Out of Bounds (Reedsville Roosters #5) (14 page)

“Shut up.”

“Shutting up now.”

Dean pulled him forward and sat him beside Lo, who gave him a speculative look.

“What?” Gary asked.

“So you’ve grown up and can take care of yourself now, huh?”

Gary scoffed and let his gaze rake down Lo’s body. “I wouldn’t say that. I still need plenty of help.”

“Dean says I’m not allowed to take care of myself anymore. I have to wait until he gets home.”

Gary gave his head a slow shake. “Poor Lo. But think of it this way—no more awkward middle-of-the-night battery purchases.”

Lo narrowed her eyes. “I’m a lusty girl. I’ve got needs.”

“And the last time I checked, you also had a husband willing to fulfill them.” Gary grazed his fingertips up her arm, stopping at the sleeve of her T-shirt. “And also at least one willing volunteer.”

“I don’t think you could handle me, Morstad.”

“I like a challenge.”

“You haven’t earned the stripes to be taking on that challenge yet.”

“Oh? Then what do I need to do?”

“To start, you can get on your knees and start worshiping the temple of Lo with your tongue. When you’ve made a sufficient offering, I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Great. So stop talking and start licking.”

Lo had never before had a so-called “pro” attending to her pussy, but she could certainly see the perks to the arrangement. Gary’s powerful tongue had her very near uttering a few blasphemous phrases herself.

Every time she tried to squirm away to catch her breath or just to push back her body’s demand that she come, Dean held her still. His hands seemed to be everywhere—on her hips, over her mouth when her shrieks became too loud, and down at either side of her lower lips, holding her apart so Gary’s tongue could probe her deeper, harder.

Gary thrust fingers inside her channel and pulled her clit into his mouth forcefully, and she gave up any pretense that he couldn’t handle her, or anyone
else
for that matter. The man was unceasing, insatiable, and she was whimpering like a cold, wet cat.

“Want more?” Dean whispered.

“More what?” she asked on a whimper.

He may as well have been asking if she wanted a higher dose of Phenobarbital. If she hadn’t known it was impossible, she would have sworn her body was coming apart at the seams, and her very next stop wouldn’t be the airport to go home, but the morgue. Human beings needed to breathe. She was having a hard time with that.

Dean released his hold on her hips and withdrew from the bed. A moment later, he was rooting through his suitcase, and Gary was tossing off what was left of her panties into the trash. At some point, they’d gotten ripped, and Lo couldn’t bring herself to care. Whatever she’d paid had been worth it to make her men act like that.

“Here.” Dean held up a condom packet and gestured for Gary to stand.

“Does this mean I’ve earned my stripes?” Gary asked, smirking.

Lo opened her mouth to rebut, but then Dean’s hand was over it and he was telling her to shush.

“I thought you wanted to be fucked,” he whispered.

She pried a couple of his fingers apart and said through them, “Who’s putting what where? If you’re pillaging any unexplored orifices, I might need a pep talk.”

“Nothing unexplored.” He gave her pussy a little swat and backed away, ripping the condom packet open as he went. “At least not on you.”

Gary’s smirk fell away, and in its place came a grimace.

Lo hadn’t laughed so hard since the bratty neighborhood kid who’d been flattening her new rose bushes with his football fell into the Yeats’s waterlogged ditch during his hasty retreat.

“Well, well. Look who’s worried about not being able to handle it.” Lo clucked her tongue.

“Have you seen his cock?” Gary mumbled.

“Often.”

“Then you should be able to guess why I’m worried. I haven’t been with a guy since the last Spider Man reboot.”

“Also, he knows I have no idea what I’m doing,” Dean said.

“Well, this should be interesting,” Lo said.

“Yep.”

Gary took the condom from him. “Maybe I’ll just hold onto that until after you’ve…” He grimaced again. “Gotten in. I don’t think we’re going to be as coordinated as you hope. We might have to do this in phases. I’ve never fucked anyone while I’ve had someone fucking me.”

“You sound afraid, Gary,” Lo said.

