Playing for Keeps: An Enemies to Lovers Sports Romance

by Stephanie Queen

  “Long story. But I promise I have no microphone, no tablet, no notebook—”

  “I get the drill. You’re off the record?”

  “I swear it, Tate.”

  “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you were all right, to be here with you. You should never be alone in the hospital.”

  “I’m not alone. I have two guys from the team with me. How’d you get past them?”

  This is the part I’m worried about, but I may as well tell him because those guys are going to figure it out sooner than later—it’ll only take a phone call to the right person for them to find out my scam.

  Sitting on the chair next to the bed, I say, “I told them I was your wife.”

  After a blink of shock, he shakes his head and laughs loud and hard.

  “Are you shitting me?” He calms himself and I’m relieved, but I don’t find it as funny as all that.

  He says, “I’m flattered at the trouble you’ve gone to just to be with me in my moment of vulnerability, Chloe. Or I would be if I didn’t think you were planning to kick me with your spike heels while I’m down.”

  “I swear, I told you I’m not here on official business. Did you have the MRI?”

  “Yes. I’m waiting for the prelim results. The doc should be back soon.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Like a mother-fucker.” Then he smiles, double dimples, and I’m devastated. Moving closer, I touch his arm, then his face.

  “You have me worried, Fontanna. I can’t stand the thought of you in pain.”

  “Don’t worry, I can still—”

  The door opens then, but I grin because I know what he was about to say before he clammed up. One of the guys from the team, the one I recognize from the medical staff, comes inside and looks pissed.

  “I’m sorry about the intrusion, Tate.” He turns to me, “You need to leave. You’re not his wife.”

  “It’s okay, Bill. She can stay.”

  Bill looks back and forth between us, nods and leaves, closing the door behind him. The doctor comes into the room shortly afterward and Tate introduces me. To my immense pleasure and surprise, he doesn’t ask me to leave. Honestly, he should. I wouldn’t trust me if I were him.

  “Looks like a slight compression of L4 an L5 and a mild strain. We’ll give you a shot and some pain meds and I’ll send the prescription to the team physician. Rest it as much as possible for the next two weeks—”

  “Hell with that,” Tate says. I bite my tongue because I so badly want to tell him to listen to the doc.

  “I need to play next Sunday. Can you get me there?”

  “There’s a risk and it’s not going to feel too good, but sure, we can get you game ready. If you rest between now and then and we double dose the shots on game day.” The doctor flashes his eyes in my direction, looking slightly uncomfortable while I sit there holding my breath. I also find myself holding Tate’s hand. And squeezing. Hard. Tate gives me a squeeze back so I loosen my grip.

  “Thanks, doc. Am I set to go?” The doctor nods and hands him a piece of paper.

  “Pain meds. You can fill the prescription downstairs in the pharmacy before you leave.”

  Once the doc is gone, I help Tate dress which turns out to be no easy feat with his back in acute pain. I can see the bruising on it already darkening.

  “It’s a good thing I’m here to dress you, Fontanna, or you would have had to ask Bill for help and how awkward would that be?”

  He laughs then groans. “Shut up, Smitty. Just get my shoes on me and take me home.”

  Bill and his sidekick escort Tate down to the lobby and I run ahead to pull the car up out front so he doesn’t have to walk. The two men help him into my car.

  “You sure you’re all set, Mr. Fontanna?” the man who I’m convinced is security asks.

  “I’m fine, Gerry. In fact, I’m in very good hands,” he says with a smirk and I want to smack him but I don’t dare, not even a playful smack. Seeing his limited ability to move tonight, I’m wondering how the hell he’s going to play a game in ten days.

  We drive to his chichi waterfront high-rise condo in East Boston and I park in the garage close to the elevator in someone’s space. No way am I dropping him off and leaving. Whether he invites me up or not, I’m going with him.

