16. Colin
COLIN
Outside the Tahoe windows, Colorado whips past in quick-cut postcards—snow-crusted pines, elk crossing signs, the kind of mountains Bob Ross would paint on Valium.
My internal CPU renders only one frame. Thalassa’s face when she answered Tic’s call.
Not that I saw it, but my imagination has been running wild since he told us.
Sort of.
We climb the last switchback. Pine Summit Resort peeks out—brown-timber chalets nestled like gingerbread afterthoughts under six feet of powder. The driver kills the engine, and our doors pop open. Alpine air blasts our sinuses.
I crunch across snow in sneakers not rated for Antarctic cosplay, adrenaline fueling each step because caffeine has lost its effect on me. I can’t feel anything but worry right now.
The chalet’s door swings open before we knock. A woman fills the doorway—gold goggles jammed into platinum hair, stance wide like she’s bracing for a SWAT breach. She does not greet. She scans. Her bright blue eyes are red-rimmed from zero sleep, yet lethal.
“You came anyway,” she says, blocking entry.
Tic smiles. “You must be Arabella?—”
“I am. I told you not to come.”
“I’m not great at taking orders. This is Dean and Colin, my brothers. We need to see Thalassa. Is she awake?”
Her breath comes out as a large fog. She’s pissed, clearly. “Are you here to cause trouble?”
“We only want to help,” Dean says gently. “Whatever she needs, we want to provide it.”
Her jaw flexes as she eyes him. “And if she tells you to leave?”
“Then we go.”
She takes a moment, like she’s weighing whether to believe us. “One wrong emotional spike and I call security, Just Desserts, and the Army. And you better hope that at least one of them will stop me from castrating all three of you with an olive fork. Slowly.”
“Understood,” Tic answers. He raises one gloved hand. “Like he said, we’re only here to help.”
To my surprise, she finally steps aside.
The chalet is expansive and quite nice. Reminds me of a few vacations we took in the Alps when I was a kid.
Arabella leads us to her bedroom, while their roommates either ignore us or stare.
I have no idea how she’ll explain who we are, and right now I’m not sure I care, outside of how it’ll affect Thalassa.
Dean leaves a stack of NDAs on a table before we enter the bedroom. “Arabella, there’s a hefty payment available to each of your roommates if they sign those NDAs. Will you see to it?”
“This will keep them from talking about Thalassa?”
“For the rest of their lives.”
“Done.”
She closes the door behind us, and Thalassa sits on her bed, blanket burritoed to her ears.
The bruise shading her left cheekbone blossoms in ugly tech-support purple.
A matching bruise rings her wrist where the IV once anchored.
Heavy socks peek from under the blanket.
Hollow eyes—hazel and usually hyperlinked with jokes—are now a glitchy shadow.
My guts invert. I will end the Red-Bull-sticker kid—the one from her hospital file.
She sees us, and the blanket cocoon unravels.
Tears flood, silent at first then noisy.
She stands, wobbling. Tic reaches her first, a gentle hand to elbow.
She melts forward. I think she’s going to faint.
Dean’s there in half a second to support the opposite shoulder.
I hover, an extra appendage, until her gaze shifts to me. I grin small. “Hey there.”
She reaches with a bruised wrist. I hold it as precious cargo, and she clutches back hard. We become a human safety-net sculpture.
“Okay?” Dean murmurs.
She sniffles, laughs, and shakes her head. “No.”
We guide her to the bed, and Tic locks the doorknob.
Dean kneels, doctor-dad mode. “Are you in any pain?”
“Head’s migraine-ish, shin’s sore. Heart absent. Like my brain.” Good sign—sarcasm module still operational.
I take in the room. There’s a sink with a coffee maker and a few snacks in the far corner beneath the window that offers a view of the forest. Two beds, hers and Arabella’s, no doubt. Not much more.
Dean stands. “Let me make you some tea. Painkillers we should know about?”
“Yeah. Next dose at seven.”
I hover till Tic gestures me down. I perch on the ottoman, knees bouncing. “We have a physician on tele-deck if anything feels off.”
