came together.”
“You?”
Rick and Kanan both laughed. Kanan defended him, “No, he was never a mess, per se. He was lonely, sure, but had a home,
a business, and was the mayor!”
“Kanan, I was more than lonely. I really thought I’d never find love again. I never looked at my own gender, and that was
where I’d been messed up the worst. Kanan changed me in all the best ways.”
And cue the lovey-dovey stuff, as they flirted and kissed.
“Newlyweds,” I groaned.
“You could be next,” Kanan said to me. “So far, the rumor mill has you with that Roland, who is gorgeous, by the way,
especially since he let his hair grow out.”
“Kanan, hell! You’re not supposed to tell people they’re being gossiped about.”
“Please, Rick,” I said. “We’re in a close friend group. I would be shocked to my socks if I wasn’t being discussed.”
Kanan winked back at me. “Thank you.”
“What I hear,” Rick said, relieved I was fine with the gossip. “Is that you have eyes for that cute little security guy, Tango,
too. What the hell kind of name is Tango?”
“It’s his last name, isn’t it?”
I asked the same. “Is it?”
Rick shrugged. “Probably. He’s ex-military, and don’t they use last names more than first?”
“First ranks, then last names, I believe,” Kanan answered him.
I was laughing. “Anyway, the rumors are jumping the gun. I’ve spoken to Tango once and the same with Roland. I simply
thought they were both nice guys.”
“With nice asses,” Kanan added, laughing .
“That never hurts,” I agreed. “There is no love connection, so cool the group down, please.”
“Oh, I think the group is happy to have something else to talk about, so don’t rush to kill that fun,” Kanan chided me. “We
need a love connection right now over the threat of death.”
“Damon’s more pissed he didn’t find all of Harvey’s stash and couldn’t—”
“Rick!”
Rick glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “You know enough?”
“They took Harvey’s money I’m guessing by your poorly veiled conversation. But they didn’t get it all.”
“Not by a longshot, come to understand,” Rick finished. “Eli is pissed at knowing that Noah kept a slice for Eli. He doesn’t
want Harvey’s money.”
“Though he’s entitled to it,” Kanan sneered. “All that time, and Eli was some trophy and housekeeper, cook, whatever.”
“You’re my trophy husband,” Rick said to Kanan.
“That’s a terrible thing to say, but thank you anyway,” Kanan said, laughed.
We checked over the chickens and spoke to a couple of the hands to give them their duties for the night and the next day.
Everything was fine, but I could tell Rick was worried, too. This was his livelihood, sure, but it was more. It was Rick’s
heritage. He was a part of a long line of farmers. From the way I heard it, his family founded the town.
When we got back, there were three new cars in the drive, and Rick tensed badly. Kanan was shaking, but I had them park at
the end of the drive and let me out. “You wait for me. I’ll go see what’s going on.”
“Be careful,” Rick ordered rather than implored me.
“I will.”
I was headed up the driveway and was surprised when Tango met me. “I was just coming to see who was parked. I saw the
shine off the windshield.”
“Who’s here?”
“I don’t know. Above my paygrade, but the cell service is out right now, and we’re trying to figure out why. Everything’s
getting weird.”
“Should I have Rick and Kanan leave?”
“No, we’re safe here,” Tango assured. “Unless they hate mafiosos.”
I swallowed. “Shit. Okay, let me go break the news.”
 Chapter Six

“I AM NOT LEAVING,” came the scream as soon as the three of us walked into the house.
It kind of sounded like Theo, but I couldn’t be sure. Kanan, however, was. “Theo,” he whispered, then rushed into the family
room, where Rick and I followed to see at least twenty people gathered.
“Listen, Theo, we’re not at odds like we once were,” said a man I didn’t know. “So, I don’t appreciate being screamed at.”
“You’re trying to take me from the home where you put me in the first place, Danny.”
“Danny,” Kanan whispered beside me, then said, “The mafia cousin.”
Rick went to be the peacemaker. “I’m just getting here and don’t know what’s going on, but this is my home. I won’t have this
kind of fighting. Sit, like adults, and let’s get things talked over.”
Theo huffed and went to Hud, burying his face in the big man’s chest. Hud pleaded with the man called Danny, “Please, Mr.
Montelli, don’t make us leave. We can’t take our pigs anywhere, as everyone else did with their animals. Joel’s mother kindly
took them, but we can’t. She has no pens for them.”
“You have help,” Danny pointed out to Hud.
“They’re mine,” Theo screamed as he turned back to Danny. “You forced me to pay for everything, and now you want to take
me from my home, my life!”
“For a little while,” Danny pleaded.
Rick slapped his hands together and pointed to the table. “Go, sit, both of you.”
“He’s right,” said a Latinx man that was extremely handsome, but could barely contain the grin he had. “We need to sit and
talk.”
Theo sat, but he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the surface of the table while Hud sat beside him. Rick and
Kanan took other chairs, and the two newcomers took the other seats. Everyone else sat on sofas or other chairs, trying to
pretend they weren’t listening in, and I joined them in the venture.
As I sat near Joel, he kept glancing at me, and he was pale as a ghost. “You okay, Joel?”
Burke was getting up to join the discussion but told me, “He doesn’t take to new people well.”
“I forgot.”
Damon moved over to hold him close, and Burke went to the table standing between Theo’s chair and Danny’s. “This is
craziness.”
“You’ve lost cellular service,” the man that I’d learned was the Javi that Kanan and Rick had told me about, said. “That’s a
big indication things might be getting bad.”
“But you don’t know that. It could be a tower is out, and it’s something simple.”
Hud agreed with his partner. “I think he’s probably right, but I’m worried, too. Instead of taking us from the place
completely, isn’t there somewhere close we can go?”
Rick offered, “We’re tight here, but I think we could manage four more.”
“Of course we can,” Kanan piped in. “We have security. We are not on the top of the list of people Harvey knows, so
everyone else came here.”
“What about Dennis and Travis?”
“Who?” more than one asked Theo.
Hud chuckled. “He means Tucker and Dale.” To Theo, he said, “You really need to learn their names, babe.”
“Sorry, but I’m a little upset, Hudson! I’m more than a little upset!”
“I know, believe me.”
While there were hidden smiles, most everyone worried for Theo. Noah rose from the couch and announced, “They’ll come
here. We’ll watch over ‘em.”
 Theo nodded and smiled at Noah, but Danny was adamant. “It isn’t just your safety that concerns us, Theo. If they got to you,
that would make us look weak and the entire family would be vulnerable to attacks.”
“They, they, who are they?”
Danny looked to Javi, who explained, “This group isn’t one that we’ve dealt with or that the Carrillos have even dealt with.
They’re a new group, out of South America, and they got their start with a cartel. They’ve moved up here to start an
organization, and they’re gaining power. It seems that this Harvey dude was one of the people greasing the wheels for the real
estate they were acquiring. That’s how he had money no one else knew about.”
“Why didn’t he use them to…kill us?” Eli asked.
“He didn’t want to use them for his own personal shit,” Javi answered. “But after we took the rest of his money, got him
thrown in prison, he no longer cared. He went to them, and it seems he’s bargained with them. I don’t know what he promised,
but we think it might be you.”
Theo paled and asked, “Me?”
“Yeah! You’re a part of our family, and the Carrillos stepped in to help us out, so two families are involved here. They want
to overtake the Carrillos and all their business dealings, so this is a good deal for them. They get you, and while they’re at it,
take out Harvey’s enemies, and they’ve gotten a huge leg up in this world.”
When things were explained that way, we all grew quiet, including Theo.
“We’re canceling the weekend,” Burke said to Damon, breaking the silence.
“I’ll put the word out.”
“Wait,” Noah said. “That’s what they’re waiting for. They want to get us all together, right? If they’ve done any surveillance,
they know about the club. They know we all go when it’s open. Call those coming, those that aren’t here already. Instead, fill it
with…people they won’t be expecting.”
It dawned on me what he meant and soon, everyone caught on to his meaning.
Burke slapped Noah on the back. “That’s perfect,” he said, then rubbed his hands together. “How many of your men can you
round up for it?”
Javi smiled. “At least forty.”
“Get them here this coming weekend.”
After Burke and Damon got the internet and phones working, at least for the moment, we all got on the phone and internet to
email or message the people that were supposed to come to the club retreat for the weekend. Javi got busy calling in his troops,
and everyone felt better that it might be over sooner than they expected.
Damon told me, “Make sure you tell them the next weekend, once things are settled, is completely free. It’ll be a hit, but
we’ve already broken even on the place.”
“Broken even? That’s incredible.”
“It is. It caught on quick. People like getting away to an actual retreat. There are kink hotels and things, but this takes it
beyond that.”
“Maybe you should think of expanding,” I said, then suddenly, I felt an idea coming that set my body shaking with excitement.
“I mean, ever think of a Cowpokes franchise?”
“That would kind of take the novelty, wouldn’t it?”
“Not really. If you had them set in certain places around the country, people could take a nice drive into the mountains, or to
the desert or wherever, and more men could enjoy this kind of thing.”
Damon kissed my cheek, surprising me. “That’s fucking brilliant!” He turned and rushed to Burke, told him the idea, but
Burke was occupied.
“Damon, we’ll talk about it, sure, but can we get this one taken care of first? Canceling might well put us out of business.”
I understood that to be a concern, but it was unwarranted. Once the emails and calls were finished, they got reservations for
the open-ended weekend to come, and most didn’t want the discount.
Word had gotten out, and most of the regulars were pulling for Damon, Burke, and Joel.
It made the trio feel good, so once other details were being worked out about the club filled with security and mob guys, the
tension lowered until everyone was yawning.
Tango came into the room to speak to Burke in a hushed conversation, and people went tense again. Tango saw that as he
finished whispering, and so did Burke. “He had to tell me the mail is here, and they went through it.”
Sighs all around and Noah, pulling a tired, thin, and pale Eli up with him, stood and said, “We’re gonna go be alone a bit. I
need to calm my boy down.”
“I’m fine, Noah.”
“Hush up and do what you’re told.”
Tango chuckled silently at that, and I moved closer to him. “Is that funny?”
“Yeah. I could tell Eli wanted to tell him to fuck off but thought better of it.”
“If you saw the brand on his ass, you wouldn’t wonder why.”
 As I gloried in Tango’s eyes getting huge, I laughed. “He…branded that pretty guy?”
“Yeah. I saw it one night at the club and then got filled in all about the ceremony.”
I walked out with him. The more I saw him, the more I wanted him. It was insane in the middle of all the chaos but being
around him soothed me.
“That’s…extreme, but I like extreme,” he purred then glanced up at me. “You?”
“Yeah, uh, I do, actually.”
“Good to know,” he said and then walked off the minute we got out the door.
I watched him walking away, which was exactly what he’d planned, I was guessing. Nice little ass he had, and that got my
mind moving in all the dirtiest directions. Burke came out after me and caught me staring.
“Guess Roland is history?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, that I was interested in Tango, but Roland’s face came to mind, that smile, flirty and shy at
once. “I…don’t know.”
“Jace, man, I’m telling you, it’s difficult with two men. It’s totally worth it, though.”
“I’ll likely need advice. In fact, how do I go about doing that?”
“I had one, and we found the third. I have no idea how to start out wanting two.”
Such was my luck. “Your advice is terribly lacking, Burke.”
“I know, but it’ll get better if you can pull this off. Speaking of which, I’m going to start a pool for the guys on if, and when,
this might happen.”
I stared slack jawed at him, then laughed. “Might as well.”
“Yeah. Might as well.”
 Chapter Seven

