Gage snorted. “Don’t put ideas in her head,” he muttered, jabbing at a bit of sausage with unnecessary force. “She’ll try it just to spite you.”
“That sounded suspiciously like you’d care,” Harry observed.
Gage shot him a look. “I care about having a woman around here,” he said. “I care about myself.”
Silas yawned from his end of the bench. “If she goes,” he drawled, “I’m going with her. I’m too old to learn my own laundry now.”
“Time to go,” Dax muttered, “we’re late,” shouldering his pickaxe and rope as the dawn grayed the window.
Harry groaned, wiping the breakfast from his chin, “Another day in the dark. Lookin’ for jewels. When we have the most precious gem of all at home.” He teased, “Try not to miss us too much while we’re gone, Snow.”
They laughed, the tension dissolving. But Snow White filed the answers away. None of them had said they would stop her. None had hinted at locking the door. The choice sat in her chest like a stone and a feather both. Most days, she stayed because leaving would have meant walking back into a world where she was either hunted or utterly alone. Some nights, as she lay between Silas and Drew, or with Bennett curled at her side and Harry’s foot occasionally nudging her calf, she realized she also stayed because she wanted to see what it meant to be wanted without it turning instantly to danger.
Each man, over the months, carved his own pattern against her life. Dax always came to her with a certain distance. He used her quietly, a few times a week, often when the others were asleep or already drifting toward it. He would whisper her name at the edge of the bed, and she’d feel the mattress dip as he slid in behind her. His hands were always careful—never bruising, never grabbing. But he never looked at her face. He would guide himself into her from behind, one arm sliding under her neck to pull her back against his chest, the other bracing beside her head. His movements were steady, controlled, as if he were measuring out his pleasure by the inch. Sometimes, when she risked a glance over her shoulder, she saw his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his jaw tense enough to crack. Her instinct was to tease him once, to make him meet her eyes when he was inside her, to see what it would do. But when the moment came, when she felt him above her, breath hot against her ear, she kept her gaze on the wooden beam overhead. So she shut her eyes andlet him touch her as carefully as a man handling something that didn’t belong to him.
Gage was the opposite. He never came to her alone. He joined her when there were already hands on her, when her body was already readied by someone else’s touch. He’d slip into the edge of the frenzy with a low, frustrated growl, his contributions all sharp angles and blunt need. He never spoke softly. He didn’t kiss; he bit. His hands were rough, his thrusts quick and heavy, the sounds he made primal and unpretty. She always felt used when he left her, breathless and panting, chest heaving as he rolled away. And yet, even there, something shifted over time. He never left a mark. If anyone else’s hands strayed somewhere she clearly didn’t like, his voice would be the first, surprisingly, to cut in with a curt “Leave it” that snapped them back. He growled the most when she laughed with someone else.
Once, Harry had coaxed a rare giggle from her by getting flour all over his beard while “helping” with the bread. The sound had filled the cottage, light and unguarded. Gage, walking past on his way to the washbasin, had scowled so hard the room cooled by several degrees.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“Your face will be if you don’t unclench,” Harry shot back, smearing a bit of dough on Gage’s arm.
Gage had cursed him out, but there was something tight and tangled in his gaze when it slid over Snow White’s smiling mouth. Later that night, his thrusts into her had carried a certain extra sharpness, as if he were trying to scrub the memory of her laughter from both their bodies.
Harry was, unexpectedly, the first to make her feel… cherished. He teased, yes. Filthy jokes, dramatic moans, theatrical compliments. But under the playfulness was a core of warmth that never seemed to dim. He was the one who brought her a dress. He barged in one evening with a bundle under hisarm, eyes alight. “Found it,” he announced, tossing it onto the bed where she sat folding socks. “In a trader’s pack headed for the next town. Had to win three rounds of cards to keep it from some tavern girl—you’re welcome.”
