The Replacement: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 1)

by Cassie James

  Jude snakes a hand around my shoulder, and his fingers tickle over my neck before digging into the hair at the nape of my neck. His eyes darken as he pulls my face close to his again, and my stomach jumps at the heat of lust burning in his eyes. “Where the hell did you learn that?”

  For a split second, I consider lying. I could tell him he was naive to think I hadn’t been with other guys. I know enough about Jude to know it would infuriate him.

  I don’t answer fast enough. “Where. Did. You. Learn. That?” he demands, fingers digging deeper into my hair with each word. The sting of the pain is only offset by the ache burning through my body as I press closer and his lower body against mine.

  Jude looks like he might come undone at any moment, and my heart flutters at the thought. Something akin to pride swells within me, and I lean forward to kiss him again. My lips have barely brushed his before he pulls my head back by my hair, his eyes narrowing.

  He’s still waiting for an answer.

  “I… I looked at a lot of porn after the scissoring incident,” I whisper. His answering grin makes my insides go molten. His mouth covers mine a second later, and I let myself get lost in the feeling of him taking over.

  My stomach twists as Jude suddenly flips us over on the loveseat, his much bigger body looming over mine for a moment before he crashes down on me again. My hands explore his body frantically as he rolls his hips against mine, reminding me that I haven’t finished what I started. I reach for the hem of his t-shirt, and I’m rewarded with a grunt as he reaches a hand behind his neck to pull it off in one fluid motion. My fingers shake as they explore the warm expanse of his bare chest, but I’m emboldened when he leans back on his haunches, breathing heavily.

  I reach for the hem of my own shirt, tugging it over my head as his eyes hood even further. I’ve barely gotten it over my head before his grappling fingers are working to get my strapless bra off, too. I’m topless under him before I can even really process what’s happening.

  His hands work my body, pulling sounds out of me that I wasn’t even aware I could make. It feels so good that I roll my hips, pressing up against him, and he lets out a long groan that makes me feel more triumphant than I probably should. Anything a regular girl can do, I can do better. The thought is ridiculous, but it distracts me long enough that I almost miss Jude shucking his pants the rest of the way off and retrieving a foil packet from one of the pockets.

  My mouth opens on a protest that never makes it off my tongue. The words disappear into thin air when Jude leans down and drags my leggings and panties down using only his teeth. I whimper as his front teeth graze the sensitive skin of my upper thigh, and I swear I can practically feel him smile against me.

  He drops the foil packet—a condom—on my bare chest. “Open that,” he commands as he runs his hands over my bare legs, his fingers inching dangerously close to the one part of me that’s been completely untouched until now.

  I hesitate, uncertainty floating around in my head. None of the porn I watched had condoms, but I sure as hell don’t want to admit I’m not quite sure what to do.

  Jude huffs impatiently, using one hand and his teeth to rip the foil open himself. With just the one hand, he rolls the condom over his length. I watch, mesmerized, wanting to remember every detail of how he does it.

  Another whimper tears its way out of the back of my throat as he presses into me. His eyes flicker up to meet mine, and he freezes. For a moment, it seems like neither of us so much as breathes while we stare at each other. His eyebrows suddenly knit down and he pulls back, looking away from me as I whimper again at the loss of contact.

  His hands grab my hips rougher than I’m expecting, and for a second my body feels weightless as he flips me over, forcing me over the armrest so that I have to pull my knees up under my body for balance.

  One of his hands fists in my hair, yanking my head back painfully, and the other gropes my ass as he leans into me so that he can bite and suck the skin along the back of my shoulders. He sinks his teeth down over my collarbone, causing me to arch up against him with a low moan. Nothing about watching porn actually prepared me for feeling all these new sensations for myself.

