Page 51 of Triple Play

For a wild second, Felix looks like he’s about to say no. Did I totally bungle this? No, if nothing else, dancing taught me to read a situation—to discern what guys want, to sell them on a fantasy that never really matches a reality. Only now, it’s my fantasy too. If Felix agrees.

He’s still studying us. Under me, Blake doesn’t exactly fidget but his hand flexes, curling and uncurling, as if he’s equally nervous. As if there’s more riding on this than just a proposition made across a hot tub—an attraction to men he won’t acknowledge, a craving for a wild night after a lifetime of living on the straight and narrow. Maybe something deeper than that, something that’s lacing through his and Felix’s new friendship.

Blake doesn’t want to pressure me. Am I doing the same thing—pressing him to conform with some big-league lifestyle that he’s clearly spent the past six years avoiding? No, he’s hard and getting harder from the feel of it. Under his breath, almost inaudibly, he whispers a c’mon the way he might beg a home run ball to just clear the fence.

But with each second Felix doesn’t answer, my heart starts beating a little harder.

“That’s up to Shira,” he says finally.

Oh, I see how it is. This whole situation is completely heterosexual if they both pretend it’s for me.

Fine. If that’s the kind of cover they need, then that’s the kind of cover I can provide. “What if…” I begin, dragging it out. I roll my ass against Blake’s lap like I’m proving a point, even if the point is just his gasp. His hair has sprung free of its pomade. It’s gratifying: perfect Blake Forsyth, frayed at the edges.

If you asked me a month ago what Blake might say to a potential threesome with a teammate he just met, I would have guessed an easy answer: a flat, uncompromising no. But when I asked if maybe, possibly, he wanted to share this experience with Felix, he clearly didn’t hate the idea. Liked it, if the pulse of his cock against my ass was anything to go from.

Impulse can only carry us so far. We probably need to talk about things before they go any further. “Okay, rule one,” I say. “What if what happens at a Fayetteville hotel stays here?”

From a few feet away on the bench, Felix nods.

“What could happen?” Blake’s mouth is close to my neck. The puff of his breath cools the drops of water there.

“Whatever you want to,” I answer.

“You want me to provide a checklist?” he asks.

“I know how much you like to plan. And…” I lower my voice, not so low Felix can’t hear, but low enough that it doesn’t feel like I’m broadcasting it to an entire city. “You’ve had a month to really consider it.”

From across the hot tub, Felix swallows visibly. “You haven’t, uh, been together before?”

Blake tenses, as if he’s bracing for something—for Felix to make fun of him, for me to lie on his behalf as cover.

“That’s rule two,” I say. “Everyone gets to go at their own pace.”

“Sure,” Felix says, as if that’s obvious.

Beneath me, Blake relaxes. “I have another rule. Or a suggestion. For the group.” It has more of that take charge tone I’m used to from him, the one I suspect he probably uses during clubhouse meetings. “If something feels good, say it.”

Not what I expected. Then again, nothing about this trip has gone as expected. “You want to make me feel good?” I purr.

“Yes,” Blake says. “I want that more than anything.”

What guys would say at the club, sometimes. Usually my cue to moan exaggeratedly as I mentally composed grocery lists.

Not with Felix. Feeling good meant him treating me like a person when most customers treated me like a vending machine.

Feeling good with Blake means something I’m just now seeing the shape of—how much he wants to break free from the boundaries he’s set for himself. Or that others have imposed on him.

“How’s that all sound, Felix?” I ask.

His lips tick up at the edge. “I guess I’m a visual learner—I’d need to see it in action.”

“Oh, is that how it is?”

That gets him to smirk. “Seems like.”

Blake’s hand tightens at my waist—does he regret agreeing to this already? But no, he presses a kiss to my pool-water-damp hair. “What do you say, sweetheart—you want to give him a show?”

A suggestion that makes my pulse beat a little fast. So I cover Blake’s hand with mine and slide it down my stomach, lower, lower, until his fingers are resting at the boundary of my swimsuit.

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