Playing To Win: The Complete King Brothers Collection (A Contemporary Romance Box Set)

by Teagan Kade

  ‘I’ll see,’ she replies, using proper grammar. She probably can’t bring herself to use text-speak. It’s cute.

  I place the cell down and sling the T-shirt on, sniffing and realizing that yeah, those pancakes do smell pretty damn good.

  *

  All day my mind swings between Erin and football. It’s hard to focus. I’m sitting there watching Coach give his usual fire-and-brimstone pre-game, but all I’m seeing is his mouth move.

  We hit the field, the lights bright, a chill in the air, my jaw working to fix my mouthguard in place. Through the grill of my helmet I take in our visitors tonight. They’re from Baylor, the Bears, part of the Big 12 with nine conference titles under their belt. We took them down last time easy and I have no doubt this is going to be an easy rerun.

  We might have lost to the Titans given I was behind bars and all, but I’m definitely planning to make up for it tonight.

  I home in on their QB.

  Yes, he could be a problem.

  The self-talk kicks in, that mesh of adrenaline starting to pull and flex. But you’re faster, I tell myself. Feet of fucking fire.

  Which makes it especially odd that, when the game starts and the ball heads my way, my famous fiery feet don’t want to cooperate. I actually stumble, just managing to get the ball underarm before firing off down the field.

  This is where I excel. I’m at home here, but I don’t see the wrap-around. One of the Baylor linebackers pummels into me from the side, lifting me clear of my feet.

  I see the world skew sideways and then I’m falling, down, down, down, waiting for the impact. When it comes it blows the air clean from my lungs. I hit the ground, flattened, and struggle for breath. Only when the linebacker lifts away do I manage to get it back, looking up at pinpricks of stars I’m really fucking hoping are in the sky and not my head.

  Tony arrives and reaches down, helping me to my feet. “You good?”

  I shake my head and sniff, spitting my mouthguard out. “Yeah.”

  He helps me to my feet. My ribs feel like they’ve been through a meat-grinder.

  I see Coach on the sidelines looking dismayed.

  “How’d you miss that?” he asks.

  “I have no fucking idea,” I reply — the truth.

  I look over to the stands, where the girlfriends hang out, but I can’t see Erin. I scan the upper reaches, but again, can’t find her.

  Maybe she’s running late?

  Maybe.

  “King!” shouts one of our defensive ends. “Positions!”

  I shake it off and run back to mid-field.

  Things take a turn for the worse.

  I don’t know what’s happening, but my game is way off.

  By the fourth quarter we’re well and truly fucked, trailing 20-10. I try to engineer a scoring drive, but it’s for nothing.

  At the sidelines Coach is, understandably, furious, but again, his words don’t register because my eyes keep flicking up to the stands trying to pick out Erin.

  She’s not here.

  I ask Tony but he simply shrugs his shoulders. “Your unicorn stood you up, man.”

  I complete maybe ten out of forty or so attempts for 286 yards, but it’s clear to anyone watching I’m out of sorts.

  The Bears clinch an easy victory.

  I throw my helmet down at the sideline. “Fuck!”

  “King, over here, now!” shouts Coach.

  Tony puts his back to him and whistles at me. “See you on the other side, man.”

  Coach has drawn me away from the rest of the team. “You want to tell me what happened out there, son? ’Cause that, that was the holocaust out there tonight. If there were scouts here, they’re going to leave severely underwhelmed. You get that, right?” He squints, examining me. “Are you hungover?”

  I look away. “No.”

  “Sick?”

  “No.”

  “Otherwise incapacitated?”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, Coach.”

  “So how do you explain that shit-show?”

  It’s a good question, even though I’m pretty sure the answer’s clear. It’s Erin. I’m angry at myself, but I’m almost just as angry at her, for not showing, for not being here and supporting me. I told her to come, didn’t I? She could be my lucky charm for all I know.

  And since when did you start believing in all that superstitious bullshit, tying your laces a certain way and tapping your chest-plate three times?

  It’s true. I don’t believe in that stuff, but it’s the natural conclusion I come to. The fact she didn’t show up put me on a dangerous kilter. I focus my frustration at her. It’s easier that way.

  Coach is looking at me sideways, snapping his fingers. “Earth to Peyton, what the fuck’s going on up there in la-la land?”

  “I think I’ve got a headache or something,” I lie. “Real bad.”

  “Mmm.” Coach watches me carefully. Since that League of Denial documentary came out everyone’s been on edge about concussions and shit. “Have Jonesy check you out in the med bay, see if she can’t find a reason why you’ve turned into Billy Kilmer all of a sudden.”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  He points at me, a father drowning in disappointment. “You better shape up for next game, son. Shape up or ship out.”

  *

  Back home all I want to do is get back into my room, put my headphones on and forget about the whole damned disaster. Nolan tries to start something, but he shuts up when I almost put him through the wall. The others know to keep well clear.

  I slam my bedroom door closed and drag a hand across the desk, anything that was there ending up in a heap on the floor. It doesn’t help.

  I’m sitting on my bed when my cell starts to ring.

  I take it out and check the screen, surprised to find it’s Erin.

