“You made a deal to get me to fuck you,” I blurt, and apparently that's the wrong thing to say. In an instant, Vic is on me, slamming me into the wall next to the front door.
“You want me to screw you, Bernadette? Will that make you feel better? Will that get you over your self-destructive bullshit?” Vic reaches between us and cups me through my jeans, sliding his thumb over the seam in the denim, teasing an ache into my flesh that wasn't there before.
A gasp slips past my lips, and his mouth twists into an awful smirk.
“That's what you've wanted from moment one, isn't it? To let the man you hate more than anyone fuck you into a mattress. That would complete the cycle, wouldn’t it?”
My breathing is coming in harsh pants, and even though I hate myself for it, I wonder if Vic might actually be right.
His finger traces up and down the seam in my pants, stroking my core into a hot frenzy. He’s so slow, so meticulous, so not like I’d expected. Those ebony eyes of his bore into mine, our harsh breaths mingling. This time, when I reach my hand down to the crotch of his jeans, he’s hard beneath the fabric.
Vic takes me by the wrist and slams my hand into the wall, making me groan.
He looks me in the eyes as he continues to stroke me with his other hand, watching as I come apart beneath the firm, commanding brush of his fingers. I haven’t been touched like this in years, not since Aaron. And the few guys I’ve slept with since, I can barely remember their faces let alone their names.
The way Vic is holding me right now is a warning. When he lets go suddenly and steps back, I feel like I should know better. Every instinct in me says to leave this alone, to back off, to let it be.
“If nothing happened with Kali, why not just tell me?” I demand, breathing hard, shaking. “It’s okay. You used her. You’re using me. You don’t give a shit who you destroy or step on or fuck up, do you?”
In the span of an instant, Vic is on me, spinning me around and shoving me against the wall. He tears the button of my jeans, the tiny piece of metal pinging against the tiles of the kitchen floor. My fingers curl against the hideous orange and yellow wallpaper as he wrenches my jeans down my hips, exposing my ass and the violent heat of my aching core.
The sound of his zipper coming down turns my insides to liquid, and I bite my lower lip.
The feel of his cock is a surprising warmth against my ass, but when he moves to push inside of me, it happens so quick that I’m barely able to take a breath before he’s filling me up. A cry escapes my lips that I can’t hold back, no matter how hard I try. It’s been so long since I had sex, and I most definitely don’t have a safe place to touch myself, so although I’m wet enough, my body’s too tight and Vic is too big.
Pinning my arms above my head, Vic pushes himself inside of me with a rough grunt, and I close my eyes against the brief rush of pain. It fades quickly enough, replaced within the span of a few thrusts to hot, blinding pleasure.
The feeling of having Vic inside of me is equal parts elation and hatred.
I hate him.
I want him.
And I don’t know why.
Victor fills me up with his thick, hard length, taking over everything, shattering me to pieces with his body.
Even though I don’t mean to do it, I find myself pushing back and into him, hot lashes of pleasure tearing through me like a storm. My hips seem to move of their own accord, rocking back against him as he drives into me.
I’m too taut, too hyper-aware to have an orgasm, but Vic comes inside of me with a ragged groan, his hot breath against my neck, the searing warmth of his hand pressing into my hip. When he steps back, I’m too liquid to do anything but sink to the floor, my forehead against the wall, body shaking.
He just stands there; I can feel his presence behind me, this all-consuming demand that I both hate and crave at the same time. The way I feel about Victor Channing, it makes no sense.
“Get up,” he says, but not unkindly. “We need to get back to class.”
That’s right.
Couldn’t possibly risk losing his inheritance, now could we?
Using the wall for leverage, I haul myself up, but there’s a mess between my thighs that has to be cleaned up. Without looking at Vic, I breeze past him toward the bathroom. He didn’t use a condom, I think as I strip down and take a quick shower, careful to keep my hair from getting wet.
It’s hard to bring myself to care.
Instead, I open the door in nothing but a towel.
“I can’t wear these,” I say, tossing the underwear and jeans his direction. They land in a heap at his booted foot as he regards me with dark eyes, his expression impossible to read. Impossible. Just fucking impossible. “I’m not going back to school in cum-stained clothing.”
“Nobody asked you to,” Vic snaps back, snatching the items from the floor and disappearing into the kitchen. A few moments later, I hear the rushing sound of water in a washing machine. When Vic reappears, he can barely look at me, storming past and up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.
I lean against the doorjamb and close my eyes, completely numb.
