Page 123 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

“Yes,” he confirmed, not moving from his position. I looked up at him through my eyelashes and caught him paying meticulous attention to me. I knew I couldn’t look like much at the moment, with my messy hair and my exhausted face, but he was looking at me like I was…something beautiful.

“In this cold?” I finally got up the nerve to look into his eyes, but he seemed focused on scrutinizing my lips as though memorizing the shape of them.

Instinctively, I swiped out my tongue to catch the last of the cereal residue, sure that was the reason he was staring at my mouth. Neil swallowed thickly and slowly bit down on his lower lip, looking somehow even more attractive than usual.

“I’d rather the freezing cold than the heat of old memories,” he answered flatly, turning his eyes to mine.

“You really are strange,” I whispered, thinking how little sense our conversations made.

“Would you say the darkness going hand in hand with the moon was strange?” he asked before strolling around the island to get closer to me. I stiffened as, step by step, he further invaded my space, turning my stool toward himself.

Thus I found myself facing his abdomen, my field of vision obscured by his broad chest and my bent knees touching his legs.

“I… I don’t understand you,” I admitted, raising my chin to look at his face, contorted into a serious, impenetrable look. He touched my cheek, and I winced at his cold knuckles, radiating winter against my warm skin.

He was frozen.

“You don’t need to understand me.”

I could sense his suffering.

“And Jennifer? Does she understand you?” I murmured in a curious, deliberately wounding tone, causing him to stop touching me. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, ready for a fight.

“No, and she doesn’t even try, which is why I prefer her to you,” he admitted bluntly, not caring in the least if it hurt me. My heart seemed to hit the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces. I tried to get up off the stool, but Neil grabbed my hips and forced me back down.

He didn’t want me to cut our conversation short; he wanted me to stay right there and suffer. And all at once, I understood the motive behind his strange behavior.

“Oh, now I get it! You’re trying to get me out of New York!

That’s why you wanted me to see you fuck her.

That’s why you suggested a threesome with a girl who beat me up.

That’s why you sought out her and the others even after you got in my bed, that’s why—” But his annoyed voice overpowered mine, cutting me off.

“Because of all that and lots more, I’m not fucking right for you!” he insisted forcefully, digging his fingers into my hips. His touch was all flame and pain, passion and peril.

I held my breath and touched my own chest, like he’d just stabbed me.

I felt like a butterfly alighting on a blade of grass, and Neil just kept stomping over me, keeping me from flying away. Killing me slowly.

“Thank you so much. Everything’s very clear to me, and in just a few hours, you’ll be free of me.” I pushed him away with a strength I didn’t realize I possessed and then I brushed past him, trying to leave. But his hand seized my wrist, halting my steps.

“Let me go,” I commanded under my breath. And then I turned to look at him with the kind of anger that, for my entire life up until that I point, I had reserved exclusively for my father.

Neil’s expression softened, and he glanced down at my pajamas and then back up to my face with the faintest smile tilting up the corners of his full lips.

“Don’t think that I didn’t enjoy what we had together,” he murmured in a pitiable sort of way.

Why in the hell was he looking at me that way? I didn’t want to feel pity for anyone right now, least of all him. It didn’t matter that my eyes were blurry with tears and my heart was shattered. Traitorous emotions, why did they have to work against me when I most needed to control them?

“Of course you did. You got to use me like all the rest,” I snapped at him.

The instant I said it, my legs went weak and my wrist burned from being trapped in his relentless iron grip. It felt like there would be a brand there, something I would carry with me forever.

“That’s not what I mean…” he answered, annoyed. Perhaps he was feeling somewhat degraded by my accusation? But what about me? How was I supposed to feel?

“And what did you mean, Neil?” I prompted him. “After all, you have always been extremely clear on this point. ‘I like using you, Selene; use me too,’” I taunted, reminding him of his own words.

Because I certainly hadn’t forgotten them. I never could.

“Stop it,” he said in a menacing hiss, his hold on my wrist tightening. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care so much that it wrought a change in me. I began to spew out words, barely even registering what I was saying.

