Page 104 of Playing My Rivals

“I don’t know.” She collapses into herself and turns her head.

“That must mean he wants more.” I hold on to the bar so I don’t fly into pieces of pure rage. “How long did this little escapade go on?”

“Hunter, please don’t do this. Please don’t ask about the specifics. Isn’t it enough to know that it happened?” She buries her face in her hands.

“No, it’s not enough. Answer the question. How fucking long?”

“I don’t know.” She doesn’t move. “A while.”

She can’t face me. Maybe out of guilt. Maybe because she’s afraid of what I’ll see when I look into her eyes—something I don’t want to know.

Every memory I have of her reaching her climax rains down on me. Soaking me in an ocean of gut-wrenching misery. My mind torpedoes through the possible things they did.

One by one, the visions take bites out of me like I’m being attacked by a vicious shark. I want it to stop. I try to make it stop, but it tosses me from side to side, ripping off my flesh piece by piece and pulling me further into the depths of the sea.

I know how responsive she is. She puts every woman I’ve been with to shame. And she does it over and over until she can’t take any more. Even when I think I’m done, she entices me back for more with her flirty stares under the thick eyelashes of a succubus.

“So it happened more than once?” I hate myself for asking.

Weeping into her hands, she nods.

Fuck me.

Knife wounds cover every inch of my heart, twisting and slicing it away.

I guess I’m looking to be skinned alive because I keep going. “And you came?”

She nods again without lifting her head.

My heart is shredded to the core. It’s surreal. The only reason I know it’s happening is because I keep losing my breath and have to wrangle in air. Pictures of him bringing her to the height of pleasure puncture my lungs and threaten to kill me.

I squeeze my eyes shut to clear the pornographic movie playing in my mind. I must be a glutton for punishment because I’m already bleeding flesh and shackled to a tree with a hungry grizzly bear coming for me, and I still need to know all of it.

“You came more than once?”

She raises her head. “Why are you doing this? You can’t possibly want to know this.”

I can’t detect an ounce of green in her eyes. They’re covered in a blood-red overcoat made of salty tears and guilt. So much fucking guilt.

“You have no idea how right you are, Dorothy. I don’t want to know any of this, but you’ve left me no choice. I know it happened. It won’t leave my brain. I’m stuck with this reel flipping in my head, one where you two…”

I swallow the thought. “Until I know every fucking last detail. No matter how much it kills me to hear them, I need you to fill in the blanks. Otherwise, I won’t be able to function. I need the truth more than I need to be spared of any emotions you’re afraid I’ll feel.”

“Why?”

“I just told you why. If I make up things in my mind, I’m likely to kill him because I’ll paint the worst picture you could possibly imagine.”

Visualizing them together makes me consider something that pegs me between the eyes. An arrow of the ultimate betrayal, making direct contact with the bullseye. My heart.

Every moment they shared is laid out in front of me. One after another, the visions stack upon each other. I can’t look away and I’m afraid of what I’m going to do to him.

It’s the tipping point. The last shred of willpower I have is gone. I’m going to take a machete to him. I’ve never wanted to hurt a man so much, but that changes in a matter of seconds when I realize what they’ve done.

I trip over myself as I jerk away and back up. My butt hits the edge of the bar shelves behind me. A bottle crashes to the floor.

“Oh, fuck no. This can’t be happening. There’s no way you did.” Rage bombs explode inside of me.

Boom!

---