Pick Six

by Max Monroe

  “Upbeat?”

  “Yeah. Like in Titanic where they play music for the rich people while they load the lifeboats.”

  “Wow. Your take on a classic movie has me questioning how closely I watched it before. And if my hearing is the same as yours. But, hey, I’ve been hearing it about once a month for the last six months, so maybe I’m just used to it. They can’t seem to get all the kinks worked out of the new system. Alarm, sprinklers, that fucker keeps going haywire at the blink of a hat.”

  I laughed at his mixed metaphors and hurried toward the daylight at the end of the hall.

  Sunlight flooded back into my eyes and warmed the skin of my cheeks as we finally stepped out the door that led to the east parking lot. A crowd was gathering a hundred or so feet back from the building—some distance of regulation, I was sure—and the owner of the Mavericks was pacing the front of the group like a caged lion.

  Some of the guys’ voices carried easily over the closing distance.

  “Fuck, I’m a little cold,” Martinez announced. Big as a tree and normally jovial, the man was standing in only royal blue boxer briefs and shower flip-flops, shivering and running one hand up and down his other arm while a baggie of carrots dangled from that hand.

  “Dude,” Sam Sheffield added and nodded down toward his black boxers, bare legs, and half-tied Nike trainers. “Fucking same.”

  I stifled a giggle and moved my eyes back to Wes Lancaster. His pacing had turned to a scary combo of stalking and bristling and I did not envy the guy in charge of the fire alarms.

  “Wow. Mr. Lancaster looks pissed.”

  Sean dropped his voice to a whisper as we reached the group and walked by the man-turned-animal himself. “Ha. He was pissed five months ago. Now, he’s…well. That.”

  “Gene! Get over here!” Wes shouted. “What do we have to do to make this goddamn thing stop going off? I’ve got players out here in their underwear for shit’s sake and a sprinkler-soaked office. My patience is running out.”

  A man I assumed was Gene jogged over toward him.

  “So sorry, Mr. Lancaster,” he said. “We thought we had it fixed last time, but apparently, it’s not fixed.”

  “Christ, you think?” Wes retorted.

  I’d really been rooting for Gene to come out with something Oscar-worthy. Something that would bring Wes back from the brink and save the man from having to search the classifieds for a new job. But it was pretty apparent good old Gene kind of sucked at explanations, and from what I could see, fire alarm systems, too.

  Get your highlighter ready, Gene. I see mind-numbing searching and ink-stained fingers in your future.

  A part of me wished I’d had my camera, but the smarter, more rational side of me knew it was for the best. All signs pointed to Wes Lancaster flipping his fucking rage-filled top if he caught me filming footage of this circus.

  But good God, I could see visuals of the most perfect segment clips and the dundt-dundt-dudda-dundt-dundt-dudda music playing in the background.

  Martinez in his fucking underwear and flip-flops.

  Sam Sheffield faring no better.

  Son of a bitch, it would’ve been gold.

  “Gene, let me level with you,” Wes stated. His lips were set in a firm line, and a little vein on his forehead popped out and started pulsating. “I’m one fire alarm without an actual fire away from taking a sledgehammer to the whole damn system. So, you need to fix it, or you might as well get ready to replace the entire fucking thing.”

  I bugged out my eyes, turning casually to show them to Sean without calling attention to myself. The spectacle was completely mockable, but I was a guest, and I’d learned the hard way serious hosts didn’t like when you overextended your welcome.

  Sean laughed at the overdramatized expression on my face and pulled at the end of one of my ringlets. I’d always been self-conscious of my hair and its endless exuberance growing up.

  Most of the other girls had hair that fell below their breasts in straight, strategic lines, but mine went wherever it wanted. Of course, now I understood how well the hair fit my personality and embraced it.

  It was vibrant. It was loud. It was nonconformist, and it was me.

  Half-distracted by trying to hide my mooning face from Sean’s discerning stare, I moved my focus to a point in the distance, well above his shoulder.

