Page 88 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Then, satiated, he collapsed by my side, sweating and panting. He stared up at the ceiling while running his fingers through his tousled hair.

I gazed at him worshipfully, as one might regard a god.

My eyes traced the lines of the Māori-style tattoo on his muscular bicep before slipping down to examine his abdominal muscles, covered in a sheen of sweat, and his hairless pubic area from which his swollen member still sprung upward.

“Did I hurt you?” He sat up slightly to lean against the headboard and reached over to the bedside table to pick up his pack of Winstons.

He didn’t look at me, though I could tell he was waiting for my response.

“A little,” I admitted under my breath, making a fist against my lips.

Though I could still feel the aftershocks of pleasure between my thighs, I was sore from basically my pelvis down.

Neil pulled out a cigarette with his teeth and lit it before sliding the lighter back into the pack and putting it back on the bedside table.

“You need to learn how to fuck without kissing,” he said, staring into the cloud of smoke he’d produced to pollute the air.

I frowned at the caustic words. Suddenly, I felt humiliated and discomforted: I was cold and sweaty. His cum was dripping down my back, and I could still feel him between my legs. I sat up, covering my breasts with a forearm and looked around for my clothes.

“What did you expect? Look at the kind of asshole you’re sleeping with,” I muttered to myself, cursing myself for being so stupid. But said asshole grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him until my breasts were crushed against his chest and my eyes were level with his.

“Do you know why you need to learn?” He plucked the cigarette from his mouth, and with the same hand, placed a lock of sodden hair behind my ears. He exhaled the smoke through his nose as he did so. I couldn’t stand that smell.

“Because I should be more like the blonds you fool around with, I suppose?” I answered, now truly infuriated. I was genuinely prepared to slap him if he said one more offensive thing to me.

“No.” He smiled as he stared fixedly at every line of my face, as though I were a portrait to be analyzed.

“Because if you keep on acting like a child, all I’m going to want to do is fuck the inexperience out of you,” he added in frustration, as though this were some insurmountable desire inside him to which he felt enslaved.

“Are you trying to give me a compliment?” I arched one eyebrow, deeply confused, but he just busied himself with his cigarette, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling.

“I don’t give compliments, Selene.” He continued to smoke pointedly as though to transfer all the buzzing thoughts from his mind to his cigarette. He was so fascinating when he was reflecting on something.

“Look at you, all serious,” I teased him, feigning a pout. Neil looked at me and wrinkled his brow.

“And dangerous, right?” he asked, lifting one corner of his mouth slightly. I was trying to keep myself from ogling his body, so I got closer to him, brushing my nose against his jaw. I breathed in his scent: he smelled like sex, like aftershave on his neck, and body soap on his chest.

“Could be more so.” I stared at the cigarette clamped between his lips, and he gave me a provoking smile. “Why do you poison yourself with those?” I wrinkled my nose and made a grimace of disappointment.

“What, have you never smoked a cigarette?” he asked archly, not touching me and not giving any sign that he intended to so in the near future.

“No, never.” I’d never picked up one of those self-destructive habits, never even tried indulging in the things I thought were bad for me. Though, to be fair, I had become very good at making mistakes recently.

“You wanna try?” he asked in that baritone voice that could make a woman do the worst kind of things for him. I alternated looks between him and the cigarette, which he now held between his fingers, as I considered the proposition.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, as unsettled as I might be if he’d asked me to jump off one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers without a parachute.

“There’s a first time for everything.” He brought his hand up close to my lips, and I opened them automatically to accept the filter of the cigarette, the same one that had so recently been between his lips. I inhaled the smoke with awkward, exaggerated movements.

Within seconds, I was hacking loudly and Neil immediately took the cigarette from me, sticking it back between his own lips.

“At least now I know for sure that smoking sucks,” I managed, through another cough. I felt like my throat and chest were both on fire.

“And that you’re a baby.” The asshole grinned as my eyes grew watery from coughing. “Don’t start. This shit is habit-forming, and it’s too hard to stop,” he added, blowing smoke out his mouth only to inhale it again through his nose, like a seasoned smoker.

“Trust me, I have no intention of starting,” I answered, making a disgusted face. I sat up to face him and pulled up the covers to conceal myself, at least from the waist down.

Neil moved his cigarette to the other side of his mouth and narrowed his eyes, peering at my bare chest. His lascivious stare made my nipples stiffen and goosebumps break out across my skin.

