Page 24 of Bunker Down, Baby

Chapter Twenty-Four

Maple

The first thing I register is warmth. Low and slow like a sunbeam across my stomach, like I’ve been sleeping for a century in a post-orgasmic haze, limbs too heavy to move, body still buzzing from a man who used it like a sermon.

Then I shift, or try to, and my wrist tugs.

I hear metal on metal. That sound is burned into my soul now.

I crack one eye open and blink up at the ceiling.

Huh. Not my ceiling.

Not my bed, either.

Memories come rolling in from the night before. Holden.

The mattress is firm, the air smells faintly of gun oil and pine, and my arm is, yep, cuffed to the fucking headboard.

Of Holden’s bed.

I don’t scream. I don’t flinch. I don’t do any of the things a normal, functioning person would do when they wake up restrained in a prepper’s murder cave.

No. My brain? It goes one place.

Porn.

Like immediate, filthy, degenerate-level porn. I don’t even know what the plot is yet but my thighs are already trying to inch together. Because somewhere deep inside me, some chaos-coded piece of my DNA went yes please to being tied down by a stoic woodsman with rage issues and survivalist thighs.

And that’s when I see him.

Holden.

Sitting in the chair across from the bed like it’s a goddamn throne, his legs spread, his eyes locked on me. Beside him, he’s got a tray, coffee, eggs, toast cut into triangles like I’m a five-year-old or a feral raccoon he’s trying to lure into domesticity. In hands?

A knife.

And not just holding it. He’s sharpening it. Real slow. Blade against whetstone. Rhythmic and steady and just ominous enough to be hot.

He doesn’t say a word. Just watches me wake up. Watches me realize. Watches me look from the food to the cuffs to the knife and back to him.

And I swear to God, I feel my own pulse drop straight between my legs.

“You cuffed me,” I say, my voice all scratchy and low and wrecked.

His mouth curves, just a little. “Figured I’d return the favor.”

“You made me breakfast?” I ask.

“You like triangle toast,” he says.

I lick my lips. “You gonna kill me with that knife, Holden?”

He stands, slow and measured. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing with every inch of his body. He moves to the edge of the bed, and trails the flat of the blade, not the edge, just the cool, smooth steel, down my collarbone, between my breasts, slow as a sermon and twice as sinful.

“Only if you ask real nice,” he murmurs.

Jesus.

I whimper. Like an actual, involuntary whimper. Because I am so far gone for this man it’s embarrassing. It’s undignified. It’s deranged.

And also? It’s exactly the life I planned for.

He sets the knife aside. Then his hand slides between my legs like it belongs there, like he’s not even questioning it. Fingers press into me, find heat, find wet.

He lets out a low, rough sound in his throat. “You’re soaked,” he mutters. “From a knife and some triangle toast?”

“I have multiple kinks,” I say, breathless.

He strokes again. “You have something. Jesus.”

And just when I think we’re about to shift gears, just when my hips lift and my brain short-circuits and I think maybe I’ll let him slice the shirt off me like a sexy prepper lumberjack fantasy gone off the rails, the door opens.

“Morning,” Wade calls out casually, already halfway into the room. “I brought.” He stops, sees me chained, spread, and barely coherent.

Sees Holden knelt over me, hand still between my thighs.

His brow goes up. “I was gonna say I brought extra jam but.” He waves a hand. “You know what? Nope. Not interrupting whatever the hell this is.”

Holden doesn’t even move. Just calmly retracts his hand like he’s adjusting a tool belt. “She’s getting breakfast in bed,” he says flatly.

Wade eyes the cuffs. “Is this your version of romance?”

“She started it,” Holden says.

I wave with my free hand, panting. “Totally did.”

Wade sighs. “Alright, fine. I’ll come back later and show you how to properly court a woman without threatening her with cutlery.”

Holden picks up the coffee cup and holds it out to me.

I take it with my free hand, grinning like a lunatic. “I don’t know,” I say. “This is actually kind of working for me.”

