Chapter 10
When I came back to the bedroom, my clothes weren’t scattered anymore. They were placed. My sweater folded neatly at the foot of the bed. My leggings beside it. And on top of them, a long black shirt I didn’t own. Soft. Worn. Heavy with warmth from someone much bigger than me.
The Skull leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. “It’ll be warmer,” he said with a nod toward the shirt.
“You went through my stuff?” I asked. I tightened the blanket around my body.
The Stag’s voice drifted lazily from down the hall, and I looked over my shoulder to see him standing right on the other side of the door, a smirk on his face. “Modesty clocked out hours ago.”
Heat flushed my cheeks, but I said nothing as all three men watched me when I pulled on the leggings, my sweater, and then the oversized shirt. It hung almost to my knees and smelled like soap and smoke and something unmistakably male.
I shouldn’t have liked that. But I did.
By the time I got my bearings, all three men were already in the kitchen, coffee brewing.
The Black Mask stood at the counter with the quiet, economical movements of a man who didn’t waste energy. I watched him silently. Mug. Cream. Stir. His broad shoulders moved under his dark shirt, tattoos slipping in and out of view.
The Stag flipped bacon at the stove like he lived here and hadn’t broken in last night. The Skull sat at the table, shirtless, chair tipped back, staring out the window as if he were challenging the storm to be violent again.
It felt absurdly domestic. Domestic coated in dread. I felt like this was a scene from a horror movie, and I was waking up after the climax to find the masked killers calmly making breakfast.
“Sit,” The Black Mask said, gesturing to the chair across from The Skull.
I obeyed and sat. A mug was placed in front of me, and for a second, I was only focused on the scent of hot coffee inches from me. The steam curled up from the mug like a question I wasn’t ready to answer.
I wrapped both hands around it, letting the heat bite my palms, and tried to look anywhere except at the three men who now owned every inch of the cabin’s air.
The Skull dropped his chair forward with a deliberate thud. The sound cracked through the quiet like a warning shot. “You’re thinking too loud,” he said, voice still rough from sleep and the hours of groaning while he’d fucked me. His eyes—sharp and unfairly beautiful—narrowed on me. “Stop it.”
The Stag slid a plate across the table: bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast cut diagonally like someone’s mother had taught him manners once upon a time.
“Eat,” he said, trying to soften his tone. Not a suggestion.
I picked up the fork because it was easier than arguing.
Because my stomach was hollow, my thighs still trembled when I shifted on the hard, wooden chair, and my pussy was sore as hell in the best way.
The tenderness between my legs throbbed every time one of them looked at me like they were still starving.
The Black Mask stayed standing, hip against the counter, sipping his own coffee black. He hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words since I’d walked in, but I felt him cataloguing every move I made.
I swallowed a bite of eggs and nearly choked when The Skull reached over and brushed a crumb from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. He brought it to his tongue without breaking eye contact and licked it clean.
Jesus Christ.
“So,” I managed, setting the fork down before my hands shook too obviously. “What happens now? You guys make me breakfast, lunch, and dinner from now on? We play house until the roads clear?”
Silence. Thick, dangerous silence filled the cabin.
The Stag turned off the burner and leaned back against the stove, arms folded. The sleeves of his thermal were pushed up, ink flexing over muscle every time he breathed. “We’re not leaving, Gwen.”
Just like that. Flat. Final.
My pulse stuttered. “I don’t even know you. You broke in. You can’t just—”
“We already did,” The Black Mask cut in, frighteningly calm. “Storm’s dumped another two feet overnight. Generator’s got maybe thirty-six hours of fuel left if we’re careful. No one’s coming up here for days. Maybe a week.” He said it as if he were reading my future or, hell, the weather report.
I looked from one to the other waiting for the punchline, the wink, or just to wake the fuck up because this was the craziest dream I’d ever had.
The Skull leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You want the truth?”
I didn’t know if that was a trick question, so I kept my mouth shut.
“You want to know what the fuck is really going on?” The Black Mask said ominously.
“You want us to be truthful about why we’re here?” The Stag finished.
I looked between all three of them, my eyes feeling wide. Fear of the unknown, of what they were about to say, made my pulse pound wildly.
“Here’s what you need to understand, sweetheart.
Last night was supposed to be a job. In and out.
Masks, some mind-fuck theater, give you the scare of your life so you could finish that goddamn book.
” The Skull smiled, slow and filthy. “Kai thought immersion therapy would break through your writer’s block. ”
My stomach dropped so fast the room tilted. Kai. “W-What?” I blinked rapidly, bounced my gaze between them, and finally leaned back in my chair. I grabbed the mug and tried to down the rest of the coffee, but it was hot as hell and I sputtered.
The words hung in the air like smoke I couldn’t wave away.
Kai. My editor. My friend. The one who’d laughed with me over margaritas about deadlines and panic attacks and how I hadn’t written a decent sex scene in six months. My hands were steady. That was the scariest part.
