Page 102 of Twisted Little Game

And I feel my heart following after him, like he’s the center of the whole fucking world.

The long hall that leads down from the entryway is dim, and as we walk forward past the archway to the front room, Weston and Sevan are in there, kicking back on the sofa by the fireplace.

Weston glances over, and from where he’s sitting, I have no idea if he can see everything on Tate’s skin.

“Yo. How was the festival? Home early? We’re going to head over in a little while.”

“Best night of my life,” Tate calls toward them, continuing down the hallway.

“Damn,” Weston says. “Guess Sev and I need to go check it out, huh?”

I give him a little salute and continue down the hall to where Tate is starting to walk up the stairs. I glimpse Rayne in the kitchen, but other than that, we don’t meet any other guys along the walk up to the shower.

Once we’re upstairs in the shower, under the hot spray of the water, I wash and massage his skin. I take care to stroke attentively around his hole, pushing on him where I know he must be very sore.

And then he washes me, too.

My first instinct is to stop him.

He’s touching me in a way I’ve never let previous partners do.

Not that you are my partner.

You are…

I don’t know the right word in English for it. Damn my brain.

Sex, for me, was always finished after it was done. I took great pleasure in making my partners come, as many times as they needed, but close intimacy afterward always felt suffocating afterward.

Tate is seeing all of me, on his own terms.

Not my terms.

His fingertips slide over my back, over the longest, thickest scar I have.

“Can I ask you…” he murmurs, as he touches it. “Nevermind.”

“The scar is from my father,” I tell him simply.

Something no one else knew, other than my mother, and Maks.

My heart pounds as Tate pushes his warm palm on my spine, leaning over to kiss along the area.

“I’m sorry, Roman.”

“It was a long time ago. I needed to be reprimanded. It was the only time I refused to do a task for my father, when I was fourteen.”

“You’ve never refused, other than once?”

“He wanted me to give a cyanide-laced chocolate bar to my friend at school. My father didn’t like the way my friend’s parents did business. He killed them, a few weeks later. But I never gave my friend the poison.”

“Jesus,” Tate says.

I rest my forehead against the cold tile of the shower as Tate strokes his hands over my back, massaging me now.

And suddenly, I feel something break open inside me.

He doesn’t even ask me to, but…