When Sinners Play (Sinners of Hawthorne University 1)

The words are blunt. Hard. I’ve been trying not to be a bitch, but maybe that was my first fucking mistake. I should’ve shut this shit down weeks ago.

Cliff lets out a startled laugh, like he’s surprised I could answer so quickly and decisively. Then his brows pull together and he looks at me again. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I don’t want to go out with you. I don’t want to fuck you. I don’t want to do anything with you.”

There. Read between the lines of that, fuckhead.

Cliff’s eyebrows furrow even more, and he shakes his head a little.

Then, with no warning at all, he pulls me against his body and crushes his lips to mine.

I’m stunned, frozen in shock for a second. Then I shove against his chest, breaking away from him and stepping back. “What the fuck?”

“You feel that, don’t you?” His eyes are a little wild, and he advances on me again, his grip on my arms bruising now. “You can’t tell me you don’t fucking feel that, Sophie. That’s fate. That’s connection. We’re meant to be.”

Holy fuck.

This guy is unhinged.

I shove at him again, bringing my knee up to hit him in the groin. He twists to the side and I only catch his inner thigh, but he still gives a grunt of pain, his grip loosening.

Lunging away from him, I turn to sprint down the street, but before I make it two steps, pain blooms at the back of my head as I’m snatched back by my hair.

I cry out, the sting so intense it’s enough to pull hot tears from the corners of my eyes as I’m dragged backward, my hands scrabbling at his tight fist as I try to break his grip.

Fuck, Cliff is a lot stronger than I gave him credit for. He doesn’t play football like Gray does and Elias used too, but he’s almost as broad-shouldered as them, and it’s all goddamn muscle.

The way he’s grabbing my hair makes it impossible for me to get a good grip on him, impossible to pry myself loose, and he handles me like a rag doll as he drags me off the street and into a narrow alley between two nearby buildings.

As soon as we’re in the darkness of the shadows, he shoves me against the brick wall. Its surface digs into my skin, the little grains of it sticking painfully into my exposed upper back as the straps of my tank top and bra slide off one shoulder.

“Fuck you!” I scream, writhing in his grasp as he uses his body to pin me against the wall. I claw at his face until he grabs my wrist and pins it to the wall, and when I raise my voice again to call for help, he claps his other hand over my mouth.

The full weight of his body is bearing down on me, pressing me hard against the brick, crushing the air out of my lungs, and I try to bite at his hand, making him hiss with pain.

“Shit.” He curses, adjusting his grip on my face so that his palm is under my chin, trapping my jaw shut. He presses up and to one side, craning my neck painfully as he drops his head, running his nose along my skin.

“Fuck, you smell good. You smell like heaven,” he groans, and a cold shiver runs down my spine.

He kisses my neck, running his tongue over the pounding pulse that flickers there before biting down on my earlobe. A shock of sensation ricochets through me, and I scream against his hand, tears burning my eyes.

I can feel him getting hard, his dick grinding against me as he sucks on my neck again, lapping at my skin as another groan spills from his throat.

“This is real, Sophie,” he mutters, and my body bucks again as I try desperately to throw him off me. “I know you want this just as much as I do. Now be a good girl and do as I say.”

With one hand still clamped over my mouth and chin, he scrabbles at my clothes with the other, trying to tug my tank top up over my breasts before giving up and tearing at the material, shredding it down the front with a loud ripping noise.

His hand is on my stomach, on my breasts, sliding beneath my bra to massage the flesh with a bruising, callous grip. Then it’s sliding lower, flicking open the button of my pants and yanking the zipper down, sliding inside, his fingers probing, seeking, sliding through my folds.

Cold fear fills me. Something beyond anything I ever felt when Brody got too handsy, beyond what I felt when my first foster father beat me.

It’s a terror so visceral and raw that it sweeps through me like a drug, making the world swim in my vision.

I would rather die than let this man touch me.

I’d rather die than let him have me.

My stuttering heartbeat seems to slow, and for a moment, it’s like I’m floating outside my body. Another person is experiencing this, not me. Another hapless girl is having her legs forced open as some entitled man touches her, exposes her, seeks to take what isn’t his.