Knockout: A Bad Boy Billionaire MMA Romance (Athletic Affairs)

by April Fire

  I managed to get a couple of decent quotes as I kept my back turned to him while he got changed, doing my level best not to glance at his reflection in the small mirror on the opposite wall. I could have just turned around and kissed him, told him that I wanted him more than anything else, told him to fuck the story and fuck me instead. But I knew I would hate myself for it. Temptation came second to success, and I wasn’t going to let a pretty boy throw my game off.

  We left together, and I caught a couple of people shooting me envious looks as we made our way out the door. I tucked my Dictaphone away discreetly, knowing that if people thought we were together then maybe, just maybe, they would back off and let me get the story that I needed. I knew it was a long shot, but there had to be some way to keep the swathes of women who seemed hungry for him, away for long enough to get a few decent quotes.

  Any hope of that went out the window as soon as we arrived at the conference room that had been put aside for the afterparty; the place was thrumming with sound, lights flashing everywhere as clusters of people danced and grinded up on each other. I rolled my eyes briefly, and quickly plastered a smile on my face as Jacob turned around to catch my eye.

  “Pretty good, huh?” He raised his eyebrows at me. I was pretty sure he’d caught my little display of boredom, but I had to play the game. I needed to get as much as I could, and sticking by his side was the best way to achieve that.

  “Awesome,” I nodded, my grin setting solid on my face as I scanned my eyes around the room. There were already at least a half-dozen women eyeing him up, and I pressed myself close against him, making out like it was just a surge of the crowd that had landed me this close to him. He turned, slipping an arm briefly around my waist to offer me some support.

  “You alright?” He asked, and I nodded.

  “I need a drink,” I hooked my arm through his. “Come on, let’s get something.”

  The rest of the night I spent tailing him closely, not bothering with the Dictaphone as it would have been blown out by the sheer level of noise in the room. Well, that, I wouldn’t have to look back on the flirting between us and cringe at how obvious I was being. I nursed one beer and kept as sober as I could, but being in his presence was still enough to make me a little giddy.

  Eventually, Jacob ducked outside for a cigarette and I followed him. My ears were a little numb from being assaulted by the noise in the party, and it was getting late. I let out a yawn and Jacob eyed me with amusement.

  “You’re not used to this kind of life, are you~?” He remarked, and I waved a hand at him.

  “It’s just been a long day, especially on top of the jet-lag,” I brushed him off. “You’re used to it, I’m not.”

  “I guess,” he shrugged. “And I’ve got all the adrenalin from the fights to keep me going.”

  “That hasn’t worn off yet?” I pulled a face at him.

  “Maybe it has and I’m just drunk,” he grinned, taking a draw and blowing the blue-white smoke into the cool night air around us. “I still feel great, though.”

  “You must have noticed all the girls checking you out,” I blurted, even though pointing that out to him was kind of counter-intuitive.

  “Why? Jealous?” He asked, another playful smile playing over his lips. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and I slid my eyes away from him. I couldn’t be this close to him, this alone with him, especially when both our inhibitions were slightly lowered.

  “No,” I mumbled, irritated. “You seemed to enjoy plenty of female attention last night, why not tonight?”

  “I’ve already got plenty of female attention,” he looked at me pointedly, and my eyebrows shot up at once.

  “Are you serious?” I spluttered, half-laughing and half-covering up the fact that I was secretly relieved that he still actually considered me as…as what, I couldn’t be sure, but as something.

  “You remember what happened on that plane, right?” He lowered his voice, and I forced myself to look at the ground. Of course, I remembered. Every night since, I had laid in bed and thought about the way his mouth had felt against my clit, how my body had reacted to his touch. “Yeah,” I shrugged. Spur of the moment., that’s all.”

  “Really?” He took another drag. “Nothing more?”

  I stayed silent. I didn’t know what to say. I knew that I should have shut him the hell down, that I should have told him to back off and that nothing was going to happen between us. But I didn’t quite have it in me to cut off any chance for anything else to happen with Jacob and I.

  I was into him in a big way, even if that attraction was more physical than anything else, and he was enough of a decent guy to back the fuck up if he thought I was actually not interested at all. And I couldn’t quite commit to that yet.

  “I should probably get to bed,” I bowed my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess?”

  “Sleep well,” he watched me as I made my way back into the party, through the crowds of people and out into the corridor beyond. I pressed my hand up against the wall, holding myself steady as soon as I was out of his view, and wondered how the hell I was meant to work closely with a guy who I desperately wanted to fuck. The next few weeks were going to be a living hell.

  Chapter Four

  Jacob

  Another night, another afterparty. I scanned the room for her, but she wasn’t here. Natalie was nowhere to be seen, and that was bugging me.

