11

Blair

Present

The lights in the warehouse flicker back on. It feels like coming up for air after nearly drowning. Asher just stopped me from being eliminated.

Asher is standing over one of the other players, holding his pendant in his hand. The guy pushes away from him, rising to his feet and storming off in a flood of curse words.

My hand flies to the pendant around my neck. It’s still there. My pulse hammers, and I don’t know if it’s from fear or from feeling Asher’s hands all over me, inside me, driving me to orgasm. The feeling of him pressing his body against mine, pinning me— that should’ve terrified me, too. His words, cruel and commanding, that somehow just drove me wild with need.

But this is different. My whole body is shaking. The last flames of pleasure are dying out inside me, but I can still taste myself on my tongue from where he made me suck his fingers.

I’ve never done anything like that. I’m brimming with fear, shame, and humiliation.

But god, I want more of it. I felt his hard length pushing into me as he played with me, and I just can’t get the sensation out of my head. I’ve only had sex once, and I’ve never felt that pure, wild need to have someone inside me before.

What is wrong with me?

The speakers crackle, and a distorted voice echoes through the warehouse. “Players, return to the main section for assessment.”

I don’t look at Asher as we walk back. I can’t bring myself to after what just happened.

Some players seem elated, others as furious as the guy whose pendant Asher snatched at the last second. The crowd swells as we approach, drunker, louder, pressing forward until the bouncers have to shout to keep them back. Am I imagining it, or are they staring at me even more now?

It doesn’t matter. I keep moving, right toward the exit, while players regroup in a circle.

We’ve only done two challenges, and I’ve already seen Asher kill a man—and felt him ignite something in me I’m not sure I can even begin to control. That terrifies me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a sharp voice calls out.

I glance over my shoulder to see Lex, the leader, watching me. “I quit,” I reply, trying to keep my voice steady.

“You can’t do that,” Asher says. “No one quits halfway through.”

“Then I’ll be the first.”

Lex slowly shrugs. “She’s free to do as she wishes.”

How can I stay when Asher just unlocked that inside me?

I walk through the door and into the dark night, letting the cool air fill my lungs. I make it as far as the side of the warehouse before I stop, my head spinning with a single, chilling thought.

If I quit now, I know what’s waiting for me. I’ll go home, where my parents are trying to marry me off to Wes, some rich, respectable “society-approved” man. Stored away where I can’t get into trouble. Their job will be done. Wes is twenty-seven and ready for his trust fund, which he can’t touch until he’s married. A trust fund marriage—romantic, right?

He rowed crew at college before going into the family business. He’s stocky, square-jawed, and one of those unnaturally blond adult men. My guess is a dye-job. He might be good-looking, but he’s not my type. And the rumors… They say he did something awful to a drunk girl back in college. His father paid the story away, but my friends love to gossip.

That’s my future if I walk away.

Even working full-time at the coffee shop, I don’t have enough to make it to college, not between tuition and rent.

Frozen in place, I feel a hand wrap around my wrist, pulling me back to the present. I turn to find Asher towering over me. I force myself to meet his eyes again, willing the memory of the last thirty minutes to just disappear from my mind.

“You made it through the first two rounds,” he snarls. “Why are you quitting now?”

“Because this isn’t what I signed up for. I didn’t even sign up , in fact!”

I rip my hand away from his grip. I want to feel triumphant at freeing myself, but in my heart I know I could only get away from Asher if he decided to let me.

“You seriously want to throw away your chance at a million dollars?”

“Why do you care? You told me to leave. You were seconds away from taking my pendant and knocking me out of this whole competition!”

I push past him. But his hand closes around mine, jerks me backward around into his body and—

Asher kisses me.

Back inside, it was like he was making a point by not kissing me. But now his lips are pressed against me like he’s claiming his territory.

It feels like it did when we were sixteen, but a million miles away from that too. It’s familiar and foreign all at once, like coming home to a place that’s changed beyond recognition. Asher is taller now, stronger, fiercer than the boy I once knew. His hands roam over me, igniting memories of our past and rewriting them at the same time. The ink on Asher’s arms pulsates as his body tenses.

“Don’t fucking walk away from me, Blair,” he murmurs.

