Page 3 of Wicked Games We Play

I held my breath as he ran the blade along the side of my Spanx, destroying one side before moving onto the other. He pulled the ruined fabric away from my body, tossing it behind him. A shiver ran through me as he ran the cold, smooth blade down the inside of my thigh before folding it and sliding it back into his pocket.

He licked his lips, eyes trailing along the lower half of my body.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve pictured seeing you like this?”

“You’ve seen plenty. We’ve been playing our texting game for weeks.”

He looked up at me, sit back. “You know that’s not the same.”

“I know.”

He hooked his finger through the thin fabric of my panties that rested on my lower belly. The proximity heated my cheeks, and I was suddenly all too aware that my lower half was fully on display, including my stomach. I blew out a breath, begging my self-consciousness to crawl back into the hole where it came from. It was ruining the moment.

“I want to taste you now, Lily. Tell me I can.”

A war brewed inside me, but arousal took over the second his teeth raked against the fabric that rested on my lower belly. A fire roared to life within me, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to be touched by this man. I nodded my head yes, giving him permission.

“I need your words. Say it, Lily.”

“Yes. Please, yes,” I whimpered. He ripped the panties down my legs, using the fingers he still had woven around them to remove them from my body. Lifting my leg, he draped it over his shoulder and dove against my center, sliding his tongue through my slit.

My head slammed against the wall in pleasure as he devoured me, pulling pleasure from my body hard and fast. I was writhing against the wall, a slur of praise and curses tumbling from my lips as he alternated between circling my clit and spearing me with his tongue. I was dizzy with lust, shamelessly riding his face in the middle of a dimly lit hallway, somewhere in the back of a completely packed bar. Fisting his hair in my hands, I was desperate to hold on to something as I was driven to the brink of my orgasm.

Feeling that I was close, he inserted his finger into me, swirling around my desire before adding another. The combination of his tongue with the friction of his fingers was too much and sent my body into overdrive as my orgasm crashed into me. I screamed out his name, chasing the high as he relentlessly drove his fingers into me, my body clenching around them while he pulled every last drop of my orgasm from my body. My body went limp as he removed his fingers from me, pulling my dress down as he stood. He grabbed my chin with his hand and pressed his lips to mine, capturing me in another dirty kiss.

The taste of me on his tongue jolted me to reality.

Needing to catch my breath, I turned my face, forcing myself to not freak out.

Noah dropped his hand before lacing his fingers through mine, lifting it to his mouth to kiss the top of my hand.

“I’m still waiting, Lily. As long as it takes.”

CHAPTERTWO

I’ve always been a relatively confident woman, but something about living in a platonic marriage for ten years only to end up in an inevitable divorce, ultimately shattered that confidence. There were things about myself that I knew weren’t true, but I couldn’t stop telling myself otherwise. As far as my appearance goes, I felt like I was pretty, albeit a little average. My curly blonde hair had relaxed slightly over the years, which gave me a natural beach wave most women worked hard to achieve. I had eyes that were bright blue and round, my eyelashes relatively full considering the years of mascara I’d caked on. My breasts were full and my rear end was plump. If I could just get past my insecurities… The little voice in my head lived to break me down every day, despite the smile that I always had plastered on the exterior. Maybe that’s why I resisted the attention that Noah was so insistent on giving to me. I couldn’t fathom why, after all these years, he still chased me. He had made it known, year after year, that he was still there.

Waiting. Wanting. I didn’t understand it.

He could have any woman he wanted, and he had over the years, according to his social media accounts, but my gut told me that if I told him I wanted to be with him, he’d come running.

I should have found that to be off-putting, but it was actually the opposite. The idea of having that power over someone else was exhilarating. And it’s exactly why I pushed him away and resisted the constant pull I felt toward him.

I needed my time to be alone and to learn how to love myself again because at the end of the day, the love that I have for myself was more important than the love of any man. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to let him go: not completely, and certainly not like I should have.

Idowant him.

Truly, if there was a man on this planet who I knew could fulfill me in ways that I never imagined, both emotionally and physically, it’d be Noah. Every time I’ve told him no, it went against every fiber of my being. I would give anything to be in the place where I could take a running leap into his arms and never let go, but doing that would go against the promise I made to myself the second my ex-husband, Ryder, and I decided to split. That night, I vowed I would give myself the time that I needed to work on myself.

Having our son, Jordan, at freshly eighteen had stripped away my youth in ways that I still couldn’t fully comprehend, and although I wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world, becoming a mom when I was barely an adult changed me in ways that I wasn’t prepared for.

Graduation parties, my college years, turning 21 and drinking too much, experiencing a one-night stand (or even experiencing any other penis than the one that had produced our son), traveling, figuring out a career path—gone. Poof. Completely out the door.

And maybe it didn’t have to be like that. It had been my choice to not pursue any of those things once I had Jordan. Ryder had never held me back from doing what I wanted, but it quickly got to where I didn’t want to do any of those things. My son and my husband were my world, and I was happy. I truly was happy. Or so I thought I was.

Divorce opened my eyes in a lot of ways, and suddenly I wasn’t so sure about the woman that I had become.

So I deny him. Time after time, plea after plea, I’ve refused to give Noah the thing he truly wants. Me.

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