Gary scoffed. “Last few guys I was with had a fondness for performance enhancers and, suffice it to say, they weren’t stacking up in all parts of their anatomy. With a couple of them, I could have slept through the ordeals.”

“So why’d you agree in the first place?”

He shrugged. “They gave good head, usually right after pounding my ass cheeks black and blue.”

“I’ll try not to turn you any colors you’re not supposed to be,” Dean said. He turned Gary around and pushed him face-first onto the bed.

Lo rubbed her hands together and grinned in her dastardly way.

Oh, boy
.

“Now, how should I do this?” Dean asked, pressing his hands to Gary cheeks and giving them what looked to be punishing squeezes.

Sighing, Gary turned his head toward Dean. “A lot of lube, and then go really slow. If you’re in a charitable mood, you could try stretching me first, but whatever. If you somehow manage to find my prostate, I’ll forgive you for ill preparation. I’m perverse that way.”

Dean pressed his hands to either side of Gary’s hips and looked up at Lo.

She shook her head. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just a witness. The studio audience.”

“Nah. Everyone here participates.” He crawled onto the bed, grabbed Lo by the ankles, and tugged her down.

“Hey!”

“Stay there.”

“Okay,” she said, more than a little curious.

Returning to Gary, he took the condom from him, unrolled it onto Gary’s turgid cock, and gestured to the bed. “Try not to come. I know from experience that lasting is difficult once she starts clenching.”

Gary’s swallow was audible, but in spite of his dazed state, he didn’t hesitate for long. He crawled between her legs, wrapped them around his waist, and smiled down at her. “Bet you didn’t picture yourself here a week ago.”

“Staring down at that pretty cock of yours? Nah. Can’t say that I did. Not a bad place to be, though.”

“Do I get to kiss her?” Gary asked Dean.

Dean, who was rooting through his suitcase again, paused then said, “Ask
her
. Her lips. Her body.”

Smart man.

“Can I kiss you?” Gary asked. The troublemaking smile he usually wore had devolved into a shy, boyish grin she would have never thought he was capable of. It was charming.
Endearing
, even, and it made her want to wrap her arms around him and hold him against her chest forever.

“Yeah, you’d better kiss me, I think.”

“I’m not used to kissing.” He skimmed his lips gently over hers and took a long, deep breath. “Most people don’t want to kiss me.”

“That’s a shame. You should always be with someone who wants to kiss you.”

“He’s a good kisser,” Dean said.

“Yeah?”

Dean stood, bobbing his eyebrows and tossing a tube of lube from one hand to the other. “Not that I’m the most knowledgeable authority, but he avoided my teeth and didn’t drool too much. That’s always nice.”

“Oh.” Lo laced her fingers through the back of Gary’s hair and guided him down to her lips. “I’ll be glad to provide a second opinion.”

There was always something so stimulating about kissing a man who’d kissed her down below first—it was pleasure-sharing at its most carnal. A full circle, of sorts.

And he was a good kisser. He knew where to put his tongue and when to take it away. When she got too eager, he withdrew, controlling the pace through withholding, keeping her in line by not giving her what she craved. She always wanted more. He pulled away with a gasp, and Lo turned her head to find Dean at the bedside, his hand sliding down Gary’s back.

Gary’s eyes opened wider and wider, and Lo decided to take matters into her own hands before the man went catatonic.

“To be such a bottom, you really are a punk,” she whispered.

She pulled him down inside of her and giggled at his quiet whimper.

“Not going to go soft on me, are you?”

“I’m not a bottom,” he muttered into her hair.

“You’re
so
a bottom, and by this time next week, you’ll be admitting you are to everyone. There’s nothing wrong with receiving, you know.”

“I’m a jock. There’s a reputation I’m supposed to hold up. Manly.
Macho
.”

Lo wrapped her legs around his back and got him moving. “Okay, macho man. Do some work.”

“Yes, ma’am. Maybe that’ll distract me from—oh,
fuck
.”

