Page 46 of Slay Ride

“So?” he asks. “Are we doing this or not?”

“I don’t know if this is a good idea anymore.”

His hands drop to my hips and squeeze. “I’ll be honest. I can’t stop thinking about fucking you, and it’s driving me insane.”

“And what, you think you’ll get over this new infatuation if you fuck me?”

“That’s the hope.”

“And what if it doesn’t work? What if we both realize the alcohol wasn’t the issue?”

He smirks. “So you can’t stop thinking about it either, huh?”

Fuck him and his sneaky ways. I swat his chest and scoot away from him before he can kiss me and scramble my brain again.

“I need some time to think about this,” I say.

He shrugs and steps toward me again. “Tell you what, I’ll fake a headache after the activity. If you’re game, my door will be unlocked. You can consider the issue dropped if you don’t show, and we can go back to what we’ve always been.”

I bite my lip and look down the hall as Grim and Rose appear from the same door. Hearing the door click shut behind them, Bennett clears his throat and walks away as if we weren’t just having a conversation.

Those two have it all figured out. They meet at the retreat, have a wonderful five days of fucking, then part ways until the next event. Maybe I should corner Rose and ask her to reveal her secrets. If she could speak, that would be a great idea, but she scurries away unless we ask yes or no questions.

I lean against the wall with a groan. Bennett’s plan sounds great on paper, but as he disappears down the stairs, something nibbles at my mind. The one little issue he hasn’t considered.

What do we do if we can’t go back to the way things were?

Chapter Nineteen

Bennett

The rec room is tucked away in the sprawling basement, along with a metric fuck ton of other amenities. Jim built more below ground than above, it seems. I stroll past a small theater, a narrow kitchenette, a gym, and a mini spa before I reach the large double mahogany doors at the end of the hall.

Pushing them open, I step into a massive room lined with more of those fake windows they have upstairs, only larger. An entire wall showcases a winter scene, complete with the occasional squirrel or deer visitor.

If I look at the windows for too long, it makes me feel sick. It’s not the sweet sentimentality of the scenery, either. It’s the fact that my brain knows I’m underground while my eyes believe I could step through the windows into that scene.

Maybe that’s why the situation with Cat makes me feel sick too, only my dick is the one who can’t seem to sync up with my brain.

Ice Pick waddles through the door and gives me a wave before he heads toward a few arcade games against another wall. With a scratch of his hairy stomach, he settles on Galaga. Excellent choice.

Grim and Rose aren’t far behind him, but instead of heading toward the billiards tables or the arcade games, they choose to have a seat in the chairs that have been arranged in a semicircle in the center of the room. I go and join them.

“What exactly are we doing in here?” I ask Grim as I sit in the chair beside him.

Grim pulls off his glasses and begins wiping the smudged lenses. “Unwissenheit ist ein Segen.”

“My apologies, but I seem to have left my German translator at home.”

“It simply means sometimes it is best to know nothing.”

I don’t know why I expected more from him. He loves speaking in cryptic phrases.

With no help to be found, I look around and try to find something to clue me in, but this room isn’t giving me much to go on. This is clearly a killing field, judging by the rolls of tarp covering the precious carpet underneath the chairs, but how will we kill? Do they expect us to beat our victims over the head with pool sticks until something falls out like some macabre piñata?

I mean, I’m game.

Cat enters the room next, accompanied by Kindra and an unfamiliar woman with long, thick braids and cheekbones that could cut glass. I try to keep my eyes on anything else, but my attention keeps returning to Cat. Those tall black boots hug her calves, and I’d like to see her in them without the rest of her outfit.

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