Page 9 of Make Me, Break Me

“Actually, it’s not him we’re here for. It’s you.” Beau hauled his ass out from beneath my bulk, and pocketed the gun. He nodded. Nelson’s fragile, pasty form slumped in the middle of the room.

“What did I do?” I looked at him for the first time, pleased to clock the bruising that bloomed around his throat.

“You won,” he said simply. “I need you to lose.”

It took me less than half a minute to catch on, and I groaned. “Fucking betting ring. And you think I'll do what you want?” I raised both eyebrows and folded my arms.

Beau shrugged and a twin—I couldn't tell them apart—extracted a knife, leaning over Nelson's form.

I gritted my teeth.Asshole.“How often do I need to lose?”

“Let’s start with tomorrow night. How about you throw the last fight?” His eyes glittered at me. “A kick to the ribs should do it. And as an added incentive, if you don’t, it won’t be the little lordling here who ends up with a new scar. It’ll be the pretty girl with the dark hair.”

Zin.

I opened my mouth to call the son of a bitch for every name he earned just for thinking of her, but he put a finger to his lips.

“Shhh. I won’t tell if you won’t. Now, let’s get a schedule together, shall we?”

I ground my teeth at the presumptuous shit’s attitude knowing he could do anything he wanted while he held Zin’s safety over my head.

On the floor, Nelson began to moan as the twins cut into him anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE

ZINZI

I kept my head down and tried to pretend the world didn’t exist. Not an easy job when the object of my unaffection kept staring at me from the library in the row three across from mine at half an hour before the building closed for the night. A Wednesday night, when we weren’t supposed to be near each other anyway.

As per usual, Dex decided to play by his own rules, not mine. Just like he did last Friday night. Because it wasn’t until a solid hour until after he left that I realized we hadn’t had sex.

Let me tell you straight: Zinzi was not okay.

I mean, that was the whole point of our deal, right? He came around. We played, we teased the shit out of each other. We drove each other insane. Sometimes we tried new sexual stuff we hadn’t before because even though we were both rough as hell together, Friday night with Dex was a safe—if orgasmic—space. We came, we fucked and he left.

End of story.

Only this time, he turned up, I came—alot—and then he left.

With me satisfied. And also unsatisfied. Because I wasn’t aching and I wasn’t burning.

Because even after all the orgasms he could possibly provide for me between the hours of nine p.m. and midnight on a Friday night, I still felt empty.

He didn’t come either. My blissful, Dex-induced haze told me that much, too. He held off for me, and I had no idea what to make of that. None of it was part of our deal.

Play, fuck, come. Leave.

Repeat exactly one week later.

We had been onto this good thing for just over two years and now…

Dex Breaker changed the rules we played by. My damn rules, and I wasn’t happy with that. Not one bit.

To top it off, he had spent the last two hours, I had counted both, every single minute that passed, and gotten very little work done in the interim, while he watched me with love lorn eyes like I was the object he focused on.

During the wrong day of the week.

And I was done.

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