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  It was enough to make Bryan's mouth water, to make his fingers curl into his palms with an urge to cup and squeeze her juicy little mound. If a woman like that wouldn't have asked him to swear off men, he'd have gone for her in a second. Heck, he'd have gone for half a dozen just like her and done his best to break Alex's record for female partners at one time.

  He was smiling faintly at the thought while she made flustered hostess noises: mentions of fresh towels in the bathroom… if there was anything they needed… and she was afraid they'd be on their own for breakfast, because, apart from coffee, her pantry really was empty.

  "We can drive into town to eat," Bryan assured her. "And, thank you. Everything is wonderful."

  She nodded and wet her soft pink lips, her gaze sliding—probably against her will—to the bed Alex was standing by. "Well," she said, "have a good night."

  And then it was just him and Alex and the heavy sensual tension Zoe's presence had left.

  "So," said Bryan, his hands shoved into his back jeans pockets, his eyes on the now-closed door. "I'm surprised you two didn't set the sheets on fire making that bed."

  "Shit," said Alex. "I didn't mean to—I just never got a chance to get over her."

  "Hard to forget your first."

  "She wasn't—"

  Bryan turned in time to catch the rawness of the longing in Alex's face. He'd come around to the near side of the bed, the one Zoe had been tucking under.

  "She wasn't my first. She was only fifteen when we were going out. I was eighteen, and my momma raised me to treat girls nice. I didn't think it would be right to take her, so I… refrained."

  The word twisted his mouth, a bitter humor in his expression. Suddenly, Bryan did feel a pang tighten in his chest. "She's the one you think of when you want a threesome."

  Alex sat heavily on the mattress. "I think of her all the time. I've never gotten over losing her." His shoulders sagged with weariness, his face too sad to bear.

  Bryan swallowed, then said what he knew he had to. "She's not fifteen now, buddy. You want me to step aside?"

  Alex shook his head. "It wouldn't matter. I want you, too."

  Bryan released the breath he'd been holding, wondering if hearing Alex say this made him feel better. He sat beside his friend and colleague on the narrow bed, letting the brush of his arm warm the other man's. "I'm glad you want me, I really am, but you can't spend your whole life hating yourself for having different needs from other folks."

  "I hate myself for hurting her. I loved her so much. I just don't understand how I could have done it."

  Alex's confession sounded as if it hurt his throat. Bryan took his hand and held it loosely against his thigh. Unable to resist, he ran his thumb over the knuckles. Alex's palm was as smooth as if he scrubbed it with a pumice stone. "I think you should tell me what happened with this Coach Vickers. I think you need to get it off your chest."

  Alex sighed. "I wish it were that easy, but I guess you might as well hear the tale from me."

  The temperature had cooled enough to leave the windows open. Alex wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and forget everything in the soft, juniper-scented breeze.

  "Lie back," Bryan said as if he knew. "It's easier to talk in the dark."

  Alex kicked off his sandals and let Bryan turn off the lights. The bed was narrow, especially for two grown men, but it felt good to have Bryan stretch out beside him. Alex was on his back, his fingers laced on his belly. Bryan rolled onto his side and covered them with one hand.

  "Whatever it is, I'm betting the statute of limitations has expired."

  It never would for people like Mrs. Fairfax, but Alex began anyway. "I played football in high school. Quarterback. I could take a hit if I had to, and I had good instincts for how to use the rest of my team. When you play for a town called Fairyville, winning cuts down on a lot of teasing. I knew how to win, and since I was more outgoing then, I was popular."

  "I can see how that would be the case." Bryan scooted down to settle his head in Alex's shoulder. It wasn't his usual careful gesture. It was trusting and relaxed, and it made a part of Alex relax as well.

  "My friends had a nickname for me. They called me the Super Outer."

  "The Super Outer?"

  "A couple times, guys on the team who were… conflicted about their sexuality came to me for advice. I think it was partly me being a big brother figure, and partly because they hoped I'd admit I thought about guys that way myself and might offer to initiate them."

  "And did you think about guys that way?"

