Sweet Obsession (Ruthless Games, #1)

by Callie Rose

“I dunno, Nat.” I stop with one foot on the base of the short stairs, turning to face her. “Maybe I’ll get a job banging your mom.”

HAHAAAHAAHAH ME.

He closes the last bit of distance between us, pressing his body against mine as he pins me to the shelves behind me. One of his muscled thighs wedges between mine, and his broad hand comes up to wrap around my jaw, tilting my face so I have no choice but to look at him. His lips press together and his nostrils flare as he stares down at me.

“I don’t like being lied to, Ayla. In fact, it’s one of the few things in the world I won’t fucking tolerate. So you wanna try that again?”

“You’re safer with us watching over you than you’d ever be with the cops anyway,”

The markings on his fingers aren’t random symbols. They don’t spell out “love” and “hate” or some shit like that. They’re numbers. The month, day, and year of the night I was shot.

“Word of advice, buddy. Wrap your shit up if you don’t want your dick to rot and fall off. You never know what you might catch in that swamp.”

“What the fuck is this?” His voice is hard, and my eyes fly open again, awareness rushing in quickly. Fuck. “It’s nothing. It’s none of your business.” I yank my good arm away from his fingers, attempting to press away from the door and slip past him. But he grabs my wrist again, his touch no longer feather-light or gentle. Now it’s rough. Angry. He bends my arm, bringing it closer to his face as he stares down at the long vertical slash mark that covers nearly the entire length of my forearm. The kind of slash that designates a serious attempt to die, not a bid for attention or a cry for help. “I said, what the fuck is this?” His grip tightens until it’s painful, and fury darkens his voice. I pull harder on my trapped arm, wishing I still had my other fucking hand so I could push him away. “And I said it’s none of your goddamn business.” He raises my forearm even higher, showing me the slash mark as if I’m a dog who got into the garbage when I wasn’t supposed to, and now he has to show me what I did wrong. As if I might not already know the scar is there. As if I don’t remember every single detail of how it happened. “When?” The single word is hard and flat. It’s not a question. It’s a demand. I clench my jaw, my gaze skating away from his. “When I was fifteen.” Then I huff a bitter laugh. “Why? Worried it might’ve happened on your watch?” He steps closer to me, erasing the small distance between us. He’s still holding my wrist in his big hand, his grip still crushing my ...

“You saved my life,” he repeats more emphatically. “Every day since then, every fucking heartbeat, I owe to you.”

“Then what do you want?” There’s an edge of desperation to my voice. I have to know. I need to know. His expression shifts again, and for the first time since he crashed into my life in a flurry of violence and chaos, I see something like vulnerability in his eyes. His free hand moves to my face, his knuckles dragging down the side of my cheek. “You, Ayla. I want you.”

When his lips meet my skin, they touch just the corner of my mouth. He drags his face away and kisses the other corner, the light press of his lips too much and too little all at once.

His warm, wet tongue laps at the small scar on my chest, and then he drags my hand away from his chest and licks a line all the way up the scar on my forearm. When he reaches my wrist, he bites down hard on the soft skin there, making me cry out in shock. There’s something vicious in the action. Something primal. Like he’s trying to punish me, maybe, or teach me a lesson.

“It’s always been you,” he murmurs roughly, his voice like sandpaper. “Ever since the first time I saw you that night. You’re my fucking guardian angel, my dirty secret, my broken doll. You’re everything I obsess over. Everything I crave.”

“Fuck.” The word is quiet, almost like he’s talking to himself more than me. “I’ve thought about this…”

“Jesus, you’re so fucking tight.” He grunts against my skin as he rips his lips from mine and drags them down the column of my throat. “So fucking perfect.”

“You don’t touch her,” he growls, his voice as low and dangerous as an animal’s. “Don’t fucking touch her.”

“Do you see that woman? Look at her.” His voice is low and eerily calm considering the violence that just exploded from him. “Go ahead. Look.” He drops his head closer to Greg’s, his lips pulling back from his teeth in something like a snarl. “I want you to remember that face. Because if you ever see it again, you will walk the other way. If she’s on one side of the street, you’ll be on the other. Or better yet, on another fucking street entirely. You will not come back to this bar. Ever. You will not speak to her. Ever. And if you touch her again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Oh, really? I’m not the one who just beat the shit out of a perfectly innocent man in a fucking alley!” His expression darkens, the blue and brown of his eyes churning. “He’s not innocent. He tried to take what isn’t his.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, angel. I’ve been inside you. You’ve taken my cock. You’ve taken my cum. You’re fucking mine.”

“Those two are like my brothers. I will never hurt them. I will never fight them. But if you ever touch a man besides any of the ones present right now, that man will pay for it dearly. Do you understand?”

“I know a lot.” He speaks simply, making no effort to deny the length and breadth of his stalking. “But I still don’t know what I want to most.” “What’s that?” I whisper. “You.” He reaches across the center console and pushes a lock of dark hair out of my face, his fingertips brushing my temple. “What’s in your head. What’s in your heart.”

“How do you do this to me, angel? How the fuck do you wreck me so bad?”

“It was always for you. That’s the only reason I tried to convince Marcus to back off. I… I thought about you all the fucking time. I still do. But I thought you would be safer, that you’d have a better life, if we weren’t in it.”

So he is in love with her tooooooo.

“No. You’re like a fucking drug, Ayla. We spent two and a half years hovering on the periphery of your life, but the moment we stepped into it that night, the moment we got close… it was like a barrier came down that was impossible to put back up. It was the first fix. And we kept coming back for more.”

“So he handpicked twelve of the most powerful families in the city, and each of them volunteered one of their heirs as a possible successor for Luca,” Ryland says, bitterness coating his voice. My eyebrows fly up as the dots finally begin to connect and I realize why they’re telling me this. “You? All three of you?”

HELL YES. THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF PLOT TWIST THIS BOOK NEEDS. HELL YEAH.

“I’ll check our ammo and weapons.” “I’ll check police scanners,” Theo adds, digging out his phone. “I’ll… put my shoes on.” My contribution sounds lame as fuck, but I’m not sure what else I could do to help.

LMAOOOO.