Owned for Christmas

by Willa Edwards

  He gripped her shoulder and turned her to his brother, nearly shocking the breath right out of her. Grant smiled down at her, drawing her into his embrace. He found her mouth with his. The kiss was hot, scorching her through and through, but much sweeter than she would have guessed from Grant. She moaned into his touch and he tangled his fingers in her hair, holding her close. Daniel kept his arm around her, embracing her lightly, and it all felt perfect. Right. As if they should have been together all along. All three of them.

  When they broke apart, Grant leaned his forehead against hers. His breath fanned her face. “I love you, pet, so much.”

  Kate’s stomach quivered. Her knees shook at his admission. “I know.” He never would have accepted this arrangement if he didn’t. He never would have been willing to share her if he didn’t love her enough to see that she needed Daniel also. “And I love you too.”

  “Good.”

  He almost laughed against her cheeks, and she smiled. She’d never been happier in her life.

  “Sorry to break up this touching moment,” Daniel’s joking voice broke through the fog. With his hand on her lower back he nudged her toward the bedroom door. “But we’d better get moving. If we don’t get out there soon, Mom might come looking for us.”

  Kate couldn’t help but giggle as Grant paled a little at his brother’s suggestion. Good to see something could still scare the almighty Master.

  They dressed quickly. Grant borrowed some of Daniel’s clothes. They were a touch too tight but they worked in a pinch. None of them wanted to take the chance of being caught sneaking to Grant’s room half-naked for something as silly as a pair of pants.

  “Ready?” Daniel grasped the doorknob.

  Grant tightened his arm around her and she nodded. Now was as good a time as any.

  Daniel turned the knob and quietly they all filed out of the room.

  “There you are, sleepyheads,” Gale called to them across the hall. They hadn’t made it more than thirty seconds out of the bedroom before being spotted. Gale must have been lying in wait for them. There was no other way she could have been so close and so ready to greet them.

  Gale stood in the middle of the hallway, a plate of cinnamon rolls in one hand and three mugs of coffee in her other. “I thought you were never going to get up.”

  Does everyone on the ranch always get up this early? The damn rooster only crowed a little while ago. Though she had no idea how long they’d been in the shower, it hadn’t felt like that long. Then again, time with her men was never long enough.

  Kate only smiled, staring at her two men. Grant wore a large grin on his face, maybe the biggest she’d ever seen. Daniel seemed to stand a little taller, his chest puffed out.

  He reached between them, taking her hand and pulling her tight to his side. His comforting clean citrus scent washed over her. “Just enjoying this lovely morning in bed, Mom.”

  Gale looked back and forth between the three of them, taking in their wet hair and happy smiles. Kate was sure she had noticed. She had to have. But Gale said nothing.

  “Well, sit. Let’s get started. I’ve only got an hour or so before the turkey’s ready to go in the oven.”

  “With your sausage-sage stuffing?” Daniel almost squealed with excitement.

  “Of course.” Gale patted his cheek. “I can’t disappoint my boys.”

  Kate loved how happy he was. Thankfully, he’d been a little happier when she’d had her mouth around him in the barn while Grant had fucked her from behind. But not much. Warmth flooded her from the inside out. She hoped he would never change. She cast a glance to her other side. The same was true for Grant.

  They all sat on the couch with Daniel on her left side and Grant on her right. If Gale thought anything of their seating arrangement, after Kate had spent most of her trip trying to avoid Grant, she didn’t mention it. And Kate was thankful. She needed Grant’s comforting heat by her side right now.

  Kate stared around the room. Everything looked like a scene out of a Christmas movie. The tree lit up the room. The twinkle lights cast a soft multicolored glow across everything, shining off the tinsel and ornaments. Presents lay beneath the tree. Four stockings hung from the fireplace. She was happy to see that none of the stockings looked worse for wear. Even now, she couldn’t be sure which one they’d used to gag her last night. But knowing Grant, it was the one he had grabbed from the mantel and pulled holiday chocolates and socks from. Almost as if he had read her mind, Grant winked at her, confirming her suspicions.