THE MOOD WAS BETTER the next morning. Everyone rose with less tension, and remarkably, it was mostly because there
were mafia bosses in the house.
Not only did Hud and Theo move into the mansion, but Javi and Danny stayed too. Danny wasn’t letting Theo out of his sight,
Javi was having fun with Burke and his guys, and Eli felt like things were finally easing. I spoke to him as we sipped coffee at
the kitchen island while the others sat around the table.
“I don’t want everyone’s lives turned end over end because of me.”
“I am very sure that’s true, but on the other side of that, you’d do it for them. Also, it’s what families do.”
I could see it wasn’t working. “Jace, they…they could get hurt.”
“And they’re more worried about you getting hurt.” I sighed, “Listen, Eli, I came here and was hit in the face with this
amazing family you guys have made for yourselves. This is what families do for each other.”
“I only had my grandmother. I…” He stopped, then glanced over to Burke. “No, I lied. From the minute I met him, Burke
became my brother.”
“And then Damon became one, Joel did, and all these other men. You’re very lucky.”
“You’re included in that, you know.”
I felt warm from that. “Thanks, though I’m not sure why.”
“We don’t take months and years to form opinions and bring people into our group, Jace. Rick was so excited when he first
met you, he insisted we get to know you. Kanan did right after he met you. They’re excellent judges of character. We didn’t
think twice about it once we met you, too. You’re one of the good ones. And, well, you like the club. It’s a…”
“Way to gauge your friends?”
“Well, what would we talk about if not kink?”
I laughed heartily and nodded to him. “I feel the same about all of you.”
“Good, so when you get with Tango, Roland, or both, you’ll have to let them come to the days we submissives get together
without our Doms around,” he mentioned, then sipped his coffee.
“Oh, so these sub days, are they often?”
“As often as we can. A friend of ours from Apishipa Creek told us about the ones they have. They’ve had them for years, and
it’s like a tradition. We took it up, and it’s a great time to relax, laugh, talk.”
“Talk about your Doms.”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
I laughed at them and mentioned, “If I get with anyone, which is a longshot and way, way off…why would I want him talking
about me?”
Eli ducked his head. “Well, I know talking to my friends has kept me from fighting with Noah a few times now.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said as his head shot back up so he could look at me incredulously. “Haven’t you ever had a guy that did things that
got on your nerves with certain things that were maybe silly, but real, to you?”
“Sure. I guess.”
“Talking about them, bitching a little. It gets it off your chest and the next time he does that thing that gets on your nerves, you
can laugh it off.”
I glanced over at Noah, who was in deep conversation with Damon, and whispered, “Shouldn’t you speak directly to him?
Those are the things that build until they can cause bigger fights.”
“Not really. See, things like the way he fusses over his tools. I get it, I like them neat too, but he doesn’t trust me. He checks
the pegboard and chest every time I need to use the tools. They’re always fine, but he keeps checking. It’s a habit for him, and I
know he trusts me with the big things, so that isn’t something I should talk to him about because it’s really not major. To my
friends, I can complain about it, and they complain about something their guys do, and usually, something their guys do makes
me glad Noah just checks his tools.”
It was a revelation. “Really?”
“Yeah. So, I laugh instead of getting annoyed. It’s great. If it is bigger, believe me, I will talk to him. That is something I
sometimes force myself to do. I never spoke to Harvey about things because I didn’t trust him to listen. He’d call me dramatic
or hysterical. Noah listens. If I went to him with little things all the time, he’d get annoyed with me for continuing to bring up
things and it would take away the importance of it when I speak to him about the bigger things.”
It made sense, but I was still skeptical. “Do you tell your therapist this?”
“He laughed and informed me that his men do the same thing. He appreciates it, because he has two guys, and they could
come to him constantly with things they wanted or wanted to change. This way, they save the bigger stuff for him. He’s a Dom
and a shrink, so he’s a little different in the ways he sees things.”
“True. Well, I’ll keep all this in mind if and when I get another boyfriend.”
“Friends. Boyfriends.”
I laughed, and that got Noah’s attention. He strode over to us and asked, “What’s so funny over here?”
“I was just telling him how our days with our friends help keep our relationships better.”
“Oh, sure,” he said, and I laughed more.
“You know?”
“Sure. He’s got his friends to dump on and it saves me a passel of conversations that I don’t wanna have.”
They went off together and I was left shaking my head.
My new friends were pushing hard for me to get with someone, and they seemed to have their hearts set on the two men who
had recently caught my eye. I got it, and it didn’t upset me. They were all crazy in love, so they assumed everyone wanted the
same.
And…I did. Sure, I did. I saw their love stories playing out in front of me, and I found myself jealous often. I hoped I wasn’t
rushing something to be in “the club”.
Then I laughed at myself for that. I wasn’t rushing anything. I had spoken to each man very little.
When Rick and I went to the farm that morning, I asked him about it. I trusted Rick a lot, and his opinions. “Rick, I know
you’re a one guy kinda guy. Is it creepy I keep thinking about two?”
“If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said yes. Now that I know Burke and his men, I see it can work.”
“They don’t even know each other.”
“Fix that. After all this…business is finally done, have Burke invite them to the same weekend at Cowpokes.”
“Tango could be gone to his next job. I thought of that. I felt crazy for even thinking that.”
“Then you may have to act sooner, at least with Tango. The world is changing, Jace. Things like throuples aren’t seen as so
strange now. Sure, by some uptight people, but in our world, it’s normal as anything else. We already know Roland enjoys the
lifestyle. Maybe, until then, start talking to Tango about…sticking around for a bit?”
“That’s a conversation. Hey, I might like you, so why not delay your next job and your life, so I can figure it out? If not, I
have another guy, so no biggie.”
“Jace,” he said with a huff of laughter. “Be honest, but maybe not…that honest.”
Like he’d known, Roland met us at the farm with another man in a truck with surveyor equipment. He got out of the truck and
came over to us as we were speaking to one of the hands at the farm. After shaking each of our hands, he told Rick, “Chandler
ordered a survey because I was confused about where to place things.”
“Things? Like, the house?”
“He wants a house, a guesthouse, and a pool.”
“A pool? He has a pool at the main house! He knows it gets about two months of use. What’s he thinking?”
Roland shook his head, but I could tell he wanted to laugh. “I’m afraid that unless he wants it aboveground, or to dig up the
entire place, he can’t have a pool. There is a huge stand of aspen over in that area that has a root system that is…a bit of a
mess. In fact, he can’t have the basement he wants. I’m going to have to break it to him.”
“Oh, I’ll do that! He’s not gonna kill that grove of aspen!”
“Oh, no, he doesn’t want to either. He loves the trees, and wanted to avoid as many as possible when we planned the place.”
Rick sighed in relief. “A pool…”
He walked off, getting on the phone with his son and that left Roland and me alone.
“How are things going? Is everyone safe?”
I nodded to assure him. “They’re discovering a few things and making plans, so I think it should be over soon.”
“Good. I hate missing my weekends…at Burke’s.”
I grinned, mostly because I couldn’t help it. “Listen, Roland, with all this, I…I wanted to…”
“When all this is over, you want to go for coffee or something? Looks like I’ll be around awhile.”
 I was a little shocked he was so forward, but I shouldn’t have been. I’d seen him at Cowpokes. He wasn’t shy. “I’d love that,
but…I…”
Rick came back over to let us know Chandler was fine with not having a pool. “He said he can do a hot tub instead, so now
he’ll call you soon with plans for a spa room.”
“That is much easier.”
“I wouldn’t…count on that,” he said, then laughed. “Chandler likes things complicated.”
“He’ll outgrow that,” Roland assured. “We all start out complicated and then realize we’d rather things be simple.”
Rick glanced at me and laughed. “Yeah, complicated is so teen years, right?”
“Rick…if you weren’t my boss…”
“I’m gonna go speak to Felix about those incubators.”
“You do that.” I said to him, then let myself look at Roland. “Sorry, he’s trying to be funny.”
“Is he saying you’re complicated?”
“No, no, I am as simple as they come, it’s…well, Roland, it’s a talk for another time. I’d love to have coffee.”
“Okay, great.” He gave me his number and then reminded me he’d be around a lot, and if I’d like, he’d text me when he was
coming by.
“I’d like that. Maybe we’ll do coffee here. I make a mean pod.”
“That’s flirting above and beyond,” Roland laughed.
 Chapter Eight

SECURITY WAS ON TOP of things at the house, and Danny and Javi went to stay at the hog farm with Ryan and Brett, plus
another set of security they brought along with them. They’d decided not to stay at Rick’s, and we mostly believed it was
because Danny was tired of being pouted at by Theo.
Theo paced the floors like a caged tiger, and his temper was as dangerous. He had Hud there, but knowing his cousin was
where he wanted to be, it didn’t sit well.
His friends comforted him, taking him off to a bedroom for an impromptu sub’s day, and that left the rest of us to contemplate
what they were saying.
“He blames me for not fighting harder to stay home,” Hud confessed. “And I don’t give a shit. He needs protection, and it’s
safer here.”
“Can’t blame ‘im,” Noah drawled. “I hate being away from home. My animals, my place, my own bed. Not that I don’t
appreciate your hospitality, Rick.”
“No, I get it. If I didn’t have the big house Harvey had never seen, I’d be right there with you. I’ve worried over Kan the
same way. His ex already tried to get back with him. What if he snaps and becomes like this Harvey?”
“It could happen,” Burke said. “To any of us. We all have exes. Harvey, well, I blame myself more than anything else. If we
hadn’t taken his money, he might have gotten out of jail and thought better than to come after us.”
“But it was Eli, like he hadn’t gone through enough from that jerk already,” Damon lamented. “I know he started out being
Burke’s best friend, but he’s become super important to all of us. Joel worries over him like he was a baby lamb.”
“Eli evokes that,” Rick said. “You see him and want to protect him.”
Everyone looked to Noah, who sniffed hard and swatted his eyes as they filled with tears. “That boy, when I first saw him, I
thought he was headed to getting into booze or something worse. If there’s such a thing, anyway. I haven’t seen anyone so
beaten down since I found a calf when I was a kid that some coyotes got ‘hold of. Tore my heart out of my chest. I don’t buy
into that love at first sight thing, but it was worry at first sight. If he’d told me he’d just robbed a bank, I woulda took him in.”
“That makes us all want to catch Harvey more, if I’m not mistaken,” I said to the room.
“As long as it isn’t Joel,” Damon said. “I’m worried about him doing something to Harvey that will haunt him. He’s tough,
and he’d kill the fucker fast, but his heart is…well, you all know him. He’s sweet and tender under all that bull riding bluster. It
could hurt him too deeply.”
“It would,” Noah confirmed. “We’re keeping that boy protected, just like Eli. Neither of them needs involved in that.”
“And you, Noah?” Burke asked seriously. “I know your feelings toward the man, know how much you’d love to get your
hands around his neck, but you have never killed a person. It’s not as easy as, ‘good, he’s gone’.”
“I’m not tender like Joel. I’m a man taking care of his husband, and I promise you, Burke, I’d sleep just fine and dandy the
same night.”
Damon laughed and told Burke, “He’s not lying.”
“Damon, I worry over you the same way. No offense to anyone in this room, and I’m sure Hud can back me up in this as we
were in the fucking military. We had to kill, and it wasn’t something I enjoyed. I didn’t know them, had nothing against them
except the fact that they were trained to kill me like I was trained to kill them. It hurt. Even though they would have killed me if
I hadn’t gotten them first, it hurt me to my soul. Don’t take that too lightly, ever. As people, we always picture it in our heads,
how it would be to take this nemesis from our lives, but in reality, when it happens, it hurts.”
“He’s right,” Hud croaked.
The room quieted and then it was loud with shoes over the wood floors, and sniffing, little sobs as all the subs came into the
room, rushing to their respective Doms.
I watched as men were hugged, kissed, and I was left to watch. Eli said to Noah, “I’d never, ever want you to live with what
I’ve had to live with. Babe, I killed too, like Hud and Burke. If I was to be as truthful with you as I should, it’s that. That is
where my PTSD comes from, more than when I got shot.”
“Eli, why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
“Because…I felt…”
“I get it. Shh, don’t tell me a thing. That’s yours, your things you gotta have to yourself. We don’t share everything, babe.”
“Thanks.”
Joel was being engulfed so thoroughly between his two men that I could barely see him. Theo was even crying, being held by
Hud. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a nightmare.”
“Aw, baby, I’m used to it.”
That jealousy I’d mentioned hit me then. My chest was on fire with it. Stupid, maybe, but I wanted a man crying in my arms.
Aren’t I the worst?
No, what was worse was that I pictured two men in my arms, crying.
After the tear-fest was over, we all made lunch together, sandwiches and chips, which Theo complained would go right to
his tiny, thin hips.
I left them while they were eating, to eat outside, and right away, I ran into one of the new security guys, a mafioso, with a
gun strapped over his back.
That brought back the conversation and the jealousy, so I walked around until I ended up on a nice piece of grass and I
stretched out there on my side, staring off at the mountains while I nibbled on my food, not even tasting it.
The mountains, where I thought I’d find my happiness, but every day I sat alone staring at them, it hurt a little more. The more
I felt sorry for myself, the more I hated myself for it, but emotions wouldn’t be quelled by logic. They were the antithesis of
logic.
“Hey,” came a voice behind me, and I sat up and spun so fast my food went flying. It was Tango, and he rushed to help me
pick up my lunch. “I’m sorry. Should know not to sneak up on people around here.”
“Yeah, probably not,” I laughed. When my food was in somewhat better order, my bread askew on the lunchmeat and most of
my chips out of the bag and scattered on the grass, I smiled at Tango, then felt guilty for it.
I hated guilt worse than jealousy.
I’d just made a date with Roland. What the hell was I doing?
“What’s wrong? Your face just…fell.”
“Sorry, a lot on my mind.”
“Yeah, duh, that’s probably not a stretch to realize, but I’ve never been all that smart about things.”
That made me forget the jealousy and guilt, as I turned angry. “Don’t say that. Don’t put yourself down like that, ever.”
He took a step back, a little frightened until he smiled. “Wow, butch.”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing . “Sorry, but you’re not stupid.”
“I could be. You don’t know.”
Ignoring that, I asked him, “Are you off duty?”
“I’m supposed to go grab a couple of hours, but I’m not tired yet. I was going to walk the tree line.”
“Want some company?”
As soon as I said it, the guilt was back. He nodded and said, “You packing?”
For a second, I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought he meant my dick, but it came to me as my face heated. “A…gun.”
“Yeah.” He ducked his head as he let his laughter come out on a breath. “You’re, uh, blushing like crazy.”
“Get me a gun and shut up.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I walked to the trash bin behind the fence and deposited my ruined food, then met Tango at the corner of the front. He handed
me a Sig Sauer 9-millimeter. “Loaded, I’m guessing,” I said as I checked for myself.
“Full mag, ready to cock and shoot.”
We walked along the trees to the side of the mansion, Tango taking the side nearest the trees. I knew that was his job, but I
hated it.
Watching his eyes, moving to see all the way into the forest that he could, his small but fine body tense, was making me a
little crazy. I could tell by his entire demeanor that he was ready to pounce on the first sign of trouble.
I knew it was his job, even so, to know he’d likely run into any fray made me hot. He was brave and confident, and yet I saw
it when he looked into my eyes. He was vulnerable.
“That weekend club they have…you go?”
“When it’s actually open, sure. Why?”
“Wondering. It’s a kink club, isn’t it?”
The conversation was moving in a direction I hadn’t expected. “Yes…”
“I see.”
 Tango cutting off the conversation like that made me more curious. “Tango, what…do you think of that?”
“Nothing.”
I grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Tango.”
He started to laugh. “I’ve been known to get my kink on from time to time, when work lets me.”
“Oh? Interesting. Tell me more.”
“Not a chance.”
He walked on and I had to jog to catch up when I’d picked my jaw from the ground. “Excuse me?”
A smile was thrown over his shoulder. “I’m working right now. If we talk about this, we might feel the need to duck into the
trees and do things we shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
The way that came out, it made me feel like some desperate ass, and I really wasn’t. Too many stirring emotions that day, I
suppose, made me feel that way.
“I’m working, Jace, and you are, too.”
“Right. The threat, the mafia and Harvey and all that. Kind of takes the fun out of meeting a new guy.”
We laughed together, and it felt so easy and good. Tango was one of those people that had two very distinct sides to him. One
was sweet, almost quiet, the other was tough and fearless. It was strange, but I liked both very much.
“When this job is over for you, though…you’ll be gone.”
“I can take some time off, Jace. If I had a reason to.”
There was an open door, and all I had to do was step through it. “Tango, I’d like to go out with you. Once this is over and
you have some free time.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, then glanced over at me quickly. “Of course, that would be less than ideal if we weren’t
compatible…with things.”
Compatible. Like not dating two guys at once? Yes, my guilt was taking over again. “I’m a dominant and a top, so break it to
me. You’re both, too.”
He laughed and walked a few steps into the trees, his hand on the gun in his holster.
I wanted to call to him, asking if he’d seen something, but that would take his edge if someone was truly there. He came back
quickly enough and said, “Squirrel. What? Do you guys feed them? Steroids ?”
I laughed, as the squirrels liked to try to get into the chicken feed on the farm. “You’d think. They’re persistent too.”
“That thing was huge.”
We walked on and I reminded him of the conversation we’d been having. “So…are we compatible?”
Instead of answering directly, he was cagey. “Well, that is a question, for sure. I suppose, if we’re just talking roles, but there
is more to it than that.”
I laughed as I was ready to choke him. “Like?”
Again, instead of answering, he told me a story. “When I first got out of the marines, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I
dove headlong into partying, and that included sex. I played all the roles you could think of, in every kind of kink you could
think of.”
“So, your versatile?”
“No. I figured out what I wanted, though. I found out what fit me. The problem was finding someone else to fit me. It wasn’t
about my role as much as…”
“You lost me.”
“I meant to. I don’t want all the cards on the table right now. Let me ease into it, so I don’t chase you off.”
I stopped again and asked, “What the hell are you into that you’d chase me off?”
He shook his head as he kept walking in front of me. “Not…now.”
Intrigued and frustrated, it felt better than guilt, jealousy, and anger, so I went with it.
I caught up to him again and said, suavely, or so I thought, “I’m pretty flexible with things, so don’t worry that I’m gonna
run.”
“Good to know,” he repeated, and I again wanted to choke him.
 Chapter Nine

