Unrivaled, page 5
Fuck it.
If u think about it, if North America wins, both Canada and the US also win.
Then, in case that wasn’t clear, he added a pair of mouth emojis and two eggplants.
He refused to stare at his phone while he waited for an answer, so he finished his dinner and brushed his teeth, just in case.
When he returned to the game, North America was up 2–1 with thirty seconds to go in the third.
His phone beeped.
1573.
What did that mean? Was it some kind of code? He refused to believe there was a sex code Grady Armstrong knew about and he didn’t. But then what—
Fairmont.
That was Max’s hotel. 1573 must be the room number.
Fuck yes.
IF ANYONE asked, Grady would blame his appalling lack of judgment on a head injury.
Or, shit, was that the same excuse he’d decided to use the first time? Did he need another one? Maybe he was so crushed after losing two games in a row, the second one to Canada of all teams—
No. That lie was even more embarrassing than the truth. He’d just have to make sure no one found out.
In the minutes after he sent the first message, he glanced around at his hotel room and wondered if he should clean up. The room-service tray was still sitting on his desk, there was a pile of folded clothes on top of his suitcase, and he’d left his toiletries on the bathroom counter.
But who was he trying to impress? Max was the one who’d suggested the bet in the first place.
“I’m overthinking this,” he muttered.
As if on cue, someone knocked on the door.
Grady opened it without comment. The less time Max spent standing in the hallway where someone could see him, the better.
Fortunately he didn’t seem to be in the mood to linger. He swanned into the room like he owned the place, but it wasn’t like he’d dressed up for the occasion. He was wearing his Team Canada shirt and track pants. Grady didn’t know how to feel about that. He was also wearing his team-branded athletic gear, but like, did Max think Grady was so easy that he didn’t have to put any effort in?
Why did Grady care? He was here to get his dick sucked.
“Nice digs,” Max commented. He had a smear of toothpaste at the corner of his mouth, so he’d put in some effort. Maybe. Grady didn’t know if that made him feel better.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s probably exactly the same as your room.”
Max’s smile went sharp. “Nah. This one has you in it.”
Jesus. “You actually manage to get laid with lines like that?” Not to mention the heavy sarcasm in the delivery.
The once-over Max gave him lingered on Grady’s crotch. Grady felt his ears heat up. It was the anticipation that had him half-hard, nothing more. He’d been promised an orgasm. The reaction was natural. “Was kinda under the impression that you’re a sure thing.”
Grady must hate himself. That was the only explanation. “Like I’d turn down a blow job.”
“We do have something in common.” Max helped himself to a seat on Grady’s bed. “But who says you’re going first?”
Uneasy, Grady took a step back. He didn’t want to be the first to get on his knees here. Not with Max, who was as much of a competitive asshole as Grady, if not more so. And there was no way in hell Max was leaving here thinking Grady was worse at blow jobs than he was. Which meant Grady wanted to go last.
“I’m the one who lost our last game,” Grady said. “How did you put it? Are you really gonna trust me with my teeth around your dick right now?”
Apparently it was Max’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’m definitely not going to return the favor if you bite my dick off, so I think I’m safe.” He was very confident in Grady’s desire to put his dick in his mouth. Unfortunately that confidence was well-founded for reasons Grady didn’t want to examine. “But we can sixty-nine if you think that’s more democratic.”
It was a reasonable solution, and Grady hated it. “I wouldn’t want you to get distracted.” Even worse if Grady got distracted and gave Max ammunition to make fun of him.
Max snorted and beckoned him closer, and Grady obeyed without thinking about it. “Relax. I literally engineered this situation so I could get your dick in my mouth. I’m just giving you a hard time.” He slid his fingers into the waistband of Grady’s pants, and Grady sucked in a breath. “It’s foreplay.”
“It is not.” Grady was proud of how level his voice was.
Max looked up and quirked a knowing eyebrow. “No?” He pressed his hand over Grady’s erection. “Seems effective to me.”
