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

by April Fire

  top of me – she was too much, all at once. I laid back down on the bed and let her set the pace, her eyes drifting shut and her head tilting back as she lost herself to the pleasure of it all.

  She looked so hot like that, it made my cock twitch inside of her – the image instantly seared itself on to my memory. I caught her breasts briefly, twisting her nipples between my fingers, and watched as she dragged her teeth across her lower lip in response. I loved the way she responded to every touch, but at the same time knew how to take control for herself.

  “Mmmm,” she finally let out a noise, and it was one that told me she wasn’t far from finishing. She ran her nails up my chest, over my neck, and to my face, her eyes springing open so she could watch me.

  “Come with me,” she urged, her voice lower and throaty and so sexy I almost blew my load that very second. “Come with me, please…”

  She trailed off, and I leaned up to kiss her again, thrusting up hard to match her grinding down on me in earnest. I felt her pussy clenching around my cock and pulled back to watch as silent ecstasy lit up her face, her mouth opening and closing and her brow furrowing and her limbs tightening all at once. Seconds later, I found my own release inside of her, my body spasming a couple of times beneath her before the two of us froze completely for a second.She slowly lifted herself off of me, and I disposed of the condom in the trashcan. She ran her hands through her hair and flopped back on to the bed, naked and gorgeous and just….fuck. I reached over to lay next to her, draping my hand across her bare stomach.

  “You should probably go,” she interlaced her fingers with mine.

  “Do you want me to?” I asked, and she shook her head, averting her gaze from mine.

  “Me neither,” I admitted. I knew what she was saying – that we’d promised that this was a one-off and that we’d return things to normal as soon as we were done – but what had happened here was far too intense to just move on from as though nothing whatsoever, had happened.

  “Can I…can you stay here tonight?” She asked, still not looking directly at me. I sank my head back into the pillow.

  “I thought you’d never ask”, I agreed at once. “Though I should probably take my shoes off first.”

  “Are you telling me you just fucked with your shoes on?” She sat up to look at my feet, and shook her head in amusement as soon as she saw that I was still wearing my sneakers. “Jesus, Jacob.”

  “I’m sorry that not all of us are in easy-access robes,” I teased, getting undressed quickly and slipping beneath the covers. Mmm. They smelled of her. I could get used to this.

  “You tired?” she asked, sliding in to the bed next to me. I reached out to touch her, enjoying the way her naked body felt next to mine. I wasn’t much one for sleeping over, but I just couldn’t get enough of her. And hey, maybe we’d have time to go at it again before we had to leave tomorrow.

  “I am,” I admitted. The orgasm had really taken it out of me. She pressed her body against mine, and to my surprise, I found my cock growing hard again as she wiggled her ass against my crotch.

  “You sure?” She asked with a playfulness to her voice, and at once I kissed her neck and let my hands trail down her body.

  “Not yet,” I replied, and soon enough we were lost to each other once again, happily forgetting the world beyond her hotel room door.

  Chapter Five

  Natalie

  When I woke up the next morning, it took me a second to remember why there was a man in my bed. All I could recall at first was putting away several mini bottles of liquor from the minibar, wondering if I would have to pay for them myself or if Jacob’s company would cover them, and slipping into a hot bath and getting ready to lounge around in front of the TV for the rest of the night and try to drown out the noises of the party that were happening downstairs.

  But then, of course, it all came flooding back to me- Jacob turning up, the way he touched my face to get me to look at him, and then – me on top, coming so hard it felt as though my body was about to give out underneath me for good. Shit. Yeah. That.

  And I had asked him to stay over. I wasn’t quite sure what had made that seem like a good idea, but the thought of him leaving just made me feel all kinds of dirty and wrong. Okay, yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have gone in for round two quite as quickly as I had, but I wasn’t sure when both of us would pluck up the courage to do this all again.

  I was going to make the most of him while I had him in my bed, that was for damn certain. He was just so…fuck, there was nothing about him that I didn’t find sexy. I lay there in his arms for a moment as the morning light poured through the window, enjoying the slow in and out of his breath against the back of my neck, and closed my eyes. If I could just stay here forever that would be ideal.

  Cancel the tour, cancel the article, and just the two of us could spend the rest of the time traveling the country and hooking up in every hotel we could find. Well, it would save on the costs of getting me my own hotel room, right? Maybe I should pitch that to them.Jacob began stirring behind me, and I twisted my head around to greet him. He smiled blearily at me, his face a little puffy from tiredness but still just as gorgeous as ever.

  “Morning,” I smiled at him nervously. “How…how are you?”

  “Pretty fucking good,” he replied, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close against him. I could feel his erection against my ass, and as tempting as it was to go for another round, I knew that people would be looking for him by now.

