“How much?”
I laid out several levels of monetary assistance and what that would do for the center.
“That’s a lot of money.” Dad popped an olive into his mouth.
“They help a lot of people.”
“Our charity fund has already allocated the donations for this year.”
“Yeah, but we have the money, and you’re in charge of the fund. You can expand the capacity if you want. Or we can make it a personal donation.”
He eyed me for a few minutes, chewing on the olive. “Tell you what, prepare a proposal for me, outlining in detail the funds needed and where they’ll go, and I’ll consider it.”
I grinned and jumped to my feet. “Thank you, Daddy!”
His answer was as good as a yes. He was just using the opportunity to get me to work on my report-writing skills, and I knew I’d crush that report.
I finished drafting it well after midnight and fell asleep instantly afterward, exhausted after a long day—but a certain infuriating guy invaded my dreams anyway.
With the donation all but locked in, I thought my frustrating week was finally turning around, but the next day made me want to throw a tantrum in the middle of Fulton Academy—let everyone see how done I was with their shit.
I was sitting between Amaya and Mena at lunch, slowly eating a roast veg salad while checking emails on my phone, when I saw it.
“Motherfucker.” I smacked my fork down and gripped my phone so tightly I was surprised the screen didn’t crack.
“D? You OK?” Amaya leaned in, her dark hair falling over her face and screening her concerned expression. The cafeteria was as raucous as usual—no one had noticed my quiet outburst of rage.
Grinding my teeth, I showed her my phone. She skimmed the email that had just come in, the one informing me I would not be awarded the internship I’d been working toward for the past year.
“What the fuck?” Amaya’s frown deepened. “I was positive you had that in the bag.”
“Me too.” I got to my feet and stuffed my phone into my pocket. “Keep this in the Dynasty for now, OK?”
“You got it. Where are you going?” She waved Mena’s curious glances down.
“To get to the bottom of it.”
I marched out of the cafeteria, through the school, and up to the third floor, where all the faculty and admin staff had their offices.
Mr. Kirke was the Legal Studies teacher and in charge of facilitating students applying for scholarships, volunteering, and other opportunities in the legal field. I’d have bet my hefty inheritance he knew exactly what was going on here. I wiped all emotion off my face as I approached his open office door.
He was hunched over some papers on his desk, making a mess of the sandwich clutched in his hand. When I knocked on the doorjamb, he looked up over his rimless glasses and swallowed his bite of food.
“Miss Mead.” He pressed his lips together. “What can I do for you?”
Taking that as an invitation, I walked into his office and perched myself on one of the two chairs facing his desk. “Mr. Kirke, I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch. I just wanted to clarify something before my next class.”
“What’s that?” He leaned back in his seat, crossing his fingers over his beer belly.
“I just received an email from Horowitz, Ross, and Shore informing me I would not be interning at their offices this summer. It was brief and uninformative. Seeing as you help organize the internship, I’m hoping you can enlighten me.”
He was not at all surprised I hadn’t gotten it. I pushed the rage down. I was the only Fulton student who’d applied. He should’ve had my back. “Hundreds of people apply every year, Miss Mead. There is only one position.”
“I am aware of how competitive the position is. I am also aware of what they look for. My grades are unblemished, I’m taking several AP classes, I’m volunteering with a nonprofit with ties to the firm, and my planned career path is exactly what they nurture in potential interns. I am the perfect candidate. I’d simply like some insight into why I was not chosen.”
I wasn’t being arrogant—I was confident I’d done all the right things. I’d worked my ass off. And if there was something else that would’ve given me the edge, he should’ve told me. It was literally his job.
Mr. Kirke gave me a small, patronizing smile. “There were three dozen perfect candidates. Sometimes, life’s just not fair. Take this as a life lesson and move on, Miss Mead.”
That condescending mother—
“May I ask who the successful student was?” The information would be public within a week anyway.
