Broken Play (8 page)

“Your turn,” she said, reaching down and rubbing her hands along the evidence of their arousal. Their cocks were both big and hot through their jeans. She felt a little like a porn star in a bad movie, and she grinned.

“Nope,” Cass said, moving his hips out of her reach. “This was for you.”

“This will be, too,” she told him seriously. He stopped and cocked his head to the side, puzzled.

“There's more to that admission than I understand, isn't there?” he asked quietly. Beau kissed her cheek and rested his forehead against the side of her head. His hand gently stroked her shoulder.

“Yes,” she said, but no more. That didn't belong here. It wasn't here. But she had to make sure. She needed to give as good as she got if she hoped to have a successful relationship, if not with these two men, then someone else. And she wanted to reciprocate. She adored them both, and would be eternally grateful for what they'd done for her today, even if they didn't understand it. But eternal gratitude only went so far, and she wanted a more immediate way to say thanks.

Cass moved back into range, but he didn't do anything to help. On some weird level he knew that she needed to do this herself. Cass was like that. He knew what he shouldn't, what no one else knew. Marian freed her arm from around Beau's shoulders, and he straightened next to her, watching her. Beau was always watching. He, too, understood there was meaning here for Marian beyond the physical act.

She unbuttoned Cass's pants first, and then Beau's, without freeing their cocks completely. She wanted this to be equal, wanted them to know that they shared equally in her affections. Cass might be questioning that right now, but it was true. She'd kissed Beau without him because she'd needed one of them at that moment, needed the connection so that she didn't feel so damaged as the old memories came roaring back. But as usual, Cass had come when she hadn't even realized she'd needed him.

She reached in and pulled their cocks up and out of their underwear. Beau wiggled his hips and his pants slid down a bit, giving her more room to maneuver. Cass simply hooked his thumbs in both underwear and jeans and shoved them down an inch or two.

“I'm close,” Beau said softly. “Sorry, but you were pretty damn hot.”

“Me, too,” Cass said. “You were
both
pretty damn hot. I'm ready to go. Won't take much.”

Marian wrapped her hands around their cocks and they moved a little bit in front of her, closer together, so she didn't have to reach so far. She was glad they were comfortable with one another in this situation. It made it easier to watch both of them at the same time. She pulled on both cocks, ran her hands up to the heads and cupped them. They were wet with pre-cum. She pressed her hands down, the moisture easing her way.

“Damn, girl,” Cass muttered. “Don't stop.” He pressed in closer until he was inches from Beau, his head tucked down to Beau's shoulder as he watched Marian's hands. “Together,” he told her.

It may have been her show, but she let Cass direct. She'd never done this and always wanted to. She tugged Beau a step closer and wrapped both hands around both cocks at the same time, pressing them together. It looked so sexy she thought she might come again, with a little encouragement. Cass was big, and his pale cock had a deep-red head and wore a blush. Beau was even bigger, his cock the same golden color as his skin everywhere else, the head a soft brown, but she could see a pink flush beneath his skin, too. So different and yet so alike. Beau's head fell back.

“Yes,” he moaned. “God, yes.”

In just three strokes she could feel their cocks grow hard as steel, hot and pulsing.

“Now,” Cass said breathlessly. “It's gonna be now.” He gave a groan and she almost laughed, it was so perfect, the kind of sound a man only made when he was about to come. Beau's breath hitched and an almost whimpering sound came from him right before he came, a strong jet of cum shooting up and falling on her wrist. Cass cried out and he came, too, not quite so hard, but just as amazing to watch. The sheen of their cum was caught in a tiny little band of sunlight that cut across her hands where she still held them. Why she found it so arresting, almost beautiful, she didn't know, but she did. They were warm and softening in her hands and she didn't want to let go.

“Marian,” Cass whispered in her ear, and she jerked her gaze away from her hands and what they held. “We've never done that before. Thank you.” He kissed her cheek. Beau did the same, adding a one-armed hug, too. Cass's confession and those simple acts meant more to her than flowers or poetry or romance. They made this encounter about intimacy and not sex. His words showed her respect and admiration. And for the first time in a long time, she had respect for herself, because she'd finally faced her demons. At least a couple of them.

Once Cass and Beau left her office, Marian began to shake. She'd practically thrown them out, but they'd been good-natured about it, attributing her sudden shyness and panic to the risk of getting caught. But the truth was, reality had hit her hard. She couldn't believe what she'd done. With them. Here. She had gone certifiably crazy. Off the deep end. She sat down in her office chair and put her head between her knees, so she wouldn't pass out.

