12. Blake

CHAPTER TWELVE

Blake

I have an idea. Whatever Shira's considering makes her eyes go wicked. She's still half naked, reclining on the towels. Her feet splash in the water. Relaxed in a way I'm usually only pretending to be anywhere but a ballfield, like she's used to dictating the world on her terms. It's enough to make me want to fall to my knees again.

She turns to Felix. "You and Blake did such a good job"—and she pokes an illustrative tongue against her cheek—"I could return the favor."

An offer plucked from the most shameful part of my imagination—having her do this. Having her do this with someone watching. Having her do this with Felix watching. Watching her do this with Felix. Nothing I would have done in Atlanta, too worried about my image. Too worried that that, if word got around, there'd be hell to pay.

"You don't have to," I say. The answer comes reflexively. That she's saying yes because she feels like she has to.

That's enough to make Shira sit up, propping herself on her elbows. "Did you like making me come?" she asks.

An indescribable amount. I nod. It's possible I'm too eager, because Shira laughs, but fuck it. I am eager. We've dated for a month. I meant it when I said I wanted to go at her pace. But it turns out her pace is fast .

"Yes," I say, voice hoarse, "I did."

"Well, trust me when I say I want the same thing too. And I bet you'd be really good at fucking my mouth." She says it sweetly, laughingly, as if sex could just be a good time we're all having together.

Everything with her feels so easy—talking with her, stroking her hair, apparently sex. Almost spilling out all my secrets.

Felix hasn't said anything. We were ordering each other around before, but this is different. I don't want to pressure him any more than I did her. I turn to him. "We all get a say in this."

"I don't want to, uh, insert myself somewhere I don't belong." What he said before. Like he still thinks of himself as extraneous. And whose fault is that?

I think of the flash of his eyes across the table earlier, the stroke of his thumb on my wrist. How I want him the same way I want Shira. There are probably a hundred labels for this feeling—a million words I'm not entirely sure of.

So I try for one I am. "Stay." And another. "Please."

Felix's slow grin fills his newly shaved face. He's stopped hiding. Good. Maybe we all should.

"This really isn't what I thought would happen on this trip," he says.

Shira and I both laugh. "C'mere." She motions to both of us.

From there it's easy to go.

It does take some maneuvering: Shira kneels on the deck. Felix is taller than I am, but I carry more of my height in my legs. To do this, we have to stand close.

I focus on the dark gloss of Shira's hair, the daring edge to her smile. "You good?" she says.

Like there could be a good better than the three of us on a warm night. "Just thinking about how lucky I am to have met you."

"Because I'm about to do this?" she asks.

"No." I flush. "I mean, not just that. Just everything about you."

"Oh"—her fingers play at my waistband, her voice as sweet as it is sarcastic—"just that." She brushes her face against the front of my swim trunks, and I groan from that little bit of contact. "Get yourself out," she orders.

I undo the Velcro at the top of my fly, the rasp of it loud in the darkness. I take myself in hand—I've been hard for a while and mostly ignoring it. Now I can't, not as I stroke myself, not as Shira inches my shorts down to expose the head of my cock, still damp with pool water and a thin stream of pre-come.

Shira gathers her hair in her hand, then pauses. "It'd be easier if you both were a little more together."

I can't watch as Felix inches toward me: not the entirety of him, just the details. The shuffle of his callused feet on the deck. The hair flattened on the points of his ankles. Close, he braces his hand on my shoulder, a curl of his large palm on my arm. All things I've worked not to want.

A want that's magnified when Shira ducks her head, when she presses an unthinking kiss to my stomach. She grasps my shorts. "I'm gonna push these down."

"Yeah." My voice scratches. "Go ahead."

She does, and they drop to loop around my ankles. I'm naked: something I've done around other people in a clubhouse every day of my professional life. Different as Felix rakes his eyes over my skin, as Shira taps the head of my cock, drawing a trail of moisture, before she pops her fingertip into her mouth. "Clearly," she says, "I have some work to do."

Lucky doesn't begin to describe it.

She doesn't make me wait. She dips her tongue to my cock. The first touch of it makes me shiver. She kisses me, long and slow and sweeping along the crown, and my hand finds its way onto her shoulder. "Sweetheart." What I call her in case some other word falls out of my mouth. Like love .

I don't try to hurry her: Not the gradual descent of her mouth. Not the soft cup of her hand around my balls. They ache—from the past hour. From the past month of waiting.

"If you keep doing that," I say, "this is gonna be over before we even get started." Like the three of us might be. No, I can't think about that right now.