  When I get in the elevator with him, he doesn’t seem to mind, so I breathe easier and stand close. What the hell am I doing? I’ve done my duty and checked on him, forfeited a big scoop for the station and a feather in my cap. Now there’s no need for me to compound my stupidity by playing nursemaid. It’s not as if he’s in any shape for fun and games—in spite of his earlier insinuation otherwise.

  “Do you really think you’re going to play on Sunday?” I say as the elevator doors open at the top floor, the direct entry to his penthouse.

  “I’m surprised at you, Smitty. You’ve been around long enough to know players play hurt. Didn’t your father have war stories about that kind of thing? Hell, didn’t you see it for yourself?”

  “Sure,” I shrug. He’s right. But how do I tell him it’s different when it’s someone you care about without giving away the last piece of myself, the one I need to hang onto for dear life before I’m completely unrecognizable?

  “But?”

  “But this is different.” I can’t help myself, hell if I’m giving myself away. When his eyes go soft and warm as we walk from his entry into his kitchen, the swirl of pleasure that transforms my insides to jelly and my heart to a palpitating machine makes it worth the risk to expose myself.

  He backs me up against the kitchen island, his scent teasing my senses. With his heat and the sight of twinkling lights along the Boston skyline framed by tall windows visible over his shoulder, it’s no wonder my knees tremble with romantic weakness.

  “How different?” he says, nuzzling my neck, his stubbled chin scraping my fragile skin, making me shiver. Holding him, running my hands along the bulging muscles of his arms and his back, need starts to blaze, impelling my hips against his.

  There’s no answer to his question, at least not in words, so I kiss him. Forgetting about his back, his shoulder or whatever the fuck his injury is, I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling his face to mine hard. He opens his mouth, groans into mine and I wonder in a flash of conscience if it’s pain or pleasure. But when he lowers his hands to cup my ass and press me against the unmistakably excited length of his raging cock, it doesn’t matter. I want him.

  His lips move to my ear and he whispers. “Are you staying?”

  Instead of answering, I push him back and head for his bedroom. He follows. But he’s slow and awkward and it’s not because of the hard cock in his pants, so I take his arm and help him to his bed. He sits on the edge with a wince and I kneel in front of him. No way can he fuck me tonight. Not until his pain meds have had a chance to work and he’s had a good night’s sleep.

  I take off his shoes and then I unzip his pants. Staring at him, I give him one of those smiles telling of naughty promises. Wrapping my hand around his cock, I free the throbbing length from his shorts and the twitch makes my heart flip.

  “I’m going down on you, big boy, so brace yourself.”

  “I don’t think I can return the favor.” He sucks in a breath as I finger his tip and squeeze. “I don’t want a sympathy BJ.”

  I laugh. “I promise you, I don’t have a sympathetic bone in my body.” I move in close, whispering. “In fact my bones are all melted by now, I’m so hot for you.” I push a curl off my forehead and he strokes the skin at my temple, pulls me in for a hard kiss.

  When I pull away and slide my hand up and down, I feel his excitement spike in the jump of his cock, feel the spike in his heat. He doesn’t stop me when I lower my mouth to his cock as he holds onto my head and lies back on the bed, groaning. I know the groan is at least partly from his pain and I want to erase it from his mind, banish it completely from his consciousness.

  Lic
king his tip, I say, “God almighty, you are gorgeous and so slick and inviting.” Holding him with both hands, I lower my mouth long and slow as I suck and relish the full steely measure of him.

  “I bet I could say the same thing about you.” His voice is gruff and I can hear the tension. Looking at him as I come up, gripping him with my hands, I love watching his face, seeing him come undone, the pent-up passion seeping through until he lets go. I want to make him lose his cool until he can hold nothing back and he calls out my name.

  Licking the moisture from his tip, my tongue darts in taunting swipes of pleasure. The raw taste and feel of him, the sound of his groan electrifies me and I’ve hardly started. He slips his hands behind my head as I clamp my mouth over him, the silky feel of him in my mouth, hard and pulsing, makes my pussy cry with pleasure, swelling up and throbbing. Sucking deep and hard until I gag, I move my mouth back up his shaft slow, tasting and savoring, and then I come down again hard, up and down again and again, slow then hard.

