Out of Bounds (Reedsville Roosters #5) (9 page)

Dean shuddered. “Happy to oblige. I think.”

“I’ll try not to ask again. I’ll wear compression pants under my shorts tomorrow.”

“Just try to stay out of the high grass and you shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Tell Cameron to stop tossing balls out there, then.”

“I’ll tell him for sure.” Dean started for the room’s outer door only to stop when something Gary had said niggled at the back of his mind.

He turned and kept his eyes directed pointedly above Gary’s neck, not that it made a difference. His peripheral vision was feeding him clues that the man had gone from semi-erect to full-out engorged.

Christ.

“Were you gonna say something?” Gary asked.

Dean had to close his eyes again so he didn’t look down. He’d seen enough of Gary’s cock for one day, and feared his brain would form an unwanted association in which every time he looked at the man he got a hard-on. He already had that problem with Lo.

“Uh, you…said something about meds?”

“Oh.” The shower curtain snicked over, and feet squeaked against the bottom of the tub.

Dean opened his eyes to find that Gary was, blessedly, hidden.

“Yeah. I’ve got issues. ADD and a little oppositional defiance. Also, OCD and some sensory stuff mixed with some occasionally-dangerous impulsivity, and…shall I go on?”

Dean was surprised he’d told him that much. Mental health stuff tended to make folks clam up. “You don’t take the meds anymore?”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Because the ones that worked the best made me feel like someone else, and I didn’t like that person. Some people find a drug and dosage that helps. I’m not one of those lucky ones. I just deal.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.” Gary slid the curtain aside again and wriggled his eyebrows at Dean. “While you’re out there asking about junk gunk, can you maybe find me some better soap? The grit in this…”

“Right.”

If the grit bothered Dean, it had to bother the hell out of Gary.

Dean knew his type. He had a brother very much like Gary, and he wasn’t medicated either. Their parents hadn’t wanted the stigma of a mental health diagnosis attached to him, so he muddled through life, unable to self-advocate because he didn’t know how or that he should, and because he didn’t want to oppose the “truth” of their parents. They were well-meaning, for the most part, but so, so wrong.

Dean didn’t want Gary to feel like no one believed he was trying to be normal. That wasn’t a place he wanted anyone to be, not even the man who brazenly flirted with his wife.

Lo made her way back to the motel a little later than she’d anticipated, but she’d gotten so caught up enjoying greasy food and good conversation, she hadn’t been ready to peel herself away. She’d felt guilty about her tardiness the entire drive back from the beach, and endeavored to make up for her absence in some way.

At one a.m., she quietly shut the door of her rental car, walked to the room, and knocked softly. She hadn’t thought to take one of the keys when she’d left.

No response.

“Shit,” she whispered, and knocked again.

If she knocked any louder, she’d risk waking the players in the adjacent rooms, and she really didn’t want to have a conversation with Wallace in the morning about her being a distraction.

She decided to try the knob, and then gave a silent cheer when the door clicked open.

“Thank goodness.”

She slipped into the room, closed the door softly and locked it, and then nearly tripped over a couple of plastic department store bags one of the men had left near the door.

“Can’t leave them alone for five minutes…”

She tiptoed past the bedroom, dropping her purse strap from her shoulder as she went, and stopped short at Gary’s bed.

The room was pretty dim thanks to the heavy curtains and closed blinds, but she would have been able to make out a lump in the bed where he should have been.

“If that little shit slipped out under Dean’s nose…”

She set her purse on the dresser and moved to the other bed, squinting.

Two lumps, but that couldn’t have been right. One was obviously Dean. She would have recognized that particular lump anywhere. He lay on his back with his arms folded over his chest and his cheek twitching in that way it always did when he was dreaming.

She moved around the bed for a closer look at the other lump. “Who in the hell is that?”

Shirtless, mumbling in his sleep, and on
her
side of the bed.

Gary.

She was about to give him a hard poke when Dean whispered, “Rained earlier. Ceiling leaked.”

“Onto his bed?”

Dean nodded.

She groaned and rubbed her tired eyes. That certainly explained the damp smell in the room. She knew dudes could be smelly in aggregate, but the smell in the room was more swampy than musty.

“When are they going to fix it?” she whispered when she returned to the other side.

“Tomorrow, supposedly. Here.” Dean scooted as far as he could toward the middle of the bed and patted the space he’d occupied. “Not much, but better than sleeping on the floor.”

She wasn’t going to argue. She wanted to close her eyes. They were starting to cross from having navigated dark roads for two hours without stopping.

Moving back to the dresser, she shed her shirt as she went, stepped out of her shoes, and ditched her shorts.

Dean held the covers up for her to crawl beneath.

She claimed that sliver of bed at the edge, and tightly insinuated her body against his as always.

