Page 114 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Neil

I came inside her.

Goddamn it.

I— me —had done something so stupid after years of experience, after having done everything a man could do to a woman without ever screwing up like that.

But it hadn’t been just a meaningless gesture, or a careless mistake made in the throes of orgasm. I made a choice; it was premeditated. I wanted to make sure that Selene truly understood what it was like when a man was enjoying sex. More importantly, when I was enjoying sex.

And the truth was, I’d only really understood that when I entered her without any barrier between me and her velvet-soft skin.

Until I exploded inside her body without worrying about controlling myself or stifling my urges.

And I wanted to show her just how much I needed to have her, to have her body, her soul, everything that was hers.

As I sank into her and put that exquisite pressure on the junction of our bodies, I felt safe with my Babygirl.

I felt like I was where I was supposed to be in a way I never had with anyone else.

After the fucking and talking, Selene asked me to stay a little longer with her, but after I’d gotten what I wanted, I decided I absolutely needed to get dressed and go back to my room.

I knew that I’d already done more than enough for one night, and the image of her face as she came was destined to haunt me, consuming my thoughts relentlessly.

“Selene is just a woman, just one woman, like so many others,” I repeated to myself as I thought about how much I’d enjoyed smelling myself on her skin and how much I’d like to be back inside her, in that place I most adored, the place that absolutely fucked my head though I’d thought myself immune to its power.

But I knew I couldn’t stay there. Selene could not be allowed to bond with me because there would be no happy ending for us.

The things that brought me pleasure were all immoral or filthy because I needed to soothe my spirit and feed my desires. My life, at the end of the day, was a pendulum that swung between cruelty and sorrow, boredom and disappointment, nightmares and reality.

It swung between me and Babygirl.

And so I took the path of least resistance, where a pack of Winstons and some hot blond were enough to keep me satisfied and relieve some of the suffering that weighed me down.

Selene was a fairy creature, a being that fell from heaven with the single goal of bringing me to the brink of madness, and it was my job to keep that from happening.

Even if I had shared things with her that I hadn’t shared with anyone else.

Usually, I didn’t like to linger over details, on the smell and the touch of it all, but with Babygirl, it was the opposite.

I loved to immerse myself in the curves of her body, kiss each line and angle, take refuge inside her and show her a world of sin.

A world she didn’t even know existed, a world in which we smashed into each other, two contrasting forces of nature, constantly in conflict, but at the same time, so interconnected that one could not exist without the other.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to let her chain me down to her.

Because Selene was forbidden fruit. A surreal illusion.

A creature of mystery. A crystalline body that contained within it a soul so pure that someone like me shouldn’t have been allowed remotely near it.

And yet, I continued to kiss her, I continued to fuck her and do whatever else I wanted to her because I was selfish and twisted.

And because her willowy little body kindled a burning desire in me that I could not contain.

The idea of her leaving for Detroit didn’t thrill me, even though I agreed it was the right decision.

After all, we had a faceless psychopath on our backs, fully capable of hurting my family and already plotting something diabolical for his next target.

Selene could be in just as much danger as my mother, Chloe, or Matt.

And I would never have forgiven myself.

***

The morning after our lustful interlude by the pool, I ignored Selene as she ate breakfast in the kitchen. She watched me the whole time with those crystalline eyes, waiting for me to look at her.

I managed to resist the urge to go to her and kiss her.

Fuck, honestly, it took all the strength I had not to walk over to her, lift her up on the table, and throw her legs open so I could lose myself in the heat of her. In her purity, in her sweet taste, or the depth of her eyes…

Her body, the way she moved, the way she looked at me, the vastness of her heart, the integrity of her soul…everything about her stunned me. Even when she was wearing all her clothes or yelling at me or giving me her disappointed look.

She was the most beautiful of angels, and I was always going to be a monster. And that was why we were impossible together.

I took a closer look at her: she looked tired but satisfied, the familiar expression of a woman who had thoroughly enjoyed herself and would love to get another taste of my body. It was the effect that I had on everyone.

And, of course, that satisfaction was immediately followed by the dissatisfaction of realizing that body was still attached to me. And I, better than anyone else, knew how she was feeling.

***

Hours later, I lounged restlessly on the waiting room sofa at the psychiatrist’s office where I had once again brought Chloe.

There was a woman, approximately my mother’s age, who wouldn’t stop staring at me.

She was wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt that emphasized her body and a fur-collared coat was draped open over her delicate shoulders, leaving her large breasts exposed.

She leafed through a magazine, legs elegantly crossed, and every now and then, she’d toss a quick glance in my direction.

She had short, bright hair—a shade of blond that particularly appealed to the Boy in me.

The familiar sick machine had been triggered.

The woman before me continued to give me heated looks, fluttering her eyelashes. I saw a shrewd gleam in her chocolate-brown eyes, so I adopted a predatory posture of my own.

I made myself comfortable on the sofa, spreading my legs, leaning my left elbow on the sofa’s arm and letting my right hand fall to my crotch.

I touched myself. Or, more accurately, I palmed myself crudely before rubbing my cock through the material of my jeans, showing her just how big it was.

I enjoyed the expression of shock that instantly flashed across her face as she glanced around in alarm, making sure no one else was there.

My clear and unequivocal signal had made her uncomfortable. I was, after all, extremely good at creating sexually provocative situations.

Kimberly had taught me how to be perverse, filthy, and libidinous.

She had likened our relationship to the love affairs among the Olympian deities.

There were plenty of myths, she said, where various Greek gods fell in love with humans due to their great beauty and then simply abducted the mortals to do with them as they pleased.

Thus, I learned from her that beauty was a powerful tool for predicting and influencing human behavior. It was at the root of so many choices people made or actions they performed. Kim herself had always told me, “I use you because you’re beautiful.”

Like the child-eating witch she was, the quest for beauty was the universal driving force behind her frequently disgusting and immoral behavior.

She didn’t care how old I was; she didn’t care that what she was doing was a crime, she didn’t care that she was damaging my mind, body, and spirit.

She had reduced me to an object. An object that she claimed to love.

So, from a yen for beauty, we moved on to violation, justified with an “I love you.” All that it really meant was: I love that you are beautiful, and I’ll fuck you for the same reason. But remember: this is our little secret.

In fact, a declaration of love invariably followed each abusive act.

An attempt to soothe the victim’s soul. Kim felt entitled to seize and possess me, because she felt a desire for me that she wasn’t willing to control.

And so the child-eater tried to make me feel guilty for my beauty and her violence because, in her depraved mind, I was the one who had offended first, not her.

I was the one who exerted an irresistible power over her, and Kim could not accept being at the mercy of anything, least of all the way I looked.

It was exactly the kind of insane justification sexual predators—men and women—typically offer their victims and the people around them. I had experienced it firsthand, years before…

I was naked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

I didn’t move except to rub my forehead and wipe away the sweat.

Kim stood in front of me, getting dressed again. I stared at her with contempt, the way I always looked at her.

I hated her.

I hated the things she made me do. I hated her abuse. I hated the way she reached inside me and ripped out my soul without ever even bothering to ask permission.

I was a happy kid before she arrived. I laughed a lot. I loved playing basketball in the backyard with Logan. I loved racing him to see who could get to the swing first.

I loved life.

But ever since Kim arrived, everything had changed.

“You need to take a shower and get dressed right now,” she said, taking a long look at my body.

I lowered my head, overcome by a sudden feeling of shame that I had been experiencing more and more frequently.

I could still feel her hands on me. The agony, the rage, the inability to fight back and stop all the disgusting stuff.

I was too little, and she was too big.