Chapter Three
While everyone around Adrienne cheered her on, Miriam narrowed her eyes at her. No one dared to outbid her after that. Ten million dollars to a billionaire was nothing. She’d unequivocally lost her mind; this just confirmed it.
“Going once,”
Cassie shouted, overly excited, knowing she would be the talk of the town for raising that amount of money at a charity auction.
“Sold to Ms. Adrienne Palmer. Emerson Foley, Darien Price, and Austin Brown for a whopping ten million dollars.”
Cassie skipped over the going twice part.
“Adrienne, they’re all yours. Enjoy.”
Cassie’s husband, Scott, hurried over to Adrienne with a key card to the hotel suite where they would have dinner.
Right.
Miriam still hadn’t lifted her jaw off the floor, but her eyes wavered between concern and pride.
“What?”
Adrienne asked innocently, resisting the urge to bite her lip again but failing.
“I decided I needed some...”
“Threesome?”
Miriam asked in a hoarse voice.
“You know me. I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. Three, in case two of them don’t work out.”
Who was she even? She had never in all her life acted out of character. But did it matter? Did anything matter anymore?
“You know what you’re doing, queen?”
Miriam asked seriously.
“I don’t know,”
she whispered.
“See you soon.”
She kissed Miriam’s cheek and allowed herself to be escorted to the hotel room upstairs by one of the staff.
Surprisingly, she managed to stride across the hall confidently despite the tremor in her whole body.
Once inside the presidential suite, she stood quietly in the middle of the living room. The aroma of food wafted to her from the dining area, where two servers waited in attendance.
She dismissed them and made a mental note of their names so she could tip them at the front desk before she left.
Alone, she pulled out her phone and read the text again, then, nodding once, slipped it back into her purse and laid it down on a marble side table.
She took a deep breath when a knock sounded on the door, then, with purpose and borrowed composure, strode to open it.
She turned her back on them as they entered, desperately needing a second to collect herself at the sight of them. All three of them.
“Gentlemen.”
She spun around to face them. It was now or never.
She was going to have a one-night stand with one of them and get rid of her virginity since the chances of her seeing any one of them ever again were zero. No one was going to find her off-grid.
She started to mull things over. Should she, shouldn’t she? She should. Fate decided for her the instant she got that damn text.
“You’re probably wondering why all three of you are here. It’s very simple. I always have a plan B or plan C even, in case two of you don’t work out.”
Good.
If she treated it like a business arrangement, she’d automatically revert to her tough-as-nails persona. She needed that right now because, as a trio standing next to each other, they were disgustingly and unreasonably beautiful. They disrupted her train of thought consistently, and she had to dig deep into her brain to sound coherent.
They had no idea what it cost her not to start trembling like some teen meeting a movie star.
“And how will you know who goes and who stays?”
Austin asked, his hazel eyes skimming over her.
“I have my ways.”
She had zero way of knowing which one of them was going to work out, but hopefully, she was going to find out once they started.
The suite was enormous, but they seemed to engulf its entirety, including her, with their casual masculinity and their indifference to the opulence of the decor around them. They seemed not to notice their surroundings and were unperturbed by the luxury. There was something about them that didn’t just scream money, as evidenced by their bespoke suits.
Who were they really?
Not her business; she self-corrected immediately. All she was interested in was what they kept in those pants of theirs.
Their sole focus was on her as they stood side by side, hands in the pockets of their suit pants, legs braced wide apart, oozing sexiness in that carefree, unbothered way, so much so that she wondered if she should rescind her offer for their company. Even though she was twenty-seven, she felt old before her time.
No. She needed this.
But there was something else about them that made her curious. She’d been around rich men all her life. She knew the type. Their confidence was born from their bank balance. The richer they were, the more they strutted around.
But these men, whoever they were outside of this situation, their confidence came from their dominance. A quiet power that hummed just under the surface of their skin, there but fully controlled.
She suddenly realized they were dangerous. They were used to getting what they wanted, and they utilized whatever means necessary. Capable of violence.
A shiver rolled down her back. Should she be afraid of them?
Yet the fear they evoked in her seemed to amplify the stirrings of unfamiliar lust in her body. An unusual thing to happen to her when she’d taken years and years to practice remaining poised and steady at every moment.
The text she received had messed her up more than she should have allowed, and this was what she had chosen as her outlet.
Sex.
No strings attached.
She needed this. She was a consenting adult, and so were they.
“These are the rules—”
She began, standing a little straighter to impose upon them her own confidence and her own dominance.
“Rules?”
Darien asked. Even the arch of his eyebrow made her breath quicken.
“Yes, rules. Rules for sex. That’s why you’re here. There will be no kissing. No talking. No cuddling.”
“What about dinner?”
Austin asked, grinning at her.
“There will be no eating. After it’s done, I leave. You’re welcome to eat then. You are not allowed to touch me—"
“Are you serious?”
Darien chuckled at her as if she had said the funniest thing ever.
“Do I look anything but serious?”
She replied with a straight face.
“Carry on,”
he said with a full smile on his face.
“There will be no touching,”
she said again for emphasis.
“Except for your penis and my vagina.”
“I see. So just put our cocks into your pussy.”
Oh, Darien was certainly having fun at her expense.
“There will be no crude language either; thank you very much.”