  Bryan shifted beside him, lying heavier against his side. The slight increase in pressure had Alex's ever-willing cock weighing heavier, too. Alex blew out a laugh.

  "From the first time I gave myself a hand job, which was—I don't know—maybe at thirteen, it seemed like I thought about every erotic possibility under the sun. Everything was sexual to me: guys, girls, new leather seats in cars. Luckily for me, I looked more mature than I was. By the time I hit fifteen, girls were throwing themselves at me—older girls especially. My mother would have died if she'd known, but I was having regular sex with girls, more than once a week, at sixteen. It seemed easier to leave the nonstandard options to my fantasies."

  "And then you met Coach Vickers?"

  "Not quite. Then I met Zoe." Arousal spurted through him at the memory, changing his cock from heavy to stiff. Trapped by the cloth of his trousers, the head began to push down his leg. He lifted a knee to give it room, this sort of adjustment second nature to him. "The guidance office assigned her to tutor me in some stupid math crap I couldn't pass, and, God, I fell for her hard. She was cute and weird, and every time I looked at her, she blushed beet red. She'd barely kissed a boy before I met her. I knew she was too young for me, and way too innocent, but I couldn't make myself turn away from how much she liked me. It was one of those can't-eat, can't-sleep, can't-think-of-anything-but-you crushes. Just seeing her smile at me was a drug."

  "So you gave up your harem for her."

  Alex snorted. "I suppose you could call it a harem. Romantic genius that I was, I thought true love would cure me of wanting those other girls. I knew Zoe wouldn't believe I loved her if I kept seeing them, that she'd be so hurt if she heard about me cheating that she'd probably run away. The way she looked, she should have been tripping over would-be boyfriends, but she was too much of an oddball. I had no competition. There was nobody to keep me from having her but me."

  Restless, Alex turned to face Bryan, their hands tangling together on the quilt. "We did everything I could think of short of intercourse and oral sex—well, short of oral sex on me."

  Bryan chuckled. "You performed oral sex when you were in high school? I'm impressed."

  "I would have done anything to make her happy. I didn't want her dying of frustration the way I was. The funny thing was, I was actually getting off more than usual, but nothing we did seemed to be enough. I was obsessed with going all the way—with getting my dick inside her pussy. I started looking at other girls again, started noticing everyone who gave me any sort of an eye. And that's when Assistant Coach Vickers hit my radar."

  "He was gay?"

  "He wasn't supposed to be. He was engaged to another teacher at the school, some pretty English teacher who'd started chasing him as soon as he got the job. I guess he wanted to be straight, because he let her get her hooks in, but the closer the date for the wedding came, the more I noticed him watching me. Tom was fresh out of college. Couldn't have been more than twenty-two. He was a good coach—a good guy who wasn't ready to admit what he was. He didn't do anything overt, just a little too much eye contact. When he offered to oversee a new weight-training regimen to increase my upper body strength, I knew his reason wasn't just to give his winning quarterback a stronger arm."

  Sighing, Alex let his chin rest on Bryan's head. "I don't even know who made the first move. One minute he was spotting me at the players' gym after-hours, and the next we were rolling around the floor mat like
animals, trying to rip off each others' clothes. I'd never done it with a man before, but—by God—Tom wasn't going to let me stop once we started.

  "I remember him saying nothing but 'fuck me, oh God, fuck me' for at least five minutes, and it took that long to get me in. He was like, 'Just spit on it. Just push harder.' It was exciting to see anybody that desperate, and even with both of us being clueless, the sex was great. We blasted off like we were never going to have that kind of sex again—which was probably what Tom was afraid of, what with the wedding looming over him.

  "I don't know how many times we did it that first night. I mean, we had to take a towel to the mats afterward. When we were both wrung out, Tom looked at me real intense and said, 'I'm going to be here again tomorrow night. You can meet me or not. It's up to you."

  "He never forced me, Bryan. Never made what was happening between us about my spot on the team. He just said, 'You can do this or not.' "

  "And you wanted to do it?"

