Page 31 of Study Games

“Really?”

“Nah.” I caught her wrists and pulled her back to me while she play-struggled in my grasp, laughing. Every wiggle she made over my legs sent a zing of want straight to my cock. “Do I have to pin you down and tickle you to get it out of you?”

Waverly licked her lips, her breaths shortening. “Maybe next time?”

Fuck. Me.

I swallowed back my need, too on edge for anything else. “Right. Tell me or fuck me, because I’m drowning in you either way.” I caught her mouth with mine in a harsh kiss designed to communicate every inch of my desire.

She blinked as I drew back, a new found awareness settling into the edges of her gaze. Her fingers brushed over her swollen lips as she watched me. “You won’t want to after this.”

I stared at her, a heavy, bitter stone sinking deep in my heart.

What the fuck had the assholes done to her?

11

WAVERLY

Jax was nothing like I expected him to be, but at the same time, he was everything that he should be. No wonder we’d clashed so badly to begin with. Everything he showed the world was an act—not unlike what I put out to cover my scars, though mine looked different to the more visible ones he carried. HIs were covered with art.

Mine were my dirty little secret.

Everything about him was designed as a distraction, with one massive difference to how I viewed myself.

His was the story of a hero, of a person who struggled and grew, small to something courageous and beautiful.

Mine was a story of terror lived daily, one I couldn't escape until I diminished into nothingness, kicked aside like so much trash.

Where I belonged, or so I’d been told enough time I started to believe it.

Until Jax.

He gave me hope and hope was…pure cruelty.

“I did something really stupid, and now the twins hold it over me.”

“The sex tape?” His face remained open but the tension in his fingers where he squeezed my waist flexed with his words.

Of course he guessed. Jax was more perceptive than any other man I let in, and afterward, there hadn't been many. My body ached for the sort of contact offered, and I wondered briefly what his hands would feel like around my ass, pushing me down on him as he filled me.

I sought the distraction, but not was not the time. Maybe, after this, there would never be a time.

Then the easy implication of his words slaps my face like reality yawns before me. I stare at him. “You say it like it’s a daily staple.”

“Well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone have one, or five?” He waggled his eyebrows at me, the one with the scar moving weirdly. It captures my attention for a bit as I trace its path.

“What? No. No. Not in the hands of two people who are determined to fuck with my future because theirs is assured. And they’re bored. They’re evil.”

Jax nodded, his face sobering. “No argument with that, except the ruin your future thing. Why are you letting someone else define who you are?”

“Because a sex tape on a CV doesn’t look that great for a lab technician, unless that job also comes with a stripper’s bikini and a pole in the bar across the road.” I flushed head to toe at the thought of dancing for him, and envisioned myself falling on my ass, thick thighs spread out on the floor before me, cheap carpet digging into my ass. My virtual humiliation didn’t end there, of course. Jax stood in front of me in my mind’s eye, lording right over me. One hand rubbed his crotch, the same hungry look in his eyes there as there was now–

I made a strangled noise and choked softly.

Jax’s look turned speculative as his gaze scoured my body, stripping away the layers of clothing, his thumbs turning circles over my thighs. “Is that your grand plan? Waverly Alloway, lab tech? Come on, honey. You can go higher than that. Stretch out on your own. No limits.” He leaned back, watching me.

“You make it sound so easy but in reality, it’s little jobs like that in an early career that work toward something bigger at the grace of bosses who might not like you and give you a promotion.”

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