Page 35 of Playing Dirty

“You’re insane.”

“Intuitive,” I amend, my gaze remaining fixed on him.

He rolls his eyes and scoffs. “All right. Enlighten me, then, MindReader Madden. If you’re sointuitive,then what am I thinking?”

I shift forward, leaning my elbows on my knees, as if I’m about to deliver the information he’s requested, and study him for a moment. My gaze traces over his face, his neck and shoulders, mapping the lines and planes visible above the water’s surface. And while he can force lies from his lips, the rest of him shows me all I need to know.

Dilated pupils, quickened breath, and flushed cheeks. Harsh swallows and a thundering pulse beneath his jaw. It’s all right there; the truth illuminated in the dim lights shining up through the water.

“I don’t need to read your mind, Theo. Not when your body is screaming.”

He snorts and shakes his head, but the tint in his cheeks deepens. “Now I think you’re the one who’s full of bullshit.”

Oh, those lips love to lie. Don’t they, Teddy Bear?

“Am I, though?”

I shift off my seat, my body slicing through the water as I wordlessly move to his side of the hot tub. He says nothing, simply watching me with fixed rage as the distance between us goes from feet to inches in under a second.

But I don’t stop once I’m seated next to him, allowing my forearm to graze his shoulder when I rest it on the edge of the tub. And then I lean in closer, my other hand sliding through the water until it comes in contact with the bench on the other side of his body, only centimeters from his thigh.

I get as close as I dare while gauging his reaction to the miniscule space between our bodies. Tension crackles and zips through the air like lightning, and I’m surprised neither of us are electrocuted when his knee brushes mine beneath the jet-bubbled water.

My gaze darts back and forth between his eyes and mouth, and when his tongue darts out over his bottom lip to wet it, I almost cave. Almostclose the last bit of distance that may as well be a mile rather than inches.

There’s a pull here, I can’t deny it; a current flowing beneath the surface, doing everything in its power to drag me toward him. It’s there in spite of the way he treats my mom and me, but especially in those brief moments when his mask of disdain slips out of place.

I’ll be damned to act on it first, though.

“Want to tell me I’m full of shit now?”

His nostrils flare, and I can feel the frustration radiating off him in palpable waves. Yet, even through the guise of anger, I can feel his panic in the way his body tenses from my proximity. I canseeit swirling in the light-green irises, nearly consumed by the black centers, as he stares at me.

And what’s the most obvious reason for this panic?

Catching him lying through his teeth.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

I’m about to push away from him, to put some space between us again in hopes that this mixture of lust and frustration flooding my system might start to cool. If I don’t, there’s no telling if I’ll end up drowninginhim or just fuckingdrowninghim.

But I don’t get the chance, because Theo’s hand lands on my forearm.

And those emotions?

Well, they boil over the second his lips crash into mine.

Ten

Theo

I don’t know what caused me to snap, only that the second I do, I realize it’s the greatest mistake I’ve ever made. Because nothing—fucking nothing on this planet—could prepare me for kissing Madden.

Kissing doesn’t even feel like the right word. Kissing implies soft or gentle, sweeping brushes of lips before they mold together, and this is nothing like that.

The moment our lips collide, it’s a full-on attack; one charged with so much fury and pent-up frustration, I’ll likely never recover. It’s teeth and tongues and a feral kind of passion unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It’s a bone-deep ache appearing out of nowhere, drawing a soft groan from my chest when his tongue teases the seam of my lips—one he’s quick to swallow down the second they part for him.

And the momentI give in?