Out of Bounds (Reedsville Roosters #5) (3 page)

Dean cleared his throat and popped the top on the bottle. “Yeah, you are.”

Lo glared at Gary over the top of her glass.

“Maybe you’ve got
him
fooled,” Gary said. “I’m a harder target.”

“I think your job has desensitized you to the ways of the fairer sex.”

“You’re pretty, but there isn’t anything fair about you.”

Lo stuck out her tongue and turned her attention to cheese straws.

Dean ground his teeth and then took a long draw of beer to squelch the compulsion to obliterate his expensive dental work. The guy couldn’t have flirted more openly if he’d tried, and Dean decided that if Gary tried, he’d break his face.

Before Dean could seriously contemplate the act, Ken set his beer on the table and slipped his arms around Clint’s shoulders. He whispered something into Clint’s ear that had the redhead’s lips turning up at the corners and his eyelids shuttering. It was as if Ken had found the exact right button to press to get that contented response from his lover, and Dean envied them for the ease of their camaraderie. If he’d tried such a thing with Lo…

He took another sip, furrowing his brow.

What would happen?

He didn’t know. He’d never gone up to her and whispered sweet nothings into her ear, promising a good time or any other thing. The sad truth was that anything he came up with to say would probably be corny and immature.

He took another slug of beer.

Think of something to say. Anything. Can’t just stand here like a jackass.

“Want to play a game?” Olivia asked. “We’ve got some new ones we haven’t even taken the plastic shrink-wrap off yet. This has been the first day in a while the three of us have been home at the same time.”

“Whatcha got?” Gary asked.

“
Cards Against Humanity
for one,” Clint said. “I have no idea how to play, but apparently the kids nowadays think it’s all the rage.”

Gary snorted. “All right, old man. If the
kids
are playing, who are we to ignore its siren call?”

Olivia laughed and scooped up Sidney and started walking toward the stairs. “I’ll put the birthday girl to bed. The rest of you can clear the party stuff off the table.” She got moving, and so did Lo—she sidled up to Dean and bumped the side of his leg with her hip, taking another sip of her wine. “Can we stay and play?”

“You don’t have to ask me.”

“Of course I do. If you want to go home, we can go home.”

The truth was, he didn’t know how to play the game and suspected he’d make an ass of himself, but Lo would get into the swing of things quickly enough. She’d be laughing and playing along, completely ignoring Dean, and he wouldn’t mind because he would get to see her smile in that way she did when she was really excited. Her grin was a sight to see, and well worth any shame he had to endure to witness it.

“I…want to play,” he hedged. “You’ve gotta show me how, though.”

She gave his ass a pinch through his jeans and moved back to the counter. “Do I ever steer you wrong?”

She hadn’t so far. In fact, she was doing the vast majority of the steering. He was coasting and letting her pull him along.

That has to stop
.

He grabbed a couple more beers from the refrigerator and took a seat at the table across from Ken.

Ken gave him a thumbs-up of encouragement.

Gary sat beside him, giving him a dirty look.

Same to you, jerk.

Lo hadn’t stayed out so late for reasons that had nothing to do with work in longer than she could remember. Before she’d gotten married, she’d gone out to any party she was invited to and to dance clubs—anyplace where she didn’t have to be alone. Having a husband cured her of that affliction but, occasionally, she craved the group dynamic. The give and take, the banter, the chaos. Sometimes, she felt at her best when she was stretched a bit too thin. Perhaps the need was an odd one, but that was the way she was wired.

She didn’t mind having to spend the night at the Morstads’. Staying meant when she and Dean got up, there’d be a loud and invigorating breakfast before she went home to cuddle with her quiet husband.

Her quiet,
hungover
husband, if his swaying status at the moment was any predictor.

“Shh, shh,” he whispered as they lumbered down the hall toward the guest room. He stopped trying to find her mouth with his lips long enough to put his finger to his own mouth. “We’ll wake Sidney.”

Lo giggled and clasped her hand over her mouth. She nodded and wriggled her eyebrows at him.

He crooked his thumb toward the darkened hall. “I think the room’s this way.”

“Yeah. Down there somewhere,” she whispered.

Sidney’s room was actually upstairs and they were downstairs. There was little chance of waking the child unless they crashed into a table and knocked over a vase or something. That probably wasn’t going to happen. Dean wasn’t that wild unless she asked him to be, and she generally liked that about him. He had a way of leveling out her moods.

“That one, I think.” She pointed to the slightly ajar door to their right, and he turned her into the room, finding her mouth again and delving her tongue within.

As always, she melted in his clutch. Her head swam and legs went noodly beneath her, but that was fine, because he always did such a good job of holding her up. So strong and staid, unless he’d gotten a few beers into him. Then he got handsy, and she’d never complain about that. She wished he’d touch her more—that he’d take more of what he wanted.

He slid his hands up the front of her shirt, unerringly finding the edges of her bra. He nudged the cups down and plucked at her nipples, and ground his rigid cock against her body.

