Her Protectors: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Victoria Belle

  Wyatt collapsed, cursing.

  “Aw, what a shame,” Kingston said in a pleased tone.

  Wyatt said nothing, his gaze still enrapt on Britt’s breasts.

  “This isn’t easy, you know,” she griped. “Considering all you guys are ogling me while I’m just trying to… stay... up… ugh!”

  She collapsed to the ground with a groan.

  “Winner!” Kingston and Wyatt chanted, coming over to give me a hearty pat on the back.

  Although I didn’t feel like a winner – not yet.

  “You ok?” I asked Britt.

  “I’m fine,” she said, getting back on her top with a smile. “That was actually pretty fun.”

  “Yeah, boobs make everything better,” Kingston agreed.

  “Not what I meant.”

  “We have something to ask you,” I blurted out to Britt before I could stop myself.

  Suddenly, the room went very, very quiet.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Probably better if we showed you ourselves,” Wyatt said, taking her hand.

  “Why are you taking me to your storage room?” she asked as he stopped in front of a door.

  “Because it isn’t a storage room anymore,” I said, reaching past them to open the door.

  As the door swung open, I stepped beside them so I could see Britt’s face. Her dark eyes registered shock, then awe as she took in the art-covered walls and watercolor bedspread in the small space. “This is beautiful. But…”

  Her confused gaze sought-out mine. “It’s not for me, is it?”

  “If you want,” I said. “You’re welcome to move in here.”

  “You’re basically here every night as it is,” Kingston pointed out.

  “I…” Her smile was rapidly falling. “This is so fast.”

  “Yeah, but it works,” I said, taking both her hands in mine. “We work. All of us, together.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say yes,” Wyatt said. “Or that you’ll at least think about it.”

  Britt’s smile was broken. “I want to. I mean, this is the nicest thing anyone’s done for me, but….”

  “Before you answer,” Kingston said. “Can I just say one thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I just say how completely out of the blue this thing with you hit me? How I never would’ve thought for a million years I’d come across a girl like you, a girl I could be myself with – the good, the bad, and the ugly? How, after everything with Hailey blew up, I thought, that’s it, never again am I going to…”

  “You said that already,” Britt cut in quietly, sadly.

  “I know I did. And I’ll say it again. Screw timelines, conventions, what’s reasonable. What has ‘reasonable’ ever got anyone? I don’t care if this has gone fast – when you know, you know. And I know. You and us, Britt, it works. Maybe not forever, but if the next few years are anything like these past few months have been… then I’d put my bets on them.”

  “He’s right,” I said, stepping forward and taking her hand. “You changed me, and every day I realize it a bit more. After Melinda and Ben, I thought women couldn’t be trusted. Thought loving again was just a road straight to disappointment. But you surprised me. You surprised me into love and, I don’t care if it’s too soon. I do – I love you. And I know it’s risky and a whole lot of crazy. This whole thing is. But I don’t care.” I smiled. “I’d rather risk the best relationship I’ve had yet – then not try at it at all.”

  “Guess this is me, then,” Wyatt said quietly. “For as long as I can remember, I figured relationships were for suckers. For people not happy in themselves, who had to find a way, a meaning, outside of themselves. I always thought it would never happen to me – truly deeply caring for someone.” He adjusted his glasses. “Guess I always figured that was what it’d be for me, just a never-ending series of girls I never clicked with, never opened myself up to. It was safe that way.” He turned his attention toward Britt. “Until you. You came and – quite frankly – blew away all my expectations. You didn’t demand, you didn’t take. You were just there, enigmatic and beautiful and unexpected in all the best ways. And if I didn’t tell you that, tell you how much you mean to me now, then that would be the greatest mistake I’ve made yet, maybe ever.”

  He took her other hand. “All this to say, would you consider moving in on a trial basis – maybe keep your apartment for another month or so?”

  Britt’s pressed together lips were giving way to a smile. She looked around at all of us, her eyes shining.

  “I didn’t even know how much I needed you all; for someone else to believe in me the way I never had. And for three amazing guys like you, all to have fallen for me.” Her gaze lowered, her head shaking. “I never could’ve expected to be half so lucky. And now,” Her lower lip trembled. “I’m just afraid of losing you all. But hearing you all say that reassured me, and I can’t say no anymore. Not to the strength of my feelings for you, and certainly not to what you offered today.”

  “So that’s a yes to the trial month?” Kingston said, his grin all ready.

  Britt kissed me on the cheek. “That’s a hell yes.”

  EPILOGUE

  Britt

  One Year Later

  Talk about time flying. How exactly did one month turn into twelve?

  As our limo took us through traffic, I could barely contain my nerves. My leg was shaking with pent-up energy.

  “Don’t make me kiss you to calm you down,” Kingston warned.

  “Don’t ruin her lipstick,” Wyatt groused.

  “Why not?” Kingston grumbled back. “That way, she can wear the purple one I bought instead – which we both know suits her more.”

  “Guys,” I said. “Don’t make me spend the whole night with Bradley and leave you two out in the cold.”

  “Sounds pretty reasonable to me,” Bradley said, smiling.

