Chapter 1
Live and Uncensored
Celeste
That's the first thing I see.
The blinking red "LIVE" icon is the second.
And the third?
Me—on camera—moaning around a frosting-covered finger while reading the filthiest line from Bound by Three.
Oh.
My.
Fucking.
God.
I drop my phone, frosting splattering across the counter like evidence at a crime scene.
The comments explode faster than I can breathe:
GODDESS I'd worship her
That moan—holy shit
Baltimore's sweetest baker just got DIRTY
Where is this bakery I'm proposing marriage immediately
Reverse harem?? Girl has taste.
My soul leaves my body.
Because they're right.
I was moaning. I was licking frosting off my fingers like I was auditioning for a porn remake of the Food Network. I was reading a scene where three men have their hands everywhere—and enjoying it way too much.
I fumble for the phone with sticky fingers. "Stop! End! TURN OFF!"
Finally—mercifully—the stream ends.
Silence crashes over the bakery.
Just me, my burning face, and the ghost of the sentence I never finished reading: "Three men, one woman, their hands everywhere as she—"
I sink onto the stool behind me, legs like jelly, and stare at my reflection in the black screen. My face is tomato red. My dark hair is falling out of its messy bun. There's frosting on my cheek and—oh God—on my lips too.
"I'm going to die," I tell the empty bakery. "They're going to find my body tomorrow morning, covered in frosting, dead from mortification."
The industrial mixer hums in the corner, the only witness to my destruction. Grandmother's bakery feels different now—like the walls absorbed my words and are playing them back on repeat. Their hands everywhere... take all of us, baby...
Because here's the thing: I wasn't just caught reading smut.
I was enjoying it. The kind of enjoying that makes you squeeze your thighs together even though you're alone at eleven PM on a Tuesday night.
The kind of enjoying I'll never actually experience because I'm twenty-four and still a virgin who gets her thrills from dark romance novels instead of actual men.
Pathetic, that little voice whispers. Reading about other women getting railed by multiple men while you can't even get one guy to look at you twice.
But that's not entirely true. Men look. They just don't see.
They see the sweet baker with flour in her hair and assume I'm all vanilla extract and sugar cookies.
They don't see the girl who stays up until 3 AM reading the filthiest books she can find on KU.
Who has a color-coded spreadsheet of her favorite scenes.
Who's memorized every position, every act, every dirty thing these fictional men do to their women.
And now ten thousand strangers know my secret.
My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number.
That can be arranged, little baker. Check your email. -W
What the hell? My heart, which had just started to slow, kicks back into overdrive. Before I can process that cryptic message, another text appears:
Bella, your grandmother would approve. The frosting isn't the only thing I want to taste. -M
My mouth goes dry. All the moisture in my body seems to pool somewhere else entirely. These can't be real. This can't be happening. I'm having a stroke. That's it. I'm having a shame stroke and hallucinating messages from mysterious strangers.
Then a third:
Six months I've watched you read in that window. Look outside. -J
I spin toward the front window so fast I nearly fall off the stool. My breath fogs the glass as I peer out into the darkness. A fire truck sits across the street, parked under the broken streetlight like it's trying to hide in the shadows.
But it's been there before.
The realization hits me like cold water. Every Tuesday night. Every Thursday. Sometimes Saturdays. For months—since Grandmother died—there's been a fire truck parked there during my late shifts. I thought it was routine. Patrol. Whatever firefighters do.
But now...
"Oh my God, they've been watching me."
My phone buzzes again, but this time it's an email notification. With trembling fingers, I open it.
Subject: For Your Private Collection
The attachment downloads automatically—a rare digital first edition of "Bound by Three." The exact book I was just reading. According to the metadata, this version was published in a limited run of 100 copies, each worth... holy shit, five hundred dollars?
The email signature just says "W."
Below that, a note: I've been collecting your favorites. This is just the beginning.
My hands are shaking so hard I can barely hold the phone. This is insane. This is certifiably, absolutely, completely insane.
Another buzz. This time it's a group message, and I've been added to a chat titled "Celeste's Admirers."