She loved the way he felt against her, and she fit perfectly against him. Her head against his chest. Her leg slung over his thigh. His heartbeat silencing her busy brain and lulling her to sleep.

Heaven
.

“You stay out of trouble today?” She yawned and wrapped her arm around his side.

“More or less.”

“Did you eat?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“What’d you have?”

“Convenience stuff. Needed to get some toiletries, so we caught a ride to the store.”

“Get something heavier tomorrow.”

“I’ll try to.” He curled his fingers into her hair, inhaled deeply, and then sighed.

She shut her eyes, content, but afraid to move an inch. The edge of the bed was far too close.

___

“Quit fucking with it. I told you it was nothing.”

Huh?

At the sound of Dean’s voice, Lo opened one eye, then the other, and realized her eyelashes weren’t brushing his chest as they should have been.

She was on her belly with the left side of her face against the bed, and Dean was halfway sitting up, propped against the headboard.

The room was still dim, but not nighttime dim.

She picked up her head to see what Dean was looking at.

Gary had his hand in his briefs and seemed to be searching for something within.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’ve got a new freckle. Or mole. I keep convincing myself that it’s a tick.”

“You don’t have a tick,” Dean said. “I grew up in Eastern North Carolina and am intimately familiar with ticks and other things that like blood just as much. Stop touching the bump. Leave it alone and the puffiness will go down.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I get that, but think about something else.”

“I woke up thinking about it. Turn on the TV, or something. Maybe that’ll distract me enough.”

Lo put her head back down. “What time is it?”

“Around five-thirty,” Dean said.

“What time do you have to be at the field?”

“Bus’ll be here at eight to take us to breakfast.”

“No chance of you going back to sleep then, huh?”

“No, I’m pretty wired. Don’t let us stop you, though. We’ll be quiet.”

“Don’t clam up on my account.” She slung her leg over his lap and pressed her face against his side. “I’ll probably nod back off, anyway, even if you’re talking. I grew up in a noisy house.”

“I should open the window,” Gary mused quietly over the hum of the television.

“The room would be even more swampy, especially without cross-ventilation,” Dean said. “Need the door and window open at the same time.”

“I hope it doesn’t rain again today.”

“If it does,” Lo said, “I’m going to grab Wallace by the shorthairs and make him personally find another room. I don’t care if he has to go buy some two-by-fours and construct one himself. No one should have to lodge in these conditions and then be expected to perform.”

“I’ve slept in worse,” Gary said. “Some of the motels we used to get put up in when we were traveling for away games were cesspools. Scratchy comforters, sticky carpet, weird stains on the bathroom counters. I was never able to sleep. Always stayed up counting down the minutes until I’d be allowed to leave the room.”

“Did you tell Wallace?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, I told him. You know how those things go. He told me to either suck it up or sleep on the bus. I stopped asking.”

“Hopefully your next away game won’t land you in a roach motel, then,” Lo said. She sat up once more. “When is your next away game, anyway?”

“Saturday.”

“Ugh. I’m leaving on Saturday.”

“Don’t remind me.” Dean rubbed small circles against her spine.

Oh, damn, not the back circles
.

They always seemed to wake her up in ways she still hadn’t grown to expect.

“Get your hands out of your drawers,” Dean said.

Gary sighed. “Might have to tie me up or something until the compulsion goes away.”

Lo scoffed. “Don’t give me any ideas. I’ve got a fully charged cell phone and a pretty pitiful savings account right now. I will certainly tie you up and torture you for five minutes so I can make a video of you squirming.”

He laughed and rolled onto his side, peering over Dean’s chest at her. “How much do you think that’ll earn you?”

“More if I capture your face. There’s a ginger bounty.”

“You kidding?”

“Nope. Legitimate fetish.”

“Is it one of yours?”

“Nope.”

He rolled his eyes and shifted onto his back, but he didn’t return his hands to his underwear.

“I don’t really have fetishes,” she said. “My whims change too quickly.”

“You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better.”

“I’m just telling the truth.”

“You don’t think exhibitionism counts as a fetish?”

“Okay. You have a point there.”

Dean started rubbing those circles again, and she let out a ragged breath as he worked them lower.

Dammit.

He was going to get her hot and bothered, and she wouldn’t even be able to fake being shy. Gary had already seen them fuck. She couldn’t pretend to have suddenly developed a sense of modesty.

“Was that Marcus yelling at Cameron last night after we got back?” Gary asked. “When I was in the bathroom, I mean.”

“Yeah. I poked my head out,” Dean said.

He worked his hand lower, dipping his fingers inside the elastic of her panties and rubbing the very base of her spine.

Dammit
.

She suppressed the compulsion to wriggle against him—to work her crotch against his thigh—and curled her toes against the mattress instead.

