Page 31 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

“Everyone’s staring at me.” I slowed my stride, suddenly self-conscious as I was hit by a wave of inadequacy.

“Ignore them,” he said, unfazed by the constant stares from all the students who passed us. Maybe he was just used to it? Well, I definitely wasn’t.

“So far I’ve been pretty anonymous at this school, and I’d like to continue with that,” I muttered, clutching my bag against my side. I wasn’t at all capable of handling this kind of stress.

“You will—calm down,” he answered impatiently.

I came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the hallway. Even I couldn’t have explained why, I just suddenly felt like I was suffocating. Neil stopped next to me and heaved a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as though I was wearing on his last nerve.

“Okay, okay,” he muttered to himself before turning to look at the lingering students.

“Let’s see…” He breathed in sharply through his nose and examined everyone who had the misfortune to be nearby.

Finally, he pointed at a dark-haired boy with thick-framed glasses before reaching out and grabbing him by the shirt collar.

He dragged the boy over to him, and I flinched when I saw the boy trembling in his grip.

“Ah, an example. What the fuck were you looking at?” Neil asked, pulling the boy right up close to his face and daring the kid to object. Everyone around us had gone into a kind of suspended animation: silent and motionless.

“I… I… nothing! I swear,” the poor guy babbled, looking beseechingly at Neil. Neil just gave him a menacing smile before slamming his back against the wall and letting him fall hard to the floor.

I instinctively rushed over to the boy to make sure that he was okay. Had Neil actually lost his mind?

“The young lady here is rather shy. The next guy—or girl—around here who dares to look at her is going to end up like this asshole.” Neil gestured to the boy who was now sitting on the floor.

There goes my anonymity. Everyone was giving me unsettled looks, and the boy who’d been hit jumped up and ran away.

As I got back to my feet, I glared murderously at Neil.

“Now walk and quit your bitching,” he ordered in a menacing hiss. Everyone went back to talking among one another, pretending to ignore us. Neil proceeded toward the exit, and I just stood there, rocked by that senseless outburst.

I glanced around and spotted Jennifer not far away, staring fixedly at me.

A flicker of jealousy lent Jennifer’s blue eyes a sinister appearance.

Maybe she thought the object of her affections had been marking his territory instead of just trying to mock me?

I turned my back on both of them and headed for the exit.

“You are actually insane!” I harangued Neil the moment we got outside. He leaned against the hood of his Maserati and lit up a cigarette. He stared at me, looking irritated but immovable as he took a few drags.

“Get in,” he ordered flatly, tossing almost the entire cigarette away. What was with this high-handed attitude? Did he get confused and think he was talking to Jennifer?

“I’m not your little lapdog. I’ll walk.” I switched directions and headed for the sidewalk that would take me to the nearest bus stop, but Neil took issue with that. Of course.

“Quit being a fucking baby and get in the car!” He grabbed my arm, halting my progress.

Clearly Neil would have no problem publicly humiliating me a second time.

I, however, still cared about how I appeared in public, especially at school, so I snatched my arm from his grasp and stalked toward his car.

Inside the car, I didn’t say a word. I forced myself not to so much as look at him and examined the car’s interior instead to distract myself.

The Maserati was sporty but luxurious, quintessentially masculine. A fiery red interior light bathed the rear seats, making them look as if they were swallowed by the flames of hell. It looked like some kind of innovative new spaceship that the devil would pilot.

A chrome trident, symbolic of power and royalty, stood out proudly from the center of the steering wheel.

Neil grasped it firmly in his two hands, the backs of them shot-through with veins.

Looking at them, I couldn’t help but remember how they’d moved against my body: focused, hungry, lusty, and skilled.

I drifted away into indecent fantasies about Neil and hadn’t even noticed when we arrived at the house.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and shot out of the car, trying immediately to put some distance between us.

I felt like I could smell him on me again, even though I knew perfectly well that was just a trick my brain was playing on me.

I tried to climb up to the front door but put my foot wrong on the first step and stumbled, bashing my knee.

Luck was just not on my side today. The stab of pain was immediate and froze me for a few seconds.

I slumped down on the ground, not caring about dirtying my jeans and tried to touch my new injury, but I winced at the pain.

“I’m absolutely correct when I call you Babygirl, aren’t I?” Neil had caught up with me. He knelt down and shook his head in amusement. He gave me such a tender look, and I found him terribly appealing, though a part of me couldn’t forget what I had just seen him do.

“You’re so aggressive and overbearing. I can’t stand you. I fell because I was trying to get as far away from you as possible!” I yelled at him, pointing at my leg, but he ignored the insults and instead just scooped me up into his arms.

I fell silent when my head touched his chest. He emitted such a good, clean smell, and I soaked it in like it was a drug. I couldn’t help but wonder then how the cruel person I had seen threatening Professor Cooper earlier could also be so sweet and considerate.

We walked into the house, and he deposited me gently on top of the counter in the kitchen.

“Take your jeans off.” Another order, this one more unexpected.

I looked suspiciously at him and inched away, ready to fend him off.

“You don’t need to do that; I can take care of it by myself,” I babbled in an effort to maintain a modicum of self-possession. There was no way I was going to get undressed in the kitchen right there in front of him.

“Selene,” he admonished, resting his hands on either side of my legs. He leaned in closer, staring intently into my eyes and I went still. “I’ve kissed you, touched you, and fucked you. Do you think a pair of naked legs is going to make much difference?”

Why did those words ignite lust inside me? I pictured us performing lewd acts, and he smiled wickedly, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. I cleared my throat and tried to look away.

“Wait here,” he said before disappearing into the downstairs bathroom. A few minutes later he returned with a first-aid kit. He set it down on the counter to open it up, taking out a can of ice spray. He shook it at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Take your fucking jeans off,” he ordered me again, more severely this time.

