by Jan Springer
“Sweet mercy, but you are strong!” she whispered as she brushed snow off her cheeks and eyelashes.
To her surprise, he began to laugh.
“You look like one of those white snow bunnies.”
I do?
She gazed down at herself. Yep, snow clung to her jeans, her coat and, well, everywhere. She grimaced as some wet snow slipped past her collar and dripped down her back. Man, that was cold!
“You’ve got a white beard and white eyebrows. You look like Santa!” He managed to say as he kept laughing.
Hmm, white beard and white eyebrows, did she? She looked like Santa Claus?
She resisted the urge to push him into the snow and start laughing. That would be so childish, and yet…
With one quick push to his chest, he was sailing through the air. He landed on his back with a plop. Powdery snow puffed up from his sides and the surprised expression on his face was priceless.
He began to laugh again.
Warmth and joy bubbled and something cold and hard that she hadn’t even realized was buried deep inside her heart suddenly broke off and melted away. His laughter was contagious and happiness swept through her in such a huge overwhelming wave that suddenly it was very easy to crack a genuine grin. It felt good. Really good.
“Come on! Help me up!” He held out his gloved hands.
She hobbled over to him, thrilled that she wasn’t falling over her snowshoes. She reached out and grabbed his hands. His grip was firm and without warning he gave her a powerful yank. She screeched as she lost her balance.
This time instead of falling into the snow, she fell right on top of Dan! Her body aligned perfectly over his length and her face was inches from his. Suddenly a sobering look caressed his face. He stopped laughing the moment his erection pushed against the juncture of her thighs.
Oh my. Having his hard body beneath hers was nice.
“Oops,” he whispered.
His eyes were a dreamy green and matched the surrounding pine trees. And his eyelashes were black and so long. He blinked and she noticed his eyes darken as his cock continued to grow beneath her.
Her breath went kind of funny in her chest as his lips slightly parted. His hands settled on her hips. They were strong and confident, his palms hot. Suddenly she wanted to know how it would feel having his mouth moving against hers. Before she knew what she was doing, she lowered her head. She closed her eyes.
His breath was warm as it caressed her lips. A sweet tremor burst through her as her mouth melted over his. His scent invaded her senses and his lips were firm and demanding, making every nerve ending in her body zing to life. As he pushed his tongue into her mouth, a shock of pleasure burst through her. Her tongue tangled with his and a sharp pang of need pooled deep inside her pussy.
A guttural sound from somewhere deep inside her chest echoed through the cold air. He kissed her harder and desire rocked her. Shivery sensations moved up her inner thighs and her legs tightened. She pressed her lower belly against his thick arousal and a thousand pleasure vibrations twisted around her. Heat whipped through her much in the same way as when she dreamed about them.
From somewhere far off, she could hear the purring engines from the snowmobiles, warning her that Brady and Rafe were driving closer. She knew she should stop kissing Dan, but he made her feel wonderfully heady and as aroused as she had during that kiss she’d shared with Brady that first night she’d arrived.
The hum of the vehicles grew louder, but she just didn’t care if Brady and Rafe found them like this.
She gyrated her hips against Dan’s leg, loving the incredible pleasure bursting inside her.
Suddenly Dan broke the kiss on a groan.
“We have to stop,” he whispered against her mouth.
Stop? She didn’t want to stop. She wanted to keep going. She was about to press her mouth against his again, but Brady’s shout stopped her cold.
“Hey you two! You should take all that arm and leg tangling indoors or you’ll freeze your asses out here before too long.”
Mercy! She hadn’t realized they were right here! She turned her head to find both Brady and Rafe sitting astride their snowmobiles not more than twenty feet away from them.
Despair shot through her. She expected to be admonished for her behavior, but neither of the men seemed angry. Instead, teasing glints twinkled in their eyes and sweet smiles lifted their lips. They actually looked as if they were enjoying themselves watching them kissing in the snow.
