Page 50 of Worth Every Game
The question strikes like a lightning bolt and I snatch my hands back, curling them into fists.I’ve massively fucked up.He thinks he’s won the game, and now he’s expecting me to jump into bed with him. It’s no wonder he thinks that. I totally lost control. Didn’t stick to the plan. In fact, I veered so far off the plan that I can’t even see it anymore.
I fucking failed.
Until now, I’d managed to avoid thinking about my dreadful interview with Robert Lloyd. I’d managed to put it out of my mind, distracting myself with makeup and shoes and poker andJack fucking Lansen,but now, in the face of this new humiliation, it all comes flooding back in bright technicolour.
This is what I do, isn’t it? Fuck stuff up. Self-sabotage.I am fucking useless. I fail at everything I try. Not only did I screw up the biggest opportunity of my career, but I can’t even get Jack Lansen, London’s biggest playboy, to beg me for sex without suffering a mind-blowing orgasm of my own.How pathetic is that?
Without looking at him, I slide off his lap. He eyes me cautiously, like I’m a bomb that might go off at any moment, as he stands and adjusts himself. He’s still hard—rock-fucking solid—and from the way his trousers are straining, his dick must be enormous.
I’d be lying if I said part of me wasn’t screaming,yes.Yes, I want to come upstairs with you. But not tonight. I won’t let myself down again. I refuse to be like all those other women he persuades into his bed, losing their heads when he’s around.Even though I am, and I already have. But right now, I have a chance to regain at least the semblance of control.
I stand taller and meet his gaze head on. “I didn’t beg.”
“Huh?”
“You haven’t won. I didn’t beg you for sex. Those were the rules. And I won’t beg. Ever. I don’t want to come upstairsand I don’t want to sleep with you.” I’m being too emphatic, speaking too loud and fast, desperately over-compensating for the orgasm, which is just another of my failures, none of which Jack could never understand.
A bemused look crosses his face. “You just came on m—”
“It wasn’t real. I faked it,” I lie.
Tension zaps between us, and Jack’s eyes narrow. “Okay.” He stretches the word and it drips with an unspoken air of disbelief, but he doesn’t push me on it.
My eyes drift down to his crotch, where a dark patch spreads across the fabric, clear evidence of my orgasm.Oh, shit. I panic internally. I can’t handle the depravity of it, right there on his fucking trousers.
I dare a glance at him, which only makes his gaze dip to where I've been focusing, and I see the flash of awareness when he notices it too. “You’ve made a mess of me,” he purrs.
The shame that flushes through me is so intense, I can’t bear it. I need to get rid of the proof that this ever happened, right fucking now.
“I’ll clean it,” I gush, stepping up to him. “I’ll take them to the dry-cleaners.” My sense of self-preservation must have clicked off-line, because my hands drift towards his waistband as though I mean to strip him right here and now. “Please, let—”
“El.” He says my name like a warning as he moves back. “If you don’t want to see this over the finish line, then you need to step away from the trousers. My dick is on a hair trigger here.”
I retract my wandering hands and he waits as if expecting me to say something, but I’m so caught up in my own head, plagued by self-recriminations, that I can’t speak.
Jack quietly assesses me, and although his gaze is gentle, we can’t connect on any real level while this game is in play. When I say nothing, he raises a brow, and says softly, “I can recognise a real orgasm, El.”
The arrogance.But he’s probably seen a million of them.Givena million. Regret swirls like a snowstorm, threatening to bury me.I’m just another number to him.
I’m too humiliated to speak. My throat swells, a great sob keen to leak out.Fuck. It’s the orgasm messing with my head, raising all sorts of shitty emotions. I want to cry, but I will not let him see it.Damn him and damn this stupid fucking game. Why did I ever agree to play?
His stance softens as he rubs at the back of his neck, and somehow I know he registers everything I’m feeling, despite my best attempts to conceal it.God, I’m a fool. A deep, cramping ache runs from my belly to my throat.If he so much as touches me right now, I’ll burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, closing the distance between us, reaching out as if to draw me into a hug.
I hold up a hand to block his approach. “Don’t touch me,” I snap, my breaths coming fast. “I said no touching.”
Jack retreats, a frown marring his forehead, and I understand his obvious confusion, because one second I’m trying to undo his trousers, and the next I’m telling him to keep his distance. I’m past the limits of rational behaviour. “All right,” he says slowly, his palms open and raised, padding the air as though I’m a bull who might charge him and he wants to back the fuck away, little by little. “I don’t want to upset you.” He glances at his watch. “It’s late. We should go to bed. Separately.” He dips his chin in farewell, and when I don’t respond, he strides from the room.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Before I can question it, I’m following him, each step blasting pain through the balls of my feet in these damn stupid heels, anger burning through me like lit petrol.
“Even if I wanted to come upstairs with you, which I don’t, I wouldn't.” I spit the words.
Jack halts in the hall, then turns back to me slowly, and as he does, I stiffen, bracing for some kind of showdown. My hands rest on my hips. I’m on the offensive and I can’t hold back any longer.
“I don’t want to be the person you come home to, when you’re out there”—my hand flails so violently towards the front door that I wonder if it could actually come off my wrist—“doing whatever you want with whoever you want. I refuse to be another woman on your list of conquests.” I almost scream this last part, and somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice is whispering, ‘Stop it. Why are you acting like a crazy woman?This is supposed to be a game’. But I’m so embarrassed, so angry, so filled with shame, that I’m powerless to act any other way.
An amused smirk has crept its way over Jack’s face while I’ve been talking, and it completely knocks me off. But when I don’t smile back, his amusement vanishes, and he tilts towards me, like he’s eager to hear whatever I’mnotsaying. Like the fact I’m standing here in his hall, staring at him, matters to him.