Page 93 of The Mating Game
“She left you?”
“Brutally,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Not only did I find out I wasn’t the only person she was seeing, when she realized I was serious about quitting school to come back home, she told me she wasn’t going to waste her life taking care of some dingy little lodge. She hadplans, and I obviously wasn’t meant to be a part of them. I was just…something for her enjoyment. Something to pass the time.”
I don’t miss the way she makes a face at Chloe’s echo of her own word for the lodge, and I can’t bring myself to look at her as I say it.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “What I said when I got here…”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.” I draw in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I learned back then that sometimes the only person you can rely on is yourself. And I guess I learned that soulmates don’t exist.”
“So you didn’t kiss me because…”
“Because you’re leaving,” I say. “And I don’t know if I can let myself be that vulnerable again.”
Her mouth opens as if she’s going to say something, then quickly closes again, as if she thinks better of it. The silence is so thick it threatens to swallow me, and I stand from the couch before she has the chance to respond.
“I need to get more blankets, I think,” I say. “That floor can be brutal.”
I stalk out of the room like the coward I am, stomping into the next room to gather some blankets from the linens closet as Tess’s delicious scent closes in on me from all sides, permeating the room and beyond. It occurs to me again when I’m bringing back piles of blankets to drop onto the bearskin rug that I will be sleeping in close proximity to this woman, that her scent and the waste of a promised kiss will linger between us intimately for the entire night—and who knows how much longer with the storm—and suddenly the thought of coming out on the other side of this unscathed seems harder than it did before.
I don’t know what it’s like to kiss Tess, even if I’m too afraid to let myself have that, but Iknowwhat it’s like to touch her. And I already believe it’s something I’m wholly addicted to. Being forced to share warmth with her for the entire night without doing so seems almost impossible. But this is a game we’re playing here, one that has a certain set of rules. She only wants my touch when sheneedsit, and wanting it aside from that isn’t something we agreed to. As I try to ignore the subtle way her eyes follow me while I set up our bedding, it hits me just howlongof a night I’m in for. Because even if I can’t bring myself to kiss her, despite how much I desperately want to, the urge to touch her is something I’m realizing never really goes away.
And with the recognition of how much I’dliketo kiss her, consequences be damned…I’m realizing I really might be utterly fucked.
21
Tess
Going to bedwith someone you tried (and failed) to kiss the night before is about as awkward as you might think. I watch with growing nerves as Hunter makes two—yes, two, and my brain can’t decide how to feel about that—makeshift beds on the bearskin rug (abearskin rug, for goodness’ sake). My thoughts race like it’s Christmas Eve, except Santa is hot, and I really want to kiss him but can’t figure out if he wants to kiss me back. Also, in this horny waking nightmare, Santa is practically six and a half feet tall, with shoulders that stretch his black T-shirt to mind-boggling proportions, and he wears flannel pajama pants (has flannel just become a sexual trigger for me?) and no socks, so my brain has to deal with the oddity of trying to figure out why a man’s bare feet are suddenly attractive.
“Do you need help getting down here?”
I blink back at him from the couch, still thinking about the way his arms flex when he pops a quilt to straighten it out. “What?”
“The floor,” he clarifies. “Do you need me to help you get into bed?”
Logically, I know that what my brain is doing to that sentenceis not at all what he intended when he asked the question. My ankle actually feels much better than it did, and if I’m being honest, I can probably get into the little pallet he’s made me on my own with very little trouble if I want to. In fact, part of me is appalled by how much he’s had to coddle me already, but that part of me is effectively silenced by the part that wants him to touch me again.
“If you don’t mind,” I answer sheepishly.
He’s right in front of me, his body looming over mine as he takes my hand to help pull me from the couch, and sure, maybe I lean into him a little more than I need to—but who can blame me, really?
Hunter is careful with me, letting me cling to his arm as I gingerly cross the floor to the bed of quilts he’s laid out for us side by side, never letting go as I lower myself to the floor.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “Don’t hurt yourself again.”
I roll my eyes, my grip moving from his forearm to his hand, which curls around mine as I adjust myself to sit with my (sort of) injured ankle slightly suspended. “I think you’re enjoying that joke.”
“Me?” His lips curl a little at the corners as he tries for an innocent look. “Just concerned for your well-being. You only have so many ankles.”
He keeps hold of my hand as I lower my leg to the blankets, settling in as he steps to the side a bit to make room for me. “Yeah, sure,” I scoff. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—”
Okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve always thought serendipity was bullshit. I mean, divine luck coming together to create happy accidents that seem to right all the wrongs in the world? It always sounded like a hokum informercial to me. But what happens at this exact moment, what causes me to stop short midsentence and lose my train of thought in a matter of seconds…Well. Imightbe tempted to rethink my stance.
It happens so fast I don’t even realize itishappening at first. It’s not like any of my recent mishaps; things don’t move in slow motion or feel like they drag on forever. No, when Hunter’s foot slips on the edge of one of the quilts, when he loses his balance and tumbles forward, that seems to happen so quickly. He’s upright and standing and perfectly stable one second and simply…therethe next. And bythere, I mean right over me. I mean his hands are braced on either side of my head to keep himself from completely smothering me. I mean his frame is so close to mine that I can feel every inch of his body heat radiating over me.
I had a lot of thoughts in my head a second ago, but right now I sort of can’t remember how to even form them.
“Now who’s clumsy?” I breathe, feeling dazed.