Cass and Beau had both insisted they needed to talk, but she wasn't ready for that. She couldn't believe what a chance she had taken with them. In her office. The inappropriateness of it was shocking. What if someone had walked in?

Marian stayed late at the office, hoping to avoid Cass and Beau. She actually did have paperwork piled high on her desk. Mike and Shannon wanted reports on the players and their recent physicals and workouts at mini-camp. By the time she felt she'd caught up enough to call it a day, she'd missed dinner. When she stepped out of her office, her stomach was rumbling as she turned to lock the door.

“Yoo-hoo,” a man softly said on her left. She spun around in surprise, dropping her keys. Tyler stood at the end of the hallway, about five or six feet away. “This time I stayed back here and gave fair warning,” he said with a smile. “Still too much?”

She laughed and blew out a breath as she picked her keys up off the floor. “No, good,” she said, locking her door with a minimum of clumsiness. She smiled at him and he took a tentative step forward. “It's just that I wasn't expecting anyone to be around,” she explained, checking her watch. “It's pretty late. I assumed everyone else had gone home.” She got suspicious. “Why are you here? Did Cass and Beau put you up to this?”

Tyler continued walking toward her, and when he reached her, she turned and they set out together.

“First, I'd like to know exactly what you think Cass and Beau put me up to, and then I'd like to know why.”

Marian barely spared him a glance, and said nothing.

“That's what I thought,” Tyler said. “Nobody ever tells me anything.” He sighed dramatically and she laughed.

“Not going to work,” she told him. He pushed open the outside door and held it as she passed him. “Why are you still here?”

“I had an aching thigh,” he said with a shrug. “I was in the whirlpool with the trainer.” Marian's eyes got big as she stared at him. She had no idea he and Ashe were an item. “Not together,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes. “Ashe is straight as an arrow. I was in the whirlpool, he was overseeing my hydrotherapy and gave me a massage. Not the kind with a happy ending.”

Marian blushed, both at her erroneous assumption and at the thought of her own happy ending earlier. “Better now?” she asked, avoiding Tyler's look.

“Better,” he said, a little too casually. He was treading lightly. These damn football players around here were too sensitive by half. “I'm hitting a club tonight with Tom and some other players. Want to go?”

She didn't, not really. But she didn't want to sit around her apartment, either, hiding with her phone off like a chickenshit. She knew without a doubt that Cass and Beau would come to find her, and she didn't want to be there when they did. She couldn't be alone with them again. They made her do stupid things and make bad decisions. Damn lust hormones.

“Sure,” she told Tyler. “Let me just go home and change. These are work clothes. I need play clothes.”

“The kind you can get dirty in?” Tyler asked with a suggestive grin.

“You wish,” Marian told him as she stopped at her car and unlocked the doors. “I can meet you at the club.”

“I'll just follow you home,” Tyler said, “and we can go together. We can do rock, paper, scissors for DD.”

“I cheat,” Marian warned him. She so did not want to be designated driver tonight. She had a mind to tie a big, fat, whopping drunk on.

It didn't take her long to change. She left her phone out in the living room, and when she heard it ring, she called out to Tyler, “Don't answer that. I'm off the clock.” She nearly tripped trying to tug her jeans on as fast as she could, so they could be gone before Cass and Beau showed up. She grabbed the first T-shirt she could find, a red, vintage Coca-Cola-logo tee. It was so faded and worn that she normally only wore it on laundry days. Maybe not the best choice, but she was in a hurry.

“It's Cass,” Tyler called back to her, his voice muffled by her closed bedroom door. “I'll just see what he wants.”

Shit, shit, shit
, she thought.

A moment later there was a knock on the door. “He wants to talk to you,” Tyler said. “Just crack the door and I'll pass it through.”

“No,” she said, backing away so her voice was coming from the bathroom doorway. “I'm in the bathroom. I'll talk to him tomorrow. Tell him that. Tomorrow.” She was probably talking too fast, but Tyler wouldn't notice. He was a fast talker anyway.

“Oookay,” he said, and Marian would have kicked the wall if she had her shoes on. He'd definitely noticed. She heard his muted voice fade away as he told Cass something.