I looked away to hide my blush and noticed the desk. A few crumpled pieces of white paper caught my eye, and I thought about riddles again, about Player 2511, about…

“What did the third riddle say?” I turned to look at him; he was focused on grinding out the cigarette butt in a black ashtray shaped like a skull on his bedside table. The guy was really committed to weirdness, even when it came to home decor.

Then, Neil sighed and ran one hand through his hair, the other stroking his…

Goddammit!

I’d been trying not to look down, and he must have noticed because he smiled, delighting in my discomfort.

“Do you know what I want from you right now?” he asked in a seductive tone as he continued to rub himself.

Abruptly, he bent one knee and left his other leg stretched out in front of him.

I continued to do everything I could to avoid turning my gaze in the direction he clearly wanted it to go and instead stared seriously into his face, waiting to hear this new perversion of romance.

“It’s one of those things you’d never do because it goes against your morals,” he said mockingly, so I knew that it was something depraved. I tossed my hair over one shoulder, allowing the ends to tickle my right breast and his ravenous eyes immediately relocated to that spot.

“You have a very low opinion of me,” I answered back challengingly because I was proud of who I was. I’d rather be me than any of the many iterations of Jennifer he’d been with before.

“I do, because you like to talk and I like to act. It’s a clear mismatch.” He balanced his elbow on his bent knee and finally stopped stroking himself. I breathed a sigh of relief because, if he had continued, he might have succeeded in distracting me.

“So, considering that you’d rather be acting right now, try acting like less of an asshole and start doing something important, like answering my question?” I gave him a confident, one-shoulder shrug to emphasize my words.

He pulled his back away from the headboard and leaned his face closer to mine, ready for an argument.

“Every time you act naughty, I just want to shut your mouth with my cock,” he whispered impishly, breathing against my lips. I held my own breath because imagining him doing that to me both frightened and thrilled me. I couldn’t even tell which was the predominant emotion.

“And I’d let you, if you’d only start trusting me,” I answered softly, staring into his eyes and trying to wordlessly tell him that he could let his guard down with me. I was an ally, not an enemy. I wanted to feel his soul, not just his body.

Neil, however, got serious again and stared at me as though I’d just said something astounding. He slid away from me and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me.

And then he retreated.

He retreated the way he always did whenever I got too close to the bright red line that marked a boundary I could never cross.

“There was a picture of you along with the rest of them in Player’s envelope,” he said, not looking at me. I couldn’t see anything except the sharp muscles of his back and those broad shoulders that spoke to all his potent strength.

“The riddle had a padlock symbol on it and a weird, blasphemous poem thing. There was also a threat on the back of the pictures.” He got to his feet, displaying the perfect musculature of his tight backside and stooped to put on his boxers.

“Everyone around me becomes a target for him. All of you are targets, even though I’m the one he’s really after. He wants to play with me, and he’ll use you to do it.” He turned to look at me, and I was stunned by these revelations.

“I had my suspicions before, but now I know for sure.” He ran a hand over his face and sighed.

“I don’t know what to say.” I lowered my gaze to the comforter I still had clenched in one hand. Honestly, there were a lot of things I wanted to say, but they only would have added to his stress and I didn’t want to do that. I would rather be useful to him and stay close.

“I don’t know your history, Neil, and I don’t know what that lunatic wants from you, but whatever happens you won’t face it alone,” I promised, pulling his golden stare to me. He stared at me like he wasn’t sure if I was real or if he’d heard me correctly.

But I was very real and he understood perfectly. I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t going to abandon him either.

“You’ve got nothing to do with the situation.” He tossed his head, growing agitated. I could tell from the way his muscles bunched up in tension and his voice, which got deeper and more forceful.

“You said there was a photo of me in there too, right?” I said, trying to conceal some of the terror I felt at finding myself in the crosshairs of some anonymous psychopath.

“So, whether you like it or not, we’re in this together.

” Voicing this conclusion out loud only increased my fear because my mind was finally able to accept the danger.

“And quit looking at me like that,” I scolded him when I noticed that the was staring at me like a man who couldn’t accept the reality of the situation.

“I’m going to make sure that nothing happens to any of you,” he whispered, a stormy, frightening light in his eyes. My shoulders slumped, and I had a feeling of foreboding.

“How?” I needed him to explain more to me because Neil acted on instinct and tended to do the wrong thing, driven by impulses he could not control.

“I’d sacrifice my life to save any of you, just like I did before…”