  “We should probably get going,” I suggested. “What time are you leaving?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “Fuck, they’re not leaving without me, are they?”

  “I guess,” I laughed, conceding the point. “But I don’t…. I don’t know if I want everyone to know what you were up to last night, you know?”

  “I think they’re going to have an idea,” he teased. “I mean, I didn’t go back to my hotel room…”

  “Okay, but I don’t think I want them to know who it was with,” I pointed out firmly. “I just…I need some time to figure everything out, alright?”

  “Noted,” he bowed his head. “I’ll get myself out of here soon, just let me grab a shower and I’ll leave you be.”

  “I’ll come downstairs with you,” I yawned, rolling over in the covers. “Breakfast comes as part of the deal, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, I see your game,” he grinned. “Fucking me and then taking me for everything I’ve got?”

  “If all you’ve got is breakfast, then yeah,” I cocked an eyebrow at him, and he laughed. I watched as he made his way through to the bathroom, leaving me alone in the bed, and I lay back and stared up at the ceiling with a big grin on my face. Okay. So, what the fuck had just happened?

  Honestly, I had no clue where the two of us went from here. I still had to write that story on him, and I doubted that I would be able to use any of this for the article. Should I try to keep things professional after this, or should I use my place closer to him to get a whole new look at the world he was a part of? I mean, I would have felt like an asshole exploiting what we had, but still. It would have been the smartest move to make in terms of my journalism. And besides, I really, really liked fucking him. What was there to lose by enjoying some clandestine fun on the road? I would just have to keep my fingers crossed that no-one else would cotton on to what we were doing together. We were always going to be spending a lot of time together, so it wasn’t like we couldn’t find excuses for getting all up in each other’s business without arousing a bunch of suspicion.

  And what about afterwards? When the tour was all done? Because if I was being honest with myself, there was something between us that I had never felt the likes of before in my entire life. That attraction, the one that clearly came as much from him as it did from me; the fact that he had come up here out of nowhere when I hadn’t even expected him to notice that I wasn’t attending that after-party.

  We were drawn to each other, almost
dangerously so, and my head spun when I thought about what it would be like to not see him every single day. I had a straight line to him pretty much whenever I wanted it now, but when this was over…it didn’t bear thinking about.

  He emerged from the shower, naked but for a towel around his waist, and I swear to God I practically had to fan myself at the sight of him. How did one man contain these many levels of hot? He moved in close to me, and kissed me gently, even the chasteness of the kiss making me want him more.

  “I should get dressed,” he pointed out, lingering close to my face, and I knew it was an offer more than it was a statement. I pulled back and waved to his clothes on the floor next to us.

  “Yeah, you probably should,” I agreed, and watched contentedly as he pulled his clothes back on. I giggled when I thought back to the fact that we’d hooked up without so much as him taking his shoes off the night before. I had never been part of something so completely and utterly intense, the kind of encounter that wiped any sense of decency straight from your brain. There was no time to think about anything beyond him, and me, and the two of us together.

  Even now, I was having trouble keeping my head on straight and reminding myself that we had to return to something close to normalcy now. If I could have locked those doors and hidden us both from the world for the rest of the day, I would have done it. And I had a feeling that he would have let me, too.

  I got out of bed and pulled some clothes from my bag. Time to make my return to the real world. I sighed heavily as I got dressed, wondering if there was some way I could stay hidden out in here all day with him, but I knew I was fooling myself. We found ourselves exchanging nervous little smiles as we prepared ourselves to leave, and I stuffed as much of my crap in my bag as would fit. We were flying out later today, and I didn’t want to have to rush around when I came back up.

  “Ready?”

  “When you are,” I bowed my head and let him lead us out, grabbing my room key from the table before we stepped outside. We headed for the elevator and my stomach grumbled. He snorted with laughter.

  “Hey, you’re the one who made me build up this appetite,” I protested, and he held up his hands defensively. “I don’t hear you complaining,” he shot back, and I grinned. We spent the rest of the ride down in companionable silence, which was broken as soon as we stepped out of the elevator. In the lobby of the hotel, there were at least a half-dozen people milling around, most of them I recognized from the fight the night before. And as soon as we emerged from the sliding doors, all eyes were on us. A few lifted their cell phones and snapped a couple of photos of us as Jacob hurried me over to the door that led to the dining room.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” I demanded, looking over my shoulder agitatedly. I didn’t like this. Not one bit.

  “Paparazzi,” he muttered, and he sounded pissed. “I didn’t think they would give a shit, but- ““Seriously?” My eyes widened, and I shot another look over my shoulder to check them out. I had never had anyone photograph me like this before, and it was as disconcerting as hell.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Sorry, I should have thought. One of the receptionists probably told them I went to your room last night and they’ve been staked out here waiting for me to emerge all morning.”

