The Wrong Play (The Wrong Player, #2)

by C.R. Jane

Jace Thatcher was dangerous. I’d already been burned by one fire. I wasn’t going to get burned by another.

I didn’t want to notice the way his presence filled a space, the way his voice wrapped around my name like a claim, the way his touch lingered long after he was gone. But I did.

And I hated myself for it.

Because wanting him meant stepping into something I couldn’t control. Something reckl...

Riley St. James was fucked. ’Cause I wasn’t letting her go—ever.

“You ruin me, you know that?”

“Every time. It doesn’t matter what I do, how much I prepare myself—I get near you, and it’s game over.”

“Just know, Riley—you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Jace Thatcher was never letting me go.

Because Jace didn’t just take—he gave. Every touch was a question. A promise. A demand wrapped in devotion.

It was never supposed to hurt. It was never supposed to feel like a cage. It was supposed to feel like…this.

Love—real love—it doesn’t save you. It ruins you. It takes everything you have and leaves you bleeding. And I can’t—” My breath hitched, my fingers curling into the sheets. “I can’t watch you bleed for me.”

“Some day, I’m going to say it. And some day, you’re going to believe it.”

“Loving you isn’t some fucking chore. It’s not a weight around my neck, not something I have to suffer through. You think you’re hard to love, but you don’t get it. You don’t understand that loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

“I love you, Riley. I love you when you’re strong…I love you when you’re barely holding on. I love you when you push me away, when you fight me, when you try to tell yourself you don’t need me. And I will love you through every single bad day you have…through every single moment where you think you’re too much.”

“You’re never going to be too much for me, sweetheart. You are my fucking world. And I’ll spend every single day proving that to you if I have to.”

“You are mine. And I always take care of what’s mine.”

Jace Thatcher, reckless and untouchable to the world, was letting himself break for me.

Because when it came to my babylicious, there wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t burn to the ground to keep a smile on her face.

“I would burn the world down before I let him take you from me,” he whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at me. “Burn it all down.”

“You don’t get to do that to me, Riley,” he murmured, his forehead dropping to mine. His breath fanned across my lips, hot and uneven. “I’m always going to come after you.”

“Every breath I take, I want you to be part of it. Every time I move, I want to feel you with me. I don’t want you on my arm where it’ll fade in the sun. I don’t want you on my back where I’ll never see it. I want you here, Riley. Where you can’t be ignored. Where you can’t be erased.”

Thatcher?” I asked, a smile spreading across my lips. He huffed. “Do I ever make the wrong play?”