Page 21 of Double Team

  Sexually confident, drunk-on-her-own-lust Grace has suddenly disappeared, replaced by Scared Shitless Grace. This Grace is totally consumed by thoughts about the implications of what just happened between the three of us.

  We could get found out so fucking easily. It only takes one person walking in at the wrong time, or one person noticing a gesture or a look and…

  It would be on headlines across the world.

  Why did I let my libido get the better of me? Making impulsive decisions is not what I do, and this is the ultimate in impulsive decision-making.

  Panic rises in my throat, and I scramble out of bed. I have to get out of here. What if there was a threat, a reason my security had to find me in the middle of the night? That’s my rationalization for running away, even though the likelihood of that happening is infinitesimally small.

  I move cautiously, soundlessly, careful not to wake the slumbering giants. I shouldn’t be worried, though, because neither of them stir. I open a drawer in Noah’s dresser, lucking out that the first one I pull on is full of t-shirts. I slip a shirt over my head and sneak out the bedroom door, tiptoeing through the house and back to the kitchen for my clothes.

  For all of our clothes. Cleaning up the evidence.

  I’ve seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know that cleaning up the evidence isn’t really possible. Things like this are always discovered. Someone always finds out.

  I take the clothes back to Noah’s room, setting them in a small pile by the bottom of the bed. For a second, I consider getting back into the bed with them. I consider not being a chicken shit and going to sleep between them, waking up with them, and repeating what happened last night tomorrow morning.

  But I’m not that brave. Instead, I tiptoe back to the guest room, collapsing into bed and pulling the sheets up around me. I sit there for a few minutes with my phone in my hand before I muster the courage to text Vi.

  She’s the only person in the world I can trust to talk about what happened. She responds in less than a minute.

  You’ve been radio silent, you know. I was wondering when I was going to get this text. Call me.

  When I do, she answers the phone after one ring, her voice expectant. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “You’re the one frantically texting me at midnight. Spill it or I’m going to start trying to guess what you did.”

  I groan. “You’re not going to guess, because it’s ten times worse than anything you could imagine.”

  “Worse?” Vi cackles. “Oh, honey, tell me it wasn’t disappointing.”

  “You know what I’m talking about?” I ask, my voice going up an octave. I drop to a whisper. “You know why I’m calling?”

  I can practically hear Vi’s eyes roll over the phone. “Let’s see. I only have a bachelor’s degree in fashion design and not my private investigator’s license, but I’ll give it a shot. You left for a camping trip with two of the hottest football players in the world, out in the middle of nowhere at a luxury ranch.”

  “How did you know it was a luxury ranch?” I interrupt.

  “Let me finish,” Vi chides. “And, please, of course it was luxury. Noah Ashby is a multi-millionaire. He’s not living in a tiny log cabin without indoor plumbing. Anyway, two hot football players, a luxury ranch, and one uptight and repressed Presidential daughter? I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you got plugged six ways from Sunday.”

  “I’m not uptight and repressed,” I protest, even as I wince at her blunt words. “And plugged? That’s really disgusting.”

  “That’s right. Repressed,” Vi reiterates. “And sex is inherently disgusting – bodily fluids, ham-hocks slapping against each other, spooge-shooters spraying spooge…”

  “Oh my God. Spooge? Who even uses that word? What is wrong with you?”

  “I was just showing you that using the phrase plugged six ways from Sunday is in no way, shape, or form as disgusting as I am capable of being.”

  “Can you spare me the evocative descriptions?”

  “If you tell me why the hell a women who was spit-roasted by two very fine men is calling me at midnight when she should be in the middle of a football player sandwich.”

  “Spit-roasted?!”

  “You know, a cock in both ends,” Vi elaborates. “I assume that’s how it went down. Unless you were going right for double penetration from the get-go, in which case you’d have my very enthusiastic congratulations and utmost respect.”

  “I’m being serious, Vi.”