She gives my balls a gentle tug. "You eager?"

I nod, desperate.

She turns to Felix. "If you could…" She motions to the bulge pressing against the lacing of his swim trunks. My eyes drift toward the heavy outline of it. I shouldn't look. Except with what we're about to do, looking is unavoidable. Touching might be unavoidable.

"You want my help?" Shira asks Felix when he hasn't moved. "I know lacing can be tricky."

Felix reaches to where she's kneeling, tilts her jaw until she's staring up at him. For a second, neither of them moves—the moment stretching like a held breath.

"Hey." Felix's voice is low, gravel, like he's too overwhelmed for words.

"Is it a problem if I kiss you?" Shira asks.

That gets his smile. "No, that wouldn't be a problem."

Slowly she angles her cheek toward Felix's hand still cupping her face and plants a kiss in the center of his palm, the barest brush of her lips. He swallows, doesn't avert his gaze. I should be possessive. Jealous. Don't look at my girl. Unless you're looking at her like that.

He unlaces his swim trunks one-handed, pushes them down without ceremony. His cock sits on a neat patch of brown hair. It's red at the tip, like he's been aching for it. A pulse goes through me, hot and bright. I can't quite avert my gaze and my blood goes even hotter when I realize I don't have to.

I can't tell if Shira knows I'm staring. Maybe she attributes it to some sex-drunk haze. Maybe, if she's doing this, she might not care that I'm…

I need to focus. I shake my head slightly to clear it. Shira's eyes catch mine like she's seeking permission. "You don't have to," I say, "but if you want to."

That gets her smile, her lips pressing against his cock, almost sweet.

Everything about this situation should bother me—my girlfriend's mouth on someone else's dick, the gentle thread of his fingers through her hair. How she traces her tongue around him and then me and then him again.

Shira asked if we wanted to share . But this feels bigger than that—like something we're building together.

A line of spit trails between us, a fragile connection. Almost enough.

"Move a little closer," Shira says. "Let me suck you at the same time."

My knees practically buckle at the thought, at being pressed next to Felix in the tight heat of her mouth. "Are you, uh, sure you can manage us both?" I ask Shira. Instantly my face burns from the implication. Baseball makes you unromantic about bodies, but Felix is big . All over.

But Shira isn't who answers. Felix curls a gentle hand in her hair and shifts, closer, closer, until his cock almost brushes mine, held apart by a slim layer of air that feels like denial, even if I'm not sure what we're denying. "You gonna take us both in that pretty mouth of yours?" he says.

That gets her smile, the daring spark in her eyes. "That depends on Blake."

If we're doing this, we should do it together. No holding back. I shuffle closer. Felix's cock slides against mine, a lightning strike of a touch. I shut my eyes, momentarily overwhelmed. I can't have this.

But maybe…

"Hey." I open my eyes to find Felix's thumb on my cheek. He strokes once, tender. "It helps to breathe."

An order I take. I breathe and breathe again. "I'm good." My hand finds its way into Shira's hair on top of his.

Shira guides her lips around us, kissing, licking, working us in the tight circle of her fist. Somehow she fits both our tips into her mouth—the crown of my cock tight next to Felix's.

Felix closes his eyes, hissing like he's in pain, even as his hips pump. "You feel incredible."

My heart stutters for a second. Of course he's talking to Shira. She does feel incredible, smiling as she sucks. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes. My hand loosens in her hair—mine, but not Felix's. He pulls, tight, enough to draw her gasp, enough that a trail of spit drips down from her mouth, collecting on my balls.

"That too much?" he asks.

She shakes her head, laughing, then inches slowly down, her lips stretched, like she's rising to a dare.

"You sure?" Felix goads, as if he doesn't quite believe her.

She pulls back momentarily. "If I say I'm good, I'm good."

"But you'd be better if you had both our spunk on your tongue."

She raises a challenging eyebrow. "You gonna get my man all wet for me?"

My man. What I am. A thought that almost makes me come. My balls draw close to my body. Urgency coils in the base of my spine.

Shira takes us both into her mouth again and we're pressed together tight, the squeeze of it and the dip of Felix's fingers into my shoulder and his short growled "good" that's to her or me or maybe us both.

"I'm gonna—" I manage, before I come, emptying myself in a few long thrusts, groaning as I go weightless, as she holds me up and sucks me through it. Lines of it drip from Shira's mouth and down Felix's shaft. I can't stop looking at his cock or the way his eyes go hooded and pleased, the bright flash of Shira's smile like she's having a good time.