She nods, eyes pooling again. “So, Arabella really told you guys?”
I nod.
“Thought that was a concussion nightmare. Hoped it was.”
“It’s better that we know,” Tic says, carefully sitting on the bed next to her. “That way, we can help.”
Her blanket slides, and the bruise glowers on her leg. She’s wearing only a long T-shirt and those thick socks, so I see all of the purple anger on her shin. Fury ticks again, but she flinches when she catches me glaring at nothing.
“Sorry. I’m just pissed at the asshole who did that to you.”
She offers a small smile at that.
Dean breaks the silence. “We can talk about details when you want. Or not talk at all.” His gaze meets mine and Tic’s. “It’s all your choice.”
She sets the mug on the table, inhaling shakily. “I can’t think. My brain loops to worst-worst-case scenarios. Can you…turn it off for a while?”
There’s vulnerability in her voice that crackles like old vinyl. She wants a headspace purge. Not conversation, not analysis. Pure emotional bandwidth cuddling, maybe distraction.
“There are a thousand ways we can turn it off for you,” Tic says. “But we didn’t bring our bags of tricks.”
She snorts at that. “The first time…we didn’t use any of your tricks .”
I swallow, wanting to make sure I’m not misreading her. “You want us to distract you?”
Dean delivers the tea he’d begun. “Name your distraction, pet.”
That last word holds power. Her breath catches in her throat until she finds the conviction of her desire. “The three of you. Now.”
Something lifts in my chest the moment I know she wants us, and I don’t know who’s naked first, but it might be me. I’m on the ottoman still, my eyes in line with her navel as I skim my hands over the outside of her calves, her thighs.
Dean sets the tea on the nightstand before gently helping her up the bed. I follow, maintaining contact with her skin. Touching Thalassa calms something in my bones. On an upward sweep—careful to avoid her bruises—I hook my hands on the hem of her T-shirt and lift.
White cotton panties and thick socks and nothing else.
Atticus lies next to her and cups her jaw to turn her face to him. He murmurs, “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” There’s no debate in her voice.
Game on.
We have to be careful of her bruises—that asshole did a number on her. But we’re not quitters. I slide the socks off first, followed by her underwear. The material is stretchy, which gives me an idea.
“You want to play, sweets?”
“Please. Anything to distract me.”
I use her underwear to bind her wrists together. A belt makes a perfect strap to tie her bound hands to the bedpost, and I lay her diagonally across the bed. “Alright, boys. Time to eat.”
We devour her, thighs, stomach, tits, ribs, mouth, anything and everywhere until she’s squirming for us. She tastes so sweet, and her skin smells like honey. I can’t get enough.
It’s made all the worse when I twirl my tongue around her clit. Fuck, I’ve missed the taste of her, and even more, the sound of her when she comes. I thought I’d exaggerated it in my memory, but no. Every sound is more delicious than the last.
“Oh my god,” she says as she arches her back. “Please, one of you, all of you?—”
I thrust my fingers into her pussy, two, then three, making her dance for me. “That’s what you need, sweets?”
“I need you !”
“You have me.”
“You know what I mean,” she blurts.
“Use your words, pet,” Dean says between bites on her nipples. “Use your filthy words.”
She squirms until she can’t take it anymore. “I need your cock!”
I take a long lick of her pussy, satisfied that she finally said it. “Tell me something, sweets. You’ve been thoroughly exposed to what we have to offer. Do you still want to use condoms?”
She quickly shakes her head. “No.”
The first time I ever had sex, it was without a condom. I got a lot of flack from my brothers about that—risking the family legacy, all that bullshit. This will be the second time, only now, I don’t think they’ll care.
I kiss my way up her body, unable to think straight at all.
Her heat has intoxicated me. When I reach her beautiful face, I take my time to kiss her there too.
She spreads her legs around me, welcoming me into her body an inch at a time.
I sink into hot, wet bliss and lose myself in the primal urge.
