The Lover's Game (13 page)

Next to my bed was a bucket that had been cleaned and still glimmered with moisture. Someone had used it, and that someone might have been me. My nausea returned with a vengeance; I was sick to the core at the realization that my lips were swollen, and my abdomen felt deliciously sore. I felt sick as I realized I was naked, and that I might have slept with the stranger. Had I really brought someone home? If so, what was Jett doing in my room, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue shorts, which praised the fact he was well endowed? I pulled my gaze away from him to my naked breasts.

Oh, God.

Suppressing a groan, I slumped back, fighting the urge to pull the covers back over my head and pray for Earth to swallow me whole. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the stranger hadn’t been a stranger at all. Somehow, I had brought my ex back home, even though I had never wanted to sleep with him again—not after he had cheated on me with someone from his past while visiting his brother, who had tried to kill me.

As if sensing my stare, Jett turned around, and my heart skipped a beat. In spite of all the ugly things he had done to me, he was still the most beautiful man I had ever seen. My heart fluttered from his mere presence; all it took was a single glance from him. I stared at his perfect features, inwardly praying for the entire situation to be nothing but a bad dream. But it was indeed Jett: the man who had broken my heart twice. From his green eyes, to his chiseled chest and bulging biceps, to the tribal tattoo covering his left arm and shoulder, he looked like a deadly temptation—an inescapable trap my foolish heart would fall into forever and never escape.

With love comes pain.

“What are you doing here?” I was so shocked that my voice cracked.

“Are you feeling better?” His soft tone reflected his concern. He stepped toward me.

I jumped out of the bed, pressing the cover against my naked body.

“Answer my question, Jett,” I hissed. “What are you doing here?”

For a brief moment, confusion crossed his face, and then it turned into a self-assured smile. “We hooked up last night, remember?” He cocked a brow in amusement, and for a second, I could almost feel the pictures flickering before his eyes.

“What do you mean, we hooked up?” I asked, mortified. It was a stupid question, but I had to ask nonetheless, if only to buy myself time to process the obvious.

Seconds ticked by.

“Jett?”
Please say you didn’t sleep with me. Please. Please!

Peering into his face, I knew I was kidding myself; his smile told the entire story.

Just look at his twitching lips, Stewart. He slept with you...and you enjoyed it.

“You asked me to give you a ride home.” His voice dripped with insinuation as he regarded me with amusement.

I shook my head. I knew I was in denial, and yet I had to give it a try.

“Does that mean we fucked?” I asked calmly.

The corner of his lips twitched again at my choice of words, and his eyes sparkled with trouble.

“Yes, you could say that.” He nodded and inched closer. “You kept calling me your wolf or something. You even begged me for it.”

My cheeks caught fire.

“I did what?” I drew a sharp breath and moistened my lips as I tried to make sense of the situation and my strong reaction to him.

His grin widened. “In case you don’t remember, I’m happy to refresh your memory. We hooked up, we fucked, and then...we fucked some more.” His gaze bored into mine as his lips curled into another heart-dropping smile. “Want to owe me again,
Jenna
?”

Crap. Crap. Crappity crap.

It was official. I had slept with my ex, and I couldn’t even blame it on him, because I had begged him to take me. For the first time since meeting Jett, I wished he’d just tell me more lies. And there I had thought I’d be able to move on from him and his hot body without further incident. Then again, he was my first love. No one had ever made me fall so hard or turned me so stupid. No one had made me feel so starved for sex and
him.
I had returned to him before, which was proof that I couldn’t trust my own judgment. The fact that I had brought him home again, when I didn’t want to, told me that love had made me her bitch and that the only reason I had even considered sleeping with a stranger was because, deep down, I had been looking for a man as attractive as Jett Mayfield. For some reason, I wanted him no matter what. The possibility that I would never be free of my desire to be with him had me fuming.

Anger gripped me—at being so weak, at my heart’s fluttering because Jett was in close proximity, at him smelling so good, and at having to force my lips to stop smiling whenever my gaze brushed his hard body.