Grady didn’t have a rebuttal. There was no way he could make words make sense when Max’s face was that close to his cock. When the slight pressure of his palm had Grady’s blood up and his dick leaking.
“Thought so,” Max said, the smug set of his mouth turned up to insufferable.
The skin over Grady’s spine prickled with exasperation. “Shut up.”
Max batted his eyelashes. “Yeah? You gonna make me?” The backs of his fingers teased the sensitive skin of Grady’s abs.
Grady knew a challenge when he heard one. He knew the tone of Max’s voice too—it was the same one he used on the ice when he was goading Grady into taking a penalty. He wanted Grady to give in.
And Grady was frozen to the spot.
“You waiting for a formal card?” Max curled his fingers and dragged his nails a few inches down to the tops of Grady’s hip bones. He was still smirking. “You are cordially invited to fuck my face.”
Grady shoved his pants down. “I hate you.” He was starting to sound like a broken record.
Max grinned. “Prove it.”
Grady gripped his shaft in one hand and Max’s jaw in the other and pushed his hips forward.
If Max had a gag reflex, Grady couldn’t tell. His eyes were wet and his mouth was hot and his face was red, and Grady would never hear another word that passed his lips without thinking of the muffled groans and obscene sucking noises that escaped around his cock.
Of course Max was good at this too. Fuck.
“You’re such a shithead,” Grady groaned.
Max hummed in agreement and gripped the backs of Grady’s thighs to pull him closer, like an asshole. An asshole who was really into sucking cock. Grady wasn’t insecure about the size of his dick, but Max was acting like there wasn’t enough of it.
Did he have to be like this?
Grady needed to get laid more if he was reacting like this to Max, of all people. He swept his thumb over Max’s bottom lip and cursed when Max slipped his tongue over the pad of it.
Max blinked at him, then licked against the underside of Grady’s dick. The firm, wet stroke made Grady throb with want.
There was no way Grady could last, and he was pissed off about it. Was he supposed to be polite and warn the guy? Normally he would. But fuck it. He didn’t even like Max. Besides, the way he was going at Grady’s cock, he wasn’t going to mind.
Grady would have to watch out that Max didn’t return the favor. Still, he wasn’t a complete jerk—he let go of Max’s face when he came and shoved the heel of his hand in his own mouth to muffle anything embarrassing.
Max narrowed his eyes when Grady came, but he didn’t pull off—pointedly, Grady thought. Like he was proving something.
Grady locked his knees and sternly commanded his lungs to stop heaving. It was undignified.
Judging by the smirking mouth around his dick, Max wasn’t fooled. He took his time cleaning every molecule of come off Grady’s cock with his tongue, until Grady had to pull him off by the hair because he was oversensitive.
Max licked his lips and fluttered his eyelashes. Apparently if he couldn’t kill Grady on the ice, he was going to give it his best shot in the bedroom.
Two could play at that game too.
“Lie back on the bed,” Grady rasped. For some reason he sounded like he was the one who’d just had his face fucked.
Laughing, Max elbow-crawled backward, the front of his sweatpants tented obscenely. “How are you still this uptight after getting your dick sucked?”
Grady pulled Max’s waistband down so it snugged behind his balls. He was already wet at the tip, hard enough that he was almost purple. Evidently the noises he’d made hadn’t been for Grady’s benefit—he really did enjoy giving head. “What can I say, you bring out the best in me.”
Max was still laughing when Grady put his mouth on his cock.
The laughter choked off into a hiss. Max bucked off the mattress, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. He might not have a gag reflex, but Grady did, so he slung his left arm over Max’s hips to pin him down.
“Fuuuuck, sorry. I—”
Max cut off when Grady muscled his thighs farther apart to make more room between them.
Sorry? What, was he pretending to have manners now? Grady bit the inside of his thigh.
Max yelped and his erection jerked against his stomach.