Dan didn’t seem embarrassed or mad either as he licked his lips. “I hope there’s plenty more where that came from.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He winked and angled her to the side of his body and managed to stand very quickly. He held out his hands and she grabbed them.
He hoisted her to her feet with ease.
“Nice-looking tree,” Rafe complimented as they neared the snowmobile.
“JJ picked it.” Dan replied.
Brady nodded and said nothing as Dan untied her snowshoes and then his own. But she could feel the heat of Rafe and Brady’s gazes as they watched her straddle the padded bench seat. Suddenly she had the inkling that their perceptions about her had changed. She wasn’t exactly sure why she had that instinct, but she possessed an intriguing awareness about them now. Before, she’d managed to contain it to her dreams and fantasies, but she couldn’t do it anymore.
Theirs was not an employee-employer relationship anymore. Not even friends. Something deeper, darker and very sexual was brewing inside of her. Brady’s kiss that first night had unleashed it, and now Dan’s kiss had ignited it.
Those naughty ménage fantasies she’d been having suddenly seemed a lot closer to reality. But JJ wasn’t sure what she should do about it.
* * * * *
Rafe noted JJ had been unusually quiet since they’d returned with the tree. Sure, outwardly she seemed happy that the tree fit perfectly where she wanted it to go. She’d acted like an excited kid when they’d all pitched in to hang the ornaments and then the Christmas lights.
She’d even talked them into popping popcorn as they wolfed down their sandwiches and drank coffee while she started preparing supper. Then they’d strung the popcorn onto strings and hung them on the tree. Afterward, she’d gotten kind of quiet again.
He wondered if maybe she was worried that she might have another panic attack—or perhaps she was shy because Brady and he had caught them kissing.
Actually, he’d enjoyed watching Dan and her in the snow. Brady, it appeared, had also been enthralled. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off JJ since they’d come back. Hell, none of them could keep their eyes off her. She was like a beautiful fire and they knew they shouldn’t touch her because they would get burned.
Since that kiss with Dan, he sensed the easygoing relationship between all of them had changed. He didn’t know if it had transformed for the better, or if what was now blossoming between all of them was fragile. Would things would fall apart if the three of them decided to take her to the next level?
* * * * *
“I swear it is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen,” JJ whispered as she set a bowl full of mashed potatoes on the dining table then sat between Rafe and Brady. She simply could not get enough of looking at it. The ornaments Jenna had sent were so cute. They weren’t the cheap plastic ornaments, like they had in prison. These were the traditional fragile glass ones that she remembered from when she’d been a kid. The colorful ones that shattered if you dropped them.
There were angels, frosted pine cones and round ones with designs. Traditional colors of green, red and gold. Everything matched so beautifully. Everything glittered and her heart just about burst with happiness as she kept staring at the tree.
Spoons clattered as the guys helped themselves to the mashed potatoes, beef steaks, applesauce and vegetables she’d whipped up for them. She ignored them and just stared at the tree. If she tried hard enough she could almost hear her mother calling out her name, telling JJ Santa had
come and left her a present. Could almost see her standing in front of the tree in her slippers and robe, her heart-shaped face glowing as she smiled and picked up the lone present.
Then she’d turn to JJ and envelope her in a hug and kiss before finally handing her her gift.
“Merry Christmas, sweet pea,” she’d say softly. So softly. So tenderly.
“I would think Christmas is pretty tough being away from your family,” Brady suddenly said as he scooped the last of the mashed potatoes onto his plate.
Brady’s comment made her frown. Made her remember how fun it had been when she’d been a kid and it had just been her mom and herself. Christmas had been so normal. Because they’d been poor, she’d received one present each Christmas, but that had been so exciting.
She missed her mom. She wished her mother could have met these guys. She would have loved them immediately.
JJ frowned as sadness swept over her.
“What’s wrong?” Rafe’s concerned voice crashed through her melancholy.
