Rule of Three

Chapter Eleven

“Some idiot apparently went through a red light.”

Dag sat on the brown leather couch in Kassidy and Chris’s living room. They’d just gotten back from Kassidy’s parents’ home after getting her mom home from the hospital.

“She’s okay, though?” Dag asked. Kassidy flopped down into a chair across from him, dressed in a narrow white skirt and silky pink-and-mauve-flowered blouse.

“She’s in a lot of pain,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “But it could be worse.” With sigh, she pulled her telephone out of her purse, flipped it open to check it, snapped it shut. “I thought Hailey might have texted back. I guess she’s working.”

“She doesn’t know?”

Kassidy shook her head. “My dad just called Chris, and he came and got me.” She gave him a tight little smile. “Hailey and my parents don’t get along that well, so I guess she wasn’t the first person he thought of.”

Huh. He knew Kassidy and Hailey were different, but this was pretty serious. Ah well. Families. He knew only too well how screwed up they could be.

“You look exhausted,” Dag said, studying her.

“Thanks.” Her wry smile tugged at something inside him.

Chris appeared in the living room, having headed straight to the bedroom to change out of his suit and tie. Now he wore a pair of loose knee-length gym shorts and a baggy T-shirt.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said. “How’re you doing?” He sat on the padded arm of the chair she sat in and stroked a hand over her hair.

“I’m okay.” She sent him a tired smile then pushed herself up out of the chair. “I should go change too.” As she walked out, she asked over her shoulder, “Did you eat, Dag?”

“Yeah. I picked up a sandwich.”

Chris took Kassidy’s place in the chair. “Holy shit. That was scary.”

“Yeah. Sorry, man. I don’t know Kassidy’s mom, but that’s really shitty.”

“She’s a nice lady,” Chris said. “Seeing her like that…” He shook his head. “I need a beer. You?”

“Sure.”

They sat and drank beer together, Chris filling him on more details of the accident until Kassidy returned dressed in a pair of sweatpants rolled up to her knees and a gray T-shirt. Her breasts jiggled softly without a bra beneath the thin cotton, momentarily distracting Dag from the fatigue evident on her face.

Dag found himself strangely disturbed by seeing her so distracted and upset. He wanted to do something about that, something to help, but he felt…helpless.

She was Chris’s girlfriend, so he hesitated to butt in. But they were friends too. She stood there, staring into space, rubbing the back of her neck.

“C’mere,” he said softly, holding a hand out to her. She looked at him and blinked but moved toward him. He took her hand and pulled her down, then pressed her shoulders so she sat on the floor at his feet. He started massaging her shoulders, the muscles tight over her fine bones.

“Oh,” she said on a whoosh of breath. “That feels good.”

“I’m told I’m pretty good at this,” Dag said, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth as he worked at her shoulders.

Her head nodded forward and he pressed with fingers and thumbs, finding all the taut bands and knots, eliciting soft moans of pleasure from her. Warmth spread through his chest.

He glanced up at Chris, who watched, and their eyes met. Chris gave a crooked smile, eyes warm, and Dag returned it and continued massaging, working his way down between her shoulder blades then back up. She was so little.

When his hands started to tire, he slid them through her hair, dragging it back into a low tail, letting it slide out and then gathering it again, over and over.

“So nice,” she slurred. Much more relaxed now.

“Good,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her shoulder just where the loose neckline of her T-shirt bared it. He didn’t intend for it to be any more than that—a shoulder rub and a quick friendly kiss—but she tipped her head back between his knees to look at him with gratitude shining in her eyes, and her mouth was so close he couldn’t resist the invitation, and he leaned over a little farther and kissed her mouth.

She responded, opening to him, kissing him back, a soft lingering kiss that had his cock stirring in his jeans. Damn. Here they went again.

They didn’t make it to the bedroom, hell, they didn’t even bother trying. Chris sat down on the floor beside Kassidy and started removing her clothes, kissing her. Dag helped get the T-shirt over her head and then tossed a fleecy throw blanket to the floor. The two of them laid Kassidy out on it, stripped out of their own clothes then worshiped her pretty body on their hands and knees, sucking her tight little nipples, licking her between her legs, taking turns moving up and down her body until she came in hard, panting shudders.

Then, with the two men standing on either side of her, Kassidy rose to her knees, holding a cock in each hand, sucking first one, then the other. Her tugging fingers pulled them closer, closer to her eager mouth, closer to each other, so close their cocks almost touched. Dag watched with heated, heavy eyes as his cock and Chris’s met at Kassidy’s mouth. Heat boiled in his balls, his body tightened with anticipation, every nerve ending tingling.