  And found comedic gold.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed at the sight of the people moving from the building hand in hand.

  “What?” Sean asked eagerly.

  I indicated the direction of my gaze with a jerk of my head, and Sean spun to face them.

  Georgia Brooks, the woman who’d hired me, and a deliriously handsome man, clutching each other and soaked from head to foot, were exiting the building in a tangled human web, wreathed in smiles.

  Lost in each other, they ignored the crowd easily. Georgia’s dress was torn in the front, and the man’s pants were unzipped, but perhaps the funniest aspect of all was the way Georgia’s bra hung from the front of his crotch, obviously caught in the teeth of his zipper.

  Apparently, his pants were left unfastened for a reason.

  “Oh my God,” I repeated, this time choking out the words with a laugh.

  Sean joined in, and soon, the whole group was turning to discover the culprit.

  Wes maintained his ignorance for a while, but by the look on his face when he finally caught on, it wasn’t nearly long enough.

  “Jesus Christ!” Wes shouted, and I had to cover my mouth with a hand. “Kline!” Wes shook his head and sank it into his hands, patience obviously tried.

  “Georgia,” Wes said through gritted teeth as Georgia and Kline came to a stop in front of him. “Do you want to explain to me why you and your husband are just now making it out here, soaking wet and barely wearing any clothing?”

  Georgia giggled, and Kline’s smile grew even bigger. “I’m guessing you don’t want either one of us to explain that, buddy.”

  “How many times do I have to ask you to stop coming here for conjugal visits? You’ve got six thousand square feet of big-ass house to sully with your depravity. Spare my offices!”

  Georgia’s smile was unrepentant, and I instantly liked her even more. Women with balls were so my style. “Please. You’re trying to tell me you and Winnie don’t have sex on Mavericks’ property? Sell it to someone your wife doesn’t drink margaritas with.”

  As the crowd dissolved into hysterics over Georgia and her husband Kline’s office disaster, I pulled on Six’s hand and dragged her discreetly toward the far side of the parking lot.

  Georgia, Kline, and Wes’s extremely public conversation had set the tone for my thinking and served pretty conveniently as a distraction. To say I hadn’t been thinking about getting inside of Six since the moment she’d arrived back in town would be a lie, but the suggestion that others were acting on it at work only strengthened my brazen resolve.

  My Jeep sat waiting, and we had the time.

  One-on-one attention seemed like the best way to make use of it.

  “What are you doing?” Six asked in a panicked whisper, her tiny legs churning at a nearly alarming rate as she tried to keep up with me. The height discrepancy between us was alive and real, but I didn’t let that get in the way of logistics. I’d bend, I’d stoop, I’d turn myself into a pretzel. There wouldn’t be any connections of a sexual nature that I wouldn’t attempt.

  A siren whined in the immediate distance, bleating into the open swampland around the stadium with overzealous enthusiasm. It called into the wind and signaled its arrival, but most importantly, it made everyone who had gathered outside of the stadium turn to look.

  “Just come on,” I told Six as I used the distraction to my advantage, picking her up to span the distance between me and the line of all of our cars more quickly, and opened the back hatch of my Jeep.

  Her glance was wary and her eyebrow challenging, but I bit my lip and winked in promise. Climb inside, it said. And I’ll sh
ow you all the reasons why you’re doing it then.

  I gave her a small boost, assuring she didn’t knock her legs as she hoisted herself up, and I followed dutifully.

  The silence of the privacy I created by closing the hatch behind myself settled over us and changed the hum in the air. Her breathing sped up, and mine soon followed, eager to touch and taste and explore.

  Navy blue and fuzzy, a blanket I kept in the back for emergency winter roadside situations beckoned. I grabbed it with ease and spread it across the entire space, laying the back row of seats forward flat to give us even more room.

  “Fire-drill sex?” she asked on a whisper as I leaned my weight into her body and forced her to lie back.

  “I couldn’t think of a better way to use the time,” I admitted. The smell of her perfume was like warm roses as I nuzzled her neck.

