by Sofia Daniel
Swallowing hard, I shook my head.
“Since we stepped out of the treehouse and headed back to the academy,” Leopold replied. “I’m so relieved you’re unhurt and unblemished from the staged accident.”
Warmth filled my chest. There was more to Leopold than innuendoes, a hot body, and a devastatingly handsome face. With a smile, I scooted to the other end of the bed and rested my head on the pillows.
Sebastian spread another towel from my neck to the middle of my ribs, another around my belly, and then he straightened the towel over my hips. He added two more to cover my thighs and lower legs before stepping back to admire his handiwork.
All the muscles in my body relaxed, and I smiled up into his twinkling, green eyes. “What’s next?”
A shirtless Leopold emerged from the bathroom, holding a bowl of steaming, lemon-scented water. He draped another towel over his shoulders.
My gaze lingered over his prominent pecs and bulging biceps. “Where are the rest of your clothes?”
He set the bowl down on the bedside table, giving me a view of the erection straining through his boxer briefs. Without meaning to, I licked my lips, hoping that the garment would come off sometime during the bed bath.
“It wouldn’t be any fun if my clothes got splashed.” He reached into the bowl, pulled out a washcloth, and squeezed off the excess water. “I’ll start at the top, and Seb can start at the bottom.”
Sebastian scrambled out of his clothes, but all my attention fixated on Leopold and what he intended to do with that washcloth.
He pulled my arm out from underneath the towel and ran the warm, damp cloth down my shoulder and to my wrists. Then he covered me up again, revealing only my hand.
As Leopold ran the cloth over each digit, he murmured, “You have such elegant fingers. All the better for gripping my cock.”
I suppressed a smile. “Is this a variation of Little Red Riding Hood?”
“One where the woodcutter teams up with the wolf?” Sebastian settled at the foot of the bed and eased the towel off my feet. He ran his warm washcloth over my soles and dipped the corner between my toes.
It tickled. “Y-you tell me.”
Sebastian’s mouth engulfed my big toe, encasing it in wet heat.
A bolt of sensation shot up to my core, making its muscles clench. I had no idea any part of my foot could be an erogenous zone. Sebastian ran his tongue on the underside of my toe, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Was this how men felt during blowjobs?
Sebastian made a zig-zagging motion with his tongue that sent pleasure shooting about in all directions. If he could do that with my feet, I didn’t want to imagine how I would react when he moved his attention further up my body.
“Ah!” My eyelids fluttered closed, and I arched my back.
Leopold placed my hand on the mattress and held the edges of the towel covering my breasts. “May I?”
I cracked open an eye to find him smirking down at me with an expression that told me that he would probably send a long time on this part of the bed bath. I gave him an eager nod.
He slid the towel up over my breasts and let it gather around my neck. Then he unzipped the sports bra and pulled the fabric open. A slight draft swirled around my exposed flesh, making my nipples harden.
His breathing quickened, and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. “You have the most tremendous tits.”
My stomach tightened, and I waited for a Little Red Riding Hood-related punchline, but one came. Leopold ran the washcloth in circles around one breast, not venturing anywhere near my puckered nipples. All throughout, his breathing became ragged, and his gaze kept darting from my eyes to my exposed flesh.
“Fucking hell, Wills,” he muttered. “You’re bloody gorgeous.”
My heart rippled with delight at the compliment. Sebastian’s tongue dipped in the gap between my toes and sent an explosion of pleasure in my core. I drew in a sharp breath between my teeth then let out a moan.
As Leopold’s circles tightened, the edge of his damp washcloth grazed my nipple. The pulse between my legs pounded with anticipation. I couldn’t wait for him to put aside the wet fabric and touch me directly with his fingers… just as he had done the last time he had me on this four-poster bed.
With his hands caressing my ankle, Sebastian pressed a trail of kisses along the arch of my foot that sent pleasurable shivers running up and down my spine. I clenched and unclenched my fists. This was insane. He hadn’t even touched me anywhere personal, yet wetness gathered in my folds.
