She dialed Jeremy’s parents’ house, knowing he’d be there.
“Hello, Sue, it’s Erin. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to speak with Jeremy, it’s important.”
33
Ben pushed his parents’ front door open with his foot, his arms full of packages. Erin and Todd came in behind him.
His mother came in, wearing a nervous smile, wringing her hands. She saw Erin and smiled, going to her.
“You ready for this?”
Erin took a deep breath. “Which this do you mean?”
His mother smiled. “Going down to the prison, and I suppose this here too.”
“Both things scare the heck out of me. But I love Ben and I’m here to support him. As for the parole board, I’m trying not to think on it too much, but there’ll be so many family members there I think I’ll be okay.” Erin took Ben’s mother’s hand. “Thank you for asking. I know this is . . . difficult for you. Hard to understand. I’d expect for you to resent me.”
Annalee shook her head. “My boy is a grown man. He’s capable of his own decisions. I can’t promise it’ll be easy. But I love him just the same and if you’re his choice, I can live with that. Took me a while, I admit. But I watch him and he’s happy. A mother can’t ask for more.”
“Ben?” Cope came out and saw them all. He dropped a kiss on Erin’s cheek and nodded at his brother and Todd. “He’s out back, working on a new bench for the front porch.”
“Let’s go.”
“With all those tools? Are you sure?” Annalee asked nervously.
The point was moot anyway as Bill came through the back door. “Any coffee for a man frozen to the bone?”
They all went into the kitchen. Bill Copeland had definitely passed his genes on to his sons. He was as tall as Ben, and broad. Dark hair liberally salted with gray and piercing blue eyes marked his features. He had a cop’s countenance, wary, watchful, but open all the same. Ben knew he had that look, even when he hadn’t been a cop for three years.
“Hey, Dad.” Ben waved. It wasn’t that Ben didn’t think his father loved his sons. He knew their dad loved them. But Bill Copeland was not demonstrative. The hugs and kisses came from Mom and that’s how it was. Ben had never seen his father cry and Ben could count on two hands the number of times he’d told his boys he loved them. Bill was a man of few words. A family man, even if he didn’t kiss scraped knees.
“Hey there, son. Didn’t expect to see you today. Is someone sick?” Bill looked around. “Erin, is everything okay with the hearing? They didn’t move it up without telling you, did they?”
Ben liked that his father cared for Erin and for a moment he considered just not saying anything. But the circle of people who knew had gotten wider, as Lorie now knew. DJ wasn’t speaking to them at all. The others hadn’t heard yet, but it would only be a matter of time.
Erin had asked them both to reconsider doing this before Christmas, but had supported them in the final decision.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.”
Erin got off the plane at LAX, her heart thundering in her chest. It was a week before Christmas and she’d been dreading this for the past month.
Todd was in front of her and Ben behind. Cope had gone ahead and she was torn between wanting to laugh at the whole exercise and being comforted.
Adrian took her hand as they moved toward baggage claim. “It’s gonna be fine,” he murmured.
“Either way, I’m going to do this.”
Jeremy sent two limos to take them to the hotel. They’d all leave for the prison the following morning.
“This is the life,” Ben joked and she laughed, albeit tightly.
“It’s a good perk, I admit.”
“They’ll probably take it out of my contract,” Adrian said. “Nothing’s free.”
She shrugged. He was probably right.
“You can afford it.”
He brightened and leaned forward to snatch the sunglasses from her nose. “You’re the one wearing Versace shades. Hell, I’m wearing thrift store jeans and a T-shirt I’ve had since high school.”
“That’s because you’re cooler than me. I have to pay for it.”
“There she is,” Brody said softly.
“Sometimes I lose myself,” she said back.
“But we always find you.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
The hotel was understatedly elegant, a quality she appreciated. Jeremy had met them for dinner, along with his parents. Stilted and awkward wasn’t an adequate way to describe it. The amount of grief at the table made her want to choke.
