The Death Games

by Vannah Summers

  “Fat chance in hell. Not until you tell me what set you off?”

  With a grunt, I gave him my back and charged to my dresser, yanking the drawer open violently. “You had your laugh, good for you. Lucky for you, they probably caught it on camera for posterity’s sake. Now, just leave.”

  Dry clothes landed on the bed as I chucked my smelly T-shirt into the corner of the room. Grant stood immobile near the end of my bed, his mouth ajar, eyes like saucers. He looked like an idiot with his shirt still hanging lopsided. Served him right.

  “Lea, I think we got our wires crossed—why are you takin’ your clothes off?” He appeared rather terrified by the idea, and I sighed at yet another sign of disinterest.

  “Oh, sorry, was my attempt at seduction not clear?” I flipped him my middle finger, partnered with a seething glare. “Don’t like it? Don’t watch.”

  In answer to my aggressive challenge, his eyes tracked my every move, but I refused to pay him any mind as my sopping shorts landed on the carpet with a plop. “I never said I didn’t like it.” His voice was quiet, vulnerable in a way, and I froze.

  “Don’t say that.” I peeked at his face, dark again with a blush, and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t do that! I’m sick of you fucking with me.”

  “I’m not! Jesus, Lea.” He raked a hand through his wet hair, the veins in his neck prominent with frustration. “We were just havin’ fun, playin’ around and talkin’, and then you freaked out. What am I supposed to do here?”

  I waved obnoxiously at the door. “I don’t know. Maybe, leave? You’ve had your fun at my expense. What else can you possibly want?”

  “There’s a lot I want, right now. But you’re startin’ to piss me off.” He tugged at the tangled shirt around his neck, tearing the thing off with a bear-like growl, before he gestured to the windows. “You think I was fuckin’ with you out there? That I was sayin’ that to make a joke?”

  “Seemed like it.”

  Genuine hurt colored his face, and his aggravation dissolved, his shoulders slumping. “I wouldn’t joke about that. And I wasn’t lyin’. Things were just gettin’ heavy. I thought takin’ a breather would help break the tension. I—you—I didn’t want to scare you off.”

  His speech ended with a grimace, and guilt rushed through me as he curled into himself, somehow looking small in the center of my bedroom. Was he telling the truth? Had I really overreacted to something innocent?

  The mixed signals he sent frustrated me, and survival instinct instructed I send him on his way. I wished I possessed the self-control necessary to tell him to fuck off. Unfortunately, the words stuck in my throat.

  Because, ultimately, I didn’t want him to fuck off. He was my only friend here, and as frustrating as his wishy-washy attitude was, I needed him. He grounded me, and to a certain extent, made me feel safe. With him, I wasn’t alone.

  Even when I was alive, I never felt that with anyone. Of course, it took dying for me find it. I was just lucky that way.

  “I thought…” I studied my fidgeting hands in shame. “I thought you were taking a dig at me.”

  Feet shuffled over carpet, and I tensed as calloused fingers cupped my cheek. “I wasn’t takin’ a dig at you.”

  “Don’t.” My denial was halfhearted as he drew me to face him, my chin tilted to meet his agonized gaze. “Stop touching me like this.”

  Irritation pinched his mouth as his dark brows drew together. “Touch you like what?”

  Wrapping my arms around my waist, I withdrew, forcing him to drop his hand. “Like I’m soft and shit. I don’t want you to touch me like you give a damn about me. It’s cruel.”

  Immediately, his expression soured, and he captured my jaw again as I scowled. “What makes you think I don’t give a damn about you, Lea? I mean, what the fuck are we doin’ here?” He gestured to the TV where we’d spent hours watching Netflix, toward the bed where he’d slept beside me and held me during the night.

  “I don’t know. You’re the one saying one thing and doing another.”

  “Then forget what I said.” His hand slipped from my chin to rest at the hollow of my throat, and his index finger followed the bob of my Adam’s apple as I swallowed thickly. “I say dumb shit all the time, it would seem.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  He smiled then, his teeth gleaming against his olive complexion. “Does it need to?”

  “But… three weeks ago, we weren’t even friends.”