“A bright young man by the name of Jacobs.” He didn’t even hesitate, didn’t have to look up the name. How long had he known?
This whole situation was infuriating. I crossed my legs but kept my posture perfectly straight. “Mr. Kirke, I did my research, like I always do, but tell me if I’m wrong here.”
He frowned slightly but nodded for me to continue.
“Horowitz, Ross, and Shore has been practicing law in the state of California and the West Coast since 1938. The internship has been running since 1963.”
The bell rang, and he sighed, but I rushed to keep speaking.
“In that time, only two women have been awarded the position: Jemima Holt and Miriam Randle.” I’d been determined to be the third—but I’d severely underestimated entropy, nepotism, and the fucking patriarchy.
“What’s your point, Miss Mead?” His nostrils flared. I was pissing him off. Good, because I was livid.
“As you yourself said, there are hundreds of applicants each year, dozens of ideal candidates. How is it that year after year, a male student is chosen?”
He scoffed and waved his hand dismissively. “Female students don’t generally have the same level of interest in studying law as male students. It’s probably just a numbers thing.”
“Females make up just over 50 percent of all students enrolled in law schools nationally. This number has been steadily growing over the decades, yet the percentage of women in leadership positions, higher paying positions, remains woefully low. Judges—27.1 percent. Deans—32.4 percent. Private law firm partners—22.7 percent. I would’ve thought you’d know these basic, easily accessible statistics as the Legal Studies teacher in one of the best schools in the country.” He sat up, his belly digging into the desk and his face turning red, but I refused to let him get a word in. “And if this were a post-graduate position in the legal field, your argument of ‘it’s a numbers thing’ may check out, but as it stands, it seems blatantly obvious Horowitz, Ross, and Shore is extremely biased toward male applicants when choosing their interns. I would expect an educational institution such as Fulton Academy—which prides itself on its progressive and exceptional approach to education—to take issue with such egregiously sexist practices.”
“Miss Mead, that’s quite enough.”
“No. What’s enough is your apathy, the ingrained sexism in the legal field, and no one doing anything about it.”
He shot to his feet. I refused to have him looking down on me, so I stood too.
“You are not privy to the selection process at Horowitz, Ross, and Shore,” he growled, “and you are not aware of how the real world works. But you will be very soon, so let me give you one quick lesson now. Women who throw around those kinds of baseless accusations against institutions such as Fulton Academy and Horowitz, Ross, and Shore very quickly find themselves unemployable. I would’ve thought that as a student of law, you’d know not to make accusations without proof. I’m sure you could cause a media storm in a teacup what with all this social media and the Twitter and such, but I’d be very careful who you make enemies of, Miss Mead, if you wish to have any chance of being employed after you finish college.”
I immediately wanted to post, tweet, fucking TikTok about this and show him just how fast I could cause some trouble. And his suggestion that I’d be ruining all my carefully laid plans by doing so was . . . weirdly fr
eeing? I guess I was just in a “fuck everything” kind of mood.
He gathered some papers off his desk, walked to his door, and held the handle. “The bell rang ten minutes ago. I’m late for a meeting, and you should be in class.”
I was clearly dismissed, but it was probably for the best. The urge to grab his too-short tie and twist until he couldn’t speak nonsense anymore was growing by the second.
“This is bullshit,” I muttered as I stormed past him and down the corridor.
He let the cursing slide, pulling the door shut and rushing off in the opposite direction.
Chapter Eleven
Hendrix
My meeting with the guidance counselor was mandatory, but missing most of lunch to sit in an office with a woman who had no concept of my past turned out to be as big a waste of time as I thought it would be. When she asked why I hadn’t graduated last year as I was supposed to, I told her that information should be in my file and I wasn’t comfortable talking about it. I resented that it had even been brought up in such a casual way.