  She smirked naughtily. “I mean, you do kind of need the practice.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her game. She’d had to be playing with me. The connection between us was palpable—electric. Larger than goddamn life.

  I sucked on her neck and licked a line around the shell of her ear before moving around to nibble each of her lips. Her coos and moans filled the tight space quickly, wrapping me in their cloak and hardening my cock at an exponential rate.

  “No time for foreplay this time,” I whispered, shoving a hand into the front of her pants and pulling moisture from the center of her pussy up to her clit.

  “Mmm,” I moaned at the feel. “Good thing you don’t need it.”

  She giggled a little, excitement bleeding from her movements as she matched my fervor and stuck her hand down my pants in kind. The feel of her fingers wrapped around me was heaven, and I was a transplant from hell. Her gift would be torture, and I’d take it to the brink of soul-selling.

  “Oh, shit,” she breathed as our pants came off and neediness took over. I poised above her, and my cock was rubbing through the wetness coating the skin between her legs. “I don’t have a condom. My bag is inside. And I doubt you have one in your uniform.”

  I glanced down the line of my jersey with a smirk and laughed when I got to the end of the fabric. I didn’t keep condoms in my uniform, and I certainly didn’t keep them in the half I had left.

  “You’re right, baby. No condom here. But I have one in the console.”

  She froze momentarily and then rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”

  “What?” I asked seriously. “You’d rather I weren’t prepared?” I rubbed my thumbs across the bare skin of her hips for emphasis. “Where would that leave us now?”

  “Blue,” she remarked easily. “And balled. But together.”

  I laughed at her and climbed forward enough to open the hatch to the compartment in between my two front seats. The condoms were easily accessible and numerous, and I pulled one off the strip and ripped it open with my teeth. She watched as I went and smiled when I gave my covered shaft a couple extra jerks for her enjoyment.

  Her eyes sparkled. “You like that?” I asked.

  She nodded, the lids of her eyes falling down to hood them.

  “I’ll have to remember that for another time,” I promised.

  She nodded and watched avidly as I settled my hips on top of hers and pushed inside. My blood raced faster and faster with every inch I sank, urging my cock even harder as a result.

  Delicate and shapely, she was miniature in so many ways compared to me. The length of her legs only just passed my knees, and she could barely make her hands meet around my back.

  But her enthusiasm was greater than her size, and her willingness to take me until we were fully connected amazed me.

  “You feel so good,” I murmured into the skin of her neck, breathing in the ragged edges of her sigh. “Hot and wet and tight… God, Six.”

  “Harder, Sean,” she ordered urgently, but I shook my head.

  “No, baby. Get used to me first. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” she argued, forcing her hips toward me.

  With two easy hands, I grabbed at the smooth skin of her hips and pulled her to a stop. “We’ve got plenty. Just relax. Let me make you feel good.”

  She nodded then, easing the tension in her muscles and giving herself over to me.

  I made an internal promise not to let her down and got to work. Teasing. Swirling. Curling my fingertips into the skin as each burning stroke ran higher up my spine.

  With a thumb at her clit and my tongue on her neck, I worked them both in the same painstaking circles until her breathing turned tattered. One breath came out at double the pace of the next, and on the very end of each stroke, she had to gasp to take in enough air.

  Sweat poured down my back and the windows turned opaque with the fog, but my mind was clear.

  This was bliss, finding a rhythm inside her and keeping it until she came out of her skin. I’d find a way to do it as much as possible, for as long as she let me.

  Her moan got higher at the end and her eyes closed, and all the tension in my back eased. She was close—I could feel it in the rhythmic pulse of her pussy, and I was free to let go.

  Easy, steady, I pushed us higher and higher until both of our balloons burst.

  Heat, fiery and delicious, spread through my body and forced me to close my eyes, and the strength of her cry pierced at the insides of my ears.