WE HAD A MEETING that evening with the entire gang, including a lot of the security people. While those being threatened
would stay at Rick’s, the rest of us would head to the club and pretend to be patrons.
As Burke and Javi laid out the plans, I saw Eli turning paler by the minute, until Noah took him from the room. As soon as
the two were gone, Burke was furious.
“That! Do you see what that fuck is doing to him? If you see him, shoot him, and if any of those cartel mobsters get in the
way, shoot them too, or better yet, call me over and I’ll do it.”
Javi nodded in agreement. “No worries, ese. We’ll get him this time.”
Theo looked over at Joel. “No feeding him to the pigs. He could poison them.”
Joel tittered a small laugh, but then his eyes moved back to the door where Eli and Noah had left. Joel looked as stressed as
his friend, pale, tense. Burke’s jaw popped in frustration, and I watched his other man in the room doing the same thing.
Rick stayed with Kanan, being he was sick with worry, too. I left for the farm with warnings from three of my new friends to
be careful, watch any cars following me, and a hundred other things.
I was glad to get away, frankly. The stress of the place was so thick, it was choking. It wasn’t only them, it was me, so taking
care of the chickens and stopping by my cabin sloughed that off me enough for the clear, cool morning air to ease me.
The incubators were warming three dozen new chicks that were making enough racket I couldn’t hear my own thoughts of
worry. That was the first step. The second was going over the books, which didn’t seem like it would be something I’d enjoy,
but it was that day. I finally made it to sitting on my porch, drinking a tall cup of coffee, finishing it off until I could feel myself
relaxing.
The topper of that was Roland pulling up and, at first, seething.
“Can I stop by for a quick vent?” He asked when he made it up the steps of the porch.
“Sure thing. What’s going on?”
He sat with a huff and said, “The survey found a few things. This land borders BLM acreage. They were twenty feet off in
the original survey, which is common, but they hadn’t updated it since nineteen-twenty-seven.”
“Nineteen-twenty-seven?”
“Yes. The grandfather or great, or whoever it was. This kind of land, it was surveyed at times…wrong on purpose. Plus, the
old instruments, while I am supposed to say they were accurate, weren’t always, and the surveyors could at times be bribed to
fudge the numbers. I don’t know which could have caused this, being that is a large discrepancy, but…”
I laughed, although he didn’t join me. “This throws off all your plans.”
“It does. I have to call Chandler now, who has to call his father, and Rick has enough on his plate.”
“Yeah, I’d delay that call until at least after the weekend.”
“The weekend. What’s happening there?”
“Lots, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about it.”
He laughed finally and said, “Got it. Pretty bad, huh?”
“The whole thing is bad. I can’t wait until it’s over and I can get back to my life.”
He held both hands, palm up, as he looked around the porch. “What…is different?”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing . “You know what I mean.”
“I get it,” he said, dropping his hands to his long, lean thighs.
His hair was down that day, which framed his face so nicely. I liked the guy, but Tango and I were flirting as well. I felt like
some fucking cheat, and that was even more stupid.
“Listen, Jace, I don’t want you to go.”
“Excuse me?”
 “To the club, no matter what they’re planning. I…got a weird feeling about it. If you do, and I suspect you’re going to no
matter what I say, and why not? I’m nobody to tell you what to do, even though I wasn’t exactly doing that, maybe suggesting it,
but…”
“Get to the point,” I pushed .
“Right, sorry. I’m a little nervous around you. I don’t know why. I used to be nervous around most men I was interested in,
and Damon and Burke, well…”
“Again, please slide past that and get to the original point,” I said, suddenly feeling possessive.
“Right. That’s…not a subject you’d want to hear about, I’m sure. The point is, I don’t want something to happen to you.
There. I said it, and now I feel like melting into this chair and disappearing.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, taking his hand. “I’d miss seeing you.”
As he stared down at my hand in his, he smiled sweetly. “Yeah. That is my point.”
I felt his hand, so warm in mine, feeling so right in mine, and pushed away the guilt that came. “I can’t promise not to be
there, but I can promise to be extra careful. Is that good enough?”
“No, but it’ll have to be.”
He let go of my hand and stood, then sighed, “I need to call Chandler.”
“Tell him to talk to his dad…later.”
Unmoving, Roland stared down at me, as if waiting for something, and I was glad of it. I didn’t want him to leave. So, I
stood and was right in front of him when I was standing, his face a couple of inches from mine. I cupped his cheek and touched
my lips to his because I couldn’t help myself.
So what? I was interested in two men. So what? I wanted them both, but then again, we had no commitment to one another, no
rules. Until that moment, we’d never kissed, never dated.
That kiss, his lips on mine, though it was short-lived, was magical. That sounded like a teenager dreaming of his first kiss,
but it was no less true. He settled his hands on my chest and the kiss went on much longer than I’d first intended.
I wasn’t complaining.
When it ended, Roland pulled back, licking over his lips, smiling and a little dazed, which matched how I felt exactly.
“I’ll see you soon,” he whispered, then gave me a peck, and left the porch quickly.
That was the sweetest thing, watching him give me a wave from his truck. He was grinning like he’d won the lottery.
I didn’t consider myself that much of a prize, but it was nice to see he did.
I got some more work done, then headed back to Rick’s, pulling him into his office to go over the books, let him know the
chicks were doing well, and to complain. “This is not good for me, Rick. I really wish I could just go back.”
“I’d let you. I don’t think you’re on anyone’s radar, but Burke forbids it, and he’s the head of security around here right now.
I’m trying to respect his decisions, though, that’s hard for me. I’m a control freak.”
“We all are. The Doms in this house are control freaks. I see it in Noah too, with Hud, everyone. Hopefully, this is soon over,
but there is one more issue that you’ll hear about sooner than later, and I hate to throw it on your plate, but I know you’ll want
to know about it.”
“What’s that?”
He looked tired, but he had to know, and if he was going to yell I’d rather it be at me than Chandler or Roland. “The
surveyor found the lines are wrong.”
“Oh! Is that all? I suspected that,” he said, laughing . “My grandfather had some…friends. I’ve had to redraw my borders on
most of the acreage. Bad?”
“Twenty feet. Not terrible, I guess, but enough that Roland was cussing up a storm.”
“Dammit. I didn’t think about that. Tell him, next time you see him, that I’ll pay a bonus for the trouble, and to not tell
Chandler. He’ll be upset I’m interfering.”
I was glad of that. “I will.”
“When will you see him again?” he asked cagily.
“I have no idea, boss.”
He winked at me and said, “The others will ask, so I did. You and those two men are…the talk, and I know that’s a pain in
the ass, but it’s taking their minds from their worries.”
“Then I’m happy to accommodate. I like the both of them. I’ve dated multiple men before, of course, but this time…it feels
different, like I’m cheating. Is that weird?”
He held both hands up, pleading, “Don’t ask me. I’ve barely been gay for a year, and I’ve ever only liked one person at a
time. I’m quite…boring.”
“Not boring. I’ve seen you with Kanan at the club, remember? Anything but boring.”
“Thanks! I appreciate that. Never grow complacent, especially with someone like him. He’s…”
“I get it. You’re still buzzing from the newness of it. Newlywed bliss.”
“That I plan to continue on for at least twenty years or so.”
 I left Rick’s office. It appeared the others were in their rooms except for Joel, who was nursing a beer at the kitchen island. I
sat with him and asked, “A little early, isn’t it?”
“Iffin it was whiskey, I’d say yeah.”
“I guess. Are you okay?”
His brows were so drawn, they appeared to be one long brow, and his eyes were narrowed to slits. “Danged ol’ Doms,
tellin’ me what ta do.”
“Isn’t that…part of things?”
“Eli’s a friend! Noah’s like my daddy now. I ain’t meant ta sit on my keister, lettin’ that sumbitch try ta git ‘em.”
“You’re as in danger as they are, Joel. You thwarted his first attempt, and Burke said you were in the barn when Javi caught
him the first time.”
“Tw-whatits?”
“Thwarted. It means you stopped him in his tracks. I heard the story; how brave you were. You’re a great friend, Joel. I can
only guess how frustrating it is, having to be here, protected.”
“Like I’m a danged ol’ kid! Like I ain’t got the gumption to take care o’ thin’s.”
He was miserable, but there was little to do about it. “I’m sorry, Joel. I’m sorry all this has happened, period. It’s taken us
all out of our lives, and they are good lives. I guess this is the hell in the paradise we have.”
“It’s hell a’righty. Ain’t fair a’tall.”
“No, it’s not.”
Theo came in then and took the stool on my other side, and asked for a sip of Joel’s beer. “Too bad this isn’t scotch.”
“’at’s what I said,” Joel informed him. “More danged ol’ rules! Makes no good sense.”
“Joel, rules are made to be broken, but maybe this time we should listen. I’m sure they have a picture of you. They’ll come
after you. Me too, being I’m related to Danny and Michael, at least by marriage. Our men, trying to protect us, it’s a show of
love.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he groaned. “I love ‘em too, so why in the Sam Hill ain’t I got the right ta defend ‘em too?”
“Yes, sure, Joel. But another time. Let them have this one. If they get the bad guys and take care of us, can you imagine how
relieved and…happy they’ll be?”
I caught onto what Theo was doing and thought him brilliant. “Theo, you mean that they’ll feel their oats?”
“Oats? What the hell y’all talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Oats, Joel, is a subtle way of saying they’re going to be so turned on by all that macho, alpha male shit, they’re going to
ravage us.”
“Hells bells,” Joel whispered, his brows separating and his mouth forming a perfect O.
“Theo, you cured him.”
“I know,” he said, as haughtily as I’d ever heard him, and he slipped off the stool and kissed Joel’s cheek before he left us
alone again.
“That’ll beat all,” Joel whispered before he pushed his beer away and left without another word.
I laughed and thought of Tango and Roland. Both of them, in my head, at the same time. It was insane. I was insane, but I
refused to feel guilty this time. Instead, I needed to talk to them both.
 Chapter Ten

