22. Harper
HARPER
Iknock once because I was raised with manners even if the people who raised me weren't, and then I open the door.
All three of them.
Killian in the chair he always takes, scotch in hand, watching me like he's been watching that door for the last ten minutes.
Asher on the couch with his elbows on his knees and something in his expression I can't read.
Maddox against the bookcase with his arms crossed, which is the stance he uses when he's already made up his mind about something and is waiting for the room to catch up.
I look at all three of them.
I look at the door behind me.
I look back at them.
“Is there a meeting I didn't get the calendar invite for or—”
“Close the door, Harper.” Killian's voice. Even. Like he's asking me to sit in a conference room.
I close the door. I don't sit down.
“What's this about?”
Nobody answers immediately, which is its own answer, and the two weeks of performing like everything is fine while everything is very much not fine compresses itself into the back of my throat and I make a decision.
“Actually,” I say, “do you know what? I'll tell you what this is about. Since nobody else seems to be starting.”
Killian raises an eyebrow. I take that as permission.
“Two weeks,” I say. “Two weeks since the opening event and in that time you” — I look at Killian — “have spoken to me exclusively about midsummer event logistics.
Vendor confirmations. Run-of-show updates.
The east terrace drainage issue which, for the record, I flagged to Mallory three days before you brought it up to me.
That's it. That's the full extent of our communication since the night you carried me through a hall..”
Killian says nothing. His jaw does a thing.
I turn to Asher. “And you. You've texted me asking if I've eaten every single day.
Every day. Which would be very sweet if it weren't clearly the maximum amount of contact you'd decided to allow yourself. I got three room service deliveries this week with blank cards, Asher. Blank. Like you were sending me meals from the ghost of someone who used to be interested in me.”
Asher opens his mouth.
“I'm not done.” I look at Maddox. “And you. At the wine tasting on Tuesday I watched you spend twenty minutes talking to a woman in a yellow dress who laughed at literally everything you said and you did not look over here once. Not once. I was eight feet away.”
Maddox has the grace to look at the floor for approximately one second. Then he looks back up.
“We were giving you space,” Killian says.
I look at him.
“How did that work out for you three?”
Silence.
“Because from where I've been standing,” I continue, “it worked out to me eating lunch with Raph every day this week because he's the only one on this property who talks to me like I'm a person he actually wants to be around, so.”
“Harper—” Asher starts.
“No, I know. I know you meant well. Space, absolutely, very thoughtful, really.
But maybe next time any of you wants to give me space you could ask me first if I want it, because I was doing fine.
I'm always doing fine. Doing fine is my entire personality and it's exhausting and for approximately five minutes after the opening event I thought that I didn't have to do fine completely alone for once and then I woke up and apparently I did.”
There it is. I didn't mean to say that last part. That came out of somewhere I wasn't opening on purpose.
The room is very quiet.
Killian sets his scotch down.
“Alone,” he says. “What do you mean alone.”
I look at the window. I look at my hands. I look at three men who are all watching me with the careful attention of people who have just realized the conversation has changed shape.
“It's nothing,” I say. “Forget it.”
“Harper.” Asher's voice, low. “What's going on?”
And there it is again, that tone, the one that makes me feel like I could actually put something down if I tried, and I've been carrying this since Tampa and I'm tired and I'm angry and he's looking at me with those warm blue eyes and I open my mouth to say something deflecting and professional and measured and what comes out instead is everything.
“My parents destroyed my job,” I say. “In New York.
It wasn't downsizing, I was never going to say that to Killian in a hiring meeting, but it wasn't downsizing.
They showed up at my office. They showed up at my apartment.
They told my employer I'd been stealing from the company which I had not, I would never, but it created enough of a situation that HR got involved and my company pulled me aside and said we believe you but we need this to go away and the cleanest way to make it go away was to classify it as a layoff and let me collect unemployment.
Which they did. Which was kind. And I still lost everything I'd spent four years building because my parents decided my stability was worth less than their next ask.”
Nobody moves.
“So when I got to Tampa and Sophia dragged me here and Killian gave me a job I wasn't going to explain any of that in the interview because I needed to work and I wasn't going to stand in front of my boss and say by the way my parents are the reason I needed this job in the first place. And then everything happened and I thought okay maybe I can breathe here, maybe this is actually—” I stop.
