Chapter 13 The Bargain #2
Harry, always the first to speak—tilted his head, considering her.
“Awh, let her stay,” he said. “She can learn to cook and clean.” Snow White opened her mouth to protest—she really, truly couldn’t cook—but before she could, he added, “Or at least stand in the kitchen and look pretty while someone else does.” A couple of them chuckled.
“I don’t know how to cook,” she said honestly. “Isn’t there anything else I can do for you?”
There it was. The opening. Gage stepped closer to Dax, lowering his voice to a whisper, though Snow White, with ears honed in castle corridors, still caught some of it.
“Let her earn her keep. We provide the hearth and home; she provides the …warmth.” His gaze slid back to Snow White’s partially exposed chest. “Seems fair.”
Dax’s jaw tightened. “Have you lost your honor?” He whispered back.
“How many years since any of us has seen a woman?” Gage shot back under his breath. “We’re not saints, Dax. We’re miners. We break our backs all day and sleep in the dirt. This is the first soft thing to walk through that door, ever. Think of it as a morale booster for the men.”
Dax’s eyes flicked to Snow White again. She met his gaze, seeing the calculation there.
The muscle in his cheek ticked. Dax looked at Gage, then at the leaves blowing by outside the window.
They couldn’t feed a useless mouth. But the way Gage was looking at her, the way the air in the room had shifted, they were starving men — and she was a feast. He exhaled.
“All right,” he said aloud, turning fully toward her. “We have an offer.”
Snow White’s stomach churned. “An offer,” she repeated carefully. “Oh thank you.”
“We aren’t a charity,” Dax said bluntly. “We’re not unkind, but we’re not fools. Food, a roof, a bed—those are worth something. We don’t need another pair of hands enough to justify the risk of bringing a stranger into our home. Especially hands as unskilled as yours seem to be.”
Her fingers tightened on the blanket. “So, what do you need?” she asked.
The other men looked at each other, wondering if they were all starting to realize the same thing.
Dax’s eyes did another quick sweep of her, more clinical than Gage’s but no less aware. “We’re men,” he said. “We spend long days underground and longer nights alone in our beds. It’s been… a very long time since any of us have had the company of a woman.”
Bennett coughed, face flaming. Harry grinned outright. Gage’s eyes darkened with open hunger. Silas just looked faintly amused. Drew’s gaze skittered away, then back, curious and uncertain.
“There is a price,” Dax went on, voice even, almost businesslike, “We are six men alone in the woods. We have needs, unfulfilled needs. If you want our care and protection, you provide our comfort. All of it. Whenever we ask.”
He held her gaze. Her cheeks burned. He could see in her eyes she understood more than he expected.
Bluntly, Dax laid out, “You let us have your body. For pleasure. When we need. How we need.”
The words were crude in their honesty, but there was something… clean about it, too. No pretense. No hidden blades in compliments. No poisoned combs disguised as gifts.
“You mean—” She swallowed. “All of you?”
“Yes,” Dax said. “All of us.”
Her heart pounded. “Whenever you want?”
“When we want,” he agreed. “But you will be fed, clothed, and kept warm. We’ll make sure you don’t come to harm. No one here will hit you or starve you or lock you in a room. If you say no to something, we listen. No one will force you. You’ll be… ours. But we’ll be yours, too. In our own way.”
“A pact.” Silas blurted.
“We’ll be respectful,” Bennett promised.
It was twisted and imperfect, and yet more straightforward than anything she’d ever been offered in the castle. “And if not?” she asked quietly.
“Then you eat the bread you already took,” Dax said, “and we’ll point you toward the nearest road. You and your horse can take your chances out there. No ill will.”
Silas nodded lazily. “Everyone’s free, one way or another.”
Snow White’s mind raced. She thought of the forest: the cold, the hunger, the unknown.
She thought of Liora’s hands and Hunter’s knife and the way danger seemed to seep from every stone of the life she’d fled.
She thought of Grimm outside, alone except for her.
She thought of the way these men looked at her—not as a rival, not as a pawn, but as something they wanted unabashedly.