William:
Gentlemen, I believe we've all been watching the same show.
Marcus:
Months of Tuesday nights. She always gets to the good parts around eleven.
Jake:
Every shift I could manage.
William:
Perhaps it's time we introduced ourselves properly.
I sink back onto the stool, legs too shaky to hold me. Three men. Three strangers who've been watching me. Who know my reading schedule. Who've seen me...
Oh God, what have they seen? Me dancing like an idiot? Crying over character deaths? That time I got so into a scene that I accidentally made whimpering noises while frosting a wedding cake?
But instead of fear, something else unfurls in my stomach. Something dark and liquid and hungry. It feels dangerously like the scenes I read about but never experience.
Jake:
You still there, princess? Or did we scare you off?
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I should block them. Delete everything. Maybe even call the police—though what would I say? "Three men know I read smut and send me limited edition books as a gift? That'll go well, for sure.
Instead, I type:
Who are you?
William:
Someone who's been watching you read in that window.
Marcus:
Someone who knows your favorite books by heart.
Jake:
Someone who's memorized the way you bite your lip during the good parts. Lower left corner, hard enough to leave marks.
"This is insane," I whisper to myself, but my traitorous body is heating up, responding to their words like they're touching me. My thighs clench involuntarily, and I'm suddenly very aware of how wet my panties are.
From reading. From their messages. From the knowledge that three men have been watching me without my knowledge.
I should be terrified. Instead, I'm more turned on than I've ever been in my life.
William:
Tomorrow. 7 AM. The Ritz-Carlton on Light Street. Penthouse breakfast room.
Why would I meet three stalkers?
Marcus:
We're not stalkers, bella. We're admirers.
Jake:
Very wealthy, very patient admirers.
William:
Who also have something to discuss regarding your inheritance.
Wait. What…?
"My inheritance?" The words echo in the empty bakery.
All my grandmother left me was this place—the bakery with its ancient mixers and temperamental ovens.
Well, that and her recipe book full of weird measurements and notes in Italian I can't read.
And that locked room in the basement I haven't figured out how to open yet, with the keypad that doesn't accept any combination I've tried.
My grandmother's been dead for six months. If this is about the bakery—
William:
It's about much more than the bakery, little one. Things she couldn't tell you while she was alive.
Marcus:
Things that required us to wait. To watch. Until we were sure you were ready.
Jake:
Your grandmother was a remarkable woman. You have no idea how much.
My hands are shaking again, but not from fear. There's something about the way they write, formal but intimate. Like they know me. How long have they been studying me to learn how to talk to me and achieve that effect on me, making me feel like I'm something precious they've been guarding?
Jake:
Wear the blue sundress. The one with tiny flowers.
How do you—
Jake:
You wore it last Sunday. When you thought no one was watching you dance to Taylor Swift.
Oh God. I did dance. I turned the music up loud and danced while frosting three dozen cupcakes, spinning around with the piping bag like a complete idiot. Singing into the whisk like a microphone. Shaking my ass to "Shake It Off" because I'm apparently a walking cliché.
William:
You were radiant, by the way.
What was that? Do they have cameras in here or…? Why does it seem like they can read my mind?
Marcus:
You are so cute, bella. You don't even realize how expressive you are and how every thought seems to crossover your face like a movie. It's captivating.
Jake:
It's what made the livestream so fucking perfect. Every reaction is genuine. No filter.
Heat floods through me, pooling between my thighs. They saw. They really were watching every gasp, every lip bite, every time I pressed my thighs together during the steamy parts. Every time I had to stop reading to fan myself with whatever was nearby—usually a spatula or recipe card.
William:
7 AM. Don't be late.
Marcus:
We've waited long enough.
Jake:
Six months is enough foreplay.
Foreplay. The word makes me shiver. Makes me think of all the scenes I've read where the build-up is almost better than the act itself. The anticipation. The tension. The moment before everything changes.
I don't even know what you look like.
Three photos appear simultaneously in the chat, and I nearly drop my phone again. A second later, I'm clutching it, absorbing every piece of information my brain can piece together from the images the screen returns.