Chapter 19
ETHAN
“Share me?”
Tessa whispers the words like they’re a foreign language, a dialect she’s never heard and certainly never spoke. She’s pressed back against her small, wobbly dining table, her hands gripping the edge so hard the cheap wood creaks.
She looks terrified. She looks beautiful. She looks like a fox cornered by three lions, trying to decide if she should run or bare her teeth.
The air in the apartment is stiflingly hot. The AC unit in the window is silent—likely broken or turned off to save money. The room smells of cardboard dust, packing tape, and the faint, lingering trace of her jasmine perfume.
“You’re insane,” she breathes out, her eyes darting between us. “You’re all actually insane. I’m calling the police.”
She reaches for her phone on the table.
I move.
I cross the distance in two strides and place my hand over hers, pinning the phone to the scratched wood.
“We aren’t insane, Tessa,” I say, my voice low and steady, vibrating in the small space. “We’re solving the problem.”
“The problem is that you’re in my apartment after I quit!” She tries to yank her hand away, but I hold her wrist flat against the table. I’m not hurting her, I’m securing her. I need her to stop moving so she can hear me.
“The problem,” she insists, “is that I have a signed contract with Nebula, my life packed in these boxes, and you’re standing in my way!”
“Yes,” I say, refusing to flinch. “We’re going to share you. All of us. Because I can’t let you go, and neither can they.”
“Ethan—”
“The real problem,” I correct, leaning down until our faces are inches apart, “is that you’re trying to run away from the only place you belong.”
“I belong somewhere where the CEO doesn’t threaten to sue me!” she shouts. Her voice cracks, a fissure of genuine pain that slices straight through my chest. “I belong somewhere where my boss doesn’t weaponize my rent against me!”
I flinch. I can’t help it.
I look around the apartment properly for the first time.
I knew, on paper, that she was struggling. I saw the credit report. I saw the bank balances. But seeing the reality of it is different. The living room is cramped. The carpet is threadbare gray, stained from previous tenants. There’s a single window looking out onto a brick wall.
And, it’s empty.
There are boxes everywhere. Stacks of books. A cat carrier by the door.
She was really leaving.
The reality of it sinks its claws into my chest. She wasn’t bluffing. She wasn’t playing a game to get a raise. She was going to walk away from the salary, the equity, the career—all to get away from the confusion we caused.
She was willing to burn her life down just to escape me.
A sharp guilt rises in my throat. I threatened to sue a woman who’s taping up boxes in a sweltering apartment because she can’t afford to stay.
“I’m not going to sue you,” I say.
“You said—”
“I lied,” I admit roughly. The confession tastes like ash, but I force it out.
Tessa shoves my chest, a hard, angry strike that actually makes me stumble back a step.
“You let me panic,” she hisses, her voice trembling with rage. “I packed my entire life because I thought you were going to destroy me, and it was just a tactic?”
“It wasn’t a tactic,” I say, catching her wrists before she can hit me again. “It was desperation.”
She stares at me, her chest heaving as she searches my face. I let the CEO mask drop completely. I let her see exactly how terrified I am of losing her.
“You… panicked?”
“I’m human, Tessa. Contrary to popular belief.”
“He was panicking,” Owen supplies from behind me. His voice is tight, lacking its usual playful bounce. I can feel him hovering, his energy frantic and jagged. “He punched a heavy bag for an hour straight this morning. He’s a mess without you. We all are.”
“Shut up, Owen,” I growl, never taking my eyes off Tessa.
“It’s true,” Asher adds. He’s standing with his back against the locked door, blocking her only exit. “He’s volatile. I haven’t seen him this unstable since the desert.”
Tessa turns her glare on him. “And you? You picked my lock. You tracked my phone. That’s a felony, Asher, not a ‘romance tactic.’”
Asher flinches. He lowers his gaze to the floor, looking genuinely chastised.
“It was a security protocol,” he murmurs. “But… I apologize. I didn’t intend to cause fear. Only to ensure presence.”
Tessa looks at Asher, then back to me. The fight doesn’t drain out of her. It calcifies.
I watch her gaze snap from Asher, to Owen, and finally to me. The fear I saw a moment ago is gone, replaced by a cold, hard resolve that chills me to the bone.
“Get out,” she says.
Her voice isn’t trembling anymore. It’s ice.