“What were they arguing about?” Gary asked.

“Was saying that we were cutting our return close to curfew.”

“Does he really have nothing better to do but to stand in that doorway tracking the coming and goings of everyone in this block of rooms?”

“You’d know better than I would.” Dean passed his hand over her rump, pausing at the top to press, fondle, squeeze.

She sighed.

He had to know what he was doing. She was always primed and ready to go in mornings, and he was making that hormonal quirk of hers harder to overcome.

“Keep that up, and I’ll retaliate,” she muttered.

“Hmm?”

“Quit squeezing my ass unless you want to get squeezed back.”

He squeezed again.

She jammed her hand into his boxer briefs and grabbed his shaft. Already rock hard, and the tip was dripping.

She picked her head up and glowered at him, and he returned that neutrally passive look that always made her snarl.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.

“Doing what?”

“You know I can’t help myself.”

“No one’s saying you should fight the urge.”

“Wait…” She narrowed her eyes at him.

He may have been initiating sex more often than she’d given him credit for. He just hadn’t been overt about what he’d wanted. She was far too used to overt.

Oops
.

His expression didn’t change a whit. He squeezed her again and with his other hand, helped her move her fist up and down his shaft. “You could say no.”

She didn’t want to say no. She wanted to be fucked. No slow, passionate ride with her on top. She wanted her shoulders down, arms pinned, and her pussy plowed into. She wanted to be filled to her brink and driven into so forcefully that she couldn’t catch her breath.

He rarely gave her that, though, and she hesitated to ask him when she wanted sex that way. She didn’t want him to think that they other ways he made love to her were wrong. She liked them all, but sometimes, she craved a little aggression.

She cleared her throat, and then whispered, “From the back, okay?”

He stopped squeezing. “Yeah?”

“So…should I leave?” Gary asked.

Lo rolled onto her back and wriggled out of her panties. “Why? I thought you liked watching.”

“You don’t care?”

“No, with you, I don’t care. You’ve almost become a room decoration at this point. I can pretty much ignore you.”

“Yeah, that’s what a guy likes to hear.”

Dean rolled her over and dragged her by her right arm and leg to the center of the bed.

Gary looked down at her with one eyebrow raised and his hand in his underwear again. She didn’t think he was feeling around for a tick, though. The bulge beneath his hand hinted that he was getting stimulation from something else.

Dean pulled her ass up by her hips and pressed her shoulders down to the mattress.

“I hope you don’t get too much enjoyment out of this,” she said to Gary as Dean pressed his thick head against her opening, teasing up and down the slit without actually entering. Spreading her wetness—and his—around.

“Oh, this is absolute torture.”

“Take it out.”

“Hmm?”

She tugged his waistband as Dean pushed into her in one unceasing thrust.

Damn.

She gave the mattress a little pound with her free hand. He always managed to knock her off-kilter, even when she knew he was going to enter her. The sensation—so much of him inside her all at once—tended to overwhelm.

“This?” Gary whispered. He pulled the elastic down below his nuts and his cock sprang forth, hard and ready as she suspected.

“Ugh, what am I doing with my life?” She tapped her ankles against Dean’s lower legs to get him moving harder and faster. She didn’t want to be lovingly tickled from that angle. She wanted grunting, groaning, pounding.

“What’s the hurry?” he asked, swiveling his hips in a way he hadn’t done before and that pulled an embarrassing peep out of Lo’s mouth.

“Showing off, are you?” she said into the mattress.

“Might as well since we have an audience, right?” He reached beneath her and tugged her clit between his fingers while nipping at her earlobe. “Audience of one or thousands, the thrill is the same.”

“Pay’s smaller, though,” she said lamely, wriggling her ass against him, silently pleading for him to get moving again. She craved the things that fat cock could do to her, and never cared how messy she was at the end.

“You want me to pay for the show?” Gary asked with a laugh.

Lo felt the bed shifting beside her and turned her face to right to watch Gary crawling closer, his cock in his hand and his lips turned up at one corner.

She swallowed. “What’d you have in mind? I don’t think you intend to write me a check.”

“Nah. Any I wrote would probably bounce.” He leaned down so close to her ear that the tiny hairs stood on end. “How ’bout carnal favors?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Dean, who’d stopped thrusting, and was making those damned circles around the small of her back again.

Whimpering, she clenched him inside her and bit down on her lip as the first threat of an orgasm encroached.

Dammit.

If her engine had been completely cold when they’d started, she might have been able to entertain him for longer.

“May I?” Gary may have been wrapping his hand around one end of Lo’s ponytail, but it was Dean he was looking at.

“Up to her. I don’t mind.”

Gary whispered against her ear again, “Can I touch you?”