“TANGO,” BURKE SAID AS Tango came into the house. They went into a corner to whisper something, and I’m sure it was
about security, but it didn’t stop me from feeling unjustifiably jealous.
I swallowed that and waited for Burke to let us in on whatever it was. He did, and it didn’t make the room less tense as we
all sat around after dinner.
“Guys, Felix and Chaz thought they saw people in the trees to the north, alongside the road. Everyone, head upstairs and
those of us on duty, let's head out to check.”
Joel was rushing to the backdoor when Damon caught him, slapped him on the ass, and pointed to the back stairs. “Go.”
“Dammit all ta hell!”
“Go!”
I walked out with Damon and whispered, “He really hates being left behind.”
“Yeah, well, I’d rather him be pissed off at me than hurt.”
“He’s…good with a gun. He’s already chased off Harvey once, and I know why you don’t want him out here, but…never
mind. It’s none of my business.”
Damon stopped and turned to me, his head dropping. “I know. I know he’s perfectly capable of being with us out here. I
just…the thought of him…I don’t even want Burke out here.”
“I get it, Damon. If I had someone, I’d worry over them too.” In fact, seeing Tango leading the pack with Burke and Hud, I
wanted to drag him from them and order him into the house.
Damon saw me look at him and asked, “Tango, huh? Out here, with a gun. Must make you nuts, by the look on your face.”
“He’s not mine. I can’t…stop him.”
“That’s not gonna last. This place, besides being hell right now, has this way of bringing guys like us together with our
forever people. It’s crazy, it’s totally crazy, but it’s worked. Theo and Hud? Hated each other. A minute or two together here
and bam. Together. Rick thought he was straight. Bam. Falls for Kanan.”
“Tango and Roland.”
“Bam,” he said, laughing . Burke turned and shushed us and then pointed for us to take off on one side of the road with him
and Hud and the others took the other side.
We all had our weapons drawn, which was scary. If someone else that wasn’t involved with Harvey was out for a hike and
had gotten lost, they could lose their life.
I was a country boy, but I hated guns. There was too much wrong in the world for guns to be used so readily, but it was
necessary right then. I knew that, but I didn’t have to like it.
We scoured the forest all around the house for over two hours. Tango was with the other group, and I was glad. I didn’t want
to act like some caveman and order him back to the house, but the urge was bubbling inside me.
When we did get back to the house, Tango was off duty, and I was on, volunteering to take a watch. I wasn’t tired, and my
mind would not quiet for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when Tango brought my food to me.
“I’ll watch for a minute while you eat.”
“You need some sleep.”
“I know when to go to bed,” he informed me with a sly smile.
“I bet.”
He laughed and leaned against the wall next to me. The sexiness of the guy was killing me, but the feel of Roland’s lips on
mine still felt fresh. Yeah, I was playing with fire, but I couldn’t help it.
“Our conversation about…things,” I started, then pushed myself to continue. “You never said whether we’d be compatible.”
“I said enough,” he answered, turning his head a little to side-eye me.
 “Talking is like…a big thing in the lifestyle.”
“Oh, I know. Right now, though, my mind is on keeping people safe and being in control of things, including myself. When I
don’t need to, I…give that up. Does that answer for you?”
Like many people, their everyday lives made them feel the need to control so much that when they could give that control up,
they used the lifestyle to do that for them. I got what he was saying, and it eased me. “Good to know.”
“Good. So, for now, I can’t think about that when I have to be someone else. I hope you can understand.”
Of course, I did. It made me want him more. “You’re…good, Tango. By the way, is that a nickname or last name?”
“Both,” he said, laughing . “From childhood, my friends. My first name is…stupid.”
“I’ve got to know now.”
He groaned and laughed at once, blushing a little. “Waylen.”
“Waylen Tango. Damn, you didn’t have a chance.”
He pushed me gently and accused, “You’re an asshole.”
“I am, yeah.”
“Did your parents plan for you to be gay? Jace?”
I laughed, as that was not the first time I’d been asked something similar. “Most think I changed it after I came out, but no, it’s
a family name.”
“Mine too. Waylen was my grandfather, the general.”
“General? Wow.”
“He was a prick. Why my dad named me for him, I’ll never know. The name, eh, maybe it’s not all that terrible, but the man
was. One last ditch effort by my father to be accepted by his dad. Dad didn’t join the military, so I had to. I didn’t mind, sure,
but still.”
Learning about him, hearing the cracking in his voice as he spoke about his family, it caused me to want to console him, but
like he said, it wasn’t the time. “I’m sorry, Tango.”
“Maybe my daddy issues work in your favor,” he cheeked. “I’m gonna try to get some sleep.”
He stopped in front of me for a second, and I thought crazily he was going to kiss me too, but Tango wasn’t Roland. He
simply stared up into my eyes and smiled.
When he was gone, I could breathe again. When he was gone, I could think. And I did. All the rest of the evening, I thought,
and fantasized, and then I grew more determined to have them. One, the other, or better yet, both.
Joel was in the kitchen again, and instead of the beer, he had a glass of whiskey. I joined him at three that morning, Burke
taking my place outside.
“I…tried to speak to Damon.”
“Done said my piece. Iffin they keep me locked up in ‘ere, I ain’t gonna obey no more. Made up my mind.”
I couldn’t blame him. “You don’t want to piss them off in the middle of all this, Joel, but I understand. There’s…a guy, and
you all know, and he’s out there, leading the way to hunt down any threats. I’m scared, but I know he’s capable. I know you are
too.”
He turned very red eyes on me. “Ya do?”
“Yeah, Joel. They do, too. Damon, he said the thought of losing you made him want to give up. If you do disobey them, just
know that if something happens, you’ll have two men that won’t be able to move on from it. They love you that much.”
“I love ‘em too. It’s makin’ me not sleep. Came ‘ere ta drink this, but it ain’t helpin’.”
“Then do what you feel you need to do, Joel. Just don’t get hurt. If you are hurt, they will hurt more.”
“I know it. I ain’t gettin’ hurt. I a’ready quit ridin’ bulls for ‘em. This ain’t that. This is…important.”
I’d heard about Joel’s bull riding career, and how he quit because Burke and Damon were worried. I thought that was wise,
as I’d known people hurt in the rodeo. “No, this ain’t that, Joel, but it’s just as dangerous. Instead of one bull, there are many
men with guns. You must be very, very careful if you decide to disobey them.”
“I’m fixin’ ta. Ain’t no worry there.”
“I believe you.”
He sighed hard after taking a sip of whiskey. “I’m obliged to ya. Felt like nobody was a listenin’.”
“Everyone listened, Joel, not just me. I promise. Damon and Burke both love you so much. That clouded anything they heard,
though. That’s not only commendable, but it was right of them.”
“I know it. Don’t matter none. These’re my friends, my fam’ly.”
I took a sip of whiskey and then added, “And your mother, she’s…tough. Remember her before you head into danger, too.
She’ll kill us all if you get hurt.”
“I know it! Boy, howdy, she’d kick up a fit to beat hell.”
Burke came into the room and sat next to Joel. “Hey.”
Joel mumbled a greeting, then drank more whiskey.
“I know you’re mad at me. At Damon, too. I’m sorry, babe. I can’t help that I want the best for you.”
 “I should go,” I said, sliding off the stool.
“Please, stay,” Burke pleaded. “Joel will feel like I’m chewing his ass if we’re alone.”
“That ain’t true!”
“Joel…”
Joel cracked a smile and told me, “Stay.”
I got back on the stool and listened to the two of them, feeling a pang of longing I wasn’t used to.
“I love you so much. Damon is crazy about you, too. We…are selfish as fuck, only thinking about our worries, Joel. We
weren’t thinking about you, and your need to do the same thing.”
I wanted to smile, but kept it back. Joel was staring at Burke like he’d heard wrong. “Ya…y’all ain’t se’fish! Not one bit!”
“Yes, Joel, we are. You are strong, and we were treating you like you were…some weak man that needed us to protect him.
And I won’t ever change that need to protect you, but I also need to take my head out of my ass and see you for the man you are.
Can you forgive me?”
Joel launched himself off his stool to throw his arms around Burke and hug him tightly. “Ain’t not one thin’ to fergive!”
I held back a smile and my eyes from rolling on that one.
“Joel, you’re the sweetest thing that has ever come into my life. Damon thinks the same. Sweet doesn’t mean weak.”
“I love ya! I love ya crazy,” Joel said as he kissed over Burke’s face.
Holding up my glass, I toasted them. “Well, done, gentlemen.”
Damon came into the room rather sheepishly. “We…okay?”
Tearing himself from Burke, Joel went to Damon next and grabbed hold of him like he was trying to squeeze him to death. “I
love ya!”
“Love you too, Joel. So much.”
After the hugging and kissing was over with his partners, he hugged me next. “Ya tol’ ‘em!”
“No, I didn’t. They came to this on their own.”
“Well, hells bells, iffin that ain’t sumthin’.”
Burke spun him around and laid down the law. “Just because we’re allowing you to come with us this weekend, that doesn’t
mean you’re running off without us, or placing yourself in danger, no matter whom you’re trying to protect. You will stay with
Damon and me, or else I’m sending you right back here.”
“I’ll behave! I swear it!”
“Good. Now, go get some damn sleep,” Damon said with a smack on Joel’s ass. Joel ran off to be obedient, now that he was
no longer angry, and Damon took his stool, picking up his glass and slamming the remaining whiskey. “Never thought in my life,
unless I had kids or something, that I’d worry so much over someone. He’s fucking precious.”
“He’s very precious,” I agreed. “It’s right to worry, but I’m glad you two came around on letting him be a part of things. I
don’t know if he’s one to hold grudges, but I had a feeling…”
Burke barked a laugh. “He’s one to hold grudges. He holds them against his father big time, a few other people in his past.
He won’t talk about it, but he’s got a lot of pain and anger that he deals with by being especially gentle with creatures. I think
he’s taken to animals to keep himself separate from people. He’s horribly shy around new people, as you know, but I don’t
think it’s all about his own confidence. It’s being afraid of them seeing him as lesser than.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it,” Damon said to him. To me, he explained, “Joel never thought much of himself. Come to find out,
most of the men here felt the same way. Theo, Joel, Eli, Kanan, they all had hard breaks that left them feeling they’d never have
true or lasting relationships because of something wrong with them. Eli, it was his looks.”
“His looks? He’s gorgeous!”
“Exactly,” Burke said, pouring his own drink. “All men wanted him for were his looks, he thought. Until Noah, that is. Theo,
it was his money, Joel, sex. He put out for men but never had one that wanted more. Kanan was dumped hard by a guy and that
gave him a knock, too. Then, when we looked past them to ourselves, we all had a lot of the same knocks to our confidence.
We’ve all come a long way.”
I saw for the first time why they pushed so hard for me to find my forever man or men. “And me?”
Damon chuckled and Burke answered me. “Oh, you put your job first, like a lot of us have. You told yourself you didn’t have
time for love.”
That was so on the nose that it felt as if he were a psychic. “Speaking from experience?”
“Sure. First the army, then dealing with what happened while I was in the army. I didn’t think I could give much to any
relationship. Then Damon came along and didn’t want a lot from me. He wanted…me. That was new.”
“Look at him. He’s a beautiful man with an even more beautiful heart. I had to have him, even though he was a top, too. I
didn’t think I’d ever feel the way I do for him for anyone else, and worried that if we found a sub, I couldn’t give him the love I
had for Burke.”
“Joel taught you differently.”
“Yes, he sure did. He made us crazy about him right away, and that was even scarier. He could have broken us, and not just
each of our hearts, but broken us apart. We’ve talked about it endlessly, how a jolt of that kind could have torn us away from
each other. Instead, he made us closer than ever.”
That scared me. “Wanting two…does that mean losing one of them would make me lose them both?”
Damon shrugged, but Burke smacked him gently. “Don’t scare him.”
“It’s true, Burke. We were solid. I thought nothing could tear us apart, but loving Joel and losing him, that would have put us
both into such a dark place, we would likely have forgotten to keep up the relationship you and I had.”
“But his circumstances are different. He’s not with someone looking for a third.”
“Still, you have to keep all points of the triangle strong. We were told that by someone that knew this. A triad, a triangle, it’s
a strong shape, but if one corner is weak, the entire thing falls apart. Each couple in that triad must be strong. For us, it’s you
and me, it’s Joel and me and Joel and you. All need to be welded and strong.”
“I get it,” I said in a whisper because the topic needed reverence. “If I embark on this, it’s not a simple, easy thing that can be
taken lightly. To be fair, I don’t take much lightly. That’s a character flaw of mine that I get too intense.”
Damon winked over at Burke. “I got a guy like that.”
“Shut up, Damon,” Burke whispered, laughed and then leaned over to kiss his partner. “I’ll tell you that Roland, of the two,
being that we know him, he doesn’t take things lightly either in most respects. He has had fun the last couple of years playing
around, but I had the feeling a few months back that he was taking things more seriously.”
“Right! The club, one weekend it was open this winter, he came and usually he’s snatched up and taken…sorry.”
“No, I have no worries about the past and sex. I would be a hypocrite.”
“Okay, good. Anyway, he came to the club and sat by himself most of the night. He was watching the room, you know? Like
looking around, but it was more than looking.”
“Right! He wasn’t looking, he was seeking.”
“Yearning,” Damon agreed. “Crazy for him. He, well, like I said, had his fun. That night, I think he went home alone, didn’t
come back the next night.”
“He didn’t,” Burke confirmed. “I called a week or so later to check on him. He said he had a good time, but he had had
work. I didn’t really believe him.”
“And Tango?” I asked. “You’re his boss, but that doesn’t mean you know him.”
“I do, actually. Not personally, not like that, but his brother was a friend of mine. Half-brother, I believe. Anyway, from what
I know, Tango keeps to himself mostly, didn’t have huge traumas overseas, was stationed all over the place. He was an elite
marine on his resume, but won’t fill in the blanks of that. He’s a bit of a mystery, and I’m close friends with his brother. The
thing is, they didn’t live together, so even his brother doesn’t know him well.”
“Two serious, good men, by the sounds.”
Burke confirmed, “Everyone Tango’s worked for raves about him. He’s unassuming, stays in the shadows of things until he’s
needed. He’s stepped out of them to interact with you. It’s one reason I knew he was interested.”
I was flattered beyond what I thought I’d be. “Really?”
“Yeah, Jace,” Damon answered him. “Burke told me about Tango when he first hired him on for the bodyguard gig. Even his
brother, that didn’t know him well, said it was the perfect job for him. What he knew, he was perfect for it, and he’s been
perfect.”
“Roland, well, he was super serious until we let him…feel his inner bad boy. I’m not taking credit for that out of bragging.
He’s told us many times.”
Before we could go further with the conversation, Theo, Eli, and Kanan rushed in to hug Damon and Burke, converging on
them like a pack of rabid coyotes.
“You did such a good thing! Joel is so happy,” Kanan told them.
“It’s about time,” Theo snarked, but then hugged each of them again.
“He’s still awake?” Damon asked in a growl before jumping off the stool and heading to the stairs.
“Did we just get him in trouble?” Eli asked Burke.
“He’s never very in trouble, Eli. He’s amazing at defusing us, especially Damon.”
“Thank you, Burke,” Eli said to his best friend. “Joel was…bad.”
Theo interrupted, “He’s okay now. Don’t have them worrying.”
“I saw. You’re not worrying me, guys. Thanks. And thank you all for being there for him when we were too busy making
things safe. Sometimes…safe isn’t everything, I guess.”
Eli said, with no room for argument, “That’s why I’m going with you too.”
 Chapter Eleven