She had no idea why she made herself sound like a prude. She wasn’t, she was just a tired virgin with mother issues. But a niggling feeling told her that if this was anything but clinical, she would be in trouble.
“Right, so only our copulatory organs will touch your vestibule,”
Austin volunteered.
“I don’t appreciate your attempt at humor, but yes, if you must call it a copulatory organ and a vestibule, then you may.”
She really didn’t want to retract her no-crude language policy, so she just had to go along with it.
“Noted,”
he said, but it was clear as day that he found her amusing. They all found her amusing, including Emerson, who hadn’t yet said a word to her yet, although his gaze never left her face or her body.
She wasn’t standing in front of them to entertain them. This wasn’t a fun game they were playing.
She wanted this done so she could leave. Without her virginity.
“Anything else we should know?”
Emerson said for the first time, and his voice was measured and dark, but a tinge of a grin curled across his delectable lips.
“Two more things. I prefer the missionary position, but you will not be allowed to look at me. You will wear a condom, and you must pull out before you ejaculate. Have I made myself clear?”
Why was she even doing this? Because ‘stubborn’ and ‘determined’ were her monikers.
They were the first things on her mind straight after getting that text and now she couldn’t backtrack. She wasn’t a quitter.
But lurking in the back of her mind was the scary truth about the three men standing in front of her. She didn’t want them to touch her ... because something inside her told her that if they did, she would somehow change.
But why did she pick the three guys who had the biggest effect on her body?
She should have gone with Mr. Generic, Mr. Unobtrusive, and Mr. Timid, who had been standing right next to them at the auction, and she wouldn’t have been reduced to demanding the missionary position but then basically ordering them to also not look at her, which meant they would have to cover their eyes with their hands. At least that meant they couldn’t touch her. It was starting to sound more and more like a circus act.
She was so far out of her depth she wanted to cry.
No, it all made sense in her head, and she wasn’t backing out. But sometimes, she wished she didn’t challenge herself as much as she did.
Also, she could easily send them away after weighing the consequences.
Should have sent them away if she weren’t also so stubborn, but there was a small, unencumbered part of her that truly wanted to feel the weight of any one of them inside her.
Just for a minute.
And any one of the three men before her would do.
“Anything else?”
Emerson asked.
“I think I covered the ground rules. The rest will be delivered as and when I see fit.”
“Good, because we have our own rules,”
Darien said, suddenly serious.
“That is a privilege you do not have.”
Her heart started to flutter erratically. She forced herself to remain rigid, to stop herself from wringing her hands together, which would not go with the sophisticated persona she cultivated for herself.
“Then we’re making it our privilege to have,”
Emerson said, closing the distance between them. Darien and Austin followed suit.
Adrienne swallowed down the uncomfortable lump in her throat. Their nearness seemed to engulf her like a cloud of lava. The scent of their cologne caught onto the air between them and saturated her right down to her pores, infusing her blood and leaving her unusually light-headed.
“These are our rules. We come as a package. All three of us or none of us,”
Darien said.
“We will be kissing you,”
Austin said.
“We will be touching you with our hands, our mouths, and our cocks. We will be looking at you. Every part of you. Every delectable inch of you. At your gorgeous face. At your goddess-like body. At your ass and your pussy,”
Emerson added,
“We will be sucking your pretty nipples into our mouth until you’re writhing with the need for us to fuck you,”
Darien picked up again.
“We will be tasting you by latching our mouths to your pussy and sucking on your clit and pulling on your soft folds until your back arches, and you beg us to stop because you can’t come anymore,”
Austin said softly.
“We’re not going to stop until you come again.”
The dark warning came from Emerson.
“And then we will be lapping up your cum as it drips from you. Sip your wetness slowly until we’re fully satiated,”
Austin said.
“And then we’re going to fuck you,”
Darien said.
“Hard,”
Emerson said.
“Long,”
Darien said.
“Until you’re shaking with another string of orgasms. One after another,”
Austin said.
“You get to keep only one of your rules, pretty lady,”
Darien said.
“We’ll use protection.”
“But only this one time,”
Austin said,
“The next time we’re inside you, it’s just going to be our cocks naked against your silky hot pussy, nothing separating us,”
Emerson said.
Adrienne opened her mouth to speak, but her brain couldn’t formulate a single coherent sentence. She shook her head and tried again.
This was not who she was. She didn’t get weak-kneed in the presence of three illegally good-looking men whose words alone could possibly make her orgasm.
She was Adrienne Palmer.
The Ice-Queen.
She made the rules, dammit, and everyone around her obeyed her.
“First of all, there isn’t going to be a next time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to ... I have to use the bathroom.”
Emerson reached out, curling his hand around her arm as he pulled her against him. Darien and Austin closed in on her.
She couldn’t breathe. Her dress started to suffocate her. Her nipples ached so much she wanted to sob, and the scorching heat between her thighs increased tenfold, making her incredibly uncomfortable. She desperately needed to go and clean up.
“We know what you want to go and do in the bathroom, sweetheart,”
Darien said, pushing a strap of her dress off her shoulder.
“But that wetness in your panties belongs to us,”
Austin said, doing the same to the strap on her other shoulder.
As they peeled her dress off her body, leaving her in only her panties, Emerson cupped her face.
She was sure she had imagined him whispering her name as if he knew her before his lips came down on hers, and she forgot everything about who she was.
Momentarily.