She shook her head and forced a smile as the three men stared at her with worry. Oh crap! She was ruining their evening and that was the last thing she wanted to do.
“Just remembering things,” she replied.
She hoped that Brady would get the hint that she didn’t want to talk about her past. She grabbed the empty bowls and stood.
“Anyone for more?” she asked.
A loud round of affirmation for potatoes but not vegetables had happiness whipping through her again. She hoped the thread of her past would drop, so she stayed a little extra longer at the counter scooping the potatoes into the bowl.
When she returned, the guys quieted and stared at her.
“If you want to call your family, that’s not a problem,” Brady said.
“I don’t have any family.” It was an automatic response. She’d gotten used to saying it over the years to the incoming inmates who asked. Usually they dropped the subject, but Brady was like a dog with a bone.
“Everybody has family. I’ve got a crazy sister who loves matchmaking all our siblings. There’s eight of us. And Dan has two sisters and Rafe has two adopted brothers and two adopted sisters plus he had a house full of foster siblings over the years. You have no brothers or sisters?” Brady asked.
“None that I know of,” she said. She placed the bowl onto the table and reluctantly sat down. It appeared the men were very curious about her and it was time to come clean.
“Parents?” Rafe prodded.
She shook her head. “Dead.”
“Aunts, uncles, grandparents?” Dan asked.
“Nope, just me.”
The guys looked at each other with perplexed expressions on their faces. It was obvious that they could not comprehend that she had no one.
“Wow, I sure know how to kill a conversation, don’t I? It’s why I’ve been avoiding talking about my past.”
“We’ve noticed,” Rafe said softly.
Since she had been here, they had asked, but she’d always managed to deflect their questions and change the subject. Today, she hadn’t been able to. Perhaps that panic attack had weakened her resolve.
Despite the sorrow clutching her heart, she managed a bright smile. She was like that—the gloomier she got inside, the cheerier she tried to be outside. It was a coping mechanism. She couldn’t stand people feeling sorry for her.
“Well then, you’ll have to consider us your family, right boys?” Dan said with a huge grin.
The other two men vehemently agreed.
“And we come with a lot of family. They drop in unexpectedly all the time,” Rafe chuckled.
“Last year, Brady’s sister, Jenna, who is the oldest of all eight, dropped in here over the holidays . It was the first time she’d been able to make it out this way, right, Brady? Anyway, we call Jenna the matchmaking one for his family. She’s always trying to find the perfect mate for her siblings. So far, she has been unsuccessful,” Rafe said.
“She did not approve of the fact we had no Christmas tree,” Brady said with a laugh.
“Hence the ornaments,” JJ added. “I love your sister already.”
“You should. Without her, we wouldn’t have you,” Dan said with a soft voice that melted like delicious chocolate over her senses.
“How do you mean?”
“She runs an employment agency and has contracts with the prison system,” Rafe stated.
“And we were surprised when you showed up because we were expecting two guys, umpf.” A nudge to Dan’s belly from Rafe made Dan shut up.
Three bashful faces stared at her.
“You were expecting two men?” Oh dear. Now that she thought about it, Brady had stared at her kind of oddly when he’d first found her sitting on her suitcases on the lake. And then he’d been angry. She’d thought it was because she’d been drunk. The guys had looked funny at her too when they’d first met that night. And she suddenly remembered talk about there being a mistake. How in the world had she forgotten that?
“We didn’t think to ask if JJ was a man’s name. But we did ask for a couple of men,” Dan replied.
“But the questionnaire that you filled out for the Freedom Run program was exactly what we were looking for and, come to think of it, didn’t say if you were a female or male. I would suspect Jenna had something to do with that,” Brady said with a reassuring smile.
“Yeah, your answers to that questionnaire had us sold, sight unseen,” Rafe said quickly.
JJ frowned. She wasn’t sure if she liked the idea that they hadn’t been expecting her.
“So you guys like drunk and drugged women then?”