He pushed up onto his hands and, eyes closed, let out a ragged breath.

“Am I doing this wrong?” Dean asked with what seemed to be faux innocence. “Too many fingers? Need more lube?”

Lo pulled Gary back down inside her. “Multitask.”

“Oh fuck.
Fuck
that’s intense.” He shouted something vaguely obscene through clenched teeth. “When you’re the one in the middle, I’ll make sure to tell you the same thing.”

“I’m sure that when I’m the one in the middle, I’ll be whining a lot less.”

“I’m not whining. I’m simply
expressing
myself. That’s what my therapist said. Tone doesn’t matter. Only the words.”

“Express yourself with your dick more and your mouth less.”

“No wonder you married a man who doesn’t talk so much. He would never get a word in edgewise if he’d wanted to. Ow!”

Judging by the smacking sound immediately before Gary’s little outburst, Lo was guessing Dean had given him a warning tap.

“You heard the woman. Less talking, or we’ll have to see if we need to find something else for you to do with your mouth. Do you suck cock as well as you eat pussy?”

“Actually, I do. Should damn well be able to with a mouth as big as mine, right? And quit distracting me. If you’re going to fuck me, go ahead and kill the suspense. I can’t deal.”

Dean shrugged. “Okay.”

Lo couldn’t see precisely what he was doing behind Gary, but within a minute, Gary was whispering the alphabet backward and his legs were wobbling against Lo’s thighs.

“Would you prefer a smaller dick?” Lo whispered. “Or maybe we could work you up to it with dildos in increasing sizes.”

“Keep teasing, woman. Maybe Dean hasn’t asked to fuck your ass yet, but I have no qualms about waking you up with a searing good-morning one day.”

“Try me. I bet I won’t complain.”

Lo knew Gary was the kind of man who needed a bit of fire lit under him. She was much the same. A tease. A dare. Once that spirit of competitiveness had been sparked, the real fun could begin.

He slammed into her and his mouth covered hers once more. He’d found a rhythm, or perhaps Dean had, that was aggressive yet controlled—obviously the very outside of what Gary could handle. While his cock may have been hard and hitting all the right spots inside of Lo, his kiss was a bit frantic and missing its mark more often than not.

“Someone come,
please
,” he said. “Or let me. I can’t… I’m not gonna last.”

“You or me, Lo?” Dean asked.

Lo sighed. She was having too much fun where she was, but she could understand how Gary would be overwhelmed. She’d had the benefit of Dean’s cock enough times that she knew all about the euphoria it could trigger.

She let go. She closed her eyes and allowed her body to come down from the surge. She let her legs fall from Gary’s back as her orgasm washed over her, and moaned through the smaller, second cascade of fireworks that tingled through her when he pulled out of her.

Gary and Dean’s combined heavy weights collapsing onto the bed beside her made her open her eyes again, and she watched Dean, with one hand gripping Gary’s neck, thrusting into him faster and faster.

Hard. Intense. So
male
. He’d never fucked her that hard, and likely figured that she couldn’t endure the effort.

Probably right
.

Watching Gary take it was almost as good in her opinion.

“Fuck. Fuck.” Gary bit down into the nearest pillow and started rearing back, meeting each of Dean’s thrusts halfway.

“Need some help?” Lo reached beneath him and grabbed his cock. She pumped it in time to Dean’s thrusts. Gary began to swear through his clenched teeth. For all Lo knew, he could have been speaking in tongues or summoning a demon, but she kept tugging him until Dean said, “Go ahead,” and Gary came, and Dean must have, too.

The collection of signs and groans between the two could have scandalized that most experienced of brothel madams.

Dean rolled off of him, breathing heavily and holding his cock. “Fuck. Your ass is so tight.”

“Clenching is a reflex when something big tries to get inside you,” Gary said into the mattress. “Hope I won’t be limping tomorrow.”

Lo laid a hand atop his cute little butt and jiggled it. “Well, if you’re not, I’m sure we can arrange something for the next day.”

