The Arrangement

Yes, but hit or miss… you’ll love them either way.

I was about to further explore that line of thinking when Burke finally exploded. He slammed himself home, his balls clapping against me. I felt my pussy contract one last time, and then he was pulsing, shooting, grunting out loud as he held me against him.

Jesus…

Finally he withdrew, helping me smooth my dress back down. Immediately I could feel big, thick rivulets of warm come… dripping out of me from all sides. The guys still surrounded me, all smiles. Their chests were all puffed out, proudly enjoying the moment.

“There had better be a towel back in the car,” I breathed.

Chase chuckled as his hand slid into mine. “Ready to go home already?”

“Oh yes,” I said, pulling close against his arm. God, I really did love having them around me like this.

“We probably should,” said Nathan. “We’ve got a little bit of a ride.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll take some hot showers. I’ll fix us a snack. Then we can fall into the couch, watch a midnight movie…” I sighed happily. “Hey, do you think we can all sleep together tonight?”

Visions of stretching out on the floor in a sea of pillows filled my mind. Surrounded by skin, and warmth, and muscle…

“Yeah, why not?” said Burke. “Although with the launch going through our heads, I don’t think any of us are going to get much rest.”

I grabbed his hand on my other side and smiled. “Maybe that’s what I’m counting on.”

Forty-Nine

CHASE

The launch went as well as to be expected. Maybe even better than expected, which was hard to say since we had no prior experience.

Instead we spent the next few days glued to our monitors, watching as the sales ticked upward and the book climbed its way through the ranks. It was a very tense first week. We knew we should be working hard on marketing the second book of the trilogy, but it was just too hard to focus.

It was even more amazing to me how fast people could review a book. How we could dedicate months and years writing and developing something, and someone could just inhale it all in one or two days. Still, the reviews were overwhelmingly fantastic. We sat together and read them aloud at the end of the each day, knowing that every one of them was an important step in the direction of our ultimate goal: the coveted, best-sellers lists.

Promo by promo, we climbed past other books in our genre. Of course the addition of Juliana had added a taboo element to everything; a sexy, forbidden twist that hadn’t been there when we first started out. It rounded out the story though. Made everything so much more important, when writing a thriller with life and love on the line.

Also important: the fact we’d told Kayleen we loved her.

It wasn’t something we’d talked about doing, it had just sort of happened. But that was love. You couldn’t plan for it, you couldn’t fight or force it. Either it was there or it wasn’t, and in her case it was love times three.

And even better, she loved us back. Wholly. Equally. There was a warmth and openness about Kayleen — a deep caring that went beyond any of the relationships I’d had before. Whereas we each had one incredible woman to love, she had three men to take care of. Three distinct relationships to cultivate and feed.

And yet she handled it. Handled each of us in her own special way, as well as her job, too. Kayleen’s passion for cooking had been obvious from even before she’d become our girlfriend. She was doing what she loved, just as we were, only she was sacrificing a chunk of her business to help us with ours.

For this reason alone, we had to succeed. We had to reach our goals of becoming financially independent. Of flourishing enough to remain where we were, and to push past that to a level where we were doing even better.

And where we could do better for her.

By week two it was obvious our book was a hit. It had been described mostly as unique, edgy, and raw. Between social media and paid promos we’d pushed ourselves into the upper echelon, and were soaring toward getting picked up by independent news sources and outlets. If we reached that mark, we could coast a little. Or we could go even beyond that.

Our goal was to be noticed by agents. Picked up by a publisher. Having our book on actual shelves aside from the thousands of digital copies we’d sold, and through print on demand. But all of this depended on what happened next.

In the meantime we shared Kayleen more than ever. I think we turned to her for physical and emotional support; a welcome distraction from the stress of so much going on all around us. In the past our book was a ship, and we controlled the rudder. But now that our story was out there, sailing alone among the masses, everything was pretty much left to the winds. It was unorthodox for us, to be giving up that much control.

Having her there in the house with us was amazing, though. Seeing her smile at the end of each day, knowing she wasn’t going home. Knowing she was home. That she belonged to us.

And that we belonged to her, too.

It was nearly a month after launch when it happened: the book reached one of the top ten slots in one of the more prestigious lists. New sales flooded in. All new life was breathed into the sails. Burke came home and threw the newspaper right on the table, without even a word, and Nathan and I dropped our forks simultaneously. We grabbed for it together, almost tearing it in two…