Game of Hearts (Stacked Deck Book 3)

by Emilia Finn

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he challenges. He grits his teeth, snaps them right by my face. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

  “Why not? Money’s money, right? Who’s to say what I can and can’t do with my body?”

  “I say! I fucking say.”

  “You,” I buck my hips, “don’t,” I buck again, “get an opinion. You get absolutely no say in what I do with my body. Now let me go before I make a scene and embarrass you and your sensitive heart.”

  “How much do you cost?” His tone is cold, a coldness he’s never used with me before. “How much do you cost, Kincaid? Should I have already been paying for your time?”

  “More than you can afford.” Stupid. Stupid! Shut up! “You stopped sparring with me. You won’t dance with me. You don’t watch movies with me anymore. You stop grappling the second I’m in the gym. Tells me that you’re either a pussy, or that you can’t afford me.”

  I shove him off one final time, but I’m done letting him pull me back. I shove him so hard that he stumbles back a full six feet, then I lower my head, lift my shoulders, and run. Along the remainder of the alley, out the end, only to find my car sitting exactly where I left it… but beside it, a faded purple Plymouth Barracuda.

  “Oh god!” I cry out.

  He knew. He parked there, he knew I was near, so the second he saw me inside, he knew.

  I spin when he runs out of the alleyway. “You knew! You knew that was me dancing.”

  “I already told you I knew.” He stalks forward. Dangerous. Dark.

  If he was anyone else, any man I didn’t spend my life growing up with, I’d be terrified of the threat in his eyes. But this is Mac. It’s goofy and crazy Mac Blair.

  He continues forward with broad shoulders. Long strides. Wide hips. His muscles throb and grow as he moves, his angular jaw clenches and releases. Then he pins me to the side of my car. Folds me back until my head rests on the roof. His eyes drop to my throat. Study what I’m certain is my pulse pounding against the delicate skin.

  Then he dives in and bites hard enough that I cry out.

  I swear I don’t lift my legs on purpose. I swear on my life, on his, on my family’s, even. I don’t lift my legs on purpose, but still, they rise, they wrap around his hips, and when his hands come down to cup my ass, I simply… give up. I lay back and cry.

  Not a pleasurable cry. Not the cry of a victor. But the kind of cry that I’ve held onto for so long, because I’m in love with a boy that doesn’t love me back.

  “What?” He pulls away.

  The danger in his eyes is replaced with the boy. The kindness. The best friend. His hands remain on my ass, but it’s more to hold me up now than it is to control me.

  “Did I hurt you?” He reaches up with one hand, slides his fingertips, feather light, against my skin. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. I swear I am.”

  “You didn’t hurt me.” I swipe a hand over the tears that slide over the side of my face and tickle the skin near my ear. “Not like you think.”

  “What then?” He leans closer. Tries to catch my eyes as I stare up at the starlit sky. “Lucy? Explain it to me.”

  “Why won’t you ever touch me? Why won’t you make a move? Why won’t you kiss me, when I’ve given you a million chances to?”

  “Uh…” He squeezes my ass. Licks his lips.

  “I mean other than tonight! You dance with me twice, you get a…” Heat fills my cheeks. “Ya know? Your dick.”

  “My dick?” Without even looking, I know that he’s smiling. “What about it?”

  “It goes hard,” I whimper. “It goes hard when we dance. But you walk away. There was that time it went hard when we were grappling, but you walked away. You break my fucking heart because you act like I’m not worthy of your time. Maybe I’m not beautiful like my cousin, and maybe I’m not as loud or confident as she is, but I swear, I’m worthy.”

  A growl plays at the back of his throat. A threat. Disgust. “You ask why I stopped grappling with you, but then you mention how my cock grows when you’re near. You ask about the dance thing, but you know I can’t control the way I go hard for you.” He shakes me.

  He literally shakes me.

  “I can’t not react to you. That’s why I stopped grappling! I’m not supposed to rock a fucking boner every time my best friend is within touching distance. I couldn’t control the way my body yearns for yours when we touched, so we stopped touching. I was doing the right fucking thing.”

