Page 44 of Power Play

It wasn’t fair that some people got to be so beautiful. So…easy with themselves.

“Kit!” A little voice cried and it was Tess running around the side of the pool with her goggles pushed up on her forehead and the floaty around her waist. She dodged between grown-ups and made her way to me.

“Hi Tess!” I said, smiling at her because she was so sweet. “You’re still dry! Haven’t you gone in?”

“I was waiting for you!” she said, as she tugged on my hand.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me go change.”

“Hey.” Suddenly Liam was beside us, smelling like sunscreen and pineapple.

He was so…overt. Overtly sexual. Overtly masculine. He was also indecent with his good boy/bad man smile. I wasn’t proudof it, but I felt overwhelmed. By him. By this man who hated me. Who was literally paying me to be there. I managed, despite his every effort to provoke the memory, to put thoughts of our night together in a lockbox that never saw the light of day.

However, sometimes it reared its ugly head and I remembered the sensation of that chest against mine. His weight, heavy and exciting on top of me and I felt a pulse through my body. A desire so intense it felt like need.

“You look really nice,” he said, like it was a surprise.

“You told me to dress up.”

“I know…I just expected-”

“The cat costume?”

He laughed. “No. But I wouldn’t put it past you.”

His laugh, his rich full-throated laugh made me smile against my will.

I made no effort to look good for anyone anymore. Mostly, I walked around in baggy clothes without makeup because I didn’t want people to notice me.

My dad had used my appearance as…what had he called it?

“Honey, you’re just one more tool in my arsenal. Why do you think I always sent you into those parties first? You were there to distract them, loosen them up, make them feel like all- powerful athletes.”

I’d believed, so foolishly naive, my father was just always perennially late to those parties. And bad with names.

The whole time he’d been using me.

Liam put a hand on the bare skin of my elbow and I gasped. Literally. Gasped.

Could this have been more of a mistake? I was wearing a thong for crying out loud – putting on a thong was the first sign you were making a mistake.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice low, and I pulled my body away from him like he was poison.

“Fine,” I said.

“You’re being weird,” he said.

“You’re being weird,” I shot back, nonsensically. Then I reached up and pushed my sunglasses higher on my nose like he was a nuclear blast and I needed the protection.

Thank goodness for Tess who pointed towards a small building on the far side of the pool. “You can change in there,” she said. “There’s a bathroom too. You’re not supposed to pee in the pool.”

“I always pee in the pool,” Liam said, and Tess reacted with such outrage it broke the tension I’d created with my unruly hormones. “Most people do,” Liam said, like he was breaking bad news.

“That’s not true!” Tess cried.

“It is!” Liam said, teasing the girl unmercifully.

“It’s not.”

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