Wade walks out shaking his head. “Y’all are insane. Breakfast’s in the kitchen when you’re done playing Saw XIII: Domestic Bliss Edition.”

Holden shrugs and then sits on the edge of the bed and feeds me a bite of toast.

No apology. No explanation. Just the quiet satisfaction of a man who’s claimed something and has zero plans of ever giving it back.

And me? I’m exactly where I want to be.

Tied up. Fed. And one very smug breath away from round two.

God, I love my life.

Holden feeds me a second triangle of toast like it’s part of some absurd post-apocalyptic mating ritual, and honestly, it might be. The way he watches me chew, eyes half-lidded, like the act of me eating something he made scratches some primal, provider instinct buried under years of wilderness solitude and firearm maintenance.

He sets the tray aside, slow and neat, like nothing about this is rushed, like we’re not half a second from doing unspeakable things in his bed with my wrist still chained to his damn headboard.

And I swear to God, it’s the calm that does me in. Not the knife. Not the cuffs. Not even the possessive glint in his eyes when he touches me like I’m something he’s earned. It’s the stillness. That predator-patient quiet that says he could spend all goddamn morning making me fall apart, and he’d do it just to prove he could.

“I think I should feed you more often,” he murmurs, eyes on my mouth.

“I think you should fuck me before the toast gets cold,” I counter, arching toward him.

He huffs a low laugh, and the bed shifts beneath his weight as he leans in, one hand still braced near my shoulder, the other sliding right back where it belongs, between my thighs, dragging through the slick mess he left behind earlier like he’s testing to see how long it takes before I beg.

Spoiler: not long.

“You’re shameless,” he says, almost like he’s surprised.

I grin, sharp and breathless. “I’m a little tied up right now. Not much else I can be.”

And then his fingers slip inside me, and any smart-ass response I might’ve had burns out on my tongue like a sparkler dipped in honey. I groan instead, long and low, tilting my hips toward him, greedy and already throbbing with need.

He watches me. Watches my body respond. Watches my lips part and my thighs tremble and my breath go shallow, and then he shifts up over me, pressing a kiss to my throat like a slow claim.

I feel him between my thighs, already hard, already ready, because of course he is. Men like Holden don’t need much. Just the right trigger. Just the right woman. Just the right chain clinking against a headboard.

He presses in, thick and deep. My wrist strains against the cuff, body arching to meet him like we’re built for this exact kind of feral worship.

He sets the pace. Slow, grinding thrusts that make my toes curl and my eyes roll, each one dragging me closer to the edge with the kind of devastating control only a man like him could have. No rush. No mercy. Just the soft, wet slap of skin and the low, guttural sounds he makes when I tighten around him.

“Goddamn,” he mutters against my neck. “You’re like a furnace.”

I laugh, breath hitching. “You gonna hammer something into me or just admire the heat?”

His hips slam forward in answer, and fuck, it doesn’t take long.

It never takes long when I’m strung up and used like this, when the man fucking me makes survival look like a religion and orgasm like a goddamn offering.

I shatter. Hard. Loud. Writhing under him, every nerve blown wide open as my body jerks and bucks against the restraint.

Holden follows with a growl, hips stuttering as he buries himself deep, like he’s carving out a place inside me that no one else gets to touch.

And for a moment, there’s nothing else. No bunker. No radio warnings. No men with knives and plans and gruff protective streaks.

Just me, cuffed and coming down, and Holden braced over me like he’s daring the world to try and take this from him.

Eventually, he slips out of me with a hiss, gently presses a kiss to my stomach, then reaches up to uncuff my wrist.

“You good?” he asks.

“Good is a laughable understatement,” I pant, flexing my fingers. “I might be concussed from orgasm.”

“Best kind of injury,” he mutters, then scoops me into his arms like I don’t weigh more than the axe he probably keeps under the bed.

I don’t fight it.

