Page 19 of Unrivaled

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. Notusually. 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 totellanyone 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 FELTlike 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.

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