She yanked on some wedge sandals and raced to the bedroom door. She stood there listening before she opened it, trying to tell if Tyler was still on the phone.

“I hung up,” he said through the door. She jumped because his voice sounded so close. Cautiously she opened the door to see him standing there giving her an odd look. She gave him a sheepish smile. “Not asking,” he said. “Let's go.”

Beau's head was messed up. He wanted Cass. And he wanted Marian. What did that mean? And now Marian was at a club with the team and Cass was pacing the house like a caged tiger. Beau was just as wound up, but hiding it better. He was pretending to watch the NHL classic from January on ESPN Classic. Was Marian giving them the brush-off? Was she just interested in doing the players, and she didn't care which ones? Even the thought felt wrong. He hadn't gotten that vibe from her at all. She was usually nervous when she was around too many of them at once.

“What the hell is going on with her?” Cass shouted, stopping directly in front of the large screen. “She has sex with us and then she refuses to speak to me, and blows us off for a club with the team?” He ran his hands through his hair in a movement Beau was very familiar with, and began pacing again.

“Technically, we didn't have sex,” Beau told him, though it had sure felt like it.

“We all came. We got her off, she got us off. It was sex,” Cass said flatly.

“Maybe it was just sex,” Beau said, trying out his theory. Still felt wrong.

“No fucking way,” Cass said loudly. “Marian Treadwell is not a woman who just has sex on the spur of the moment. It meant something. You were there. You know it did.”

He was there, all right. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It meant something. I'm just not sure what. I don't know what is going on with her.” He sighed and turned off the TV. “She told me when I came in that I was the only sane thing in her world. I don't know what that means. But she also said she has feelings for you, Cass. It didn't mean anything that she came on to me first.”

Cass flapped his hand at Beau as he continued to pace. “I know that. I wasn't upset. I get that you're less threatening.”

“What does
that
mean?” Beau asked, getting a little pissed. “She was not using me as a fucking substitute for you, you know. She told me that.”

Cass stopped and frowned at him. “You two did a hell of a lot of talking before I arrived. And I wasn't suggesting that. I was simply saying that women find you more approachable and easier to talk to. And that's
my
fault. I'm impatient; I have a short fuse; I'm not touchy-feely. I know all that. I've learned to live with it.”

“I am not touchy-feely,” Beau said indignantly. “Who said I was touchy-feely? Was it Tyler? I'll kick his ass.”

“I said it. You want to kick my ass?” Cass said with a grin. “Give it a shot.”

Kicking was not what Beau wanted to do to Cass's ass. When the thought slammed into him from left field, Beau nearly toppled off the couch as he scrambled to get up. They hadn't talked at all about what had happened between them in Marian's office. That was something new with them. You didn't just casually rub dicks with your best friend. But Beau wasn't ready to bring it up. He figured it was up to Cass to start that conversation, since it had been his idea. When he jumped up from the couch, Cass backed away, looking surprised.

“Um, no, not gonna kick your ass,” Beau told him. “Just, maybe we should go to the club and find out what's going on.”

“An hour ago you said we shouldn't,” Cass argued, hands on hips. “You said she needed space.” He put air quotes around the last word, as if it weren't a real word or something. He was so lame, he cracked Beau up sometimes.

“Well, I've been sitting here thinking, and now I think we should,” he said, walking out of the room to go change out of his workout clothes. Cass followed on his heels.

“Are you sure?” Cass asked. His tone of voice made Beau stop and turn.

“What do you mean?” he asked, confused. “I just said so.”

Cass looked away and got that serious look on his face, as he worried his bottom lip. The look usually meant he was going say something he didn't want to, and chances were it was going to piss Beau off.

“The team will be there, and there's going to be a lot of drinking, and who knows what else,” Cass said. He looked right at Beau then. “Can you handle that? We haven't really put ourselves in that kind of situation for a few years.”

Beau was taken aback. “I hadn't even thought about it,” he admitted. He considered what Cass said. He wasn't the same fool who did shit without thinking, who ran for trouble instead of away from it. He was smarter now. And just that, the fact that he stopped and really thought about what Cass was asking, gave him the answer. “Yeah, I can handle it. I can't hide from it for the rest of my life.”

“Then let's go and see what the hell is wrong with our woman,” Cass told him, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Don't go all caveman on her,” Beau begged.

“I am a caveman,” Cass said. “She better learn to live with it now.”