As his kisses traveled up the inside of my calf and up to my knee, his other hand ran up my thigh and hooked itself over my panties.
A strangulated noise of encouragement stuck in my throat.
“Willow?” Sebastian lapped at a sensitive spot above my knee. “If you want either of us to stop or slow down—”
“I-I’m… it’s fine!” I blurted.
With a chuckle, Leopold leaned over me and held my other nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Something tells me this Little Red Riding Hood isn’t complaining.”
I bit down hard on my bottom lip to suppress a moan. Leopold was right. I might not be experienced, but I knew exactly what I liked. And these two gorgeous guys driving me to distraction with their hands and lips and tongues were getting close to sending me over the edge.
Sebastian pulled at my panties, and I raised my hips off the bed. As soon as the scrap of fabric slid down my legs, he tossed it over his shoulders and growled.
Palpitations resounded through my chest and down to my core. Except for a few strategically placed towels, I was nude, exposed, and at the mercy of two half-naked men.
Leopold dropped the washcloth in the bowl with a splash and swirled his tongue around my nipple. With his outstretched hand, he ran gentle, massaging strokes over my other breast.
“Oh,” I moaned.
Sebastian parted my thighs and trailed a barrage of licks and kisses and gentle nips up my inner thigh, each sending ripples of pleasure through my core, which spasmed and clenched. He took his time, running tight circles over my sensitive flesh with the pads of his thumbs, making me shudder with desire.
A hot, fevered breath puffed out from between my lips, and any remnants of my headache vanished into the ether. Who knew that bed baths could be so therapeutic?
By now, Leopold’s tongue made flicking motions over one nipple, and he rolled his thumb and forefinger over the other. I reached out and ran my hand under his tight abs, under the waistband of his boxer briefs, and gripped his erection.
“Relax,” he said as he ran his tongue over my nipple. “Neither of us need you to reciprocate. We can take care of ourselves.”
“I still want to touch you.”
Leopold groaned. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll soon come to a sticky ending.”
Sebastian’s chuckle sent a rush of warm breath over my wet folds. “I don’t know about Leo, but I have myself in hand right now.”
I suppressed a giggle. It was no wonder they were best friends. Did they bond over girls and puns?
The first flick of Sebastian’s tongue on my swollen clit had me arching off the bed with a loud cry.
“Too much?” he murmured.
“N-no,” I rasped. “J-just right!”
Leopold snickered. “That’s the wrong fairytale.”
I would have made a quip about the woodcutter and the big bad wolf making Little Red Riding Hood a bowl of porridge in the morning, but Sebastian spread me wide with his thumbs and ran the tip of his tongue over my throbbing nub.
A panoply of sensations wrapped around my core, traveled up my quivering belly, and seized me around my throat. Sebastian’s tongue continued its steady glide over my most sensitive part, reducing my entire existence to the feel of his mouth on my clit and Leopold’s mouth and fingers on my nipples.
“Oh, f-fuck!” I said from between clenched teeth.
“All in due course, my dear.” Leopold stretched a nipple
to the point of pain, but my scrambled brain interpreted the feeling as pleasure. He thrust his hips and slid his hot, thick erection back and forth against my hand, which clenched around it.
Sebastian let out a deep, rumbling growl that made the muscles of my core tremble. He lapped at my clit and circled my entrance with the pad of his finger.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered whether he was the wolf in this scenario. It didn’t matter. I twisted my hips in a silent plea for him to penetrate me.
“What do you want, Willow?” he murmured against my sensitive bundle of nerves.
“P-please. I need your fingers.”
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Leopold muttered.
Sebastian slid two long fingers into my core, stretching me open. My muscles clenched around the thick digits, and a contented sigh escaped my lips. While he slid in and out of me, he licked and flicked and circled my clit, making me tighten around those stroking fingers.
Pleasure wound around my core, building in intensity until it seized me like a constrictor. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Sebastian continued this maddening pace, forming a rhythm that pushed me to a limit I was sure would cause something to rupture.