They trudged up to their rooms, but once the door was closed, Ben locked it, looked to Todd and nodded. Both men turned their attention to her.
“Naked and on your knees.”
They turned and went into the bedroom.
With trembling hands, she obeyed. The sex in the last several weeks had been as frequent as usual but softer, more gentle, with each man speaking sweet words. With the stress of finding out about the hearing and then of telling their families, things had been more rushed.
Seeing this side to her men once again made her heart thunder as her body readied for them.
The chain Todd had given her swayed as she got to her knees.
Some minutes later they both returned, shirtless but still wearing jeans. Her pulse jumped at the sight of them. At the gleam of the ring in Ben’s left nipple, at Todd’s very flat belly with the tattoo bearing their initials marking the hollow at his hip.
Their lips were swollen and she wanted to moan at the image of them kissing as she’d waited there, patient and on her knees.
Todd approached with a blindfold that he put over her eyes gently, tightening it against the light. And just like that, her skin came alive as she lost her sight.
She heard the steps on the lush carpet as they circled her, and the dull thud and scent of hemp. Rope. Her lips opened on a gasp.
The heat from Ben’s body buffeted her back as he helped her to her feet. “I need you a little farther in the room. Two steps forward.”
She trusted him to guide her and then felt Todd’s hand, splayed across her belly, just above her mound.
The shock of an openmouthed kiss on her collarbone.
A hand on her shoulder, urging her to kneel, this time on a pillow they’d put down for her.
The rasp of the rope as it made the first seductive contact against her upper body.
‘Round and ’round it went. Around her body. Circling her arms. Binding her wrists. Between her legs, snug against the slope where leg met body, opening her cunt. Between her breasts and around to her back again.
She lost herself in the sensual array of the binding. The scent of rope and male arousal, the feel of fingertips contrasting with the rough hemp.
Her breathing grew deep and slow as her blood thrummed with the heady brew of hormones the rope always brought.
“So beautiful.” Ben spoke against her ear and she shivered.
And then the slither.
She heard the sound of the tails of the flogger, which Todd had grown to love. Leather on leather. She saw the move in her mind’s eye as he turned it in his hand. The low creak of the handle echoed in concert with her panting.
Her clit throbbed, extra-sensitive since the piercing. The cooler air of the room caressed her flesh as they moved, stirring the air.
She wasn’t expecting the first strike from the flogger, just barely touching her nipples. Absently, she thought about how good Todd had gotten with it.
Again and again, until her body heated with the blood rising to the surface. She wasn’t hurting, just hypersensitive.
Ben against her back, the texture of his jeans as he put his calves just outside hers.
“Shall I make you come?” he asked, licking up the side of her neck to her ear.
She swallowed hard, trying to find words. Instead she managed to nod and he chuckled.
Arching. Her back arched as she p
ulled against the ropes, toward where Ben knelt behind her.
Struggling against disorientation and loss of balance, until she remembered they’d catch her and she relaxed.
Until Todd shoved her thighs apart and his mouth found her pussy. A desperate moan surfaced as her fists opened and closed, wanting to touch the silk of his hair, to hold him to her.
Wave after glorious wave of pleasure rolled through her, sending her far away from herself even as the ropes, even as Todd’s hands on her thighs, even as Ben’s hands on her arms, kept her anchored.
She was picked up and carried, carefully; placed on a bed, still kneeling.
The blindfold was removed and she saw their actions reflected in the mirror opposite the bed. Tousled, flushed, nipples dark and tight. Wanton and desirable. Desired.
Tears stung her eyes when she found Todd’s gaze. He looked at her as if she were precious and she felt it. Ben’s eyes sparked with his desire for her, his concern and love.
“Not the time for tears,” Todd said, tossing the flogger in the open suitcase. “Just pleasure. Tonight is about us helping you forget the bad and remember the good in your life from now on.”
