Red Zone Read online

  Hell, I did know better, but the guy seemed to despise me, and I couldn’t blame him. It was easier for both of us, I thought, if I just left him alone. Now I could see how that had worked out.

  When I’d first arrived at the suite, I’d politely knocked on the door instead of just using my code to get inside. I knew my invasion of his space was going to lead to a battle I wasn’t looking forward to. When he still hadn’t answered after several minutes of my fist pounding on the door, I’d finally determined that tossing politeness out the window was going to have to be my next step. Anyway, the music was playing so loud that I even convinced myself that maybe he hadn’t heard me. As soon as I’d stepped inside, I had lowered the music and yelled his name. I knew things were already going to be bad without me making them worse by just barging in.

  He hadn’t responded. Nothing. Just an eerie silence that made me think that maybe he wasn’t even home, that he’d just left the music playing accidentally. Relief had rushed through me because in all honesty, I wasn’t excited about facing him again. Kingston had every reason in the world to hate me and there wasn’t one damn thing I could say to defend myself. Putting off the inevitable seemed like a blessed reprieve for me.

  With all my shit still boxed up neatly in the back of my truck, I’d decided to take a quick tour of the place to see which space Kingston had left me with. It hadn’t taken but opening one door to a bedroom with nothing on the walls, a dresser and a bed with no sheets to realize he’d snatched up the bigger bedroom for himself. Fair enough. I was new to the team and frankly, he deserved it more than I did. The other room was plenty big, and I didn’t plan on spending a lot of time lounging around my bedroom, anyway. Between school, practice, and my extracurricular activities at the club, my schedule was full.

  As I’d stood in the room, dreading all the boxes I had to carry in, because I knew Kingston would never offer to help, a soft moan from the room down the hall had captured my attention. Since I’d been sexually active since the ripe old age of fifteen, I recognized a moan of pleasure when I heard one. The voice of reason inside my head ordered that I mind my own business and leave Kingston and whoever’s legs he was between alone, but my instincts had me walking straight for his bedroom door.

  The moan was so fucking sensual that I felt my body responding to the sound of pleasure. Maybe Mr. Perfect and the unknown moaner would be up for a threesome? I seriously doubted it, especially with me being the third person, but my feet kept walking anyway.

  Feeling like a total creeper, I’d cracked the bedroom door and peeked inside, hoping for a healthy dose of free, live porn, but quickly found the bed to be completely empty. Pushing the door open even wider, I surveyed the scene and found it to be totally lacking in signs of a rough and tumble college boy sex scene. No clothing or underwear slung in every direction. The room didn’t reek of sex and sweat. There was no longer a hint of the soft moan I’d heard earlier and definitely not the erotic noise of bodies slapping together.

  Frowning, I walked over to the bathroom door and yelled Kingston’s name. Nothing. Not a sound. I twisted the doorknob and found the door locked. I yelled his name again and knocked on the door. Loudly. Nothing.

  After spending several frustrating minutes trying to get Kingston to open the door and making zero progress, a worry nibbled at the back of my mind, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Something wasn’t right. I got that he might not want to let me in or was in serious pout mode if he’d realized who his roomie was going to be, but I would have expected a fuck off response from him instead of dead silence. I’d pounded on the door harder and still received nothing.

  After that, the shit hit the fan and splattered everywhere. I kicked open the door to find Kingston Bentley in his bathtub, completely naked, and so fucking still that I thought for a few heart stopping seconds he was dead. Then he opened his eyes, but he seemed to look straight through me in a daze. A stain of bright crimson on his lower abs caught my attention and that’s when I’d noticed his hand held a razor blade, and he was already beginning to make another cut into his flesh.

  The first emotion to sweep over me had been shock, closely followed by shame—had my arrival on campus driven him to this? Had I stolen his life and driven him to a point of wanting to die? The shame remained but then a wave a fury had washed over me. How could he be so fucking dumb? This was nothing more than stupid college football.

  I stopped pacing and checked my watch. For all I knew, he might be back in the bathroom, finishing what he’d started. He had exactly seventeen seconds to make an appearance. And then fuck it—I was going in after him.