Then she spent a stupid amount of time rambling about college applications and areas of study while I tried to keep my bored mask in place. In reality, my skin was crawling, and I wanted to storm out of there the entire time. To her credit, she did try to ask me questions about what I wanted to do after high school, but I didn’t give her much in the way of responses. Because I had no fucking clue. I just wanted to get through the school year and graduate. I couldn’t bear to think about what would come after, what kind of future I might have.
I was so wrapped up in thoughts of a potential future I didn’t deserve that I almost missed the blonde ball of anger barreling toward me from the other end of the hallway.
Seeing Donna made me pause and look around. Where the hell was I? Somehow I’d wandered into a quiet, locker-free corridor I wasn’t familiar with. I was still getting the lay of the land—the school was massive.
“What the hell are you doing in the administrative wing, Hendrix?” Donna stopped directly in front of me and somehow managed to look down her perfect little nose—despite being a good foot shorter. She was seething.
I knew she couldn’t stand the sight of me, but even I couldn’t elicit this level of rage. What was up her ass?
I made sure not to let my amusement show as I frowned down at her. “None of your business.”
Oh, she did not like that at all. She took another step closer, her chest just inches from mine, and gritted her teeth, but she didn’t seem to have a witty comeback. I kept perfectly still, stifling the chuckle that was bursting to tumble out of me.
When it became apparent she wasn’t going to say anything, I looked around the corridor, careful not to give away how affected I actually was by her proximity, by her sweet, girly smell in my nose. “Why’s it so quiet here?”
She finally found her voice. “Because anyone who’s not teaching a class is currently in a meeting.”
She blew a big breath out through her nose, as if the meeting were being held specifically to make her life more difficult. Then she cocked her head, and a tiny smile twitched at the corner of her mouth before it disappeared. What a strange, frustrating woman.
As abruptly as she’d gotten in my face, she grabbed my wrist and turned on her heel. Stunned by the sudden movement and flowery scent of her shampoo wafting past me when she flicked her hair, I let myself be dragged like a naughty puppy. Shoulders back, head held high, she marched past two office doors and opened the third.
When she tried to pull me into the office, I came to my senses and pulled my wrist out of her grasp.
She rounded on me immediately. “Get inside.”
“No.” I folded my arms. “You’re acting even more batshit than usual, and I really don’t have time for whatever this is. I need to get to class.”
“The bell went fifteen minutes ago. Is there even any point?”
“Of course there is. I’m very interested in Mrs. Shepard’s hot take on string theory.”
“Please. Like you even know what string theory is. You’d pick science over a blow job?”
“What . . . the fuck is happening?” My eyes widened, and I allowed myself a quiet laugh. Her erratic behavior was worrying, but fuck if it wasn’t intriguing too. She was a bitch, but there was no denying she was hot, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about what I’d done to her that night in the rain. I knew what her pussy felt like clenching around my fingers as she came. And now that she’d put the suggestion into my brain, I wanted to know what her mouth felt like around my dick.
“I have a score to settle, and I need to burn off some steam. Meeting lets out in about twenty. You want your dick sucked or not?”
“How do I know you won’t bite it off instead?” I narrowed my eyes.
She leaned in, lifting onto her toes to whisper into my ear. “You don’t. But that’s the risk you take any time you stick your dick into someone’s mouth, isn’t it? The danger, the teeth.” She nipped me on the ear. “That’s what makes it fun.”
Her words made some things click into place in my mind—why she was at Davey’s that night; the intense, controlling personality; why she was about to do something reckless on school property. Donna liked the rush of danger, the adrenaline of almost getting caught.
But I didn’t have the time to fully consider the implications of all that. I was hard as a rock, and I was an eighteen-year-old guy. I was never going to say no to a blow job.
I wrapped an arm around her waist and shuffled us the rest of the way into the office.
As soon as I pulled the door shut, her hot little tongue invaded my mouth. She placed both palms flat against my chest and shoved me, and I let her, relaxing back against the wall as I grabbed her ass with both hands. She had a great ass under that scandalous tartan skirt.
