Page 55 of Twisted Play (Cruel Games #1)

He finger fucked me roughly, shoving me up on my toes and compounding the humiliation. My body’s natural lubrication eased Cole’s path, and when he ground his palm into my clit, I couldn’t stop myself from whining.

“Answer the question, slut,” he growled. “Tell Tristan how much it turns you on to know someone else could catch us humiliating you.”

I closed my eyes, unwilling to do as he asked but unable to deny the effect his words had on me. The humiliation turned me on—the risk. The thought of actually showing myself to strangers? Less so.

“Eva…” Tristan said.

“No!” Cole said, snapping his wrist and driving his fingers in and out of me. “She does what I want her to do, and what I want is for her to admit she likes what we do to her.”

Tristan slid a finger under my chin and gently turned my face to his. “Eva?—”

“Don’t ‘Eva’ me,” I snapped. “You’re just as complicit in this deal as he is. You could have said no.”

Tristan’s eyes reflected shocked hurt, but I wasn’t here for this bullshit. For all his rhetoric about treating me like I deserved, he participated in the same degradation as Cole.

A moment later, Katie knocked on the door, interrupting the standoff. “Are you decent?” she asked.

Cole slid his fingers out of me then grabbed a robe from his side of the bed and tossed it at me. His cruel smirk told me he’d caught me sniffing it, inhaling his spicy scent, as I pulled it on, turned on and frustrated.

“Yes,” I breathed. “I’m dressed…enough.”

Cole pointed at his eyes, then Tristan’s. “We’re not done,” he mouthed.

Katie entered with her fingers twined around Linh’s.

Immediately, I felt self-conscious in Cole’s room with all these gorgeous, confident people standing around, looking at me. I shrank into myself, pulling the robe tighter.

Tristan caught the movement and dropped onto the bed, hauling me beside him with his arm around my shoulders.

“Yeah, I have some clothes that’ll fit her,” Linh said before she disappeared. Two minutes later, she handed me a short skirt with a ruffle hem, a bralette, and a sweater .

Okay. Yeah. I could wear these until the guys got me home to pick up a change.

“Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“The Viking’s making breakfast,” Haruto said, “if you get a move on.”

Cole looked me up and down, the light in his eyes wild. “Maybe,” he murmured. “Eva’s gotta get dressed first.”

The moment the room was empty, Tristan was tugging off the robe and lifting the t-shirt off me. I tried to cover my breasts with my arm, but he just laughed and tossed me the bralette.

I slid it over my head then held my hand out for the sweater. Instead of handing it to me, Cole took one of my breasts in his mouth, licking and sucking on it through the fabric of the bralette until my knees weakened with need.

“You’re not in charge, sparrow,” he rasped, but the need in his eyes took away the sting of the reminder.

Tristan slid the sweater over my head, careful not to muss my still-wet braid.

Right. Now the skirt. “I need underwear.”

“The fuck you do,” Cole answered, handing me the skirt.

“The fuck she doesn’t,” Tristan said, his eyes flashing with anger.

Guilt coiled in my stomach about getting between these best friends until I gave myself a mental shake. These two assholes could have just kept my secret. If they were fighting about how best to force me into sexual servitude, that was their problem, not mine.

Cole’s voice turned silky as he turned to look at his best friend. “You’re only part of this deal because I asked you to be. Eva belongs to me.”

Tristan sneered. “Why? Because you saw her first? Because you decided to blackmail her while I was making a fool out of myself, trying to get her to like me?”

Oh. Oh. My heart cracked open. Tristan, I do like you , I wanted to tell him. When you’re not playing these stupid fucking games.

And sometimes, even when you are, the voice in my heart continued.

“Because she’s a conniving little?—”

“No,” Tristan interrupted. “This isn’t about her. This is about you and me.”

“Come here, sparrow,” Cole ordered, and I stepped up to him, wearing nothing more than the bralette and sweater, grateful it fell to the tops of my thighs. “Do you want to quit this game?”

He cupped my cheek, his touch gentle, before he slid his hand down my neck and squeezed softly, his thumb pressing against the front of my throat. “Do you want out? Do you want Coach to find out what you’ve been doing? Dr. Parker? The school administration?”

I shook my head, unable to force the words out as terror slid down my spine.

“Good girl.”

As much as I hated it, his praise made me want to turn my face to him and absorb his warmth, like a flower to the fucking sun. Disgust furled deep in my gut.

“See, Tristan? She likes it.”

“No, she’s terrified she’ll lose her scholarship and the bratva will kill her father,” Tristan snapped. “That’s not the same thing as liking it.”

“Sure, she’s scared,” Cole acknowledged as he stroked his thumb over the front of my throat, pressing it against the bottom of my chin, forcing me up on my toes. “But the humiliation turns her on too, and the pain, I think. ”

His cold blue eyes held mine, daring me to lie, to tell him I didn’t like it, that he hadn’t awakened a monster inside me that was as depraved as he was. As they were.

“Isn’t that right, sparrow?”

I couldn’t stop my tongue from peeking out to lick my lips or the heat that went straight to my clit when Cole’s gaze zeroed in on it.

“So fucking greedy,” he murmured. “So fucking perfect.”

I took one shuddering breath and then another, unable to discern whether I hated this or loved it.

No.

I hated it, but I’d never been so fucking turned on in my life. Cole’s cruelty did it for me, like Alek’s dominance, and I hated that too.

He leaned forward and nuzzled his nose against mine in a gesture that would have been affectionate were it not accompanied by the threat of choking. “Tell me, sparrow—do you want me to stop?”

