“Bloody hell,” he murmurs, staying right where he is, still sheathed inside of me. We’re both having trouble breathing, I think. “Bloody fucking cocksucking hell.” Wind finally looks back over at me and our eyes meet. It’s too much, looking at him while he’s still inside, and I try to look away. He touches my cheek with gloved fingers and forces me back. “You, Milady, are staying in my room tonight.”
“I don’t know how the other boys would feel about that,” I choke out, but Wind just smirks and sits up, pulling me along with him, so that my head is against his sweaty chest, his heart thundering against my ear. I like that, hearing his heart.
“Come find me in bed later and ask me how much I fucking care,” he says, and then we sit there together for a while in silence.
When we come out of the barn a few minutes later, fully dressed, but still recovering from our encounter, I feel like Zayd is the only one that notices, narrowing his green eyes in our direction. Creed and Miranda are too busy fighting, Zack is keeping Charlie entertained, and Tristan is nowhere to be seen.
Probably a good thing.
Since I think Windsor wanted to kill him earlier.
“Have a nice chat?” Zayd asks, leaning back on the bench and putting his tattooed arms out behind him. He’s still wearing the polo shirt, but he’s tossed the jacket.
“You have no idea,” Wind purrs in his English accent, and I shiver.
He’s been a good friend to me all along. Now, when I glance over at him, something feels different.
Deeper, darker … impossible to ignore.
“Right,” Zayd responds, voice tight and clipped with jealousy.
Jealousy.
How the hell am I going to manage an entire harem of bullies for the rest of the year?
Guess only time will tell that.
December at Burberry Prep is always fun. There’s a giant Christmas tree in the student lounge, but I’ve never really had the chance to appreciate it, considering my previous circumstances. It’s quiet and secluded up here, and the student council—most of whom I’ve never met—actually runs a tiny café where students can purchase coffee or croissants.
It’s like … halfway between The Mess and the library, but without much employee supervision.
Essentially, it’s the ideal place to get jumped.
Since second year, I’ve been preparing my case against Harper.
I’m not worried about her. Some of the others however, I’m struggling with. They all deserve to get theirs, but I’m not willing to break my rules, no matter what Zack says.
“I like it up here,” I say, sitting next to Tristan on one of the leather couches in the student lounge. “The last time I was up here, I was giving Wind a tour of the school.” My face burns, and I do my best not to think about how much hay I had stuck in my butt crack. Or how I gave in and tiptoed to Wind’s bedroom later that night. He spent almost two hours between my thighs with his mouth.
“So do I. Too bad we wasted four years not using it.” Tristan Vanderbilt taps his fingers on the couch arm, and then pauses to look over as Lizzie Walton appears with a cup of coffee on a saucer, and a white bag in her other hand filled with pastries. “Excuse me.” Tristan stands up and then sets something down on the stack of papers in front of me, most of which are scholarship pamphlets I picked up during the academic fair last week.
Tristan … kind of needs to apply to as many as he can.
“I brought food for everyone, but …” She trails off and watches him leave before sitting down in the chair nearest me. I glance down at whatever it is that Tristan left, and then flush ten shades of crimson when I see it’s his test results, just like I saw with Zack, Zayd, and even Windsor. He emailed me his, and I just happened to have Charlie standing near me when I opened it …
Needless to say, we had a small birds and the bees sex talk that ended with him giving me a book that looks like it’s from 1982, all about how people in love can make each other happy with their bodies … Gross.
“You okay?” Lizzie asks me, waving her hand in front of my face. I look up and force a smile, folding the page in half, so she can’t see it. If Tristan gave me this then … but I notice that she’s also got a folded in half piece of paper clutched in her hand, too.
No, I’m being paranoid. I’m imagining things. I’m …
“Why did you pick me?” I ask suddenly as Lizzie sets her food down and tosses shiny dark hair over one shoulder. She freezes, like a deer caught in the headlights. I mean, I’ve heard this story from Zack, but I want to hear it from her, too.
“For …”
“The bet,” I clarify, as if there was anything else. My hand subconsciously reaches down to rest atop my slashed out infinity tattoo. I know it’s all in my head, but it feels like it burns sometimes. I just hate the way the world works, how the super-rich control everything, and how they rule without compassion.
The Club is … just that, but on a smaller scale.
Nothing is different; nothing has changed.