  “So am I. If you took it up the butt and in the cooch, I would offer you a very sincere congratulations, with only the tiniest hint of jealousy.”

  I’m silent for a moment, pointedly ignoring her crude words. “I ran out of the room.”

  “Oh my God, Grace. You fled the scene when they were sticking it to you?”

  “No, not when they were sticking it to me,” I clarify, exasperated. “That part was… well, good.”

  “Good,” Vi interrupts. “You just had a threesome and all you have to say is that it was good? That doesn’t sound very good.”

  The ache between my legs reminds me of exactly how good it was. “It was… crazy, Vi.”

  I don't do crazy. I don't do wild or crazy or impulsive. I do… measured. In control.

  “Uh huh. And that’s why you’re now hiding under your covers in your room, talking to me in whispers on the phone instead of sucking the spooge out of a football player’s dick.”

  “Stop saying spooge.”

  “Why. Does it make you hot?”

  “Are you high?”

  “Sober as a judge,” Vi says. “And for the record, I’m just trying to get you to laugh about this shit. You can’t take everything so fucking seriously or you’re going to drop dead of a heart attack.”

  “I screwed two guys. Well, one. I went down on the other one. Vi, this is not what I do.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m congratulating you. If you did it all the time, it wouldn’t be special. Grace Sullivan, the most tightly-wound girl I know, had casual sex with two men at the same time.”

  Casual sex. Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. She’s right. That’s all this was and nothing more. Noah and Aiden are professional football players who have women throwing themselves at them all the time, and I’m the daughter of the President. It can’t be anything other than casual… even if I haven’t had sex in two years and I just dove right into the deep end of the pool, making it feel as uncasual as possible for me.

  “You hooked up with two men and the world didn’t end,” she continues, but instead of reassuring me it just reminds me again that someone could find out.

  “It very well could. We both know that.”

  “That’s just slightly dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “You know what I mean. The political world would explode if anyone discovered what happened.”

  “So don’t let them find out.”

  “Everything comes out, Vi,” I hiss. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. People keep secrets for years. Think of all of the romance novels written about secret babies. Hell, think of all the politicians hiding affairs and secret babies. The three of you are mature, consenting adults who are perfectly capable of keeping secrets.”

  “Well, I don’t know about the mature part,” I joke.

  “Do I detect a hint of humor under your overstressed voice?” Vi asks.

  “Slightly,” I admit.

  “That’s a start,” Vi says. “Now, in all seriousness… tell me everything.”

  “I’m not kissing and telling,” I protest, feeling protective of what happened between Noah and Aiden and I.

  “But it was good?”

  “It was good. Really, really good.” Too good, in fact. Even now, exhausted after being “fucked six ways from Sunday” as Vi put it, my body craves their touch.

  This is casual. It needs to be casual.

  S

omeone needs to tell my body that, because right now it feels like it very well could be an addiction.

  “So get back in the game,” Vi says. “Go get ‘em, tiger. Break a leg. Suck a cock – or two. Wake those boys up and put them inside you.”

  I exhale heavily and roll my eyes, even if she can't see my face. “When you date athletes –"

  "Screw," Vi corrects. "When I screw athletes. I occasionally date them, but go on."

  "When you screw these jocks who are used to filthy, juvenile locker room talk, are they ever the ones appalled by your dirty mouth?"

  "All the time, doll. All the time."

  26

  Aiden

  Mmm.

  The heat from Grace’s body radiates onto mine and an image of what happened last night flashes in my head before I even open my eyes.

  In my not-yet-awake state, I reach out to pull her against me, my hand grazing her ass cheek and –

  What the fuck.

  That’s not Grace I’m snuggling up against.

  I practically leap to the other side of the bed at the same time that Noah growls, “If your hand so much as gets within a foot of my dick, so help me I will- ”

  “Dude. Why are you snuggling up on me?” I ask, my voice loud.

