Theirs to Keep - A Reverse Harem Romance

by Krista Wolf

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think of our offer?” chuckled Camden.

  The stars stretched out overhead, amplifying the silence as my eyes flitted to each of theirs in turn. I saw affection. Longing. Lust. Maybe even… something more.

  A decision was made, internally. It happened without me even knowing it.

  My God, Karissa. For real?

  Behind me, the ocean waves crashed listlessly against the sandy beach.

  “I think you should take me home and make me your girlfriend,” I said with a breathless grin.

  Thirty

  KARISSA

  The ride home was dreamlike, even surrealistic. A steamy montage of kissing and touching, of being held and cuddled and sandwiched between two warm, mostly naked bodies…

  Is this really your life now?

  So far it was. On one side I had Camden, kissing me roughly. The two of us making out desperately in the soft, buttery world of the back seat, shrouded mostly by the dark of night.

  Ohhhh…

  And on the other side Roderick, kissing my neck. His beard felt delicately soft as his mouth worked against my hot skin, my body arching as he ran his palm down the front of my dress to cup one full, swollen breast.

  Two hot mouths. Four eager hands. They roamed slowly, moving anywhere they wanted, and my body curved to meet them.

  The guys had drawn straws before getting into the car. When my brows crossed, they laughed.

  “It’s to see which poor bastard has to drive.”

  Bryce lost. He was very unhappy about it. I got into the backseat, and the others slid in along either side of me. Halfway home, I could see why.

  Poor baby.

  Right now Bryce was driving us home as fast as he dared. He risked a glance in the rear-view mirror, just as Camden’s hand slid my dress higher up on my thigh. Our eyes met, and I winked at him lustily. As his gaze dropped back to my bare thighs, I spread my legs to give him a better view.

  This is slutty, Karissa.

  No, no it wasn’t. Not anymore. Because these were my boyfriends now. I could have sex with any one of them, whenever I wanted.

  Or all three at once, apparently.

  I jumped as a finger brushed my clit. By this point my beautiful dress was more of a belt. The red silk thong I’d put on to match was being tugged to one side, and not even by the guy who was about to finger me.

  Oddly enough, it was that part that turned me on most of all: the realization that future lovemaking would require a team effort. The idea that my body would be theirs for the taking, and at any moment that could involve two or even all three of the guys, when I wasn’t spreading my legs for them one-on-one.

  You’re going to be a busy girl.

  The idea of it made my heart jump into my throat. In a good way, though.

  A very busy girl.

  It was a challenge I decided I was up for. My libido had always been overactive, even if it had been dormant for the last year or so. I considered my sex life to be like a hibernating bear. It slept, it slumbered, but now it had finally woken up.

  And it was ready to eat everything in sight.

  “This…”

  The word was whispered huskily into my ear by Camden. He had two outer fingers gliding up and down through my glistening folds, while dipping his middle finger inside me.

  “This is ours now,” he finished.

  Roderick had one hand on the inside of my opposite thigh. He was kissing my shoulder. Playing with my hair…

  “We’re going to take it whenever we want. Understood?”

  The finger inside me plunged deeper. I bit my lip and nodded.

  “Say it, Karissa.”

  “Yes.”

  “Say the words,” Camden growled.

  God, the way he was talking was so sexy! So crazy and wild and sizzling fucking hot.

  “You’re… going to take it… whenever…”

  “No,” he interjected, gliding a thumb over my clit. The movement caused me to buck so hard my ass left the leather seat. “Say that you’re ours.”

  “I’m yours,” I repeated breathlessly.

  “Whose?”

  “All of you. Any of you.”

  “When?”

  “Whenever you want,” I gasped. “However you want…”

  He kissed me again, swirling his hot tongue past my hungry lips. I sucked on it gently. Sifting my fingers into the mass of hair at the back of his head, I pulled him even harder against my face.

  This is fucking CRAZY.

  “I’m your girlfriend,” I said, when the kiss was finally broken. “I want to be your girlfriend…”

  “You are.”

  “And you’ll be my boyfriends,” I reiterated, as the butterflies exploded again. God, it all sounded so strange! So unreal, so foreign, so incredibly heat of the moment. “All of you. The three of you, together...”

  I was bucking and grinding now, against his entire hand. Roderick’s mouth was locked tightly over my left breast. His hands were touching, cupping, caressing. His tongue was driving me crazy.

  “My God,” I swore out loud. “You keep this up, I’m gonna co—”

  “Shit. Oh SHIT.”

  The words didn’t come from either of the guys alongside me. It came from the front seat.

  “GOD DAMMIT!”

  My eyes fluttered open, even as the car surged beneath me. Bryce was gunning the engine. Racing us recklessly up the driveway, hurtling the car toward the looming shape of Southhold Manor.

  It took me only a split-second to see why.

  “OH NO!”

  Something was on fire.

  Thirty-One

  RODERICK

  I flew from the car before it even rolled to a stop, and hit the ground running. Even so, Camden was ahead of me. He was always fast. Even before his training.

  “Get the water!”

