The Unforgiving Minute Read Online Free PDF

bath, he would also need to get out of it again. And the thought of Josh Andrews in clinging and hopefully transparent wet clothes was…. Well, Ryan was only human.
    Thankfully the treatment room remained quiet, so Ryan continued lying there and was able in due course to witness the full glory that was Josh Andrews rising like Venus from the waves in translucent tennis whites. The dark points of his nipples were pressed hard against his T-shirt, intriguing and so very, very tempting, but when he turned round, the way his shorts clung to the curve of his ass had Ryan wanting to fall to his knees. The swell of that ass was simple perfection. The line of his white underwear was visible through the shorts, and Ryan desperately wanted to follow that curve with his mouth.
    As Josh was ushered from the room by his father, Ryan closed his eyes for a minute and willed himself to think of other things. He couldn’t risk being found with the beginnings of a hard-on here, without a female player in sight, even if it wasn’t his fault that Josh Andrews was so perfect he would give a tennis net a hard-on. Probably did, every time he brushed against it to shake the other player’s hand.
    Damn it, thinking about touching Josh wasn’t helping Ryan’s problem at all. He closed his eyes and called to mind that cheap motel he’d stayed in for one of the ITF tournaments where accommodation wasn’t provided. He’d pulled back the shower curtain, about to step in, only to see the shower tray was crawling with cockroaches. He had not run screaming and buck-naked out of his room and into the parking lot, no matter what Elena said. He’d had a towel round his waist and it had been no more than the sort of efficient jog he favored to keep himself fit.
    Okay, yeah, that was getting easier. Cockroaches definitely trumped Josh Andrews. Ryan got to his feet just as a new influx of players arrived into the treatment room. Greeting them in passing, he headed back to get changed, with the intention of going to the players’ lounge for a cold drink. Perhaps Josh would turn up there once he was finished with his post-match physio. Perhaps Mitch would already be there.
    On his way to the bar, he greeted and was greeted by a few people. He recognized more faces now. He’d just snagged a juice when he saw Elena’s partner, Lily, across the crowded room, beckoning him over.
    “Hey,” he said, bending to give her a kiss on the cheek.
    “Damn it, Ryan, did you get taller?”
    “Nope, which means you must be getting shorter.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I heard it happens with age.”
    That earned him an elbow in the ribs—she was just as bad as Elena—before he was introduced to the group she was standing with. It was a bit of a whirl of faces and names, but everyone was friendly and it didn’t take Ryan long to feel right at home. He’d just gotten to the climax of his drunken moose story when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he found Mitch standing there.
    “Howdy, y’all,” he said. “Mind if I borrow Ryan here for a few?”
    “God, take him away!” Lily said. “If I never have to think again about Ryan braying seductively at a drunken moose, I can die happy.”
    “I— Yeah, I’m just going to pretend I understood that,” Mitch said, and steered Ryan away and out of the lounge.
    Outside, with the door closed behind them, it was relatively quiet, though bursts of applause from various courts drifted occasionally through the warm summer air.
    “Did you really just say howdy?” Ryan demanded.
    “Did you really just poke fun at my cultural heritage?”
    “Cultural heritage? Really? Next thing I know you’ll be telling me everything’s bigger down there.”
    “Oh, believe me, Ry, it is.”
    For an instant Ryan stared at him, mouth dry and heart thumping fast because it sounded as if Mitch had meant it as the come-on it sounded like. But then he came back to his senses. “Yeah, yeah. Do you know who you’re playing