Page 112 of Let the Game Begin

I was older than her; maybe I could give her some good advice and help her figure out how to separate attraction from that illusory feeling called love, but nothing more than that. “Or…” I whispered, offering an insane alternative. “You could stay right here and explore this attraction we share, purely as a physical desire that needs to be satisfied, until one or both of us gets tired of this shit.” We looked at each other. Both of us knew that was the stupidest possible thing to do, and I fully expected her to reject me, to agree that she should turn her attention to someone else, someone less troubled, someone who could get closer to her ideal man.

Not to mention that we could be found out at any time. I, in particular, ran the risk of losing Matt’s trust forever, all to indulge my sexual fantasies with his daughter.

“Or you could talk to me more often, like you’re doing right now, without me needing to ask you,” Selene retorted, surprising me. She knew how to shut me up, and she didn’t even need to get my pants down to do it. Ishook my head in shock. I was talking to her, and what’s more, I was the one who’d started it.

I was reminded of her stupid compromise. Selene wanted to learn something about me every time I demanded something from her. I realized that I needed to be cunning and anticipate her next moves. So I leaned forward to kiss her and keep her from starting in with the fucking questions again. But she spotted what I was doing right away.

“Nope.” She pulled back to prevent me from reaching her lips, which then curved into an insolent smile. “If you want a kiss, you have tell me something about yourself.” She recited her damned condition, and I sighed in defeat.

“My favorite color is blue,” I said, which was the first bullshit that came to mind as I stared into her beautiful eyes. Then, I tried again to steal a kiss from her, but she pressed one hand to my chest, clasping her blanket around her with the other.

“I want more,” she insisted.

What could she possibly want to know about me? I didn’t talk about myself with anyone. I didn’t talk like that to women.

Ever.

And I couldn’t understand why she wanted to do it or what she hoped to achieve. I’d already fulfilled a few of her fantasies about being with a man, what else did she want from me? I glanced around and noticed the cigarette butt stubbed out in the plastic ashtray beside me.

“I started smoking when I was twelve,” I said. It was banal but just as true as my previous fact, and her forehead creased thoughtfully.

“Do you smoke… Are cigarettes all you smoke?” she asked hesitantly, as though afraid of how I might react. She was trying to figure out if I used drugs, that much was clear, but she was far too polite to ask me outright.

“Cigarettes are my only addiction, so no, I don’t do drugs.”

Because I can’t.But I didn’t tell her that, because then I would have had to explain how both drugs and alcohol altered my psychological state and made me dangerous. Or maybe I would have even blurted out a confession about the heavy medications I used to take and how combining them with illegal drugs could have killed me.

“You’re wrong. You have at least one other addiction,” she said. “The blonds,” she clarified, smiling at me in amusement. I sighed and gave her a serious look until her smile faded. She had no idea what kind of shit hid behind that seemingly simple statement, nor the pain I carried with me.

“My real addiction is sex…with the blonds,” I corrected her, and her expression darkened before she shook her head to banish whatever she was thinking about.

“I’m not blond and yet—”

I cut her off before she could finish. “It’s been so long since I fucked you; you were clearly just an outlier,” I told her with a certainty that I knew would prick her feminine pride. Truthfully, we had only spent a little time together, but I felt like I’d known her for years. And that was strange.

“After that last time, you…” Selene cleared her throat and turned red, clearly thinking about what had happened in her room. And in her bathroom. “You didn’t seek me out again. Why?”

If she had been any other woman, I would have thought it was a come-on, but Selene seemed genuinely curious and even a little afraid of the answer I would give her.

“Maybe I stopped wanting you?” I offered, smiling my sleaziest smile. Babygirl sucked in a breath and pursed her lips. I hoped she wasn’t about to start crying; instead she just took a deep breath and leaned closer to my ear, hitting me with her hot exhalation.

“Or maybe you want me so much that you have to stay away from me? I think you didn’t want to jump my bones because you didn’t want to see the bruises your whore left on me,” she said, sounding unlike herself. The word “whore” took on a lewd new appeal when it rolled off her innocent lips.

I grasped her side more tightly as my other hand crept closer to her crotch. I didn’t want to think about what Jennifer had done to her, or I would end up showing her the side of myself that I hated. Instead, I preferred to focus on what we’d gotten up to in her room.

“Would you like to be my whore?” I taunted her, just a short distance from her lush mouth, which I needed to taste. We were doing way too much talking and not enough acting for my tastes.

“At least with me you wouldn’t have to worry about catching a disease,” she answered shortly.

“But you’d be too much of an innocent to go along with all my twisted requests,” I replied and it was true. I would never have shared Babygirl with the Krew. I would never have let her do any of the things I usually did with women—Jennifer and Alexia in particular—and the other assholes I hung out with.

“Like?” She was blushing even as she showed me all the typical inquisitiveness of an inexperienced girl trying to hide her embarrassment by pretending to be more worldly.

“Like, would you want to share me with another woman? At the same time? In the same bed?” My whisper was like a caress and her eyes went wide before darting away from me. She was uncomfortable, stiff as a block of wood.

She didn’t answer me and just glanced at the pool house behind her, obviously considering something.

“And would you want to share me with another man? At the same time? In the same bed?” she said finally, sounding embarrassed, but there was a determination in her eyes that rendered me speechless for a few moments. Sure, I would have enjoyed that, but only with another woman. Not her. A strange feeling in my stomach made me close my lips into a thin line. If Xavier or Luke had heard Selene say something like that, they definitely would have tried to share her.