  I lift my head. Study his desperate eyes.

  “You’re worthy,” he growls. “You’re way too expensive for me, too precious to dirty up with stained hands.” He releases me, but I stay up, because of my legs around his hips.

  He lifts his hands between us, shows me the palms. “Stained, Lucy. From working in a garage. Callused, black, dirty, and no matter how much I wash them, I can’t get them clean for you.” He lowers his hands, but only to grab the hem of his shirt. Swallowing his nerves, he lifts the fabric, shows off the lightening scar. I see muscle, I see a history, I see strength, but I know that’s not what he’s showing.

  “Broken,” he hisses. “So fucking broken, but you’re wrong about one thing. I can’t get over it. It’s not the heart that I’m caught up on, not the surgery. Not the fact I’m weaker than I should be. Not even the title fights that I’ll never get to compete for. All of that, I can let go. It’s easy.”

  “Then what?” I swipe more tears from my face. “What are you caught up on? Because I swear, I’ve listened to you bitch for almost a decade.”

  His cheeks color. They warm. They make my heart tumble.

  “You.” He presses a hand to my chest. Open palm, flat in the space between my breasts. “You. I’m caught up on you. Because I can’t afford you.”

  “I’m not for sale!” I lose my ever-loving shit, release my legs and stand on my own two feet. “I’m not a fucking whore, Blair! You don’t have to afford shit, because I’m not for sale.”

  “You’re not asking for money to be dropped on the bedside table on my way out,” he agrees in an infuriatingly calm voice, “but you still deserve a certain life. You deserve a pretty home, health insurance premiums that don’t send us broke. You deserve to have a man who can take care of you, who can buy enough kibble to feed a mutt Great Dane without counting pennies or taking a third job. I would,” he adds. “I would take the third job, I would do anything to make you comfortable, but you deserve a man that shouldn’t need to do that.”

  On a burst of anger, he stabs a hand through his dark hair. “I can’t give you anything, Lucy! I swear, money in my world is like sand in my palm. I can pick it up, but it leaks. Instantly. Straight through my fingers, it floats on the wind, and just a moment later, my hands are empty, and I have no clue if it was even there at all.”

  “Money.” My heart pounds with painful throbs that almost take my breath away. “It’s about money?”

  He stares into my eyes. Grits his jaw. Nods. “It’s always about money.”

  “So, in your mind, there’s a price beside my head? You don’t want me because of my wit, or my brains…” I swallow. Look down. “Not my legs. Not my movie choices, or my fight ability. Not even the fact I could dance for you, because I swear I think of you when I practice. There is nothing about me or my personality that is redeemable. Just my ticket price?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” he snaps. “I want everything about you. Do you want my truths, Kincaid? Then you should know I’ve wanted you longer than I’ve wanted to be a champion fighter. Fuck,” he throws a hand up, “I don’t even care about fighting. I just care about the payday – why? So I can take care of you! You want more truth? I want you so much that my heart aches, and that has nothing to do with my surgery or meds or my faulty body. I’ve wanted you, watched you, since I was too young to know pulling my dick would feel good. But don’t worry,” he says almost cheerfully. Perhaps manically. “I learned. Oh man, did I learn. What was I?” he ponders. “Thirteen? Maybe fourteen, the first
time I made myself come while I thought of you. My imagination has never suffered, and you always wore those little shorts.”

  He looks down between us, and before I can process his words, he snaps my jeans open and reveals them. “The lock-in,” he says, referring to our annual gym sleepovers. The adults – my parents, uncles, aunts – host a sleepover once a year, so the kids get to party it up with bad food and soda. “The lock-in,” he repeats. “You asked me to grapple with you, so I did.” He groans. “Of course I did. I can’t say no to you! After that, you sat with your cousin, ate pizza, wound the stringy cheese around your tongue. Twenty feet away, you sat all the way over there, while Ben and I sat on our own, but you did sinful things with that cheese, and you stared into my fucking eyes.”

  “You walked away,” I choke out.