Grady took that in—the slightly pink skin with the faint impression of his teeth, then the puddle of precome pooling on Max’s stomach. He rubbed his thumb over the mark he’d made, and Max shivered and flung his arm over his eyes.
He remembered the obscene photo of his bruises Max had sent him the other day. Maybe that had been a hint, not a taunt.
He took Max down again. He kept his mouth gentle, teasing, but he pushed his thumbnail into the bite.
Under him, Max writhed. “Should’ve known you’d get—fuck—competitive about this—”
You started it.
It was easy to make him fall apart. Grady already knew everything he needed to—Max liked it when Grady was mean to him. Someone would have to Eternal Sunshine that knowledge from his mind, because it would be inconvenient when Grady had to play against him. But right now he was all ego, basking in the trembling of Max’s thighs and the hitching of his breath when Grady pulled his mouth off to stroke him slowly while he sucked a bruise into the crease of Max’s groin.
Max made a muffled noise that was all vowels, and his erection twitched in Grady’s hand.
Grady let go and drank in the curse of protest as he scored his fingernails down the opposite thigh.
“You’re an asshole,” Max said.
No, he wasn’t. Not usually. Max brought out the worst in him. “You’re into it.”
“Yeah,” Max agreed, easy, and he wailed when Grady carefully raked his teeth up the head of his cock.
Fucking figured, with that comment about trusting Max with his teeth around Grady’s dick, that he’d be the one who got off on it.
Grady brought him to the edge twice more, hypnotized by the jerking and twitching of Max’s body, the heaviness of his breathing. Every time he pulled his hand and mouth away, Max swore at him, and Grady had to suppress a shiver at having that kind of power.
Then he realized he was getting hard again from making his most loathed opponent writhe in pleasure, and came to his senses. He covered the head of Max’s cock with his mouth and pumped his hand over the base of the shaft, and this time when Max stiffened, Grady grazed his teeth over the crown as he pulled off. He stroked Max through a surprisingly silent orgasm and held his weight firm over Max’s hips just because he could. Max kept his arm over his face until his legs stopped shaking and Grady finally let go.
After a moment’s thought, he wiped his hand on Max’s shirt. He still had the one from the other day anyway.
“Wow,” Max said finally as he let his arm flop back to the mattress. “I’m impressed with your level of pettiness.”
Grady rolled onto his back. “Learned from the worst. Gotta sink to the level of the competition.”
Max snorted. “I was counting on it. Why d’you think I wanted to go first?” He was going for smug, Grady could tell, but he mostly sounded sex-dumb. “Right to edging me ’til I cried on the second date. You’re something else.”
Something in Grady’s chest went feral at that, like a wild animal showing off its kill. Which was fucked up. Grady wasn’t going to tell anyone about this. Max really had cried too; the sides of his face were damp.
Fuck, Grady wanted to make him cry again. What was wrong with him?
“This isn’t a date” was the only protest he could come up with. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and went to the bathroom to wash his hands.
MAX FELT like he’d just invented a new superweapon, but with sex.
On the one hand, woohoo, his team would be winning at orgasms forever. On the other hand, mutually assured destruction.
Or at least the destruction of his wardrobe. He grimaced as he pulled his T-shirt off. He probably deserved that.
It figured that even Grady’s sense of humor was kind of bitchy. Max had him pegged as a stick in the mud, but obviously he’d miscalculated. Somewhere under the frowny grump and the laser-focused drive was an actual personality Max wouldn’t mind getting to know.
He tugged his sweats up the rest of the way, sat up against the headboard, and tried to regain his equilibrium.
Once was luck… or coincidence, or novelty, or whatever. But now Max’s brain was leaking out his ears again and, well, he was a twenty-eight-year-old professional athlete who liked sex and he was very interested in having more of it with Grady. The guy didn’t have to like him—hell, the sex was probably hotter because he didn’t.
Getting Grady Armstrong to like him would be an incredible achievement, though. Max believed in himself. He could win this guy over. Maybe they’d never be friends, but they could be friendly acquaintances who had a lot of sex.
