Under His Spell by Kelly Favor Page B

can’t admit something that’s not
true.”
    His smile faded.   “Now you’re lying.”
    “I don’t need you,” she said.   It was a strange thing to say to him,
and quite the opposite of how she was feeling.   Her heart cried out as she said the
words, knowing it would hurt him, knowing it wasn’t the truth.   But something inside told her that he
needed to hear this, needed to be pushed in some fundamental way.
    “Why are you playing this game?” Easton
whispered, still searching her eyes for clues.   “Is this what you think I want from
you?”
    She didn’t reply at first.   And then, she simply said, “I’m just
being honest.   I mean, I like
you.   You’re cute and all.”   She turned and walked away from him,
back to the bar, taking his glass of liquor and fondling it.   “But I don’t need you, Easton.   I mean, how could I?   I hardly know you.”  
    Easton’s jaw was stiff and his eyes
flinty.   “I’m not sure I care for
the way you’re talking right now.   Maybe this was a mistake.”
    “What’s wrong?” she asked him, her tone
haughty.   “You can dish it out but
you can’t take it?”   And then she
took a long gulp of the Scotch, and it was like fire in her throat.
    Easton looked down at the floor, shaking
his head.   “I can take a lot,” he
said slowly, “but I won’t take much more of this version of you, Kennedy.”
    “This is me,” she said, giggling.
    “No, it’s not.   This is you playing a part, trying to
fuck with my head because you’re too scared to be vulnerable.”
    “Wait,” Kennedy said, still smiling.   “Are you describing me or are you
describing yourself?”
    “Remember the assignment,” he told her,
his voice a growl of impatience.   “This isn’t about what gets you off,” he said.   “This is supposed to be about you
showing what you can do for me.”
    “Maybe you don’t actually know what you
want me to do for you,” she said, raising an eyebrow yet again, taunting
him.   “Maybe you need me to teach
you a few things.”
    “If I wanted a teacher, I wouldn’t have
found the one person who hadn’t completed first grade,” he said.
    That remark hurt, and she felt the
reaction register on her face, a quick flinch of pain that she tried to cover
up with another smile and sip of Scotch.   “You’d choose that person if you were really, really insecure, though,”
she said.   “Because then you
wouldn’t have to worry about getting shown up.”
    “This is actually kind of sad,” Easton
said.   “I suppose this is what
happens when a little girl plays dress up and tries to imagine how grown ups do
it.”
    Her façade was crumbling as he continued
to insult her lack of experience.   The truth was, she didn’t know how to do this.   She’d tried to please him, tried to show
him a different side of herself, gone with her intuition.   But she seemed only to have enraged him.
    “Forget it,” she said, putting the drink
down on the bar and starting to walk toward the door, brushing past him as she
went.   “I tried, and I couldn’t make
you happy—as usual.”
    “Get. Back. Here. Now.”   His voice was stern.
    “Fuck you,” she said, and continued
moving.
    A second later, he’d grabbed her wrist
and pulled her back into him, spinning her as if she was his dance partner.
    His strength and speed was startling.   She ended up pressed against his body,
looking up into his furious eyes.
    “What do you want from me?” she said,
starting to cry, which she absolutely hated.   He was always making her cry, somehow.
    “I don’t want anything from you,” he told
her, his breath on her face as he grabbed her wrists.   “I just want you,” he said.   “That’s it.   Just you, Kennedy.”
    And then he kissed her, passionately, his
firm lips pressing into hers, and his tongue pushing its way into her mouth,
opening her to receive it.
    He tasted amazing—like liquor and
mint and then his own taste that