Page 17 of Let the Game Begin

“Like a girl coming out of your room, Neil!” she scolded me, and her voice bounced around between my temples until I had to squeeze my eyes shut.

“How many times do I have to tell you…” she went on but was interrupted when Matt appeared in the kitchen, unwittingly coming to my rescue.

“God, my back is killing me, but I have to go to work to today,” he complained, and my mother turned to console him for a few moments. I took advantage of her distraction to sneak away and avoid what would undoubtedly be a tedious dressing-down. She had long suspected what I got up to in my room, but I hadn’t given her confirmation before. Living in a big house like ours gave me some freedom to fully dedicate myself to my sex life but didn’t provide all the privacy I would have liked.

Sure, I could smuggle the girls out through the service stairs or the back gates, but that wasn’t enough to hide the assiduous way I plowed through my quarry. I was like the worst kind of beast: always starving, always unsatisfied. It was a psychologically ruinous sort of existence that would eventually lead me to destroy myself as both a person and a man.

Brushing off these grim thoughts, I went out to meet my siblings where they were sitting at a table under our gazebo. The rays of the sun were warm and gentle on my bare shoulders as I walked.

“Oh, to what do we owe this honor?” my sister teased with a smirk.

“Love you, too,” I answered. I gave her a wink and then looked around for Selene. I couldn’t say exactly why, but I’d been hoping to run into her this morning. Or maybe just see her around the house, poured into those jeans of hers and filling up the space with her sass.

“It’s almost lunch time. You were up late, huh?” said Logan, giving me a suggestive look. My brother knew how I lived, and I’d never tried to deny any of it with him.

“Well, you’re the fucking romantic. I make my own fun,” I said shortly, because I was too focused on trying to determine the whereabouts of thelovely tigress who had invaded our house days ago now. I didn’t want to ask Logan about her and make him suspicious, but I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“Selene come out?” I scratched one eyebrow with my thumb and feigned a lack of interest, like I was just passingly curious about where she was. But my brother wasn’t stupid.

“No, she’s up on the third floor at the indoor pool,” he answered.

The fact that we had two swimming pools, one outside and one inside, had never seemed so practical as it did to me that day. Was Selene all alone there?

The idea thrilled me and sent a strange rush of adrenaline down my spine. It was completely inappropriate, but my deviant mind wanted to see her. Against all my good sense, I quickly excused myself, pretending that I’d forgotten my pack of Winstons in my room.

I avoided the kitchen and headed straight for the house’s elevator on the first floor, because I was in an atypical hurry to find Selene, even if I didn’t fully understand why. When the automatic doors opened on the third floor, I crept down the hallway that led to our pool. I mentally counted down the seconds that divided me from her and then…then I saw her.

I froze, just watching her for what felt like endless minutes. She was stretched out on a chaise lounge wearing just a black bikini that fit her like a dream. Her pale skin glowed, and her damp hair looked like polished amber. Her rounded lips were parted slightly, and occasionally, she would lick them, which generated increasingly indecent thoughts in my twisted mind. I refused to even blink, perhaps out of fear that she might vanish at any moment like a dream or an illusion.

I approached her like the most lethal sort of predator and threw myself down on the empty chaise next to her.

“Morning, Tinkerbell,” I said politely, nudging her side. Selene jumped and pulled out her earbuds.

“You scared me!” she cried irritably and turned my way. The ocean in her eyes dazzled me, and she seemed somehow even more beautiful than she had been the night before.

“Are you afraid of me?” I asked, picking the container of body lotionshe’d left on the table next to her and raising it to my nose. “Mmm…coconut,” I murmured, taking in the pleasing fragrance. She snatched the lotion away from me with an agitated look. Apparently, Tigress didn’t like people touching her things. So, I decided to get in her space, push her boundaries a bit just to test her.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she declared and then lay back down, pretending to ignore me, but I could feel her agitation. I could sniff out her desire the way any animal sniffs out its dinner.

“You should be,” I answered. I lay down, propping myself up on my elbow and leaning my chin on the palm of my hand. I could feel her stare burning into me.

“Fear can be an ally, if you know how to handle it,” she answered firmly and gave me a cunning look. Nothing turned me on more than a woman with a killer body and a beguiling mind.

“And do you, Selene? Know how to handle it?” I sat back, resting my elbows on my bent knees. I looked her up and down, from her glistening lips to her long, slim legs—the ones I yearned to feel clasped around my hips. She was so small; it would have been effortless to overpower her and the idea…it excited me.

And she seemed to understand exactly what I was thinking because she went red.

“Stop looking at me that way!” she snapped at me. I almost came when I heard the low, apprehensive sound of her voice. It was breathy, like she’d been running fruitlessly for hours in a maze. She sat up and hunched her thin shoulders as if trying to protect herself. From me? Hadn’t she just implied she knew how to handle her fears?

“You have to… You have to stay away from me, Neil.” She got up in a rush and leaped into the pool to escape me. Where did she think she was going? This was my territory. She was in the wolf’s den now, and the wolf certainly wasn’t going to spare her.

With a shameless grin, I got up off the chaise and undressed. I pulled off my pants and was left in just my black Calvin Klein boxers. I considered taking those off as well and joining her naked, but I didn’t want to push it too far. At that point, she still onlysuspectedthat I was a pervert.

I followed her, slowly immersing myself in the warm, crystal clear water. The two blue gems that were her eyes followed my every feline movement. I gave her a smile that communicated every one of my bad intentions and swam elegantly toward her.

I stopped a short distance from where she was now pressed against the wall of the pool, and I took a moment to admire her. If I’d gotten any closer to her, I wouldn’t have been able to restrain myself.

“Face your fears, Selene.” I stared—first at her eyes and then at her lips. Finally, when she didn’t retreat, I closed the distance between us once more. I touched her hip, and she jolted. I smiled at her reaction, but I didn’t stop. My hand just glanced over her bikini bottoms, and I tried to stroke her between her thighs, but Selene clamped them together tightly to keep me from going any further.