Page 41 of Dirty Game

"Then teach me."

The words are barely out before I realize what I've said, what I'm asking.

But I don't take them back.

Instead, I do something that surprises us both.

I rise up on my tiptoes, my hands coming to rest on his chest for balance, and I kiss him.

It's clumsy. Inexperienced.

I don't know what to do with my lips, my tongue, my teeth.

I just press my mouth to his and hope that intent makes up for technique.

For a heartbeat, he's frozen.

Then a sound escapes him—half groan, half surrender—and his hand slides into my hair, angling my head to deepen the kiss.

This is nothing like the barely-there brush of lips from three days ago.

This is heat and demand and barely restrained hunger.

His tongue traces the seam of my lips, and when I gasp, he takes advantage, tasting me like I'm something he's been denied for too long.

I don't know what to do with my hands, my body, the sounds trying to escape my throat.

Everything is a sensation—his skin under my palms, his fingers tangled in my hair, the solid weight of him pressing me into the wall.

He tastes like whiskey and danger and something uniquely him that makes me want to crawl inside his skin and never leave.

When he tears himself away, we're both breathing hard.

"You don't know what you're starting," he says roughly, his forehead resting against mine.

"Then teach me," I repeat, bolder now, drunk on the taste of him.

He steps back so suddenly I almost fall.

The loss of his heat, his touch, his presence, feels like deprivation.

"Not like this," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Not when you don't understand what you're asking for."

"I'm asking for you."

"You're asking for something you've built up in your head. Some version of me that saves you, protects you, makes you feel safe." He's backing away, putting distance between us like physical space might break whatever spell we're under. "That's not who I am."

"I know who you are."

"Do you? Because the man you're looking at with those wide eyes, the one you think might have hope sleeping somewhere inside him—that man would destroy you just to see if he could."

"No," I say simply. "He wouldn't."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because you've had a dozen chances to destroy me already. Instead, you feed me strawberries. You break bones for my honor. You kiss me like I'm made of spun glass." I take a steptoward him, and he takes one back, maintaining the distance. "That's not destruction. That's?—"

"Don't say it."