Something they were willing to name their price for, openly, instead of pretending it was something else.
Were they cruel? Were they kind? She wasn’t yet sure.
Her stomach knotted. Her thighs still ached faintly from the clearing.
Her ribs hurt when she breathed. Her heart felt like a bruised fruit.
She could leave. Ride until she dropped.
Keep trying to find a village where they’d take pity on a ragged girl with a good horse.
But maybe not. Maybe she’d die a slow death of starvation in the woods before she ever got where she was going.
Or maybe the wolves would eat her alive.
Maybe Grimm would get hurt. Where was she really going anyway?
She could stay. Trade her body—already used, already claimed—for safety, food, a kind of belonging. The choice would be hers. No one would push her into a corset so tight she fainted. No one would dress poison up as love. She let herself sit with that for a long heartbeat.
“I don’t know how to please six men,” she said finally, voice steady despite the blush burning her skin. “I barely know how to please one.”
Harry chuckled. “Oh, beautiful — we’re not picky!”
“We haven’t seen a woman in a long time,” Silas said.
Or ever, young Drew thought, though he didn’t say it aloud.
“And I think I’ve never seen a lady as beautiful as you before,” Bennett blushed.
Dax’s gaze softened by a fraction. “You don’t have to know everything now,” he said. “You will learn. We will teach. You have the right to walk away anytime if you decide it’s too much. No one chains you here—” Dax shoots a sharp look at Gage.
“No one,” Gage echoed, though there was a challenge in his smirk.
Snow White looked at each of them in turn.
She saw their desire. She saw their loneliness.
She saw a kind of rough, battered honesty that felt almost like kindness.
Her mind went a hundred miles a minute: I feel almost sorry for them, all alone without a woman’s touch.
But am I willing to be their play-thing?
Is that what I was looking for when I left the castle?
Why am I feeling like I want to say yes?
Why am I feeling a pulse in between my legs?
Why am I feeling intrigued? I wonder what they’ll do to me.
I wonder how it will feel. The way Hunter looked at me made me feel so alive.
They’re looking at me like that right now.
The idea of being touched and desired on her own terms, of not being cold and alone anymore, tempted her more than it frightened her.
And for the first time in a very long time, she felt something in herself reply to all of that with a word she hadn’t expected to think again: yes.
She took a shaky breath. “All right,” she said. “I agree.” Her heart hammered. “I’ll… do it. On those terms. Food, shelter, protection—for my body. Whenever you want, however you want.” She was nervous, but spoke with a sort of inspiration.
Gage’s grin turned feral. Bennett’s eyes went wide.
Harry whooped once, then clapped a hand over his own mouth, suddenly aware of the gravity of the moment.
Dax nodded slowly. “Then we have an agreement,” he said.
“You can rest today. Eat. Get your strength back. Tonight…” His eyes flicked briefly to the bed. “We’ll talk again.”
Silas smiled, “I’ll warm the sheets for you,” as he approached the bed ready for a nap.
Gage, never one for waiting or following orders, had other ideas. He stepped forward, fingers already reaching for his belt, the bulge at the front of his trousers straining the worn fabric. “Or,” he said, voice low and hungry, “we can start right now.” His hand went to his fly. He tugged it down.
Snow White’s eyes widened as he freed himself. The sight stole her breath for a beat—not only because of the unexpected size and blunt maleness of him, but because there was no shame, no apology in the way he stood there, aroused and firm, letting her see exactly what she’d agreed to.
Her heart kicked against her ribs. Her mouth went dry.
Her thighs pressed together under the blanket, a confusing mix of fear and anticipation and something she refused to name yet spiraling low in her belly.
The hunger in the room sharpened, but it did not feel like Liora’s cruelty.
It felt like six starving men handed the first real feast they’d seen in years.
For the first time in her life, Snow White felt herself seen not as a weapon, or a threat, or a reflection.
But as a woman. It terrified her. It thrilled her.
And, on her own battered, complicated terms, she chose it.