“You promised to do something extra special tonight,” I whispered, looking at Travis over my shoulder. “But then you got hurt, and my body won’t slow down, even though I know you need to rest.”
Travis scoffed and lifted me off Eli’s lap, cradling me against his big barrel chest as he started walking through the house. “Tonight isn’t the night for that, but it’s for something deeper. Something more permanent.” He vowed, as Eli nodded his agreement as he followed us, “Tonight, we make this real. We make this everlasting. We make this forever.”
I swooned at his words, trying to convince my brain to believe them.
“Tonight is the first night of the rest of forever.” Eli affirmed, clicking switches as we walked into a dark room, and a soft glow emanated from lamps on two bedside tables on each side of a massive bed. “Tomorrow, we start making changes to how we all live. Tomorrow we become one unit.”
God. I was eating every word up like a desperate bitch, needy for their devotion and commitment.
“Prove it.”
And then I was surrounded by them.
Their touches.
Their scents.
Their words of devotion and longing.
For the first time in years, I believed it too. In the dark warmth of Travis Hayes’s secret home in the woods, I became theirs.
No more doubt.
No more thinking it was too good to be true.
I made love for the first time in my life.
To not just one man, but two best friends.
Two of my best friends.
And I’d never be the same.
I dreamed of coffee.
And maple syrup.
The warm combination of the two melted into something more sensual as warmth built in my belly as if Travis’s hand wasstill there, against the soft spot below my belly button he seemed to obsess over touching when we slept.
But when I rolled over, the soft morning light filtered in through my lashes, and the sheets were cold where his big warm body had been all night. In pure stubbornness, I refused to open my eyes and accept that my time in the warm, cozy cabin was coming to an end, so I reached back toward the side that Eli had snuggled me from all night. Yet the same cold void met my fingertips, and I growled in discontent, forcing my eyes to open.
It hadn’t been a dream, that much was clear until the room came into focus. Travis’s room.
It was bare except for the freshly sanded wood and white walls surrounding the bed and end tables. But it was perfect.
And I hated how I could already envision the things I’d do to it if I had any say in decorating it. In turning it from a house into a home.
Trav and Eli insisted that was exactly what was going to happen, but I still felt like it was too far gone to believe. Especially in the morning light without their bodies distracting me.
For a long moment, I just lay there, staring at the slant of sunlight spilling through the wooden shutter blinds on the windows, listening to the low sounds coming from the grand living space beyond the open bedroom door.
Pots clinking, and a soft hum I recognized as Travis’s.
It felt—domestic. And that felt dangerous.
I eased my body out of the cold sheets and pulled on my Net Crashers Jersey that had somehow materialized from the living room where I left it last night. As soon as it fell over my skin, however, I realized it was far too big to be mine; the fabric fell to my knees, and the sleeves hung far past my fingertips.
I walked into the bathroom and turned my back to face the big mirror hanging over the sink and smiled to myself when I read the name above the logo.