I don’t feel a thing.
That is, until I feel his heat, his gaze, watching me. Always watching me.
Warily, I crack my eyes and find him there, staring at me. For the briefest of seconds, the expression on Victor’s face matches mine. But that doesn’t mean it’s any more explainable or understandable. He’s an enigma, a lone planet floating in a faraway galaxy. Yet if I can discern anything from this moment, it’s that as soon as he’s within my orbit, I don’t feel numb anymore.
“Here.” He hands over a pair of underwear that look brand-new as well as a pair of Prescott High gym shorts. They’re his, so far too big, but at least they have a drawstring. I step back and close the bathroom door, slipping into the undies—dude undies, but oh well—and the shorts. “How are your stitches?” is what he asks me when I open the door back up.
“Fine,” I say, but they’re bleeding a little. I mean, he did throw me into a wall.
Vic grunts and grabs an extra hoodie from a hook near the door, chucking it at me the same way I chucked my dirty jeans at him, and then we head outside to his bike. I have to hide a small grimace when I straddle it, that ache between my thighs burning now that the adrenaline of the moment has faded.
Neither of us says a word until we arrive back at the high school, parking a block away and walking back.
Hael meets us out front.
Must be lunchtime. Seniors are the only ones allowed off-campus during lunch. Either that, or the Havoc Boys have paid off the new security guard to look the other way when they break the rules, the same way they did the last one.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Hael demands, sliding his palms over his red hair, muscles in his inked arms bunching with the motion. “Shit is going down. Those Ensbrook and Charter fuckers are all over our dicks.”
“I told you to wait until I got back,” Vic snaps, ice-cold, iron-clad.
Fuck, I hate him.
And yet … when I close my eyes, I can feel him buried inside of me, and that heat I work so hard to fight back begins to creep into every single cell.
Luckily, Hael is too flustered to notice either of our strange behavior, or the fact that I’m wearing Victor’s gym shorts. His goddamn name is written across one leg in Sharpie—a school requirement since we have so many problems with theft.
“What happened?” Vic demands as we start toward the front steps where Oscar, Callum, and Aaron are waiting. Unlike Hael, Aaron notices the shorts right away, and his gaze flicks up to my face and the slightly damp tips of my hair.
His mouth purses into a thin, hard line.
“The Charter crew won’t let us near Billie or Kali,” Callum says, his voice that rough, broken sound as he flips his hood back, revealing mussed-up blond hair. “And they’re spreading rumors about Bernadette.” He looks at me with bright blue eyes ringed in thick liner, and then turns his attention over his shoulder as the front doors of Prescott High open and Mitch, Logan, Kyler, Danny, and Timmy step out. Two Charter boys—Mitch and Logan—and the three Ensbrook brothers. Two families, all trash.
My lip curls.
“What kind of rumors?” Vic asks, as if he hasn’t noticed the horde of assholes descending the steps toward us.
“That she fucks her stepfather. That she’s joined us in order to rat our crimes out to him.” Oscar says all of this without skipping a beat, his gray eyes raking my body from head to toe. I can tell right away that he knows about me and Vic in an instant. Unlike Aaron, he isn’t surprised, and he doesn’t care. I also note that he’s wearing his original glasses again, like maybe the ones he wore to deal with Don were throwaways, so they couldn’t be identified.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but Vic is already sweeping past the other Havoc Boys to face off against Mitch—the apparent leader of this new rebel group. For three years, Havoc has ruled these halls with an iron fist. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing as Billie and Kali bring up the rear of their little team.
“What did Kali pay you to get her dirty work done?” I whisper loud enough that only Aaron can hear, standing on my right side with his teeth gritted, and his hands curled into fists at his sides. He barely slides those gold-green eyes of his over to me, the angry scowl on his face twisting down into a frown.
“She betrayed every person she knows to us, including her cousin who was fucking a well-known local judge.” Aaron exhales and closes his eyes for a moment. He acts like I’ve just taken a sledgehammer to his skull. “Kali’s cousin was pissed off at us for a turf war we got into with her brother at Fuller High, and sicced the court system on me. I barely managed to keep the girls from ending up in foster care.”
My brows go up, and I feel this sharp ache inside my chest as I turn back toward the scene in front of me.
“Do you think this is a game?” Vic asks as I let my eyes wander the front of the school, searching for any of the on-campus cops. There are none in sight. So somebody paid them to look the other way. Could’ve been Havoc, or maybe their newfound enemies. “Your girl cut mine up with a knife.”