Double Team Read online

  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