“And then I woke up and, yeah, maybe my internal freak out got the best of me and I left you,” I look at Killian, “alone in bed, but it wasn’t like any of us talked about a future anything at all, and I spent two weeks eating lunch with Raph and getting anonymous room service and trying to figure out if the thing I thought happened actually happened or if I'd managed to catastrophically misread the entire situation.”
I press my lips together.
“So there it is. That's the whole thing. You wanted to know.”
Asher is off the couch before I finish the sentence. Not fast, just deliberate, crossing the room until he's close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him.
“Baby,” he says, low. “Why didn't you tell us any of this before?”
Something hot and frustrated flares behind my sternum.
“Before what, Asher?” My voice comes out sharper than I intend and I don't pull it back. “Before I started working here? Before you and Maddox fucked me? Or before Killian showed me his secret elevator?”
“Bullshit.” Maddox from across the room, flat.
I turn to look at him. “Excuse me?”
“I said bullshit.” He pushes off the bookcase. “You're not actually angry at us for not knowing something you didn't tell us. You're angry because you've been waiting for us to prove we meant it and we handled it wrong and you'd already decided what it meant before you gave us a chance to explain.”
“Oh good,” I say, “now you want to chime in.”
“I've been trying to chime in for two weeks, Harper.” His voice is tight in a way I've never heard from Maddox, who is the least tight person I've ever met. “Stop acting like we mean nothing to you.”
The words land in the center of my chest.
“You first, Maddox.”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing that's happened in this room all evening.
I turn toward the door. My hand finds the handle.
I don't make it.
Maddox moves fast, faster than someone who carries himself like he has all the time in the world has any right to, and his hand comes around my arm and he turns me, not rough but absolutely certain, spinning me back until my shoulders meet the door and his body is close, one forearm braced beside my head, and his other hand catches my wrists and guides them up above me in one smooth motion.
He looks at me.
I look back at him.
“You first,” he says, quieter now, and then his mouth finds mine.
I shiver as Maddox’s teeth graze my neck, his fingers dragging slow circles over my clit through the thin cotton of my panties.
“Bad girl,” he murmurs, voice rough, “still wearing these.”
They’re gone in a single tug, his hand sliding back, pressing firm, relentless.
I gasp, back arching, and he chuckles low against my throat.
“Gonna beg for my fingers, baby?”
“Yes—”
Louder when he pinches my clit. “Say it.”
“Please—I need your fingers—please—”
He nips my earlobe. “Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”
Two fingers slam inside me and I cry out, hips jerking, pleasure ripping through me like fire.
Then he’s lower, lips on my collarbone, my chest, his hands peeling my dress down.
Asher appears at my left, steady, taking my arm, and Killian steps in on the right, fingers locking around my wrist. Between them, I’m held—open, exposed—as Maddox sinks to his knees, his mouth replacing his hand, hot and deep, tongue dragging through me, licking like he’s been starved.
I whimper, thighs trembling, and they tighten their grip, holding me upright while he ruins me with his mouth.
The air shifts.
Asher’s lips find my breast, teeth grazing the peak, and Killian follows, going for the other, both of them sucking, biting, worshipping while Maddox doesn’t let up, humming against my clit every time I moan.
I come with a broken sob, vision white, body collapsing between them—but they don’t let me fall.
Maddox lifts me, laying me on the floor like I’m something priceless, and I blink up just in time to see him strip—shirt gone, pants gone, cock thick and heavy in his hand.
Then he’s on me, driving inside with one brutal thrust, filling me, stretching me.
“Look at me,” he growls.
I do.
“You’re ours,” he says, voice dark. “Say it.”
“I’m yours.”
He fucks me harder, hips slapping mine, then drags me onto all fours, smacks my ass, and I cry out, the sting blooming into heat.
The carpet is rough against my knees but I don’t care, I want this, I want all of it—the heat, the sting, the way Maddox’s hand tightens in my hair like he’s claiming me, like he’s reminding me who I belong to now.
He pulls out with a loud pop, slaps my ass once, twice—sharp, bright—and I gasp, back arching.