Gary trotted out of the field house to find Dean and Lo waiting by the door. “Hey! My fan club.” He’d never had a fan club before, much less a distractingly sexy one. No one but Clint had ever gone to his games.

Lo waved a little Reedsville pennant at him and grinned. “I know fuck-all about baseball, but Dean says that was a good game.”

“Obviously, you’re not having any issues with walking, running, or sliding into bases,” Dean said quietly. There was a twinkle in his eyes that held a challenge that made Gary want to either cover his ass and run, or drop his pants right there and tell Lo to act as lookout while Dean slid home.

Gary cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure there were no extra ears around. Cameron had been on his heels on the way out of the locker room, but must have gotten waylaid. Gary used the opportunity to give Dean’s crotch an appreciative grope. “It was a wonder I was able to concentrate as well as he had on the field. Every time I saw a bat being swung, I thought about your dick.”

“Have mercy,” Lo said. “Freud would have had a field day with you.”

“All three of us, probably. Anyway, I had a bit of limp this morning, but I walked it out like a good boy.”

Lo swatted his questing hand away from Dean’s fly as the door creaked open and one of the starters filed up.

“Plans for tonight?” she asked. “Team supper, or what?”

“Yeah. We’re supposed to be meeting at this buffet place off the highway. Meal is being paid for by one of our major sponsors, so I’ve got to show up and demonstrate my gratitude or some such shit.”

“Go have fun. We’ll see you later.”

“You’ll be at the room?”

“Yeah, packing up.”

“Wait—what do you mean, packing up? You’re not leaving already, are you?”

“That was the deal,” Lo said. “Wallace isn’t gonna reimburse Dean if he stays any longer, and my work schedule next week is weird. Got promoted to supervisor and I’m transitioning.”

“Yay. Congrats,” Gary said dryly.

“Hey.” She poked him. “Maybe it’s not a fun job, but it’s stable and has decent benefits.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Like the discounted plane tickets I use to fly down here.”

“Sorry. I know I should be more grateful, but I’m just…so used to someone being here now. I haven’t let myself think about me being on my own.”

“You’ve been on your own for a long time, Gary.”

“But I don’t want to be.”

“Come on, don’t start that.” Dean got him moving toward the team bus and leaned in to whisper, “You’re in Reedsville for a few months, and then you can go back to being a lowlife degenerate for the rest of the year in whatever city you choose.”

“Real fucking funny.”

Dean sighed and gave Gary’s baseball cap brim a “Hey. We’ll talk later back at the room, okay? Me, you, and Lo.”

“You’ll remember?” No way could the two of them leave before they made him some promises. He’d end up obsessing about all the would haves, could haves, and should haves, and there wouldn’t have been anyone left in Reedsville who could bring him out of the spiral of self-doubt.

Don’t even plant the seed
, he told himself as he shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked at each of his lovers.

Lo skimmed the pad of her thumb across his lower lip and smiled. “We’ll remember.”

___

Gary concentrated on keeping his expression neutral as he chewed a tough piece of “Chef’s Secret Recipe” fried gator, and nodded at Charles when he pulled a chair out beside him and sat.

“Can’t wait to get the hell out of here,” Charles said in a low mutter.

“Got a hot date or something?”

“I
hope
it’s hot,” Charles said.

Gary growled with impatience. The dinner was dragging on far longer than he’d anticipated. They’d arrived at the joint at six and hadn’t gotten drinks until seven thirty. The hour was going on nine, and Gary hadn’t seen the waitress in at least fifteen minutes. Once upon a time, those team suppers that went on and on might have been at least a little amusing, but that was before Gary had people to go home to. He
needed
to spend some time with Lo and Dean before they left. He didn’t want the last he saw of them to be their backs as they headed out the door. Even if they promised they’d come back to see him, Gary still needed to treat the departure as a goodbye. Most folks changed their minds about coming back to him. In Gary’s opinion, the odds of them continuing their new arrangement weren’t in his favor, and forgetting him would be easy because they’d be so far away.