Could I have been doing this for years? Not with them, of course, but with some other nameless faceless strangers who pop into my imagination. No, even if I could, I wouldn't have wanted to experience this with anyone else. A possibility sparks at the edge of my vision, a what if that doesn't fade even as my orgasm recedes. What if this time doesn't have to be our last?

I pull back in time to watch Felix's hips stutter as he comes, to watch Shira's face flush as her fingers work between her legs, as she bites her lip like she's holding back a word. My name? His? Then she gasps as pleasure rolls through her, full bodied, wild and free.

After, we stand for a second, chests heaving. "Get her a towel," Felix says. An order. Yes, sir , hangs on my lips. But no, that was for earlier.

Still, I move only as far as pulling Shira up and clasping her to me. Her mouth is wet, face and chin shining. "Can I kiss you?" I breathe.

Her eyes widen. "Are you sure? I have—" She gestures to the wetness streaking her face.

If this is the only time we get, I don't want to hold anything back. So I press my lips to hers, deep, licking our combined release off her tongue—salt, spit, a bitterness that matches my own: that this is ending.

When I draw back from her, my mind is clearing. We've been lucky no one's come out here, that security hasn't come to investigate their newly useless camera. I get Shira a few towels and wait as she wipes her face with one that I immediately transport to the bin marked laundry .

She wraps another towel around her waist, and slings a third over her shoulders, then gathers her things and heads toward the door. Something there makes her pause. "What's this sign?" she calls.

Felix heads over to her. "You can pull that down."

Shira does, easing the tape off the glass door. I grab my shirt and phone and move closer as she holds up the sign for my inspection. A single piece of paper that reads, Under Construction in blockish handwriting hung up with the kind of tape players use to better grip our bats. "Did you put this up?" she asks Felix.

Felix nods.

"You hung that before you came outside," I say. Before we all decided to have sex in a hot tub.

"Yeah." Felix looks vaguely embarrassed. "I didn't want to assume, but I hoped."

I hoped. And I carry that hope into the hallway and up the elevator with us as we make our way to our temporary home.

Shira

It's possible I float from the deck back to our room. When we get in, there aren't any more beds than there were before. "I'm gonna shower," I say, "if you want to get in the bathroom before me."

Felix and Blake each take a turn—Felix taking exactly two minutes, Blake spending only slightly longer than that with the sink running the whole time. He emerges a minute later, wrapped in a towel, carrying his swim trunks in one hand. "All yours."

I shower then change into pajamas, not bothering to blow my hair out and doing as minimal a skincare routine as I can get away with.

When I get out of the bathroom, Felix and Blake are lying on the bed, caught in low conversation. Yesterday, I was worried about what they might say to each other. Today, Felix is drawing his hand in a broad circle across the bedspread and Blake's looking up at him with a certain shine to his eyes.

They pause when they see me.

"Room for one more?" I ask.

Blake scoots back and pats the soft white bedspread between them. What happens here… I thought we left that promise outside. Maybe whatever magic spinning between us lasts until checkout. So I slide myself between them. The mattress dips in the middle, rolling them both toward me, Blake's chest under my cheek, Felix's solidity at my back.

After a second, Blake strokes my hair. "We were talking—we just want to make sure you're okay with what we just did."

Warmth suffuses my body, melding with the tiredness from how long a day it's been. "You really care about me."

"We do." We . Like we're a unit.

I look up, startled. A piece of hair drifts onto my face. Blake brushes it away, then kisses the tip of my nose.

"You always kiss me there," I say.

He does it again. "Does it bother you?"

"You ever have a part of you that you love but that the world doesn't seem to?" I stop myself before I can add, I used to dance for money . And I was good at it.

Blake doesn't respond. Felix goes tense at my back. Neither of them answers, which is an answer in its own way—yes, they both have things about themselves that they have to pack away.

"This bed is bigger than I expected," I add.

Blake relaxes. "Yeah."

"Seems like we all fit."

Felix laughs gently. "You're not sending me back to the couch?"

"I think I can sleep—" A yawn interrupts me. "Anywhere, really." I yawn again.

"I'll get the lights," Felix whispers. He gets up and dims them, returns to the bed as Blake and I are sliding under the covers. I hold up the comforter, and he eases himself in next to me. They each settle at my sides, feet brushing mine, like the beginning and end of my world.

Sleep comes easy—held between Felix's strength and Blake's soft murmurs. And as I'm drifting off, I wonder: now we're together like this, how're we supposed to ever be apart?