To reward him, I slid in another finger. His answer endeared him to me further. “Good to know.”
“Do you disagree?”
“Let’s just say that it goes a long way to explaining why my relationships with women never worked.”
He laughed as he stretched out while luxuriating under my preparation. “What do you mean? The number one reason had to be because none of them challenged you.”
“A few of them challenged my patience. So do you sometimes.”
“We all know that. I’m talking about challenging you in a competitive sense. None of them could do that, which is why you inevitably got bored with them once the fun of the chase was over.”
Sometimes he was unsettlingly accurate with his reads on me. “Whenever you say things like that, it makes me think you missed your calling as a therapist.”
“If I hadn’t become a tennis player, I probably would have gone that route. I’ve always been great about understanding people.” He wiggled his ass to tease me. “I got you to open up to me, so you know I would have been great at it.”
“You would have been the best at it, just like you are with everything else.”
He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Aww, you’re getting closer to admitting I’m the best boyfriend in the world.”
I rewarded him for playing a proper game of tennis with me outside. “You’re the best boyfriend in the world for me.” I withdrew my fingers and slicked my cock with more lube. “You’re certainly theonlyboyfriend for me.”
“Damn straight. Now, stake your claim and mark me as yours.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. I slid into him with a sigh of relief, relishing how his tight channel embraced me so intimately. Considering I had identified as heterosexual until our encounter, I had quickly become enamored with the pleasures of being with King. I loved that I didn’t always have to be gentle and loving with him. He enjoyed a bit of roughness, which meant I could grab his hips and drill into him with a hard and fast rhythm. It made both of us cry out in lust as we worked up another sweat.
“Hang on, wait.” He stopped to shift positions, making me rest on my haunches to allow him to ride me reverse cowboy–style. It didn’t take him long to work up to a satisfying bounce. “Oh, that’s better! Fuckingyes!”
The change freed me up to reach around and start jerking him off as he went to town on me. When we weren’t in public, I loved how loud he got while we fucked. It reminded me of his grunts when he let loose one of his powerful backhands across the net, which aroused me now that I wasn’t opposing him. The noise was pure aggression, which tapped into that primitive part of me that couldn’t get enough of King.
When I brushed my thumb over the head of his cock, he came with a shout. I stroked him until he finished with a full-body shudder. He collapsed against me with a contented sigh, breathing hard from the effort after our grueling three-hour match earlier. “Sorry, give me a second, Knight. I promise we’ll return to rocking your world soon.”
With my clean hand, I guided him to turn his head for a soft kiss. He reached back and embedded his fingers in my hair with a moan as he surrendered to me. As much as our rougher coupling did it for me, the gentle moments with him touched something deep inside me I hadn’t known was there until he showed me.
After he recovered enough, he pulled off me with a groan of protest, then flopped onto his back. Sliding into him again was like coming home as he wrapped his arms around me and cradled my head. His tired body rocked in sync with the gentle rolls of my hips. I used to scoff at the notion of making love to someone, believing it to be nonsense that sold romance novels and Hollywood movies. But I was finally free to express that part of my guarded heart with the only person worthy of my affection. It meant I could show him that he meant more to me than all of our bravado, banter, and battles. Tennis made my heart beat, but King was what made it sing.
“I love you, Knight.” They were words I had resisted the first few times he said them, but now they endeared him to me even more every time he said them. The world may not have known we shared those kinds of feelings for each other, but as long as he understood how I felt about him, that was all that mattered.
Burying my face against his neck, I came with his name on my lips. I hugged him tightly as I kissed up to his ear. “Almost as much as I love you.”
He laughed like he always did when my competitive nature demanded I turn declarations of our feelings into a battle of one-upmanship. I couldn’t help it. That was my favorite game, because it was the only one where we both came out as winners on top.
Chapter Six
King
I had gotten so usedto Knight’s warmth during our four-month relationship that the first time he froze me out like the Iceman everyone called him, it hurt like hell. That was saying something, because every muscle in my body ached after a punishing French Open tournament. It had taken all the strength I had left in me to survive it while acting like I was fine. I had barely scraped by with my win against Knight at the end. If we had gone for more than three sets, I would have lost for sure.
We were always careful in public not to let on about our relationship, but he had avoided me during the entire tournament. He had even spent the night in his own hotel room, which hurt worse than my arm. When he was forced to be in my presence at the postgame press conference, he had been simmering with a barely contained rage. It was worse than before we had gotten together. I thought he was going to storm out at one point, but he sat and silently fumed while I tried to make coherent words come out of my mouth.
I didn’t have any energy left to find out why he was upset with me. I just wanted to pass out in bed and never move again. Now that the adrenaline of the tournament was over, I was in sheer agony with my arm. I hoped like hell it was just tennis elbow and not a muscle tear. I didn’t want to be in a position where I had to decide between pulling out of Wimbledon or risking it turning into a major injury. The last thing I needed was to deal with a surgery that meant missing the rest of the season.
Battered and broken, I barely had the strength left to make it up to my hotel room. When I entered the enormous suite, I wasn’t expecting to see Knight standing inside. He had his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at me with seething rage. “What thefuck, Kingston?”
Tossing the key card on the side table, I hung my head in defeat. “Look, I know we need to have this fight. I deserve whatever lecture you want to give me, but I’m too tired. I need a rain check until at least tomorrow.”
He stormed over to me, getting in my personal space. “No, we’re talking about this right now. What the hell were you thinking?”
All I wanted to do was curl up in his arms, not get yelled at. In my exhaustion, I had to fight back tears. “About what?”