  "At the time, it seemed the perfect solution. If anyone would keep what we did a secret, it was him. I could have a consenting partner to take the edge off what not quite having Zoe was doing to me, and Zoe wouldn't be hurt. I knew it was cheating. I just thought it was the lesser of two evils."

  Bryan wriggled upward until his face was on the pillow opposite Alex's. Their knees bumped together, and a thrill Alex didn't know how to quash slid up his thighs. His guilt didn't have much influence over his libido. He was so hard from telling this story he was aching.

  "Somebody caught you."

  "Somebody was bound do. We went at it like freaking bunnies once we broke the ice. We even did it a couple times in Tom's office, during school hours. I guess he thought he was going to get wanting men out of his system, and then be able to get married, but it didn't work that way. The more he had, the more he wanted and, Jesus, it felt good to have someone as crazed for sex as I was. I was finally getting all I needed. I was finally feeling relaxed.

  "But you can't be that intimate with someone—even if you're only screwing—and not give off signals people can read. There was one kid on the team, kind of a borderline player who spent a lot of time on the bench. He was always half a minute late to practice, as if he wanted to be reprimanded so he could gripe about how unfair the coaches were. I had him pegged as a potential outee, but I think he was too jealous of my status to come to me. He spotted what was going on between me and the coach and decided he was going to get back at us both.

  "He did a good job of it, too. One night he surprised us in the weight room, with a camera, no less. Then he got his outraged parents to bring a complaint to the school board that Coach Vickers had molested him."

  "And you knew your coach couldn't have done it?"

  "Oh, yeah. The kid gave times and places that the supposed incidents had occurred, and each time I knew Tom had been with me. This kid was lying through his teeth to get even. I don't know if he liked presenting me as Tom's victim, too, but I guess he figured I wouldn't admit I'd been willing. I was king of the school, in his mind. Why would I give that up?

  "I'm ashamed to say that for a while he was right. I was terrified of what would happen to my life. My family was going to know. And Zoe. I didn't think I could face it. But people started talking about Coach Vickers deserving to go to jail or worse. I could see the lynch mob forming. His own players, guys he'd been really good to, wanted to beat the crap out of him. And Tom was protecting me. He wasn't saying what had really happened. He wasn't using me as his alibi. I knew I had to come forward."

  Alex's eyes filled with tears at the memory. "My mother got me through it. I'd never known how strong she was until I told her the truth. She wouldn't let my brothers say a word. Not to mock me. Not to be pissed. She just said, 'We're a family, and we're going to help your little brother do what's right.' I think my dad was kind of stunned by how fierce she was."

  "You were lucky to have her."

  "Yes, I was."

  Bryan was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his thumb swept back and forth across Alex's hand. "I think I have to agree with Zoe. I don't understand why the town hated you. Yeah, they might have been freaked that their golden boy liked guys, but you did the right thing. The rest wasn't their business."

  "Small towns think everything is their business, and they needed someone to blame. It didn't seem enough that Tom's career was ruined. People started to remember how lucky I was with women, how nobody seemed to be able to turn me down. I'd insisted the relationship had been consensual, and they got it into their heads that I was the aggressor, that I'd seduced a formerly heterosexual male and had infected him with my perversity. I went from golden boy to scapegoat within a week. My teammates were so angry about what they saw as my betrayal that I had to quit. And maybe they were right. Maybe Tom would have married and lived happily ever after if it weren't for me."

  "Alex." Bryan's scold held a hint of laughter. "I know you're hot, but come on. Even if your coach never came out of the closet, he wouldn't have lived happily ever after. He'd simply have lived a lie that was more comfortable for everyone but him."

  "Zoe never lied. I kept remembering that through the worst of it. Zoe always was who she was, ghosts and fairies and all, no matter how uncomfortable that got."

  "Alex, there are people in this world who are born with parts of their truth very clear to them. Trust me, though, everybody—even Zoe—struggles with something."

  Alex couldn't speak. He could only hug Bryan tight to his chest. There was no softness to Bryan's muscles, no comforting give, but his hardness was exactly what Alex needed.