When he added pleasured moans to the mix, the pressure squeezed me so tight, my entire body shattered.
Spasms seized my body, each pumping out waves of pleasure so fierce, a scream ripped from my lips. Somewhere on the edges of my awareness, Leopold’s thick member pulsed, and he spilled warm fluid onto my hand. Moments later, Sebastian’s groan joined my cries.
When the violent convulsions eased into pleasant waves, my muscles melted into the mattress, and I relaxed into the rest of my orgasm. My eyes fluttered closed, and I smiled through the aftershocks.
Part of me still couldn’t believe they’d given me so much and demanded so little in return. I was the luckiest girl in Cumbria and right now, the most sated.
Sebastian lay at my side and pressed a kiss on my lips. “How are you feeling?”
“Fantastic.” I kissed him back. “But that wasn’t a bed bath.”
Leopold crawled up my body and peppered kisses at the juncture of my neck and shoulders. “You’ve clearly missed the moral of the story.”
“Which is?” I asked.
He kissed a trail up my neck and along my jawline. “One way or another, Little Red Riding Hood always gets eaten.”
Chapter 5
The daily bed baths continued, growing in intensity each day as my health improved. Sebastian and Leopold also took time to escort me around the grounds, helping me regain lost strength, and they brought my books from the academy, so I could catch up on the week of work I had missed.
A few days after we had installed ourselves in the treehouse, a middle-aged couple arrived at the door with bags of shopping. Sebastian walked down to their Land Rover and helped them carry the rest of the supplies back to the treehouse.
I sat on the sofa, enjoying a somewhat ticklish reflexology massage from Leopold. “What’s this?” I whispered.
“Christmas dinner,” said Leopold.
“Aren’t you going to spend it with your family?”
“I avoid them when I can.”
“Oh.” My brows drew together. On the surface, it sounded callous, considering Sebastian had lost all but one family member to a plane crash, and I’d lost Mom and Dad to a car accident and Ashley to betrayal.
Leopold kept his gaze on my feet, seeming to focus on his task. When he glanced up and met my eyes, a frustrated breath huffed out of his nostrils. “You probably think I should be grateful to have parents, but my family situation what anyone would call loving or traditional.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The door opened, bringing in a gust of cold air, and Sebastian walked in with the middle-aged man. Both held huge boxes. I cringed at the thought of them walking up icy tree trunks with heavy items.
Leopold raised my feet off his lap and stood. “Do we have the right kind of spirit this year to set the Christmas pudding alight?”
A feminine giggle made me glance at the doorway. The middle-aged woman clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Mr. Brunswick! What you need to do is get the spirit good and hot, then you set it alight.”
“So you pour flaming spirits on the pudding, then?”
“Yes, sir. Remember that this year, or you’ll have to do with mince pies and custard again.”
“That’s where you went wrong,” muttered Sebastian.
“I’ve brought whiskey and brandy from the cellar along with a selection of red and white wines. Is there anything else you need?”
Shaking his head, Leopold pulled an envelope from the back of his pocket and handed it to the woman. “Thank you, Matilda. Merry Christmas.”
A flush colored her cheeks, and she slipped the envelope in the pocket of her coat. “Thank you, sir.”
After they left, Leopold explained that Hessington House was one of the Brunswick Bank’s corporate homes, which served as a base when the Board of Directors held meetings in the north of England. When I asked why he preferred the hideout to a palatial house, he just smiled and muttered something about enjoying his freedom while he could.
On Christmas Eve, we awoke to dense snow surrounding the treehouse. Leopold finally showed me the staircase at the back of the verandah, and we all went out to build a snowman.
As we packed the snow into large balls and rolled them around the ground to increase their size, it struck me that this was the happiest I’d been since Mom and Dad had died. A lump formed in my throat. This was probably my happiest moment since Mom had told us about her breast cancer diagnosis.