“Tessa,” Owen starts, stepping forward with that pleading, puppy-dog look that usually works on everyone. “Just listen—”
“No,” she snaps, stepping back. Her glare sweeps over us before locking dead onto me. “I listened when you told me I was a liability. I listened when you threatened to bankrupt me with a lawsuit. And I listened when all of you made it clear I was just a problem to be solved.”
She gestures violently to the boxes around us.
“I did everything you asked. I packed. I quit. I found a new job. And now that I’m actually walking out the door, you decide you want your toy back?”
“You’re not a toy,” I growl, my jaw tightening. The word makes my skin crawl.
“Then stop treating me like one!” she yells. The anger she’s been suppressing finally boils over. Her chest heaves, her eyes blazing. “You don’t get to show up here, break into my apartment, and tell me you’ve ‘solved the problem.’ I’m not a bug in your code, Ethan. I’m a person. And you hurt me.”
The air in the room solidifies, thick with the truth of her accusation.
Her words strip the armor right off me. She’s right.
We treated her like a variable to be managed, not a woman to be loved.
“I know,” I say roughly. “I know I hurt you.”
“Then why should I stay?” she challenges me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go to Nebula. Markus Vance might be a shark, but at least he doesn’t pretend to be my family while holding a gun to my head.”
“Because we love you,” Owen says.
The words hang in the stale air of the apartment.
Tessa stops moving. She looks at Owen, searching his face. The charm is gone from him, stripped away to reveal a raw, terrified honesty.
“Owen,” I warn low in my throat. We haven’t discussed this. We haven’t used that word.
“No,” Owen shakes his head, ignoring me. “She wants a reason? That’s the reason. We don’t just ‘want’ you, Tess. We aren’t just ‘solving a problem.’ We’re miserable. I haven’t slept in three days. Asher has been staring at a blank screen for forty-eight hours. And Ethan?”
He gestures to me.
“Ethan tore his office apart an hour ago because he thought he lost you. We aren’t functioning. We aren’t complete without you. We’re just three broken guys who realized too late that we found the missing piece.”
Tessa looks at me. Her gaze is searching, demanding the truth.
“Is that true?” she asks.
I could lie. I could pull rank. I could try to salvage my pride. But looking at her standing there, surrounded by the boxes I forced her to pack, I realize I don’t care about pride.
“Yes,” I rasp. “It’s true. I tried to protect the company. I tried to be the CEO. But the moment you walked out of that office… I didn’t care about the company. I just wanted to burn it down if it meant I couldn’t have you.”
“And you?” She turns to Asher.
Asher’s looking at the floor. He lifts his gaze, his blue eyes unblinkingly honest.
“I can’t calculate a future without you,” Asher says simply. “The probability of my happiness drops to zero. You’re the only variable that matters.”
I see her waver. The anger is still there, but the wall is cracking. Her shoulders drop an inch.
“You threatened to sue me,” she reminds me, her voice wavering. “You terrified me.”
“I was desperate,” I admit. I take a step closer, but I force myself to stop and not touch her. I have to respect the line she drew. “I knew the only way to make you stop running was to put a wall in front of you. It was a mistake. I… panicked.”
I hold my hands up, palms open.
“I’m not asking you to just come back to work,” I tell her. “I’m asking you to let us fix this. To let us earn you back.”
“And the sharing?” she asks. “You think that’s a solution? To pass me around?”
“We don’t pass things around,” Owen says softly. “We share the load. We share our lives. We want to share you because one of us isn’t enough to give you what you need. And because none of us are strong enough to let the others have you.”
“It’s selfish,” she whispers.
“It is,” I agree. “We’re selfish men, Tessa. We want it all. But we want to give you it all, too. Protection. Stability. Passion. Everything.”
I reach out and offer my hand.
“Don’t go to Nebula,” I say. “Don’t go to a man who sees you as an asset. Stay with the men who see you as the air.”
She looks at my hand. Then she looks at the boxes surrounding us—the physical manifestation of her running away.
She takes a deep breath. She reaches out and places her hand in mine.
Her fingers are small, warm, and trembling. I close my hand around hers, pulling her in with a desperate gravity.
I bury my face in her neck, letting out a shuddering breath as her scent fills my lungs.
“Thank you,” I whisper against her skin.
She wraps her arms around me. I feel the tension leave her body, the anger washing away into exhaustion.
