King of the Court

by Melanie Munton

  Curiosity piqued, I asked, “Do you know what caused the whole rivalry between them?”

  He shook his head. “All I’ve ever heard is that it was an old childhood thing that evolved as they grew up and started competing against each other. But I do know that Warren was doing a lot of trash talking tonight. I mentioned something to the refs about it, but I guess they never heard it. It’s pretty obvious to me, though, that Warren said something that pushed Donovan to the breaking point.”

  Oh, shit. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling.

  I recalled how furious—and guilty—Cam had looked before booking it to the locker room. “If it’s any consolation, I think he’s punishing himself over the loss far worse than you ever could.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I know. He cares more about this team than anyone understands. That’s when it becomes hard being a coach. What do you say to a player who’s already torturing himself over his mistake? How do you affect him enough to make him listen?”

  I wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or not, but I decided to answer it, anyway.

  “You alleviate the punishment for him. It’ll do no good to remind him of how he screwed up, so you just move on. Focus on the future. The sooner they can all put this game behind them, the better.”

  He looked at me with a sheepish grin. “You know, you’d make a hell of a coach one day, Reese.”

  I laughed. “Are you kidding? Have you forgotten the temper I have on the court? My players would all hate me.”

  He shared in my laughter. “Trust me, I haven’t forgotten your temper. I’ve never seen a face get so red in my life.”

  “If only you had a mirror with you during your games,” I mused. “Where do you think I got it from?”

  He chuckled again and veered off to the locker room as I kept walking down to the training room. I knew Gus was already in with the guys, taking care of some icing and wrapping, so I probably wouldn’t have much to do.

  Cam sitting on the exam table when I opened the door, legs dangling in front of him, hands loosely intertwined between his legs. At my entrance, he slowly raised his head and pinned me with such a fierce expression my breath caught in my throat. I may not have known everything about him, but I’d become fluent in his body language.

  He was in a rage.

  Apprehension froze me in my tracks, but I didn’t want him to see how his behavior was unnerving me.

  “What happened out there?” I asked. “What was punching Trey all about?”

  His smirk was full of derision. “I didn’t punch Warren. If I’d actually punched him, he would have walked away with a broken jaw and not just a bloody nose.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling very exposed under his piercing gaze. “That still doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m not interested in talking right now.”

  His eyes slid down my body, stopping on my chest and legs. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something off about the way he was looking at me. It wasn’t with his usual teasing, yet lustful flirtation. It was…colder, somehow.

  He crooked his finger at me. “Come here.”

  Becoming less certain of his mood, I shook my head. His devilish grin was both pleased and taunting.

  “Playing hard to get now, Reese? Okay. I like a good challenge.”

  Before I could react, he lunged forward, lightning fast, and grabbed my wrist, yanking me into him. “Somehow I don’t think this will be much of a challenge at all,” he whispered.

  My spine stiffening at that unflattering implication, I pushed against his chest. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Stop trying to resist me,” he commanded. “Aren’t we past that point? I know you want this. You know you want this.”

  I did not like how he was acting. It was as if he were under a spell. Even when we were fighting he was never this removed from his real self.

  “Cam, what’s going on—?”

  He slammed his lips against mine.

  I didn’t react at first, refusing to move my mouth under his. But then, dammit, his arms wrapped around my back, his hands demanding and powerful as they pulled me closer. And when they lifted to cup the back of my head, angling my face in an effort to control the kiss, I gave in. I was a sucker for those rough hands and against my better judgment, I sank into his body and allowed the warm sensations to wash over me.

  He grunted some noise of approval in his throat at my surrender and deepened the kiss. It wasn’t long before desire took over and our hungry mouths moved against each other in desperate need. Losing all sense of time, space, and location, our hands grappled at each other’s clothes. His mouth clung to my neck as I roughly pulled his jersey over his head. In that moment I didn’t care who could suddenly walk in here and catch us. I just needed to feel his bare skin, getting as close to him as I possibly could.

  With his upper body now naked, he stood up and spun us around, grabbing my hips and hauling me onto the table. Stepping between my spread legs, he gripped both of my thighs and wrapped them tightly around his waist. We were stealing all the oxygen in the room with our heavy panting and strangled moans. And when he reached underneath my sweater dress and ripped my tights from my body, I swear I almost came on the spot.

  Instead of also tearing my underwear to shreds, he simply pushed the material aside and shoved two fingers through my slick folds, lodging them deep inside me.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this body,” he said against my throat. “Or this pussy. It’s so damn good with you.”

  “More.”

  To my utter horror, I said the word not once but twice, whimpering between pleas. And then I practically begged him to get me off. While I was at work. Classy.

  “Please, Cam.”

  He chuckled against my skin, trailing kisses along my collarbone as his fingers continued to thrust in and out. “See, I told you. You’re no good at playing hard to get.”

  I was hardly listening as he pushed me up that slope, about to crest the peak. He could keep talking all he wanted as long as he didn’t stop moving his fingers. I was…almost…there…

  “I guess you weren’t good at it with Warren, either, were you?”