My blood began to boil in my veins. The attraction to him had to stop. I was so enraged that I grabbed anything I could find, and it so happened to be my high heel. With a cry of frustration, I hurled it at him, but he dodged it, and it hit the wall.

“Why did you say your name was Check?” I shouted, barely able to contain the wrath in my tone.

If he noticed it, he didn’t show it. Instead, he let out an amused laugh.

“I thought it was fun that we were playing a game,” he said, still wearing that irritating grin of his. “You’ve always been a sore loser.”

“So it was all a game to you? You’re so sick and bored of me that you need role play?” I hissed.

His grin disappeared in an instant. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and a frown began to darken his features.

“You know that’s not true, Brooke,” he said at last. “You like playing games just as much as I do. It has nothing to do with being bored.”

“It has
everything
to do with it.” Inside, I felt like a dam was breaking and at any moment water would slush down and flood me. I balled my hands into fists, unable to contain my anger any longer. “I want you out of my life.” I grabbed his shirt from the floor and threw it at him. He caught it in midair. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my life.”

More confusion crossed his face, followed by dismay, as I took a menacing pace toward him, and shoved him hard.

“It was just a game, Brooke. I was only kidding about you being a sore loser. There’s no need to get upset about it.”

“It’s not about the game. I want you to get out.” I pointed to the door in case I hadn’t made my point clear enough. “Get out of my life.”

It wasn’t the elaborate speech I had prepared in my mind, and I sure as hell I didn’t mean to shout, but everything inside me was shaking—my voice, my hands, my limbs. At any moment, I was going to explode.

“Brooke...” His tone was gentle and soothing, as though he was talking to a child. “What’s going on?” Instead of putting on his damn clothes, he took a step forward.

I flinched. “Stay away from me, Jett.”

I held up a hand to prove my point. Jett stared at it with a hard, defiant expression, but he seemed to respect my need for private space.

“Calm down, baby,” he said.

Before I could stop him, he stepped toward me and touched my shoulders. I shrugged off his hands, recoiling at the physical contact, even angrier that I wanted him to draw me to him and tell me that we’d be all right.

“Don’t you tell me to calm down,” I hissed. “I have every right to be angry at you. You played me. If I had known last night that it was you, I never would have slept with you.”

He drew in a sharp breath. Shock registered on his face, then disbelief. He looked as if I had just slapped him. In a way, I felt the sharpness of my own words, and it pained me as much as it pained him.

“You thought I was someone else?” he asked in a low tone, his brows drawn in disbelief.

The way he said it, I felt almost threatened.

“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth.

“What the fuck, Brooke!”

He released me. Hurt and betrayal shimmered in his eyes. For a second, I felt stunned that I had hit him where it hurt. My heart ached at his pain...until I remembered his betrayal with all its consequences.

“What did you expect, Jett?” I whispered, my voice almost choking me. And there I had been thinking a stranger could make love to me the way Jett had, when it had been him all along, all gorgeous and out of this world. Only, I had forgotten that beauty was an illusion we built inside our heads. The sooner I grasped that and acknowledged it, the faster I’d be able to get away from him.

The silence was deafening, but his answer never came. Instead, he continued to regard me, his gaze betraying his hurt and worry. If I could peer into his soul so easily, then I figured he might at least see the turmoil inside me, and all the things that had crushed my heart, so I turned away, because the magnitude of my love for him had to remain a well-kept secret, or else he could use it against me. Manipulate me. Tell me what I wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t true.

“It’s over,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “You can’t have me anymore. You can’t sleep with me anymore. In fact, I’d rather you just left and never contacted me again.”

He let out an annoyed sigh and pushed his fingers through his dark hair just as I had done the previous night when he had pinned me to the floor. “The last time I checked, we were still together.”

“Then I am ending things right now.” Another sharp pang of pain hit my chest. I turned my gaze to the shaggy rug beneath my feet so I wouldn’t have to see his expression. “Can you please leave now?”

