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I didn’t watch him leave. All my attention was on the man sitting beside me. He took a large gulp of his drink.
“He likes you,” he said, once Lucien was out of hearing range.
“Jealous?” I shot back immediately.
A smirk crawled onto his face, and he chuckled, his wide chest rumbling with it. “He wants to fuck you, Lila.”
My stomach clenched, goosebumps breaking out over my skin. My breath left me in a whoosh. His words were spoken dangerously low, although the harshness in his voice could not be mistaken.
“How would you know?” I retorted, angry and confused. He played with my feelings, turning my emotions into a little game of his. Maddox had me in knots, twisting me around like a little plaything.
He grunted, shaking his head, and then he let out a laugh. As if he was sharing an inside joke with himself. “I’m a man, like him. I know what he was thinking about when he looked at you like that.”
“Maybe he wasn’t thinking about sex. Maybe he’s a gentleman. Unlike you.” I was playing with fire, I knew that. I was testing him, testing us.
“I dare you,” he whispered so softly, I almost missed it. Maddox looked down at his glass, his fingers clenched around it. Even in the dim lights, I could see the way his knuckles were starting to turn white.
He was giving me a dare now?
He didn’t finish his sentence, and I wondered if he was contemplating his dare. Maddox’s jaw flexed from obvious frustration. For a brief moment, I thought maybe he wasn’t angry at me. Maybe, he was angry at himself. He was fighting himself. Could it be that the problem wasn’t me?
He drank the rest of his drip in one gulp and then slammed his glass on the counter, before swiveling around in his stool to face me. Maddox stood up and walked a step closer to me, until my knees were touching his strong thighs. He leaned forward, caging me in between the counter and his body. Our gaze locked, and he licked his lips. He had me captivated for a moment until he mercilessly broke the spell.
“I dare you to sleep with him.”
I reared back in shock. Wh-at? No, I must have misheard him. That couldn’t be…
“What?” I whispered, my throat dry and my tongue suddenly heavy in my mouth.
Maddox’s eyes bore into mine, staring into my soul. When he spoke again, his deep accented voice danced over my skin dangerously. “I dare you to fuck him, Lila.”
A tremble started in my core and then moved through my body like a storm. Not just a quiet storm. A tsunami of emotions hit me all at once, reckless in its assault. I submerged under the dark waves, suffocating, and then I was being split open so viciously, it sent tiny cracks of my heart and fissures of my soul in all directions. I clamped my teeth together to stop myself from saying something –anything that would make it worse.
We had done too many dares to simply count on our fingers. Countless silly dares over the years, but we had never dared each other to sleep with other people. Granted, I had asked him to kiss a girl once; they made out, but it was years ago. But our dares had never crossed that line.
Sex… that was never on the table. We never explicitly talked about it, but it was almost an unspoken rule.
Why would he even ask me to do such a thing?!
“What’s with that look, Lila?” he taunted.
My eyes closed. I refused to look at him, to look into his beautiful eyes and see nothing but pitch-black darkness. He wasn’t looking at me like he used to. The light in his eyes was gone.
It scared me.
It hurt me.
It was destroying the rest of what was left of me.
“Look. At. Me.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to see the hurt in my eyes.
“Open your eyes, Lila,” he said in his rich baritone voice.
I did as I was commanded. He crowded into my personal space, forcing me to inhale his scent and feel the warmth of his body. “Are you serious? Or are you already drunk?” I asked quietly. It was hard to breathe with him this close.
“I never take back a dare.”
And I never lose. He knew that. We were both very competitive, and to this day, neither of us had backed down from a dare.
Maddox’s hand came up, and he cupped my jaw. His fingers kissed my skin softly. He smiled, but it didn’t match the look in his eyes. “What’s wrong? You don’t want to do it?”
“I don’t play to lose.” Asshole.
Maddox leaned closer, his face barely an inch away from mine. Our noses were almost touching. My heart fluttered when he tipped my head back. Take back your dare. Take back your dare, Maddox. Don’t make me do this.
