Page 72 of Snowed In with Benefits

A voice in my head whispers that this is too good to last. That she has a life outside of this cabin, and that she’s eventually going to want to go back to it. She has a career, or the start of one. She has a family, even if they don’t deserve her. She has a whole world out there that doesn’t include a mountain and three men and a kitchen that smells like sex and maple syrup. This is a snow globe. And snow globes are beautiful, but they’re small, and eventually you set them down and walk away.

I shake my head. Rather than dwelling on that, on the impermanence of this situation, I should just enjoy it while it lasts. I crack eggs into a pan and listen to the sizzle, listen to Josie laughing, listen to Beau’s low voice and Emmett’s grunt. These are the sounds of my life right now. These are the sounds of something I didn’t know I wanted until she was standing in my kitchen wearing my brother’s clothes and asking me to fuck her.

I look over my shoulder at her. She’s standing now, towel in hand, her hip cocked against the counter. Beau is saying something to her and she’s smiling up at him, and Emmett is behind her, close but not touching, just existing in her orbit the way he’s been doing since the day she arrived. She catches me looking and her smile changes, softens, becomes something private and warm that’s just for me. Just for a second. Then Beau says something else and she laughs and the moment passes, but I felt it. I felt the whole thing.

She’s perfect in all the right ways. Every way except one.

If only she would stay.

29

JOSIE

We get the kitchen cleaned up while Hunter cooks breakfast again. It’s the same as before, the eggs, the hash, the sausages and coffee, but somehow it smells even better than it did the first time. Maybe it’s because I’m starving. Maybe it’s because the kitchen still smells faintly of sex underneath the bacon grease and I find that I don’t mind it at all. We sit down to eat and the men are all smiles, even Emmett.

There’s a comfortable silence as we all start eating, but something has shifted. The table feels smaller, or maybe we’re all just sitting closer. Emmett’s knee is touching mine under the table and neither of us moves away from it. Beau is more open, his shoulders relaxed in a way I haven’t seen before, like he finally put something heavy down. Hunter… well, Hunter has always been open, but there’s a depth to it now that wasn’t there before. A steadiness. We all exchange looks around the table, like we’re all holding the secret of what we just did between us.

Beau smiles at me. I grin back at him, feeling less intimidated than I ever have in his presence. Emmett brushes my knee under the table and I squeeze his hand, a silent little gesture that says everything. It says we’re good. That what just happened was good, that the affection goes both ways, and that he cares about me in his stoic sort of way.

“This hash is fantastic,” I tell Hunter. “Thanks for making it again.”

“Any time,” he says, and winks. His glasses catch the light, making his wink twinkle.

“Any time we ruin the first breakfast that way,” Beau mumbles around a mouthful of food.

I laugh and Hunter grins. “I’ll cook two breakfasts a day if they keep getting ruined that way, happily,” he says.

“What about you, Emmett? Are you down for some more ruined breakfasts?” I ask, teasing a little.

He hesitates, then snorts. “Don’t like wasting food,” he says. “But if it works out that way…”

We all laugh and I feel fantastic. There’s such an easy, open feeling at the table right now that it warms my heart. My body. My everything. It’s so good to just exist here, like this, with the sexual tension satisfied for the moment, everybody satiated, and all of us still friends. Still whatever we are. The utter lack of jealousy among the guys makes me feel safer than ever. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to get possessive or weird, and it just doesn’t happen. They pass the salt and the hot sauce and the coffee like men who figured out a long time ago that sharing doesn’t mean losing.

After breakfast, I head upstairs to get fresh clothes, then go back down to the bathroom to shower. I’ve got something sticky on my back that’s going to bother me all day if I don’t take care of it, and my poor muscles need the attention of the heat. I catch sight of myself in the mirror and pause.

I look different. Not different in any way that I can point to. My hair is still my hair, my face is still my face, but there’s something there that wasn’t there before. Something behind my eyes. A looseness in my jaw that I didn’t know was clenched. My shoulders are lower than I’ve seen them in years. I stare at myself for a long time before I recognize what it is. I look like someone who has been asleep for a long, long time, just waking up to the world. Blinking in the light. Not quite sure what day it is, but not in any rush to find out.

I roll that over in my mind as the hot water washes over me. I have been asleep, in a way. I’ve been spending my life, my time, making other people happy, doing the things I was supposed to do, living the life I was supposed to want. Brunch on Sundays with Preston’s parents. Engagement photos in matching outfits. A registry full of things I didn’t pick out because his mother had better taste and I didn’t want to fight about flatware. Now I’m just… living. Taking pictures I want to take. Sleeping with men I want to sleep with. Doing what feels right for me, not what looks right or sounds right or presents right to other people.

I finish up in the shower and get dressed. My clothes from this morning are a mess of breakfast, sweat, and cum, so I’m wearing one of the guys’ t-shirts and my own leggings. Hunter’s, I think, based on the softness of the fabric. It’s been washed so many times it feels like tissue paper. It’s a little chilly, but it’ll do until I can get some laundry done. That’s what I should do today. I’m sure the guys have clothes they need to have cleaned too.

I dry my hair and pull on my socks, dump my sticky clothes in the hamper, and head back out to the kitchen. The guys are all still there, talking about what they’re going to do today, just like they do every day, just like this morning didn’t shift the world on its axis. I stand in the doorway for a second and just watch them. Three big men around a table, elbows on the wood, coffee mugs in hand, talking about firewood and fence posts. It’s so normal it almost makes me laugh.

“I’m thinking it’s time for laundry,” Hunter is saying.

“Oh, I was already planning on—ow!” I wince as I walk into the kitchen trying to claim the laundry, my hip feeling like it’s half out of place. I breathe through the pain and gingerly take another step.

Beau stands up from the table first, his face etched in worry. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you okay?” Hunter asks at the same time.

Emmett just raises his eyebrows at me. He doesn’t look worried. He looks like he already knows.

I look at all three of them a little helplessly. “I’m sore,” I admit. “The shower helped some, but obviously not enough.” My face flushes as they look at me. “I’ve never had sex like this before,” I admit. “Preston is… not exactly well-endowed. I never noticed before, but now that I have you to compare him to, it’s pretty obvious. Anyway, the last few days have been a little… hard on me because of that.”

They all look like they’re about to apologize, and I speak quickly before any of them can.

“It’s not a bad thing, honest. I’m having a great time, it’s just a little bit of an adjustment.”