“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, tasting every syllable, “that Kai hired you? Paid you… to break into my cabin, scare the shit out of me, and then… what? Leave?”
The Skull’s mouth curved, lazy and cruel. “That was the original contract, yeah.”
I stared at him. At all three of them and waited for the punchline that never came. A laugh cracked out of me—ugly, incredulous, nothing like amusement. “You’re serious.”
The Black Mask didn’t blink. “Dead serious.”
Another laugh, sharper this time. “She hired actors? Like some kind of fucked-up haunted house experience for writer’s block?” My voice climbed. “Do you have any idea how insane that is?”
The Stag moved to stand behind me, his hands now on my shoulders. His thumbs pressed in harder, grounding, possessive. “She said you were drowning. Said immersion has worked for others before.”
I shook my head hard enough that my hair whipped my cheeks.
“No. No. This… this crosses every line. This is crossing every fucking line. This is—” My throat closed.
If I were being honest, this hadn’t felt like crossing lines when I was begging them to fuck me harder.
Or when I was coming apart under their mouths and hands and cocks.
The Skull leaned forward, forearms braced on the table, voice low. “Listen closely, Gwen, because we’re only saying this once. The job was simple: three masked men, a blizzard, a few hours of controlled terror to rattle your cage and kick your muse back to life.”
“We were paid to scare you, not to touch you. Not to taste you. Not to put a single finger on you,” The Stag started in.
“Kai made that part crystal-clear in writing, and we signed it. When you opened that door with the knife shaking in your hand, the plan was already crumbling. When you looked at us like you were daring us to cross the line instead of begging us to leave, we knew you’d be ours. ”
The Black Mask growled the next words low and heated.
“We didn’t plan the sex. We didn’t plan to strip you down, tie you up with Christmas garland, or come inside you until you forgot your own name.
That wasn’t the job. That was us deciding the job was over the second you moaned for more instead of screaming for help. ”
The Stag moved back enough when I shoved up from the chair so fast it scraped back and almost tipped. He was a wall of heat at my back.
“Sit down, Gwen,” The Black Mask said—ordered—quietly.
“Fuck you,” I snapped, voice shaking. “All of you. Get out. Get the hell out of my cabin right now.”
The Skull stood too, slow, unhurried. Now, all three stood in front of me staring with unflinching, stoic expressions that should have terrified me instead of turning me on. “We’re snowed in, sweetheart. Roads are gone. Even if we wanted to leave—”
“I don’t care.” The words tore out raw. “You don’t get to,” I stuttered. “You don’t get to do what you did and then tell me my editor thought it was a good idea.”
Tears burned suddenly and furiously. I hated them. I hated how my body still hummed, how every bruise felt like proof I’d wanted it. I hated that part of me was already trying to rewrite the story so it made sense, so I wasn’t the woman who’d let three strangers wreck her and then asked for more.
The Black Mask moved first. One step, two, until he was close enough that I had to tip my head back to keep glaring. His hand lifted. It wasn’t fast, not threatening, as he cupped my jaw like he’d done it a hundred times.
“You’re angry,” he said, low. “Good. Be angry. Scream at us. Hit us. We’ll take it.” His thumb swept over my cheekbone, smearing the tears I hadn’t realized were there. “We’ll probably fucking get hard because of it. But don’t lie to yourself about what happened after the masks came off.”
I jerked my face away. “You don’t get to tell me what I felt.”
“No,” The Stag said, stepping forward now, voice rough. “We felt you come apart repeatedly. You stopped counting before we did.”
I pegged him with a hard glare. “That doesn’t make it right.” I was seething. I was getting wet.
“Never said it did,” he answered, unflinching. “But it makes it real.”
The Skull watched me as if he were waiting for something to break. “Things didn’t go exactly as planned, Gwen, but it is what it is.”
The Black Mask’s grip slid to the back of my neck, firm, steadying as he stared into my eyes. “You’re right,” he said simply. “We’re keeping you because the second you looked at us like you’d been waiting your whole life for exactly this, the job ended and something else started.”
I hated how steady his voice was. Hated how my pulse stuttered under his palm. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly freezing despite the cabin’s heat radiating from the fireplace. “I need… I need space. I need to think.”
All three stepped back without a word, clearing the path to the living room.
I walked away from them on legs that felt loose and unstable.
The Christmas tree lights blinked lazily red and green, obscene in the morning light.
I stopped in the middle of the rug… the same rug where they’d held me down and filled and ruined me.
I stared at the faint stains we hadn’t cleaned up yet.
So fucking nasty. So fucking hot.
Behind me, no one followed. No footsteps. Just the inaudible murmur of their voices too soft to make out words.
I pressed my palms to my eyes until sparks burst behind my lids. Kai had betrayed me. They had betrayed the job.
Yes, I… I had betrayed myself somewhere between the first scream and the last shattered moan.
The storm outside had quieted to a gentle, persistent fall. But inside, something louder was gathering, and I had no idea which of us it would destroy first.