She worked his belt buckle open and unfastened his khaki shorts. They’d been like two ships passing in the night, lately, and she was hungry for him. Wanted to hold him, grip him tight. Have him in her mouth so she could show him just how much she craved him.

“You taste so sweet,” he murmured against her lips.

“Moscato will do that.”

“
You’re
sweet.”

“Nah. Not feeling sweet.” She dropped to her knees, taking his pants and briefs down with her and made him widen his stance a bit.

She notched her fingers into the backs of his thighs and drew his straight, proud dick toward her mouth, but stopped when he threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her back.

He never did that.

“Dean, what—”

“Don’t stop on my account,” came a male voice from somewhere in the room.

Shit. Gary.

They’d obviously stumbled into the wrong guest room.

She turned her head slowly and, after a moment, her eyes adjusted so she could see him lying on his side in the large bed. He had one leg cocked and his hand draped over the knee.

He’d left after the first card game, saying he needed to take an allergy pill, and then he hadn’t returned. Lo and the others had kept playing until Dean had started to yawn. That was when Olivia had offered them the guest room, and Lo accepted.

Lo started to stand, but before she could, Dean nudged her head back toward his shaft.

His narrowed gaze was on Gary, and his mouth pressed into an austere line.

Oh.

Lo could recognize a challenge when she saw one. She had a heap of male cousins, and those assholes turned everything into a competition.

But Dean didn’t need to compete with Gary, even if Gary seemed to be asking for a contest.

“I think the room you were looking for is down the hall, by the way,” Gary said, his hand falling from his knee to his shadowed crotch. “But if you’d like to stay in here where the bed’s already cozy and broken in, I certainly won’t send you away.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Lo said.

Dean brushed the silken head of his cock across her lips and, teasingly, she darted her tongue across the weeping slit.

She liked him taking the lead because he so rarely did. Sure, he’d get on top of her and pound her until she saw stars and couldn’t move a muscle, but that was because she
told
him to.

“Big guy,” Gary said. “Gonna suck all that at once?”

She laughed. “Shut up.” And actually, she
was
. She liked doing it, so she did. She took Dean into her mouth and clamped her lips around the bulbous head of his erection.

She liked the little noises he made when her mouth was on him. So needy and…
grateful
.

Drawing in some air, he put his head back and widened his stance even more. “God,” he whispered.

“Already?” Gary said. “She’s barely gotten started. Doesn’t take much for you, huh?”

“Fuck off,” Dean said.

“Thank you. I think I will.”

Whatever that mysterious statement meant, Lo didn’t know, and she couldn’t concern herself with riddles at the moment. She was concentrating on pulling more of Dean’s fat shaft into her mouth. She liked to think of the job as a challenge—to see how much of him she could suck, and how long he’d let her suck him before he got that desperate, needy rasp to his voice. If there’d been more light in the room, she would have gotten her camera out and filmed the whole thing. Short, dirty vignettes brought good money on the Internet. That was how they’d paid off their house.

Nah. No video this time
.

Dean tapped the back of her throat and Lo suppressed a gag.

“I’d ask you to talk me through this, Lo, but obviously you’re preoccupied,” Gary said. “How about you, Mr. Gearhead? Will you tell me what she’s doing to your dick? How she’s licking and sucking you so I can give myself a pathetically unsatisfying hand job?”

Oh. So that’s what he’s doing.
Lo snorted.

Dean growled and tightened his grip in her hair again.

“Too good for you to speak?” Gary said. “Lucky you. The last blowjob a lady tried to give me ended in blue balls and shame. Took me two days after that to clear the pipes.”

Lo backed off Dean enough to say, “Poor baby,” and then got right back to work. She loved the way his thighs clenched when she had her mouth on him.

“I know!” Gary sighed. “She was complaining about her jaw hurting, saying I was taking too long to come. I offered her a secondary means of getting me off, but I guess that would have made it too easy for her husband to tell she was sleeping around. You know, I have a knack for attracting married chicks.”

“Maybe you should find a new line of work.”

“Trying to.” He sighed again and shifted on the bed. “Thinking about going back to baseball. The Roosters would take me back. Shallow talent pool in the outfield.”

Lo murmured a little
I’m listening
sound around Dean’s cock and worked up some spit to get him good and wet.

He groaned. Whether the conversation she was carrying on as she sucked him off was making him suffer, or the magic of her mouth, she couldn’t guess. Perhaps both. She loved having him in her mouth—loved that sucking him was one of few ways she could have the quiet man at his mercy. He may not have been much for speaking when their clothes were all on, but when she touched him, he made plenty of noise, and they were like candy for her. She wanted to devour every sound.

“
Shit
,” he whispered.

She looked up to see he’d parted his lips and put his head back. He spoke his enjoyment to the ceiling and widened his stance even more to flatten his cock across her tongue.

“The bed might be easier on your knees,” Gary said.

“You gettin’ off it?” Lo asked around Dean’s cock.

