James Games Read Online Free Page A

to have—a life of fun and sex and crazy wild antics—and nothing is going to stop me. Not my family, not some skewed sense of morality, and not my heart. Yuck.
    I make the executive decision to change the subject. “So I heard a rumor that initiation for Phi Delta Chi is tonight.”
    “Yippee. I’ll go put on my best cocktail dress.” Iris sets her sweater down and groans.
    “They keep the details a secret,” I press, trying to drum some excitement out of her. “Maybe we’ll each have to sacrifice a baby goat.”
    I thought for sure that would up her eagerness, but she just rolls her eyes and puts her face in front of the fan. Our AC’s been broken ever since we moved in. Freaking freshman housing.
    “Can I ask you something?” I pick myself up and plop myself down on her bed, rubbing the fuzzy sweater. She just groans again in response.
    “Why are you interested in getting into Phi Delta Chi? They’re a big party sorority. Lots of drinking, lots of sex. Doesn’t really seem like your thing. I practically had to threaten you with pink and sparkles to get you to come out with me last night, and you left halfway through the concert. Yet you’ve been coming with me to every single pledgeship meeting for Phi Delta since the first day of school. Is it the booze cruise they have in November? A lot of people try to get in just for the booze cruise.”
    “Can you go shower?” she grumbles. “You smell like alcohol and sex.”
    “That is the smell of life , my dear. Breathe it in deeply.” I wedge myself between the fan and her face, waving my pits under her nose. When she’s done alternating between fake-vomiting and fake-almost-real strangling me, I wait expectantly, but she fumbles for a new topic instead of answering my question.
    “Have you seen James Reid yet?” she finally says.
    “Who?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Yeah, a little.” I stretch my arms over my head, relishing the way the crop top pulls up to expose my ribs. “He’s some celebrity on campus that everyone wants to bang, right?”
    “You sound like you don’t care.” Iris pokes my stomach disdainfully. “I don’t care about anything, and I care about James Reid. Don’t you remember him in All About Us ? He was huge when I was a kid.”
    “Funny thing about growing up Amish: you kind of don’t pay much attention to celebrities. Or actors. Or TV shows, seeing as you don’t have a TV. Believe it or not, I don’t even know what this guy looks like.”
    “I thought we weren’t allowed to say the A-word.”
    “ I’m allowed to say the A-word. You are not.”
    She repeats the word ‘Amish’ about fourteen times and finally gives up when I tug a little too hard on one of the loops in her sweater.
    “Okay, okay,” she says, yanking it away from me. “I guess that explains why you don’t know about him, then. He was every preteen’s wet dream and then he dropped off the face of the earth—out of the press, out of Hollywood, everything. His show was canceled. He just quit, and everybody wanted to know why—but he wouldn’t tell. He was totally off the grid until he came to UCSD.”
    “Why would I bother with an ex-cool celebrity who’s probably as stuck up as he is washed up? I don’t care what boys looked like on a screen four years ago, I care what they look like in my bed now.”
    “You haven’t seen him,” she says simply.
    I pat her shoulder. “You can have him. I prefer to get with guys who aren’t obstructed by a mountain of girls with unfulfilled preteen fantasies.”
    “Go shower,” she glowers. Note to self: don’t badmouth James Reid in front of Iris.
    In the shower, I take stock of my body. I’m still sensitive where Masked Boy touched me. The musky smell of sex slips off my body and goes down the drain with the water, and I immediately miss it. It smelled like him . All tall, strong boy body and silence and the most intense eyes. No wonder he didn’t speak. With eyes like that, other forms of