Gray grabbed my wrist, pulling me from them, still with his joint in one hand. I twirled until I fell to his lap.
I immediately froze.
I’m on Grayson Crowne’s lap.
He reached for his cards, arms wrapped around me, keeping me pinned. The action jostled me, pressed me deeper into him. I sucked in nothing; I had no air left to swallow.
“Do they let you rip open the plastic and eat the steak before you buy it?” Gray maneuvered to hold his cards in one hand, his joint with the other. “Sit down, fuckheads.”
Everyone slowly did as he said, and I could see the calculations in their heads. I wasn’t a person, I was a thing, like a car or a house. How much was I worth betting?
Turns out, I was worth a company, a rare car, a house, and an island. I might’ve felt special if I wasn’t so terrified.
The game started. I should’ve been focused on who was winning, who was going to get a night with me, but I couldn’t stop focusing on the tiniest of things. The warmth suffusing off Grayson’s chest, seeping into my back. His breath heating my neck. How each time he called, he leaned forward and wrapped me tight in his biceps, and his lips grazed my neck. Their softness was a shock to my skin, hair rising to meet them.
He hadn’t ceased caging me, even after everyone had calmed down and stopped looking at me like meat. Gray was tall, built like a swimmer. His knuckles were calloused, and his arms were thick. I felt oddly—wrongly—safe.
I shifted, an ache growing between my thighs.
I rolled my hips, trying to extinguish the ache, and it only made the throbbing worse. I shifted again, then again, trying to fix it.
“Chill,” Grayson said, making me jump, lips at my ear as he played a hand.
“You’re gambling me and telling me to chill…” I couldn’t contain my incredulous laugh.
Suddenly there was a blunt against my lips. “Shut the fuck up, Snitch.” He picked up his cards, holding the blunt against my lips. Waiting for me. I shifted on his thigh, trying to get back to a comfortable position.
Grayson gripped my thigh, keeping me still. “You’re making me lose my focus. When I lose focus, I lose. Do you want that, Snitch?”
When I did nothing, his stony gaze connected with mine, a question in them. To extinguish that and whatever was happening to me, I inhaled.
It wasn’t my first time smoking. Not by a long shot. But as the smoke filled my lungs, my eyes locked with Charlotte’s.
Everything short-circuited. Smoke seared my throat. Tears blurred the room.
I couldn’t cough hard enough.
Lottie didn’t look happy. Her friends? Even less happy.
“This is a bad idea,” I coughed.
Gray put the blunt back in his mouth, and my stomach did another pancake, thinking about how it had just been in mine. It stuck out of the corner of his lips.
“Nervous?” He arched a brow, a playful curve to his pink lips.
I blinked out of the hazy delirium I lost myself in whenever Gray shone his light on me.
“Charlotte looks upset,” I said.
He froze with the hand he was about to play.
Then kept going.
“You should tell her the truth,” I continued. “If you want her back. Tell her the truth.”
“You really like stirring the fucking pot.”
“It’s called honesty.”