“Right.” Lizzie sighs and closes her eyes. Her all-black uniform is perfectly pressed and polished, much like Tristan’s, never a fold or wrinkle or stitch out of place. When she opens her amber eyes and looks back over at me, I keep my gaze neutral. “It feels so stupid now, but … back then I was so angry. Your mother’s new husband, Adam Carmichael, he’d been sleeping with my sister.” I wait, seeing if she might elaborate a little. Fortunately, the silence, filled only with the clink of cups and the distant murmur of a coffee grinder, seems to spur her on. “And then there was you, this … easy target. You were going to school with Zack, and … to be honest with you, I didn’t care. I hated Adam, and I hated the Carmichaels, and I just …” She trails off again and looks away, toward the snack counter. “I didn’t think of you as a real person back then, just a distant object. I thought of them all that way, all the Plebs.”
My mouth tightens into a thin line as Lizzie looks back over at me.
“That’s it? I was collateral damage? Nothing more?” Somehow that makes it even shittier.
“Well, that, and when Zack mentioned you in passing, I … maybe I was jealous. He called you beautiful. I’d never heard him talk about a girl like that before.” Lizzie and I stare at each other, and her face flushes. Hopefully she realizes how ridiculous she sounds. “I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. I’ll say it forever if I have to: I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry now,” I tell her, and then I guess maybe her embarrassment is too much, or I’ve pushed her too hard or something because she gets really freaking cranky then.
“Look, you’ve gotten your revenge on me. You have Tristan now, and what do I have?” She stands up and knocks her bag of pastries to the floor, spilling crumbs everywhere, her black pleated skirt swirling around her thighs. “I have nothing. Nobody. Nobody likes me at this school. I came here to help you, I …” She trails off, and then pauses when she realizes I have no plans to engage her on this.
“I had you on my list, you know, for revenge.” I stand up and gather my things in my arms, my bookbag clutched in tight fingers as I look over and meet Lizzie’s eyes. “But you were so heartbroken when you saw Tristan and Harper engaged that I couldn’t do it anymore. That was it. I thought you were hurting enough. But if I’d wanted to, I could’ve gone a lot further. Look, I’m giving you a fair shot at him because I want him to be the one to make the decision, but what you did to me was wrong. I hope you truly realize that.”
I take off, and then pause when I hear the clattering sound of broken glass, glancing back over my shoulder to see that Lizzie’s knocked her coffee cup and saucer to the floor. She’s quite literally panting with frustration, but I don’t have the time to deal with it.
Something else is going on with her, and it has nothing to do with me.
Later that same day, when I’m walking out of The Mess with Miranda by my side, Harper comes storming down the hallway in a violent rage. She pauses next to me, teeth gritted, and jabs me in the chest with a finger.
“I’m biding my time, but when I finally do deal with you, Reed, you are fucking dead. Do you hear me?” She shoves me back, and Miranda goes for her, but I hold her back, waiting until Harper’s around the corner before I let go. I’m about to head off in search of Wind when he finds me, like he always does.
He chucks something at me, and I catch it, realizing quite quickly that it’s not something I want to be holding onto at all. It’s a wet, soggy bra. Not mine, most definitely. Somebody else’s.
“Eww.” I drop it and Wind catches it in quick fingers, tossing it into the nearby trash can before Ms. Felton and Mrs. Collins come around the corner with a sobbing Ileana between them. She’s holding her hand over her chest and weeping.
“I promised you I’d deal with her.”
“Windsor,” I start, a warning note in my voice. He looks back at me with a dark expression that quickly morphs into a hunger that my body responds to, even if my brain rebels against it. “What did you do?”
“I posted Ileana’s private messages to Harper on Becky’s Facebook page. Becky …” He pauses again as Becky Platter rages past us, barely glancing in our direction. “As I was saying, Becky shoved her down the stairs and poor Ileana landed chest first. I think … you wouldn’t say pop …” Wind snaps his fingers and smiles at me while Miranda gapes at him. “I think you’d call it rupturing. Her breast implant ruptured. I know you abhor violence, but to be fair, even I couldn’t have predicted the outcome.”
“Her boob … ruptured?” I ask, and then I wipe my hands desperately on the front of my uniform. “What was I just touching then?!”
“Oh, that? When they got in a fight at the bottom of the steps, Becky snapped Ileana’s bra and tore it off. I simply picked it up. The wetness is just bottled water that Becky threw on her first. Like you said, let them hang themselves, right?” He shrugs. “I couldn’t have done a better job myself.”