  The blaze before us wasn’t the manor itself, thank fucking God. It seemed localized to a single pallet of material. A shipment of lumber brackets, used mainly for cross-bracing. Even so, it was a big one.

  And it was right next to a half-dozen other pallets, filled with all sorts of similarly combustible materials.

  “HURRY!”

  Camden was already gone, sprinting out in a wide arc toward the nearest water hookup. I could only pray that a hose was still there. The crews working on the garden renovations had been moving them to the back of the construction site. If they hadn’t returned them…

  The heat from the fire grew hotter as the flames licked the sky. With the wind picking up, it lit up the entire front of the mansion with a hellish, orange glow.

  “Roderick!”

  Karissa’s voice carried over the roar of the flames. I spun in a circle, unable to locate the source of her cries.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  No answer. I peered again, but the smoke was making it difficult to see.

  “KARISSA! WHER—”

  Bryce ran up beside me, stopping just short of the burning pallet of lumber. His hands were opening and closing helplessly. The look in his eyes was murderous.

  “We have to find her!” I shouted into his ear. “She might be in—”

  “HERE!”

  I whirled and there she was, dragging the mother of all fire extinguishers. The thing was at least as long as her leg. I didn’t even know where she got it.

  “Help me…”

  Bryce and I grabbed the thing, and together we ran for the fire. I pulled the pin. He directed the discharge nozzle, and I squeezed down hard on the trigger.

  WHOOSH!

  A thick white powder exploded from the end of the nozzle, filling the whole area with smoke. We advanced together, into the heat. We sprayed the base of the pallet first, then worked our way up the side.

  But the flames were just too much. We were barely making a dent.

  Damn.

  “I’m here!”

  Camden’s cry was labored, like he’d just run a marathon. He was drag
ging a contractor-grade hose, stretched out behind him. Relief crashed over me as I realized water was rushing forth from the end of it.

  “Hit it from the other side!” I yelled. “Bryce, help him!”

  Karissa was already on it, grabbing the center of the hose and pulling it in the right direction. The resulting slack helped Camden move quickly. He put his thumb over the nozzle to widen the spray, and began soaking the pallet from the opposite end. Gradually, over the course of a minute, the flames began dying down.

  “Stay with it!”

  The flames licking sideways were gone, and so was the danger of the fire catching on somewhere else. The heat dissipated as the fire began to die.

  YES!

  I didn’t breathe again until I knew we were in the clear. When it was finally more smoke than flame, I said a silent prayer to the patron saint of firefighters. If there actually was one.

  “Fuck…”

  I sprayed until the canister was dry, and no more powder came out. Camden eventually dropped the hose.

  “That could’ve been bad,” Bryce muttered.

  “No shit.”

  “Really bad.”

  I shook my head, exhaustedly. “I know!”

  “I mean, we just got here in time,” he said. “That thing had to have been set just minutes ago.”

  The realization was sobering. It forced me to look around.

  “It’s okay,” Karissa declared, walking toward us from the smoldering pile of charred wood. “I just checked it. It’s totally out.”

  Camden stood behind her, nodding vaguely. “Still. If we hadn’t been here…”

  “But we were here,” I said thoughtfully. “And maybe that’s significant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The voice came from Karissa, who looked like she’d been through a war. Head to toe she was covered in soot, her red dress gashed all the way open on one side. Her hair — which had been so pretty at the beginning of the night — was a particularly spectacular disaster.

  “You look like hell,” Bryce joked.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean your hair—”

  “Wasn’t set up for a night of dancing and firefighting,” she growled dismissively. Turning again, her eyebrows narrowed as eyes locked on mine. “What did you mean by significant?”

  I tried spitting out the taste of the flames, but eventually realized it was a futile effort. All of a sudden I wanted my toothbrush.

  “I mean we got here just as the whole thing started,” I said. “And they didn’t light the house, so—”

  “Thank God,” muttered Bryce.

  I nodded my agreement before continuing. “So to me that means they weren’t trying to burn the place down.”

  “Just the construction materials,” said Camden. “They were trying to stop us.”

  “Or slow us down,” Bryce agreed.

  I shrugged noncommittally. “Or maybe they were just trying to send us a message.”

  Karissa seemed to consider all three possibilities before answering. “So what’s the message?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “Maybe the message itself is ‘fuck you?’” Bryce theorized cheerily. He continued smiling until Camden shot him a dirty look.

  “So… got any enemies?” Karissa coughed.

  She asked the question professionally, but with the slightest hint of something more. Almost exactly like Peter Falk, on the old television series Columbo.

  “Not that we know of,” I replied.

  “Not that you know of?” she repeated. “That sounds pretty specific.”

  “Well if I didn’t know about them,” I snapped, “how I could I even tell you?”

  She backed off, and I felt suddenly guilty. She was only trying to help.

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s just… well…”

  “You’re on edge,” she finished for me. “Totally understandable.”

  “What about cameras?” Bryce suddenly blurted. “Did we have any cameras on the worksite?

  “No,” Karissa said sadly. “They weren’t in the budget.”

