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

by Teagan Kade

  I press my tongue to his and open my mouth wider, flattening my hands against the wall behind me and finding it warm from the kitchen beyond, the heat extending to my buttocks.

  It all happens so fast. His hands are everywhere at once, his hard body pressed to mine and leaving little air to breathe in this stifled space. I’m sweating, hot and close to combustion.

  I flinch when there’s a shout from the kitchen because I swear to god it sounds like the chef is standing right beside us. There’s a clatter as something falls to the floor. My whole body freezes up, Titus nuzzling into my neck and mewing there like a wild animal.

  I bring my nose to his hair and breathe him in, suddenly realize he doesn’t smell like danger at all, but the ocean itself—that suddenly clarity of air when the tide pulls away and your feet start to sink into the sand. And that’s it, you’re trapped there, waiting for the water to rush back in and wash you away.

  I breathe out long and unsteady, shivering against his warmth in contradiction, my fingers clawing at the wallpaper.

  He drops and draws my dress up. It bunches around my hips as he presses himself into the crotch of my panties, breathing in my sex through the lacy gauze and moaning his approval. He takes hold of them with his hands and tugs them down my legs, unhooks them from my heels before sliding the warm bundle into his pants pocket.

  And suddenly I’m standing there half-bare as the day as I was born, my dress around my waist and zero confusion about what’s going on here at all if someone were to pass by.

  Titus places his lips against me, against that heated haven between my legs, before rising and applying them to my lips once more.

  I wrap my arms around his neck and draw him to me. He reaches down to unzip himself, pulling his cock free and taking hold of my right thigh with one hand, lifting it high against his waist, trapped there between him and the wall.

  The head of his cock taps against my opening and I near faint from the anticipation. Cold sweat has broken out on my brow. I’m quivering and restless and want nothing more than for this man, this tide, to take me.

  I whisper this against his ear, tell him exactly what I want.

  He shifts his hips slightly, the tip of his cock pressing against the wet pocket of my pussy. “Is this what you want?”

  “Yes,” I plead, biting at his shoulder.

  There’s a whoosh from the kitchen, a flare of fire illuminating the hall and our hidden space.

  I go to press down on him, to drop and take his beautiful cock inside me, but he draws back, teasing and taunting. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I moan. “Please. Please.” I’m begging, barely in control of my carnal desire, but I do not care. I want this more than anything.

  He answers by thrusting upwards into my heat. I lift against the wall and throw my head back.

  I’m so wet, so hot. Every thrust from below sends me higher and higher against the wall, my feet starting to lift from the floor, heels loose.

  He takes hold of a breast between us and thumbs my nipple through the sheer fabric. Needy pangs of sensation follow, flicker between my chest and my sex, bouncing back and forth inside me until I’m not sure where I start, and he begins.

  All the while he thrusts deeper and harder, his cock sluicing into my wetness and filling me up, finding those hidden spaces he used to know so well.

  The pressure on my clit increases, rubs against the hard buttress of his pelvic bone until my mouth goes slack and I’m quite sure I’m drooling there in the open air like a toddler, unable to control even the most basic of bodily functions.

  He thrusts faster and faster, the sensations and heat rising around me, the wallpaper rough against my ass, milky desire dripping down the length of his cock, coating his balls, wet and slick and primal.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and know I’m close. I can visualize my orgasm there, a swarm of color pulsing with every vaulted thrust.

  “You’re so fucking hot,” he tells me, straining from the effort, lost in his own ecstasy.

  He draws out and flips me around, heaving me flat against the wall and kicking my legs apart. I gasp as he presses against me and finds my wet hole again, thrusting deeper, pounding against the rounded pillow of my ass.

  Can they hear us, in the kitchen? Will we be discovered, kicked out? Worse?

  I open my eyes and see the wallpaper in front of me, the worn texture of it shifting back and forth as I’m fucked.

  I’m panting, forcing my clit against the wall, grinding there against the heat coming from beyond while Titus clasps his hand around my mouth.

  Pressure, his cock, the heat… I can’t take it any longer.

  I press my clit to the wall, Titus’s cock following all the way to the end of me. I bite down against his hand as I come so hard I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.

  I spasm and jerk there between Titus and the wall, my head knocking against it and my hips flapping forward for more.

  Titus stiffens as I tighten around him, a single, lost “fuck” in my ear before he loses himself inside me. I welcome it, his heat and seed, the hot afterglow of his cock.

  Looking sideways, I stiffen as I see someone pass by the alcove, but they’re in too much of a rush to notice us here in the shadows.

  Giggling, barely able to stand straight, I turn and push Titus away, shimmying my dress down while he stuffs his cock away, the two of us laughing and smiling like horny teenagers.

  I enter the main room of restaurant first, flustered and sure everyone in the room knows exactly what we were just doing. Even as I seat myself and take hold of my napkin I can feel where Titus was just inside me, the wetness slick between my thighs.

  Titus returns a minute later looking remarkably composed, though the playful smile on his lips says otherwise. He picks up the menu. “So, dessert?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TITUS

  I’m once again struck by the familiarity of our encounter on our way back to the car. Maya’s trying to hide her smile beside me, her cheeks still hot and flushed. Her body gives off a warmth and energy that’s palpable. My cock tightens in my jeans, eager for another round.