  Tenuous and gentle, I gathered her in my arms and breathed her in, fighting to hold on to the high for as long as I could. Because when we went back out there, in front of the prying eyes of my teammates, I knew she wouldn’t let me come within a foot of touching her.

  “No!” I said, panic making my inflection go up at the end.

  Sean paused, the ballistic noise had caught him so off guard, and I used the opportunity to fill him in with an explanation. “If we go back together, everyone will be wondering where we went, and I can’t handle that kind of an inquisition.”

  “Six—”

  “No. I will not waste that kind of interrogation on mediocre sex,” I snapped. I didn’t choke on the lie, but it was close.

  Sean’s eyes widened almost impossibly as he stuttered.

  I was beginning to enjoy shaking his confidence. With his manwhore, cocky as fuck reputation, he kind of needed the reality check even if he really didn’t need the practice, and I liked reaping the benefits—pleasure-filled orgasms—of making him try so hard.

  Clearly, with each passing time we got together, he tried even harder. Harder to make me come faster, harder to make us do it together. He tried different things and invented brand-new techniques gleaned from, I knew, studying all of my bodily reactions. It was as fun as it was evil, and honestly, I didn’t really feel all that bad about it.

  Maybe I should have, but the orgasms. Good God, the orgasms.

  Plus, I was all for female empowerment and it was about damn time women held some of the power.

  I leaned forward quickly and touched my lips to his to ease the sting, and then I slid out the side door.

  I left him behind and moved quickly across the parking lot, eager to put a great deal of distance between us, should we come under scrutiny upon our arrival.

  I knew I didn’t exactly look well put together, but my clothes were all in their proper places—I’d checked and double-checked—and my hair was always wild. My skin was too dark to really show a red glow, and I was good at talking my way out of things that were awkward. Hell, half my videos on my YouCam channel were just one-woman disasters as I tried to talk my way out of some kind of trouble I’d gotten myself involved in.

  Firemen swarmed the crowd, and radios screeched as security placed everyone in a single file line.

  I winced at what that could mean and hurried my pace when Cam spotted me in the distance. “There she is!” he shouted, turning the heads of everyone there. My step stuttered, but as security ran toward me, I tried not to be such a coward.

  “What’s up, fellas?” I asked casually as they closed in
like SWAT. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “Ma’am, we need you to confirm your name for us and join the line. It’s protocol in an alarm situation like this to exit to the evacuation area and stay put until a proper count can be confirmed.”

  Yikes. Sounded like Sean was going to be in big trouble. Me? I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t an actual employee, and no one had given me a notebook with a written notice of instructions. I had the whole pretty and dumb thing working for me in a big way.

  “Sorry, Officer.” I batted my lashes. “I wasn’t aware.”

  “I’m not an officer, ma’am. Just search and rescue. What’s your name?”

  Eek. “Oh. Sorry. Six Malone.”

  He pointed over his shoulder and sighed. “Go join the line.”

  I did as I was told and followed the indication of his hand, squeezing beside Teeny when he beckoned me. He was munching on a bag of carrots. “Hey, Teen.”

  “Hey, Li’l Shawty. Where you been?”

  I shrugged and grappled for a second before landing on a tried and true female response. “I had to pee. Needed to find a private spot.”

  Teeny laughed and nodded. “You got one of them little fucking bladders, huh?”

  I bobbed my head dramatically. Anything to get him to believe me. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “You see Sean while you were out there?” Quinn asked from my other side, a suspicious brow raised. I didn’t like the look of it, and I didn’t trust Quinn. He was too smart, too invested, and just cunning enough to pull off following me without my knowledge.

  He might have known the truth, but he also might have been trying to get me to admit something, so I went with the old standby of lying my ass off. I shook my head and gave my best face of plausible deniability. “Hmm. No. Haven’t seen him. Is he missing too?”

  “Yeah,” Teeny confirmed, munching away on the orange crunch. “Mr. L’s losing his shit too. You guys were the last of the count, and we can’t go back into the building until we have the whole number. Funny as hell.”