I huffed but decided to cooperate. I unbuttoned my pants and started to push them down.

Neil helped me pull them all the way off before focusing on my red and aching knee.

The skin wasn’t broken, but I would obviously have a large bruise the next day.

When Neil so much as brushed his fingers over the area, I winced in pain.

“We need to get something cool on it; it’s already swollen,” he noted with a sigh. Then he covered it with a considerable amount of cold spray. I gritted my teeth at the burning sensation caused by the freezing spray. Still, I did feel my pain lessening.

Neil waited a few seconds before taking the opportunity to scope out my bare thighs, which I instinctively pressed together. My panties—white, cotton, and utterly unappealing—were completely exposed for his devouring eyes, and though we had indeed had a history together, I was still embarrassed.

Neither of us spoke, and when I tried to slide down from the counter, Neil wouldn’t let me. I looked around and realized that the house was suspiciously silent. Where was Miss Anna?

“Anna must be out shopping. She’ll be back soon,” he said, appearing again to read my mind in that unsettling way of his. It felt like a violation of my privacy.

“You scare me sometimes,” I grumbled with feeling, and he smiled thinly. He was particularly attractive when he smiled.

“Your eyes can’t keep any secrets from me,” he answered with an intense stare.

It was in moments like these that his effect was especially potent.

I couldn’t resist him when he looked at me like that, and he, the giant bastard, knew it.

And that was why he felt comfortable getting closer to me and putting his hands on my thighs.

I stared down at his long fingers, sinking into my flesh and saw that my legs had started to fall open at his silent command.

It was like my body wasn’t even my own anymore.

Neil situated himself between my thighs until my sex was pressed against his fly. I didn’t say anything, but only because that firm, insistent contact stole my breath.

“So, you wanna tell me why you’ve been avoiding me these past few days?

” he whispered, rubbing my hips with his fingers.

My mind was distracted, overloaded with too many uncontrollable sensations.

I stared at his full lips and then into his golden eyes, which were waiting on my response.

It was difficult to explain my perspective in words.

“Because I know that you’re screwing with me,” I admitted and his face grew dark. He didn’t appreciate the certainty in my voice, but that was what I believed.

“And what else do you know?” He didn’t deny my assertion, though.

He leaned in until his nose was closer to my neck and seductively breathed in my scent.

I didn’t fight him off, but I kept my hands tight on the counter’s edge.

I didn’t have the nerve to touch him or be uninhibited like him, despite the fact that I was sitting there in just my shirt and underwear, practically draped all over his body.

“I know that the night we spent together meant nothing to you, that you actively resist love and that—” I said and he put his index finger to my lips and silenced me.

I looked into his strange eyes and felt an unfamiliar warmth spread throughout the middle of my chest. It was the kind of warmth that would have been a lot more intense if I could have shared it with him.

“You’re a smart girl, Selene, but don’t dig too deep into this mystery.” He smiled confusingly at me.

“It’s a bottomless hole, and your hunger for the truth is only going to hurt you. Each one of us is an enigma. An unanswered question. And that’s how it should stay.” He moved his thumb over my bottom lip and examined it like he’d never seen one before.

“That’s just an oblique way of telling me I’m right, isn’t it? I’m not stupid, Neil.”

I was, though, because for some strange reason I felt like crying.

I had been accumulating all these emotions and states of mind that I’d never experienced before in my life, and it was all because of the fucked-up boy in front of me.

I didn’t know how to deal with or even understand what I was feeling.

“You can do whatever you want with me: You can talk to me. You can listen to me. You can use me…” He grabbed my hand and pressed it against his crotch.

I sucked in a breath when I felt that thick and powerful hardness hidden under the fabric.

That had been inside me, moving and bringing me indescribable pleasure.

I looked into his eyes, unsettled, as he continued, “But what you can’t do is understand me.

Or associate me with anything like love.

” The coldness of his words was even more painful than the resignation in his eyes.

I wondered how a young man could already have so much darkness inside him.

“I don’t use people.” I pulled my hand back as though I’d been burned, and he tilted his head to one side, frowning. It was second time he’d told me something like that, seeming to take it for granted that it was normal.

“People are not to be used,” I reiterated with more conviction, and it was then that he took a step back from me.

He looked bewildered, lost. He glanced around before bringing his gaze back to me and staring like I wasn’t even human.

Alarmed, I slipped off the counter, nearly falling, and limped a few steps forward. My knee hurt too badly to put weight on it.

“That’s why you can’t know me.” He gave me a disappointed look and then inexplicably walked away from me. What had I done to make him put that distance between us? A distance that was, more than anything else, psychological?

“Because?”

“Because you can’t accept what you can’t understand.”

I couldn’t tell if I was too fuzzy-headed to get what he was saying or if Neil really was just too twisted to be easily comprehended.

I stared thoughtfully at him, and just then, the front door opened.

A moment later, Anna appeared with a few envelopes in her hands.

She dropped them on the floor and observed me, frowning.

She was definitely wondering what I doing in the kitchen wearing just my panties. Then she looked down at my red and slightly flexed knee and figured it out.

“Selene, honey, what happened?” She rushed to me with maternal worry, like I was her actual daughter, while my eyes remained locked on the somber boy just a short distance away from me.

“Take care of her, Anna,” he ordered the housekeeper before turning his back on us and going upstairs.

The vibration of a cell phone shook me out of the confusion I was drowning in. I glanced around before realizing that it was my phone. Slowly, I bent down and retrieved it from my jeans, still tangled on the floor.

I swiped my thumb across the screen to unlock it and read the text that had just arrived: I’ll be there this weekend.

It was from Jared.