Page 91 of Snowed In with Benefits

“You want to stop?” he asks.

The other two look at me, waiting for my answer. It’s like the entire room is holding its breath.

“Want us to deal with him?” Emmett asks.

My heart is pounding. He’s watching me. Preston, with his slicked hair—tufted now that he’s running his hands through it—and his judgment and his appearance-based values and his broken heart—what there is of it—is standing there. Not beating down the door. Not walking away. Just watching, like he’s gathering evidence for my eventual trial.

And for one horrible second, the old programming kicks in. I feel it like ice water dumped down my spine—the urge to cover myself, to scramble off Emmett, to grab a blanket and hide and apologize. The shame is right there, waiting for me, familiar as a coat I’ve worn for years. Preston’s voice in my head, calm and disappointed: This is what you’ve become? I can hear it so clearly that my thighs start to close, that my hands move toward my chest.

Then I stop.

Because I recognize that voice. I’ve been listening to it my entire adult life, and it has never once told me to do something that made me happy. It told me to be smaller. Quieter. More appropriate. It told me my photography was a hobby, that my cooking was a phase, that my body was a project that needed constant improvement. It told me that wanting too much was the same as being too much. And I believed it. I believed it for four years.

I look at Preston through the glass. I look at the man who taught me to be ashamed of my own hunger, and I feel Emmett hard and deep inside me, Beau’s hands steady on my hips, Hunter’s warmth beside me. Three men who have never once asked me to be less.

I lick my lips. “Let him watch.”

Emmett’s cock twitches inside me. Beau groans. Hunter gets completely hard all over again. They’re looking at me possessively, hungrily, and they don’t hesitate. Hunter brings his cock back to my lips. Beau and Emmett start thrusting in earnest. The three of them are moving in sync, fucking me deep. I cry out.

“Good girl,” Hunter says, stroking my hair.

“A fucking queen,” Beau grunts.

I scream, letting Hunter fall out of my mouth as pleasure rips through me.

“Those screams are mine,” Emmett says. “They belong to me.”

I smother my screams with Hunter’s cock once more, whimpering around him. I’m loud and I don’t care. Preston is watching, and I don’t care. I want him to see this. I want him to finally realize that he can’t just bully and gaslight me into being who he wants me to be. I want him to know that he can’t just walk all over me and do whatever he wants.

But somewhere between one thrust and the next, something shifts. The anger drains out of me like water through a sieve, and what’s left is bigger. I stop thinking about the window. I stop thinking about Preston entirely. He shrinks, fades, becomes nothing more than a dark shape in my peripheral vision, and then not even that. He’s gone. Not because he left—because he stopped mattering.

I wrap my hand around Hunter’s cock and look down at Emmett. Pinned beneath me, wrists bound, completely at my mercy. His eyes lock on mine and something expands in my chest. I feel Beau’s heartbeat against my back, steady and sure. I feel Hunter’s fingers tangled in my hair, gentle even now. I feel Emmett’s pulse inside me, deep and slow and mine. This connection that’s so raw and pure and huge—it has nothing to do with Preston. It never did. This isn’t about proving something to the man outside the window. This is about the three men in this room who looked at every messy, hungry, too-much part of me and said more. That’s what does it. That’s what sends me over the edge.

I come hard, whimpering. “Come with me,” I beg them. “Come inside me. I want to be full of you.”

Emmett groans, thrusting powerfully up into me, locking in as he pours his cum into me. Beau follows, pulsing with Emmett, and the sensation is so intense that I feel like every nerve ending in my body is electrified. Hunter takes my mouth, thrusting twice before he comes down my throat. My own orgasm shakes the very foundation of the earth, connecting the four of us in the most human way possible.

Panting, I wipe my mouth and look out the window. Preston looks livid, but he stood there and watched the whole thing. I grin in his general direction. He turns and storms off through the snow.

I watch him go and wait for something—guilt, maybe. Regret. Some echo of the girl who would have chased after him, who would have pulled on a robe and run barefoot into the snow to explain herself, to apologize, to make it okay. She doesn’t come. She’s not here anymore. Or maybe she is, but she’s lying on Emmett’s chest with her eyes closed, and she doesn’t feel like getting up.

I collapse onto him and one of the others undoes the belts around his wrists. His arms immediately come down around me, heavy and warm, and I feel his chest expand with a long, slow breath. Like he’s been holding it. Like he’s been holding it since the day I got here.

Hunter is stroking my hair. Beau is rubbing my back. The fire is popping and the cabin smells like woodsmoke and sex and us. Four people breathing in the same rhythm, slowing down together. I press my ear to Emmett’s chest and listen to his heartbeat. It’s enormous, like everything else about him. Steady and deep and unhurried.

I’m full of them. I’m empty of shame. The two feelings exist in the same body at the same time, and for the first time in my life, that body feels like mine.

“Good girl,” Hunter breathes. He kisses me on the temple.

35

JOSIE

I wake up on the couch with Beau under and around me. I smell coffee. My ass is sore, but I feel incredible. I stretch out, skin-to-skin with Beau, and kiss his collarbone. He snorts awake and smiles down at me.

“Mornin’, duchess.”

“Morning, handsome.” I yawn, twisting off him and onto the floor. There’s a stack of clothes waiting for me, another borrowed pile. It reminds me that me and Hunter never did get around to doing laundry yesterday. That’s okay. We did something much, much more important. I slip into the clothes as Beau gets up and dressed.