I clench my fists, feeling my fingertips jab into my palm.
“Don’t like me talking that way about your boyfriend?”
“What?”She spins around, ponytail whipping. “Are you serious? Do you really think you have any right to be jealous after the way we left things?”
I grind my teeth, my jaws aching. Anger surges through me and, before I know it, I’ve flown across the room. I stop mere inches from her, both of us breathy and way too fucking amped-up.
“So we’re finally going to confront the elephant in the room,” I breathe. “The wayIleft things? If I remember correctly, you were the one who refused to talk to me after the tournament.”
Her mouth hangs open and a crimson sheen moves across her cheeks, filling them. She shakes her head, laughing strangely. “Wow, so you do the sweetest, most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me … and then you turn full jackass. Mood swings much?”
“I didn’t ask you to bring up the past,” I glower, letting out a trembling breath. How the fuck have we gone from hot-and-heavy one second to this bullshit the next? “And, Grace, you need to tell me if there’s anything going on between you two.”
“Are you serious?” She paces away from me, stopping on the other side of the couch. She grips the back, her fingernails digging into the supple leather. “So you own me now, do you?”
“I never said that,” I grumble. “You don’t have to twist every fucking word I say. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“But it wasn’t a question,” she points out angrily. “You said Ihaveto tell you if something’s going on between us. Says who, huh?”
“Says me,” I tell her. “I’m not going to let myself get involved if you’re … Jesus, if you’re playing me again.”
“Playing you,” she repeats coldly. “Playing youagain. Jeez, Harry, you seriously have a warped view of how things went between us, don’t you?”
I can’t explain the protective savage urge that grips me when I think of my red-haired receptionist and Grace together. I haven’t stopped once to think about Grace being with another man, which doesn’t make sense, now that I think about it. Did I just assume she’d been abstinent this whole time or something?
The more important question, though, is why the hell am I reacting like this?
It was supposed to be a game.
Atrick.
“Tell me how it really was, then,” I snap.
She scoffs. “If you don’t know what you did to me, Harry, and if you’re going to stand there and keep on lying after all these years, then I don’t see how it’s my responsibility to explain it to you.”
She struts to the door. I pace over, quicker, and stop in front of it with my hands hanging at my sides.
My fingers twitch with the desire to grab her, to kiss her roughly and transform this pain into passion.
“Is there anybody else?” I demand.
She purses her lips. “No, if you’re that desperate to know, there isn’t. But there might be someday. Because, guess what, Harry? I’m not a naïve little girl anymore. You don’t own me. Now, can you move, please—Ah, ah …”
I wrap my arms around her waist and tug her toward me.
She grabs through my shirt, gripping onto my chest and quivering like she can’t decide if she wants to pull me to her or push me away.
Our lips part and our tongues wage a fierce battle.
Her breasts squash against me, tempting me to reach up and push them together, to slide my hand up her smooth belly and under the fabric of her bra.
I squeeze her thighs, causing her to moan in a stifled way through the kiss.
My manhood blazes and urges me to carry her to the couch.
But before I get a chance, she breaks off the kiss, glaring.
“Harry,” she says sternly. “I mean it this time. Move. Please.”