  “I sure fucking did! I ran. Straight into the locker room before I got caught walking around your family’s gym with a stiff dick. I locked myself away, dropped my shorts, and for the first time in my life, I whacked off and thought of a girl. I thought of you. And I swear,” he sneers. “It felt so fucking good.

  “After that, I watched you sleep. We all had our own sleeping bags, but you and Smalls squeezed into one, faced each other, held hands. So beautiful, so pure and innocent, while I was in my bag thinking things that were so far from innocent. But while you slept, I watched over you.”

  He leans into me. Grits his teeth. “You have nightmares. Not the big, loud, screaming kind, but the kind like when a dog sleeps. You know how their legs twitch, and little whimpers escape their throats? That’s what you do, so I kept watch to keep the monsters away. I couldn’t know what was in your head, and I couldn’t ask and let on that I was watching, so I did what I could. I kept guard.”

  “Mac…” I swallow. “Why not just—”

  “Do you honestly think I don’t notice you?” he snaps. “I know everything about you! I know about your secret hatred of The Princess Bride, but you watch it because Smalls loves it so much. Because that’s you, isn’t it? You’ll do anything to make your friends happy. I know about your secret love of dance. Your family knows you dance, but no one else knows what it means to you, right up in your heart. I know that you use the same hair tie every single day.”

  He draws my eyes down to the purple tie on my wrist. “Or if it’s not the same one, then you bought in bulk, and use the same kind every day. I don’t know why you do that, but I noticed it. I know that when you take your hair down, which I fucking love, by the way, the way it cascades like a waterfall, I know that you store the hair tie on your right wrist.”

  He lifts his wrist. Shows off a thin leather band he’s been wearing for years. “So I do the same. It’s pathetic, but it makes me smile, so fuck you if you think it’s dumb.”

  “I don’t…” I swallow. “I don’t think it’s—”

  “I never not noticed you. And tonight, I knew you were you before I even looked into those fake eyes. I’m fucking obsessed with you, so for you to think a little makeup and a wig would confuse me, you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

  “I thought you were watching the random dancing girls,” I whisper. “It hurt my feelings, because you were watching the girls.”

  “Just you.” He uses the flat of his palm – his stained, black palm – to sweep tears from my cheek. “I’ve never not noticed you, but there’s a massive fucking chasm between the things I want and the things I can have. You’re the former, and I’ve already accepted that I’ll live my life twenty feet away, tugging on my cock and watching you do filthy things with your tongue when the cheese is running away.”

  “You don’t have to stay away.” Bravely, when I so rarely am, I grab his hand and move it to my chest. I flatten it over my breast, use my own hand to make his squeeze, and I stare defiantly into his eyes when they widen. “Nobody said you can’t touch. You hurt me when you ignore me.”

  “I can’t.” He lifts his hand away as though I’ve electrocuted him. “I-I-I can’t.”

  “Yes, you fucking can.” I grab his hand and slam it back down. With my other hand, I reach up and thread my fingers in his hair.

  I attempt to pull him closer, but he’s stronger than me. New heart and all, he’s always been stronger.

  “Just kiss me, Mac. Fuck. Why is this so—” I grunt when he refuses to come closer. When he twists his head out of my hand, then takes his hand off my boob, only to place it on my hip. “Mac! Stop being such a fucking prude.”

  “Not being a prude.” He lifts his hands off my body completely, steps back for the first time tonight, and places three feet between us. “I’m doing what I said I would always do. I’m taking care of you.”

  He steps in, but only to move me from the door. His hand wraps around my hip, the other, he uses to tug my keys free and slide them into the lock.

  He opens the door, tosses my forgotten bag onto the passenger seat, then places the keys back into my palm. “Get in. I’ll follow you home.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Follow me to your place. We can do it there.”

  He scoffs. Shakes his head. Then presses his hand to the top of my head to fold me into the car. “No, your house, because then we can’t. I will not touch you, Lucy. Never, because you deserve better. Get in, buckle up. I’ll follow you out.”