Max couldn’t just, like, suggest they keep fucking, though. Grady would turn him down on principle. Max would have to antagonize him into it.
Fortunately Max had plenty of experience antagonizing men into doing what he wanted. Getting a guy to fuck you and slap your ass wasn’t all that different from getting one to crosscheck you and punch you in the face.
He started with helping himself to a bottle of water from the mini fridge. Then he grabbed Grady’s phone while he was in the bathroom. It was locked—Grady wasn’t stupid—but Max had fun trying to guess his passcode anyway.
When Grady returned, the signature Grumpy Cat expression came with him. “What are you doing?” His eyes flicked to the water bottle. “You’re paying for that.”
“You can send me a Venmo request after I finish fixing your internet dating game. Cheapskate.” Max flipped the phone around and pointed it at Grady’s face, hoping that would do the trick. Yup—facial unlock. He grinned and pulled it back toward himself. “If you wanna make a love connection, you need the right app.” Also probably a good deal of luck, but Max didn’t want him to get lucky. Max wanted him to get frustrated, give up, and decide to fuck Max instead.
He had a plan for that.
Grady made a sour-lemon face. “Why should I trust you to do that?”
“Hey, your sister’s the one who said you should get a hookup app. It’s not like I’m going to sign you up for Chaste Christian Singles.” The app finished installing, and Max typed in a username and password, saved them to Grady’s password-manager app, and navigated over to the profile questions. “I’m already being way more helpful.”
“I don’t need your help.”
Yeah, right. Max snorted. “Okay, bud. Have you gotten any messages that aren’t dick pics or accusations of catfishing?”
He took Grady’s stony silence as an answer.
“Look, this is easy. I bet I can fill out most of it for you anyway. Then all you have to do is check yes or no on the people you match with. If you hate it, you can delete the app and no harm done, right?” Max put on his best Helpful Teammate face. He needed to remind Grady that Max was a different guy off the ice. Grady, who wasn’t, kept forgetting.
“Do what you want,” Grady said reluctantly. “You will anyway.”
Now he was getting it. Hopefully it took him longer to catch on that Max was actively sabotaging him. “Awesome.” He left the personal information to fill in later and scrolled down to the fun part. He cleared his throat and made a show of getting comfortable against the headboard, legs crossed like a pretzel. The more annoying he was, the less attention Grady would pay to what he was doing. “So, Grady.” He looked up and injected his voice with gravitas. “Are you looking for someone to go out with, or someone to come home to?”
Grady’s cheeks went red. “That is not one of the questions.”
“It is too.” Max held out the screen to prove it. “See? They want to match you with someone who wants the same things you want.”
He half figured Grady was going to call the whole thing off right there, but finally he said, “Come home to.”
“Aww,” Max said, more sincerely than he intended. Grady scowled anyway, so at least his slipup went undetected. Then he scrolled down to the notes section underneath the answer. “I’m going to add that you’re an antisocial dick who travels too much and you want someone to bone when you get home.”
“Helpful,” Grady said, flat. “Appreciate it.”
“Next question,” Max went on without acknowledging him. “Which is bigger, the earth or the sun?”
Grady gave him a flat stare to match his voice.
Yeah, okay, fine. “My dick,” Max said aloud as he filled in the comments section under the question.
Grady made an indignant noise.
“When do you expect to have oral sex? Second date, obviously. Next question, who calls the shots in bed?” Max didn’t bother waiting for a verbal response for that either.
Apparently not being included was getting to Grady, because he asked, pissy, “Do you actually need my input for this?”
Max paused for a sip of water and considered. “Probably not.” He went back to the questionnaire. “What is your attitude toward polygamous or open relationships?” He snorted. “Yeah, no, you’re a possessive asshole, so—”
“Hey! What makes you say that?”
Max lifted his head. “Really?” Then he tilted it to one side and pointed. “I’m literally wearing your teeth marks on my neck and we’re not even dating.”