  His hand leaves my ass as he pulls back, and then he’s sinking into me again. Not quite as slowly as the first time. I wince, my body struggling to adjust to this unfamiliar intrusion as he sinks into me inch by inch. My face sinks against the leather of the armrest as my body quivers too much to hold itself up any longer. My knees nearly give out, too, but at the last second Jude grabs me by the hips to keep me where he wants me. I’m sure tomorrow I’m going to find purple and gray imprints from his fingers digging into me so hard, but at the moment I can’t bring myself to care.

  I lose myself to Jude, everything around us fading away as he pushes into me at a punishing pace, each stroke rougher than the last as he takes what he so desperately seems to need. And I like it. I like the way he grunts when I push back to meet his thrusts. I even like the way he yanks my hair with no rhyme or reason, as if he’s trying to punish me for how much I’m enjoying this.

  Tension coils low in my belly, and just as I’m positive I’m going to break in half, Jude lets out a long groan and collapses onto my back, his weight forcing me flat against the couch as his chest heaves. A deep satisfaction settles over me as he catches his breath. I did that to him; my body gave him that pleasure.

  Jude rolls off of me, and I pull myself into a sitting position as I try to catch my own breath now that his weight isn’t bearing down on me. I wrap my arms around my knees, resting my cheek on top of them as I smile up at him, sated and happy in a way I haven’t been since I first woke up.

  It takes me a minute to realize Jude’s not looking at me. He collapses down onto the opposite side of the loveseat and drops his head into his hands. I reach out and lay my hand on his shoulder, but my stomach lurches when he jerks away from my touch.

  “Get dressed.” His voice is hoarse as he stands, stepping out of my reach. He grabs my clothes off the floor and tosses them at me in an angry way that makes my mouth fall open. “Now!” he demands.

  My hands shake as I leap to my feet and start dressing as quickly as I can.

  “Was that...” I pause, struggling to find the words around the hard lump in my throat. Sex with Jude was rough and dirtier than I anticipated my first time being, but it was a lot like the stuff I’ve seen on the internet. So why was he acting like this? “Was that not okay? Did I do something wrong?”

  He jerks his jeans over his hips as he turns angry hazel eyes on me. I finish pulling my shirt over my head and then still. He shrugs before he answers, “Marginally better than a fleshlight, at least.”

  I want it to be a joke. A cruel one, but exactly the kind of thing Jude would crudely joke about. He’s not laughing, though, and it feels like the whole world comes crashing down at my feet.

  “Jude…” He stalks past me to grab his t-shirt, jerking it over his head with his back to me. My voice croaks as I tell him, “Surely you don’t mean that.” My stomach sinks as he turns back and tosses my jacket right in my face.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he challenges, and my breath is heavy in my chest as tears stings my eyes. “You know we’re not friends, right?”

  “Jude, we just had sex!” Desperation claws at me, and my heart hurts in my chest. How could he not understand how important this step was for me? Maybe his precious Piper hadn’t been a virgin anymore, but by any stretch of the imagination—I was. “You can’t just fuck someone you don’t like!”

  “You’re wrong, because that’s exactly what I just did.” He stalks out of the home theater, leaving me no choice but to trail after him, my tears obscuring my vision. “Don’t you get it, Silicunt? Tori might be an idiot, but she wasn’t wrong—we want you gone. All of us. The girls wanted to get rid of you the catty way, but me and the guys? We wanted to reel you in and see who got to fuck the robot first. Guess I won.”

  My mouth falls open as he pulls his phone
from his jeans. I struggle to breathe around the pressure of despair pressing in around me, and as he stands there texting with zero regard for me falling apart in front of him, I know that his words are unequivocally true. No decent person would use one of their friends like this and leave her to completely break in front of him.

  “There will be a car waiting for you by the gate in five minutes. Feel free to meet it there,” he says, and then he’s gone, disappearing into the house as if he can’t get away from me fast enough.

  My fingers shake as I button my jacket, and I finally stop fighting the tears I’m failing to hold back anyway as I let my feet carry me mindlessly out the front door and down to the gate at the end of the drive. My tears turn into big, ugly, heaving sobs as I wait for the stranger who’s coming to take me home.

