Protecting Dallas

Fourteen

DALLAS

“Morning!”

I walked straight into the kitchen, past Maddox, past Kane. Right past Austin, cleaning his cereal bowl in the sink already.

It was like ripping off a band-aid.

“Umm… Morning,” replied Maddox weakly. I noticed his body language had changed already. He looked stiff and uncomfortable as he held up a pan. “Did you want eggs?”

“If you’re making them, sure.”

I grabbed a mug and poured myself a nice cup of coffee. Real coffee. Freshly-ground and steaming, dripped from an actual coffee maker, selected by me.

“We could do bacon too,” Austin said hesitantly. “If you were into that.”

“Bacon would be cool.”

I slid into my usual chair, pinning my hair up as I went. All three of them were looking down now. Looking up. Looking anywhere except at me.

“So are we gonna talk about it?”

My words dropped loudly in the silent room. They looked even more uncomfortable, if that were possible. Only now they were turning red too.

“Talk about what?”

“About last night,” I said, kicking my feet up. “You guys ever do that before?”

I’d decided upon waking there were two ways this could go: the awkward way, or the really awkward way. I wasn’t sure which one was which, but this path was definitely more my style.

“Do wha—”

“Tag team a girl,” I said, cutting Austin off abruptly. “You know, together.”

The kitchen couldn’t have been more silent if the world outside had ended. For a long while, no one spoke.

“Have you ever done anything like that?” asked Maddox.

“No,” I answered with a shrug. “But I’d lying if I said I hadn’t wanted to. It’s obviously been a fantasy of mine… although I always kinda figured it would happen with two guys before it happened with three.”

Austin let out a short, nervous laugh. “You uh, seemed pretty okay with it.”

“Hey,” I said. “When life gives you lemons…”

Maddox started cracking eggs into the pan. “We weren’t exactly making lemonade last night,” he smirked.

“No,” I agreed. “Definitely not. But when life gives you three hot roommates who sleep practically naked, and two of them happen to burst into the bedroom while you’re fucking the third…”

Kane coughed over his mug, nearly spitting his own coffee all over the floor. Damn, I was foolish to be nervous. I was actually enjoying this.

“Yeah, well Kane fucked up last night,” said Maddox, his eyes flitting over to deliver his friend an admonishing glance. “He broke our one rule. The only rule.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”

“We vowed not to get involved with you,” he replied. “All three of us.”

“Oh,” I said, having trouble suppressing a grin.