I KNEW IT WOULD happen the second Eli declared his intent to go along to Cowpokes that weekend with the rest of us. Noah
heard about it, yelled, cussed, forbade him, but Eli held strong.
Eli took the gun from Burke and stared him dead in the eye. “I’m a vet too, brother. Remember? I can do this.”
“You’re still fucked up from the war, Eli! You cannot add to that.”
“You don’t think Harvey has added it for me?”
Everyone went quiet then. I understood, and I thought most did, but Eli didn’t care who thought what. “I’m doing this,” he
said, checking the magazine and then slamming it back into the butt of the gun. “Noah may never forgive me, but I can’t ask all
of you to risk life and limb while I sit protected in a fancy room. I won’t do that, Burke.”
Noah stood in the doorway again, after storming off, and said, “Eli, they want you first and most.”
“Yeah, Noah. I know, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want the rest of you nearly as bad.” He turned and his tone softened.
“Please. Understand.”
“I do. Sure, I do, Eli, but that don’t mean I’m happy ‘bout it.”
Burke was grinding his teeth, his jaw clenching badly. Damon took his partner outside to try to cool him off, and the rest of
the room had grown quiet. Noah went to Eli and held him, pleading , “If anything bad happens to you, it’ll kill me. Please,
babe, don’t run into the fighting.”
“I won’t run in, but I’m not running away. Maybe that’s what’s been wrong all this time. I was letting everyone handle things
for me. I was happy you all were handling things, but I’m not a kid,” he said, pulling back. “I’m not a coward.”
“I know that! I know you’re no fucking coward.”
“Then I’m coming too,” Theo said, though his voice shook.
As Hud was about to explode on him, Kanan said, “Count me in.”
Joel stood tall among them. “I’m sorry for startin’ this, but it ain’t right. We’re subs, sure, but we’re still men that have ta
defend our homes and the guys we love!”
I smiled inwardly, even as my eyes welled with tears. The four stood tall together, though Theo was pale as a ghost. Hud
noticed. “Theo, you…don’t have to.”
“You were going to let Brett and you love him!”
“I love you more! You’re my partner!”
“I love you too,” he squeaked, then ran off and Hud followed him.
I went to Burke and Damon outside and mentioned, “They have a right.”
“I know. Fuck, I know that. Joel is bad enough, but Eli? He’ll be so fucked up after this!”
Damon tried to soothe him, and I said, “Maybe this is different. This isn’t, like you were saying, some stranger who was
trained to hate him and kill him. This is personal for him. This is him, seeing all the people he loves running into the fray for
him. If he stayed behind, that might fuck with him worse.”
Burke’s head dropped, and he walked off a few paces before returning. “That’s a…point. I’m not calling it good, but it’s a
point. I can’t take it, Jace, to see that man hurt again.”
“Then let him help end it.”
There were concessions on Eli’s part, along with his compatriots. Burke had another of his security employees bring two
huge bins of Kevlar vests. “This doesn’t stop anyone from shooting you in the head,” Burke told the group gruffly.
Theo took it with his fingers. “You’ve washed these since some other sweaty Neanderthal wore it, correct?”
Burke’s jaw clenched at him, and Theo paled, taking a step back.
Damon calmed him or tried. “Burke, honey, let’s go check on the weapons.”
“Right. Guns,” he said, staring harder at Theo. “Let’s go get them.”
 “Geez,” Theo said as Burke and Damon left the room. “It’s a valid question.”
“Let’s go find you something to do, babe,” Hud said, grabbing the back of Theo’s neck to escort him from the room.
The tension eased, but not all of it. Everyone branched off into their separate corners, most of the partners together, talking in
hushed voices, kissing, hugging, and I was left to watch them all.
Friday came with a bright, beautiful morning. I paced outside the kitchen door, watching the wind bend the trees as a storm
over the mountains threatened to dim the sun.
Tango came along, eyes scanning the trees and road. “Hey, Jace.”
“Tango, hey. Ready for tonight?”
“Yeah, but I’m always ready. You?”
“Nope.”
He chuckled and whispered, “You could have hesitated.”
“Why? I don’t want to be in some gunfight or whatever. Doesn’t mean I won’t be there, no, but I don’t have to like it. I’m not
a fan of death and destruction.”
“Believe it or not, neither am I.”
He was shuffling his feet and seemed to want to say more, but there was no way I wanted to start anything with him in the
middle of this mess. “After this is over, if we’re both…okay, I’d like to take you out.”
His eyes briefly met mine, but he ducked his head. That didn’t mean I missed his smile. “I’d like that. I thought we would
anyway.”
“I just had to get it out.”
“Sure, sure. Yeah. I’d like that.” Finally, he met my eyes and stayed there. “Be careful tonight. If you need help, you just call
out for me.”
“I’d say the same if I didn’t want to be laughed at.”
“Right,” he said, chuckled. “Sorry, but…I’m like the rest of them. Just looking out for someone I care about.”
He left me with that, and all I could do was smile, even as I worried over him, over the others and yeah, for myself.
We trickled into the yard sporadically. Damon and Burke went first, with Joel driving behind them. Noah and Hud went next,
soon on the phone, to tell the rest of us it was clear to proceed.
It took two hours for us all to show, but we weren’t there half an hour before we heard vehicles and Burke ran out to see if
the war was already beginning.
We all took places at the doors and up in the loft, but Burke soon ran in, telling us to be calm. “You all gotta see this.”
As we all left Cowpokes, we saw something remarkable. There were twenty cars there, and not one was a threat. In fact, I
recognized a lot of them. All members of Cowpokes.
Burke was leaning in, talking to someone through a car window, and Damon ran back to tell us, “They are insisting on
staying to help.”
Noah smiled and sniffed, throwing an arm around Eli as Eli sunk into his side.
“They could be killed,” Theo whispered beside me.
“I guess they are like the rest of us. Fighting for what’s ours.”
“Cowpokes doesn’t belong to them!”
“In a way…it does. It’s a place they can be themselves, to take off the stress of things for a weekend. It’s…special.”
“Sure is,” Joel said as he smiled around at the cars. “Look at ‘em! Ain’t that grand?”
When I saw Roland, however, I almost lost my mind. I was no longer on the sidelines, pissed off that my significant other
was thinking about joining the small army. He was there, his hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt
and old jeans.
Running over to him, all the arguments I’d given Damon, Burke, Noah, and Hud, they flew from my mind. “Roland, get the
hell out of here!”
“Excuse me? I’m here and I’m not leaving, and who the fuck are you to tell me to?”
He had me there. We’d shared one kiss. That wasn’t a contract for a lifetime of love. “Roland, this is more dangerous than
you can imagine.”
As he bent into the backseat to retrieve something, he said, “It’s more believable, having the place full of people. No one
would buy you few folks being the actual weekend crew.”
When he came back out of the car, he had a heavy duffle. “Please tell me there are no guns in there.”
“Three. My own. I have them at my apartment for safety. I live in a sketchy neighborhood.”
Roland brushed past me, and Burke came up to stand in the middle of the sudden crowd. “I can’t say I’m not pissed at all of
you for ignoring my email, but…I am touched so deeply that you’re here. Joel and Damon are going to get you set up in rooms,
and then meet me in the club itself.”
There was a subtle round of applause, and I couldn’t stop staring at Roland, wishing he’d listen.
In the club, Burke passed out all the rest of the Kevlar vests and then spoke to small groups of people to give them their
instructions. I was bereft seeing Roland there. He wasn’t the type, wasn’t the kind of guy that ran into a firefight.
But, then again, I didn’t know him.
Then I saw Tango, standing there, laughing with some of the other security detail. It hit me that I should protect him, too. I had
to forcibly keep myself from running to him to yell for him to get to safety.
He was a former marine. I was worried about him, and he could likely kick my ass all over the valley and leave me bleeding
out on a patch of grass.
“Ain’t easy,” Noah said as he came up beside me. “Seeing someone you care about puttin’ themselves at risk.”
“No. I guess all my talk about how you all should loosen the reins…it was utter and complete bullshit.”
“A foot deep’s worth of bullshit, but your heart’s in the right place.” My shoulder was squeezed, and I almost ran from the
building, needing some air.
Once everyone had a place for the night, clothes were changed to resemble what they’d organically wear for a night of fun at
Cowpokes. I didn’t change, as I rarely wore anything more elaborate than jeans and a T-shirt.
The Kevlar I’d been given was forced on Roland, and he hollered about it, but I insisted, though it was much too big for him.
My chest was twice his size, but I made him make it work. “You’re acting like a domineering asshole, but I seem to be flattered
instead of angry.”
“Dominant asshole,” I corrected. “And you’ll wear it and get the fuck out of the way if it gets too much.”
Roland purred, “Yes…Sir.”
As much as I was hoping we were all wrong in thinking the cartel mob would come after us at the club, we were right on the
money. At midnight, when we were all tired of being so on alert, the music going on around us, more annoying than joyous, we
heard the first shot ring out.
Joel was on the phone to the sheriff, who knew the plan we’d made, and then he ran out behind Burke and Damon, gun out,
and others followed him. I was among those, running out into the night, hearing the popping of gunfire coming in quick
procession, the lights of the muzzle flashes lighting up the woods.
Everything became chaos. Men were running this way and that, and in the darkness, it was hard to tell friend from enemy.
The only thing I could see to tell was the leather some of our men wore.
I fired at a group coming out of the trees, winging one of them until he fell back in the grass. I ducked as they returned fire on
me, and I was pulled to the ground and made to crawl behind one of the cars.
It was Tango. “You got one,” he shouted, then he came out from behind the car, shooting at the ones that had followed us.
“Tango, they’ll kill you,” I screamed, and he came back behind the car.
“I got three,” he boasted, then he kissed me hard before taking off again. “Stay there,” he called back, and I shook my head to
clear it from the kiss that not only surprised me but made me warm and ready to fight again.
I stood, shooting at the last man that was charging the car, but I missed. Tango, however, didn’t, and the man was on the
ground bleeding in a blink.
Shouting, cursing, gunfire, the entire place was one long, loud noise. I ran out into the fray, seeing Eli running from the club
doors. “Jace! They set it on fire!”
I looked back and saw the flames licking the side of the building. “We can’t worry about that now,” I shouted, then shot a
man who had come out of the brush to fire at Eli.
Eli grabbed my hand, and we ran for cover again. He sat, leaning on the tire of the car. “Fuckers aren’t shit. I think we have
most of them down or running.”
“Really? Sure didn’t just seem like it.”
“I saw a group running down the road. I’m betting they’re about to get into their vehicles and wish they’d never listened to
Harvey.”
A siren could be heard in the distance and Tango called to me, “Find Burke! Tell him the police are coming!”
I had no idea where Burke was, and that scared me. I hadn’t seen him except once while the firefight was going on, but I took
off, searching the night.
Joel was with Damon, near some trees, and Joel was hollered, “Get outta ‘ere, sumbitches!”
I fell to my knees, sliding a bit to get beside them. “Where’s Burke?”
Damon took a shot then answered over his shoulder. “He went with the others to try to put out the fire.”
“The cops are on the way.”
“Cops? Ain’t no cops,” Joel rushed as he peeked out his head and a bullet whizzed by, just missing him.
“What do you mean?”
“Only two cops in this town and one’s on vacation.”
“There…there’s only one cop? He’ll be slaughtered!”
Damon didn’t listen, but Joel actually laughed. “Mos’ o’ the time, he’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog. He handles hisself
jus’ fine an’ dandy, though.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but got up and ran as bullets flew, getting nearly to the car where I’d left Tango.
Suddenly, however, I felt a sharp pain in my side, and it threw me a couple of feet and I slammed into the side of the car,
thinking crazily that I hoped I didn’t dent the car. I wouldn’t want to do that to someone.
Hey, I said it was crazy.
Once the pain fully hit me, I looked down to see my hand was covered in something. It was hard to see at night, but it looked
black. Pitch, deep black and the liquid shone in the bit of light cast from the gunfire.
Gunfire that was coming closer to me.
As I turned to see where it was coming from, the world got much darker. I felt my legs give out, and I hit the ground. The last
thing I saw was a face. No two faces. Roland and Tango were both leaning over me.
And do you want to know what my last thought was before I passed out? They’re gonna find out about each other and they’d
be pissed off at me.
Yeah. Maybe I’d already lost too much blood…
 Chapter Twelve

