Page 79 of The Games We Play

Now, I’m reliving that same nightmare. How careless could I be? While I was sleeping two doors down, she was taken. Right out from under my fucking nose. They couldn’t have gotten far. Stomping the gas pedal, gravel flies behind me as I take the one-lane blacktop road at raging speeds.

The car squeals around the curves, sliding and swerving as I barely maintain control. My phone rings, and I reach over to grab it, checking the screen to see it’s Doc. I glance back up at the road as a blur of yellow flashes across my headlights. I slam on my brakes, sliding across the blacktop as another shape rushes into the light beam and grabs the yellow blob.

Fucking hell!

I jerk the steering wheel to the side. My car flies off the road, and the world spins over and over, my head crashing into the window as I come to a sudden stop. The car horn blares, and I slowly sit up, turning off theignition and reaching for my seat belt. Glancing outside the car, I try to make sense of what happened. I can’t make out anything in the dark.

“Xane!” a voice shouts through the ringing in my ears and the incessant car horn.

Fumbling with the door handle until I get it unlatched, but it’s ripped from my grip as it flies open.

“What the hell were you doing driving like a fucking lunatic!” Tess screams at me, and I blink her into focus. I grab the bent metal of the car’s frame, pull myself out of the seat, and stand.

“What was I doing? What the hell were you doing out here?! We thought you were kidnapped!”

She looks like a warrior, a true killer, in the blacked-out clothes and guns strapped to her body.

“Kidnapped would mean I’m a kid, which I’m not. Besides, what I’m doing isn’t your concern. I don’t owe you anything. You saved my life at the auction. I saved yours by getting you to Doc. We’re even, and I’m leaving.”

Roxy whines at her feet and looks between us.

“Not a kid? You’re acting like one right now. Throwing a goddamn temper tantrum and running away in the middle of the night.” I stalk to the hood of my car and wretch it open. After jerking the wire-free that powers the horn, I shut the hood. It pops back, too mangled to close properly, and I slam it harder, refusing to let it win this battle, just like Tess. It latches, and finally, silence.

She stomps up behind me, and I turn. Her eyes blaze, and it stirs the fire in my core. I want to pin her to this heap of metal and show her what happens to those who disobey me. She slides her hand to her back, and I track her every movement.

“Call Doc,” she says, her voice void of any emotion. She steps back like she actually believes she can just leave.

I grab her arm and pull her back. Her body slams into mine from the force, and the cold barrel of a gun presses to my temple. Her lips are mere inches from mine. She’s never had me more turned on than I am right now, my life in her hands.

“Do it, Puppet.”

Forty - X

Tess isn’t here rightnow. The woman looking at me with ire in her gaze is the same one who I taught to hunt, who found the thrill of taking a life. Her lips part slightly, and I reach up, brushing my thumb across the soft skin.

“Don’t call me that,” she says breathlessly.

I sigh and tilt my head, leaning into the gun.

“The games over, Mr. Collins. You lost.”

I clench my fist at the words,Mr. Collins. My brother was the respected suburban dad. I’m nothing like him, and she fucking knows it.

She drops her hand and tries to step away from me again. I grip her throat and spin us around, pinning her back on the hood of the car, just like I wanted. My hardening cock presses into her abdomen, and I squeeze my fingers tighter.

“Our game is never over, Puppet,” I growl. “I’ll never stop watching you part your legs and slip your fingers between your pussy lips at night. You’ll never hide from me, no matter how far you run. I’ll always findyou because you’re mine. No distance will change that, and calling me by anything but X will not change that.” She tries to shove me back, but I grab the collar of her shirt and rip it down to her navel. She looks so damn sexy here, surrounded by wreckage and the glow of the headlights casting shadows across her features. My fingertips brush over the X scar on her chest. “You belong to me.”

“I don’tbelongto anyone. Especially someone who doesn’t want me.”

I brace my forearm across her collarbone and force the gun from her hand, then throw it deep into the woods.

“Doesn’t want you? Is that really what you think?” I cup her breast, then slide my hand down her side until I get to the next holster and pull that gun-free, too, throwing it like the other one.

“Yes. You said it loud and clear. I’m used to not being wanted. That’s all I’ve known. I’ll be fine on my own.” The fire in her eyes morphs from hate to something hungrier as I skim my hand across every inch of her torso, plucking the knife sheathed at her ribs and the gun from the small of her back.

“Just like you were fine when I first met you? Too drunk and stoned to function and wishing for death?” Her gaze narrows, and I know I’ve hit my mark. My Puppet was ready for war. How could she possibly think I don’t want her when she causes this reaction from me? She drives me fucking insane.

“Where were you planning to go?” I ask, my hand trailing down her left thigh, then the right.

---