Ben easily untied the rope, slowly bundling it as he unbound her. She still bore the furrows where it had lain against her skin and she found it beautiful in the same way she found the marks from Todd’s bites beautiful.
When Ben had finished, he put the rope away and each man took a wrist and massaged it where the ropes had gripped. Strong, capable hands on her, making the pain fade.
“Thank you.”
Todd smiled, just the barest lift of one corner of his mouth. “We’re not done yet. Not by a long shot.”
“Oh.”
Ben chuckled and kissed the inside of her wrist.
“Can I touch you?” she asked both of them.
“Yes.” Todd moved closer and she went to his waistband. She got off the bed to remove his clothes and then followed suit with Ben, and at last they all stood naked and her heart raced at the sight.
They turned back to the mirror she’d seen herself in minutes before and she took them in. Tall and masculine, hard lines of jaw, the defined muscle of pecs and biceps. Todd with a bit more hair on his chest than Ben. Ben who stood two inches taller. Beautiful and masterful and all hers.
Still facing the mirror, she took a cock in each hand and gave an experimental pump or two. And lost herself in them once more, trusting they’d catch her if she fell.
Todd had watched her all that day. Had witnessed the slow drain of her vitality and color, but she hadn’t given up. At the dinner with Jeremy and his parents, they’d spoken, albeit haltingly, of Adele. Todd had felt like he truly knew her through it. Felt her loss, or the edge anyway. Erin’s grief was deep; he knew they only saw the briefest outline of it.
He and Ben had decided to exorcise her of the day in the way they knew best, with a little bit of pain and a lot of pleasure. They’d help her lose herself in the sea of endorphins and serotonin and reinforce that they’d be there as her safety chute.
She looked so damned beautiful, her eyes now half-lidded and sex-blurred. Her skin an enticing shade of pink, still marked in places where the rope had held her tightest.
He continued to watch in the mirror as she turned and fell to her knees once more, drawing him and Ben hip to hip.
And then he had to look down as she brought their cocks close and licked and sucked each one and both at once as she could. The sensation of her tongue and hands as his cock slid along Ben’s nearly made Todd lose his mind.
Her eyes fluttered closed, her lashes fanning against the uppermost ridge of her cheeks. Drawn by need, Todd traced over the sweet hollow just below her shoulder, on her back. Nestled within a bower of ivy her brother had inked around it. The drawn pucker of the scar Charles Cabot had given her had faded, but the memories hadn’t. She had one more on her thigh and each time Todd saw them or touched them, he sent up a prayer of thanks that she was alive to bear them.
“Enough,” Todd said roughly, pulling back from the sweetness of her mouth. “I want to come inside you.”
Ben moaned. “I want to come in your mouth.”
“I know a way we can make that happen.” Todd sat on the bed, scooting back just a bit. Erin followed, knowing what he wanted.
She straddled him, her back to his front, and sank onto his cock, hard and fast instead of her usual slow, seductive way. Todd sucked in air and counted to a hundred to keep focus.
Ben hummed his satisfaction and stepped forward so she could take him in her mouth again and the three began to move. Thrust, suck, thrust, like a machine with three moving parts, until it became smooth and singular.
Ben knew he wouldn’t last long, not given the way she’d been after he tied her up. So pretty and vulnerable yet strong beyond imagination, Erin was the most precious thing he knew.
He loved being with her this way, as Todd was inside her, as they all shared one another. What a gift his life had become each and every day. It lessened the pain of the estrangement he now had with his father, gave him enough hope in human nature that he’d someday not have this gulf there.
He wondered at her, at the miracle she was, as he sifted his fingers through the softness of her hair. Hair that was currently chocolate brown. He’d simply accepted that she’d come home with a new hair color or a new piercing, even a new sex toy for them all to try.
Pleasure rushed from the soles of his feet and out his cock as she palmed his sac and played her middle finger against his perineum in just the right way to push him over the edge.
Then he knelt and kissed her as she ran her fingertip back and forth over his nipple with the ring.