She looked up at them, her mouth wet, eyes wide. “I want to suck you both,” she whispered, and Dag felt her breath on the sensitive head of his cock. “At the same time.”

Jesus. He wanted to shout, yes! But he swallowed the words through a tight throat, glanced at Chris. Chris’s jaw was locked, a pulse ticcing there, his eyes narrowed, one hand resting on Kassidy’s head. When Dag’s eyes met Chris’s, the torment there almost knocked him back. Did Chris want that? Did he not want that? Confusion swirled inside Dag as he waited for Chris’s response, his cock and balls aching.

“Please,” Kassidy whispered, focusing her attention on Chris. “I want to so bad.”

Chris’s eyes fell closed and he gave a jerky nod. “You can try, baby. You won’t be able to get both of us in very far.”

Heat flooded Dag’s body, weakening his knees, and he took one step closer, planted his feet firmly on the floor as his dick slid along the length of Chris’s.

Fuck! His eyes were heavy, but he wanted to watch, wanted to see as Kassidy pumped them together and opened even wider. She could barely take them both in, just the heads, her tongue scalding hot as she licked over his flesh, Chris’s cock just as hot and hard against him.

Unable to stop himself, he reached out a hand, for support, for balance, for…pleasure…and rested it on Chris’s chest. They both held Kassidy’s head with one hand. Chris’s other hand hung at his side, fingers clenched. Dag didn’t look at Chris, couldn’t look at him, stared at Chris’s hand. Until finally Chris lifted it and slowly, slowly touched Dag’s chest.

Fire streaked through Dag’s body, his cock jerked against Kassidy’s mouth. Chris slid his hand higher, flattened his palm, his heat scorching Dag’s skin. Dag moved his hand too, up to Chris’s shoulder, to the back of his neck. Their faces were only about a foot apart, close enough to hear each other breathing in harsh, ragged breaths.

Slick, wet sounds filled the air as Kassidy licked and sucked and played with the thick shafts and murmured her enjoyment. Dag let out a long groan when she rubbed their cocks together. She looked up at them almost apprehensively, her long lashes like starbursts around her eyes. And, making another noise of helpless pleasure, Dag leaned his head against Chris’s and tightened his fingers around Chris’s nape as he exploded in long, hard spurts.

Chris was quiet, for one who usually talked during sex—Dag knew this—and then he came too, with a muffled groan, and Kassidy took their come into her mouth, on her mouth, on her face, splattered into her dark hair.

“Thank you,” she said long moments later as the three of them collapsed together on the couch. “For letting me…”

Dag didn’t say a word, and neither did Chris.

Kassidy finally heard back from Hailey Saturday afternoon, when she was on her way over to her parents’ house. “Are you going to come see Mom?” she asked into her cell phone, turning onto the street where her parents lived.

“I can’t today,” Hailey said. “She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“She’s got a fractured pelvis. She’s pretty much bedridden for a while.”

“Well, that’s good,” Hailey said, and Kassidy drew the phone away from her ear to stare at it in disbelief.

“That’s good?” she repeated, voice rising. “That is not good!”

“She’s alive,” Hailey said. “I had a late night last night, I’m beat, and I have to work tonight.”

“But…well, okay. But next week Dad has to go out of town.” Kassidy pulled into the wide driveway in front of the double-car garage. “I thought maybe you could check on Mom during the day when I’m at work, and I’ll come by in the evenings.”

“I can’t,” Hailey said. Kassidy gritted her teeth. “I’m really busy all next week.”

“Doing what?” Kassidy sat in her parked car, staring at the doors of the garage painted the same taupe color as the house.

“I’m just busy,” Hailey said, an edge in her voice.

Kassidy felt like flinging the phone against the garage. “Fine,” she said tightly, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut. “Whatever.” She snapped her phone shut and stalked into the house.

Inside the foyer, she took a deep breath before facing her mom and dad. Her hands trembled and she tried to control them as she dropped her phone into her purse then moved into the house.

“Hello!” she called. “It’s me, Kassidy.”

She walked into the den and found her dad sitting in a chair beside the bed, both of them watching television. Her mom looked a little better but still bashed up and pale.

“Kassidy,” Mom said with a faint smile. “Hi.”

“Hi, Mom.” Kassidy approached the bed with a smile and smoothed her mom’s hair back. “How are you doing?”

She visited with her mom for a while then threw in a load of laundry for her dad. He could do laundry, but he didn’t like to, and he needed clothes for his business trip. Kassidy took inventory in the kitchen for easy meals her dad could make, but didn’t find much, so she made a list and then went to the grocery store. She unloaded groceries, made two big pans of lasagna and slid them into the oven to bake. She’d take home one of them for Dag and Chris and her.