I glanced across the clearing at Leopold and Sebastian, my chest tightening with guilt. Did I deserve to laugh and smile my way through my first Christmas without my family? In all my time at the hideout, I’d only given Uncle Trevor, Aunt Hortense, and my little cousins fleeting thoughts. And I hadn’t spared a single consideration for Ashley.
“What’s wrong?” Leopold placed his arms around my back.
Sebastian turned from his giant snowman and frowned. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but he didn’t speak. Perhaps he already knew what I was thinking after having experienced many Christmases without his family.
I rubbed my head. “Sorry for worrying you both. My aunt and uncle are probably wondering where I am.”
Sebastian’s features relaxed. “I can drive you to their place if you like.”
“Thanks.”
We put the snowman on hold, piled into Sebastian’s jeep and made a two-and-a-half-hour trip through the snow-covered mountains to Uncle Trevor’s apartment.
Aunt Hortense opened the door, bringing with her the sound of children screaming over a blaring television. Her face twisted with displeasure, and she placed a hand over the back of the newborn on her shoulder. “Trevor’s out, buying powdered milk.”
“Oh.” I glanced into the apartment’s interior. “When will he be back?”
“Not for a while.” Her gaze darted from Leopold, who stood at my right, to Sebastian, who stood on my other side. “I can’t let you in.”
“Come on.” Leopold placed an arm over my shoulder. “We can wait for him in the jeep.”
As we stepped out into the street, snow fell in thick flakes, making my stomach twist. The longer we waited, the more treacherous our journey back to the hideout would become.
I looped my arm through Leopold’s and Sebastian’s. “We’d better set off. I’ll speak to him another time.”
“Are you sure?” asked Leopold.
I nodded. “Let’s go back to the hideout and make preparations for tomorrow.”
The boys treated me to therapeutic bed baths both in the evening and on Christmas day, chasing away the last of my melancholy. They’d even bought me the latest iPhone to replace the one I had lost.
In the following week, the headaches receded to the point where I no longer felt pressure in my skull or throbbing pains. Since the neu
rologist had told me to finish the course of medication, I continued taking the pills.
In the few days before term started, anxiety nibbled at the edges of my mind. The boys had filled my heart with their love and attention during our time at the snowy oasis, and I wasn’t ready to return to Brittas Academy.
On Sunday afternoon, I rested on the sofa watching Leopold and Sebastian move boxes from the treehouse into the jeep, and a pang of regret struck me through the chest.
Leopold sank into the leather seat next to me and placed a hand on my thigh. “Headache?”
I shook my head. The painkillers and stress-relieving orgasms were doing a tremendous job. “What if the person who had tried to kill me made another attempt?”
He glanced up at Sebastian, who was carrying my case to the door of the treehouse.
A pained look crossed Sebastian’s features, and he fixed his gaze onto the wooden floor. “Between Leo, Kash, and me, there’ll always be one of us at your side.”
Later that evening, the boys escorted me to my room in the west wing, where a few of the girls in my year strolled back from dinner. Ashley hadn’t been to my room since her initiation, but dread rolled through my belly at the thought of her lurking inside.
I shook off those paranoid thoughts, stepped into the room, and switched on the light. An envelope lay on my desk.
“What’s that about?” asked Sebastian.
“Do you want me to do the honors?” asked Leopold.
“Would you mind?” I asked.
“Not at all.” He strode into the room, picked it up, and tore it open. After pulling out a slip of paper and reading its contents, his face fell. “Not good.”
“What does it say?”
“Please visit Mrs. Benazir’s office on Monday at 7 am.”
The next morning, the scent of lavender filled my nostrils as I stepped into the headmistress’s office. Mrs. Benazir glowered up at me from her desk chair, and behind her stood the imposing, dark figure of Miss Claymore. The deputy headmistress’s face twisted into a grimace that made me wonder if she was constipated.
My insides knitted themselves into a series of complicated knots, and the blood vessels around my brain pounded in time with my quickening heart. How would I tell them that one of their students had tried to kill me when I had no evidence and no recollection of that disastrous Monday night?