  Grant’s fingers hooked in the waistband of my underwear, tugging us closer, eliminating the space between our bodies. “Three weeks ago, I figured you’d die in the first task. Then, there was a high possibility I’d have to kill you myself. But you know what?”

  When he didn’t treat it as a rhetorical question, I licked my dry lips and squeaked, “What?”

  “When I made it out of the second task and you didn’t, I wanted to charge back in there and find you. Because as fucked up as all this is, I didn’t want you to die.”

  His confession was too much. My eyes stung as his thumb brushed over my bottom lip. My mouth moved, searching for something to say. “I didn’t want you to die, either,” I finally admitted.

  He rested his chin on my head with a snicker, and my forehead pressed to his sternum as his chest rumbled. “You shoulda just moved on, Lea. Been at peace, or whatever the fuck happens when you leave the D.S.D. Your soul’s too good for all this.”

  As I raised my head, my nose brushed his chin, but he didn’t jerk away. His dark gaze swallowed me whole, and I tumbled down the rabbit hole as his breath fanned over my face.

  “Guess I should have read the fine print, huh?” I sassed, and his boyish grin resurfaced, transforming him into a boy I wished I’d met before all this.

  “Maybe it makes me a bad person,” he echoed my words, cupping my jaw in a way that made me feel both small yet significant, “but I’m kinda glad you didn’t.”

  As his words washed over me, my heart hiccupped in my chest, and a dangerously fuzzy warmth filled my body until I feared I’d float into the ceiling and disappear. I hated it, the heat of his proximity and the tenderness in his eyes.

  I could barely hear my own words over the roar of my heartbeat in my ears. “There’s only one winner. Where does that leave us?”

  With his palm memorizing the frantic beat of my heart, he lowered his head, our noses touching. “Either of us might die in the next task. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die with regrets. Not again.” As if afraid of rejection, Grant tentatively tilted my chin, our lips a hair’s breadth apart. “I don’t want to regret missing this, Lea.”

  Carefully, cautiously, he closed the distance between us.

  Chapter 15

  Solace

  Fire blazed to life in my veins as his mouth shaped mine. The kiss was unexpectedly gentle, a sigh of relief. It was propping my feet up after a hard day’s work. It was the taste of sweet tea on a summer night as the cicadas sang. It was coming home after a long, strenuous journey. He was autumn leaves and maple syrup and damp, freshly turned soil. He tasted like home.

  Offering me time to pull away, he paused, but that was the opposite of what I wanted. Maybe he didn’t really like me as much as he thought he did. Or perhaps he was simply desperate for comfort, reassurance, the bone-deep safety that came with the touch of another. Either way, I wasn’t going to waste this. I had wanted to kiss him ever since I spotted his sexy ass in line at the D.S.D. And fuck if I wasn’t going to take advantage. Now was the moment for action, and I practically mauled him, delving my fingers into his thick hair to anchor him to me.

  His hum of approval vibrated against my mouth as my teeth nipped his bottom lip, and I chuckled darkly as I repeated the nibble. His mouth was soft, but the kiss was firm, confident. As his lips danced with mine to a new and curious melody, he pushed me into the short dresser at my back, his larger body blanketing me, and I moaned.

  I yelped when, in one quick motion, his hand cupped
my ass and hoisted me onto the dresser’s edge. Chuckling, he never broke the kiss as his hands hesitantly explored the skin of my chest, fingers gliding up my spine. I shivered at the touch, and a sigh escaped me as he kneaded my tender muscles.

  “Lea,” he whispered as his lips traveled over my jaw. A groan clawed its way from my throat when he separated us long enough to take inventory of my half-naked form.

  I wasn’t normally one to be self-conscious, but his dark gaze was too intense, too earnest, as it devoured my exposed skin. Embarrassed by the bruises still marring my scrawny torso, I instinctively shielded my chest and dropped my eyes, but Grant had other ideas. Capturing my face in his hands, he forced me to lift my head.

  “Don’t,” he said hoarsely, and I frowned. “Don’t hide.”

  “Why?”

  Nuzzling my cheek, he exhaled a long, shaky breath before he kissed the tender spot on my jaw where Natalia had punched me. “Because this is real.” His lips trailed over every bruise, every cut and mark on my neck, a kiss to punctuate every word he spoke. “This means you’re real, that you’re here. That you didn’t die in that warehouse.”