  How could I let this happen? For a learning AI, I sure was a fucking idiot. And they’ve been telling you that for days, the ugly voice in the back of my mind reminds me as a dark town car rolls to a stop. An older man rolls the window down and eyes me skeptically.

  “Piper Hawthorne?”

  I nod miserably, wishing I didn’t have to be. At the moment, I wanted to be anyone in the world but Piper Hawthorne.

  The doors unlock with an audible click, and I slide into the back of the car before the man can get out to open the door for me. I don’t think I could handle anyone doing anything nice or polite for me right now without breaking down into a fresh round of tears. The man eyes me again in the rearview mirror, but after I’ve confirmed my address for him he turns his attention back to the road.

  The car moves forward slowly, and I turn my head to stare out the window. Lights flash by the window, each flash providing me with a peek at my miserable face. I suck in deep breaths, trying to calm my breathing as more tears leak from my swollen and red eyes. I know I only have twenty minutes to pull myself together before I’m home. The last thing I want is for Mom to have a reason to question me as soon as I walk through the door. How would I ever be able to explain to her that I’d let someone I thought genuinely cared about me take something from me that I’m never going to get back? What would she say when she realized she’d replaced her dead daughter with a whore?

  Pull your shit together, Piper. Her voice comes through so clear to me it’s almost like someone else is actually speaking the words aloud.

  What would Piper do in this scenario? She would square her shoulders, walk into school on Monday morning, smile at Jude and Tori, and take pride in the fact that nothing they could ever do would give them the power to run her off.

  I’m that person, too. I remind myself as the car pulls to a stop in front of my house. I thank the driver and square my shoulders at the sight of lights shining from several of the lower level windows. If The Pricks want to treat me like trash, fine, but I’m not giving into their games ever again. I’m a learning AI, after all. What would be the point of my existence if I didn’t learn from what just happened tonight?

  I fix a smile on my face as I leave behind the temporary comfort of the silent town car and head for the front door of my home. Jude, and Tori, and the rest of The Thorns and The Roses, they might want to take everything from me, but they’re in for a rude awakening.

  I’m Piper Hawthorne, and it’s about time I fight tooth and nail for what’s mine. A place at Rosewood Academy, at the very top of the social ladder? That’s mine. It’s always been mine and it will always be mine—if and when I want it.

  And now, I want it.

  They can get on board, or they can drown in my wake. I’m tired of trying to calm the waters. Now, I’m ready to be the storm.

  12

  Piper

  It’s still relatively early on Sunday when I convince Mom to drop me off in Sherman Oaks. She’s on her way to brunch with a client, and giving me a ride will probably make her late, but she breaks out in a wide smile when I ask for my bank card.

  She’s been begging me to take it out on a test run, but I haven’t really felt the need to buy anything, not when she’d already replaced my entire wardrobe at the beginning of the school year. This morning, though, I’m itching to get out of the house, and it only seems right that I probably owe Macie a girls’ day after everything.

  Mom happily hands the card off to me as she tells me, “Have a good day with Tori, darling.” I pause with my hand on the door handle, but ultimately I don’t correct her. She waves as she drives away.

  Tori’s Mom, Lydia, answers the door, a question in her eyes she doesn’t voice as she greets me. “Piper, hi.” I’m positive she’s heard about me, but I’m sure it’s still surprising to come face to face with the reincarnation of your daughter’s dead friend. “How are you?” she asks, the words stilted.

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Lydia motions for me to come on in, but then she pauses awkwardly in the foyer. “Did Tori tell you to meet her here? She stayed with Chelsey last night, I didn’t expect she’d be home quite this early.”

  “I’m actually not here to see Tori. I’m here for Macie,” I correct her, watching uncomfortably as her nose wrinkles.

  “Oh?” Mrs. Wharton has never really been high on my list of favorite parents, but the way she warily stares at me is enough for me to drop her right down to the bottom of my list. It shouldn’t hurt my feelings, the way she stares at me like she wishes I wasn’t standing right in front of her, but it stings nonetheless.