“Lo set me up with one of her cousins,” Charles said. “Her name is Juana. She sounds like she might be a little bit of a handful, but I’m optimistic.”

Gary turned his back to the majority of the room and covered his mouth to disguise the movement of his lips. Having too many players know one’s business was rarely a good idea on the Roosters team. “What time are you supposed to meet her?”

Charles turned his wrist over and stared down at his watch’s face. “An hour ago, actually.”

“Shit.”

“I told her these things sometimes run long, and she said she’d wait around for a little while. I guess she doesn’t have to work tomorrow or whatever. Supposedly, she was at the game earlier, but I wouldn’t know how to pick her out in crowd.”

Gary rubbed his chin and tried to shake some order into his scattered memories of the day. “You know, I think Lo did have a lady sitting next to her that could have been a cousin.” Gary glanced his shoulder. There was no one around worth worrying about except Marcus, who was heading their way. Kiss-ass Cameron was at the bar, chatting it up with Wallace and the guy Gary thought was a team sponsor’s rep.

“Hopefully, Wallace will get off the curfew bullshit and start treating us like adults instead of teenagers at summer camp.”

Marcus turned a chair around and sat backward in it. “You do remember why the curfew got initiated in the first place, right?”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I remember. I was here. But the thing is, that shit ain’t in my contract. That was a retroactive change to account for shenanigans.” He gave Gary a pointed look.

Gary threw up his hands. “Hey. Not all those shenanigans were mine, and very few of my shenanigans involved having chicks keep me up all night. Most of that was Evan Boswell, I’m pretty sure.”

“Boswell, who’s now shacking up with Lock in the offseason.”

“Barton Lock? No way.
That
asshole?”

Marcus shrugged. “There’s someone for everyone, right? They had amazing chemistry on the field, so I guess it’s not so odd that they got together off the field, too. Left the team at about the same time.”

“I think that was the season after I had my noble departure,” Gary said.

“Yep. Lock was ready to retire, period, and Boswell got pulled up to the majors.”

“I knew about Boswell. He plays for the team Clint used to play for.”

“Lock’s old team, too.”

“Damn. I’ve been out of the loop. Anyone else hooked up while I was away being a Miami man-whore?”

Charles seemed to actually be thinking about the question. He rocked back in his chair and rubbed his scruffy chin.

“No one you wouldn’t know about already,” Marcus interjected. “Marshall and Thompson had been together forever. They left last year. They live on a ranch in Texas with Marshall’s baby’s momma.”

“Say what?”

“Don’t ask. Long story. Definitely don’t bring it up around Wallace. He’s still salty about losing a captain and a high batting order player in one fell swoop. I think he has a little black-haired voodoo doll that looks just like Emilie Beaudelaire.”

The seersucker-wearing sponsor pulled out a chair across from them at the table and smiled at each man in turn. “Let me see if I get this right. Morstad. Ecceles. Carter?”

“In the flesh,” Marcus said.

“Excellent. You guys are easier to recognize when you’re tiny specks on a baseball field. There, I can tell who you are by your position.” He held out a hand to shake. “Mike Rufino from the Comets.”

The three players stared dumbly at the dangling hand, and likely all for the same reason.

Charles was first to unfreeze himself, and actually shuddered before clearing his throat. “Uh. The
Philly
Comets?”

“Yep.” Mike pulled his ignored hand away. “I guess you’d know about the new farm team arrangement.”

All three shook their heads.

“Wallace didn’t tell ya? Ink’s been dry on the deal for months.” Mike shrugged. “Anyway, I’d been studying up on you two”—he pointed to Marcus and then Charles—“for a little while now. And you, Morstad, I had no idea you were back in the sport until this morning. Folks don’t usually come back once they drop off.”

“Surprise,” Gary said quietly.

“What’ve you been up to?”

Because Gary was Gary, he was about to say “Man-whoring,” but Charles kicked his foot under the table before he could get the words out.

Gary choked back a curse at the pain, and said, “Oh, you know. Bit of this and that.”

