A few heavy minutes pass as snow blows against the window next to us.

“Okay,” I say in a whisper after I can’t stand the quiet any longer.

“Okay what?”

“I think I understand now. You and him. Us.”

His hand leaves my hair and traces a warm trail from behind my ear to my shoulder. “I deserve the worst, Greer, but I don’t want it. I don’t want you to leave me.”

I startle. “Who said anything about leaving?”

He frowns. “You were so angry—and with good reason—I just thought—”

“That I’d leave you? Like Embry did?”

“Yes,” he confesses.

I squeeze his hand. “I’m angry. I need to be able to be angry sometimes. I need to be able to demand answers. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to stay.” A deep breath with the next admission. “Especially because I love Embry too. He and I haven’t…please believe me, Ash, we haven’t touched since that night in Chicago.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Ash says in a voice I feel down into the pit of my stomach. “That’s something neither of you could hide from me, not face to face.”

“So what happens now?” I ask. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“Where do you want to go from here?”

He looks up at me, and then all of a sudden he’s standing with me in his arms and we’re walking toward the bed. He lays me gently on my back and crawls over me, brushing the hair out of my face as his hips settle into the cradle of mine. I try to stifle my moan at the feeling, but it doesn’t work.

“What else were you feeling that night?” he asks.

“What?”

“On Christmas Eve. You said your heart was breaking, but what else did you feel when you watched Embry and me? Did you feel…” his fingers dance down from my face to my breast, where my nipple hardens instantly through the soft chiffon “…curious? Did you wonder what it might feel like to be in between us? Did you wonder what it would look like to see Embry’s mouth wrapped around my dick?”

I don’t know how to answer, I don’t know which answer is best for our future or what he wants to hear, so I tell him the truth. “Yes. Yes, I was curious. I was—” Ash’s fingers are moving down to my hip now, burning warm trails through the fabric, and it’s hard to concentrate “—I was turned on.”

“Did it make you wet?”

“Yes,” I whimper.

“Are you wet right now?”

But he doesn’t wait for me to answer. He finds out for himself, and I can tell by his pleased grunt that he likes what he’s found. I spread my legs wider for him, and within a few heartbeats, he’s got his flushed erection in his fist, stroking it and kneeling up over me.

“On your stomach,” he orders. I flip over, shivering when I feel my dress dragged up over my ass, and shivering even more when I feel the fat tip of his cock against my folds. He pushes in, just the right amount of rough, and I practically purr with the sensation of his thick shaft spearing me.

He brings his body down over mine, his lips near my ear and his arm under my breasts so he can grab and squeeze all he likes. Only his hips move, deep and powerful, all muscle and deliberate, unhurried strokes.

“I don’t know what the future looks like,” he says, his breathing still calm and even, as if he were sitting on a couch and not shoving eight inches of hungry flesh inside me. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do next. The three of us are never going to stop loving each other and we’re never going to stop being jealous. But at least we all know now.”

He shifts the angle of his hips and I gasp, and then the hand that was plumping my breast slides down to my clit and starts rubbing. I bury my face in the covers and moan.

“Would you like it if Embry were here right now?” Ash asks. I can hear the smallest ragged edge in his voice, as if he’s aroused by his own words. “Underneath you while I’m on top? The two of us pressing against you, demanding satisfaction and attention? And when we’ve taken everything we can from you, would you like to watch us fuck each other? You should see how fast Embry comes when he’s being fucked, Greer, it’s really quite something.”

I’m moaning almost non-stop now, squirming into the blanket, the image of the three of us fucking too much for me to bear. The image of Ash buried in Embry’s ass lighting me on fire. I come suddenly and hard, clenching around Ash’s cock as my hands claw at the blankets.

“Oh, so you do like that,” comes Ash’s voice in my ear. I can tell by the erratic thrusts of his hips that he’s getting close himself. “I like it too. The thought of you two together makes me so fucking hot—” He breaks off and pulls out, and the bed shakes as he strokes himself to a hard, furious finish.

He lets out a rough groan, and wet heat shoots onto my ass and the small of my back, and I realize I’m smiling into the blankets. I don’t know if it’s the catharsis of Ash and I coming clean with each other or the mild display of dominance or just the good old-fashioned sex hormones, but all the feelings from earlier tonight are washed clean and hung out to dry. Still there, not vanished, but no longer so dirty and unsettling, no longer secret.

Something cool and silken dabs at the semen on my skin, and I turn my head to look up at Ash. “What are you using to do that?” I ask scoldingly. “It better not be your bow-tie.”