“I hate you guys,” she murmurs into my shirt.
“I know,” Owen says, hugging her from behind, burying his face in her hair. “We hate us too.”
Asher steps in, his hand resting tentatively on her back, completing the circle.
We stand there for a long moment, a tangled knot of breathing and relief in the middle of her cardboard fortress.
Then, I pull back. I look at her. The vulnerability is still there in her eyes, but the heat is returning. The fire I missed.
“You’re wearing an oversized t-shirt,” I note, my voice dropping an octave.
“I ran out of clean laundry,” she defends weakly.
“Take it off,” I say.
She looks at me, reading the hunger in my eyes, then looks past me to Owen and Asher. She sees the exact same starvation in them.
Her hands tremble as she reaches for the hem of her shirt.
“Prove it,” she challenges softly, pulling the cotton shirt over her head and dropping it to the floor. “Prove that I’m not just a problem you solved. Prove that I’m the air.”
My control snaps.
I step forward, sweeping her into my arms. I lift her off her feet, my hand gripping the bare skin of her thigh.
“Ethan,” she gasps, her arms instinctively wrapping around my neck as I carry her toward her bedroom.
“We’re done talking,” I growl against her ear. “I’m going to show you exactly what it means to be claimed by us.”
I kick her bedroom door open wider and step inside.
It’s even messier than the living room. Clothes are piled on the chair. The bed is unmade and rumpled.
I set her down next to the mattress. She’s standing in a simple cotton bra and panties. She crosses her arms over her chest, suddenly self-conscious under the weight of three men staring at her.
“Don’t hide,” Asher says. He’s standing at the foot of the bed, watching her. He hasn’t touched her yet, but his gaze is a physical caress. “We’ve all seen you. We’ve all memorized you.”
“It’s different,” she says, her voice shaking. “All of you… at once. It’s intimidating.”
“Good,” I say. “Be intimidated.”
I shrug out of my suit jacket, tossing it onto a box of books. I rip the tie from my neck, letting it fall, and then unbutton my dress shirt, shucking it off completely.
I want her to see me. I want her to see the muscle I built carrying the weight of this family. I want her to see that I’m not just a suit.
“Get on the bed,” I say.
She climbs onto the mattress, backing up until she hits the headboard. She pulls her knees to her chest, curling into a ball.
I crawl onto the bed after her. The mattress dips under my weight. Then Owen joins, crawling up the other side.
Asher stands at the end, stripping off his shirt with efficient, jerky movements. He reveals the tattoo on his left shoulder—the coordinates of the extraction point where we survived.
Owen has the same one on his bicep. I have it on my ribs.
We’re marked by our history. And now, we’re going to mark her.
The bed suddenly feels small. The air is sucked out of the room, replaced by testosterone and heat.
I reach out and grab her ankle, pulling her legs down.
“Open for us,” I say.
She hesitates for a split second, looking from me to Owen to Asher. Then, slowly, she relaxes her legs. Her knees fall apart.
I move between them.
“This is going to be intense,” I warn her, placing my hands on her thighs. My thumbs press into the soft flesh. “We aren’t going to be gentle. We’ve been holding back for weeks. We’ve been pretending for about a month. And now the dam is breaking.”
“I don’t want to be gentle,” she whispers, looking me dead in the eye.
That spark. That defiance. It’s what made me crave her. It’s what makes her worthy of us.
“Good girl,” I growl.
I lean forward and kiss her.
I kiss her hard, biting her lip, forcing her mouth open. I feel Owen’s hands move over her body. He kisses her neck, his hands roaming over her breasts, unhooking her bra.
I feel the mattress shift as Asher moves closer.
I break the kiss, pulling back to look at her.
Her bra is gone. Her chest is heaving. Her eyes are rolled back slightly, overwhelmed by the sensation of four hands on her skin at once—my grip on her thighs, Owen’s hands kneading her breasts.
“Focus,” I command. “Stay with us.”
“It’s a lot,” she gasps. “I can’t… I don’t know where to look.”
“Look at me,” I say. “Then look at Owen. Then look at Asher. You take it all.”
I look at Asher. He’s staring at the damp scrap of white cotton covering her swollen pussy like he wants to tear it apart with his bare hands.
“Asher,” I say.
He looks up at me. His eyes are feral.
“Take it off,” I tell him. “Show her we’re not here to play.”