  Noah is already standing beside the bed, scrambling into his boxers. “You had your head on my chest, asshole.”

  “If I did, it’s only because your chest feels like a woman’s.” I dig around for my clothes in the pile on the floor. “You might be getting a little soft. You really need to reevaluate your off-season training.”

  “Fuck you,” Noah grumbles. “Where the hell is Grace?”

  “Gone, obviously,” I respond without thinking. Then the realization hits me. “Did she actually screw us and leave?”

  Noah’s brow furrows and he turns to head to the bathroom, totally ignoring me. Well, maybe Noah is used to chicks running away screaming after he screws them, but I’m sure as hell not.

  I’m the one who leaves. I’m the one who has to figure out a clever (or not so clever) excuse to ditch out on a girl after we hook up.

  Not once in my twenty-six years has a woman ever pulled a - well, an “Aiden Jackson”. The middle-of-the-night bail is one of my trademark moves – not that I’m proud of it, but I’ve never been with a girl I wanted to stick around and see the next morning. Not once have I ever been the one who was ditched in the middle of the night.

  I already have pants on and I’m pulling on a t-shirt when Noah walks back out of the bathroom, pausing in the doorway. “Why, are you sad she didn’t stick around and cuddle with you?”

  “Pfft. At least that way she’d have been between us and I wouldn’t have woken up next to your stupid ass.”

  “You were the one trying to grope my stupid ass.”

  “Only because it felt like a woman’s.” I pause. “Seriously. It’s baby-soft. What kind of moisturizer do you use?”

  A dark look passes over Noah’s face. “I use Shut The Fuck Up Lotion.”

  “You’re really damn testy this morning. Obviously getting laid doesn’t do anything to make you less of an asshole.”

  “I was doing just fine before I woke up,” Noah growls.

  “You think Grace freaked out?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. After the shit that happened last night, wouldn’t you?”

  “I just woke up in bed with you. I already am freaked out.” That’s not a lie.

  “Well, that makes two of us. It’s not like I wanted to wake up with you in my bed.”

  This is awkward as hell. Noah and I have been best friends for as long as I can remember having a best friend. We’ve been through a lot of situations together.

  This situation has never come up before.

  I exhale heavily and clear my throat. “Should we… uh… talk about it or something?”

  Noah screws up his face into a grimace. “Do you have feelings you need to share?”

  “Hell, no, I don’t have any fucking feelings. What’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re the one who wants to talk,” Noah says, huffing as he digs in a dresser drawer and pulls out gym clothes.

  “Well, we need to talk to Grace, don’t we?” I ask.

  Noah’s shoulders slump. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You guess? I’m asking you. Chicks don’t run out on me after sex.”

  “You think I have experience with this?”

  “Girls running away from you? I think you might be an expert.”

  Noah scowls. “You don’t think she left the ranch and went home, do you?”

  Shit. I didn’t think of that. “I didn’t think the sex was that bad.”

  Noah looks at me like I’m stupid. “It wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t think it was.”

  “It wasn’t,” I agree, then say it again to reassure myself. “It wasn’t. It was kind of hot, being with the same girl. I mean…” I clear my throat.

  Noah shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be, watching you with her.”

  “Not as awful? You seemed to like it just fine. You were the one telling her how much you wanted to watch her swallow my cum while you came in her.” I say it before I think about what I’m saying, mostly to get under Noah’s skin.

  Noah’s face turns red. Holy fuck. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Noah embarrassed. I almost feel bad. Almost.

  He shuffles his feet and clears his throat. “Are you finished now?”

  “Yep. No more talking. You want to find Grace or go to the gym?”

  Find Grace is the right answer. That’s what we should do, at least that would be the sensitive thing to do, but I suddenly have the need to something that doesn’t involve me being in bed with my best friend.

  “Gym,” Noah grunts. “What are you benching?”

  “More than you,” I challenge.

  With that, everything is back to normal. Or whatever the hell normal is now.

  27

  Noah