  “It was a close call.” I tentatively traced his stubbled jaw, and he shivered in horror.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Yeah, that second task was pretty fucked up.”

  “Yeah, it was.” He looked away, chagrin and pain flashing in his eyes, and I placed a hand on his chest, over his thrumming heart. “Did you guys make it out of the room before the clock counted down?” Furrowing my brows, I nodded, and he shuddered. “Good.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  With a shake of his head, his Adam’s apple jumped. “The door opened when the clock hit fifteen seconds, but it was already too late. We didn’t stand a chance. I was closest to the door, and it’s the only reason I didn’t get tackled by one of those things. It was a bloodbath.”

  Unconsciously, my hands rubbed soothing circles over his chest as the ghosts swam in his eyes. “It’s okay, Grant. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I left people behind. They were still alive, and I ran—”

  “We all did that.” I captured his tortured gaze. “We all made those choices.”

  “I never want to be that person, Lea.” My name fell brokenly from his lips, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. We’d never embraced before tonight, but it was… bliss.

  Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, his fingers found their home on my lower back where they dug into my skin. I drowned in evergreen barely masked by chlorine, and his breath trembled against my ear.

  “Maybe it makes me a bad person,” I whispered into his neck, “but I’m glad you did what you had to do to make it out of there alive.”

  He chuckled, tickling the edge of my mouth with his lips. “That might be the nicest thing you ever said to me.”

  Before his mouth could reconnect us and I lost my bearings, I framed his face with my hands and asked, “Why now? What changed?”

  Contemplating, his eyes tracked the new trail his finger blazed over my collarbone and down my sternum. “I don’t want to fight it anymore. Ever since you stole my pen at the D.S.D., you caught my attention. I couldn’t have ignored you, even if I tried. Damn, you annoyed the hell out of me, but you intrigued me. You were this bundle of sass and life. I was sure you’d be a goner.

  “But then you surprised me. You stood your ground against people double your size, you were smart and brave and somehow, you never lost yourself in the games. You helped people, strangers who were determined to kill you. You helped me, even when you shouldn’t have.”

  Lacking words to respond to his sudden gush of emotion, I gaped like a fish. He continued, smirking at me. “Because that’s who you are, and you didn’t compromise. I admired that; I envied that. Plus, you’re, uh, pretty easy on the eyes.”

  “You liked me?”

  He nodded. “From the start. But this isn’t exactly the best place for romance, you get me?”

  With a mirthless laugh, I nodded as he balanced my weight in his strong arms, hauling me from the dresser, and I cinched my legs around his waist. As he carried me to the bed, my heart leapt into my throat, and I pressed my forehead to his. His knees met the mattress, and I tightened my grip on him as he laid me softly on the comforter.

  “Lea—”

  “You’ll regret it.” I forced the words out, hating each one but needing to say it. “In the morning, you’ll regret this. You’re scared and lonely, and you wouldn’t be here if we weren’t going to die in the third task.”

  I anticipated his anger, but the hurt was unforeseen. It carved lines into his brow and hardened his features. Suddenly, he was the Grant I’d met in the beginning, the one who didn’t want anything to do with me.

  “We are not dyin’.”

  My eyes watered as I nodded. “Yes, we are.”

  “We are not dyin’!” I flinched at the volume of his voice, and his face fell. “We are goin’ to go into that task together. We’re goin’ to fight together, and we are sure as hell goin’ to live.”

  “There’s only one winner.”

  “Fuck that. And fuck Death!” Looming over me, he glowered, and my nails dug into his chest for purchase. “No matter what happens in that task, I’m not gonna kill you. I’m gonna do my damnedest to keep your skinny ass alive.”

  Coughing out a watery laugh, I turned away as a tear snaked down my cheek, and Grant buried his face in my neck. His weight crushed me, and I sank into the mattress. But I locked my limbs around his body to keep him from fading away.

  His mouth played over my throat, my Adam’s apple, my pulse point. The hands pinning me to the bed eased, traveling over my stomach, and I gasped as a calloused fingertip skimmed over my nipple. My nipples weren’t known for being sensitive, but when he captured the pebbled nub and rolled it between his thumb and index finger, the sensation shot straight to my aching cock.

