Play Me #3: Play Me Hard is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2014 by Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 9780804177832
Cover design: Georgia Morrissey
Cover photograph: Vasilchenko Nikita/Shutterstock
www.readloveswept.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One: Aria
Chapter Two: Sebastian
Chapter Three: Aria
Chapter Four: Sebastian
Chapter Five: Aria
By Tracy Wolff
About the Author
The Editor’s Corner
Chapter One
Aria
“I don’t respond well to ultimatums, Sebastian.” I’ve had too many of them in my life, been told too many times to make a choice when there really was none. Pretended too many times that I had real control over my own life when it was nothing but a lie.
I’ve spent the last fourteen months making sure that I do have control—that I’m living my life away from my family and as close to how I want to as I can manage—to just fall back into old patterns. And yet, here I am, four hours after having sex with him, being told what to do. And worse, taking it.
“And I don’t respond well to watching the woman I just made love to collapse from exhaustion.” He sounds as adamant about this as I do.
“I’m fine.” It’s a lie. I’m nowhere close to fine, but that’s not his problem. It’s mine. And since I don’t even have a clue what’s wrong with me—why all of a sudden I feel so tired and sad and lonely and lost—I figure I’ll just ignore it and it’ll go away. It’s probably just all the sleepless nights I spent worrying about my sister catching up with me. All I need is a good night’s sleep.
“You’re not fine and we both know it.” His hand is on my elbow now, not tight enough to hurt, but more than tight enough to let me know that he means business. That he has no intention of letting me go until I do what he asks.
Well, to hell with that.
I wrench my arm away, but for whatever reason I’m not as sturdy as I usually am and I end up stumbling back a few steps. Sebastian lets me go at the first tug, but then he’s right there to steady me. His hand on the small of my back, his body pressed too close to mine.
“Don’t make me force you,” he tells me and I find myself bristling all over again. Force me? Who the hell does this guy think he is?
I start to tell him off once and for all, but a quick glimpse of his face has me freezing. He doesn’t look like he’s threatening me, doesn’t look like he’s laying down the law. In fact, he looks an awful lot like he’s asking. Like he’s actually asking me not to force him into doing something neither of us wants him to do.
I know it’s strange to look at it like that, especially considering the nature of what went on in his office earlier tonight. He has to know he’s got the upper hand here—sexually and because he’s my boss. So why does he care whether he has to force me or not? He’s stronger than I am. And though I’d put up a fight, if he really wants to he can carry me out of here and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
It’s a humbling realization, one that confuses me even as it makes me want to go for his eyes. But I can’t do that—because he’s my boss and because the last thing I really want to do is hurt him. I was the one who freaked out in his office, the one who walked out before we could so much as exchange after-sex pleasantries. He’s been nothing but kind to me and just because I don’t trust him, just because I get nervous around anyone who’s that big of a control freak—anyone who I think wants to control me—it doesn’t mean that I have the right to treat him like shit.
That knowledge has me sighing even as the tension leaves my muscles and I find myself relaxing next to him. “I’m not planning on going anywhere but home,” I tell him. “It’ll take me twenty minutes to get there and then I’m going straight to bed. I’ll be fine.”
“Let me take you.”
“I’m twenty-four years old. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“No, you need a lover.” He reaches out, trails his fingers down my cheek. “We’ve already done the making love part. Now let me do the rest.”
It shouldn’t get to me. His low, husky voice. The intense green of his eyes. The way his body is curved protectively around mine even though my cheek is the only place he’s touching me. And yet it does. It really does. It’s such a good line and even if it really is nothing more than that, it’s enough right now.
I find myself nodding before I even know that I’m going to do it.
“My car—”
“Wi