Page 110 of My Irresistible Enemy

I shivered. I didn’t like his tone. I hadn’t liked it online, and I liked it even less in person. Tanner, or HungTopXL, his alter-ego, really wasn’t trying to flirt. He didn’t want to compliment me. He didn’t want to make me feel good.

He wanted to scare me.

That was the difference between him and everybody else. Tanner wasn’t trying to participate in a fantasywithme. He was trying to force oneontome. He got off on power. Not just having it, but abusing it. He got off on making people afraid.

And to be quite honest, it was working. He was bigger than I was. By a lot. And I was pretty sure he could block my exit from the room if he wanted to.

But I’d be damned if I let him know that.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I spat. “Nothing in your subscription gives you rights to my body. If you didn’t like that, you could have unsubscribed at any time. Fuck, you should have. It can’t be ethical for you to subscribe to my account and be a judge on the show.”

“Don’t talk ethics to me. You shouldn’t have had your account in the first place. Besides, you liked it. You liked me.”

“Likedyou? I quit responding to you!”

“But you never told me to stop.” Tanner shook his head, his smile almost rueful now. “Look, I get it if you’re a little nervous. I know I can be intimidating. I didn’t want to approach you this way. I tried to do it differently, at the festival. Tried to loosen you up a bit. But you had to go and give that drink to Nolan, and now here we are. Our time’s running out, Aiden. And I’m not letting you leave without getting a taste of you.”

“Wait, what?” My jaw dropped. “What are you talking about? What did you do at the festival?”

“Aiden, there’s no need to act so innocent.”

“It’s not a fucking act!” I stared at him in horror. “What did you do?”

“He tried to drug you,” said a voice behind us. We both turned and saw Nolan in the doorway, looking grim. “He tried to drug you, and he got me instead.”

18

Nolan

Blood sang in my ears as I stepped into Aiden’s bedroom. My heart pounded. Tanner was standing way too close to Aiden, for one thing, and for another, Tannerexistingwas enough to enrage me on its own.

I’d come to apologize to Aiden. To beg his forgiveness. To tell him I loved him, and to try to make up for some of what I’d done.

I hadn’t expected to see Tanner at all. Hadn’t given him a second thought. But finding him here, now?

“Fuck. You.” I walked towards him slowly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered.

“Like hell you don’t. I heard you. We all heard you.”

He looked wary. “We all?”

I glanced over my shoulder as Tate stepped in from the hallway, followed by Em, hoisting a video camera. Then I smiled at Tanner. It wasn’t a nice smile.

“I never—you misinterpreted me,” Tanner backtracked.

He did it literally, too, backing away from Aiden and me. I heaved an internal sigh of relief. I didn’t want him anywhere near Aiden, and it was probably a good thing he was farther away from me too, since I was at my boiling point.

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure you just admitted to harassing Aiden online, deliberately exposing his account, trying to use your position as a judge to get him to sleep with you, and—oh, yeah—attempting to drug him.” I pinned him with my gaze, disgusted. “Has no one ever told younobefore?”

“Come on,” Tanner said. “You’re making this into a much bigger deal than it needs to be. It’s not like he was going to win anyway. Neither of you was supposed to last this long.”

“That doesn’t affect laws of consent,” I snapped.

What an utter slimeball. Did he actually believe what he was spewing, or was he just saying whatever he could think of that might get him out of this situation?

“He wanted it,” Tanner protested.

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