Page 49 of Ruthless Game

Let me go.

It echoed through the locker room around us as the water fell down over her face and mine, soaking my chest and swim trunks, rivulets of water running down her face, mixed with tears.

“Let me go, Max,” she whispered, and my name on her lips, the name only she had ever called me, was like an assault. My chest quaked underneath the flesh of her palm, my fingers dug deep into the flesh of her hip, and desperate denial rose in me like a wave about to crash.

I let it.

She was a siren, and I’d wreck on her rocks.

But I’d take her with me.

“Never,” I said, pulling her deeper, closer, and crashing my mouth down on hers.

17

Emma

Shock poured over me like water, drenching me in a want so intense it went deeper than desire. Deeper than need, even. It was something I couldn’t put words to. And still, I couldn’t kiss him back, could only stand there, trembling, as Lawson’s lips pressed hard against mine, his wet mustache against my skin.

He pulled away with a frustrated, cracked growl. “Kiss me back, Starburst. Kiss me like you mean it, like you need this as much as I do. Give me that, at least.”

“If I kiss you, will you let me go?”

“If you kiss me back, I’ll give you the world. I’ll give you the universe, steal the goddamn stars out of the sky. But I won’t let you go. Kiss me.”

This time, he moved his hand to cup my face, pulling me even closer. If he had kissed me with the same brutal force again, I could’ve resisted. But the soft, sweet yearning to the way he pressed his lips to mine—a gentle tenderness that gave instead of took—coaxed me into kissing him back. I opened my mouth, and he shared his breath with me, tasting me, slowly, uncertainly, like he’d forgotten what it could be like between us. I melted against him, tasting him back, stroking my tongue against his. He groaned and stroked back, a slow exploration of a land previously charted but long lost. He kissed me, and I kissed him, as water poured over us like a cleansing rain. For a moment, all the pain and cruelty between us disappeared, and we were just Emma and Max, a boy and a girl who meant everything to each other, him her sun, her his stars. Meant to be forever and always.

He surrounded me in the taste of him.

For a moment, everything was perfect.

He drowned me in the scent of him.

For a moment, we were perfect.

And then he said against my lips, “I missed you so much, Starburst. Even when I hated you, I missed you.”

Even when I hated you.

No.

He didn’t get to do this to me.

Whore, he’d said that night. And here I was, in his arms, hand on his heart, ready to let him break mine all over again.

“No, Lawson. Stop,” I said.

His body went rigid.

“I tell you I miss you, and you tell me to stop?”

“Whose fault was that? You missed me, but you never, not once, tried to find me. Why? Lawson? Why now? Why come for me now, after all this time?”

Instead of answering me, he dipped his head to kiss me again, to silence me with his lips. And once again, I fucking let him. I’d missed the taste of him too much, especially when he began to switch between hard bites and soft kisses, like he couldn’t decide how he wanted me. In the past, his kisses had overwhelmed me. Now, his kiss consumed me, until I forgot where I was or where I was supposed to be. The shower turned humid, muggy, as I melted against him, moaning into his mouth, my pussy fluttering when he groaned back.

“Starburst …”

The old nickname he’d given me pierced something in my chest, something I’d been careful to protect for the past three years. I’d trained myself to never hear the endearment again. I was good. Fine. And with one, no, two kisses, he was going to destroy all of that. Every piece of backbone I’d built for myself would come crumbling down.