“Clean?” Silas asked lazily.
“I can try,” she said. “I can learn.”
Gage looked unconvinced. “What kind of woman doesn’t know how to cook or clean? What are you—some kind of princess?” he said sarcastically.
Dax exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. The men exchanged a series of looks that spoke of years spent together, their conversations long since distilled into small gestures. Some saidwhy not. Some saidthis is trouble. Some saidtrouble might be better than the way things are. “We don’t have room or need for charity cases,” Dax said finally, voice firm. “We work hard. We’ve made a life here. We don’t need anything to change.”
Snow White’s throat closed. “I won’t be a burden,” she said. “I’ll earn my place. I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ll do anything you need around here. Please. I’m—” She hated the tremor in her voice, but couldn’t stop it. “I’m desperate. And I’m alone. And I have nowhere else to go.”
Silence.
Harry, always the first to speak—tilted his head, considering her. “Awh, let her stay,” he said. “She can learn to cook and clean.” Snow White opened her mouth to protest—she really,truly couldn’t cook—but before she could, he added, “Or at least stand in the kitchen and look pretty while someone else does.” A couple of them chuckled.
“I don’t know how to cook,” she said honestly. “Isn’t there anything else I can do for you?”
There it was. The opening. Gage stepped closer to Dax, lowering his voice to a whisper, though Snow White, with ears honed in castle corridors, still caught some of it. “Let her earn her keep. We provide the hearth and home; she provides the …warmth.” His gaze slid back to Snow White’s partially exposed chest. “Seems fair.”
Dax’s jaw tightened. “Have you lost your honor?” He whispered back.
“How many years since any of us has seen a woman?” Gage shot back under his breath. “We’re not saints, Dax. We’re miners. We break our backs all day and sleep in the dirt. This is the first soft thing to walk through that door, ever. Think of it as a morale booster for the men.”
Dax’s eyes flicked to Snow White again. She met his gaze, seeing the calculation there. The muscle in his cheek ticked. Dax looked at Gage, then at the leaves blowing by outside the window. They couldn’t feed a useless mouth. But the way Gage was looking at her, the way the air in the room had shifted, they were starving men — and she was a feast. He exhaled. “All right,” he said aloud, turning fully toward her. “We have an offer.”
Snow White’s stomach churned. “An offer,” she repeated carefully. “Oh thank you.”
“We aren’t a charity,” Dax said bluntly. “We’re not unkind, but we’re not fools. Food, a roof, a bed—those are worth something. We don’t need another pair of hands enough to justify the risk of bringing a stranger into our home. Especially hands as unskilled as yours seem to be.”
Her fingers tightened on the blanket. “So, what do you need?” she asked.
The other men looked at each other, wondering if they were all starting to realize the same thing.
Dax’s eyes did another quick sweep of her, more clinical than Gage’s but no less aware. “We’re men,” he said. “We spend long days underground and longer nights alone in our beds. It’s been… a very long time since any of us have had the company of a woman.”
Bennett coughed, face flaming. Harry grinned outright. Gage’s eyes darkened with open hunger. Silas just looked faintly amused. Drew’s gaze skittered away, then back, curious and uncertain.
“There is a price,” Dax went on, voice even, almost businesslike, “We are six men alone in the woods. We have needs, unfulfilled needs. If you want our care and protection, you provide our comfort. All of it. Whenever we ask.”
He held her gaze. Her cheeks burned. He could see in her eyes she understood more than he expected.
Bluntly, Dax laid out, “You let us have your body. For pleasure. When we need. How we need.”
The words were crude in their honesty, but there was something… clean about it, too. No pretense. No hidden blades in compliments. No poisoned combs disguised as gifts.
“You mean—” She swallowed. “All of you?”
“Yes,” Dax said. “All of us.”
Her heart pounded. “Whenever you want?”
“When we want,” he agreed. “But you will be fed, clothed, and kept warm. We’ll make sure you don’t come to harm. No one here will hit you or starve you or lock you in a room. If you say no to something, we listen. No one will force you. You’ll be… ours. But we’ll be yours, too. In our own way.”
“A pact.” Silas blurted.
“We’ll be respectful,” Bennett promised.
It was twisted and imperfect, and yet more straightforward than anything she’d ever been offered in the castle. “And if not?” she asked quietly.
“Then you eat the bread you already took,” Dax said, “and we’ll point you toward the nearest road. You and your horse can take your chances out there. No ill will.”
