Page 55 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Neil

“How to listen to your soul.”

That’s what Babygirl wanted to teach me. I had no idea what that meant, so I let go of her and stepped back, only to see a victorious smile spread across her angel face.

The girl wasn’t just a fairy; she was also a dangerous witch.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t understand me for who I am,” I said, annoyed. Someone like her couldn’t deal with a person like me.

I was too fucked up.

I was still trying to find myself, still trying the meld the man I had become with the Boy that I had been. I was searching for a kind of inner peace that I couldn’t grasp, and until I actually accepted myself, I couldn’t take anyone else along for the ride.

“Why?” Selene asked, hugging her arms. She was clearly freezing, but I did nothing to warm her up. I didn’t know how to treat a woman outside of bed.

“Because you’d run.” I stepped back from her. This conversation was getting too intimate, more intimate than getting naked with her, more intimate than leaving my imprint in her bedsheets, more intimate than sticking my tongue between her thighs.

“From what?” She advanced on me, but I gave her such a frosty look that she stopped her in her tracks.

“From me!” I raised my voice in frustration. How could she not understand? She needed to stay away from me.

Simple.

“I could understand you and—”

I shook my head, cutting off whatever bullshit was about to come out of her mouth.

“For fuck’s sake: no one can understand me, not even you!” I insisted.

She needed to quit thinking of herself as some heroine who was going to save me. There was nothing to save, no one to be redeemed. I was who I was and nothing was going to bring order to my chaos.

She hissed in frustration as she pulled away from me and went to her closet.

She pulled out a long sweater, grabbed some clean panties from a drawer, and vanished into the bathroom.

I didn’t understand why she’d left me there, halfway through a “talk” she herself had started.

A few minutes later, however, she emerged wearing her thin sweater and panties that exposed her lovely little ass.

She couldn’t have taken a shower in such a short time, but I suspected she had done a quick freshening up to calm down while I waited for her, still in just my boxers.

“The sex you have with me isn’t like the sex you have with other women, is it?

I mean, just look at me.” She gestured to herself.

“I don’t know how to pleasure you; I’d never been with a man before you.

I’m inexperienced and probably not even as attractive as all your other lovers.

So why do you want me?” She sat back down on her bed and stared at her knees, intimidated.

Was she feeling self-conscious even after what we’d just done?

“You look like a real babe right now,” I said, and she lifted her face to look at me. She was blushing, probably because of the roughness of my voice, and she was staring at me like I’d just told her to get on her knees and suck it.

“Neil!” She tossed her head, shaking off who knew what thoughts. “I would like a serious answer for once!” She swore and got to her feet. She was so mad, and I found her extremely adorable. With her looks, she wouldn’t have intimidated a squirrel.

I smiled at her and folded my arms over my chest, watching as her gaze moved over my flexed biceps. She liked my body; she liked it a lot.

“Answer me,” she said softly, almost like she was already surrendering to the idea that she’d get nothing out of me. I looked at her seriously and decided that, just this once, I could humor her.

“I don’t know why.” I looked her up and down, scrutinizing her curves.

She was beautiful, proportionate yet lush, and her face was flawless.

She looked like a doll, handcrafted by an artist. “I just like you…and he likes you, too.” I pointed at my crotch, and Selene followed my gaze, reddening immediately.

She cleared her throat and looked back at my face, mirroring my position.

She crossed her arms under her small breasts and raised her chin confidently.

“That is not a complete answer. You also like Jennifer and Alexia and all the other girls at school,” she proclaimed with certainty, but that wasn’t really the case. I picked—or rather, cherry-picked—the very best, like I was selecting goods on offer.

I was sleazy, sure, but I wasn’t easily satisfied.

It wasn’t true that I’d fucked all the girls at our university, because I didn’t take a woman to bed unless I found her sufficiently attractive.

I had fucked a lot, though, and I did nasty things with the Krew girls that I would rather Babygirl not learn about.

With her, something was different. It was a more intense attraction, a more powerful chemistry, and an uncontrollable wanting.

Usually, physical substance was all I was really looking for in a woman.

I could recognize myself in the physical; I could recognize the tragedy of my childhood and understand that it was over now.

I knew that this wasn’t a normal response, because whenever I finished abusing my own body that way using whatever blond I could find, my soul would once again cry out, looking for some peace.

And then the whole cycle would start over again. Again and again. Every time.

With Selene, however, I never felt used up or wrong. With her, I felt removed from everything, far away from the chaos. Far away from myself, even.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know!” I bent down to gather up my jeans and get them back on.

I wanted to leave. I was feeling hemmed in, cornered by a girl with eyes as fathomless as the ocean.

Selene, meanwhile, tracked my every movement in silence.

Surely she had figured out that this “talking” bullshit wasn’t going to work and that I was going to leave the same way every time.

“We’re not done here.” She took my arm and I stopped.

“What more do you want?” I snapped in irritation, noticing my sweater just a short distance away. I wanted to reach for it, pull it on, and get out of the room as soon as possible, but instead I remained there. With her, with Babygirl.

“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…

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