Page 85 of Meet Your Match
Swiping it away as soon as it fell, I grabbed my bag out of the closet and began packing. One night in my own house wouldn’t impact my job, and tonight, I wantedmybed.
“Shake it off, Maven,” I coached myself as I packed. “It’s fine. You are fine. Everything isfine.”
I almost believed it.
Until I strapped my bag over one shoulder and heaved my door open, only to find Vince standing in the middle of the hallway.
I halted, my bag swinging and nearly taking me forward with it before it slung back in place. Vince was stone where he stood, like a tortured god captured in statue form. It was like he was coming to get me and then had stopped himself, but then didn’t know where to go or what to do next, so he just stayed, waiting.
But for what?
We stood like that a long time before he started moving toward me, his pace slow, eyes never leaving mine until he was standing in front of me at my door. His gaze flicked to my bag then, and he swallowed, finding me once more.
“Where are you going?”
The spell was broken then, and I remembered the woman writhing in his lap. I chuffed a laugh out of my nose. “Home,” I said, then I let the door shut behind me, locking it and stalking down the hall.
Vince was on my heels.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I growled, turning to shove him hard in the chest. “If you know, then why are you asking, you pompous prick?”
“Because I want to hear you say it.”
“Saywhat? That I’m disgusted by your public display of lust?”
“You’re not disgusted,” he challenged. “You’re mad. You’re jealous.”
I scoffed. “I amnot—”
“You are. I know because I felt the same way when I saw you cuddled up in a booth with Brittzy.”
I blinked at that, letting it sink in.
Then, I laughed.
“You’ve got to be fucking joking me. So, what, you just found the first girl who’d let you grope her and took her to the VIP booth, hoping I’d see?”
His jaw locked, but he didn’t answer.
“Wow.” I laughed again, shaking my head and pushing the button for the elevator. “Real nice, Tanev.”
“Goddamnit, woman.” He snatched my bag so fast I couldn’t register it, and then his hands were on me, sweeping up to cradle my face as he backed me into the nearest wall. I gasped when we slammed into it, heart racing at the mixture of anger and passion ignited in his golden-green eyes.
“I don’t want to do this,” he choked, Adam’s apple bobbing hard with the admission. “I don’t want to play these fucking games with you. I don’t want to be in pain when I see you with one of my teammates because I don’t have the assurance that you’re mine, and I don’t want to try to make you jealous with some random fucking girl I don’t even know. This isn’t who I am, but it’s who you make me because I’m fuckingcrazyfor you.”
My insides melted to mush at those words, at the sight of this confident, powerful man so raw and exposed.
All for me.
It was sick what that did to me, how my thighs clenched together and my pulse picked up a notch.
The last bit of my good sense hanging on was screaming as loud as it could for me to remember what I’d just been feeling in the car ride home, to remind myself who I was playing with here. But the screams were like the buzz of a fly — annoying, and then something I could ignore altogether because my heart was humming so much louder.