  “That’s crazy,” I muttered, but soon forgot about my troubles as soon as the scent of a hot breakfast filled my nostrils. “Mmm. Want to join me? We could get pancakes.”When I turned, I found Jacob looking down at his phone with a frown on his face.

  “I actually have to go…” He replied apologetically, shooting me a brief, distracted look. “My agent wants to see me.”

  “Oh, okay,” I shrugged. “Catch you later, I guess?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he replied in a mumble, walking away from me with his eyes fixed on his phone the entire time. I started to load up my plate with food, starving hungry, and put the incident to the back of my mind. Little did I know that it was about to blow up in my face.

  Chapter Six

  Jacob

  “Look at this shit!” Angelo cast down his tablet on the table in front of me, throwing his hands in the air and pacing the room quickly. “You want to explain it?”

  I squinted down at the photograph; it could only have been taken a few minutes ago at most. It showed Natalie and I emerging from the elevator, both of us looking like we’d spent the night rolling around in bed together. I mean, we had, but that wasn’t necessarily the image I wanted to project.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I shrugged, playing dumb. For a second, I thought steam was about to come pouring out of Angelo’s ears, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself before he lay into me again.

  “A bunch of people have seen you out with her,” he waved his hand at the picture, which was being hosted on some low-level gossip site. “They’re starting to think that she’s your girlfriend.”

  “So?” I averted my eyes from his. “What if she is?”

  “This doesn’t fit with your brand, Jacob, you must be able to see that,” he shook his head.

  “You’re not the kind of guy who dates, remember?”

  “So just tell people that she’s a reporter and that’s why we’ve been spending so much time together,” I waved my hand. “What’s the big deal?”

  “And how are we going to explain why a receptionist tipped off the photogs that you were heading to her room in the middle of the night? And that the two of you didn’t come out till morning and when you did it was looking like…this?” The words tumbled out of his mouth as though he was having a hard time keeping them in, and a patronizing part of me wanted to tell him to just calm down, to take a few deep breaths. But I knew that he needed me to offer up a decent solution. I just couldn’t think of one.

  “I’ll be more discreet next time, sorry,” I shrugged again. I was starving, and could seriously have done with a good cup of coffee to set me up for all the travelling we were going to do that day. Maybe I could sneak her on to the private jet? That would make the trip a whole lot more palatable.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Angelo spoke again, this time through gritted teeth. I snapped out of my musings about Natalie and finally focused my attention on him.

  “What are you saying here?” I flattened my hands on the table and raised my eyebrows at him. “Just tell me straight.”

  “You need to dump her,” he replied, drawing his finger over his throat as though he was ordering a hit. “This kind of stuff doesn’t fit with your image. At least until the tour’s done, you need to keep her at arm’s length.”

  “Fuck off,” I screwed up my face at the ridiculousness of what he was suggesting. “Are you telling me that you can’t find any way to spin this?”

  “Not when I’m managing press for the rest of this tour,” he pointed out. “It’s a few weeks, Jacob. She’ll understand. And if she doesn’t…”

  And if she doesn’t, I’ll have lost a chance with one of the only women who’s ever made me feel anything outside of my own selfishness. I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what the best course of action was here. And I knew, at once, what I had to do.

  “Fuck that,” I shook my head. “I want to be with her.”Angelo rolled his eyes. We had been working together long enough that he didn’t feel the need to hold back anymore. Which was good most of the time, but right now I needed him to be on my side about this.

  “Seriously?” he snapped. Maybe the jet-lag was getting to him, but he seemed tired, and it felt like that was affecting his judgement.

  “Yeah, seriously.” I clenched my fists. “I’m not listening to this. We can talk about this later.”

  “We better,” Angelo replied, and there was a warning tone to his voice that made me want to turn around and give him a serious piece of my mind. But instead, I took a deep breath, turned, and made my way out the door to find Natalie.

  When I came across her, she was sitting back from a table in the dining room, plate empty and eyes closed, as though she w
as recovering from the food-orgy that she had just engaged in. She looked up when I approached and smiled, but that was wiped from her face when she saw the expression on mine.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, cocking her head at me. I sat down opposite her and looked around, making sure that no one else was snapping

  pictures of the two of us while we spoke. I leaned in towards her, and she widened her eyes as I got up close.

  “Jacob, come on, just tell me what’s going on,” she demanded, sounding nervous.

  “I just spoke to my agent,” I explained, already feeling exhausted by the turns the day had taken. “He says that I can’t see you anymore.”

  I scanned her face for a reaction but she kept it studiously free of any of expression, as though she was too busy processing the news inside her own head.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “And what?” I shot back.