His hand slides around my throat and my breath grows faster.

Shame burns through me. What’s wrong with me that Asher’s strong hands around my neck—strong enough to snap me in half—make me so much wetter? But the shame only makes the ache inside me stronger. Being used, being hunted, being scared—I couldn’t stand to have anyone know that those types of fantasies won’t leave my head. But Asher seems to know it all without me speaking a word.

“You like that, baby? You like how I take control of you?”

I feel my pupils grow wider with lust, the unspoken answer hanging between us. Yes. Yes, I like it so much.

“Then kneel.”

I drop to my knees, obeying him. He grabs my hair and my stomach lurches, pushing me back and flipping me over until my head is down and my ass is in the air. I try to ignore the damp feeling of the concrete beneath my hands and face, and the fact that anyone could walk around the side of the building and see us here.

I exhale hard as he pushes up my skirt and rips down my panties. I’m still sensitive from him touching me back inside, but that same hot, needy ache is already growing again in my core.

“You look so pretty, Blair,” he mocks. “The rich little princess on the ground in the dirt for me, exposed and dripping wet.”

I gasp as I feel him sink to his knees and feel his mouth covering the mound of my pussy, his two big hands easily gripping my hips in place. He spits, coating my already soaked slit with it. My heart hammers harder and faster; this is so dirty, so wrong, but I’m on fire with how good it feels.

“I knew you’d taste this fucking sweet, little Blair.”

It’s raw and animalistic, like he’s taking exactly what he wants from me, and what he wants is my pleasure. He feels no shame, that’s clear from the way his tongue is licking and sucking at every inch of my folds from my sensitive clit down to my entrance. His tongue sinks into me and my wild moan shatters the silence of the night air.

Like some obedient pet who’s learned a lesson, I start to tell him that I’m close, just like he ordered me to back inside the warehouse. “Asher, you’re going to make me come—”

“No.”

I whine in protest as he draws back, stopping me reaching the edge of pleasure.

“Not yet. First I’m going to feel how tight you are around my cock. I’ve waited long enough.”

My stomach knots as I hear him unzip his pants. I don’t want him to know, but I’m barely experienced. I’ve only been with one person, and even that was only once.

Josh. Sweet, loyal Josh, who’d had a crush on me since grade school. After everything with Asher fell apart, I slept with Josh just that one time, hoping it would fill the gap Asher left behind. It didn’t.

And then everything went up in flames.

But now I’m on all fours outside this warehouse, with Asher Stone about to take me and use me. And I’m aching for him to do it.

He rubs against my slit, my arousal coating the head of his cock. I bite my lip so hard I taste copper, because Asher is teasing me and I’m doing everything I can to stop myself screaming out for him to be inside me. His fingers tighten in my hair as he pushes against me, easing the head an inch deeper.

I glance back. Oh my god. The length of his cock is so big. Bigger than Josh’s, which really is my only source of comparison if you don’t count the smutty romance books that my friends and I all download and recommend to each other.

Flames ignite between my legs. The ache starts to pound harder. I can’t stop staring.

He grabs my hair, pushing my head back down toward the earth.

“You feel how wet you are for me, Blair? I should’ve known. I always kind of suspected. I saw how you looked when we did all that thrill-seeking shit. I always suspected you were turned on by it. Now I know that was true.”

Pain explodes in my lip as I realize I’m still biting down, because he feels too big. Like there’s no way I can fit this kind of thickness inside me.

But I feel myself stretch around his girth as he sinks into me, his hips knocking against my ass. The sensation explodes through my core, the feeling of being entirely filled up and used. He slaps my ass. My cheeks burn with humiliation and pleasure.

I’ve barely caught my breath. Then it really begins.

He begins thrusting into me, drawing back and forth, my walls aching with each movement. It’s brutal, all-consuming, growing harder and faster with each minute. My vision blurs in the darkness as the flame in my core grows wilder.

“Is it how you always imagined it, Blair? So wet around my cock while I fuck you hard on the ground out here?”

My heart is going crazy in my chest, my brain intoxicated in the pleasure coursing through my body, so much so that I can’t stop myself whimpering out answers that my rational mind would never tell.

