She smiled big.

I stared at her, looking between her smiling mouth and her eyes that were still bright but not as big as before and settling on them. My gaze narrowed.

“What’s the truth you had ready to give up?” I asked.

Tori’s smile wavered the slightest bit. “What do you mean?” she questioned, knowing damn well what I meant.

“Might like that I call you Legs, but that wasn’t what you were thinking about a minute ago,” I told her.

“Yes, it was.”

“You had somethin’ else on your mind and you’re coverin’ with this.”

“I’m not covering.”

“You’re coverin’, babe.”

Her smile wiped clean from her face. “Liking that you call me Legs has been the only thing on my mind,” she insisted. “Nothing else. I’m not covering.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You’re lyin’.”

Her eyes pinned me with a hard look.

“Coverin’, too,” I added, smiling at her.

Tori glared at my mouth, glaring harder the bigger I smiled.

“You wanna kiss me?” I asked.

“Nope,” she answered immediately.

“Liar.”

Tori’s mouth twitched.

“You wanna get fucked?”

Her gaze lifted, met mine, and started heating.

“You wanna get fucked,” I repeated, saying it as a statement now.

“Absolutely not. That’s the last thing I want,” she contended, mouth tight, no longer twitching.

This was the game.

The little shit was lying. She was lying about a lot.

Telling me she didn’t want to fuck, but the second I got her inside, she started tearing at my board shorts, practically ripping them in half she couldn’t get them off me fast enough. Then crawling back up my body and kissing me like there was a time limit on that shit and she was racing the clock. Kissing me after saying she didn’t want to kiss me. Sloppy, wet, using her teeth, her lips, her tongue. Forgetting about breathing and just kissing for minutes until she had to break away, gasp for air, fill her lungs, and then go back in for more, giving it to me harder because she’d been deprived for a whole fucking second.

Only time Tori faltered and took on the lies she was telling, making them seem believable, was when I carried her into the kitchen and grabbed a sleeve of condoms out of a drawer I kept random shit in.

Flashlight. Batteries. Deck of cards. Condoms. Everyone had a drawer like that.

Tori stopped kissing me and pulled back, leaning to the side to look behind me as I carried her across the room, then she straightened up and looked into my face.

I made sure I wasn’t running us into the couch, getting us around it first, then doing that, I looked at her.

Tori was studying me. Eyes squinted in focus. Brows pinched together. She looked curious. Maybe a little pissy since I obviously kept condoms in the kitchen for a reason, and she was guessing that reason wasn’t because of her, that I had put them there a while ago and probably used them with others. Figuring this and deciding she was right in her assumptions, Tori went rigid in my arms and turned her head when I tried getting at her mouth.

I smiled against her jaw.

“Makes my dick hard when you act jealous,” I shared, laughing when she turned her head even farther until she was looking behind her. “Means you don’t like the idea of me touchin’ anyone else, even if that shit was before you and shouldn’t matter. I get that, babe.”

I moved lower and licked her neck. I bit down until she gasped and her limbs trembled.

“I wanna break the hands of every motherfucker who ever touched you,” I confessed.

Tori went rigid in my arms again, but it was different this time. She liked hearing that. I knew this because, along with going rigid, she whimpered and slid her fingers up the back of my neck and into my hair, gripping handfuls. Then she turned her head and let me get at her mouth again.

She was frantic before. I didn’t know what the fuck this was.

We were biting and hitting teeth more than we were actually kissing. Mouths crashing together. Noses getting in the way. Acting like neither one of us knew what the fuck we were doing, just knowing that we needed it and further knowing we’d do anything to get it.

Draw blood. Break bones. Didn’t matter.

She was crazy. I had lost my goddamned mind.

I got her naked, spread a blanket out in front of the fire, and tossed a pillow down, all while we kept kiss-fighting, which was the only word I knew to describe it. Once I got Tori beneath me and slid my fingers inside her, touching where she never lied, where she couldn’t lie, I started chipping away to get to the truth.

And she kept playing the game.

Denying it. Telling me there was nothing else she was thinking about while I fingered her slowly and stroked my dick so she could watch. Now I was adding my thumb and making her breaths come quicker, building it faster, knowing she was close to giving it up. And knowing Tori. Knowing her this entire fucking time.

She was mine, and I knew exactly what she was hiding.

“Think you love me, babe,” I offered up, tired of waiting for her to admit it.

Her eyes sliced to mine and widened in panic. I inhaled sharply through my nose when her nails cut in deeper on my thigh.

Fuck.

Tori’s fingers relaxed. She bit her bottom lip.

“Yeah,” I murmured, pulling my hand out from between her legs. I planted it on the floor next to her hip and crawled over her, smirking. “You fuckin’ love me, don’t you?” I asked, dropping to my elbows and pressing us together, trapping my hard cock between us.

Lip still caught between her teeth, Tori slowly shook her head.

“You love me,” I stated.

She shook it quicker.

“Babe.”

“I don’t,” she argued, voice quiet. “Really.”

“Really, you do. That’s your truth, Legs.”

“It isn’t. I like that you call me Legs.”

“You like that and you fuckin’ love me. Said it built in you and that it’s more now. You said it. No denying what you said.” I bent closer, hovering over her mouth that was pinching together tight. “You’re way past likin’ me,” I murmured. “I hit your soft and I’m fuckin’ stayin’ there.”

She pulled in a breath, blinking.

“How much do you love me, Legs?” I asked, watching her eyes jump between mine.

“There are steps between like and love. I said I really like you. That’s the step I’m at,” she debated softly.

“Skipped right over those steps. You love me.”

“I didn’t skip.”

“You skipped.”

“No, I didn’t!” she snapped, bending her one leg next to my hip and planting her foot on the floor, then pushing off with all her strength and rolling us.

I laughed as my back hit the blanket. “Babe, just give it up,” I said, tucking the pillow under my head. “We both know what you’re feelin’.”

“There isn’t anything to give up, and I am not feeling anything other than what I just said,” she argued, hands flat on my stomach as she pushed up to her knees and slid down, straddling my thighs. “I like you. I like a lot of things about you and I like those things a lot, and we can waste time arguing that it’s only like and not love or you can lie there and shut your mouth for five minutes while I tell you what all I like.” She huffed out a breath and pushed her breeze-blown hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ears. “Or at least some of what I like. I’ll need more than five minutes to cover all of it,” she added, holding my hips.