  Then frantic, out of my mind with the power of him in my mouth growing and sizzling hot until he groans loud and tense, grinding out my name, and his cum streams into my mouth, hot and salty, shooting down my throat until I pull my mouth off him, letting him spurt onto my face. I watch his face contorted in excruciating pleasure as he stares back at me, holding my head, my shoulder with shaky hands.

  “Oh God, Chloe . . .”

  Chapter 16

  Tate

  Staying out of practice has me almost as irritated as the pain in my back does. I’m disgruntled and not myself, sitting in a whirlpool with nothing to occupy my mind except memories of Chloe going down on me. After we got me dressed and dosed heavily on pain meds, I dropped her off at her car and headed for the stadium. That was yesterday and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.

  After she didn’t answer my first text last night, I haven’t bothered with another. Forget calling her. Next move is hers. Sean Patrick comes in the room with the trainer, holding his phone up.

  “What the hell are you doing in here? On another break from your grueling practice?”

  He gives me his middle finger, his grin undiminished. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the kid scowl.

  “I’m a special teams drill all-star. Just made a killer tackle to save a TD. We’re on a short break and I wanted check in on you. Give you an update on the Twitter feed.”

  Trying not to blame the messenger because the last thing I want to hear about is social media, I say, “Sure.”

  Social media is the only thing worse than official media and doubly bad when official media resorts to using social media. It’s all a big frenzy of over-sensationalized gossip and sometimes pure fiction. But since Sean is doing me a favor, I wave my hand, encouraging him to go ahead with it.

  “You’re trending in Boston,” he says and I have a passing awareness that this can’t be a good thing since I’m on the injured list. It’s not like they’re going to talk about me having a great game when they can talk about my injury.

  “Do tell,” I say, my encouragement diminishing.

  He laughs at me. “It’s all about your injury, but the part that has interest flaring is talk about you being out for the season.”

  “Fuck. Where the hell did that come from?”

  “No one reliable,” he says.

  The question couldn’t have come from anywhere aside from idle speculation because our team’s medical status is locked up in a vault of secrecy as if world peace depends on it. The official results of my MRI says I need rest. The doc says I can play with a shot. None of this is information available for public consumption. And none of it says I have a long-term problem. PT, ice baths, stretching, the inversion table and the shots will all help get me back to one hundred percent far quicker than the average guy would.

  “Chloe hasn’t tweeted a word,” he says as if I’m about to accuse her, which I’m not. “I don’t know what you two have going on, but I swear she wouldn’t do that to you. She’s a stand-up lady for a reporter.”

  A large part of me, about ninety percent, believes that’s true. I want to believe in her a hundred percent. She’s given me reason to believe in her, to go against all my previously held notions about reporters putting stories above decency when it suits them. I even put aside my initial judgment of her that she might have blind ambition fueled by her father’s legacy to betray a player to get her story.

  Caution around reporters is drilled into every player, but I’ve always taken it more seriously than most, lived by the mantra that none of them can be truly trusted, that it’s not worth the risk. But there’s no caution in sight now, none to be dredged up inside me where Chloe is concerned.

  Not since she came to the hospital for me and didn’t utter a word to anyone about it.

  “Thanks, Sean.”

  “You coming out on the field at all today? That might help squash the rumors.”

  “I have a therapeutic massage coming up in a few minutes. Then a session on the inversion table. After that I’ll be out there.” No matter what the trainer says.

  Every night this week when the phone rings, I check thinking it’s Chloe and it’s my mother or father. Even my brother calls to check up on me. I haven’t seen Chloe at practice all week except from a distance and now it’s Friday and I’m good and pissed.

  Game three is a Sunday Night game and my parents will be there. Mom is bugging me to meet Chloe and I’ve been putting her off. Laying on my couch with a heating pad, I reach over and answer the phone, without looking.