  I answer, let her speak first.

  She sounds real chipper. “How’d the game go?”

  It’s even more infuriating she doesn’t know, that she couldn’t take a minute out of her life to check the score or stick her head out the window and realize no one was walking home cheering tonight.

  I stand up, pacing around the room. “How did it go?” I laugh.

  “Yeah,” she says, light.

  “How do you think it fucking went?” I half-shout, struggling to control myself.

  “Uh, okay. So, not good?”

  “Where were you?”

  She senses my anger. “I didn’t know attendance was compulsory.”

  The hell you didn’t. “The invitation was pretty fucking clear.”

  “Peyton, I don’t like the way you’re talking to me. What’s this all about?”

  My anger rises, becomes a red haze it’s getting increasingly hard to see through. I think of the way my father would scream into the phone, some poor lackey on the other end copping it. That’s his way and I’m struggling not to make it mine. “All the other players’ girlfriends had the courtesy to show up, you know.”

  I realize what I have said the moment it’s out of my mouth, but it’s too late — the ‘g’ word is out there, swimming around in the silence between us.

  I don’t know where to go next with this. I need Erin to reply, but the line’s dead.

  “Erin?”

  I silently curse myself again, the anger dissipating.

  “We need to talk,” she says, short, and hangs up.

  I place the phone down gently.

  The fuck have you done, superstar?

  Who knows? I have never used the ‘g’ word before, and everyone knows it’s only five letters away from…

  I breathe out and in, try to calm myself using the techniques Coach taught, but it’s useless.

  All I can do is sit here, mind racing, and hope to Christ for clarity.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ERIN

  Titus answers the door. “Well, well, if it isn’t the unicorn herself.”

  I step past him. “I
really wish you guys would stop calling me that.” I stop pinch myself, making a show of it. “I’m quite real, you understand.”

  Titus bounces his head back and forth. “Given the way you’ve pussy-charmed my brother, I’d say anything’s possible.”

  I shake my head. “Charming.”

  He bows, waving a hand in front of himself. “No, charmed, m’lady.”

  Coarse as the brothers are, I can see why they’re a hit around campus. Any one of them could double as a model, all broody and dripping with alpha angst in their own way. They’d make a great rock band.

  “Have fun!” Titus shouts as I make my way up the stairs, echoing his sentiment the last time I was here.

  I find Peyton on his bed. It looks like he’s been waiting for me. My anger has simmered over the twenty-four hours, but I’m still angry at the way he reacted when I didn’t show up to his game.

  Maybe I did understand what it meant to him. Maybe I didn’t want to show up, to admit to myself what that might mean, for both of us.

  He puts his hand up. “Before you say anything, let me apologize. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  I take a seat beside him. “And maybe I could have been there. I didn’t know it was so important to you.”

  He gestures around his room, at the myriad of football posters and scribbled sheets of plays, the no less than ten footballs lined up on the shelf above his bed.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, “it’s important to you, I get it, but that was still no reason to go off at me like that. Like I said, I didn’t know it was compulsory attendance.”.

  “All the girlfriends were there.”

  My heart stops at the word again. It takes a second before it kicks back into gear. He must have realized what he said on the phone, but saying it now is a deliberate choice. “Is that what we are, boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  Silence.

  I’m about to say something when he speaks first, hitting me with those impossibly dark eyes. “I like you, okay?” He’s clearly nervous, running his hand over his head, shifting around when he speaks like the bed’s made of rubber bands. He looks down between his legs. “To be honest, I’m not really used to feeling anything like this. No one’s ever lasted as long as you have.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking at me again. “It is. You’re different.”

  “One of a kind?”

  He smiles. “Something like that.”

  “So we can put all that ugliness the other night behind us and move on if you, what do the kids say, want to go steady? Is that what you want?”

  The smile grows. “I’d like that… and the benefits it would entail.”

  “I’m into you as well,” I confess, “which is crazy, believe you me, but you’re not who I thought you were either.”

  “Shit, I’m even more bad ass than you imagined?”

  I punch him gently on the shoulder, kind of surprised it’s my hand that hurts. “Dream on.”

  He scoots over so we’re touching, shoves me lightly sideways.

  I shove back.

  “What should we do now?” he asks.

  I have a few things in mind, though the idea of Titus listening in from downstairs kind of nips that in the bud.

  “How about a walk, to clear our heads?”

  I stand up. “Sounds good.”

  But even as we walk out, I’m torn. I’m still hiding the story from him, still writing it for crying out loud, and why? I can’t have it both ways.

  Can I?

  *

  Peyton breathes in the crisp night air. The campus is so quiet this time of night. I like it. It’s peaceful, meditative almost.

  “Did you have fun at the fair the other night?” Peyton asks, swinging our hands together.

  All I can think about is the Ferris wheel. “Well, it was the first time I’ve…”

  “Come?” Peyton cuts in. “Seriously? What about that morning, at your place?”

  But I stop him, lowering my voice and checking to see we’re alone. “No, no, you idiot. The first time I did any of that in public.”

  Peyton starts to smile. “But you enjoyed it, didn’t you? I sure as hell remember. You really enjoyed it. Just about blasted off to the moon when we hit the top.”

