Page 81 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Neil

“What story are you going to make up to explain this gnarly bruise?” I asked Selene as she perched on the marble counter of my bathroom.

I had no idea why I’d decided to take her away from Blanco with me.

I just knew that I categorically refused to leave her there with that prick Jared.

I had no idea he’d come in from Detroit at all, much less that Selene had decided to confess everything to him without telling me first. I could have helped her manage the situation, but once again, she’d done the childish thing.

She didn’t answer me, though. Her ocean eyes were still beautiful but listless; they had lost their usual light.

“Why didn’t you say anything about Jared coming here?” I pushed again, putting the first-aid kit away underneath the sink. I’d already dressed the cut on my palm and put some bruise cream on her cheek. Over the course of one evening, I’d become a fucking nurse.

“He texted me yesterday when I was with you,” she said finally, slipping down from the marble counter and turning to look at herself in the mirror.

She was always beautiful to me, even with that large violet stain that stood out against her pale skin.

“And I still don’t know whether to be pissed at you for the way you ran me off last night or for announcing everything we did in public or whether…

” She turned and looked at me. “Or whether I should thank you for standing up for me, in your own way,” she finished in an uncertain whisper, looking at the jacket I was still wearing.

I thought back for a moment on the evening’s events. I’d gone out to distract myself, to spend one night with the Krew without dwelling on my nightmares, my mood swings, and all the other fucking problems that swarmed my brain.

It had been incredible the night before, feeling Babygirl’s hands on me as she followed all my instructions, learning how to touch me.

For all the experienced women I’d been with, I had never come to easily as when I felt those timid, questing, and uncertain fingers on me. It was impossibly arousing.

I couldn’t tell her the real reason I’d made her leave: that some mechanism in my brain had been triggered in a way that would have seemed convoluted and illogical to anyone who didn’t have my precise traumatic experiences.

Unfortunately, my memories had been resurfacing more and more often, and sometimes even the smallest, barely perceptible detail was enough to set me off.

Sometimes, it was blond hair, or something someone said, a look, a situation—it could be anything, and I would be back there in the worst part of my life.

My demons would rear up to remind me they were still there and I would never heal.

That was why I couldn’t have a relationship with anyone and why Selene needed to stay away from me.

I couldn’t believe in love, because the kind of love I’d known had destroyed me completely. The damaged remains of my psyche had no capacity for love.

“Jared called me a…” Selene spoke, and my thoughts turned back to her.

She was wearing a simple outfit that was nonetheless attractive on her.

I wanted to touch her, and strangely, to be touched by her.

I wanted to feel those fingers clasped around me again, the way they had been before the moment evaporated because of my broken brain.

“A…” She couldn’t finish her sentence, and I stroked her cheek softly.

I didn’t need to hear her say it; I already knew the kind of insults she’d heard from him. She was still afraid and upset. I could hear it in her trailing speech and see it in her trembling legs.

“And did you believe him?” I asked her, trying not to focus too much on those full lips whose taste was still impressed upon my tongue. Selene looked thoughtfully at me, and I stared at the upward curve of her eyelashes, ringing her ocean gaze that currently looked so tempestuous.

“I don’t know if a woman who has only ever been with one man can really be described that way,” she said, sounding both reflective and saddened.

Did she actually have to think about it?

That one man was me, and she wasn’t a whore; she would never be.

“He doesn’t know shit,” I spat, in reference to her boyfriend. Or rather, her ex-boyfriend now. Selene was everything that was pure and unsullied; she was magnificent, and she was light-years away from a whore.

Sure, she’d made mistakes, but that was probably mostly my fault. She had a good soul, and that didn’t change.

“Don’t let other people tell you who you really are.

Quit giving a shit about other people’s opinions.

” I pulled off my leather jacket and headed for my room, gesturing for her to follow me.

I tossed the jacket onto the desk chair and rolled the sleeves of my sweater up to my elbows.

Selene stood at a distance, inspecting her surroundings as though it were a torture chamber where she was about to receive her umpteenth punishment.