IT WAS DIM, THE light, the sounds, like I was underwater. Then I realized I was in the back of a car, lying on a short, rather
narrow seat.
“Jace, you okay?”
I looked around to see Roland leaning far over the passenger front seat of the car, fussing over me.
“What am I doing back here?”
“You were shot,” said another voice, and I turned my head, though it wasn’t easy.
“Tango?”
“Yeah, we’re getting you to the hospital.”
“We can’t leave them!”
I tried to sit up, and the pain hit me so hard, I nearly fainted again.
“Jace,” Roland screamed.
I was still there, but his face was blurred. “You two…how…?”
“We both saw you get shot,” Roland told me, nearly out of breath.
I closed my eyes and felt myself growing weaker. I realized, after learning I had been shot, that I could die. I could slip away
as my blood leaked out of my body.
If indeed I was dying, I had to get it out, the truth and the guilt. “I like both of you,” I croaked. There. It was out. I felt
woozier than ever, but somehow kept myself from passing out cold again.
“Okay, and?” Roland said, laughing, but his laughter turned to more worry. “Jace? Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I said as I reopened my eyes. “Didn’t you understand me?”
Tango wasn’t laughing. “You’re worried about that right now? Motherfucker, you just got shot!”
“I don’t want to die, and…not…”
Roland sat right in his seat, effectively turning his back to me. That was it. He was pissed.
Well, so I thought. “Can you believe this guy?” Roland asked Tango.
“It’s kinda cute, I guess. Wanted to confess before he croaks. Should we tell him?”
“Tell me what?”
Roland moved again, but only to look around at me. “The bullet hit the tiny love-handle you have and went in and out. You
could bleed out, sure, in about ten hours or so.”
I moved my hand and saw the black liquid I had before. “Really?”
“Tango lived with an EMT for a while and then worked with a medic in the marines. Put your hand back. Keep pressure.
We’ll be at the clinic in town soon and you should be fixed up in no time.”
“Then we can get back to the conversation about how he likes both of us,” Tango said, laughing .
I couldn’t believe they were laughing when the entire time I was thinking about the two of them, I feared they’d hate me.
The clinic wasn’t busy, and they seemed almost glad to have an actual emergency. I overheard one nurse say she was glad it
wasn’t another phantom pain in the back or vomiting.
Tango and Roland took turns holding my hand until the doctor saw me, then stood just outside the door while he went over
me, then cleaned and stitched up my wound. “You were lucky,” he told me, right out of a fucking movie. “A couple of inches to
the middle of you, and your liver would have been nicked at the very least.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky,” I said with sarcasm. “I already made a deathbed confession.”
“Oh?” The doctor asked, laughing. “That’s…too bad. Want me to go out and tell your friends you need to stay the night? It’ll
give you time to correct your story.”
“No. I need to get back.”
 “Well, I’m supposed to keep you here until the police come, but I’ve been told they’ll be busy for hours. You’re fine to go
after I write your prescriptions and get you signed out.”
“You can’t…shoot me again. This time something a little more damaging?”
“Sorry,” he said, laughing . “I’ll get you signed out, and maybe we’ll expect you back later, with contusions.”
“That would be a good bet.”
I was wheeled out into the waiting room to find Roland and Tango, their heads together, whispering. I pointed to them, and
the nurse pushed me over, finally catching their attention.
“Hey,” Roland greeted as he stood. “How are you?”
Tango stood beside him and said, “You look better.”
“Morphine,” I admitted. “Gonna feel just fine for a few hours.”
I stood at the automatic open doors, and they escorted me out to the car.
It was Roland’s car, a tiny thing, and suddenly I didn’t feel like the giant I had when coming to the hospital.
They got me into the back, and Tango got in with me as Roland took the driver’s seat that time. Once we started off, Tango
lifted my shirt to check the bandage. “How often do we change it?”
I handed him the papers and confessed, “They told me, but I wasn’t really listening.”
Tango stifled his laughter, but Roland didn’t. He laughed loudly. “A little…embarrassed?”
“So, I confessed. We’re not…in an exclusive relationship or anything.”
“Exactly,” Tango said flatly. “Why were you freaking out, like making deathbed confessions about it?”
“Because I feel guilty! Yeah, we don’t have a formal commitment, but I like both of you. I really like you, and it’s stupid.
We’ve barely…spoken! Let alone anything else and…”
“I like you too, Jace,” Roland said from the front. “I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you at Cowpokes. That’s why we
didn’t just hook up then.”
Tango agreed. “I liked you too, right away. You’re hot, Jace, but it’s more. You kept trying to mediate between everyone, and
you are a sincerely good guy.”
“While flirting with both of you? Of thinking…things…”
“Like?” Tango asked, rolling his eyes.
I couldn’t say it, but Roland didn’t have that problem. “Thinking of doing like Burke, Damon, and Joel? Tripling up?”
I sighed and fell even deeper into the back cushions.
Tango laughed at me. “You’re…old fashioned or something?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” I defended. “How the hell do I know what you two would think?”
Tango again rolled his eyes and it was sexy, if not a little frustrating. “I’ve been in two triads before. They’re almost my
thing.”
“You were. Past tense.”
“Yeah! We didn’t work out, mostly because of the location. Both times, I had to move, and so did one of my partners in the
first one. Careers were being built; life wasn’t set in stone for any of us.”
“You’re barely thirty. It’s not like anything is set in stone now.”
Roland said from the front, “You really need to talk to each other a little more, I guess.”
I couldn’t believe how casual they were. Before we could get further into the conversation, Tango’s phone rang. “It’s about
time.”
Suddenly feeling selfish, I asked Roland, “What’s the word there?”
Tango held up a hand to quiet us as he spoke briefly to whoever had called him. Once the call ended, Tango explained to the
both of us, “There’s a ceasefire. Everyone is gathering their wounded and dead, and that happened when the sheriff got there.”
“Dead?” I asked.
“I don’t know details. That was Burke and he was busy, but wanted to check on you and tell us to come ahead. He’s planning
to speak to one of their side.”
“He can’t do that,” I whispered. “They aren’t honorable people. They won’t honor whatever deal they make.”
“Burke’s counting on that, he says. I have no clue what that means, but he sounded confident.”
I could tell Tango was worried.
Roland said, “Jace, I want to take you to Chandler’s father’s house. You’re out of this now.”
“No, I’m not! Take me to Burke’s! I’ll walk there if you don’t take me!”
Tango shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “Thought I had a twenty. I’ll owe you the rest,” he said
as he passed the money to Roland.
“No, it’s fine. Being right and the bragging rights of that are enough.”
“What the fuck are you two talking about?”
Tango teased, “Betting you’d have a fit if he drove to the Belish house.”
“Oh, nice. I’m laying with a bullet hole in me and you two are betting on me? Nice.”
 I was quite put out, but all they did was laugh at me, and it brought to mind the warning Burke had given me. “They gang up
on you.”
I was living it before I’d done more than kiss them.
“Listen, this isn’t exactly fair,” I started, but Tango just shook his head. “We’ll deal with this later.”
We turned onto the driveway that would lead us to Cowpokes. “Please, don’t let any of our friends be…hurt.”
Roland parked down the road some, and Tango helped me from the car. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Go, see what’s going on.”
“Roland, you have him?”
“Yeah, go.”
Roland placed my arm around his shoulders and helped me walk a little easier, even though the drugs were keeping my pain
at bay. We got up the little hill to see men everywhere, on the hoods of cars, on the ground, and Burke jogged over to me,
thankfully unscathed.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, these two just…”
“I got it. Listen, you’re out of the fighting, but I’d like you to come with me to the house.”
“Sure, lead the way.”
Tango was in the living room, along with all our friends. Everyone seemed okay, and Theo was actually smiling.
“Thank goodness yer okay,” Joel said as he ran over to help Roland get me to the couch.
Noah nodded to me, and Eli kissed my cheek. “The first wound of our bunch.”
“Who else?”
“We have three gunshot wounds,” Damon said, “none of them fatal or even bad. They’re on their way to the hospital now.
The sheriff is with them, to grease the wheels for others that might come from our side and to arrest anyone from the other
side.”
“That’s part of our negotiations,” Burke told me. To all of us, he said, “They want Eli. Harvey has somehow convinced them
that Eli knows where a bunch of money is, and he’s promised it to them. They refuse to believe Harvey is lying.”
“What are we going to do, then?” Noah asked. “They ain’t getting him.”
“Of course not, Noah. The guy told me that if they don’t get him, we will finish this and so far, they’ve taken it easy on us.”
“Right,” Hud scoffed. “Easy. Two guys were ready to shoot me in the chest before I got them first.”
“He said they didn’t lose anyone, but that’s bullshit,” Burke chuckled dryly. “I took two out myself, and there was no getting
up from those shots. More are wounded. We have a few wounded, sure, but we’re coming out better. The thing is, he hinted that
they have more men waiting off in the trees or something, or maybe coming up the road.”
“How’s Cowpokes?” I asked.
“One wall burned pretty well,” Damon told me. “Outside, mostly, but the water and smoke damage is extensive inside, too.”
Everyone groaned pitifully. “That’s where…that’s where Noah proposed to me.”
“We didn’t lose it,” Burke told him. “We’ll fix it right up again. Don’t worry, guys, we’ll be fine after this.”
“How the hell can you know that?” Kanan demanded, then Rick pulled him in to hold on to him tightly.
“Because my family has called in the troops,” Theo said, his chin rising in pride.
Javi explained, “Danny was on the phone to the Carrillos two days ago. We’re…partnered with them now, and they take care
of their partners. We just got a call from one of them, saying the cavalry is on the way.”
We all breathed a sigh of relief, though that made a few of us either laugh to ourselves or shake their heads.
“I get it,” Javi said to those silent responses. “Mob to fight a mob.”
“Makes sense to me,” Noah said, standing. “That doesn’t mean squat as far as Harvey goes. He’s mine.”
Eli sat pale and drawn. Theo went to him and sat on his lap, ignoring Noah’s foul look in his direction for the act. “They’ll
get him.”
“I don’t care who does it,” Eli said. “He already hurt people here.”
“Who else?” I asked.
“No one was hurt badly. Mostly like you, flesh wounds, but one guy, I think they call him Beast, he got…shot in the leg,” Javi
informed me.
“Beast? He’s shot?”
Joel lamented, “Ain’t bad, he said, but he was a-bleedin’ like a stuck hog.”
I felt terrible. He’d come, without his partners, to help. They were likely crazy, worrying about him. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah,” Burke affirmed. “We got a call from Brett, who took him. He’s fine, and he’s worried Beast’s partners are gonna
show up. We need this over.”
“They’re not gonna wait all night for us to lick our wounds. I don’t think they give two shits about their wounded,” Javi said,
scowling hard. “How do you ask men to fight for you and not care if they get hurt or die?”
We all mulled that over as I sat, with Tango and Roland fussing over me. “We care,” Tango said. “That’s all I need to know.
So, let’s get back out there. We don’t need them trying to burn the house down next.”
 “We didn’t suffer the losses or wounds they did, but we’re still down a few men,” Damon said. “If we go out there now,
before the Carrillo people come, we’re likely to suffer more.”
“Not if we ask for an exchange,” Hud pointed out. “Listen, now, the money, it’s bullshit. Those of you that have it, give
enough of it back to placate them. We do a peace talk with them, and if nothing else, it can stall all this until the Carrillo people
show.”
Burke pointed at him as he whispered, “Brilliant.”
“All we have to do is stall,” Theo said, excited. “Get them to the table, talk a while and while that is happening, our own
mob shows.”
“Who knows? We might not need them,” Burke said.
“Burke, babe, we used a lot of our share of that on the club,” Damon reminded him.
“We’ve made that back and then some, Damon. The club is doing well.”
“We ain’t givin’ those sumbitches a dime!”
“Joel, baby, we might have to,” Burke soothed.
“No, we ain’t gotta do shit. We had ‘em! We had ‘em good and right!”
It was true. From what I’d seen and heard since we returned, the other side had many more wounded and dead. “Joel’s right,
but so are you, Burke. Let’s get them to the table. If the Carrillos don’t show in time, once the talks end, we can finish it
ourselves.”
Burke nodded and then looked around the room, and almost everyone was nodding. “I guess that’s what we’ll do then. Let me
go holler at them, get the leader over here, and we’ll have a nice sit-down.”
Tango and Roland helped me stand, and then they surprised me by trying to take me to the bedroom. “Yeah, go on ahead in,”
Joel told them. “The sheets’re clean as a whistle.”
I told Joel, “I’m not going to your bed.”
“Yes, you are,” Roland insisted. “You’ve been shot, Jace!”
“I know that,” I sighed. “I’m fine. I’m not letting my friends continue to fight without me.”
Tango was pissed, and he and Roland bonded over that. “This asshole thinks we’re going to let him go back out there.”
“He’s not,” Roland said. “I will leave right now.”
“Then leave! I’d like it better if you both left,” I insisted.
Tango was even angrier. “I bet. Then who’ll rush you to the fucking hospital next time you get shot? You realize this isn’t a
hunting party? The fucking deer fire back in this scenario, and I was a fucking marine! You’re trying to protect me, when I’m a
hundred times more of a soldier than you’ll ever be!”
Roland smiled at him. “You were a marine, I almost forgot.”
Seeing them bonding, well, it made me a little crazy. “I’m not leaving.”
“Well, then get comfortable on the couch,” Tango said. “I will not worry over you and get myself killed.”
He walked off and Roland followed him, an arm around his shoulders. Theo came to me, laughing, and I wanted to kill him.
“They seem…close.”
“Fuck off, Theo.”
“I’m your comrade-in-arms,” he said, his chin rising high. “I suggest you don’t piss me off and get shot with…what’s that
called?”
“Friendly fire?”
“Yes! That!”
Hud pushed him to Eli and Joel and waved a hand over the chair I’d just abandoned. “Sit. You are pale as a ghost.”
“I’m angry.”
He chuckled and pushed me gently into the seat. “I bet. Poly relationships are cool, fun, but they can induce jealousy pretty
easily.”
“Poly relationship. All that’s happened is that they took me to the hospital together, and I confessed to them I liked them
both.”
“Well, I think they like each other too, by the looks of it. You better get used to that, unless you are bowing out.”
“How did you…do it?”
“I fell for the two that Theo fell for. You’re already halfway there, so…either you let them get close, or figure out you can’t
be with either.”
A straightforward comment that only made me angrier. “I…we have more important things to think about right now!”
“Yeah. There are, but the worlds collided a bit, huh?”
I sank into the cushions. “Yeah. Great.”
“Maybe hope for a more invasive wound next time. They’d forgive you if you were on the verge of death.”
“You’re a real inspirational speaker. Maybe you should start a new career.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Another random document with
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be allowed that such a confession as the following would be felt as
an irritant:

All those, I think, who have lived as literary men—working

daily as literary labourers—will agree with me that three hours a
day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then he
should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work
continuously during those three hours—or have so tutored his
mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen
and gazing at the wall before him till he shall have found the
words with which he wants to express his ideas. It had at this
time become my custom—and it still is my custom, though of
late I have become a little lenient to myself—to write with my
watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every
quarter of an hour. I have found that my 250 words have been
forthcoming as regularly as my watch went.