I couldn’t lie to him, not when his gaze was fixed on mine, not with the hint of vulnerability that softened his eyes.

“No,” I whispered.

His eyes flashed dark with an emotion I couldn’t read, and then he blinked, leaving only cruelty. He turned me until I faced Tristan, then he pressed up against my spine, his hard cock nestled into my back, his fingers drumming against my throat.

“And do you want Tristan to stop?” Cole’s gravelly voice resonated deep inside me.

“No,” I whispered, hating them but hating myself even more.

“Good,” Cole said, as if that finished the matter. Maybe to him it did. He grabbed the skirt from the bed and held it up to me.

My cheeks turned fire-engine red. I stepped into it, nervous and uncomfortable as I realized it only fell to mid-thigh. “I’m going to flash everyone today,” I whispered.

“The fuck you will,” Cole said. He nudged my feet apart and cupped my pussy, lifting me onto my toes before looking over at Tristan. “This pussy belongs to us, and we don’t fucking share.”

Tristan’s gaze burned into my ass as I walked up to the boutique, each step swishing the short skirt I’d borrowed and terrifying me that I was flashing everyone.

The good news was that today’s shopping trip would be humiliatingly short.

We’d all discover very quickly that a fancy boutique like this wouldn’t carry my size.

Then I’d be free to go home and bury my face in my satin-covered pillow to relive the last twenty-four hours while I decided whether I should laugh or scream my fury into the abyss.

The bad news was, I still had to live through the humiliation to get there.

Memories of past boyfriends who’d made snide comments about shopping at secondhand stores, who tried to get me to upgrade my wardrobe—as if I had a penny to spare on fucking fripperies—settled into the pit of my stomach as I dragged myself up the stairs, dreading entering the store.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” Cole said from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, and his eyes were fixed on me. “That ass.”

I blushed but couldn’t stop the fluttery feeling in my chest at his blatant appreciation .

He jogged up the steps and wrapped an arm around my waist. “I bet if I slid my fingers between those pretty thighs, I’d find you absolutely drenched at the idea of shopping without panties today.”

He’d win that bet, the asshole. Instead of answering, I steeled myself to push open the door, but Cole was too quick. He opened it for me, and that simple gesture fucking melted me. It must have shown in my eyes, because his brow furrowed as I walked past him.

“Can I help you?” a pretty brunette saleswoman asked me.

“We have an appointment,” Cole said, popping back up beside me. Tristan stood on my other side, and to my surprise, their towering presence soothed my nerves.

“Of course. Please come with me.” She led us through the boutique to a private room. My fingers brushed against a sparkly dress, and I checked the tag, the price sending me spiraling with panic. I shouldn’t even have been breathing on clothes this expensive.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Tristan said, catching my hand and pulling it to his mouth to brush a kiss over my knuckles that sent butterflies careening in my stomach. He glared over my shoulder at Cole. “Today’s on Cole’s black card, and I’m going to make sure you do some real damage.”

“More will arrive over the course of the day,” the woman said to Cole. “We could have been more prepared if you’d given us more than a couple hours’ notice.”

“More prepared for what?” I asked.

Cole took my other hand and pulled me deeper into the room, where two racks of clothes flanked a set of mirrors around a dais. “Prepared for you to try on clothes.”

“When Mr. Carter called this morning to let me know you needed a whole new wardrobe, we reached out to every designer who makes plus size clothes in the city, and a few as far away as New York,” the saleswoman continued, smiling warmly at me as my heart battered in the confines of my chest, utterly confused from the rollercoaster of emotions these two men put me through.

“We’ve been at this since before dawn. I hope you’ll find something you like. ”

My heart thumped hard in my chest. “Wait,” I said, looking up at Cole, trying to figure out what he was getting at. “You only owe me one outfit to replace the one you cut up last night.”

“Wrong, sparrow,” Cole purred, tugging me toward the dais. He pushed me up, and I brought my hands down to hold my skirt against my ass, only for him to turn me around until I faced him. Even on the eight inch platform, he towered over me.

Carefully, as if I were a precious artifact that might tumble and shatter at any moment, he moved my hands to his waist and tugged me closer so he could whisper in my ear. “This is the perfect height. I could wrap your leg around my waist and fuck you right here, couldn’t I?”

“Cole, what are you doing?” I shoved at him.

He pushed one of the curls already escaping my braid out of my face. “Whatever the fuck I want. And today, I want to buy shit for my girl.”

“What, so you can feel better about what you’re doing to me?” I asked, hurt shooting through me like an arrow. Of course it was tit for tat with him. It always was, just like it had been earlier this morning.

Cole had the gall to look hurt. “I don’t need to feel better about what I’m doing to you, sparrow.

I like what I’m doing to you. I want to buy you shit because it’s fucking hot to think about you sitting in the staff seats at the game tonight, wearing nothing but clothes my best friend and I picked out for you, soaking wet and needy because I shoved a vibrator up your pussy. ”

My lips rounded into a soft “o,” and Cole smiled.

“I don’t do things I don’t want to do, sparrow. And if I want to buy clothes for you so I can parade you around campus looking like the gorgeous, filthy slut you are for me, then I am going to fucking do it.”

The pressure in my chest loosened. This wasn’t because I was embarrassing in my thrifted clothing or because he didn’t like the way I dressed. It was because he wanted to tease me.

And maybe I liked that?

Fuck.

Cole tipped my chin up so he could kiss me, his tenderness such a contrast to earlier that morning, I thought I’d cry from the sweetness. “Now, be a good girl and let me and Tristan spoil you rotten.”