  While I’d frantically searched for bandages, my mind had finally caught up with reality enough to tell me that Kingston hadn’t been trying to kill himself. He’d been cutting in another stupid search for pain. I’d heard about cutting, but that was the full extent of my knowledge. But the bottom line was that whatever he was doing, the way he was going about this wasn’t smart and it wasn’t healthy, and I’d be damned if he did it on my watch. People already hated me enough without blaming me for this shit.

  Seventeen seconds up, I stomped down the hallway, I tried to convince myself that I was simply worried about him and that was the reason my heart had nearly thumped straight out of my chest when I’d seen him in that tub. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I’d noticed Kingston’s naked body…and found it to be just as gorgeous as the last time I’d seen it.

  The idea that I might be attracted to Kingston Bentley exploded around in my head like fireworks. This was new…and scary. Intimidating. Okay, it was fucking terrifying. I considered myself to be more or less bisexual. At the club, I dominated other men all the time and found it enjoyable. Sometimes it turned me on sexually, but to tell the truth, I found the most pleasure in the act of Domination. With a man, I felt like I could go harder and inflict more pain. A good sub—a good masochist—would take whatever I had to give them and beg me for more, and some of those guys were dedicated masochists, for sure. The sessions I did with males didn’t always end in sex—it wasn’t just about the sex, or at least it wasn’t for me. It was about the Domination, bending a sub to my will, making him beg for the pain, and using his body as a canvas to create a work of art.

  I was a sadist as well as a Dominant, which some people just didn’t get. They thought of people in history like the Marquis de Sade, and flinched away from the idea, when nothing could have been further from the truth. I only hurt people who wanted it. Who begged for it and needed it as much as I needed to inflict it.

  So why did I feel pleasure by inflicting pain on another person? If I derived pleasure from physically hurting someone else, didn’t that make me a bad person? The answer was no. I administered the pain and the sub/masochist transformed that pain into pleasure. It was as intense and complicated an interaction as it sounded and required a lot of attention and a real commitment from both parties to work. But when it did work, it was a thing of beauty.

  I liked men just fine and found many of them sexy as hell. It was the knowledge that the man I was attracted to right now was none other than Kingston Bentley that caused the fireworks to fizzle and flicker out.

  Yeah, anything sexual between me and Kingston would never happen. Not. Ever.

  “Kingston!” I thundered as I pushed his bedroom door open and stormed inside the room. “So help me, God, if you’re…”

  I slammed right into him, nearly knocking him to the ground. Hell, he would have tumbled over if I hadn’t caught him around the waist and held him upright. Shit, he’d lost weight.

  He jerked out of my grasp and hissed, “Don’t touch me!” With those parting words, he stomped out of his room and down the hall.

  If I wasn’t his mortal enemy, in his mind at least, I might have taken the words as a challenge to try and use my skills to get him to beg me to touch him. Again and again.

  With a shake of my head, I turned to follow him. There was no denying it—it would be a he
ll of a lot of fun to try and tame all that fire and angst. I’d like to have him in my playroom for a while. I’d have him eating his words.

  I found him in the kitchen, digging through the refrigerator with a determination that he should have used to defend himself against the bitch that lied about him and put him in jail. When he finally slammed the door shut, he had a bottle of Tequila. Okay, so that was not what I’d expected him to pull out. From everything I’d heard about Kingston in the past, he had a reputation as a boy scout. Call me crazy, but boy scouts didn’t drink Tequila…straight from the bottle in huge gulps. They didn’t let other men tie them up and beat them either, but that was another story. After a few seconds, I was able to draw my eyes away from the sensual move of his Adam’s apple long enough to reach over and snatch the bottle out of his hand. “What the fuck, Kingston?”

  He snarled in my direction. “What? Are those your favorite words to me, Memphis?” Shoving past me, he said, “How about this? Mind your own damn business…and by the way, I’m not your business.”