  “Hi mom.” I expect her to laugh, but the laugh I hear isn’t my mother’s. Sitting up fast—too fast—I groan. “Fuck—sorry.”

  “You okay, Fontanna? Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting your mother to call.”

  “No, I’m not disappointed.” Every nerve in me is lit up and happy, especially the nerve endings in my cock which is growing by the second just hearing her fucking voice. Damn.

  “Hey, don’t ever take your mother for granted,” she says. Then I curse myself for being an insensitive prick because of course she has no mother, never did really.

  “You’re right, but it’s good to hear from you.” I’m not pathetic enough to call her on not returning my text like a needy boyfriend because that’s not who I am. Not needy and not her boyfriend. I don’t know what the fuck I am, but it’s neither of those two things.

  “I should have called you sooner, but …” There’s a pause and it goes on too long for me to stay silent.

  “But what, Chloe?” I can’t keep the accusation from my voice, proving I’m a fool.

  “You need to heal and I… didn’t want to tempt you—tempt myself—make it worse.”

  My grin feels silly. I’m turning into an imbecile. “Is that right? So you didn’t call me for my own good?”

  She laughs. “When you put it like that it sounds—”

  “Nice,” I say, knowing it’s a lame thing to say, but my head is haywire with re-living her lips around my cock—both pairs of lips or either of them. I’d take anything from her right now.

  “I’m glad,” she whispers, but she sounds more sad than pleased and I wonder if she misses me that much, wants me that much, or if it’s something else. Shoving the paranoia aside, I believe she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

  “You working the game Sunday Night?”

  “Yes. On field color. No post game press conference.”

  “Good,” I say, my heart stuttering with the largeness of what I’m going to say. “Because I want you to meet my parents after the game.” A breathy pause for a beat, then two without a word has my heart thudding faster, waiting with impatience.

  “Wow, Tate. I… I don’t know what to say.” She pauses again and when I’m about to tell her to forget the whole fucking shit idea, she rushes her words like they’ve been logjammed.

  “I’d love to meet your parents. It would mean a lot to me. I wish I could return the favor.”

  “Chloe…” I
close my eyes, realizing this is tough for her and I’m a dick for my impatience, my clumsy invitation.

  “I’ll see you after the game then.”

  “Meet us in the anteroom near the press room. It’s set aside for relatives and friends waiting for players.”

  “I know that room. I don’t think I’ve ever been in there officially.”

  “No big deal,” I say. “If it wasn’t such a late game, we could all go out to dinner, but maybe it’s better to meet for a few minutes before I make you sit through a dinner with my family.”

  She laughs. “Maybe.” Her tone tells me most definitely.

  With my heart still pounding too fast with pleasure, excitement and dread we end the call.

  Now all I need to do is let my parents know about the plan.

  This is where the dread starts. Even though Mom has been haranguing me to meet Chloe, I know she’s going to freak as soon as she finds out that Chloe is a reporter. But there’s no way to keep it from her, not for long. And I’m done waiting for my mother’s patience to outlive my relationship with Chloe.

  In spite of all the treatment, the rest and the super-charged shots, my back isn’t ready for prime time and after the first three snaps in the first quarter, coach takes me out of the game. Disappointment is a weak word for how I feel but when the final second ticks down and we win, sending the team to a record of three and 0, I get over it fast.

  Post game I change and skip the press conference because coach doesn’t want me to deal with the barrage of questions he knows are coming about my injury status. He’s an expert at shutting down topics and handles it. I go out to the ante-room to meet with my Mom and Dad and it’s bad enough fielding their questions about how I’m feeling.

  “Honestly, Mom, I’m okay. I can walk and sit and move around, so I’ll live.”

  “But can you play football?” She says.

  “You’ll have to come back next week to find out,” I say.

  “It’s a deal,” Mom says at the same time as Dad says, “I don’t know if we can get away .”