Page 94 of Ruthless Game

He eyed me. “You mean the internship you’re only doing to make your parents happy?”

“Shut up,” I said, hating that he was right.

Hating everything.

An idea came to me, filled with rage, and revenge—the kind of revenge that would hurt me as much as it hurt him.

Still.

It was the only way.

I began to head toward shore, leaving him to splash around as he lost his buoyancy and had to steady himself by putting his feet back on the pond floor.

“Emma, where are you going? Emma.”

He followed behind me, swearing as he had to navigate between walking and doggy paddling toward me. Finally, he rose behind me, a looming shadow.

“Emma, what the hell?” He grabbed my shoulder, pulling me around to face him.

“You know how to make it up to me, Max?” I asked as I stared up into his wide, pained blue eyes. Eyes I loved as much as I hated. “Fuck me. Fucking finally put your cock in my pussy and do what you came here to do.”

“Not if you think it means I’ll let you leave,” he said.

Exhaling, I admitted, “I know you won’t. I don’t want you to. I just want you to fuck me. Make love to me, Max. Prove that you love me. Prove you mean it when you say you’ve forgiven me. Show me.”

His jaw hard, he nodded, and then he was scooping me up in his arms and running out of the water, up the beach, and back toward the house.

As he carried me through the door, I sent up a prayer to whoever was listening that this would work—and that I wasn’t making a huge mistake.

35

Lawson

Prove that you love me. Prove that you mean it when you say you’ve forgiven me. Show me.

As I raced up the steps into the house, Emma locked in my arms, her words repeated in my head. She was angry, hurt, and a small voice in my head asked: What if she’s telling the truth?

She couldn’t be, though. Because if she was, and I’d refused to believe her for so long, then that meant that everything that happened after could’ve been avoided.

That all of it—what happened that night with those girls, and worse, losing her for years—had been my fault.

No. For whatever reason, Emma refused to let herself be seen as a cheater. Maybe she’d convinced herself she hadn’t.

That’s ironic, a voice in my head scoffed, but didn’t expand further, and I didn’t want it to.

Forget that. I was finally going to be inside the woman I loved, after years of dreaming about it, and instead of me forcing her, coercing her, she’d asked. No, not asked, demanded.

As I got to the house, I slammed the door behind us and looked down at her. I expected her to say something like, “This isn’t a race, Lawson,” but she was quiet, staring straight forward, like I wasn’t carrying her at all.

That pissed me off. My emotions were all over the place—anticipation, excitement, lust and desire, anger, dread. Something about this felt wrong, but I couldn’t entirely pinpoint why, especially because most of the blood in my brain had transferred to my cock.

Emma shivered.

“You’re cold,” I said flatly, even though I hated that I hadn’t noticed it or seen to her before this. I took the steps, two at a time, up to the bathroom, setting her on the sink counter and going to turn on the shower.

“Stop,” she said. “I’m fine. I want you to warm me up.”

I shook my head. “No. You being cold when we fuck for the first time isn’t right.”