The reader may easily imagine the maddening effect of that

upon any ambitious young writer, indolent by habit yet conscientious
in his craft, reminiscent of hours spent in gazing at a wall for words
with which he wanted to express his ideas. How many times did
Plato alter the opening sentence of The Republic? How many times
did Gray recast the Elegy?
But time, which should bring the philosophic mind, will lead most
critics who follow criticism sincerely to the happy conviction that
there are no rules for the operation of genius; a conviction born to
save a vast amount of explanation—and whitewash. Literary genius
may be devoted, as with Milton; nonchalant, as with Congreve;
elaborately draped, as with Tennyson. Catullus or Burns may splash
your face and run on; but always the unmistakable god has passed
your way. In reading Trollope one’s sense of trafficking with genius
arises more and more evidently out of his large sincerity—a sincerity
in bulk, so to speak; wherefore, to appraise him, you must read him
in bulk, taking the good with the bad, even as you must with
Shakespeare. (This comparison is not so foolish as it looks at first
sight: since, while no two authors can ever have been more
differently gifted, it would be difficult to name a third in competition as
typically English.) The very mass of Trollope commands a real
respect; its prodigious quantity is felt to be a quality, as one searches
in it and finds that—good or bad, better or very much worse—there
is not a dishonest inch in the whole. He practised among novelists of
genius: Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, the Brontës, George Eliot,
Ouida were his contemporaries; he lived through the era of
“sensational novels,” Lady Audley’s Secret and the rest; and he
wrote, as he confesses, with an eye on the publisher’s cheque. But
no success of genius tempted him to do more than admire it from a
distance; no success of “sensation” seduced him from his loom of
honest tweed. He criticises the gods and Titans of his time. He had
personal reasons for loving Thackeray, who gave him his great lift
into fame by commissioning him to write the serial novel that opened
the Cornhill upon a highly expectant public. Trollope played up nobly
to the compliment and the responsibility. Framley Parsonage
belongs to his very best: it took the public accurately (and
deservedly) between wind and water. Thackeray was grateful for the
good and timely service; Trollope for the good and timely opportunity.
Yet one suspects no taint of servility when he writes of Thackeray
that “among all our novelists his style is the purest, as to my ear it is
the most harmonious.” (And so, I hope, say most of us.) Of Dickens
he declares with entire simplicity that his “own peculiar idiosyncrasy
in the matter” forbids him to join in the full chorus of applause. “Mrs.
Gamp, Micawber, Pecksniff, and others have become household
words—but to my judgment they are not human beings.”

Of Dickens’s style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is

jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules
—almost as completely as that created by Carlyle. To readers
who have taught themselves to regard language, it must
therefore be unpleasant. But the critic is driven to feel the
weakness of his criticism when he acknowledges to himself—as
he is compelled in all honesty to do—that with the language,
such as it is, the writer has satisfied the great mass of the
readers of his country.
 To the merits of Disraeli—whom he must take into account as
“the present Prime Minister of England,” who “has been so popular
as a novelist that, whether for good or for ill, I feel myself compelled
to speak of him”—he is quite genuinely blind. For the political insight
which burns in page after page of Coningsby, as for the seriousness
at the core of Sybil, he has no eyes at all. To him, dealing with the
honest surface and sub-surface of English country life, with the
rooted interest of county families and cathedral closes, all Disraeli’s
pictures of high society appear as pomatum and tinsel, false glitter
and flash. He had never a guess that this flash and glitter (false as
they so often were) played over depths his own comfortable
philosophy never divined. He just found it false and denounced it.
Upon Wilkie Collins and the art that constructed The Woman in
White and The Moonstone he could only comment that “as it is a
branch which I have not myself at all cultivated, it is not unnatural
that his work should be very much lost upon me individually. When I
sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much
care, how it is to end.”
Again, honest though he was, he accepted and used false tricks
and conventions calculated, in the ’eighties and ’nineties, to awake
frenzy in any young practitioner who, however incompetent, was
trying to learn how a novel should be written. The worst “stage aside”
of an old drama was as nothing in comparison with Trollope’s easy-
going remarks, dropped anywhere in the story, and anyhow, that
“This is a novel, and I am writing it to amuse you. I might just as
easily make my heroine do this as do that. Which shall it be?... Well,
I am going to make her do that; for if she did this, what would
become of my novel?” One can imagine Henry James wincing
physically at such a question posed in cold print by an artist; as in a
most catholic and charitable paper—written in 1883, when the young
dogs were assembling to insult Trollope’s carcase—he reveals
himself as wincing over the first sentence in the last chapter of
Barchester Towers: “The end of a novel, like the end of a children’s
dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar plums.”
James laments:
 These little slaps at credulity ... are very discouraging, but
they are even more inexplicable; for they are deliberately
inartistic, even judged from the point of view of that rather vague
consideration of form which is the only canon we have a right to
impose upon Trollope. It is impossible to imagine what a novelist
takes himself to be unless he regard himself as a historian and
his narrative as history. It is only as a historian that he has the
smallest locus standi. As a narrator of fictitious events he is
nowhere; to insert into his attempt a backbone of logic he must
relate events that are assumed to be real. This assumption
permeates, animates all the work of the most solid storytellers....

Yes; but on further acquaintance with Trollope one discovers that

this trick (annoying always) of asking, “Now what shall we make Mrs.
Bold do?—accept Mr. Arabin, or reject him?” is no worse than
“uncle’s fun,” as I may put it. Uncle is just playing with us, though we
wish he wouldn’t. In fact, Trollope never chooses the wrong answer
to the infelicitous question. He is wise and unerringly right every
time. You will (I think) search his novels in vain for a good man or a
good woman untrue to duty as weighed out between heart and
conscience.
Another offence in Trollope is his distressing employment of
facetious names—“Mr. Quiverful” for a philoprogenitive clergyman,
“Dr. Fillgrave” for a family physician, etc. “It would be better,”
murmurs Henry James pathetically, “to go back to Bunyan at once.”
(Trollope, in fact, goes back farther—to the abominable tradition of
Ben Jonson; and it is the less excusable because he could invent
perfect names when he tried—Archdeacon Grantly, Johnny Eames,
Algernon Crosbie, Mrs. Proudie, the Dales of Allington, the Thornes
of Ullathorne, Barchester, Framley—names, families, places fitting
like gloves.) And still worse was he advised when he introduced
caricature, for which he had small gift, into his stories; “taking off”
eminent bishops in the disguise of objectionable small boys, or
poking laborious fun at Dickens and Carlyle under the titles of Mr.
Sentiment and Dr. Pessimist Anticant. The Warden is in conception,
and largely in execution, a beautiful story of an old man’s
conscience. It is a short story, too. I know of none that could be more
easily shortened to an absolute masterpiece by a pair of scissors.
With Trollope, as with Byron, in these days a critic finds himself
at first insensibly forced, as though by shouldering of a crowd, upon
apology for the man’s reputation.

II
I do not wish to make a third with Pontius Pilate and Mr.
Chadband in raising the question, “What is Truth?” but merely to
suggest here that, as soon as ever you raise it over poetry or over
prose fiction, it becomes—as Aristotle did not miss to discover—
highly philosophical and ticklish. To begin at plumb bottom with your
mere matter-of-fact man, you will be asked to explain how in the
world there can be “truth” in “fiction,” the two being opponent and
mutually exclusive terms; and such a man will tell you that larkspurs
don’t listen, lilies don’t whisper, and no spray blossoms with pleasure
because a bird has clung to it; wherefore, what is the use of
pretending any such lies? Ascending a little higher in the scale of
creation, we come to another bottom, a false bottom, a Bully Bottom,
who enjoys make-believe, but feels it will never do “to bring in (God
shield us!) a lion among ladies.” Still ascending past much timber, we
emerge on the decks of argosies—
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
portlily negligent of all this bottom-business on which they ride,
carrying piled canvas over the foam of perilous seas. In short, the
man who hasn’t it in his soul that there is a truth of emotion and a
truth of imagination just as solid for a keelson as any truth of fact,
merely does not know what literature is about. As Heine once said of
a fat opponent, “it is easier for a camel to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven than for that fellow to pass through the eye of a needle.”
Now Trollope, if we look at him in one way, and consider him as an
entirely honest Bottom, simply saw Micawber as a grotesque
creation and Victor Hugo as a writer extravagantly untrue to nature.
He merely could not understand what Hugo would be aiming at (say)
in Gastibelza or in the divine serenade:

Allons-nous-en par l’Autriche!

Nous aurons l’aube à nos fronts.
Je serai grand et toi riche,
Puisque nous nous aimerons ...

Tu seras dame et moi comte.

Viens, mon cœur s’épanouit.
Viens, nous conterons ce conte
Aux étoiles de la nuit.

He could as little see—and yet who doubts it?—that the creator of

Micawber was absolutely honest in closing David Copperfield on the
declaration that “no one can ever believe this Narrative in the
reading more than I believed it in the writing.” What Trollope made of
Don Quixote (or of Alice in Wonderland) lies beyond my power to
imagine. But the point for us is that as an honest man who lived
through the vogue of Poe and Dickens and, in later times, of Ouida
(who will surely, soon or late, be recognised for the genius she was),
and was all the time, on his own admission, alive as anyone to the
market, Trollope kept the noiseless tenor of his way and, resisting
temptation this side or that, went on describing life as he saw it.
Thus, and in this easy, humdrum, but pertinacious style, he
arrived, much as he often arrived at the death of a fox. He was a
great fox-hunter; lumbering in the saddle, heavy, short-sighted,
always unaware of what might happen on t’other side of the next
fence—“few have explored more closely than I have done the depth
and breadth and water-holding capacities of an Essex ditch.” He
knew little of the science of the sport:

Indeed, all the notice I take of hounds is not to ride over

them. My eyes are so constituted that I can never see the nature
 of a fence. I either follow some one, or ride at it with the full
conviction that I may be going into a horse-pond or a gravel-pit. I
have jumped into both one and the other. I am very heavy and
have never ridden expensive horses.

“The cause of my delight in the amusement,” he confesses, “I have

never been able to analyze my own satisfaction.” He arose regularly
at 5:30 a.m., had his coffee brought him by a groom, had completed
his “literary work” before he dressed for breakfast; then on four
working days a week he toiled for the General Post Office, and on
the other two rode to hounds. In all kinds of spare time—in railway-
carriages or crossing to America—he had always a pen in his hand,
a pad of paper on his knee, or on a cabin table specially constructed.
As he sets it all down, with parenthetical advice to the literary
tyro, it is all as simple, apparently, as a cash account. But don’t you
believe it! The man who created the Barsetshire novels lived quite as
intimately with his theme as Dickens did in David Copperfield; nay,
more intimately. To begin with, his imaginary Barsetshire is as
definitely an actual piece of England as Mr. Hardy’s Wessex. Of
Framley Parsonage he tells us that

as I wrote it I became more closely than ever acquainted with

the new shire which I had added to the English counties.... I had
it all in my mind—its roads and railroads, its towns and parishes,
its members of Parliament and the different hunts that rode over
it. I knew all the great lords and their castles, the squires and
their parks, the rectors and their churches. This was the fourth
novel of which I had placed the scene in Barsetshire, and as I
wrote it I made a map of the dear county. Throughout these
stories there has been no name given to a fictitious site which
does not represent to me a spot of which I know all the
accessories, as though I had lived and wandered there.

Here Trollope asserts less than one-half of his true claim. He not
only carried all Barsetshire in his brain as a map, with every cross-
road, by-lane, and footpath noted—Trollope was great at cross-
roads, having as an official reorganised, simplified, and speeded-up
the postal service over a great part of rural England—but knew all
the country-houses, small or great, of that shire, with their families,
pedigrees, intermarriages, political interests, monetary anxieties, the
rise and fall of interdependent squires, parsons, tenants; how a
mortgage, for example, will influence a character, a bank-book set
going a matrimonial intrigue, a transferred bill operate on a man’s
sense of honour. You seem to see him moving about the Cathedral
Close in “very serviceable suit of black,” or passing the gates and
lodge of a grand house in old hunting-pink like a very wise solicitor
on a holiday: garrulous, to be sure, but to be trusted with any secret
—to be trusted most of all, perhaps, with that secret of a maiden’s
love which as yet she hardly dares to avow to herself. Here let us
listen to the late Frederic Harrison, who puts it exactly:

The Barsetshire cycle of tales has one remarkable feature;

8
for it is designed on a scheme which is either a delightful
success or a tiresome failure. And it is a real success. To fill
eight volumes in six distinct tales with the intricate relations of
one set of families, all within access to one cathedral city,
covering a whole generation in time, and exhibiting the same
characters from youth to maturity and age—this is indeed a
perilous task.... Balzac and Zola abroad have done this, and with
us Scott, Thackeray, Lytton, and Dickens have in some degree
tried this plan. But, I think, no English novelist has worked it out
on so large a field, with such minute elaboration, and with such
entire mastery of the many dilemmas and pitfalls which beset the
competitor in this long and intricate course.