  As the boys pouted, I patted them. “Only joking. But seriously, I’m nervous enough without you two fighting.”

  “I guess you have waited a long time for this,” Wyatt allowed.

  “Try a whole year,” I said, grinning. “If I would’ve had any idea what sending those sketches of mine did would’ve caused.”

  “You wouldn’t’ve believed it,” Bradley said, kissing me on the cheek. “A gallery show a few months later, and then a spread in NYC’s magazine? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”

  “It was Wyatt’s online pictures and site for my art that really got the word out there,” I said, smiling at him.

  “I was well-reimbursed,” he said loftily, raising his brows back at me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said smirking.

  “Speaking about reimbursed,” Kingston said. “Tonight’s after-gallery-party plans are what – three for three?”

  “If I have the stamina for three in a row,” I said, smiling thinly.

  “Oh, believe me,” he said, patting me with a significant look. “You won’t regret holding out.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” I said, resisting the urge to kiss him. Damn lipstick.

  “Speaking of,” Bradley said, taking my hand. “This traffic isn’t getting any better, though I have something that could take your mind off things for the next fifteen minutes.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, come in the back with me.”

  “Aw, seriously Bradley?” Kingston protested.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t ruin her lipstick,” he said with a wink.

  Really, I was intrigued. Bradley was a gentleman through and through. What exactly could he have planned for us back here?

  No sooner had the screen behind us closed, then was Bradley getting on his knees.

  “Bradley?” was all I could say, between my legs wettening with expectation.

  He pulled down my panties, putting his hand where they’d been. “Would you let me do this for you?”

  That was all I needed to spread my legs and let him get at
me. “Um, okay.”

  And then, all words were useless, because his finger was entering me and his lips were kissing me. The play of sensations was pure torture. The probing insistency of his finger in my pussy with his lips and tongue’s sweet caress on my clit. The invigorating scrape of his stubble on my bare skin.

  “Fuck,” I moaned, but Bradley didn’t let up for a second.

  His fingers jabbing in me deeper, his mouth flowed around me expertly, kissing and nibbling an unbearable path up and down my thighs, on and around my pussy lips.

  My hands raked through his hair. Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, he kissed his way back to my clit and unleashed his mouth-suckling finger-fucking full-force.

  Fuck, was Bradley good. He didn’t go down on me super often, but when he did, it was nothing less than heaven on Earth. He was a god with his finger and tongue, and my body was nothing more than his pleasured servant. Already, nonsensical syllables were rushing out of me, while my body was jerking with uncontrollable spasms.

  And yet, still he had more, even as I came once – that only served to egg him on further.

  When it was over, Bradley cleaned me up, put my panties back on, and cradled my still-overcome head in his arms. “Told you I wouldn’t ruin your lipstick.”

  All I could do was smile woozily at him. It took me a few minutes to come to fully.

  When we got back into the other section of the limo, the limo had apparently edged its way a bit closer to the gallery, while Kingston and Wyatt were eyeing us with smirks.

  “Enjoyed yourselves?” Kingston asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  My phone went off, and I answered it. “Simone!”

  “I’m at the gallery, everything looks amazing, there’s so many people here!”

  “Shit, we’re caught in traffic.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You still have, like, an hour. Just think everyone got here early to make sure they snagged a spot.”

  “Guess we’re lucky the café let us both off today.”

  “Oh please,” Simone said, and I could hear her cheeky smile over the line. “You’re Britt Sanders, New York’s hottest up-and-coming artist. Paula wasn’t about to prevent you from going to your own art show. In fact, oh my god, she’s here too!”

  Kingston was squeezing my ass with an expectant look.

  “Gotta go,” I told Simone. “But see you soon!”

  “See ya!” she said and hung up.

  “What?” I asked Kingston.

  “Well,” Kingston said. “Wyatt and I had a talk.”

  “And?”

  “And we agreed that the traffic is going to keep us struck in here for another 30 minutes at least.”

  “So…”

  “So you two can go first,” Wyatt said with a wave of his hand and a crooked smile. “That way, you get the best for last.”

  I could only gape at them.

  “That a yes?” Kingston said.

  “This may be a bit much on the day of her gallery opening,” Bradley commented.

  “Says the man who already got his time with her.”

  I sat there as Kingston smiled at me. I stared out the window at the city I thought I’d known.

  Just like this life I thought I’d known. The one that had, ever since I met Bradley, Kingston and Wyatt, turned out surprise after surprise for me.

  Things weren’t just ‘ok’ for me anymore – weren’t just barely bearable. This life – as wild and unexpected as it was – had turned out to be just the thing that I hadn’t realized I’d wanted.

  “You ready for this?” Kingston asked, undoing his trousers.

  “Hell yeah,” I said, smiling.

  The End

  HER INDPENDENCE DAY PREVIEW

  1

  Ashley

  I could feel the eyes of most of my students—minus the ones in the back row who were whispering in what they thought were quiet voices about their plans to meet on the corner at lunch to smoke—on my back as I scrawled the page numbers on the white board for them to open their books to. As I turned, the room was filled with the sound of rustling paper as everyone opened their copies to the directed pages and waited as I perched myself on the edge of my desk.