Behind her, Todd groaned and she gasped into Ben’s mouth as he found her clit, squeezing it between his fingers and bringing her off right on the heels of Todd’s climax.
Todd pulled her up and off and they tugged her into the bathroom, where they’d laid out all the accessories she’d need for a long soak, and she blinked back tears as she hugged them both.
34
They all got up before dawn and trudged out to the waiting limos. Erin was grateful she didn’t have to drive as she tucked in, settling between Ben and Todd.
She wore a suit, as did the men. Brody had combed down his normally wild hair and Adrian looked stylish and handsome. Of course Ben and Todd were beyond handsome in their suits, but they wore cop like cologne and she took comfort in it.
The trip to the prison would take them east for about two hours, so she settled in for the drive. No one spoke much, but they all glared at her until she drank her juice and ate a muffin. Then they forked over the coffee and she held on to it like a lifeline, trying not to think of what she would be facing.
That fateful day she’d had everything one moment and nothing the next. She wanted the parole board to know that. She’d brought a folder with pictures in it.
She was lost in thought until Ben sat up straighter and she looked out the window to see the industrial hulk of the prison walls.
Detective Emery was there and, to her surprise, he hugged her. “I’m glad you’re here. Listen, chances are he won’t get parole today. I want to repeat that. But you being here makes a difference. I know it’s hard, and I’m glad you have your husband and your family with you.”
Jeremy came up with his parents and Emery said hello to them as well.
“Shall we?” Emery motioned and they moved through the gates into a holding area, where Erin’s bag was searched. She left her cell phone and most of her belongings behind before they moved through another set of fenced-off sidewalks to an outbuilding.
Her hands shook and nausea swamped her. She stumbled and Todd put an arm around her.
“Buck up. We’re here for you. You will make it through. Do this for Adele. Do it for yourself.” Todd kissed her cheek, and she nodded, numb.
“We’ll wait out here until they call us. There’s another hearing going on right now,” Emery explained. “
This board is a good group. Due to the nature of what Cabot was convicted of, they’ll let you all speak. Erin should go first. Jeremy, you should sit with her and then speak right after. Then the uncles and grandparents. I’ll speak as well, and we have the psych report, which isn’t rosy.”
Erin nodded, in a daze, but clung to reality by her fingernails. She would do this, damn it.
The hallway smelled much like every other government building she’d ever been in. The scent settled in her nose and she knew when they got back to the hotel she’d need to shower for a long time to rid herself of it.
Finally they were called in and she stopped short when she caught sight of Charles Cabot sitting there in an ill-fitting suit. He hadn’t changed much since she saw him last, also in another ill-fitting suit on the last day of the trial.
His eyes lit up when he recognized her and Ben stepped into his line of sight without reacting otherwise.
“Hold on,” Jeremy said softly. “Don’t let him win. This is for her.”
She nodded, jerkily, and they sat. She barely heard the board speak, but she did listen attentively when Cabot spoke about his remorse and how he’d found his calling and wanted to help troubled youth.
Brody forcibly unclenched her fists and handed her a handkerchief because her palms were bleeding where she’d dug her nails into the flesh. He’d help youth? How about by not killing them?
She heard her name and Ben squeezed her shoulder and Todd kissed her cheek as she and Jeremy got up to sit at a table facing the parole board.
She thanked them for allowing her to speak and then she began to place the pictures of Adele on the table, from ultrasound to the picture taken in the morgue. Her hands shook, but she kept going.
“This is Adele and she was my baby. Charles Cabot stole a life, a future filled with possibilities. I won’t see her get on the bus to kindergarten. I won’t see her lose her first tooth. I won’t watch her graduate from high school and college. We won’t ever argue about curfew and how much lip gloss she can wear. I won’t see her marry and I’ll never hold her children. I gave birth to this person and she is not here now for one reason, and that’s Charles Cabot and his instability. His selfish lack of control cost my child her life and has made me look over my shoulder ever since.”