“You can sit down, if you want.” I didn’t know how to interact with a woman outside of bed. I was experiencing so many firsts with Selene; she couldn’t possibly realize. I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed.

I was feeling unsettled. I hadn’t really given that dickhead Jared the lesson he’d deserved, and just the night before, I’d kicked her out of the pool house like nothing had happened between us.

I should have at least tried to apologize about that.

I was also discomforted by the two riddles I hadn’t been able to solve and the idea of some unknown person stalking me.

Finally, I felt weird about Logan having learned the whole truth.

In short, I had a lot of reasons to be antsy in that moment, yet my mind was fixed on Babygirl as she sat down on my bed and everything else seemed to fall away.

“Why did you kick me out like that last night, and why did you smash everything?” Selene asked softly as she stared at the crumpled papers I’d tossed to the floor the previous night.

They were covered in my attempts at solving those goddamned puzzles.

I flexed my left hand, the one with the bandage over the cut I’d given myself with that bottle, and sighed.

“Because my brain doesn’t work right sometimes, especially when it gets stuck in the past.” She didn’t really want to start up this “talking” bullshit again, did she?

We’d had sex several times now; I liked her body, and I liked her, but the possibility of Selene becoming a real part of my fucked-up life was still extremely remote.

Babygirl pulled down the sleeves of her own sweater and clamped her thighs together nervously. She was still troubled, and it made me feel helpless because there wasn’t anything I could do to erase the shitty evening she’d had.

“Did he put his hands on you in any other way?” I asked suddenly. I crossed my arms over my chest and planted my ass on the desk, mentally preparing myself for whatever answer I was about to hear. Selene kept her head lowered and didn’t say a single word.

God, she was ridiculously sweet: she seemed somehow smaller and more innocent like that. I moved slowly to her and crouched until I could meet her big blue eyes.

“What did he do to you?” I pushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, and she went rigid.

Was she afraid of me, too?

Of course, she had watched me smash up an entire room less than twenty-four hours before, so could I really expect her to feel safe in my company?

“He kissed me and…”

She paused and my mind ferreted away that information. He had kissed her, and the realization that he had done so against her will revived my poisonous anger. “And he did touch me.” Shit, I didn’t want to know any more.

I got up and stalked around the room like the lunatic that I was. I wanted to break that fucker’s nose, crack his head open, and chop off his balls for what he’d tried to do to her.

“Fuck,” I swore, understanding exactly what it was like to have to live with that kind of trauma. “Why did you tell him you’d slept with someone else? Specifically with me? You shouldn’t have done it, not by yourself. You were being stupid!” I yelled, making her flinch.

“He knew everything already. He knew about me. He knew about you. He knew that you go to Blanco regularly. Someone had already told him everything; that’s why he came here tonight,” she explained, getting to her feet and facing me.

What did she think she was going to do against someone like me? I smiled and regretted going off on her but not calling her stupid.

“You should have done some investigation before you went out alone with him. This could have been a lot worse,” I blurted out.

But how bad had it actually been? I looked her up and down, from her auburn hair to the toes of her shoes, that entire soft, pure little body that had only ever been touched by me. Would only be touched by me, until I got tired of her.

I realized that she was scared, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was feel her again. I wanted to do it my way, in my room. The same place everything began that fateful evening when she’d come to me hammered, thinking I had company and instead found me drunk-training.

“How far did he go?” I asked her because I needed the pain—I needed to know. She glanced up at me and swallowed before biting her lower lip, where my eyes lingered, greedy for her.

“As far as the blond in the pool house went with you.”

Fuck, no!

That blond had done just about everything with me; did that mean her shitty ex had managed to force his way into her pants?

“Don’t screw with me!” I grabbed her elbow and felt her shivering. I needed a real—and precise—answer.

“Why, are you jealous?” she taunted me. She had no idea the dark things this conversation had really awakened in me. No, I wasn’t jealous, but I certainly would have castrated any man who tried to assault my women, whether it was my sister or my… her .