“‘Selene, it’s just sex. Selene, it’s no love story. Selene, you don’t know how to kiss, how to fuck, Selene, you—”

With one powerful tug he brought me suddenly closer to him and I fell silent. His face was just a couple of inches from mine, and from the cruel expression on his face, I knew that his patience was gone.

“Are those the memories you’ll be taking back to Detroit with you?” he whispered, a hairsbreadth from my lips, clearly trying to intimidate me. There was neither lust nor desire in his eyes but something darker and more dangerous that he was struggling to keep at bay.

“Yes,” I lied. I would never have admitted to him how I was going to remember so much more about him, about me and what we had shared with each other.

“Then you really don’t know shit.” He released me roughly and took a few steps back with a diabolical smirk that made me waver on the spot. He stepped away and leaned on the kitchen island, palms down, shoulders slumping forward as though something heavy weighed upon him.

“If I don’t, it’s because you’ve never given me anything of yourself other than your dick,” I blurted out, hoping to provoke him, and he turned to look at me like he couldn’t believe I’d spoken.

He perused my entire body attentively, from my colorful socks to my baggy pajamas.

Then he smiled the kind of intriguing smile that could have made anyone do something stupid.

“Since when is a girl like you so brash?” Something about his low baritone told me that he’d enjoyed my pathetic imitation of his usual lines, though it was obvious to the both of us that I belonged to a different world entirely.

“Since I met a deviant like you,” I answered in kind.

“Trust me—I kept it as sweet and romantic as I could with you, Tinkerbell,” he said with a mocking look.

“And what would you have done differently? If you were with one of the others?”

Neil considered my question for a few moments, wrinkling his forehead in an expression of concentration that was almost fatally appealing.

Then he laughed sardonically and walked toward me as I trembled. I knew that I should have left, I should have gotten away from him as fast as I could. But something kept me stuck there, at his mercy.

“I would have grabbed you…” He took me by the hair and tilted my head so we could look into each other’s eyes. His tight grip along with the rough tone he used to address me generated only one feeling in me: fear.

“And I would have ordered you to get on your knees,” he whispered slowly, still weighing and evaluating me with those golden eyes.

Inside them, an explosion of emotions showed just how unstable and dangerous his soul really was.

“I would have forced my way into here…” His eyes darted to my mouth, and I saw desire painted all over his face.

“And I would have made you swallow it all down. I would have emptied myself into your mouth until you begged me to stop.” He clenched his jaw and released me abruptly.

I had to grab on to the kitchen counter to keep from falling to the floor while my heart pulsed so rapidly that I was afraid it would burn a hole in my chest.

“You’re shaking like a leaf.” Neil regarded me from head to toe, studying the reactions of my body. “This is why I’ve always tried to suppress the real me when I’m with you,” he concluded, taking another step.

In that moment, it seemed certain to me that Neil was a demon, wrapped up in gold and black to camouflage what he really was and bewilder my senses.

They say that, in life, we have to make the right choices, but we don’t always have the ability to recognize them. Who establishes right and wrong? Does the right thing really make us happy? Was going back to Detroit really the right decision? The one that would make me happy?

The first rays of sunlight began to peak through the window of my room where I had dragged myself after my fight with Neil. They turned everything they touched into gold, but the peaceful silence of the moment wasn’t enough to soothe my melancholy.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror, and all I saw was a girl in pain—alone, disillusioned with everything, but most of all, with herself.

I knew from the beginning what I was getting into with a person like Neil.

I knew from the beginning that, sooner or later, I was going to pay the price for what I’d done, but still, I chose to follow my heart.

“Always follow your heart,” my mother often said, but her maxim now seemed like a huge pile of bullshit to me. A heart could cause irreversible damage, the kind that all the reason in the world couldn’t fix.

It occurred to me how strange this feeling really was: I had made a mistake and kept on making it, and yet, I didn’t regret it. In fact, if I had access to a time machine, I would have done the exact same things over again.

With him.

***

I opened my closet and gathered up the last of my clothing to put in my suitcase. I was still concerned and disturbed over what had happened on Halloween, about the puzzle we’d received. And what was I doing? I was running away like a coward.

I still couldn’t believe myself.