  Gale passed around the hot cinnamon rolls and mugs of coffee. Kate clung to hers gratefully, enjoying the warmth of the rich brew sliding down her throat. The relaxation from the shower was fading fast. She couldn’t tell what Gale suspected about their behavior, but the fear of her knowing too much—and thinking poorly of her—had every nerve in Kate’s body twitching.

  Each movement of her legs against the couch caused the marks on her leg to sting pleasantly. She could never forget it was there. The F burned across her thigh like a brand. They’d stamped her. Just like they did their cows. Kate smiled, and she’d never been happier to be owned by two men.

  “Daniel.” Gale settled down in the armchair across from the couch, holding her own cinnamon roll and coffee. “Why don’t you hand out the presents?”

  Daniel nodded, heading toward the tree and the generous gifts mountain, acting as if he handled this chore every year. And he probably did. He pulled the brightly wrapped presents from under the branches, reading each card and delivering them to the recipients’ feet. Grant and Gale quietly talked about the holiday as Daniel performed his duty, their murmurs and happy faces filling the house with love and affection.

  Kate had always wanted a family like this one. Loving, open, honest. Now she might have her dream. Daniel wanted her, Grant wanted her, and they planned to stay here in Colorado. Her mother would create three new frown lines across her brow—making her dermatologist an even richer man—if she knew Kate was planning to quit her job and move to a backwater country town to live on a ranch for a man—or men. But it felt right to Kate. Perfect. And for the first time in her life, she didn’t see the point in fighting what she wanted.

  The presents piled up at each person’s feet—tiny mountains grew next to Gale and Grant and to her other side where Daniel had been sitting. A few colorful boxes were placed by her ankles, warming her heart. They were probably from Daniel, but she appreciated each one.

  Once all the gifts had been passed out, they began opening them. They took turns ripping apart the holiday paper to reveal the presents beneath. Gale almost cried after she had opened the heart locket from Daniel that held a picture of his father. She gave Kate a big hug for helping Daniel pick it out.

  Kate smiled at the happiness around her. She’d never thought a holiday could be like this. Not about things or wants, but about love. The presents weren’t about what was inside, but more the affection they represented. The thought and love that had gone into finding the perfect gifts.

  She didn’t know how she’d ever been so blessed as to spend her holiday—and hopefully her future—with these people. It seemed like a dream she hoped never to wake up from. A Christmas gift she’d been asking for her entire life. And now, thanks to Grant and Daniel, she’d finally received it.

  “Kate, dear, aren’t you going to open a present?” Gale raised her coffee cup to her lips, taking a sip.

  “Uh…” Kate looked down at the five presents at her feet stacked together, like little boxes of hand-wrapped love. She hated to open any of them. The love they expressed meant far more to her than anything that could be inside them.

  “Go ahead, open one up,” Gale encouraged.

  “Okay.” Kate didn’t want anything else. Having Grant and Daniel was more than anyone deserved. But if Daniel or Gale had taken the time to shop for her, the least she could do was open the presents.

  Daniel reached down into the heap, picking out one gift from the stack. “This is from me.�
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  Her heart stopped beating. She stared down at the box Daniel held up for her, small enough that it easily fit in the palm of her hand. Her fingers shook as she accepted the gift from him. She ripped apart the decorative Santas dancing across the wrapping paper, revealing what she’d dreaded and hoped to find.

  Popping the top of the small square, she sucked in a deep breath. A diamond sparkled up at her. The Christmas lights from the tree twinkled across the stone’s multifaceted surface and the gold band surrounding it.

  In front of her, Daniel dropped to his knee, his eyes focused on her. He reached for her hand, his grip firm and warm. She almost melted beneath his touch.

  “Oh, my God.” Gale covered her mouth with one hand.

