Lassoed (Steele Ranch 5)

She arched a dark brow. “Strip twenty questions?”

I grinned. “Sure.”

“I have more questions than clothes,” she countered.

“We’ll do our clothes, too, right, Ashe?”

“Hell, yes.”

“I still have more questions than all our clothes.”

“Sweetheart, haven’t you figured it out by now?”

Natalie’s frown got even deeper. “What?”

I couldn’t resist, I reached back and tucked her hair behind her ear, felt the silky softness between my fingers. “We’ve got forever to learn it all.”

She cleared her throat. “Forever?”

Ashe came to stand right beside me, shoulder to shoulder. “This isn’t a one-night-stand. We want it all with you.”

“All?” she squeaked.

“Sweetheart, we must have really messed up if you don’t know how we feel,” I added. “We want you. Only you. We knew the first time we saw you. That’s why we fucked up. We were too damned eager for you.”

“We have control now,” Ashe added confidently. “Maybe just a little. So ask your questions.”

“And you get the clothes?”

I shook my head. “The clothes go on the floor. We all get answers and we all get naked.”

I saw the curiosity and the heat in her dark eyes, but we waited. She’d said no and we wouldn’t touch her unless she wanted it. This. Us.

She toed off her shoe as she asked, “Do you guys have family? Parents, brothers and sisters?”

“My parents live about a mile from here,” I offered. Only a shoe came off, but it was a start. “My dad owns the mechanic shop on Main Street and my mom’s a radiologist at the hospital. One brother. He lives in Denver.”

“My parents live in Portland. No siblings.”

His parents were retired and liked to travel. It was hard to keep up with their adventures; they were either in Machu Picchu or the Galapagos this month.

“My turn.”

She nodded.

“Are you a sports fan?” he asked.

Her mouth fell open and she glanced between the two of us before she spoke. “You aren’t those crazy sports fanatics who break up with a woman because she likes the wrong team, are you?”

Ashe shrugged as he began to undo the buttons on his shirt. I reached behind my neck, tugged my Henley up and over my head.

Her eyes went to our chests as she responded. “My stepdad is a big fan of hockey. When I was little, I watched it with him. It’s probably the only real thing we share, and a dislike for the Red Wings. Penguins fan, here.”

That was hot. A woman who liked hockey. Worked, since Montana was frozen more than half the year. Lots of hockey to watch, at least on a club team or juniors level.

“How did you get fixed up with Riley?” She toed off her other shoe.

“We actually run our own IT company. Security.” I angled my head into the house, but the basement was the business’s office space. “Ashe and I met in college and we sold our first company a few years later. I wanted to come back here, to Barlow, and Ashe followed. Started another company, one to keep us from getting bored. We don’t actually work for Riley, but occasionally for Cord. We do some investigating, online searches, stuff like that for him. But you—or at least the last Steele daughter—were hard to track down, so he asked for our help.”