Wanting You (Only Have Eyes For You #2)
Prologue
Kinsley
The jersey is heavy.
Not just in the literal sense, though the thick, professional-grade material weighs on my shoulders like a suit of armor I never asked to wear. It’s heavy, the name stitched across the back in bold hunter-green letters: MONROE.
A name that echoes through the halls of this university, a name whispered with reverence by girls who dream of being chosen. A name I have grown to hate.
And now, it’s on me.
His bedroom is cold, minimalist and obsessively clean, smelling of mint and something wild that is purely him.
It’s the complete opposite of the chaos churning inside my chest. My own clothes, a simple dress, is a ruined, sodden heap on his polished floor; the casualty of a party, a crowd, and a perfectly aimed drink.
An accident he’d said, but nothing with West Monroe ever feels like an accident.
He stands by the door, arms crossed over a chest so broad it seems to suck all the air from the room.
He hasn’t touched me since I walked in here, but I feel his presence like a brand on my skin.
He just watches, his gaze intense and proprietary, the way a dragon might watch over a piece of gold it has just stolen.
“Better,” he says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates straight through me.
The jersey swallows me up. The sleeves hang past my fingertips, and the hem falls to my mid-thigh, a mockery of a dress. It smells of him; of ice, expensive soap, and the faint, animal musk of sweat. It’s intimate. Overwhelming. I feel like I’m suffocating in his very essence.
This is what he wanted. Not to help me, but to possess me. To erase me and replace me with his name.
I should be screaming, I should be fighting. The girl I was weeks ago would have thrown this jersey in his face and walked out into the cold in her ruined clothes without a second thought.
But that girl is gone.
She died the night I kissed him, a stupid dare that sealed my fate. She withered with every text message he sent that I pretended to ignore; she vanished completely the first time I saw the raw, violent jealousy in his eyes when another guy spoke to me.
He doesn’t care that I hate him; he doesn’t care that I told him no. He sees my defiance as a challenge, my fear as foreplay.
A slow, predatory smile curves his lips, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. They remain fixed on me, dark and knowing. He sees the tremor in my hands, the frantic pulse beating in my throat. He sees the war I’m losing with myself.
And he loves it.
“There,” he says, taking a step closer. The word is a final, damning verdict. “Now you look like you’re mine.”
I finally understand. West Monroe doesn’t want my heart. He wants to excavate it, to hollow it out and build a throne inside the empty space. He doesn’t want my love; he wants my surrender.
Standing here, swallowed up by his name, I realize with a terrifying certainty that he is going to get it. He was never asking. He was just taking.