  Outside, I can’t help but muse the restaurant parking lot, tucked away at the back, would be more fitting for a trailer park than top notch fine dining.

  Maya squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry. If we get jumped I’ll kick them in the nuts.”

  I take out my keys. “What if it’s a she?”

  “I’ll punch her in the tit.”

  We reach the car laughing. I spin Maya around press her against the side of the Mustang, my hand against the hot wall of her thigh. “I didn’t know you had such a violent streak, Ms. Riordan.”

  Her hand moves to my crotch far more assured than before. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Mr. King.”

  “If you’re about to tell me you’re a man…”

  She makes her voice deep. “Do I sound like a man?”

  My hand moves under her dress, reaches the waistband of her panties and pauses. “If by ‘man’ you mean a cross between Emma Stone and a coffee grinder, sure.”

  She pushes forward against me and I swear to god she’s fucking fire itself, a burning mass of sexual power waiting to take hold and consume me completely.

  Somewhere in this sexual cloud a thought occurs to me, one I’ve had before but somehow lost. “Have we slept together before, like, in the past?” I’ve asked her before, I realize. Right before Alissa called about Dad’s hospital scare.

  She stops what she’s doing, eyes narrowing. “What do you mean? Before your accident?”

  The accident. I haven’t heard it phrased like that in a while. “Yeah.”

  Her hand draws away from my crotch. She reaches to her jaw and glances away. “Ah, yeah. Yes, I mean.”

  I take a step back unsure why, as if physically assaulted by this sudden revelation. It would explain the familiarity. “Really? How many times?”

  Maya leans back against the car door and f
olds her arms together. She draws in a deep breath. “To be honest, we’d been seeing each other for a while.”

  “No,” I say, fighting against an emotion I can’t place, trying to be casual but coming across as anything but. I don’t know why, but I feel almost betrayed, like this is information I could have used when I woke up from that coma. Why would she keep this from me? It makes no sense.

  “Yes,” she repeats. “We were serious, Titus.”

  “No,” I say, firmer. “That’s not me. I don’t do relationships. I don’t get serious.”

  “Titus…”

  She approaches me but I flinch back.

  She half runs forward, grabbing me by the arms and there’s a desperation in her eyes I haven’t seen before—another revelation. “Listen to me, Ti. I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie about this?”

  I shrug her off. “Why are you only talking to me about this now? Why didn’t my brothers say something if we were such,” I air-quote, “a ‘thing’?”

  I’ve had enough trying to wrangle my thoughts into order. The instant headache’s not helping. I’m getting irritated. “What are you playing at here, Maya? Tell me the truth.” I pace on the blacktop back and forth. “Are you trying to convince me there was more to it than there was? Are you trying to snag me as your boyfriend, trick me somehow? Is that it?”

  She rolls her eyes. “God, get over yourself.”

  “Seriously,” I continue. “What’s the end game here, because I can’t see the scam.”

  “That’s because it’s not a scam!” she shouts, more vocal than I’ve seen her yet. “We were not a scam, or fake, or anything. We loved each other. We can get back there. We can find a way.”

  “Where?” I bark back. “Whatever it was we supposedly had I can’t remember it.”

  “And that makes it not real?” She’s speaking faster, growing impatient and I have no idea how a perfect night suddenly turned into this disaster. I shouldn’t have asked the question, shouldn’t have given into that constant sense of déjà vu I’ve been feeling lately.

  Which doesn’t mean a thing. It could be anything, right? Might even be my brain misfiring after the hit I took, signals getting lost and all that.

  “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I confess, “but I do know what you’re suggesting is not me at all. I tap my chest. I feel that here, right at my core. Like I said, it’s not who I am. I don’t do commitment.”

  She wipes away a tear, nodding. “Can you just take me home, please?”

  It’s a quiet ride back to her apartment. You could hear a pin drop in that interior, hear it echo and echo on until the end of time. The heat I felt before has become an ice wall of epic proportions and winter has most definitely come.

  I consider saying something, anything, but the words are lost in the maelstrom in my head. My cock’s deflated to a fucking wet balloon.

  What if you went along with it? my head suggests. Would it really be so bad?

  But it’s the golden rule: Kings don’t do long term. We don’t do strings. The old man never seems to learn, but it’s been unbreakable between us brothers… or it was until Peyton decided to buck the trend and lose his mind.

  He seems happy enough, doesn’t he? Maybe you’re wrong.

  Me? Wrong? I laugh it off internally.

  Not fucking likely.

  But then I think of Maya and it seems stupid.

  Or is it?

  Fuck it. I don’t know what to think.

  She’s been quiet the whole time. She hasn’t even tried to argue with me. In many ways, that makes it worse. She just seems… sad.

  Detached.

  I pull up outside her apartment building, look across to her, but she’s giving nothing away. “Here we are.”

  “Thanks,” she replies simply, opening the door and climbing out.

  “Maya, w—”

  But my words are cut off as the door closes.

