Page 88 of Let the Game Begin

“I want to know why you want—”

Again, I didn’t allow her to finish. I wiggled out of her grasp and breathed in deep. I was on the edge of another explosion.

“I do not know. I don’t know why I want you,” I shouted, making her flinch. “You are the only virgin I have ever been with. You have no experience. You don’t know how to please me. I have no idea what attracts me to you. But what were you hoping to hear? That I’m in love with you? That you’re ‘the one’ for me? That I’ll only sleep with you from now on? Well, allow me to enlighten you, Selene: I just like you. My cock just likes you.” I grabbed it through my jeans. “It’s all just sex. Now, is that enough to bring down your castle in the air? Can you stop plaguing me with all these questions!”

Selene backed up, saying nothing.

I was rude, an insensitive, hot-headed dick, but I had told her the truth.

I needed her to understand that there was no future for us. There was no fairy tale, because I wasn’t capable of giving her any more than this. I had so many problems on my plate that thinking about a relationship was not remotely my priority, no matter how hard it was for Selene to understand.

I had been dead inside for too long. There was no salvation, no liberation coming for me. Meeting this chaste and pure girl with her “I can fix him” instinct simply wasn’t enough to pull me out of my own personal hell. That was how it happened in books, not in real life.

“You need to live life as it really is.” I drew close to her and used my index finger to tilt up her chin. Her eyes, disillusioned now, were still so crystalline that they threatened to enthrall me.

“Illusions destroy the mind, Selene. There is nothing worse than wanting one so much that you start to believe it’s real.” Selene was far too naive to really understand the dark side of human nature. Her eyes were like permanent rose-tinted glasses through which she filtered the world, seeing only what she wanted to see.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarled, walking away, and I knew perfectly well how angry and disappointed she was now. Selene had never experienced sex before we met, so she was probably confused and struggling to separate physical attraction from the illusory feeling of “love” that everyone else believed in.

I looked one last time at Selene before brushing past her to finally pick my sweater up off the floor. I could feel the weight of what I had said resting heavily on my chest, but I couldn’t apologize for something I genuinely believed, despite the shitty way I might have expressed it.

I sighed and covered my torso, feeling her gaze sharp on my back. Then, I went out the door without giving her another glance.

I didn’t deserve a pure white rose like her, and Babygirl didn’t deserve my asshole behavior. I knew it, but in spite of all that, I wanted her still. My desire for her was so strong, it couldn’t be repressed. I wanted her body without any emotional entanglement that might compromise the delicate understanding between the two of us.

We weren’t stepsiblings, and we weren’t just roommates or friends, but we weren’t a couple, either. Whatever we were, it had arisen purely from a thirst that I wanted to slake. A thirst that would be the source of all her disappointments…

***

The next day, I decided to relegate Selene to a corner of my mind and deal with the much more serious issue. My sister didn’t want to go to school and was locked in her room, drowning in the pain that piece of shit Carter Nelson had inflicted upon her. I knew I should regret leaving him comatose in a hospital bed, but all I could feel was frustration that I hadn’t killed him outright.

On top of everything else, I now knew that the Nelson family intendedto press charges against the attacker when Carter woke up. There was no way the kid wouldn’t mention my name if I didn’t find some way to stop him.

“What are you thinking about?” Jennifer kissed my neck, nuzzling the tip of her nose against me to breathe in my smell. We were in my car, but I had no intention of fucking her there, despite her continual advances. She’d asked me for a ride home, and I’d agreed to take her, not thinking about the possibility that she might try to get in my pants the way she usually did.

I didn’t mind her forwardness. I was used to it, in fact. Jennifer and I had known each other for four years at that point, and we had established a type of relationship based purely on sex without any sort of commitment. We got along well, especially when we weren’t talking. She had an incredible body: huge tits and a tight ass well worth slapping. And she was a real firecracker in bed, which was why I generally preferred to fool around with her in my free time.

“You know I don’t like it when you stick your nose into my business.”

She was very familiar with who I was and how I thought about things.

Jennifer sat back comfortably in the passenger seat and adjusted the plaid skirt that barely covered her thighs. Today, they were wrapped in a pair of dark tights. Despite the falling temperatures, she never gave up her uniform of knee-high boots and miniskirts, which I used to instantaneously access the only part of her that really interested me.

“Do you know any friends of Nelson’s?” I asked as we arrived at the front gate of her house. Jennifer was part of a wealthy family, originally from Ireland. Her father had died in a car accident, and her mother wasted no time at all starting a new life with an entrepreneur out of New York whom she met by chance on a business trip.

“Friends of Bryan, you mean?” she asked, doing up the buttons of the coat that she’d just opened in a desperate attempt to lure me.

“No, the younger brother. Carter,” I specified, starting to develop a plan that I could put into action soon to make sure the little bastard didn’t press charges.

“Mmm…you should ask Xavier. He always knows everyone.” She shrugged and tugged on a black hat, covering the top of her blond head.

“Okay. You can go.” With one hand resting on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift, I glanced out the window again. I kept the engine running, waiting for her to get her ass out of my Maserati. Jennifer, however, just sat there, staring thoughtfully at me.

“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?” she asked suddenly, out of nowhere.

“With who?” I scowled, almost annoyed with her. I hated it when she brought up personal questions, trying to ferret out some kind of secrets about my love life. A love life that I didn’t have and, more importantly, would never want to have.

“With the little Virgin Mary who lives with you.” She gave me a look of such disturbing rage that it would have sent shivers down anyone else’s spine.