  If Kate had had the strength to speak, she would have said the same thing. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest that her ribs hurt. All Daniel’s hints now made sense—all the little comments about marriage and the future had been gearing her up for the moment he’d give her this ring and hope she’d say yes.

  But that had all been before this weekend. Before he and Grant had decided to share her. Before she’d reunited with the man who had broken her heart. Before she and Daniel had agreed to move here, to give this place and this multi-partner relationship a try.

  They were only a few hours into this relationship. They couldn’t possibly be ready for marriage yet, if they ever would be. Kate had trouble believing that Grant could ever handle another man owning her—at least the legal part of her—over him.

  She looked over at Grant, his body hard as stone, his face a blank slate, devoid of opinion. He focused his stormy eyes focused on the wall behind his brother.

  With the fingers of her opposite hand, she touched the bracelet, the one he’d placed around her wrist only an hour ago in the barn, before he’d fucked her brains out while she sucked down his brother. The bracelet that told the world—and more importantly her—that he owned her. Completely.

  “Kate, sweetheart, I bought this for you almost a month ago. I can’t imagine anyone else I would want to spend the rest of my life with. And after this weekend…” He swallowed, his lips trembling a little as he spoke. “I feel that way even more. You’re the girl for me, Kate. Forever.”

  She focused on breathing. She stared down at the man she loved kneeling before her. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and be with him forever. And for the first time since she’d met Daniel, she felt capable of loving him as completely as he loved her. She hadn’t been able to do that before. Her heart had been too broken. But now those cracks had mended, and Kate wanted to give Daniel all her love.

  Could a relationship as complicated and confusing as theirs last forever? Or were they just setting themselves up for heartache farther down the line?

  Kate might be a masochist in the bedroom, but she wasn’t one when it came to her heart.

  Beside her, Grant reached for her free hand, squeezing it in his. His grip was strong, confident, so like Grant, and her stomach fluttered. She looked up, meeting his gaze, shocked not only by the kind, gentle touch but also by the moment that he’d decided to offer it.

  The corner of Grant’s mouth kicked up, just a slight tuck up that would have been unperceivable to anyone else. He dipped his head slightly toward Daniel, squeezing her hand a little harder.

  All the air left her lungs in one giant whoosh. Her heartbeat sped up. Grant was encouraging her, pushing her to accept his brother’s proposal. The last string of her resistance snapped. If Daniel wanted her to marry him, and Grant agreed, what argument did she have to say no? Too much love, too much affection, too much happiness? Surely none of those reasons held water.

  “Yes.” She threw herself into Daniel’s embrace. She kissed his throat, his cheeks, before going for his lips.

  They still had a lot to work out. She doubted that the negotiations would ever end between the three of them. Being caught between two brothers would always require some work. But in that way they were like every other couple in the world. And the fact that Daniel and Grant were both willing to try was all she needed.

  Gale let out a cry of glee, jumping up from her chair and almost upending her coffee. Kate burrowed tighter into Daniel, fighting the urge to duck at the noise. She’d never heard anything quite like it.

  “See? I told you.” She slapped her oldest son on the arm. Gale jumped up and down, stamping the balls of shiny wrapping paper around her feet flat into the carpet.

  Grant nodded. “You were right, Ma. She is a keeper.”

  Kate smiled back over at him then threw a glance up at Daniel. The ‘for both of us’ went unsaid.

  Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

  Valentine Next Door

  Willa Edwards

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  “You need to get out of there, buddy,” Brett declared.

  Jeremy huffed into the phone. He didn’t need his best friend to tell him that. He’d been back in his childhood bedroom for three weeks now, while the damn bone in his leg healed. Being waited on by his mom, unable to even leave the house, was driving him stir-crazy. After years of moving from place to place searching out the next great photo, sitting still was taking a serious toll on his mental state.

  “Are you offering to let me stay at your place?”

  “Fuck no. I like you, dude, but not that much.” Brett chuckled into the phone. “I’m not giving you a sponge bath.”