  I groaned, arching off the bed, and Grant chuckled deeply. “I don’t know whether to tell you to stop or order you to keep going.”

  “Demandin’, are we?” His teeth scraped over the nape of my neck, and I growled.

  “I’ll show you demanding,” I threatened halfheartedly as I twisted my fingers in his hair and hauled him back to me.

  He was on top, but I was in control as I thrust my tongue into his mouth and tasted the lingering chlorine. A delicious rumble vibrated in his chest as I sucked on his tongue, giving him a teasing hint at how proficient my mouth could be. Though, when he settled firmly between my legs and the outline of his hard cock pressed to my groin, I questioned whether I could even fit the monster in my mouth at all. Damn, I figured he would have a cock proportionate to his size, but that thing was a beast. My ass clenched with frightened anticipation.

  A tweak to my nipple distracted me from the mammoth cock grinding against mine, and I bowed off the bed again with a snarl. “Watch it!”

  “You’re a big boy,” Grant teased, flicking my sensitive bud again. “You can take it.”

  “Keep up the attitude, and I’m gonna make you take it!” I hissed in his ear before biting his earlobe hard enough to hurt.

  A strangled laugh broke through his lips, half-humor, half-desire. “The logistics of that would be”—he lifted his weight to meet my gaze with a quirky smile—“interesting.”

  “Just because I’m smaller than you doesn’t mean I can’t wreck you.” I grinned through the threat, and he laughed again, our teeth clacking as he connected us in another kiss.

  “Maybe,” he murmured against my mouth, and my erection jumped at the thought. “If you’re good.” Rolling my eyes, I yanked his hair, and he grunted in pain. “Calm down, I’m just teasin’.”

  “Less teasing. More kissing.”

  He happily obliged, and I whimpered when his hand snuck beneath me and teased the base of my spine. For some unknown reason, that was one of my hot spots, and I melted to jelly as he stroked above the band of my underwear.

&nbs
p; “You like that?” He hummed against my collarbone, and I mewled pathetically, spanning his hard, muscled back with my palms.

  “Don’t stop,” I pleaded, my dominance draining as he continued his assault.

  He answered with a scalding kiss, and I slid my hands over his broad shoulders, mapping the bulging muscles of his deltoids, then his pecs. My fingers bumped over his rippling abs, and when I met the waistband of his wet workout shorts, I whined.

  “These need to go,” I husked, and he withdrew with one last kiss to my sternum.

  Standing at the edge of the bed, he hooked his thumbs in the shorts and, with an infuriatingly smug smirk, dragged them and his boxers to the floor. His happy trail led the way to his trim, dark pubic hair, and I swallowed as his length jutted from his body in my direction. Yeah, that was not fitting in my mouth, but I wasn’t one to back down easily from a challenge.

  I scooted to the edge of the bed, my feet finding the floor on either side of his legs, and when he didn’t stop me, I traced the head of his cock with my fingertip. “You’re so fucking hot.” I leaned in and pressed a kiss to his hip bone, and his finger threaded through my curls as I blazed a trail to his pulsing erection. “This cool?” I asked, blowing over his tip where a drop of precum beaded.

  His entire body spasmed as a broken chuckle scraped his throat. “Uh, you don’t have to, if you’re not into it.”

  With a wicked grin, I winked as my tongue darted out to collect the bitter pearl, and his knees trembled. I paused, giving him a moment, and he shot me a sheepish smile, his cheeks darkening.

  “It’s been a while.”

  I nuzzled his pubic zone, pulling back to place a sweet kiss to the head of his cock. “Well, then, I guess I’ll have to make up for lost time.”

  As I enveloped the top of him, his eyes slid shut, and a sexy groan filtered through the air as his grip on my hair tightened. “Fuck.”

  Laughing around his cock, I took as much of him as I could, using my hand at the base, and started my rhythm. He was gorgeous, panting out curses as sweat glistened on his chest, and my own need screamed for attention, still trapped in my boxer-briefs. I told my cock to calm down as I focused entirely on the sexy Bostonian before me.