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Cassie let out a soft snort. “Only because romance makes you uncomfortable. I’m surprised you agreed to go out for a meal.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m growing up.”
“Or maybe you just couldn’t say no to Mexican food.”
“Yeah, it’s more that than anything else.”
“You have to let me know how it goes.”
I sipped at my drink and nodded. “I will.”
“I’m impressed that he worked up the nerve to ask you out. I didn’t think he had it in him. Especially since you’re sort of scary.”
I felt my lips flatten. “I am not scary.”
She only laughed, the heifer.
More chatting and teasing went on, and then Ava blurted out, “Ooh, we should play Truth or Dare.”
Stuart held up one finger. “I am not doing a sexy crawl on the floor again.”
“But you were so good at it,” Max taunted.
“I haven’t played that in ages,” said Cassie. She glanced at Ava, who was grabbing a small box from one of the kitchen drawers. “Remind me of the rules again.”
“They’re pretty basic,” Ava told her, taking two piles of cards from the box and setting them on the table. “You get the option of whether you want to pick a Truth card or a Dare card. If you pick a Truth card but don’t want to answer the question written on it, you have to grab a Dare card and do whatever it says. The penalty for refusing is to … um, let’s think of something different from last time … Ooh, you have to remove your top.”
Cassie hummed. “Good one. We’ll be looking at naked chests in no time. Guys always shy away from the dares.”
And so the game began.
“Truth or dare?” Ava asked Stuart, who then picked up a Truth card. But when he didn’t want to answer the question of whether he’d ever lied to any person in the room, he had to grab a Dare card.
“Shit,” he muttered. “It says I’ve got to put my hand on the inner thigh of the person on my left, and I’ve got to keep it there for the rest of the game.” He gave Cassie an apologetic look.
She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Stuart, it says my thigh, not my groin, just do it.”
“Fine,” he said. “Don’t tell Donnie, he’ll give me all kinds of shit.”
Yeah, her boyfriend totally would, game or not. They’d only been together a couple of months, but Donnie was super possessive of Cassie.
Soon enough, it was my turn. And since I didn’t want to answer the question on my Truth card, I took one from the Dare stack. My stomach dropped as I read it aloud, “You have to fake an orgasm for fifteen seconds.”
Stuart straightened with a grin. “Oh, this’ll be good. Maya never shies away from this shit.”
No, generally, I didn’t. Purely because I didn’t embarrass easily. But when you were conscious that one of the people in the room had in fact seen you come, faking the whole thing felt weirder than it should have.
I couldn’t exactly let Ryder sense that, though, could I? So I gave the dare my all—moaning, arching, throwing my head back, almost laughing at Stuart’s ‘That’s it, baby, come.’ Then Ava announced that the fifteen seconds were up, and a laugh bubbled out of me.
(Ryder)
Jesus fucking Christ.
Clenching my hands beneath the table, I drew in a breath through my nose as I silently willed my dick to stand down. There was no chance of that happening. It didn’t matter that Maya had been faking the orgasm. Not when the little scene had brought back so many explicit memories. Now X-rated images were dancing around my brain, and I was caught between wanting to claim her mouth and wanting to punch Stuart for calling her ‘baby’ and ordering her to come.
That was my job.
Except it wasn’t.
Fuck, I shouldn’t be here. I’d never considered myself masochistic before. But choosing to spend hours around the very thing I was struggling to resist, taking in her scent with every breath … I was just torturing myself really, wasn’t I?
Adding to the torture for me, every man at the table now knew what my woman looked like when she came. Okay, so she wasn’t my woman. But it often felt like she was, which had always been part of the problem.
I could look at a beautiful girl, admire her in my head, and imagine having her beneath me, but I never saw a woman and had to have her. There was no surge of crushing need propelling me to take and possess. Until Maya. She took my control from me. And I didn’t like it. It made me think of my old man. Made me feel like him.
He’d cheated on my mother left, right, and centre. He hadn’t cared that it hurt her so badly she left him. I’d always thought it fucked up that he’d whined how she never understood that a man had needs and couldn’t always help himself. I’d branded it bullshit. Branded him a weak motherfucker. So the relentless, blinding need that struck me the first moment I laid eyes on Maya … it hadn’t been welcome. Especially when I hadn’t been in an emotional place to offer anything to anyone. I still wasn’t in that place. Not fully.