  They both laughed. Best friends since elementary school, they’d done a lot for each other, but they had their limits.

  “I can bathe myself, dude.” It required a plastic garbage bag and a few strips of duct tape, but he could do it. “I’m not that handicapped. I just couldn’t get up and down the stairs to my place.” His third-floor walkup in the city had seemed cool and Bohemian before his injury. Once he healed, he’d be looking for a new apartment in a high rise with a doorman and an elevator. Maybe a condo in a neighborhood that would be good for families.

  He’d been thinking a lot about the future since his injury, not that he’d admit it to his buddy. Maybe it was the staying still, or maybe it was the injury itself, but the call of the road had tamed down to a gentle breeze. The idea of coming home to someone was starting to sound appealing. If it was the right person.

  “Isn’t there somewhere you can go for a little while? Just for a break.” Papers rustling echoed over the phone.

  Brett must be at work. The man worked from dawn to midnight some nights. Not that Jeremy could say much. He put in a lot of hours at his job too. But at least it wasn’t in an office.

  Jeremy knocked his fist against the cast on his right foot. “Can’t drive with this thing, and I won’t get far walking.” All he could do was sit and think. About everywhere he’d been and where he might be going next. He’d never been much of a thinker. He was a doer. Whenever he’d seen what he wanted, he’d gone after it. Now, all he could do was spin his mind in circles.

  “There’s got to be something you can do,” his friend declared.

  But the words didn’t register with Jeremy. All he heard was the slam of a door. He stilled. His heart sped up and his cock perked to attention. It was a sound he knew well. A sound he’d waited for so often as a teenager and had now begun to anticipate each night since returning home. It was one of the few joys he’d had since he’d been stuck back in his childhood bedroom.

  Next door, Mrs Valentine, the school librarian and the star of his every adolescent fantasy and most of his adult ones, had shut her front door. He held his breath, waiting for her to walk through the house to her bedroom that stood across the small twenty-foot lawn from his own.

  “Mrs Valentine’s home,” he whispered, even though, logically, he knew she couldn’t hear him through the walls of two houses.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, dude? Mrs Valentine?”

  Brett groaned, and Jeremy understood his pain. Just the thought of Mrs Valentine had Jeremy’s balls tightening and his dick hard.
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  “You were always the luckiest shit in school to live next to her.” Brett’s voice rumbled in his ear.

  The sound distracted Jeremy—momentarily—from the beautiful sight before him. Jeremy wasn’t the only one who’d had a crush on the school librarian.

  He waited with bated breath as she walked into her room then shut the door behind her. Mrs Valentine always changed as soon as she got home from the library, switching from her pumps, tight pencil skirts and curve-hugging button-down blouses, into more relaxed sweats or jeans.

  And he got a front-row seat for the action. As a teen, it had been one of his favorite times of day. As an adult, it was starting to become the same. Thank God the woman had never discovered blinds.

  She stepped into the middle of the room, her tiny bare feet curled into the plush carpet. Standing in front of the dresser mirror, she dropped her hands to her chest, her nimble fingers unbuttoning her shirt. The pale color was perfect against her exotic caramel complexion. Each released button showed off a new inch of flesh. Even from his vantage point across the yard, her skin looked soft and kissable.

  Nothing about Mrs Valentine had changed in the ten years he’d been away. Not her habits, her figure or her ability to strike him deaf, dumb and blind with her beauty.

  She tossed the white shirt to the floor. She slid her hands behind her to unbutton her skirt, thrusting her chest forward, her ample breasts threatening to overflow from her white-laced bra. The very edge of one nipple almost escaped the frilly trim, tempting him to insanity. She twisted the skirt around her waist, released the zipper then pushed the fabric down her full hips—hips that would be just the right size to hold onto as he pounded into her from behind. From this angle, he couldn’t see her ass but he knew it was plump and round. The kind of ass he’d always loved. He’d do almost anything for the opportunity to explore those hills and valleys.