She unfolded the dress carefully. It was simple—a soft, faded green cloth that had seen better days—but someone had taken care to keep it mended. The neckline was modest, the sleeves tight to the wrist, the waist nipped in just enough to hint at curves without shouting them.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, running her fingers over the fabric. “Harry, I can’t—”
“You can,” he said. “And you should. You deserve to feel like yourself sometimes, not just like…” He gestured vaguely at the pile of gray and brown she usually wore. “Besides, nobody else around here is gonna wear it!”
He wasn’t wrong. The first time she put it on, the men went quiet in a way that startled her more than any catcall would have.
“You look…” Bennett began, then seemed to lose his words entirely, blushing down to his collar.
“Like some lady in a painting,” Silas finished for him. “Or one of those storybook princesses you read about.” The word made her shoulders tense. She forced a laugh to cover her uneasiness.
Harry stepped closer, tipping her chin up with one knuckle. “You look like you,” he said simply. “And that’s more than enough.”
He kissed her then, not with the urgency of the others but with a slowly building heat that curled her toes. His hands mapped her curves through the fabric, reverent and playful by turns.
With Harry, sex began to feel less like a debt and more like a shared adventure. He made her laugh in bed as often as hemade her gasp, always attuned to her responses, always willing to change pace or try something different if she tensed. “You good?” he’d murmur sometimes, lips at her ear as he moved inside her. “Too much? Not enough? Tell me, Snow.” No one had ever cared, in bed, whether she was “good” in any way but accommodating.
Silas became her constant. He was the one she most often woke up beside, his breath slow and deep against the back of her neck. His brand of intimacy was unhurried, half-dreamed, like everything important in life could be tasted best in the quiet spaces between. On countless nights, she would stir to find his body pressed along hers, his front warm against her back, his hand resting low on her belly. Sometimes he would shift closer, the unmistakable evidence of his desire nudging her gently. “Shh,” he’d murmur when she rolled in surprise. “Go back to sleep.” Then he’d rock into her slowly, almost languidly, filling her with careful movements that barely woke the bed. There was no grabbing, no growling, just the steady slide of bodies already so familiar with each other’s shapes that they fit without fuss. It was easy, with Silas, to forget the bargain entirely and just feel.
Bennett’s attachment grew quickest. He hovered near her in small, earnest ways: always the first to hand her a cup of water when she finished hauling buckets, the one who quietly took over beating rugs when he saw her arms shaking, the one who slipped the best piece of meat from his own plate to hers, thinking she didn’t notice. He rarely initiated sex himself, too shy to be the first to reach. But when the others did, he was nearly always there at the periphery, not pushing forward so much as filling in the gaps. If someone’s hands were rough on her hips, his would be smoothing over her shoulder blades. If a mouth was on her throat, his would be at her wrist, pressing soft kisses to the thin, fluttering skin there. If she gasped in a way that sounded too much like pain, his eyes would find her face atonce, silently asking if she was all right. Bennett was also the one who most consistently cared about her pleasure as well as his own. Sure, the others would rub her nipples from time to time, but Bennett spent more time kissing, rubbing, and touching her body than any of the others.
Drew remained her softest spot. At first, his inexperience had made him awkward, his hands unsure of where to rest, his movements within her tentative and light. He would look at her with wide, questioning eyes, as if waiting for visible approval before every new touch. He always finished terribly quickly, his inexperience shining through. She found herself guiding him almost without thinking: moving his hand a little higher on her hip, adjusting his angle with a small shift of her own body, advising him quietly. Their moments together felt less like a transaction and more like a lesson taught and learned in secret, both of them discovering what they liked or disliked. With Drew, she felt less like an object to be taken and more like a fellow thief sharing a secret.
As the weeks rolled into months, the sharp edges of her fear dulled. She still startled at sudden noises outside. A snapped twig could send her heart racing, memories of Hunter’s knife and Liora’s comb flaring bright. Sometimes, hanging damp shirts by the stream, she’d look up thinking she saw a shadow in the trees, only to realize it was only the play of light and leaves.
She never told the men about the queen. About the poisoned comb, the corset, the ordered murder in the forest. When they asked where she was from, she kept her answers vague. “A village far from here,” she’d say.
“What’s it called?” Dax would ask.
She’d shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going back.”