But I lost my grip on it almost immediately as she slid down, rubbing her body down my front until she was on her knees in front of me.
I had to take a breath to steel myself. Part of me had figured she was talking shit and I was calling her bluff. But I should’ve known. Women like Donna Mead rarely said things they didn’t mean, and even less often did things they didn’t want to do.
Holy shit, this is really happening. She made quick work of the button and fly on my neat gray uniform pants as I tried not to pant as if I’d just run a marathon. I was acting as though I’d never had head before, for fuck’s sake.
Although, to be fair, I’d never had head on school property. I’d gotten into plenty of trouble, did some fucked-up shit at my last school, but this was a first even for me.
As Donna pulled my pants and boxers down in one efficient maneuver, I could see what she saw in these moments of recklessness. It was a thrill; an exciting, tantalizing buzz of adrenaline made my suddenly free cock even harder.
I shouldn’t have expected anything less, but Donna still surprised me a little when she leaned forward and immediately took me into her mouth. No teasing strokes of the tongue, no exploratory kisses. She just wrapped her full lips around the head of my cock and sucked.
“Fuck.” I no longer cared how hard I was breathing. Her mouth, her lips, her tongue, holy shit—the back of her throat . . . I was lost, such a fucking goner for this complicated, infuriating, spoiled rich girl and her hot little mouth.
She sucked me off the same way she did everything else—with confidence and determination. As with everything else in her perfect life, Donna excelled at this too.
She used the perfect amount of suction, swirling her tongue around the head, working the base with her hand. The occasional scrape of her teeth made me shiver, the hint at pain and destruction.
She’d said we only had fifteen minutes, but I had a feeling this was going to be over in two. How fucking embarrassing. I tried to think of unsexy things to slow down the orgasm already building, stem the increasing pressure in my groin.
Puppies.
Algebra.
The intricacies of my Tesla eng
ine.
The grating sound of nails on a chalkboard.
Austin’s face as he—no, not that. I pushed that back into the lockbox deep in my mind.
For a moment, I worried I was about to go from one extreme to the other—go completely flaccid in Donna’s mouth while she was giving me the best goddamn blow job of my life. But then I opened my eyes, looked down at her, and groaned, all other thoughts driven from my mind.
I could see down her perfectly ironed shirt, her perky cleavage and a hint of pink lace. Her lips were plumped up from the friction, her unique eyes watching me, unashamed and unabashed. She was perfect.
Her light, soft hair bounced as she bobbed her head up and down. Without thinking about it, I reached out to run my hand through it, then stopped myself just in time. Most chicks didn’t like it when you grabbed their heads while they were sucking you off, in my experience.
But Donna frowned a little and grabbed both my hands, placing them on her head and digging her nails into my skin. As soon as I threaded my fingers into her hair, she let go, and her hands went to my hips.
I groaned again—too loudly, considering our location—but some noise is kind of unavoidable when the chick giving you a BJ actively encourages you to pull her hair and hold her head.
I was getting close, panting, the pressure building. My hips twitched, involuntarily driving my dick forward, and I fought to still them.
Again, Donna surprised me. She moaned around my cock, the vibrations feeling incredible. Both her hands moved to the wall on either side of my hips, and she gave me a challenging look, practically begging me to fuck her mouth.
I watched her carefully, just in case I’d read the signals wrong, but I started thrusting. She met me stroke for stroke, taking me deeper and moaning. The head of my cock started hitting the back of her throat repeatedly, but she just kept going, encouraging me with her eyes, sucking me down with her mouth.
For a few glorious moments, Donna gave herself over to me completely. The sight of her on her knees before me as I thrust my cock in and out of her mouth, her eyes starting to water a little, was addictive. Better than any porn I’d ever seen.
Like You Hurt: A Standalone Enemies to Lovers Romance (Devilbend Dynasty Book 2) Page 10