Marian sat at a back table in the bar with Tyler and Tom. She giggled as she thought about their names. “Can't say that fast five times in a row,” she said out loud.

Jo Jo Jones stood beside the table and peered down at her. “Man, she is drunk.”

“More karaoke!” she shouted at the empty stage.

“Not you, sweetheart,” Tyler said, a hand on her arm. He wasn't holding her back so much as anchoring her to her chair. She'd already tumbled out once. Tequila was a wonderful thing.

“Tom,” she said with a sexy little pout. Tom just gave her a raised eyebrow and sipped his beer. She turned to Jo Jo. “Jo Jo,” she said.

He backed away from the table with his hands in the air. “No, ma'am. Don't come crying to me. Quarterback called it.”

Tom pushed back his chair. “I'll go again. I love karaoke.” The last was said with a big, white-toothed grin. He looked like a toothpaste ad. Marian giggled again, then she slapped her hand over her mouth. She did not giggle. Assistant coaches did not giggle.

“Where are Cass and Beau?” Sam Franklin asked from beside the table with a frown in her direction. She didn't really know the linebacker well. He was a vet, had gone straight into the army after playing college ball, just after 9/11. He'd been drafted by the Cowboys, way back when. He'd also been injured in the line of duty. Rather than pay him off when he got out of rehab, they'd traded him to the Rebels for future prospects. Shannon needed to fill the lineup and the salary cap was low—they blew the budget on Danny—so he needed guys who would take a garbage deal just to play. Sam was one of them. He was fighting for a place on the team during mini-camp, and so far she was impressed with his drive and work ethic. She thought he treated mini-camp like a military mission he was determined to win. But he tended to be dark and brooding and solitary. She'd been surprised to see him here tonight. But the big Samoan nose tackle, King Ulupoka, had taken Sam under his wing and was dragging him around these days.

His question was met with dead silence around the table, so Marian answered him. “They are not here.” She nodded. “Nope. Wouldn't let them come.” She giggled. “Well, I did. But not here.” She giggled again. “They make me do stupid things.”

“And getting shit-faced on tequila at a karaoke bar with the team is smart?” Jo Jo asked sarcastically.

She pointed at him. “Jo Jo, shut up.” She'd momentarily forgotten that something like twenty of the players were here. He mimed locking his lips closed and throwing the key over his shoulder.

“Going to sing now,” Tom said. “I like ‘Young Volcanoes.' Who else likes that one?”

“Me,” Marian said. “I like it.” She had no idea what it was.

“I ain't never even heard of it,” Jo Jo said. “That sounds like white-boy music.”

Marian laughed so hard she nearly fell out of her chair again. Tyler straightened her up.

Tom was really good. This was his third song. He didn't have a great voice, but his enthusiasm made up for it. The ladies loved it. They screamed and shouted for him, and at one point he stood on a table and had the whole bar singing with him. Marian wanted to enjoy it, but she just sat there sad-faced, and sighing.

“I can call them,” Tyler offered quietly, leaning on the table toward her.

She shook her head. “No. Not a good idea.”

“Why?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.

“Me,” she said, pointing to her chest, “coach. Them”—she pointed out toward the dance floor and waved her finger around—“players. Get it?”

“So you think there should be no fraternizing between coaching staff and players?” he asked.

It took her a moment to focus on the big words. She nodded. “Right.”

“But you do know that sitting around getting drunk with us is fraternizing, right?” Tyler asked. She glared at his flawed logic.

“Not the kind of fraternizing I was doing with Cass and Beau this afternoon in my office,” she told him. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth again in horror at what she'd confessed.

Tyler copied Jo Jo, miming locking his lips and throwing away the key. She sighed and flipped her tequila glass over so it couldn't be refilled.

“I just need a little time,” she whispered. “It's been…it's hard for me, this relationship stuff. The sex stuff.”

It was Tyler's turn to sigh. “Does this have anything to do with why you won't come into the locker room? Why I scared you so badly the other day?”

Marian shook her head frantically. How had Tyler figured it out? She knew he was smart, very smart, like most quarterbacks. You didn't get that position unless you could read people and situations with a glance. Tyler had had more than one glance. But she'd deny it to her dying day.

“Okay, okay,” Tyler said, rubbing her back. “I'm not asking again.”

Tom's song had ended and the bar had barely settled down when there was a commotion from the dance floor. Marian looked over and right into Cass's heated stare. When she glanced beside him, Beau smiled and winked at her.