  We’d been reading George Orwell’s “1984” for the last two weeks, and I’d been hoping that my time as a substitute teacher for this particular English Literature class would be over by now for two reasons: one, they were a rowdy group of inner city kids that loved to push my buttons, and two, we had stumbled upon the first sex scene in the book, and I had no interest in reading it aloud to a class of kids who were very likely more familiar with the sexual terms in the novel than I was.

  But there I was, dressed in my yellow skirt, pink flats, and white blouse, about to read an intimate scene to them about Winston Smith getting steamy with the dark-haired beauty, Julia.

  Curse Mr. Patrick for having to get his appendix removed this week and having complications.

  I flipped open the book and glanced up at the students. Some had started reading ahead and were looking up at me expectantly. For them, this would be like watching one of those terribly awkward movies where you just can’t look away but you’re cringing the whole time.

  I swallowed, crossed my ankles, and started reading.

  I stuttered and blushed before we were even a page in, and the kids started giggling. Thank God this was my last day before my vacation.

  “Maybe we should just skip ahead a bit,” I mumbled as I flipped through the next couple of pages in a desperate search for a more vanilla scene. Maybe Winston would start talking about Big Brother again soon, and I could dive into that. It was more important subject matter anyway.

  “Oh, come on, Miss Rowe,” one of the kids groaned in the back.

  “Don’t skip the good parts!”

  My cheeks burned hotter. No. I wasn’t doing this. Mr. Patrick could indulge his crew of horny teenagers when he came back to teach if he wanted. This was far out of my comfort zone. I slapped the book closed and put it behind me on my desk, and then I walked around to collect a stack of papers that I had left on my chair out of sight of the students.

  “Such a prude!” one of the boys said. It was innocent teasing, I knew, but I blushed anyway because it was true.

  I handed out the pop quiz to shut them up.

  It only sort of worked. They erupted in groans of protest, which I ignored as I plopped down behind my desk and adjusted my skirt around my knees. “No talking. This should take you to the end of the class, so you’d better get started. And put your phones away.”

  As pencils started frantically scribbling on the paper, I pulled my phone out of my purse, which was neatly tucked under my desk, and smiled at the dozen notifications from my group chat with the Thomas brothers.

  My ex-stepbrothers.

  I scrolled through the messages I’d missed. I shouldn’t have been reading them in class because they were so racy and steamy that I probably turned an even brighter shade of red than I’d been when I was reading the sex scene.

  “Can’t wait to see you, Ash.”

  “Don’t forget your bikini.”

  “Bikini? Who needs a bikini?”

  I suppressed a giggle and shook my head at their incessant flirting. Ethan, Jesse, and Dean had been in my life since I was young. My mother met their father at a fundraising event when I was eight, and the two of them were married within a year. I went from being an only child to sharing my mom and my house with three boys, and being the tomboy that I was, I flourished with their company.

  I’d loved every minute of my childhood. The four of us spent most of our time outside, and I had a lot more freedom because my mom knew I was safe when I was out with the boys. Dean, the oldest, was six years my senior, so he’d been a teenager when I met him. He’d taken to me pretty quickly because of how competitive I was and how much I thoroughly enjoyed kicking his younger brothers’ asses at any and all sports we played.

  I was faster than
them, too. Minus Dean. He had longer legs than me and a serious advantage. But by the time I was fifteen, I could catch up to him, which embarrassed him a bit because he was in military school at that time. But I was fast. Always had been.

  “Are you on the ferry yet?”

  “Get your ass back to St. Simmons, Ash. My brothers are losing their damn minds.”

  “Tell those kids they’re on their own and just come back to us.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek as I texted back. “I miss you guys, too. I’ll see you soon enough! Xoxo.” The hugs and kisses might have been a bit much, but then again, everything we did was a bit much.

  I’d been attracted to my stepbrothers for as long as I could remember, and I’d been struggling with that attraction for equally as long. It was taboo, and it should have been gross. But it wasn’t. They never felt like brothers to me but, rather, three best friends who always looked out for me. The flirtation had become a lot worse after I turned eighteen. We hid it from everyone we could, especially our parents, and the only person who knew how I felt was my best friend Lulu, who I was also excited to see upon my return to St. Simmons. She didn’t think it was all that strange, but she was never one for conventional relationships and had been known to be seeing several people openly at one time.

  Things would be weird this time around. My mother and stepfather had just divorced. That was why I was going back in the first place, to check on my mom and make sure she was holding up okay. They’d been together a long time, nearly two decades, and it had come as a shock that Ian had cheated on her. The relationship crumbled quickly after that, and now, neither of them were on speaking terms.

  IT sucked for the Thomas brothers and me because there were no more family events for us to use as an excuse to spend time together.

  But it was also a good thing because we technically weren’t stepsiblings anymore.

  I left the group chat, still smiling like an idiot as the students worked on their pop quizzes, and I blinked at the little notification box that popped up and said I had twenty-seven unread text messages from Nick Myles.