  I watch her pass in front of the headlights and know I should get out and follow her, make sure the night doesn’t end on this sour note, but my hands remained fixed to the steering wheel. I can’t move.

  The invitation to come upstairs that was such a certainty earlier never comes, no teasing come-hither looks or clever chit-chat. There was nothing.

  Once she’s inside I slam my hand onto the top of the dash. “Fuck!”

  I put the car in gear and accelerate hard wanting the whole thing to go away.

  As if my head wasn’t broken enough already.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MAYA

  I stand at the door to the King house for what seems like forever, hand hovering in a knocking position while I collect my thoughts, which yes, are a tumble-jumble disaster after last night.

  Whatever giant step for our relationship we had been taken was lost when I answered that simple question. It feels like we’ve actually gone backwards, heading in entirely the wrong direction.

  And it’s making me sick to my stomach.

  I finally knock, Nolan answering the door shirtless, yawning. He’s a little leaner than Titus, but the quality King genes are well intact.

  “Maya,” he slurs, holding the door open to let me pass. “The Lord of Darkness is in his room. Hasn’t come down all morning, which I guess leaves two possibilities as to what you guys got up to last night.”

  I want to tell him it’s none of his business, but I remain quiet instead, simply nodding and heading up the stairs with my heartbeat thrumming in my ears and the questions and doubts starting to come faster.

  I knock on Titus’s door. “Titus?”

  I expect him to look hobo-ish when I open the door, a soggy mess of a man thanks to my doing, but it’s quite the opposite. He stands there in a navy Henley, off-white chinos… looks every bit ready to leap into the day. “Come in,” he smiles.

  It throws me off. I was expecting something, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.

  He takes a seat at the desk, pulling mine over, and rummaging through some papers there. “I’ve been looking over the coursework. I think I’m ready for that standardized test again.”

  I take a seat. “Aren’t we going to talk about last night?”

  He lifts his ankle up onto his knee, holding it there while looking at me quizzically. “Is there really anything to discuss?”

  It’s said with such cold detachment it’s like someone’s slowly slid a knife into my side. I actually hold myself in fear of how I may react. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  He smiles, but it’s fake. “Not really, no. Do you have the test?”

  I sigh, pulling my hair over my ear. I reach into my satchel and draw out the same standardized test Alissa gave Titus back when all this started.

  I pass it to him, holding the bottom edge and locking eyes with him, trying to transfer something, anything between us, but he simply laughs. “For me to take the test you do know you have to let go of it, right?”

  I let go and he takes the test, sweeping the coursework to the side and laying it flat on his desk. “Don’t worry. I won’t cheat.”

  It reminds me of something he said one night in bed, well before this nightmare. I asked him if I would be enough, if he’d grow sick of me and go looking for something better when the novelty wore off. The look he gave me back then was of such grave seriousness I can still picture the micro-details of his face.

  “Why would I ever need to look for something more when you’re everything to me?” he told me.

  From everything to nothing and all because of a stupid ball of cushioned cork. I’ve seen some great plot twists in my time, but that? How could I have planned for it, prepared myself for how crushing this would be?

  “I’ll be outside,” I mutter.

  He nods robotically, picking up a pen and examining the first page of the test.

  I’m trying not to cry. I don’t want to hit ground at the end of the stairs. I want it to open up into a void and swallow me up so I can forget about this. I just can’t take it any
more.

  Nolan’s set up in the kitchen in front of a breakfast I’m quite sure could feed a small nation, now shirted.

  He examines me carefully as I cross past him to the cupboard, hunting around for the coffee pods. “Everything okay? You’re not letting sourpuss up there get to you, are you?”

  I don’t think Nolan’s a qualified counselor last I checked, but he’s going to have to do.

  I find a pod and pop it into the machine, leaning against the counter. “Less sourpuss and more up and at ’em, actually. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be needed soon.”

  Nolan places his fork down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Never confuse being loved and needed with being used and wanted.”

  I look at Nolan with surprise. “That is… deep. Wow, but is that really what you think, that he’s using me?”

  He shrugs and resumes shoveling in egg. “Just thought it was a cool quote. Don’t know if it actually implies anything in this situation or not.”

  “You think I,” I teeter here, “I love him?”

  Nolan pauses mid-forkful, placing it back down and pushing the plate to the side to give me his full attention. The jock I took him for is all but gone in that moment.

  He points somewhere above me. “Can’t you see it, Maya?”

  I look up. “See what?”

  “That giant flashing sign above your head that says you’re heels over ass, giggly schoolgirl, cute-names-for-each-other in love with big T up there—whether he knows it or not. And here’s something you should know about Titus: he’s fucking smart, but he’s fucking stupid, too. Know what I mean? It’s something in our genetic coding. Call it the King Complex.”

  “The King Complex?”

  He nods. “Sometimes we don’t see what’s right in front of our face. We can be blind like that.”

  I fiddle with the coffee machine, don’t want Nolan to see how I’m blushing. “Is it that obvious?”

  “That you’re into him?” He laughs and takes his seat, pulling his plate back into position and digging in. “I’m no Dr. Phil, but yeah, it’s pretty fucking obvious.”