  “Just about blasted off to the police station if we had of been caught,” I retort.

  Peyton takes up position beside me and continues to walk. “I bet you were a real goody two-shoes in school, weren’t you? What’s been your craziest sexual exploit, until me?”

  I roll my eyes and laugh, looking up at a sky quilted with stars, a sole plane cutting a sharp line through them. “I gave a guy a blowjob once, at his parents place.”

  “They were home?”

  “No,” I snap. “Of course not.”

  “Wow, kinky. That’s it, seriously? No weird bondage fetishes or taking it in the a—”

  “What is your obsession with my ass? And no, I’ve never taken it in th—”

  He reaches behind me and squeezes said posterior. “But I have a feeling you’d be open to it. I think you’d fucking love it, actually.”

  There’s a park that adjoins the campus beside us. It’s not exactly Central Park, but it’s filled with cherry trees and old English maples, the perfect place for studying on a summer’s day.

  Peyton leans over to whisper in my ear, glancing towards the shadowy shapes of the park. “How about now, in there?”

  I follow his eyes. “What? Sex?” I whisper, scared someone will hear us.

  “No, Mahjong,” counters Peyton. “Come on.”

  And before I know it I’m being dragged into the park, the two of us whipping through the trees and shrubs until we’ve found a nice spot hidden away from the quad and main campus thoroughfare, no real light to give us away save for the silver spill of the moon above. In it, Peyton looks practically angelic.

  What he does next is not.

  He mashes his mouth against mine, pressing me up against the large trunk of one of the more senior maples. The bark’s rough against my back, his tongue meeting with mine and already sending me into sensory overload.

  I’ve fantasized about kind of thing before. Of course I have. I didn’t expect to be doing it right here, on campus grounds.

  The kiss alone is enough to get me burning, my core tightening and stomach fluttering at what I know is to come. I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s absolutely insane, completely out of character for me. I’m the straighty one-eighty world champion. I don’t do this.

  No one can see us, but still my cheeks flush bright red with embarrassment.

  Peyton reaches underneath my skirt and tugs my panties down. I lift my head and he hooks them off one ankle, then the other, letting them drop in a damp heap on the ground beside us. A cool breeze passes between my legs, turns my bare skin to gooseflesh.

  I expect his hand, his fingers, but he kneels instead, lifting one leg and hooking it over his shoulder, disappearing under my skirt like an old-timey photographer.

  I thought Peyton was hungry at dinner, but the way he devours me there in the park is something else. He holds the top of my legs and licks from the wet ring of my opening all the way up to my clit, sucking it into his mouth before circling the thick body of his tongue around it.

  I try to stifle a moan above, closing my mouth and placing both hands onto the top of his head for support.

  He licks away from my clit, his tongue narrowing and sliding into my pussy, his lips closing around my labia and the whole thing sending me completely insane with pleasure.

  “Holy shit,” I breathe out, doing my best to be quiet, closing my eyes momentarily to try and concentrate.

  His head shifts under my skirt, his hands moving down to cup my ass and separate my cheeks. His tongue moves downwards and then in, further and further until the tip of its sitting right against my asshole.

  I thought oral sex in a public park was pretty taboo, but going there? Where
no guy has gone before?

  If I thought I was losing it when he started going down on me, I enter a whole new world of pleasure.

  I’m bent over by the shock of the sensation, the way his tongue stabs against my most private place. He licks at it, can’t seem to get enough given the way his fingers are digging into the soft flesh of my ass.

  Slowly, he draws away, lifting my leg down and coming up for air, standing and turning me so I’m facing the tree.

  His mouth is at my ear. I can smell my arousal on him, the earthy scent of my sex on his lips. “Do you know how fucking hot that made me, licking your cute little asshole like that?”

  “How hot? I question, panting it out syllable by syllable.

  He replies by running his hand under my skirt. It saws between my buttocks, a finger adding pressure to the tight rosette of my anus.

  I suck in a breath and it disappears past the tight outer ring of muscle, sucked deep into the heat of my ass beyond.

  I almost come right there on the spot, but I hold out enough to keep it at bay, Peyton slowly working his finger in and out.

  In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d enjoy something like this, but the way my heart is racing, cotton wool filling my head… I’m not just enjoying this. I’m loving every blissful second.

  I mew when his fingers draw away, the sound of a zipper going down, movement, and then the glorious sensation of his cock inside me, sliding upwards and nailing me to the tree.

  I grip the trunk with two hands, fingers clawing into the old bark as I’m taken.

  It’s not for long.

  Peyton withdraws, his cock sliding up to rest between my ass cheeks. “May I?”

  I know what he’s asking.

  I nod my approval. He uses his thumb to press down on his cock, to guide it into that too-tiny hole.

  At first, I have no idea how this is possibly going to work, but his cock’s slick from being inside me, the wetness allowing the giant head of him to push through the first few inches to be swallowed up inside my ass.

  I groan aloud, unable to control myself now, pushing back against him and another inch moving forward into the clamping heat of my body.

  It’s a completely different sensation, so filling and dirty, so completely not… me.