Chapter 17 Line Crossed #3
He was already fisting himself, hand moving in quick, harsh strokes.
He stepped to the front of her so that when his release came, hot and sudden, it spilled across her forehead, her eyes, and her ruby lips in warm ropes.
“Guahhhh” he roared as he came. She flinched, eyes squeezing shut as the warmth splattered her skin.
His breath came in harsh pants. For a moment, he braced one hand on the headboard above her, head hanging, hair falling into his face.
Then he stepped back. The only sound in the cottage was her ragged breathing and the faint drip of his release sliding down her cheek onto the mattress.
He stared at her wrists, where the rope had left faint pink tracks, and then at her face covered in his release.
A sudden, violent flash of clarity crossed his features—not the satisfaction of a conqueror, but the wide-eyed look of a man who had looked into a mirror and didn't recognize the beast staring back.
His hands shook as he reached for the knots. He fumbled with the rope at her wrists, his movements frantic. “Gage?” she whispered, confused by the sudden change in temperature.
“I have to go,” he rasped, the words catching in his throat. He yanked the last knot free. He didn't look at her. He couldn't. He practically scrambled off the bed, hauling his trousers up and buckling his belt with trembling fingers.
“Gage, wait—”
But he was already at the door. “Gage,” she said, voice small, humiliated.
“Gage, please—” He flung it open so hard it cracked against the stone wall.
He didn't look back at the bed, where she sat up, clutching the blankets to her chest, wiping her face, dazed and unfinished.
He bolted into the sunlight, his heart thundering in his chest like a trapped bird.
The door shut behind him with a heavy finality. He didn't get five paces before he slammed into a solid wall of wool and muscle. “Whoa! Gage, where's the fire—” Harry’s cheerful greeting died instantly as he gripped Gage’s shoulders to steady him. Gage pushed past him and stomped outside.
In the bedroom time stretched. In the few seconds before the men found her a million thoughts flooded her mind.
Oh please, it felt so good—I felt like I was about to explode.
Oh no, Oh no. What was that? Why did I enjoy that so much?
Nobody has ever touched me there. But I liked it so much.
What does that mean? What has Gage done to me?
I wish he would come back and just touch me there one more time…
I’m sure that’s all it would take. I just need it—more of it.
Why did he just leave? I feel so dirty. If any of the men find me here like this I will be so embarrassed.
I won’t be able to stay here anymore. I’ll have to go.
I’m sure Gage will come back any minute.
I’m sure he will. He loves me, doesn’t he?
Oh, what am I doing here? What have I become?
This is so wrong. Is it wrong? How can it be wrong if I like it so much?
The door opened again. “Snow—” Silas’s voice cut off abruptly. He stood there for a heartbeat, then retreated so fast the door banged against the frame. “Dax!” he shouted, voice high and panicked. “Dax! You— you need to come here.”
Footsteps thundered. The next time the door opened, it was with authority.
“Where is—” Dax’s words died as he saw her. He crossed the room in three strides, jaw clenched so hard the muscle in it jumped.
“Oh, Snow,” Harry breathed, moving to her first. He dropped to his knees, his hands hovering, afraid to touch her. “Did he—did you say no?”
She looked at them, her throat working as she tried to find her voice. “I…where did he go?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Did he leave me?” She looked down at her shaking hands. “We just…he just... he looked at me like I was a monster. And then he ran.”
Dax crossed the room in three strides, his face a mask of controlled fury. He didn't look at the bed; he looked at the discarded rope. He picked it up, the fibers rough in his hand.
“Are you hurt?” Bennett asked as he rushed in, voice worried but strong. “Were you scared?” He got her a blanket and wrapped her in his arms.
Dax’s eyes darkened. “Where is he?” he asked, the words like stones dropping into a well.
Drew, white-faced in the doorway, pointed vaguely toward the tree line. Dax straightened. “Stay with her,” he ordered Bennett. “Don’t leave her alone. Not for a second.”
Outside, the air was warm and sharp. The tree line loomed at the edge of the clearing; beyond it, the forest stretched.
Dax found Gage not far from the cottage, standing with his back to the house, hands braced on a tree trunk as if he were holding it up.
His shoulders rose and fell with deep, uneven breaths. “Gage,” Dax said.
Gage didn’t turn. “If you’re here to thank me for coming home early,” he said, voice flat, “save your breath.”
“I’m here,” Dax said evenly, “to tell you that if you ever leave her like that again, I will knock you out cold.”
Gage’s fingers dug into the bark. “She’s fine,” he said. “She knew what she was agreeing to. You all seem to have forgotten.”
“Fine?” Dax repeated, a dangerous calm in his tone. “There’s rope burn on her wrists. She’s confused. And you just left her alone like that.”
Gage turned then, slowly. His expression was a complicated tangle: anger, shame, defiance. “What did you think this was, Dax?” he demanded. “A courtship? You made the deal. Food, shelter, protection—for her body. I’m just taking what I’m owed.”
“We agreed,” Dax said, taking a step closer, “that it would be consensual. That she could say no. That we wouldn’t treat her like something to be left on a butcher’s hook.”
“She could have said no,” Gage shot back. “She didn’t. She begged me for more, begged me not to stop.”
Dax’s jaw clenched. “You left her like that. That’s not free-use, Gage. That’s cruelty.”
Gage’s eyes flashed. “Oh, and you’re innocent?” he sneered. “Creeping into her bed when you think the rest of us are asleep, eyes closed so you feel better about what you’re doing? We’ve all got our sins.”