  It took about two seconds for those clipped words to register. Then my eyes sprang open and every molecule in my body froze. My orgasm now felt like a million miles away.

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” he bit out. “You spread your legs for him once. Now, you’re so willing to do it for me. Are we that interchangeable, he and I? Or is hooking up with me somehow a revenge plot against him?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Part of my brain had shut down immediately when I heard those words. The other part was so enraged that I was seconds away from slapping him in the face. Instead, I used every bit of strength in my body to shove him away.

  “Excuse me?” I spat. “Where the hell do you get off saying that to me?”

  The ticking muscle in his jaw told me he was ready for a fight. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you weren’t all over Warren back then.”

  “Whether I was or I wasn’t is none of your business! It doesn’t matter. That was before you and frankly, it has nothing to do with you.”

  “The hell it doesn’t,” he hissed. “It does when he’s shoving that shit in my face during a fucking game.”

  Ah-ha. So, Trey had said something to him about the two of us from a thousand years ago. Probably lies, no doubt. Couldn’t Cam see that he was just saying those things to provoke him? To needle him? Get inside his head so he couldn’t play at his usual level?

  And obviously, it had worked.

  “What exactly did he say to you?”

  “He told me enough,” he growled. “Enough to know that you’re the type of girl who would go after a guy like him. Clearly not the type of girl I thought you were.”

  His sneer had turned into
one of disgust and that’s when I lost all patience. He was not going to look at me like that over one past mistake when he had dozens of women floating around in his wake of one-night stands.

  “You’ve got some nerve to judge me,” I snapped. “You don’t get to bring up stuff from my past and try to make me feel guilty for it. I tried to explain the situation between me and Trey that day at the lake and you didn’t want to hear it. You have no right demanding answers from me now, just because you heard things you didn’t like hearing.”

  He paced around the room, looking more agitated by the second. “I can’t even handle hearing you say his fucking name! Thinking about the two of you together like that makes me sick to my stomach.”

  If I’d had anything in my hands right then I would have thrown it at his stupid head without hesitation. I was that mad.

  “What do you want me to say?” I yelled. “That I was fifteen and a little drunk at a party that I shouldn’t have been at because I was rebelling over my parents’ divorce? Or that I had to use force just to get Trey off me when he started taking things too far?”

  He stopped his pacing, his whole body locking up as if he’d suddenly become chilled to the bone. His widening eyes met mine, questions brewing in them. The cat’s out of the bag now. He was going to hear the truth whether he wanted to or not. The problem was that my emotions were going haywire and I couldn’t tell the story the way I wanted to.

  “Yeah, I’m guessing he left out that part,” I said bitterly. “At first, I was into it. He knew I didn’t want to have sex, and he acted like he understood. But when he pushed me back on the bed, I knew he wasn’t listening. By the time he had my jeans over my hips, I was practically shouting for him to stop. He kept telling me, ‘I know you want this, Reese.’”

  I let those words resonate for a second since they were very similar to what he’d said to me only moments ago. He seemed to get the message.

  “It wasn’t until I kneed him in the balls that I was actually able to get him off of me. I ran away and hated him from that moment on. Though, that didn’t stop him from trying for a repeat all throughout high school. I was the one girl who had ever rejected him and he couldn’t stand it.”

  He didn’t say a word. He just stood there watching me in shock. So, of course, I was humiliated when I felt wetness coat my cheeks. Dammit, I never cried in front of anyone, least of all guys. And I did not want him to know how badly he’d just hurt me. My heart was an impenetrable fortress. After years of learning many lessons, I’d always guarded myself against getting hurt.

  I would not accept that he had somehow breeched the fortress walls.

  I sniffed as I wrapped my arms around myself for protection. “I guess you two are interchangeable. You both do whatever you need to do to get whatever you want, even if it means hurting others. And if you don’t get it, you turn into complete assholes.”

  His lips parted, but I ignored the remorse I saw there. All I wanted from him in that moment was his absence.

  He sucked in a breath. “Reese, I’m—”

  “Get out.”

  More tears fell. I tried to be discreet about wiping them away, but he noticed. He acted as if the sight pained him, but again, I didn’t care. There was nothing he could have said that would have erased the pain he’d caused in a few brief minutes.

  “Reese, please.”

  “I. Said. Get. Out.”

  Reluctantly, he slowly made his way toward the door. I followed closely behind and waited until he was across the threshold. He turned back as if he were going to say something, but I slammed the door in his face.

  This time, I didn’t bother trying to wipe the tears away.

  28

  Cam

  That was the second time I’d screwed up today.

  Although with Reese, I had a feeling that I hadn’t just screwed up.

  I had royally fucked up.

  She didn’t speak to me for the entire ten minute bus ride back to our stadium in Calhoun. She wouldn’t even look at me. Not that I blamed her. I’d been a complete ass and deserved every bit of her ire.

  Hearing about what really went down between her and Warren hadn’t eased any of my anger. It was just now solely directed at him. It made me want to track him down and rip his fucking head off. The fact that he’d been trying to make her life miserable ever since that ill-fated hookup was like rubbing salt in the wound.