“Yes,” I whine into the dirt. “Yes, Asher. All those times I touched myself and—and wished it was you…”

A dark moan of pleasure escapes his lips behind me, and he slams into me harder, the head of his cock reaching a place so deep inside me that I can’t stifle a scream. His hands move from my hair to my throat to my breasts, squeezing and pinching until my whole body feels on fire.

“Fuck, Blair, there’s no other woman on this planet like you,” he mutters. “I should’ve been your first, Blair. We should’ve been each other’s only ones. I want to kill every other man who touched you. But I’ll accept being your last instead.”

I can barely process what he’s saying. Asher hates me, for whatever stupid reason, even after he forgot me and left me behind. But he’s speaking like I’m a goddess that he lives to worship, even while he uses me here in the dirt. What is going on?

I can’t think about it any longer, because the heat inside me has grown to a breaking point. Every slam of his hips, every pinch of his fingers is driving me harder and deeper into a void of wild, beautiful oblivion.

“I feel you getting so tight around me. Come for me, Blair.”

My core tightens so hard around his cock, and the orgasm takes me.

Warmth floods me, reaching every inch of my fingertips. I’m so terrifyingly vulnerable in this moment: outside with my face in the dirt, at Asher’s mercy, lost in the high of this orgasm. And that just makes it feel all the sweeter.

I gasp as Asher grabs me, pulling me back tight against his body as he continues to thrust into me. “I love how my little slut comes when I tell her to,” he whispers in my ear. “Now I’m going to fill you up with my cum, and you’re going to take every drop like a good girl.”

Fire surges through me all over again as I feel him tense, and my core grows warmer as his seed fills me.

I gasp for air as his body stills. Asher Stone just came inside me.

I’ve never felt anything like that.

Part of me wants to stay here, floating in the mist of pleasure that still tingles through my body. But reality claws at me, and I blink hard, trying to pull myself back.

He pants as he pulls out and rises back to his feet. My face is on fire as I scramble to my knees, pulling my skirt and top back into place.

This doesn’t change things.

This can’t change things, right?

For a moment, there’s only tense silence between us.

“Come back inside,” Asher says finally.

I swallow, grounding myself.

“Fine,” I say slowly, “but this changes nothing. I’m here to win.”

His eyes darken. Is that what he wanted to hear? Or not?

“Game on. I’m going to enjoy watching you crash and burn.”

Anger flares in me. After just making me feel this way, nothing has changed between us. Which is fine, but I can’t stop the irrational fire of irritation that comes with it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’ve been trying to tear me down since we got here.”

Asher’s expression hardens. “You think I’m the only one with a vendetta? Don’t pretend you’re some innocent in all of this, Blair. You’re here because you wanted a thrill, something more than your picture-perfect life.”

I glare back at him. “If that’s what you think, then you don’t know me at all. You have no idea what it’s like to be me, to have every part of your life dictated by someone else.”

He laughs, cold and biting. “Poor little rich girl. You know what I think? I think you like having someone to blame for your choices. Makes it easier, doesn’t it?”

“I came here to break free from the life everyone else decided for me.”

He shakes his head, his gaze like steel. “You say that, but the second it gets hard, you’re ready to run back to that life. You’d rather stay trapped than fight your way out.”

I draw in a breath, forcing down the surge of anger. “And you’d rather destroy yourself than admit you still care about anyone.”

His jaw clenches, and for a moment, he looks like he might say something. But he just steps back, and I feel a strange hollowness settle in my chest as we head back toward the door. Neither of us speaks.

Everyone is staring when we re-enter the warehouse.

Lex’s smile widens as we take our places in the circle, making my skin crawl. I glance sideways at Asher. He’s watching me, a dark, twisted expression on his face.

Was walking back in here a huge mistake?

Lex circles the row of players. When he reaches me, he leans in, his whisper chilling. “The Collective is pleased with you, Miss Bennett. Personal conflicts between players always add intrigue to the games. But this…this is something special. Keep it up, and you and Asher will be tonight’s stars.”

My stomach drops. I keep my eyes forward, my face blank, as his words sink in.

I’d already wanted to beat Asher at his own game. But now…

Is he using me? Tormenting me and touching me just to make sure the crowd sees us as the main event?

I’m about to find out.