“You’re such a good girl,” her mom said later, her voice blurry from pain meds. “Thank you, Kassie.”

She was the good girl. Always the good girl. Except for the naughty threesome she had going on in her bedroom with two men. Her stomach clenched at the thought. What would her mom think if she knew about that? About how bad Kassidy was really being. Kassidy sucked her bottom lip in briefly.

What she was doing with Dag and Chris wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t as if she were doing something deliberately bad to someone else—breaking a law or harming anyone.

Although a glimmer of concern did hover in the back of her mind about where this was all going and the fact that, hell yeah, someone could definitely get hurt by what they were doing. She just wasn’t sure who it was going to be.

She pasted on another smile for her mom. “Dad says you’ll be okay tomorrow, so I’ll come back Monday when he’s gone.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“We have some family days we can use for things like this.”

The small knot in her stomach tightened at the thought of the project at work she needed to work on, but she had a plan—she’d stop by in the morning, make sure Mom had everything she needed, get to work, do a few things and gather up some work she could do at home, then come back and stay with her mom for the rest of the day. It would only be a few days and then Dad would be back, and Mom would be able to get up and around on her crutches a bit more, hopefully.

So that’s what she did, but Tuesday night she’d done all she could do on the project away from the office and she was stressing about how she was going to get her tasks done by deadline and still look after her mom.

“God, I wish I could help,” Chris said, shoving a hand through his hair. “But I’m swamped myself.”

“It’s those layoffs, isn’t it?”

The company was moving forward with outsourcing. Working in Human Resources she knew all about it, but she didn’t like it—cutting staff was never a good thing—and she knew Chris didn’t either, but didn’t have much choice.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Fuck. I’m in meetings all day and I might even have to fly to Seattle this week.”

“Oh no.” She stared at him in dismay. “Not now.”

“I hope not. I’ll try to avoid it.”

“I’ll go check on your mom,” Dag spoke up, and both Kassidy and Chris turned to him in surprise. One corner of his mouth tilted up. “What? So she doesn’t know me. I feel like a useless piece of shit sitting here while you two run yourselves ragged.”

“I’m okay,” Kassidy said automatically. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to, I want to,” he replied evenly. “Come with me in the morning to introduce me and I’ll stay with her for a while and you can go to work.”

“Don’t you have meetings tomorrow?” Dag had been busy all week too, with seemingly back-to-back meetings and constant phone calls and emails on his BlackBerry. He’d worked most evenings, too, and Kassidy had come to realize that contrary to her impression about him having everything dropped into his lap with no effort, Dag was as much as a workaholic as Chris was. Maybe more. He seemed driven to turn this idea he had into reality.

“Not until four o’clock. You can come after work and that should cover things pretty well.”

“Yeah. She can be alone for a couple of hours.” She nibbled her bottom lip and regarded him. “Thank you, Dag.”

“Thanks, man.” Chris laid a hand on Dag’s shoulder. Dag looked up at Chris, and Kassidy saw a flash of something in Dag’s eyes, something…disturbing. Dag looked at Chris as if he wanted to eat him.

She swallowed and blinked, but the hunger was gone and Dag just smiled easily. “No sweat, man,” he said. “Anytime.”

So the next morning Kassidy led Dag into her parents’ home and introduced him to her mom. Predictably, her mom protested that she didn’t need someone with her all day and she certainly couldn’t impose on someone she didn’t even know.

“It’s no trouble, Mrs. Langdon,” Dag said, with his devilish charming smile, and Kassidy watched her mom soften at his irresistible appeal.

“Call me Hope,” she said. “I feel terrible about this. I’m sure you’re a busy young man…”

“I may have to take a few calls,” Dag said, smiling. “And I’ve got my computer to keep me busy with some work, but otherwise I’m yours for the rest of the day. I’m looking forward to knowing all about Kassidy’s childhood. I want to hear all the stories about what kind of bratty kid she was.”

Hope laughed. “Sorry, there aren’t any stories like that. Kassidy was a perfect angel.”

“There must be something.” His dimples deepened and Kassidy shook her head.

“Don’t tell him, Mom,” she said, smiling. “He’ll hold it against me.”

Her eyes and Dag’s met above the bed and heat sizzled for a few seconds.

“I wouldn’t hold that against you,” he said softly, and she knew exactly where his mind was and what he would hold against her. And her insides softened and warmed.

“I better go,” she said hastily, picking up her purse. “Thank you again, Dag, and just call my cell phone if you need anything.”

What would her mother tell him? God. Once again, she didn’t want Dag to think she was a boring goody-two-shoes, although at this point he had to have a fairly good idea that she was definitely no angel.