“That’s different,” Dax snapped.
“How?” Gage barked a laugh, ugly and humorless. “Because you’re gentle? Because you turn your head when you shame yourself? At least I don’t lie to myself about why she’s here.”
Footsteps pounded behind them. Harry skidded to a stop, chest heaving, Silas on his heels. Drew hovered further back, wringing his hands.
“She’s not a toy you can wind up and walk away from,” Harry added, eyes blazing behind his usually mild expression.
Silas leaned lazily against a tree, but his gaze was sharp. “You broke the spell,” he said softly. “That wasn’t part of the game.”
Gage’s shoulders hunched, every line of him defensive. “You all act like saints,” he snarled. “You forget who brought her here, who laid out the terms! We’re not her princes in shining armor. We’re miners. Men. We take what we’re given!”
“You don’t get to hide behind that,” Silas shot back. “You wanted her. Fine! We all do. But you don’t get to… to hurt her because you’re angry at yourself or at the world!”
“She wasn’t hurt,” Gage insisted. “Did she bleed? Did I break a bone? No. She liked it! She wanted more!”
“Until you decided she should be humiliated,” Harry cut in. “Until you decided your pleasure was the only one that mattered!”
Gage snorted. “When did you grow a spine, Harry?”
“When she started trusting us enough to fall asleep between us,” Harry said. “Maybe try not to make her regret that.”
Dax lifted a hand. “Enough!”
They all fell quiet, breathing hard.
“We are not going to stand here and pretend there isn’t darkness in what we’re doing,” he said. “We made a bargain that sits on the edge of a cliff. If we push it, she falls. If we respect it, maybe we all get what we need.”
He stepped closer to Gage until they were chest to chest.
“You crossed the line today,” he said quietly. “I won’t have it happen again. Not in my house.”
Gage held his gaze, something like guilt flickering under the anger. “And if it does?” he asked. “What then, Dax? You going to throw me out? March me down to town and tell the people I was too rough with the woman we all use?”
“If you keep treating her like this,” Dax said, voice low, “you throw yourself out because she’ll leave.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But she will.
And where will that leave us? Back where we started.
Six men in cold beds. No one laughing in the kitchen.
No one making this place feel like a home. ”
The word hung there. Home. Harry’s jaw worked. Drew looked away, throat bobbing. Even Silas’s lazy posture tightened.
Gage’s gaze slid past Dax to the cottage, to where he left her. Something in him shifted, only a fraction. “I’m not apologizing,” he said finally, though the words rang less sure. “I did what we agreed.”
“We agreed she’s not just payment,” Harry said quietly. “She’s… ours. And we’re hers. That means we don’t walk away like that.”
Silence fell again.
Gage scrubbed a hand over his face, dragging down his beard. “I need to think,” he said.
“Good,” Dax said. “Do it away from her for a while.”
Without another word, Gage turned and stalked into the trees, his broad back soon swallowed by the shadows.
Harry let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for minutes.
Drew had a worried look on his face that seemed to ask if Gage would be ok.
Dax looked at the dark line of the forest. “He always comes back,” he said. He turned toward the cottage. “Come on,” he said. “We have to make sure she knows this isn’t what we want for her. Not like this.”
Inside, Snow White sat near where they had left her, cleaned up and clutching a cup of water. Bennett sat at her side, pale and silent, as if rooted there by shock. When the others entered, she looked up, scanning their faces as if searching for judgment. None came.
Harry moved to her first, dropping to his knees by the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said, not for anything he’d done, but for everything she’d just gone through. “We should have been here.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said dully. “I agreed. I'm sorry if you think I'm a disgrace.”
“No! You agreed to be ours,” Harry said, coming to sit at the foot of the bed. “Not to be left abandoned like that. He took it too far.”
Her throat tightened. “We had a safe word. I could have asked him to stop. He would have listened to me. But I liked what he was doing. I wanted it. I asked him to keep going.”
Silas flopped down onto the other side of her, his arm curling automatically around her shoulder. “We’re idiots,” he sighed. “But even we know there’s a difference between rough play and crossing the line.”
Snow White let out a watery laugh at that, despite herself. She rubbed her wrists where the ropes left their mark.
Dax stood at the end of the bed, arms crossed, brow furrowed. “You’ll want to leave,” he said bluntly. “We’ll pack you food, point you toward the right road.”
Her chest squeezed. “I don’t want to leave,” she said at once. The truth of it startled her. “I’m not angry with him. I said I wanted it. But now that it’s over, and you all know what happened, I feel embarrassed—like I lost control of my mind for a moment."
Dax’s shoulders eased a fraction. “If you want to stay, then you stay,” he said. “On your terms. No more deal, no more free-use. And if any of us crosses a line with you, you tell us. Even if it’s me.”
She nodded. In that moment, still sore, still humiliated, still shaken, she realized something important: These men might break her heart one day.
They might let her down, make mistakes, hurt her in ways they didn’t intend.
But for now, in this little cottage at the edge of the woods, they were trying.
Trying to be better than what the world expected of men like them.
Trying to make a place where she could be more than a body to be used and discarded.
Trying, in their fumbling, flawed way, to be something like a family.
She let out a long breath and lay back, their warmth surrounding her.
“Okay,” she said softly. “We all stay. Together.”
Outside, the forest held its secrets. Inside, anger still simmered, hurt still throbbed, apologies still tangled on tongues. But under all the turmoil, the fragile threads binding them together held.