  "Shh," said Bryan, rubbing his back.

  "I don't want to hurt you," Alex choked out. "I don't deserve you any more than I did her."

  Bryan kissed his ear and laughed. "Why don't you let me worry about that?"

  Emotion swelled inside him in a great hot flood. He couldn't keep from turning his head, couldn't keep from claiming Bryan's mouth and kissing him deeply. Bryan's hold on him shifted to his butt, their groins sliding together as their legs found a tangled fit. Alex moaned at what the contact revealed.

  Bryan was full and ready behind his jeans.

  "Oh, thank God." Bryan broke free of the kiss with a breathless laugh. "I don't know if I should admit it, but that story made me really hot."

  Not the least offended, Alex was already shoving Bryan's metal waist button through its hole. "Tell me what you want," he said, his cock practically screaming at him to hurry up. "Tell me how you want me to get you off."

  Bryan gasped as his hand dug deeper and found skin. "Take me in the shower. I want to pretend you're coaching me."

  Lust blazed through Alex in a searing wave, paralyzing him for a second before it jolted him into quick motion.

  "I hope you mean that," he said, rolling off the bed to help Bryan up. " 'Cause right this second, I could 'coach' you straight through the tile."

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  The guest room was on the opposite end of the house from Zoe's bedroom, both the living room and kitchen lying between. There should have been privacy aplenty, but with the windows open and the night so clear, Zoe couldn't help but hear the escalating masculine groans.

  Her guests were in the shower. Zoe knew this because the pipes in her sixty-year-old house always sounded like Niagara Falls. Sadly, the torrent wasn't loud enough to drown out the moans of rising pleasure-pain. Those were the kind of cries people made when they really, really wanted release. Given the somewhat twisted nature of her kinks, she didn't know whether to burrow under a pillow or listen harder. Alex and Bryan were screwing in her house, despite her and Alex's history, either so inconsiderate that it didn't occur to them to be quiet, or so overwhelmed by their needs that they'd forgotten to.

  Zoe's hands clenched on the sheets like she meant to rip them, her own needs coiling tight inside. She was not going to let this get to her. She wasn't so pathetic that she was going to do herself while her old boyfriend did his l
over. She didn't care how long it had been since she'd had a man. She was not turning Alex and Bryan into her masturbation aid.

  Groaning, she turned onto her belly, her eyes screwed shut against the images in her mind. Was Alex as big and smooth as she remembered? Could Bryan get his friend's erection all the way into his mouth? Did Alex like being on top as much as he used to? She pulled a pillow over her head, then shoved it off as someone began to come. Bryan, she thought. She remembered how Alex sounded, and that wasn't it. Then Alex's strangled snarl split the darkness, and she knew she'd guessed correctly.

  No more than a minute later, the noises started up again.

  With a muffled curse, Zoe flopped onto her back. Kinks be damned. No way were Alex and Bryan spending another night.

  A tap on her window had her sitting up with a gasp.

  "Magnus! What are you doing here?"

  The casement was open to catch the breeze. Her manager pushed up on his arms and swung one long leg inside, his yellow shoe just missing her houseplants. Zoe heart began to beat faster as she yanked the sheets over her breasts. All she had on were a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt and clean panties.

  A wish flew through her mind that she were wearing something small and slinky and feminine. She squashed it down with sheer force of will.

  "I don't recall inviting you in," she said coolly.

  "Well, lucky I'm not a vampire and you don't have to."

  He was in her room then, him and his sullen attitude—which, considering how he'd treated her, showed a lot of nerve. He crossed his arms over his powerful chest. "You sent me home tonight because you didn't want to talk our problems through."

  "And if I still don't want to?"

  She must have been seeing him with more than ordinary sight, because his eyes abruptly seemed to flare, green as phosphorus in the shadowed room.

  "Fine with me. I'd rather show you how I feel."

  For such a big man, he was unfairly fast. He moved too quickly for her to evade him, bounding onto her bed and pulling her to her knees. The sheet fell down her body with a hiss. She thought he'd kiss her, but all he gave her was a little shake.