“No. I’m sure you’d just as soon move on down the hall to the room you were looking for, but sucking cock is more fun when you have an audience.”

He sounded like he was speaking from experience.

Lo let Dean fall from her mouth and looked at the lounging spectator.

“Really,” he said. “All the little encouragements and helpful instructions. Suggestions you might not have thought of because you’re concentrating too hard on the moment. It’s like…
hmm
. Being coached.”

“Coached.” Lo wrapped her fingers around Dean’s slick shaft and stroked to keep him hard and interested. There might have been a first time for everything, but Lo would have never predicted she’d have her mouth on her man while another watched inside the same room. The Internet depersonalized their other shows.

Dean was either taking it all in stride, or too wasted to care. She didn’t think the latter could be true. He’d never been
that
drunk. At least, not since they’d been together which admittedly hadn’t been all that long.

“Mm-hmm,” Gary said. “Coaching.”

“I guess a baseball player should know a little something about that, even if he can’t prove he’s any good at it on the field.”

“Quiet, woman. Come here.” He motioned her—or them—over. She wasn’t sure which.

Dean’s nostrils flared and he had his hands fisted at his sides, but his erection remained just as turgid as it been when she’d been sucking him.

“Come on,” Gary purred. “I don’t bite. Unless you ask me to.” He chuckled.

Dean wrapped his fingers around Lo’s wrist and stopped her from pumping him. “It’s all right,” he said quietly.

He helped her to stand and tucked himself back into his shorts.

“Pity,” Gary said.

Troublemaker.
She was starting to understand why he’d gotten thrown off the Roosters the first time he’d played for them. He was an instigator.

And she’d never before been so eager and so wet.

“Come on.” Stumbling a bit, Dean pulled her into the hall, then closed Gary’s door.

He continued them on toward the window at the end, and they stopped at the next door. Clearing his throat, he knocked.

When no response came, Lo opened the door and nudged Dean inside.

He fell backward onto the bed, still dressed.

She sighed and worked off his sneakers and his socks. He was stiff as a corpse, breaths already slower and longer.

“Dean.” She sighed.

“Love you, baby. Stay in here tonight. Not his room.”

She heeled off her sandals and instinctively checked her hand for her rings.

Still there.

“Why would I go there?” she asked the drunk.

“He wants to fuck you. Obvious.”

“Oh?”

Dean grunted.

“Have you forgotten that I’m married?”

“You are?”

“
Dean
.” Giggling, she climbed onto the bed and pulled back the covers. “I’m married to you.”

“Yeah, you are.”

She watched the corners of his lips quirk up at the corners and his tense body relaxed against the soft mattress.

“I don’t see how you could possibly not remember that.” She snuggled under the covers and nudged the side of his arm with her toe.

Slowly, he scooted up toward the pillow, sighing all the way.

“Gimme another six months,” he said. “I might remember then.”

“I’m sure your parents will remind you if you forget.”

“They remember.”

“Uh huh.” She gave the covers a tug, trying to get him a bit more uncomfortable so he’d get under them. She needed his warmth, his touch, even if she
could
set fire to his boozy breath.

He groaned, sat up, and then lifted his ass.

She quickly yanked the cover down for him to get in. “There you go. Warm and snug, big guy.”

“My parents…were there.”

“Yep.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and pressed her face against the side of his chest. “Don’t you remember dancing with your mother at the reception?”

“I stepped on her foot.”

“And mine, too.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, baby.”

She laughed again and skimmed her fingers down his chest, down his belly. She laid her hand over his belt buckle and left it there. “That was six months ago. Both of my feet are just fine now. I’ve recovered admirably from the ordeal.”

“I’m an ordeal.”

“Only when you’re dancing. The rest of the time, you’re a dream.”

“I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’ve had more water than wine. I’m perfectly sober.”

“You are?”

“Yep.”

“You could drive us home.”

“I could.” She swirled her fingertips over his belly and dragged her foot up his shin. “You want to leave now? Drive home in the dark when this bed is so comfortable?”

If he fell asleep in the truck, there was no way she’d be able to get him out. She’d learned some very creative ways to rouse him during the short time they’d been married, some salacious, some sweet. Some just terrible. She preferred to just let him sleep so she could watch his dreams play out in his facial expressions.

“If we leave…Gary doesn’t get you.”

She sighed. “Why are you so convinced he’s going to get me?”

“You talk to him.”

“Yeah. He’s a talker, I guess.”

“I’m not.”

“And?” She held her breath waiting for a response until she had no choice but to draw in a breath. Her body demanded that she breathe. And she wanted to demand an answer from him, but it was no use. He was asleep, and she was alone with her thoughts.

She’d never thought of Dean as insecure. His stoic nature and proud bearing had her thinking that such a failure was improbable.

But if I have insecurities, why not him?

If Dean had any clue of just how needy she was, he probably would have begged Gary to take her off his hands.

Groaning, she closed her eyes.