  Almost to my breaking point, I slammed the bottle of Tequila down on the countertop and went after him. This time he’d walked out onto the balcony and was standing by the railing, looking down. I quickened my pace, unsure of where his head was and what kind of damage he was really capable of inflicting upon himself. His behavior was the polar opposite of everything I’d heard about Kingston Bentley and even the little bit I’d witnessed first-hand.

  My eyes, traitorous fuckers, wandered to his pert ass as I stepped out onto the balcony following him. Kingston’s ass—regardless of how pert and spankable—wasn’t normally my thing. I’d never so much as looked at him in the showers, no matter how attractive I thought he was. I’d spanked plenty of cute asses in my day, and Kingston Bentley’s was one I’d love to apply a good paddle to.

  “Stop doing stupid shit and maybe I’ll quit saying it,” I said as I forced my eyes away from his perfectly-shaped globes. Yep, they were perfect. My hands itched to grab them and hear him squeal. “What’s happened to you? This isn’t the Kingston I’ve heard about.”

  He snorted in disgust. “Isn’t that funny—you trying to act like you know or care anything about me. You’re a real peach, Memphis.” He spun around to face me, making me thankful my eyes were no longer ogling where they had no business. “Wait a minute! Let me guess? You’re my new roommate, right? Really? Wasn’t it enough to have the girl lie about me, have me thrown in jail, and steal my position on the team? Now you have to live here and make my life a living hell? Nice. Really nice. Wait, don’t forget that you’re blackmailing me now. We definitely need to add that to your list of cons.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but your pros list is completely empty while the other overflows. I’m sure you’re okay with that, though. It has to be something you’re used to. My guess is that you and your father have walked all over people your entire lives.” He smiled, but it wasn’t at all friendly. “Looks like you have that skill off the field, too. Good for you,” he added sarcastically.

  Damn, that was a lot of hate for somebody who didn’t even know me.

  I decided to try to be reasonable with him. “First of all, neither my father nor I paid anybody to lie about you—the bitch did that one all by herself. Secondly, you should never have spent a night in jail. I have no idea why your parents didn’t get another lawyer in there to fight that exorbitant bond, but that’s on them and you—not me. Thirdly, I didn’t steal your position, Kingston. You weren’t there to play and that left me. I played a hell of a game by the way, and we won.” I took a deep breath. “And I’m a better quarterback than you. You’re good, but your throwing game is weaker than mine. We both know that.” I’d thought my words would hurt him, maybe even cause him to take a swing at me. They didn’t, though. There was nothing there. No emotion…just a blank stare back at me.

  He crossed his feet at the ankles and leaned back against the railing, causing my heart to pound a few beats faster than normal.

  “You forgot to deny the blackmailing. What lie do you plan on using for that act of assholery?”

  I smiled. “I didn’t deny it because I am blackmailing you.” I wondered what his hair felt like. I bet it was soft. “If I tell the coach what I saw you doing it will probably get you tossed off the team. Or get your parents to send you to a psychiatrist at the very least. If you don’t want that, it looks like I’ve got you over a barrel.” Yep, my mind immediately envisioned him bent over a barrel, completely naked and legs spread wide, his wrists and ankles attached by chains to round, steel hooks on the floor. I needed to stop that train of thought right now. Kingston Bentley had to be off limits!

  “You really are a piece of work,” he answered with a shake of his head. “What do you want from me, Mr. I’m-the-better-quarterback? Should I carry your books at school? Wash your jock strap? I’ve got it! I can walk ahead of you and toss rose petals in the air so everybody will know royalty is coming their way.”

  I had to smile at the image. Damn, I could really like this guy if he didn’t hate me so fucking much.

  “Those are some good ideas, and I’m gonna be honest with you, the rose petals thing is going to be hard to turn down. If I didn’t already know what I wanted from you, I’d have to go for that. Crimson, of course—to match our school colors. Maybe we’ll keep that one in reserve.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, what you want from me…what is it you think you’re going to get from me, Memphis?”

  Ohhhh…the fucking possibilities that flashed through my mind with that question.

  “First and foremost, I want you to promise there’ll be no more cutting. If I don’t agree to quit, there won’t be anything you can say or do that will stop me from reporting it to the AD and to your parents—it’s dangerous and unhealthy, Kingston. It stops now.”