  “I won’t go home.” I’ve skipped sexy, tempting, even commanding. Now I’m heading toward foot-stomping. “You said you want me, which means we’re going to do this. Whether you like it or not, this is happening.”

  “So fucking romantic.” He rolls his eyes. “Say that again on Valentine’s Day, won’t you? It’ll make my heart go all pitter-patter. Get in the fuckin’ car.” He shoves me so hard that I fall, and when he lifts my feet in, he slams the door so the car rocks on the chassis.

  Angry, humiliated, and ready to tear him apart, I crank the window down with grunts of exertion, because the car is old and so are all of its components. “This isn’t over, Mac Blair. Fuck you if you think you get to declare my worth.”

  “Shut up.”

  He says it so simply, so meanly, that I recoil.

  “Turn the damn car on, lock the doors, drive the fuck home.” He stares so hard that I feel the heat on the side of my face.

  My stomach rolls, and my heart thuds. But my shaking hands… they undo me.

  Humiliation stings as I stab the keys into the ignition and turn my shitty car on. When he’s satisfied that I’ve given up on my pursuit of sullying him, he jogs around my car to his and starts his roaring engine. It’s so loud, so demanding, that it drowns out the waves that whoosh through my brain.

  I sit in mine for a moment. Staring at my shaking hands. Loathing the music that plays through my stereo. But then he presses down on the gas so his car snarls and rocks on its wheels from the power in the beefy engine.

  He’s cussing me out and telling me to move my ass, and somehow, he’s made it so even his car sounds mad.

  Giving up, I push my car into reverse and back out of my parking spot. I don’t wait for him as I approach the street while he backs out of his spot. He’s there, he’s loud and demanding, but I don’t wait for him. I pull onto the blacktop and head toward Main Street. Through the single set of traffic lights, past the gas station, past the bakery that is just starting their day. I drive across the train tracks, head toward the edge of town, and all the while, an angry muscle car nips at my heels.

  I pull up to the estate gates that protect my home, punch the security code into the panel, and listen to the buzz that has been present in my life since… forever. I wasn’t born here, but we moved in when I was only a baby.

  Any other day, under any other circumstances, I might wave as Mac continues on his way home. But fuck him. He’s a prick. So I pull through the gates as soon as they part enough to fit my small car, and because I’m feeling petty, I flash a middle finger as he idles at the gates and waits me out.

  All of the lights are out, in my home and those that surround it. The people inside will be
up in a short while to start their day with a run, but for right now, everyone is asleep, and the world is silent but for the rolling engine of the fucking muscle car that Mac ‘found’ a couple years ago.

  The gates close as I pull into my driveway and kill the engine. I cut my lights, collect my things, and all the while, Mac remains, with his lights illuminating my estate so I won’t trip on a hydrangea bush.

  God forbid I fall and hurt myself.

  Fuck him for thinking he gets to decide what’s best for me. Fuck him for deciding anything that doesn’t end with us exploring what we both want. He admits it! He admits he wants me. He’s just too much of a fucking coward to take what I’m so clearly offering.

  Fuck him for that too.

  And since he knows my secret – Rhino’s Club – he now holds power over me the same way my caller does.

  These men know my secrets, they command me in ways no one else does. And even after tonight’s work and my declaration on the phone that I’m done, I still owe the latter six hundred dollars in dance money.

  Mac

  All the Whys

  I sit beside Ben on the grassy knoll near the lake about two hours after dropping Lucy off at her home. I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I haven’t done shit but stare at my phone and obsess.

  Forgive me, brother. For I have sinned.

  “Why you so quiet today?” Ben lays back on the grass as the sun breaks above the horizon and blinks off the surface of the lake. We pant, spent after a grueling run at a pace set by Ben, like he knew I needed punishment. “What’s on your mind?”

  Your sister. “Nothing.”

  “So why are you being weird?”

  Because I can taste her on my tongue. “Tired.” I tip my water up and chug. “Worked last night.”

  “Didn’t sleep yet?”

  I shake my head. Not with your sister. Not at all. “Get to it in a bit.”