  “Hey, good fight tonight, man,” Someone appeared next to me and stuck out his hand in my direction. I shook it absently.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I muttered, downing the last of my scotch on the rocks and squinting into the crowd. It might have sounded arrogant, but why would she have been anywhere other than my side? She wasn’t putting together a story on anyone other than me. She had spent the whole of the night before hanging on my every word, slowly sipping her way through a beer while I hit the party train as hard as I normally did. If she wanted to write a story on me, then she would have to get on board with my lifestyle. And tonight, she was doing a crappy job.

  Thinking about it, I hadn’t seen her since the night before when I’d stepped outside for a cigarette and we’d finally confronted what was between us. I mean, I wasn’t wrong – the two of us were constantly on the brink of bubbling over. She couldn’t deny that. She really didn’t. In fact, she just walked away when things were getting too intense to handle.

  And I couldn’t blame her, because she was supposed to be here in a professional capacity and the fact that we seemed to be stuck in a loop of unconsummated attraction was getting in the way of that. I couldn’t give her a straight answer as long as that was hanging between us; instead, I found myself flirting hard, trying to convince her to come back to my hotel room instead of giving her the answers she needed.

  Not to mention the fact that a few people had taken me aside and expressed their surprise that I was dating someone, so she was acting as kind of a cock-block to the women who didn’t have a dozen reasons not to go to bed with me.

  “Can I get you a drink?” The man asked, and I shrugged.

  “Sure,” I responded absently. I wasn’t really listening to what he was saying as he started to babble on, waving the bartender over and getting me another scotch, but there was a drink involved so I didn’t really give a damn.

  My head was swimming slightly with the booze, not enough that I was hammered, but enough that my brain was getting way too hung up on Natalie and nothing else. I had won the second fight here, for goodness sake, and I deserved to have some fun – but things just didn’t seem right without her here to document them, to cast her wry eye over the goings-on and barely conceal her complete lack of understanding at all of it.

  It was almost funny, watching her face at the party last night; it was so clearly not her kind of deal and she was doing a crappy job of hiding that from me or anyone else.

  “So, what do you think?” The guy finished up eagerly, staring at me as he waited for what I assumed he thought would be a killer nugge
t of truth on whatever he’d been talking to me about.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I nodded, stepping away from him quickly enough that I didn’t have to face his look of disappointment for my crappy answer. I looked around again, drinking deep from the glass in my hand. There was still no sign of her, and it seemed like I wasn’t going to get much down unless I found her. I finished my drink, returned the glass to the bar, and made my way towards reception.

  “Hello?” The receptionist smiled politely up at me. “Can I help?”

  “Hi, yeah, I’m looking for Natalie, the journalist we’re putting up?” I asked, grinning back my most charming grin. “She left her Dictaphone downstairs and…”

  I trailed off as soon as the woman behind the desk started tapping away into her computer, and a few seconds later she turned her attention back to me.

  “34-D,” she nodded towards the elevators. “On the fourth floor.”

  “Thanks,” I bowed my head in response, and turned to head up to Natalie’s room. Maybe she wasn’t there. Maybe she’d found someone else to hook up with, someone to blow off the steam of our mounting tension. The thought made the corners of my brain blur with annoyance; I wanted her so fucking badly that it was making it hard to think straight.

  The elevator deposited me on the fourth floor, and soon enough I found my way outside her room. I hesitated for a split-second, lifted my hand, and knocked.

  I heard a rustling inside, and a few moments later the door opened. Natalie was standing behind it, wrapped in an enormous toweling robe, her hair wet and pulled back into a ponytail on top of her head.

  “Jacob!” She looked down at herself, then back at me, her eyes wide. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just…” I ran my hands over my head, the sight of her making my thoughts run into each other all over again. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” she shrugged, stepping aside and letting me move past her. “Ignore the mini-bottles. Hit the minibar pretty hard tonight.”

  “I feel you,” I watched as she moved the bottles from the bed and flopped down on it. Was she naked under that robe? She crossed her bare legs, and I forced myself to pull my gaze away from them and back to her face.

  “Why weren’t you at the party?” I asked, pacing up and down in front of her. She shrugged.

  “I just didn’t feel like it tonight,” she eyed me, speaking carefully, as though she knew that I was scanning her words for any hint of interest I could find. “Why?”

  “It was distracting, not having you there,” I leaned up against the wall a few feet from her bed, next to the balcony.

  “How could it be distracting not having me there?” She asked, wrinkling up her nose in amusement.

  “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about where you were,” I met her gaze, and her lips parted slightly, as though she was surprised at what was coming out of my mouth. How could she be? I’d been pretty fucking brazen about it up until now, and I wasn’t willing to wait any longer to find out what her designs were on me.