“Well, damn. If Wallace had told me you were bobbing around, I would have made an effort to fly down last week.”

“Why?” Marcus asked.

“Easier for me to finagle players away if I can get them as a package.”

“Pardon?” Charles asked.

“Yeah, listen. We’ve got a few players to put out to pasture next year, and possibly one midseason. We didn’t recruit hard last year because we knew we were going to have some turnover and we were so close to affiliating with the Roosters, anyway. We’ve got fewer players in reserve than we like to have and, to be honest, I don’t know what’s gonna happen this season. We just came out of a championship-winning year and now have the smallest team we’ve had in recent history. I don’t know what’s gonna shake out.” He pushed his chair back from the table and reached out a hand to shake again.

Gary, Marcus, and Charles had finally developed the good sense to shake it.

“Tell your agents to be ready for a call at any time,” he said.

“What agent?” Marcus muttered, but Mike was too far away to have heard.

For a while, the three sat in silence. Then they got up in unison, pushed their chairs in, and left, all going their separate ways in the parking lot.

Gary couldn’t speak for his friends, but if Marcus and Charles were feeling anything like he was at the moment, they thought a little bit of their brains were going to dribble out of their ears.

Marcus paced in front of the bus, lips moving, apparently muttering to himself.

Charles stood beneath the awning at the end of the building yammering into his phone. Gary was about to pull out his phone, too, to call Clint, but before he could, Mike jumped out from the SUV that had evidently been parked in front of Gary.

“Hey, Morstad. Got a minute?”

“Stuck here until someone pays the check and opens the bus, so yeah.”

“Good. Listen, who’s representing you nowadays?”

Gary snorted. “Gary Morstad. Never saw the point of representation.”

“You need to get a guy.”

“Why?”

“Because we need to fill a hole in our roster.”

Gary nodded slowly. “Yeah. You said something about midseason.”

“Maybe a little sooner. You were playing today like you’d never left, and to hear Wallace talk, I would have thought you’d been under a rock or something in the past few years.”

“No. No rocks.”
Just ladies. Lots of ladies
.

“Are you actually ambidextrous or do you just bat that way?”

“I’m a southpaw. My mother didn’t like that and forced me to learn to do shit with my right hand before kindergarten.” She’d figured that with everything else wrong with him, he should have one less thing making him different from his classmates.

“Ah, that’s perfect. I’ve got the guys in Philly on the hook tonight. They’re waiting to hear about what kind of talent we’ve got in waiting down here, and I bet you anything, they’d want to get you up there to work out with the team in the next couple of weeks.”

Mike had said a lot of words in short succession, and Gary needed a few seconds to properly parse them all.

“You mean…”

Mike pounded Gary’s back and then headed toward his SUV. “I’ll be in touch with your guy. Get a guy.”

“Right.” Gary gulped. “A…
guy
.”

As Mike drove away with his phone pressed to his ear, likely toward the airport, Gary stood near the restaurant door, shifting his weight, and waiting for the other shoe to drop in his head.

As was always the case after receiving what should have been good news, there was a period of panic, because things never went, for him, the people might have expected.

And then he remembered why being in Reedsville worked. Dean had helped him transition, and then Marcus and Charles had taken the reins from him.

If Gary went to Philly, he’d have to transition all over again, and on his own. Once upon a time, he might have been bold enough think he could do that with no problems, but he’d matured and was afraid enough of his weaknesses to not want to ignore them.

“Philly.
Shit
.”

The team finally started to flow out of the restaurant and toward the bus, and after Cameron had passed, Gary joined the throng.

Philly symbolized everything Gary had wanted when he’d first started playing, and also when he’d returned to Reedsville weeks prior.

The majors. The brass ring. He wouldn’t have to worry about money in the off-season or be looking out for side gigs to supplement his summer income. He wouldn’t have to wonder if he needed to get back into the manservant game to make ends meet.

He slumped into the seat behind the driver and dragged a hand through his hair.

There was no way in hell he could do it on his own. Not unless he went back on his meds.