  The guy was scum.

  But according to her, I wasn’t looking much better than him. I had to fix that immediately.

  “You want to talk about what happened out there tonight?” Jesse asked from the seat across the aisle.

  I lowered the hood on my sweatshirt but didn’t look at him. “Just Warren being Warren.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, man,” he said in a curt tone. “You weren’t your usual self around him tonight. Everyone could see it.”

  From the back of the bus I could barely make out the top of Reese’s head leaning against the window. I couldn’t let her leave the parking lot tonight without apologizing or I might lose her forever. The thought had panic swirling in my gut.

  “He just crossed a line tonight,” I answered. “And it struck a nerve. I didn’t mean to screw everyone out of a win.”

  Jesse scoffed. “If we can’t manage to hold a lead for a couple of minutes because of one foul, that’s not on you. That win should have been secured regardless of what happened. We let the game get away from us.”

  I did look over at him then. I assumed everyone would have been pissed at me for breaking up the team’s rhythm, but I should have had more faith in my teammates. I should have known they wouldn’t give me a hard time over one slip-up. Everyone had them now and then.

  I fist-bumped him. “Thanks, man.”

  “If there is anything bothering you, you know you can talk to me.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder just as we stopped in the team parking lot. I saw Reese dash out the front door like the bus was rigged with a bomb, practically sprinting to her car in the frigid winter air with bare legs. My damn fault. Since I’d ripped the hell out of her tights, she’d had to ditch them back at BelV’s stadium. She’d probably been freezing her ass off for the last half hour or so. I’d even heard Coach ask her what happened to them, and she made up some excuse about getting a runner in them.

  Yet another thing I felt like an ass for.

  I had to get off this damn bus immediately and chase her down without anyone else seeing.

  I shoved past all the guys in front of me, grateful to see that Coach and Gus had already de-boarded and were nowhere in sight. When I finally tracked her down and saw that she’d parked around the corner of the stadium, completely hiding us from view of everyone on the bus, I thanked the lucky stars I hadn’t earned. She was digging through her purse, I assumed looking for her keys, when I caught up to her.

  “Reese, wait. I need to talk to you.”

  She glanced up in surprise, then schooled her features and went back to searching for her keys. “I have nothing to say to you. Leave me alone.”

  Not a chance. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out. The hand in her purse paused. “I know… I know I was the biggest asshole back there and saying sorry doesn’t excuse the things I said to you or the way I acted. But I am really sorry.”

  I almost wished she hadn’t looked up then because that’s when I noticed how badly she was shivering. Her teeth were chattering, for Christ’s sake.

  “Okay, you’re sorry,” she said, her voice cold. “You said your piece, I heard it, now can you please leave me alone?”

  Frustrated that I couldn’t wrap my arms around her and use my body heat to warm her, I asked, “Can we maybe continue this conversation in your car where there’s heat? You’re freezing.”

  The laugh she released wasn’t a happy laugh. “No shit I’m freezing. And this little discussion is only delaying me getting into my car so I can get home to my warm bed.”

&n
bsp; Okay. Looked like I was going to have to try a different tactic. If there was one thing I knew about Reese, it was that she appreciated honesty, even when it could be brutal. So, that’s what I would give her: the honest to God truth.

  I threw my arms out to the side. “All right, you want to know what tonight was all about? Here it is.”

  That got her attention. She now watched me with reluctant curiosity.

  “I don’t like thinking about Warren ever having you. Hell, I can’t handle hearing him say your name, let alone think about him ever touching you. And he knows that. During the game tonight he was taunting me with what did or didn’t happen between you two. He was using you to get under my skin.”

  “Why would he do that?” she whispered.

  My hands now on my hips, I pinned her with a look. “Because he can obviously tell how I feel about you.”

  She swallowed, her lower lip trembling. “How you feel?”

  I nodded slowly, never taking my eyes off her. “I was insanely jealous tonight, thinking about you being with someone else, now or in the past. That wasn’t fair of me, I know, especially since I haven’t been shy about my many…liaisons over the years. I took that jealousy out on you in the worst way, and I can’t tell you enough how fucking sorry I am. But all of this tonight has made me realize one thing.”

  Her breathing was erratic, the white puffs from her breaths coming out in a staggered pattern. “What?”

  Here was the point of no turning back. Once I took this leap everything was going to change. Everything would be different. That was, if she was willing to take the leap with me.

  “I don’t want to be with anyone else,” I said emphatically. “I haven’t for a while. And thinking about you with anyone else makes me want to punch a hole through the damn wall. I don’t even know when it all started happening, but I’m a miserable jackass on the days I don’t get to see you. When we go for days without talking, all I can think about is who else could be flirting with you when I’m not. Or who else might be making you laugh at dirty jokes, even though you try not to. Or who else might be ogling your ass in those skirts you wear. I can’t make any of that go away, no matter how hard I try. Like it or not, Reese, you’re mine now.”