  “Well they are now,” Camden sneered.

  We stood in silence for a few moments, surveying the damage. The burned pallet would be unusable, but that was the least of our problems.

  “Hey,” I asked abruptly, turning on Karissa. “Where the hell did you get that fire extinguisher?”

  Her shoulders raised in a shrug. “The trunk of my car.”

  Camden chuckled. Bryce swore something under his breath.

  “You carry a fire extinguisher like that in the back of your car?”

  Now she laughed, and the little black smudge on her chin laughed with her.

  “You guys are forgetting something.”

  Reaching down, she tore a long strip of fabric off the bottom of her ruined dress. By the time she was finished, it looked almost like a miniskirt after all.

  “I used to be a police officer. Remember?”

  Thirty-Two

  KARISSA

  An hour later we were sprawled out in the living room, physically exhausted. We’d run a full perimeter of the property — twice. Inspected every other pallet and pile of construction material littered around the building site, front and back.

  “I’ll get on the camera thing in the morning,” I said, lounging across the couch in my filthy torn dress. “Oscar knows a guy.”

  We were all filthy, really. Roderick was covered in dirt and sweat, ditto for Bryce. Camden’s soot-covered chest still glistened with it. All three guys’ shirts were open to mid-chest.

  It really was kinda hot, though.

  “Who would’ve lit our supplies on fire,” Bryce asked for the third time. “And not the place itself?”

  The bottle of wine we were passing around dangled from the end of my hand. By now it was nearly empty.

  “Someone who wanted to hurt you but not cripple you,” I replied.

  It was a good thing. It was a bad thing. Right now though, my brain was too scrambled to try and make sense of it.

  “We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” said Camden. “The three of us will sit down and—”

  “Ahem.”

  “Sorry,” he smiled back at me. “The four of us will sit down and put our heads together.”

  He reached for the wine, and my eyes fixed on the thick, corded muscles of his extended arm. The soot had settled in the hollows between the striations. They made his biceps stick out magnificently. His triceps and shoulders, too. Eventually I passed it to him.

  “Other than that it was a pretty good night,” Bryce said trying to be cheerful. “Right?”

  “Well yeah,” Camden snickered. “It sure was.”

  “I’m not likely to forget the night you asked me to be your girlfriend,” I jumped in with a chuckle. “If you look at it that way, I guess that makes this our anniversary.”

  Roderick nodded. “Guess so.”

  “So… are we celebrating?” I asked coyly.

  Camden finished off the last of the wine, then raised the bottle high. “I thought this was celebrating.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The guys exchanged glances. Sitting in one of the antique chairs they’d dragged in from the parlor, Bryce sat up a little.

  “Are you saying—”

  “I’m asking if the three of you plan to finish what you started,” I purred, bending one of my knees. The jagged hem of my ‘dress’ rode up so high on my thighs it was practically a belt again.

  All three of them were speechless. And that’s because they were staring at my thighs.

  “I mean, right now I’m still just a fuckbuddy,” I shrugged. “A friend with benefits.”

  I sat up and swung my long legs to the floor. From their own couches the guys remained frozen, but their eyes followed my every move. I felt like a hypnotist, working a stage.

  “I’m not really your girlfriend until you make me your girlfriend,” I said, layering the words with sugary sweetness.
Then I stood up and rolled the scant fabric of my tiny thong down my legs. I didn’t stop until it was around my ankles.

  “So… make me your girlfriend.”

  Bryce and Camden shot upright almost instantly. There was lust in their eyes.

  “You know we’re dirty, right?” asked Roderick. He looked down at his own ruined clothes. “Really dirty.”

  “So?” I posed, hooking a finger into the corner of my mouth. I stepped out of my panties and kicked them away. “What’s wrong with dirty?”

  They still hadn’t moved, so I made the move for them. Dropping to my knees, I turned my backside on Roderick and Bryce. Then I crawled over to Camden, slowly and sensually, before nudging my way between his legs.

  “You sit back and relax.”

  I splayed one palm over his hot, soot-smudged chest and pushed him backward. As he settled into the couch again I unzipped him and took his pants down.

  “Maybe I’ll just make you my boyfriends,” I teased, nuzzling the thick knot straining against his boxer-briefs. “One by one…”

  I opened my mouth and bit down gently on the warm, fabric-covered outline of his cock. Camden’s breath caught in his throat.

  “… by one.”

  Thirty-Three

  KARISSA

  A quick yank of Camden’s boxers and there he was, looking even more tremendous than I’d remembered. I stretched my mouth over him, taking the engorged head and sliding it slowly back and against my outstretched tongue.

  Then my lips closed… and I was blowing him. Stroking him up and down. Sucking and licking him like I was physically starving, not even focusing on the others, not even caring what happened behind me, or to me, or anything else.

  MMMMmmmm…

  He was salty. Musky. Wholly delicious. The sweat of our dancing was in my mouth, and it wasn’t unpleasant. It made the whole thing more real, more raw. It made us more connected, as I looked up for his approval and saw that familiar dreamy look crossing over his devilishly handsome face.