SEXT

I check the policies section of the dating app’s website first. There’s nothing about what to do if someone leaks photos sent via the app without your permission, but I write a long email to their contact person anyway, just in case it helps. If nothing else, maybe they can beef up their security in the meantime and help stop this happening to some other poor, innocent girl.

I have to click into Zayne’s profile to send them all the details on what happened, who I sent the photo to and how it was leaked. Doing that sets off a riot of feelings in my gut all over again. Because right there on the cover photo is him, gazing at me with those damn blue eyes, so impossible to tear mine away from. Even pixelated on a screen, he’s hot as hell.

I’d thought, crazy as it seemed, about deleting this app after this weekend. I’d thought, why do I need it? I’ve already found a guy who’s way better than any of the other losers, and it turns out I already knew him in person. I didn’t need this stupid app to help us hook up.

But now? I don’t even know how to feel. A crazy person stole my image from his app, is threatening me, publicly harassing me, and he doesn’t even trust me enough to tell me what’s going on. How can I reconcile that with the guy I thought I was falling for?

My heart sinks into my stomach. I read this all wrong. I misread all the signals. He’s not into this, not the way that I am.

My throat clenches hard as I click away from his profile. But closing the window doesn’t help remove the memories. They surge up again, brought to the surface by the sight of that image all over again. Yesterday, it was only yesterday. It feels like a different era. A completely different life.

We’d finished lunch and we were playing a game at his dining room table. Poker. He was trying to teach me the rules, but I was abysmal. I kept betting on nothing hands, going all in on a pair of twos. So he changed the rules.

“Strip poker now,” he’d said with a grin, gaze fixed hungrily on me.

“Okay,” I agreed, and I didn’t tell him that I already planned to continue sucking. Even more so now.

He dealt another hand, but this time, for once, I had decent cards. I hesitated, double-checking. But no. I was right. I had a good hand. So I placed a bet. Zayne rolled his eyes and matched it.

“You have to fold sometimes,” he pointed out. “You can’t go all-in on every hand and expect me to believe you’ve got something when the last five times you didn’t.”

I shrug and raise again. “Never know,” I said. “The tides could have turned in my favor.”

“Poker isn’t the only thing you need to practice, Clove,” he admonished with a wink. “You need to work on lying, too.”

“But isn’t that what you love about me? My innocent guile?” I raised again, and he matched again, and I could feel the win creeping up on me.

“I suppose. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all along you’ve been pretending to be innocent and slow at this game, building me up, so you can sweep in like a shark at the right moment and claim victory once and for all.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Oh? Is that so?”

“Maybe.” His gaze caught mine. Held firm. That smirk of his widened. “So tell you what, Clove. Why don’t we raise the stakes even higher? Why don’t we make this truly interesting?”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, hands carefully folded around my cards, trying to give nothing away. I had a full house. There was no way he was going to beat me, not this time.

“An hour of obedience,” he replied, one eyebrow lifted. “The winner gets to command the loser to do whatever they want for one full hour. No backing out.”

I shivered. The command in his voice sent a jolt of desire straight through me, all the way to my belly, and through to my tightened pussy. Part of me suddenly wished I had a bad hand. What if I lost? What would he do to me? But the other part wanted, fiercely, to win. To see this sexy, handsome, hunk of a man kneeling before me, at my beck and call. I could make him do whatever I wanted. Make him kneel in front of me and lick me until I came again and again, then make him fuck me right here on top of the table, knocking the cards off around us on the floor… I could make him take me to the shower and wash for me, perform for me, slowly run his hands all over his muscled body, touch himself wherever I wanted him to touch himself… I could drive him mad, the way he’d been slowly driving me mad this whole weekend.