  “Yeah, I’m surprised you haven’t heard—” I’m not actually. Macie and her step-mom don’t have a close relationship even though she’s as thick as thieves with her dad. “But Macie and I have been hanging out. She’s not expecting me, but I thought I’d surprise her with a girls’ day if that’s okay.”

  The look in her eyes tells me that she wants to tell me that it’s absolutely not okay, but she fixes me with the same patronizing smile she’d been trying to hide since I showed up on her doorstep uninvited. “Of course, if she wants to.” She points me in the direction of Macie’s bedroom, and I thank her politely before I head for the stairs. As I’m climbing the stairs, Macie’s dad is puffing down them. He smiles warmly, saying hello, but I don’t miss the curious glint in his eyes as he turns his head to stare at me.

  I try to brush off how uncomfortably this is going so far as I knock on Macie’s door. I hear shuffling from the other side, and I grin when she groans loudly enough that I hear it clearly through the door. “Dad, what the hell could you have forgotten in the three seconds since you quit pestering me?”

  “Luke, I am not your father,” I breathe out in a raggedy voice before giggling. Macie jerks the door open with a grin.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I hold up my shiny new bank card. “Girls’ day on me?”

  She tilts her head to the side and my grin falters. I would be the first to admit that we’ve been on slightly shakier ground recently because of our arguments over The Pricks these last couple weeks. I hadn’t thought I’d done any serious damage to our relationship, though. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until she laughs and shakes her head at me.

  “That Star Wars reference might have been the shittiest joke I’ve ever heard.” She turns to head into her room, and I follow, eyes drinking in the sight of my best friend’s room for the first time.

  It’s all clean lines and dark, modern colors. She points to her closet before disappearing inside, and I pause by the foot of her platform bed. The mahogany of her desk draws my eye, and I wander over to study the designs she has pinned to her cork board. My fingers trace over the lines of code scribbled hastily on a pad of paper, and I’m barely beginning to process the 0’s and 1’s when she appears at my side.

  “Ready to go?” she asks with a breathless sort of smile, and I nod before following her out of the room.

  We’re in her car, barely out of the driveway when she says, “I heard about what happened.”

  My heart kicks into overdrive. Has word really spread that fast? Who had Jude told? Everyone? Does ever
yone already know all about how he fucked me and then kicked me out of his house? I’d planned to tell her, of course, but I wanted to tell her myself. Preferably in a way that minimized what a freaking idiot I am.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I already know I was an idiot to ever think I could trust Jude.” I cross my arms over my chest protectively, trying to keep in all the hurt threatening to spill out.

  “Jude? I heard he wasn’t even there.” She looks over at me, confused, and only then do I realize she’s not talking about me having sex with Jude. She heard about what happened on Thursday with Tori, Chelsey, and Brennan. Shit. She must see the fresh panic on my face. “Something else happened?

  I nod slowly, but now I can’t find the words to tell her the details.

  “Piper,” she says my name softly, “what happened with Jude?”

  She pulls the car to a stop in front of a line of shops and then shifts in her seat so she can study me. I sag back in my chair and rest my head in my hands so I don’t actually have to look at her. There are so many emotions coursing through my body and dammit, what right did any cruel, selfish boy have to make me feel this way?

  “Hey, it’s okay.” Macie taps my arm until I raise my head and look at her again. “I’m not judging you, Piper. You can tell me what happened, I swear.”

  I take a deep breath in through my nose and release it shakily through pursed lips. I run my fingers roughly over my grainy eyes, and I close them against the pain for just one short moment. “I had sex with Jude last night.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” I’m fully prepared for a look of disappoint at my declaration. I’m not at all prepared for the fury that I see reflecting in her eyes instead. My mouth gapes helplessly as her hand shoots out and she grabs my arm. I let out a squeak of protest, and she lets go of my arm like she’s been shocked. “Sorry, sorry.”