Page 61 of A Game So Reckless

Ilean heavily back against the couch, tilting my head to regard the ceiling while absorbing the weight of Darragh’s words.

I will marry someone worse. Dario was snivelling, and shitty, and a traitor.

But my papà knows worse men. Crueller men.

Richer men.

The heaviness of my own future feels like it’s crushing me.

I shiver as a calloused touch goes to my throat. Darragh pulls my head back down with surprising gentleness.

Perhaps even more surprising?

He’s not standing anymore.

He’s kneeling in front of the couch.

In front of me.

“We’re more alike than you realize.”

“No, we’re not,” I argue. “I’m not fucking crazy, for one thing.”

But something about that statement rings hollow. Because simply being here with him is already crazy.

The fact that I’ve let him kiss me, buy me tampons, make me come, is crazy.

The fact that his hands are on my leggings-clad thighs now – and that it feels so fucking good, even after he just killed someone – has to be the exact opposite of sanity.

“Maybe not,” Darragh murmurs, and my breath locks up in my throat. My nipples prickle. My thighs jump beneath his touch. “But you’re reckless.”

“Reckless? Please. The most reckless thing I’ve done is being alone with you.”

“That’s true,” he acknowledges without hesitation. He knows how dangerous he is. How dangerous it is for me to get sucked into his malevolent orbit.

His hands inch up my thighs, a slow, demanding roll of velvety touch that makes me simultaneously want to spread my legs and squeeze them together.

“But it goes beyond that,” he says. His hands have reached the waist of the leggings beneath my hoodie. His fingertips kiss the bare skin of my belly, and all thought ceases for a feverish second. His touch grows suddenly harder. He grabs the hem of my leggings in rough fists.

“You went to a club when you didn’t even know who owned the property,” he points out, and there’s something raw, angry, and accusing in his eyes. Like he’s actually pissed about the possibility I might have put myself in danger. “You fell asleep on that tube and let yourself get so far from shore that you could have been drifting for days.” His face tenses, his gaze ripping from my mouth to my eyes and back down again. “And then you waltzed over and practically handed yourself on a platter to the equivalent of a professional fucking frat boy.”

“On a platter? Yeah, right. What happened to you admitting I would have clawed his eyes out?”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it was a stupid fucking thing to do, pet.”

“Stop calling me that.” I want it to come out hard. Forceful. But my voice shakes when Darragh’s thumbs find my hipbones and press there.

“Why should I?” he sneers. “When you need to be taken care of like one? I’ve half a mind to call your daddy. Tell him all the shit that’s gone down so far. Tell him how many times I’ve saved you. Tell him that if he’s not going to take care of you properly...”

His eyes go as dark as the space between stars. In one brutal, efficient movement, he’s ripped down my leggings and underwear and tossed my ankles over his shoulders.

“ThenI will.”

He shoves his head between my legs so fast, with such all-encompassing hunger, that I don’t have a hope in hell of reacting with anything but a mangled sort of cry. Before I can gather enough breath into my lungs to ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, his tongue finds my clit, and my whole body goes prismatic with need.

Need that I didn’t even know that I was capable of feeling. Need that feels like it’s hollowing me from the inside out. Emptying me entirely out of myself.

So that there’s only room for him.

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