8
I should prefer to say that it grew.—Q.

It is a strange reflection—as one turns the advertisement pages

of The Times, or of Country Life, and scans the photographs of
innumerable “stately homes” to-day on the market—that Trollope’s
fame should be reviving just as the society he depicted would seem
to be in process of deracination. I use the word “deracination”
because that society—with all its faults, stunted offshoots, gnarled
prejudices, mossed growth of convention, parasitic ivies—was a tree
of ancestry rooted in the countryside, not to be extracted save by
wrenching of fibres and with bleeding of infinite homely ties. To some
extent, no doubt, this sorrowful dislocation must follow all long wars.
A hundred years ago Cobbett rode our land and noted how its true
gentry, as a reward for their very sacrifices during the Napoleonic
struggle, were being dispossessed by bankers and “loan-mongers.”
So, to-day, are decent families—who, while “thinking too much of
themselves,” thought much for their neighbours—being uprooted and
exiled, and taking into lodgings a few portraits, some medals, and
the last framed piece of vellum conferring posthumously a D.S.O.
These times, at any rate, do not “strike monied worldlings with
dismay.” On the contrary, the war-profiteer and the week-ender with
his golf-clubs are smothering the poor last of the society that Trollope
knew; and in time, no doubt, their sons will go to Eton and
Winchester, learn in holidays the old English love of field and stream
and sea, and so prepare themselves in a generation or two to cast
off life at earliest call simply because this England, to which they
have succeeded, has come to be, in their turn, their country. Thus it
will go on again (please heaven) as the father’s hair wears off the
grandson’s hoof.
The fortunes and misfortunes of Trollope’s comfortable England
have always this element of the universal, that they are not brought
about by any devastating external calamity, but always by process of
inward rectitude or inward folly, reasonably operating on the ordinary
business of life. In this business he can win and keep our affection
for an entirely good man—for Mr. Harding, for Doctor Thorne. In all
his treatment of women, even of the jeune fille of the Victorian Age,
this lumbering, myopic rider-to-hounds always (as they say) “has
hands”—and to “have hands” is a gift of God. He was, as Henry
James noted, “by no means destitute of a certain saving grace of
coarseness,” but it is forgotten on the instant he touches a woman’s
pulse. Over that, to interpret it, he never bends but delicately. No one
challenges his portraits of the maturer ladies. Mrs. Proudie is a
masterpiece, of course, heroically consistent to the moment of her
death—nay, living afterwards consistently in her husband’s qualified
regrets (can anything be truer than the tragedy told with complete
restraint in chapters 66 and 67 of The Last Chronicle?). Lady
Lufton’s portrait, while less majestic, seems to me equally flawless,
equably flawless. Trollope’s women can all show claws on occasion;
can all summon “that sort of ill-nature which is not uncommon when
one woman speaks of another”; and the most, even of his maidens,
betray sooner or later some glance of that malice upon the priestly
calling, or rather upon its pretensions, which Trollope made them
share with him:

“Ah! yes: but Lady Lufton is not a clergyman, Miss Robarts.”

It was on Lucy’s tongue to say that her ladyship was pretty
nearly as bad, but she stopped herself.

Difference of time and convention and pruderies allowed for,

Trollope will give you in a page or so of discourse between two
Victorian maidens—the whole of it delicately understood,
chivalrously handled, tenderly yet firmly revealed—the secret as no
novelist has quite revealed it before or since. At any moment one
may be surprised by a sudden Jane Austen touch; and this will come
with the more startling surprise being dropped by a plain,
presumably blunt, man. For Trollope adds to his strain of
coarseness, already mentioned, a strain—or at least an intimate
understanding—of cheapness. His gentle breeding and his
upbringing (poverty-stricken though it had been) ever checked him
on the threshold of the holies. But he had tholed too many years in
the G.P.O. to have missed intimate acquaintance with

The noisy chaff

And ill-bred laugh
Of clerks on omnibuses.
Those who understand this will understand why he could not bring
himself to mate his “dear Lily Dale” with that faithful, most helpful,
little bounder Johnny Eames. He knew his Johnny Eames too well to
introduce him upon the Cathedral Close of Barchester, though he
could successfully dare to introduce the Stanhope family. He walks
among rogues, too, and wastrels, with a Mr. Sowerby or a Bertie
Stanhope, as sympathetically as among bishops, deans,
archdeacons, canons. His picture of Sowerby and the ruin he has
brought on an ancient family, all through his own sins is no less and
no more truthful than his picture of Mrs. Proudie in altercation with
Mr. Slope; while they both are inferior in imaginative power to the
scene of Mr. Crawley’s call on the Bishop. In the invention of
Crawley, in his perfect handling of that strong and insane mind, I
protest that I am astonished almost as though he had suddenly
shown himself capable of inventing a King Lear. In this Trollope, with
whom one has been jogging along under a slowly growing conviction
that he is by miles a greater artist than he knows or has ever been
reckoned, there explodes this character—and out of the kindliest
intentions to preach him up, one is awakened in a fright and to a
sense of shame at never having recognised the man’s originality or
taken the great measure of his power.
 INDEX

Addison, Joseph, 96, 128

Aeneid, 159
Alice in Wonderland, 228
All the Year Round, 18
American Notes, 17, 52
American Senator, The, 220
Antony and Cleopatra, 93
Arabian Nights, 41, 170, 187
Ariosto, Lodovico, 158
Aristophanes, 158
Aristotle, 42, 84, 139, 191, 226
Arnold, Matthew, 74, 100, 121, 161
Art of Fiction, The, James’, 81
Ashley, Lord (Lord Shaftesbury), 172, 174, 192
Aurelius, Marcus, 131
Austen, Jane, 31, 71, 164, 179, 200, 233
Autobiography, Trollope’s, 219, 221

Bacon, Francis, 4, 107

Bagehot, Walter, 114
Ballad of Bouillabaisse, 104
Balzac, Honoré de, 34, 135, 138, 219, 230
Barchester Towers, 220, 225
Barnaby Rudge, 52, 55
Barnes, William, 119
Barry Lyndon, 125, 126, 147
Battle of Life, The, 18
Beerbohm, Max, 149, 160
Belton Estate, The, 219
Bentham, Jeremy, 73
Berkeley, Bishop George, 128
Blackwood’s Magazine, 204
Blake, William, 128, 159
Bleak House, 11, 12, 33, 55, 69, 89
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 70
Bolingbroke, Viscount, 197
Book of Snobs, The, 125
Boswell, James, 201
Boule de Suif, 139
Bright, John, 183
Brontë, Anne, 211, 222
Brontë, Branwell, 201
Brontë, Charlotte, 72, 201, 211, 212, 222
Brontë, Emily, 201, 211, 222
Brookfield, William Henry, 106
Browne, Sir Thomas, 112, 197
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 161, 167, 170, 204
Browning, Robert, 7, 21, 100, 128, 161
Brunetière, Ferdinand, 24
Bryant, William Cullen, 17
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 7
Bunyan, John, 71, 197, 225
Burke, Edmund, 4, 21, 22, 128, 149, 183, 197
Burney, Fanny, 164
Burns, Robert, 66, 128, 222
Butler, Samuel, 84, 85
Byron, Lord, 66, 128, 160, 226
Campion, Thomas, 19
Canning, George, 107, 183
Carlyle, Mrs., 10
Carlyle, Thomas, 7, 10, 21, 40, 74, 93, 107, 124, 128, 176, 177,
223, 226
Carols, 18
Carroll, Lewis, 78
Casa Guidi Windows, 161
Catherine, 125
Catullus, 222
Cervantes, Miguel de, 91
Chadwick, Sir Edwin, 167
Chapman, Frederic, 83
Chapman, Robert William, 200
Charles I, 4
Charlotte Augusta, Princess, 110
Chatham, Earl of, 183
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 8, 20, 66, 67, 98, 158
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 10, 33
Childe Harold, 66
Chimes, The, 18
Christmas Carol, A, 18
Cicero, 183
City Churchyards, The, Dickens’ essay on, 96
Clarendon, Earl of, 197
Clark, Sir Charles, 110
Claverings, The, 219
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 74, 132, 161
Cobbett, William, 68, 171, 231
Cochrane, Alexander Baillie, 193
Codlingsby, 188
Colenso, Bishop, 73
Coleridge, Hartley, 30
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 21, 56, 77, 128
Collins, Wilkie, 13, 127, 224
Comedy of Errors, The, 53
Compleat Angler, The, 71
Congreve, William, 222
Coningsby, 117, 193, 194–196, 208, 223
Conington, John, 123
Constitutional, The, 102
Coriolanus, 158
Cornhill Magazine, 212, 223
Country Life, 230
Cousin Phillis, 212–216
Coverly, Sir Roger de, in The Spectator, 71
Cowper, William, 107, 124, 128
Cox, Harold, 167
Crabbe, George, 107, 159, 204
Cranford, 126, 199, 200, 202, 203, 210, 212, 213
Cricket on the Hearth, The, 18
Croker, John Wilson, 192
Cry of the Children, The, 161, 168, 169

Dana, Richard Henry, 17

Dante, 28, 91, 134, 158
Darwin, Charles, 7, 73
David Copperfield, 52, 54, 67, 75, 76, 90, 93–97, 129, 228, 229
Defoe, Daniel, 49, 78, 163, 196
Denis Duval, 147
De Quincey, Thomas, 5, 38
Deserted Village, The, 159
Dickens, Charles, 3–99, 125–127, 129–141, 176, 210, 222, 223,
226, 228, 229, 230
Dictionary of National Biography, 203
Dinner at Poplar Walk, A, 5
Diocletian, 197
Disraeli, Benjamin, 116, 170, 171, 180–198, 206, 208, 210, 217,
222–224
Divina Commedia, 11
Dobson, Austin, 146
Dombey and Son, 11, 39, 42, 44, 69
Donne, John, 21
Don Quixote, 228
Dostoievsky, Feodor, 75
Dream, The, Byron’s, 66
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 142
Dr. Marigold’s Prescriptions, 18
Dr. Thorne, 220
Dryden, John, 8, 20, 24, 25, 66, 128, 159, 197
Dumas, Alexandre, the elder, 24, 53, 54, 146, 196
Dunciad, The, 128, 129

Eclogues, Virgil’s, 159

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, 222
Eliot, George, 7, 72, 211, 222
Endymion, Disraeli’s, 195, 210, 217
English Mail Coach, The, 38
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 27
Esmond, 96, 122, 123, 146, 147, 149, 152–156
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 26, 159
Essay on Man, An, 159
Essays of Elia, The, 57
Eustace Diamonds, The, 219
Evelyn, John, 71

Ferrex and Porrex, 213

Fielding, Henry, 20, 71, 95, 139, 163, 179
FitzGerald, Edward, 106, 108, 122
Flaubert, Gustave, 12, 138, 221
Forster, John, 12, 13, 15, 16, 51, 59, 86, 89
Fox, Charles James, 183
Framley Parsonage, 220, 223, 229

Gaskell, Mrs., 179, 199–218

Gaskell, William, 199, 203, 205
Gastibelza, 227
Gay, John, 128
Georgics, 214
Gibbon, Edward, 21, 128, 197
Gissing, George, 12, 13, 96, 97
Gladstone, William Ewart, 183
Golden Lion of Grandpré, The, 220
Goldsmith, Oliver, 128
Gray, Thomas, 222
Great Expectations, 31, 74, 93
Greuze, Jean Baptiste, 140
Greville, Fulke, 41

Hallam, Arthur, 107

Hamlet, 49, 81, 144, 163
Hammond, John Lawrence, 172, 191
Hammond, Mrs., 172, 191
Handel, Georg Friedrich, 26
Handley Cross, 37, 68
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 191, 206
Hard Times, 211
Hardy, Thomas, 31, 140, 229
Harrison, Frederic, 230
Hastings, Warren, 4
Haunted Man, The, 18
Hazlitt, William, 30, 78, 129
Heine, Heinrich, 227
Hemans, Mrs., 168
Henley, William Ernest, 9, 48, 134, 142
Hertford, Marquis of, 117
Higgins, Matthew James, 129
History of Civilisation in Europe, 7
History of English Prose Rhythm, Saintsbury’s, 150–151
Hoffman, Josiah Ogden, 17
Holly-Tree Inn, The, 18
Holy Tide, The, 19
Homer, 110, 139, 144, 217
Hood, Thomas, 161
Horace, 123, 124, 135, 158
Horner, Leonard, 178
Household Words, 13, 18, 211, 212
Howitt, Mrs., 204
Howlett, John, 191
Hugo, Victor, 227
Hunt, Leigh, 10, 89, 90
Hunter, Sir William, 109
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 7, 73

Infernal Marriage, The, 181, 182

Inge, William Ralph, 63, 64
Irving, Washington, 17

James, Henry, 40, 76, 81–83, 225, 232

Jefferies, Richard, 132
John Inglesant, 39
Johnson, Samuel, 21, 26, 37, 97, 101, 103, 110, 126, 128
Jonathan Wild, 163
Jonson, Ben, 20, 27, 128, 141, 226

Keats, John, 21, 128, 159, 160, 213

King John, 158
Kinglake, Alexander William, 107
King Lear, 29, 46, 139
King on the Tower, The, 130
Kingsley, Charles, 7
Kipling, Rudyard, 9, 49, 112

Lady Audley’s Secret, 222

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 161
Lamb, Charles, 5, 31, 57, 78, 107
Landor, Walter Savage, 89, 90, 128, 220
Last Chronicle of Barset, The, 220, 232
Lear, Edward, 78, 105
L. E. L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 168
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 144
Lewes, George Henry, 99
Life of Charles Dickens, Forster’s, 59
Life of Charlotte Brontë, 201, 203, 210–212
Life of Dr. Johnson, 201
Lincoln, Abraham, 183
Little Dorrit, 32, 43
London Magazine, 57
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 144
Longinus, 149
Lothair, 185, 186
Lycidas, 159
Lytton, Lord, 230

Macaulay, Lord, 172, 174, 183

Madame Bovary, 139
Malory, Sir Thomas, 196
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 167
Manners, Lord John, 193
Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward, 132
Marlowe, Christopher, 21
Martin Chuzzlewit, 17, 23, 51–53, 54, 74
Martineau, James, 74, 132
Marvell, Andrew, 124
Mary Barton, 205–209, 211, 212
Marzials, Sir Frank T., 117
Maupassant, Guy de, 138
Maurice, Frederick Denison, 7
Measure for Measure, 91
Meredith, George, 137
Mérimée, Prosper, 138
Merivale, Herman, 117, 119, 131
Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 30, 45, 46
Michelangelo, 26
Midsummer-Night’s Dream, A, 78, 149
Mill, John Stuart, 7
Milnes, Richard Monckton, 106, 107
Milton, John, 21, 66, 124, 127, 128, 136, 159, 212, 222
Molière, 28
Moll Flanders, 163
Moonstone, The, 224
Morning Chronicle, 37, 177
Morris, William, 162, 176