  “Yeah?” She breathed, her voice dropping lower. She fiddled with the tie on her robe, and I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that it was the only thing between her and nakedness. If I pulled that away…

  “I prefer having you around,” I paced across the floor until I was standing in front of her – a few feet away, but close enough that I could have reached out to run my hand up her leg if I wanted to. “You make for some interesting conversation.”

  “What, about whether or not I’d fuck you?” She shot back, her words harsh as I tried to dance around the point. Well, if she wanted to play it like that…

  “Do you?” I raised my chin, meeting her gaze steadily. She inhaled deeply, letting the breath out slowly, and I knew that I had her on the ropes. She had to admit it.

  “Whether I want to or not is irrelevant,” she replied, looking away from me as though my gaze was enough to make her question her resolve. “We can’t. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might compromise the story,” she continued looking resolutely away from me, and I stepped towards her and caught her chin in my hand, tilting it up towards me. Her lips parted again, and I was close enough now to see that her breath was coming quickly.

  “I can promise you that it won’t,” I swore. “I won’t treat you any differently. Maybe we’ll even be a little straighter with each other when this is off the table…”

  She pressed her face against my hand, closing her eyes, apparently savoring the feel on my skin against hers.

  “Just once,” she murmured, her chest rising and falling quickly. “Just once. To get it out of our systems.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, leaning down to close the distance between us. I was already getting hard, my body aching for her at once. I could smell the scent of the hotel shampoo and shower gel, the ones that came with the room, as I got closer, and that was the last thing I remembered before our lips touched.

  She let out a moan as soon as we came into contact, and reached up to wrap her arms around my neck and pull me down on top of her. I didn’t need any more encouragement, and happily straddled her and began to run my hands all over her body, across her legs, down her side, under the hem of her robe. She squirmed beneath me, and I remembered wondering how the hell we had waited this long to do this in the first place.

  She was just so – my brain didn’t have the composure to come up with words in that moment, but that didn’t matter. We weren’t doing that much talking anyway. I sat up on top of her, undid the tie to her robe, and pulled it open before leaning down to suck hard on her nipples. They swelled in my mouth, and she held me in place as I kissed and licked and sucked across both her breasts till she was shivering with pleasure beneath me.

  “Shit,” she hissed as she pulled my head level with hers once more, kissing me so hard that it made my head spin. I’d fucked plenty of women before that moment, but I had never felt this pure, unbridled need in my life.

  Before I knew what was happening, she had flipped me over on to my back and was sitting astride me, letting the robe fall off completely so she was bare. I ran my hands up her waist and over her shoulders, determined to take in as much of her as I could, but she was sliding down my body before I could stop her, between my legs, parting my thighs.

  I stared up at the ceiling as she undid my pants and yanked down my boxers, and returned my gaze to her right at the moment that she wrapped her hand around the base of my cock. Her eyes were wide as she glanced up at me, her lips parted slightly as she hovered them over my erection, and then, all at once, she opened her mouth wide and took me in.

  What she couldn’t take with her mouth she covered with her hand, and seconds later, she had enveloped my cock in this gorgeous, soft, warm sensation that sent shivers across every inch of my body. Maybe I was just backed-up as hell from not getting to lay a finger on her, but it had to rank amongst the best blowjobs I’d ever received in my life.

  She skimmed her tongue up the underside, taking me in deep, before lingering at the head for a moment, and then plunging all the way down again. She let out a moan with my cock in the back of her throat, and the feeling spread out across my entire body.

  I gritted my teeth and looked down at her as she sucked and licked and played with every inch of my cock, as though she’d been as hungry for this as I had, and I swear that it almost pushed me over the edge right there and then. I reached down, tucked my hands under her arms, and pulled her up on top of me; I reached into my pocket for a condom and quickly sheathed myself.

  “You ready?” I panted, and she nodded, placing her hands on my still-clothed chest for leverage as I gripped my cock with one hand and my hips with the other and slowly, slowly lowered her done on top of me.

  Both of us let out a sound of sheer and utter relief as soon as I was inside her. It was clear to me that both of us had wanted this – no, needed it – as much as the other, and it was something close to a miracle that we had waited this long be
fore we’d ended up in bed together. Her fingers tightened against my chest, and she began to ride me, taking her time at first as we both got used to the feeling of finally being with each other.

  “Fuck, you’re so tight,” I panted as I pushed myself upright and kissed her, using the leverage to thrust into her as hard as I could. I just wanted to feel her, to feel as much of her as I could while I still had the chance. This felt too good to believe that it would truly be a one-off, but I wasn’t taking the risk.

  I was committing every inch of her to memory. Her taste, her smell, the way she looked on