She arches back, her head digging into the mattress and exposing the column of her throat. I take a bite as I drive myself deeper, and she shudders around me. It’s not long before I feel her quivering, her breaths ragged and deep as her cheeks turn red.
“Just like that, sweets. My bare cock is making you come. I can feel it.” I grab a leg and throw it over my hip to open her wider as I add a little twist at the end of my thrust. She barks a shocked sound from the change, then her body tenses. “Right there?”
She can’t speak. Only nod.
I keep at her until she shatters on me, gushing on my cock as she comes. The hot rush travels through me until I’m coming too, right inside of her. My breath gusts over her, blowing her hair from her face before I kiss her harder, mindlessly.
I run my thumb over her bottom lip. “You’re perfect, sweets.”
She sucks my thumb into her mouth, then locks eyes with me. This girl, even now, is pure mischief.
But I’m not alone. “I’ll be back.” I kiss her forehead and pull out, rolling aside as Tic takes my place. We’ve never done this, though I’ve wanted to. The idea of filling a girl full of us…it just does something for me.
He isn’t as gentle as I was—there’s a need behind his expression that I understand on a deeper level.
He turns her over onto her stomach, still bound.
Spooning her as he enters her from behind.
That leaves her tits and face vulnerable to Dean’s onslaught.
He reaches under her to work her clit as Tic fucks her hard.
She’s mewling for us in seconds, her body jolting with impending orgasm.
Maybe it’s the hormones or the stress, but today, she’s on a hair trigger.
Good. She should get all the orgasms she ever wants.
He slams himself deep when he comes, unloading into her soaked hole and adding his own mess. His grunts echo in the room, and I hope none of her friends come to check on her.
After he pulls away, Dean unbuckles the belt and rolls her onto his hips, sitting up.
Our essences spill out between them. Her hands are still tied, though.
She braces them on his chest, then sinks onto his cock, breath catching now and then.
He grabs her hips and rises to the occasion, lifting them both as he fucks her from underneath.
But she doesn’t have the strength today, so I line up behind her to help lighten the load by lifting for her. “Let me do the work, sweets.”
She does, giving herself over to our control completely. The back of my mind’s mainframe runs a sequence I can’t stop looping. A life like this. The three of us, showing her what her body can do. What life can be like. Raising a family together. All she has to do is say yes, and it’s hers.
I don’t know if that’s true for my brothers. But I’m willing to give it a shot.
She leans back against my chest. My cock hasn’t gone down since the first orgasm. If anything, I’m harder now. But I doubt their travel plans included packing lube. She murmurs, “I want you too.”
“Where?”
“In my ass.”
My cock leaks precum just from hearing that. “I don’t think you have lube?—”
“Never leave home without it,” Tic says as he tosses me a tube.
I have so much to learn from him. I lube up and she leans forward, letting Dean wrap her in his arms. The tightness is unparalleled. She moves ever so slightly to take us in deeper, and her gasps fill the air.
Tic takes care of that. Once I’m fully inside her ass, he takes her mouth for his own.
We lead from there—in, out, up, down until none of us can see straight.
She claws at Dean’s chest—he cries out, “Fuck, pet, I’m gonna have to declaw you!
” She giggles around Tic’s cock, and it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
She must scratch Dean again, because the next thing I hear is his grunt of, “Fuck, yes, baby, right now!” His body jerks, meaning I have to be careful of his legs.
But he holds her in place while me and Tic continue our work.
I spread her ass apart to watch my cock go in and out, and to intensify her pleasure. She trembles on me, our wet mess. I can’t get enough until it’s too much again. “You’re gonna make me come, sweets. Can you take it like a good girl?”
“Mm-hmm,” she hums, still taking Tic in her throat.
He growls, “Fuck, yes, right the fuck now!” He thrusts down her throat, holding her head in place as he comes.
I lose it then, unleashing myself on her ass until my balls are absolutely drained. All strength leaves my body, and I collapse onto her back, forcing Tic to release her head or risk a bite.
The four of us, gasping, sweating, cursing. This is how life should be.