Page 179 of Duty and Desire

Then I walked out.

Two Sundays ago, in the morning, Mo and I had been confronted with something Mo warned me later I’d see a lot of at his place: one of Mag’s girls. A pretty brunette who spent the time Mag allowed her before getting her ass out of the condo to take her home looking at him like she was wondering if she should tranquilize him so she could successfully put a ball and chain on his ankle.

She hadn’t been seen again.

That said, last Sunday morning, we’d met a redhead. She also had the ball-and-chain look.

And she, too, had been hustled out the door by Mag so he could take her home.

The good news was, he was not a man who made them Uber it.

The bad news was, he was a Slam Bam Thank You Ma’am Man.

Mo explained, unnecessarily, this was about Nikki. He’d been rabidly faithful to Nikki, and with any woman he was seeing, staunchly monogamous.

But now, his bud was attempting to fuck Nikki’s memory away.

This was doomed to fail. I knew it. Mo knew it. Mag probably knew it. Though it was clear he needed this pointed out so he notonly knew it subconsciously, but also consciously, and then he could stop breaking hearts all over Denver doing it.

I wasn’t prepared to get into that just then.

I wanted to take care of the Denver sisterhood at the same time help Mag over his heartbreak, but…

Priorities.

Luckily, right then, I didn’t have Mag’s latest random piece of ass.

I had Mag, Auggie and Boone filling camelbacks with water (Mag) and downing a protein-load breakfast (Auggie and Boone) which, along with them all wearing various forms of running gear, shared with me they were going to take to the streets.

“Is there a marathon I don’t know about?” I asked in greeting, and got three big, white smiles.

Just to share, Mag was nearly as tall as Mo, built tough, but lean, and he had a mess of black hair that was longish, prone to wave, curl, flip and often fell in his eyes in a way that he knew worked so good, or he’d tame that mane. This was paired with rugged, rough-hewn features and electric-blue eyes.

Boone, on the other hand, was pure, classic male beauty. The angles of his face could have been drawn by Michelangelo. The cut of his cheekbones probably had numerous poems written about them. They definitely had countless orgasms attributed to them (amongst other things about him). He had dark blond hair that was a thick swath on top, short on the sides and brilliant green eyes.

Oh yeah, and he was tall and built, but instead of being Mo’s six five, or Mag’s six four, he was probably around six two.

Auggie had not turned out to be a disappointment. It was no wonder women treated him like a god. Thick black hair that curled quite a bit around his neck, black eyes, olive skin, dense brows with a perfect arch, long stubble, sublime nose with slightly flared nostrils and a generous mouth, even I would bedown with worshiping at the altar of him. And I had all that was Mo.

He was slim, not slight. Sinewy. Not an ounce of body fat on him (not that the others had any). And he was the shortest of the bunch, including Axl. Auggie probably measured in at six one, whereas Axl slotted in at number three, behind Mo and Mag, who, at my guess, was six three.

In normal circumstances, this was a lot to take in of a morning.

At that time, I didn’t even think about it.

“Mornin’, Mac,” Boone said.

“Yo, Lots,” Auggie said.

“Hey, girl,” Mag said. “Want some breakfast?”

“Mo and I are going out later,” I told Mag. “But thanks.”

Mag looked to Mo’s door.

“Trail run,” Auggie declared, and my gaze went to him.

“Sorry?”