Casually I sipped at my coffee. I was a big girl. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t need to be treated with kid gloves, and I wasn’t about to let my feelings get hurt over a little sex, even with the boss.
Or rather, a lot of sex. With two of my bosses.
Bryce leaned in, and for a moment they were on either side of me. Their proximity reminded me of last night. It made me shudder.
“We’re not asking to explore your feelings,” he whispered huskily. His voice was hard, tough, manly. “We already know you’re badass enough to handle this. We’re here to tell you something else.”
I felt a surge of excitement flow through me. Mixed in with something like pride.
“What?”
The pause was endless. Head to toe, my whole body tingled.
“We’re doing that again,” Camden growled throatily, and there was zero doubt as to what he meant. “Tomorrow night. Your room. Same time.”
In the span of two seconds, my heart was thundering out of my chest. I could hardly breathe. Barely form the one-word response that dropped from my trembling, willing lips.
“O—Okay.”
Fifteen
KARISSA
“Tell Marius to get his ass down here,” I shouted into the phone. “No one’s doing anything until he does a walk-through.”
It was a crazy day at work for sure. Made crazier by the weather, which was rapidly turning everything to mud. The gas company called to say they’d be missing their inspection, and I rescheduled two deliveries I wasn’t ready for anyway. At least the HVAC guys were keeping things clean.
“Yes, he has to do it in person,” I growled. “No, he can’t do it over fucking FaceTime.”
I looked at Oscar and rolled my eyes. Was everyone an asshole today? Or was everyone just trying to cut corners?
“Good,” I said finally. “He’s got an hour. He takes even one minute longer, he can forget about me paying his people for the day.”
I hit the red button as hard as my thumb would allow. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as hanging up an actual phone these days.
“What is it that you need, Oscar?”
My foreman looked nervous. He was shifting from one foot to another, like he was about to ask for a day off.
“You’re not asking for a day off, are you?”
“No boss,” he said quickly. “Definitely not.”
“Then what?”
“It’s the morning room,” Oscar said. “There’s… trouble there.”
My brows crossed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Come with me,” he urged. “You’ll need to see this.”
I followed him through the lower loggia, past paneling that had been expertly sanded by one of the best woodworkers money could buy. They’d start staining soon, and then varnishing afterward. Just another few of the thousand or so loose ends that needed to be sewn up before this place could be called finished.
But God, when it finally was? Southhold Manor was going to be the most amazing place in the world.
“How bad is it?” I asked of my mystery problem. “On a scale of one to ten?”
“Not exactly sure,” Oscar answered.
My worry mounted. Honestly, I was in a good mood — a great mood, actually. I’d spent half the morning on a steady caffeine drip, to keep my body going. But my mind…
My mind moved slowly, lingering along on its happy journey through the more intimate details of last night. I could remember everything the guys had done to me. Every butterfly-inducing kiss. Every skin-shivering, electric touch. Down between my legs, I was happily, pleasantly sore. Each time I squeezed I could feel tiny, heated contractions. Aftershocks of the incredible orgasms I’d had, at the end of the guys’ hard, wonderful thrusts.
The next morning hadn’t been awkward at all. In fact, they’d treated me exactly the way I would’ve wanted to be treated. I was an equal, a consort. A partner in crime.
And best of all they wanted more.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that it would be a one-shot deal. It was just too good. Too fucking amazing. It would be cataclysmically stupid to walk away, simply chalking it up to a fantasy fulfilled. Not when all three of us enjoyed it so thoroughly. And especially not since we all lived under the same roof.
That they’d come inside me was both surprising and hot. I was on the pill, of course. Had been since forever. But the guys hadn’t known that, and they hadn’t asked. The way they took me so definitively, possessing and plundering my body… my God. It was all so unspeakably hot.
You’d asked for it, though.
I really had, hadn’t I? I’d urged them on. Ground my heels into the smalls of their backs, and told them to let go inside me. Maybe the blame was on my end, but I didn’t care. Or maybe they were just so used to doing this together. But doing it with someone else…
“Here,” Oscar said, stopping abruptly. “And up there, too.”
He pointed, and my eyes followed. Everywhere I looked, scattered across the floor and on the ledge above, I saw shards of tiny, colored glass.
“What the everliving fuck?” I swore, for about the tenth time that day. I really did have a dirty mouth. I should probably do something about that.
“Looks like it was a rock,” said Oscar.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” I repeated, pointing downward. “It was a chunk of paver.”
Sure enough, a jagged piece of grey-white paver lay off to one side of the mess. A second one rested nearby, appearing equally responsible.
“Two pavers, two windows,” I said.
Oscar scratched at his head. “But those… those pavers are from—”
“The courtyard,” I nodded. “Yes.”
We were deep into the back end of the manor now, clear on the other side. At a place where the only things outside the broken windows were gravel and grass.
“So they took these pieces from the front entrance,” said Oscar. “Carried them all the way around the house, to throw them in the back.”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
I shook my head sadly. “To break these windows specifically,” I said. “They’re stained glass.”
“Shit.”
I sighed heavily. “You’re not kidding.”
The windows in question were
