Page 89 of Let the Game Begin

“No,” I lied. “And even if I were, it shouldn’t matter to you.” Her bright eyes lingered on my hand gripping the steering wheel, then moved down to take in my entire body and the tension there that I had gotten all too good at hiding.

Apparently satisfied, she brought her eyes back up slowly to mine. Then she leaned into me and put a hand on my knee, stroking up toward my thigh.

“Then why not let Xavier and Luke share her? They’d both like to have her,” she whispered, just a short distance from my lips. Her words fluttered slowly around in my brain, conjuring up images of the two of them in bed with Selene while Babygirl shouted and writhed to escape their unwanted touches. A searing heat spread from the pit of my stomach up to my chest. I grabbed Jennifer by the throat and tightened my grip until her nose was touching mine. She held her breath and stared at me, terrified.

“You try to get them to do something like that and you’ll regret ever meeting me,” I threatened her sharply. Carter’s treatment was just a sampling of the many insane things I was capable of doing.

She smiled. Fuck, she smiled! And I knew exactly why: She had won. She’d gotten the reaction she wanted from me.

“Youaresleeping with her. And I’ll tell you what’s more: you like the little brat, too.” She murmured the last part in a broken whisper that mademe abruptly release her. Jennifer rubbed her throat and coughed, staring at me with glistening red eyes.

“You’ve been warned. Now get out!” I ordered, interrupting our stare-down.

Jennifer had never been jealous of Alexia because she knew that, of the two of them, I preferred her, but she had always been extremely threatened by other women. So much so that she occasionally went to extreme lengths, like beating up girls I had been with. The two of us weren’t in a relationship; we weren’t together in any real sense, but something had changed between us in the last year.

“She likes you; I like you. Everyone likes you because you’re impossible to ignore,” she said. I had quit looking at her by then, but I could sense her irritating scent creeping into my space as she leaned close to my ear. I could even feel her warm breath touching my skin.

“Everyone likes you because you are filthy in exactly the way women want.”

Women liked me because I was filthy, but none of them knew just how filthy I really was.

I tried not to give her any additional attention, because our conversation was already over, but Jennifer stopped getting out of the car when she saw a man lurching around right in front of the gate. I bent down to see him better. He was wearing a nice suit, but the shirt was buttoned incorrectly and he looked confused. He looked drunk, actually.

“Billy,” she murmured, looking alarmed. It was strange to see Jennifer scared of anything, yet in less than a minute, that man had completely changed her demeanor.

“Your stepfather?” I guessed, and she nodded. “Is your mom home?” I had long suspected that Jennifer’s home life wasn’t the best. Her stepfather was an alcoholic prick, and her mother only got with him for his money and to ensure her life of luxurious excess.

“I doubt it,” she said as she continued to stare through the windshield at Billy. He could barely stand upright.

I could have just told her to leave and gotten the fuck out of there, but even though I’d always been callous, I wasn’t quite that callous.

“I’ll go with you,” I suggested, getting the pack of Winstons out of my jeans so I could light up.

“No, you don’t need to. Billy’s a solid dude; he’s just been going a little overboard with the alcohol lately. But it’s fine. Go back to your brat,” she sneered at me.

She was pissed at me, and she was going to continue being that way until I went back to giving her the kind of attention I did before Selene came here.

“He hits you, doesn’t he?” I asked her abruptly, taking my first drag. I’d never cared much about my friends’ personal lives, and it wasn’t like me to ask that kind of question. But I felt compelled in that moment to learn more about her. I knew what it felt like to be under someone else’s thumb.

“I’ve seen the bruises; you can’t lie to me,” I added quickly. I knew every curve of her body since I saw her naked on a near daily basis, and I had spotted some suspicious marks on her pale skin. I’d never been overly curious about them before, but now this confirmed my theory. Jennifer shook her head and gave me a sly smile.

“Those are evidence of your passion. When you’re fucking me hard, you—”

“Cut the shit! Don’t joke about that kind of thing!” I scolded her shortly, and she flinched, dipping her chin in discomfort. I had never seen her yield so quickly. I continued to smoke and sighed. I hated being so aggressive, but it was a part of my nature that I’d been living with my whole life.

“Why do you care what Billy does to me?” she said softly, and for the first time, I saw her suffering. There were tears, clinging to her eyelashes and filling her blue eyes. Blue, but a different shade from Chloe’s or Babygirl’s. Jennifer’s eyes were like two pieces of sky, semi-obscured by smoke. They could be sweet sometimes, like Babygirl’s, while other times they radiated all the energy of a furious storm.

“The whole time we’ve known each other, you’ve never talked to me about anything personal,” she answered shortly. She looked back out the windshield and sank down in her seat.

I mulled over her words, sucking on my Winston again. It was true: Jennifer and I had known each other for years, but I’d never been capableof just having a conversation with her or really getting to know her. I’d often wondered how she felt about being treated that way by me, so coldly detached, indifferent, and insensitive.

Why couldn’t I stop myself from taking out what had been done to me on the women around me?

“I know what your skin smells like, how your body feels, and all the things you like in bed, but sometimes I just look at you and wonder if I’ll ever really know you at all.” Jennifer spoke again, but I just kept smoking and avoiding her gaze. I raked through my hair with one hand while I clamped on to my cigarette with the other. A desperate attempt not to lose control.

“There’s nothing else you need to know about me,” I said grimly. After all, revealing more of myself meant telling my story, and I was disgusted by what I had lived through. I would rather be a cliché, the typical fuckboy with a revolving door of women who didn’t care about anyone or anything with the possible exception of spending my rich daddy’s money.

I did love to fuck, but not for the reasons most men liked to pick up women. I was constantly changing women, not because I enjoyed being a manwhore, but because that was my survival mechanism. And I had never used any of William’s money. I strove to be independent since I turned sixteen. I’d done all sorts of odd jobs, not because I had to, but because of my pride. That way, I would never have to ask my bastard father for a penny.