The men didn’t say anything. Their looks were uneasy. It appeared they hadn’t wanted her to know she’d been sent here by mistake.
“Hey, sweetheart, don’t be sad. You had me the first minute I saw you,” Rafe said tenderly.
“You had me the minute I tasted your chocolate pudding,” Dan said with a wink.
“Ah, the way to a man’s heart is through his eyes and stomach,” she joked.
The two men turned to Brady. She followed their gazes to Brady, suddenly eager to hear what he had to say.
Brady crossed his arms in front of his chest and shifted uncomfortably on his chair. His face possessed that same shyness that she’d noticed that first night when she’d been drunk and asked him to put on his cowboy hat.
“Oh, come on, Brady. Tell us. When did JJ have you?” Dan prodded.
Brady looked directly at JJ and her tummy flip-flopped wonderfully at his heated look.
“She had me at our first kiss,” he said.
Oh.
Heat blasted into her cheeks. Excited whistles erupted from Dan and Rafe.
“What? Rafe guffawed.
“And here I thought I was the only lucky guy who got a kiss.” Dan shook his head with what she hoped was mock anger on his face. He clutched a fist to his heart.
“Hell, I’m the one who should be pissed off,” Rafe complained. “I haven’t even been kissed.”
“I’ll kiss you,” Dan said and smacked his lips together, making a squeaking sound.
“Get out of here.” Rafe rolled his eyes and laughed.
“Maybe I should kiss you, Rafe. So you don’t feel left out?” JJ teased.
“Pucker up, my man. She kisses real nice,” Dan chuckled and slapped Rafe’s back.
A burst of self-consciousness bit into her as all three men suddenly focused their attention on her, their gazes expectant. Goodness, she had just been teasing them.
They really wanted her to kiss Rafe? She looked at Brady and caught herself. Why should she care what he thought? And why did she suddenly want his approval?
To her surprise, he gave her a nod. He wanted her to kiss Rafe. She could tell by that same intense look of interest he’d displayed when he’d caught her kissing Dan.
Dan watched her keenly. She gazed at Rafe. His expectant smile created some wonderful trembles inside her lower belly. Sudde
nly, the idea of kissing Rafe in front of the other two men was a real turn-on.
She stood and Brady and Dan cheered.
“Oh, Rafe! Looks as if you are gonna get your kiss,” Dan said with a grin. Arousal flared in his green eyes.
Brady settled back in his chair and folded his arms casually across his chest. His blue eyes were dark and intense as he studied her.
Heat swirled low in her belly.
“It’s because she’s saved the best for last,” Rafe replied with a wink.
JJ’s heart hammered crazily as she walked around her chair and stood in front of Rafe. His brown eyes dilated with sexual hunger. Something lusty whipped through her. Her breathing quickened and hot blood coursed through her veins.
Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her around the waist. She let out a yelp as he pulled her onto his lap.
Instantly she felt the hard length of his arousal pressing against her pussy and ass. Liquid heat tore through her as she suddenly had a vision of Rafe undressing her and then the men taking turns making love to her right up against the kitchen counter.
Intense warmth burned into her cheeks. She shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts. It was inappropriate and yet…
“I’ve been waiting for this kiss for a long time,” Rafe whispered. His voice sounded so tender, and her instincts told her that he would be an attentive lover.
“Come on, JJ, kiss him,” Dan whispered.
Excitement swirled around her. Rafe was suddenly a magnet. Her lips tingled. She wanted his sexy mouth. Wanted to feel his lips on hers. Just one kiss. Just to see what could have been.
She lowered her head and closed her eyes. Her lips melted over his.
Sensations swamped her. She lifted her hands and splayed them over his warm chest. His heart pounded against her palms. One of his hands slipped into her hair and he pressed his palm against the back of her head, bringing her deeper into the kiss.
His tongue forced her lips apart and she slanted her mouth harder against his. Her skin felt sizzling. His scent turned her on. He smelled so good. Like dark forests and fresh air and happiness.