As if sensing that I needed space, he walked back to the open window and leaned against the wall, facing me. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.” His voice was calm, but the dangerous undertones didn’t escape my attention.

I looked up at him. His face was as hard as stone, and his eyes shimmered with something I couldn’t pinpoint. “You know damn right what’s going on.”

“I actually don’t.” He pulled his eyebrows together again and let out an annoyed sigh. “Why don’t you enlighten me, Brooke?” His hard smile belied his anger.

My pulse began to race, but it wasn’t from the physical attraction that was still palpable in the air. Jett was playing games again, and this time it was the clueless card, but I could see through his pretense—more so because I had seen it coming. The thought that he thought he could lie right to my face infuriated me.

“Damn right, you do,” I said through gritted teeth, suppressing the wish to throw something else at him. “I don’t trust you as far as I can spit.”

He inched closer and grabbed my hand. I drew back before he could pull me to him and before his hard body could envelope me, soothing me the way only Jett knew how.

“Brooke.” Another annoyed sigh. “Can you please, for one moment, sit down and explain to me what’s going on? The last time you broke things off, you didn’t have a freaking choice, but this time? Forgive me for asking, but I’m confused.” His voice was hard, his expression detached. I had never seen his stunning green eyes devoid of warmth, and it scared me. His attitude suggested that I was the enemy, as if I was the one causing
him
pain.

“What is there to explain?” I started. “I know.”

“What do you know?” He sounded so sincere I laughed bitterly. He wasn’t just a good liar; he was an excellent one, who could have probably fooled any lie detector.

I shook my head as I stared him down. “I know
everything
, Jett.”

“What do you mean?” He sighed. “What exactly do you
think
you know?”

Now he was turning downright patronizing.

“Fine. If this is the way you want to play.” I smiled bitterly. With the sheet still wrapped around me, I sat across from him and ran a hand through my hair. My eyes settled on him in what I hoped was an icy expression. A few seconds passed. I took a deep breath and released it slowly, then continued, a little calmer, “Did you really think I’d still want to date you after I found out you fucked Tiffany?”

He stared at me, shell-shocked, as though I had just dropped a bomb. I had expected to feel better after the confrontation, but I didn’t. Instead, all the hurt of being cheated on, of being betrayed, returned full force, multiplied by a million.

“I didn’t fuck her,” Jett said at last, and paused, choosing his words carefully as he wiped his brow. “Not recently anyway. I mean, it happened a long time ago.”

“How long ago?” I asked calmly, but the tremble in my voice betrayed my hurt.

“Last year.” His gaze connected with mine, his eyes begging me to understand. “It was before I met you.”

He didn’t even deny they had been lovers, and a year wasn’t as long ago as he made it out to be. Judging from their intimate communication, they still were close. A sudden pang of jealousy pierced my heart.

“Are you still in love with her?”

“What?” He let out an awkward laugh, then stopped, frowning at my hurt reaction. “Is that what this is about? About Ti?” He stared at me in disbelief. “Trust me, Brooke, nothing is going on between us. As I said, it happened a long time ago.”

I snorted as I thought back to the incident at the bar: her lips on his, her tongue in his mouth, the insinuation that she had booked a hotel room for them, the fact that he had wanted to see her, and that she had been pregnant by him.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? How can I trust you?” I whispered and stared at him, unable to comprehend that he was lying to my face. My eyes began to sting again. “You saw her behind my back.”

“What are you...” His eyes widened as realization kicked in.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?” My voice broke.

A short moment passed. For the first time, I noticed that Jett couldn’t look at me. He remained silent again, and in some twisted way, that was worse than a whole chorus of lies. A stray tear ran down my cheek. I wiped at it angrily before he could see it.

“So you won’t even deny that you kissed her?” I exclaimed, ignoring the sharp stab ripping through my chest.

“I didn’t,” he whispered.

“Liar.” I took a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Don’t you understand, Jett? I was there, right in the same room with you, behind the ice sculpture, watching you both, listening to every word. There’s no point in lying. Whatever you have to say, I know the truth.”