Page 87 of A Game So Reckless

“My grandda is dead.”

My shoulders stiffen in surprise.

His grandda. The one who rescued him from homelessness after his parents’ deaths. The one who likely helped forge him into what he is today, for better or worse.

And just like that, the fight goes out of me.

“Darragh…”

“I’ll try to take care of things as quickly as possible,” he says tonelessly. “But it sounds like I’ve got a fucking mess to clean up out there.”

My heart twists.

I want to touch him. Even after everything.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He’s got his back to me right now. Even beneath the suit jacket, I can see the muscles tense. Then, he’s moving to me, turning around and closing the distance between us in ground-swallowing strides.

“Don’t apologize to me, Valentina. Don’t give me that fucking shit. Here. You wanna be sorry? You wanna get all sentimental on me now? Take this.” He jams his hand into an inner pocket of his suit jacket, pulls something out, then presses it into my palm. “Wear it. Every day I’m gone. Morning, noon, and night.”

He forces my fingers to close around the boxy shape. “I don’t care where you are. I don’t care what you’re doing. Eating. Sleeping. Praying. Fingering that sweet little pussy I just fucked. Youwear it.”

He heaves out a harsh breath and drops his hands, only for one of them to shoot back up, capturing a stray lock of my hair between his fingers and thumb. He studies it with mute, nearly hostile intensity. Like the black strands hold all the secrets to the universe, but they’re keeping all that precious information just out of his reach. He gives my hair a tug towards his face, as if he’s going to bring it to his mouth and kiss it.

Instead, he lets it go.

“I’ll be back for you.”

I can’t tell if it’s a promise or a threat.

Whatever it is, it’s the last thing Darragh says to me before he goes.

Chapter33

Valentina

The first thing I do after Darragh leaves is to lock the door behind him. I need some time and space to recover from everything that just happened. To try to process it all.

But I don’t even know if such a thing is possible. My brain buzzes with static, a shapeless crackling that seems to inoculate me against analyzing what’s just happened in any sort of detail. Every once in a while, a vivid image breaks through the snapping haze, just for a fraction of a second. I see Darragh when he’s above me. When he’s inside me. I see the unravelling of his control, the way desire carves up his features. The way that desire turns to distant ice when he realizes why I slept with him tonight.

I see the chessboard smash. Again and again and again.

I handed him my virginity on a silver fucking platter.

And it didn’t mean a thing.

I’m already engaged. Tohim. The control I thought I was exerting over my own fate never even existed.

It was decided weeks ago. I had no say. I had no fucking idea.

Forget about asking me to marry him. He never even bothered totellme. Not once over the past two weeks did Darragh try to see me or contact me. Not once did he let me know what he’d done.

Not even when he was thrusting deep inside me, not even when he wascoming.Coating himself with my pleasure and my blood.

The place between my legs aches. My muscles clench involuntarily, trying to relieve that tension.

To squeeze out all the emptiness.

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