Let the world burn, I’m being carried to breakfast by a man who just realigned my cervix.

By the time Holden carries me into the kitchen, I’ve stopped pretending I’m embarrassed about any of it.

Because why should I be?

I’m freshly fucked, barely dressed in an oversized shirt that technically belongs to Evan but smells like Holden now, and I’m still floating from the kind of orgasm that rearranges your future plans. And the best part? I’ve got a literal buffet of filthy, competent, hilariously possessive men all standing around the kitchen like it’s perfectly normal to start the morning with group snark and a side of sausages.

Dean’s the first to spot us, shirtless and already halfway through a cup of coffee like he didn’t spend the early morning sharpening knives and cracking jokes about the apocalypse being one big horny camping trip.

“Well, look who finally showed up,” he crows, leaning back against the counter like a man very pleased with himself and the world. “Was worried you’d gone feral in the survivalist’s den.”

“Still might,” Holden mutters, settling into a chair with me still in his lap like he’s the throne and I’m the offering.

Evan, deadpan and clinically dangerous even before caffeine, doesn’t look up from his mug. “Kind of rude you didn’t invite any of us.”

Dean lets out a cackle that could shake the bunker walls. “I guess you and I are the only ones confident enough in our masculinity to take her apart together, Doc.”

“You’re not wrong,” I murmur, grinning.

Wade ambles in from the stove, spatula in one hand, his sunny cowboy charm radiating off him like he’s never once considered the bunker anything but a bed-and-breakfast for disaster-dating. “Y’all never told me group sex was on the table,” he drawls, sliding a plate onto the counter. “I got a lotta moves I could’ve brought to the rodeo.”

Dean winks. “Please tell me that’s a metaphor and a promise.”

Brock, sitting at the far end of the table with his arms crossed and that permanent scowl half-worn, snorts. “I don’t need help to take her apart.”

And now I’m smiling like the goddamn devil, because they’re not even arguing, they’re competing. Verbally sparring over who gets to fuck me next like that’s just the next logical bullet point on the day’s agenda.

Which, honestly? It is.

Holden just tightens his arm around my waist and says, voice low and dry, “Daddy always eats first.”

That earns a fucking chorus of groans.

“Jesus Christ,” Evan mutters.

Dean nearly drops his coffee. “I knew it. I knew you had the ‘I chop wood and build fences and breed women’ energy. I knew it.”

Wade just laughs, easy and warm, and hands me a plate with eggs, sausage, and something that might be toast or might be a lovingly crisped Pop-Tart. It’s Dean’s work. I can tell by the butter glossed across the top like it’s a goddamn culinary masterpiece.

“I present to you, m’lady,” Dean says with a flourish, “The bastard child of breakfast and sugar-based crime. Buttered Pop-Tart toast points. Gourmet as hell.”

I bite one just to humor him and moan loudly. For show, obviously.

Dean winks. “Told you. She gets it.”

Holden doesn’t even blink. Just slides his hand higher up my bare thigh and feeds me another bite like this is the new normal: him, playing throne, surrounded by four men who are somehow both chaos and order, and me, the deeply spoiled ringleader of our little bunker circus.

Brock watches me over the rim of his mug. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s heat in his eyes now. A kind of reluctant admiration, like maybe, just maybe, he’s starting to enjoy the ride.

Evan clears his throat. “We still doing drills later? Or does that depend on whether our queen can walk?”

I smile around a forkful of egg.

“I can walk,” I say, licking a bit of butter from my lip, “But not because anyone was gentle.”

Holden grunts behind me, and I feel the curve of his smile against my shoulder.

Dean whistles. “Hell, I love this woman.”

Wade tips his hat like he’s saluting. “We all do, partner.”

And in that moment, I’m not just a doomsday prepper or a stalker or a wildly horny collector of apocalypse husbands, I’m the center of the most beautiful chaos that ever existed.

I’ve got my bunker.

I’ve got my boys.

And breakfast has never tasted so good.