Laid Open by Lauren Dane Page B

between them, she could only breathe as Ben thrust, rolling his hips, fucking into her body so hard her tits jiggled.
    “There’s no need to be afraid. Not with me and Ben. We love you. All of you. We’ll protect you, and if that means we need to let you grieve in your own way, so be it. We’re your safe place, just like you’re ours.”
    Tears came again, but they were good tears. He was so right. “You’re right.”
    She was sure she couldn’t take any more until Todd’s fingers found her clit and tugged ever so gently on her piercing.
    “He’s so handsome, our Ben,” Todd whispered into her ear.
    “When you fuck him it makes me lose my mind. So. Hot.”
    Todd chuckled. “Me too, gorgeous.”
    But she had no more words when a second climax came, sweeping over her, and sucked her under. It was all she could do to hold on as it happened. Hold on as she heard Ben’s growl, as he grabbed her hips tight, increasing his pace and depth until he snarled, leaning forward to kiss her hard and fast as he came.
    Each fell back to the mattress, breathing hard, hands held.
    “Never doubt us.” Ben said this as he panted.
    “I don’t. Really. I just lost myself a while. But I knew you’d be there when I came back. I knew you two would be my lighthouse in the harbor.” Tears came, but they were cleansing. “And you were. Like you always are.”
    “Always.” Todd squeezed her hand.
    “Forever,” Ben added.
    She’d fallen apart and they hadn’t lied and told her things would be all right. They’d accepted her, grief and all. And in doing so, only underlined just exactly why she was with them to start with.
    “No one knows me like you two do. Thank you.”
    “We should thank you for knowing you.” Todd moved to his side to face them.
    “No, thank you for knowing me and loving me anyway. For seeing all my flaws and loving me despite them.”
    “Your flaws are part of who you are. We love you because of them. Like you love me because of mine. The world is full of challenges. Ours sometimes more than others because we have three instead of two.”
    Todd kissed the side of her breast and then reached out to run his fingertips through Ben’s hair. “We’ll kick those challenges in the ass because you can’t beat us.”
    “Team us.” Erin laughed and meant it more than just about anything she’d ever said.
    “Fuck yeah.”

Keep reading for a special excerpt from the first novel in the new Delicious series by Lauren Dane
    TART
    Available November 2012 from Heat Books.

In case anyone ever doubted it, getting up at four in the morning was all sorts of things. Jules Lamprey had been doing it for years so it wasn’t so much a matter of
holy crap, it’s early
anymore.
    What she did like, she thought as she locked her front door and headed to her car, was the way the world held so much anticipation. No dawn yet. But it wasn’t the middle of the night anymore either. The promise of a new day was just beginning to manifest itself.
    She liked that she pretty much had the road to herself as she made the short trip to Tart. Oh sure, in a while there’d be people waking up to get that first ferry to Seattle, but for now, it felt as if the entire world was all hers.
    And for a brief, thrilling moment after she’d parked her car and walked up the block, she stood and looked at her shop.
    Tart, in all its glory. Shiny red and chrome with black-and-white tiles on the floor. The place she’d been given so unexpectedly had become her heart. The place she always knew existed because she’d made it so.
    Hers. She unlocked the back door and went through to the kitchen, hanging her things up and getting ready to start the day. She figured at least one of her friends would be by in the next hour either to help or seeking tarts and coffee, and that made her nearly as happy as seeing the front of Tart each and every morning.
    * * *
    True to her gut feeling, Gillian came in at six. Gillian Forrester had been Jules’s closest