The Alpha Crowned the Orphan, So Both His Betas Followed Me Out novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Loft

Tobe had me against the center beam of his grandmother's hay loft before the barn door finished swinging.

It was Sunday night, on the Jacks Fork in Missouri, and the loft smelled of timothy and old dust and cold river air.

His grandmother was at her sister's in Van Buren until Wednesday.

Jubal had taken one look at the two of us in the yard and said he had a mare to settle.

He had taken the lantern with him, and he had not been subtle about it.

Now there was only the moon through the gap in the boards, and Tobe's mouth on my neck.

"You've got hay in your hair," he said.

"Don't you dare stop."

He laughed, a low surprised breath against my skin, and I felt it everywhere.

I pushed my hands up under his flannel and found his stomach, hard and warm, ridged with muscle.

He sucked in a breath, and I dragged the shirt up and over his head.

His chest was broad and dark-haired, and there were scars all across it, white in the moonlight.

I put my palm over the longest one, a seam from his ribs to his hip.

"Saw kicked back," he said. "I was twenty-two."

I leaned in and kissed it.

He went rigid, and his hand came up and cupped the back of my head.

There was a smaller one under his collarbone, a puckered hole.

"Deer rifle," he said. "My cousin. We don't talk about it."

I kissed that one, too.

I kissed the ladder of scars across his ribs and the cut over his left nipple, and he shook harder with every one.

When I reached for his left wrist, he lifted the arm out of my reach.

"Leave that one," he said.

"It's a dog bite."

"It's an old one. Leave it, Shyla."

I looked at his face, the hard line of his jaw in the dark, and I let it go.

He took my hand instead and laid it against his chest, over his heart.

It was thudding, slow and heavy.

"You watched," I said.

He went still.

I had not planned to say it, and now that it was out I could not stop.

"The day Kenton put the ring on me. In the Hearth Barn, in front of everyone. You were at the back with your arms folded, and you watched."

"Yes," Tobe said.

"You never said anything."

"No," he said.

"Why?" I said.

He looked down at me for a long time.

"Because you were smiling," he said.

It hit harder than a slap.

I had been smiling, and I had been nineteen, and I had thought I was the luckiest girl in the valley.

"I counted," Tobe said, lower. "Every day since. I could tell you how many."

"Don't."

"Two thousand nine hundred and some."

I kissed him to shut him up, hard, with my teeth.

He kissed me back with his whole weight, and the beam creaked against my spine.

When we broke apart, we were both panting.

"I'm angry at you," I said, against his mouth.

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