  He laughed out loud. “Oh…okay. Since you want me to, then I’ll quit. No worries there. I live to make you happy. I mean, I’ve thought about quitting, but I kept telling myself that I didn’t have a good enough reason, so I just couldn’t, no matter how dangerous and unhealthy it was. But now that I know you really want me to, I’ll just retire my blade and start crocheting to relieve my stress. How’s that?”

  “You’re quite the asshole, Bentley,” I acknowledged. “Funny, but an asshole.” I took a step closer to him. “It stops today. No negotiations, no backtalk. You cut. I tattle. Oh, and it should go without saying that the other activity stops too. The shit I witnessed at Checkmate that night is dangerous and stupid. It stops too.”

  “That’s really something coming from you! I saw you there that night too, you know! You have as much to lose as I do there!”

  “The difference is I don’t put myself in danger with what I do.”

  “Oh, just some poor, unsuspecting subs!”

  “I practice safe, sane and consensual, Kingston. Can you say the same?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Mature.” He tried to step away from me, but I blocked him against the railing by putting my hands on each side of him. His eyes widened and nostrils flared, but he didn’t take a swing. God, he smelled delicious. “Let’s move on. I also want you to begin training with me on a daily basis.”

  “I plan on showing up for practice, and I know I’m your backup quarterback. You wasted your blackmail talents on that one.”

  “Nope. You’re not only the backup quarterback anymore. I want you to request my dad to also train you as running back, while you still train with me for quarterback. Running back is Stallone’s position but you’re faster and have better moves than he does. I’ll go with you to make sure you do it and to tell him I think it’s a good idea. On top of that, Stallone’s a troublemaker for the team. If he fucks up again, you can step in.” This brilliant plan had come to me after my discussion with dad. I knew he’d been hinting at something but couldn’t figure out what it was exactly. I’m not sure if this was it, but it was how things were going to be if I had any say
in it whatsoever.

  “I’m a quarterback, not a running back,” Kingston snipped.

  Strange that he hadn’t tried to break away from me yet…

  “Now you’re going to be both. Deal with it. You have the skill. We just need to work on the plays and get you more familiar with the other position. Blackmail, Kingston. Remember? You don’t really have any choice here.”

  He answered with a grunt, but there was a thoughtful expression on his face, like maybe he was allowing himself to consider the changes.

  As for the last thing, I have someone I need to meet tonight. I can’t trust you to leave you alone, so you’re going to have to go along with me.” Having him so close to me was doing something weird to my senses. Good, but weird. New…but really damn good.

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Memphis. I wouldn’t be caught dead out in public with you. Forget it.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” I countered. “I told you. You’re going. It’s my uncle and I haven’t seen him in a few weeks. He’s only in town for a few days so we’re having dinner and going out afterward. You are too, and I don’t want to hear another fucking word out of your mouth about it. We’re leaving soon, so be ready or I’ll carry you out in sweats and a t-shirt. This is something I want to do and I’m not letting you knock me out of it with a spoiled brat temper tantrum.” I stepped away from him. “Twenty minutes, Kingston.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

  “Don’t care,” I answered as I turned to walk away.

  He folded his arms across his chest, his back still against the rail. “I’m not going anywhere, so you need to get over yourself.”

  I turned back and sighed. “I tried to do this the easy way, but you like it hard, don’t you, boy? Okay, then. Let’s dance.”

  ****

  Kingston

  A hand caught my wrist, squeezing hard, and my first thought was Oh, fuck. He’s not playing. The fact was that while I’m not a lightweight by most measures, standing a little over six feet tall, I was still fairly small as football players go and Memphis had about three inches on me. It may have been part of the reason he was a little better quarterback than I was, though I didn’t like to admit it. Tall quarterbacks were generally the same height, or taller, than most of their linemen, so they have a cleaner line of sight and better passing lanes. Taller guys can make throws shorter guys can't, in terms of arm strength and trajectory, so basically all we shorter guys had going for us was speed to avoid a rush, but we got sacked more often too.