by Bella King
Breaking Her Bully
The High School Bully Romance Box Set
Bella King
Copyright © 2019 by Bella King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Hate Lover
A Dark High School Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance
Introduction
Blood is plentiful in death and love.
Red.
That’s my favorite color. It has an impact, unlike any other color. Some say that red makes you more attractive. Others say that red is the color of death, while green represents life. I disagree. Red apples, red wine, red blood, and red stains of rust have flavor and meaning. They’re iconic, like the marks on your skin etched in after a rough night of sex with a person you love and hate at the same time. Speaking of which…
Apollo.
I like to call him Apple, but not the red kind. That would be too close to my favorite. He could be a sour green apple because that would suit him better. Green is the opposite color to red and is also his favorite color. That’s fitting because we’re opposites.
Apollo is an asshole, plain and simple, but the other women at Winterlake Prep School seem to like him an awful lot. I know why that is. I said he was an asshole, not ugly. He drips with rugged charm, a jaw sharper than a blade, and a tongue that’s as clever as it is cruel.
Apollo is my enemy, not because I chose him to be, but because he chose me. It could have been that I didn’t quite fit in at Winterlake Prep. Perhaps my family wasn’t rich enough for his taste, or my hair wasn’t straight and blonde like the women on the cheer team. Maybe he didn’t like the way my voice sounded, a little raspier and deeper than the shrill squeaks that he must be used to from the other women here.
For whatever reason, this man had taken a dislike, no, hatred toward me that could only be countered with an equal or greater hatred of him. I wasn’t prone to aggression and bitter quarrels before I met him, but now I fenced with my words and made threats meant to slice to the bone.
Apollo was a punk, a rebel, and a bad boy. He wasn’t the man of my dreams. More accurately, he was the man that haunted my nightmares. He was the guy that fathers hated, and only broken women fell for.
He was everything I hated in a man. He was mean, rude, and overly aggressive, thinking with his cock instead of his brain most of the time. I wasn’t like him, and maybe that’s why he hated me so much. In fact, that was probably the only thing we had in common – a mutual hatred.
I hated Apollo, and he hated me. Why, then, did we end up lovers?
Chapter 1
Nothing is ever truly dead.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked, nearly jumping out of my skin when I saw Apollo standing in the pristine white hallway of Winterlake Prep.
His thick arms were crossed, and a mean smirk marred his otherwise handsome face. He was older now than when I last saw him, around 19 years old and still as wicked as they came. His white cotton shirt was unbuttoned so low that I could see the littering of tattoos and symbols inked into his skin for eternity. His serpent green eyes danced in amusement at my surprise.
Apollo had been expelled from Winterlake last year under accusations of tampering with his grades to stay on the football team, but he, of course, denied any wrongdoing. He was never known to own up to his bad behavior, instead, letting evil things slip through the cracks of an otherwise morally sound mind.
Men like him walked the line between deplorable and irresistibly charming, with each side unable to exist without the other. Apollo was the perfect yin and yang, dancing gleefully on the thin line between good and evil. A little nudge would be all it took for him to fall off to either side, but he quite liked the middle. He thrived in grey areas.
Surprise didn’t even begin to cover how I felt upon seeing him standing in the school hallway. When you were expelled from Winterlake, there was no going back. You weren’t allowed on the grounds, much less in the damn building.
Apollo watched my face as my thoughts quickly brought me to the most unfortunate conclusion I could imagine. He was back.
“Did you miss me?” Apollo asked, uncrossing his arms and stepping forward.
I could smell the deep masculine cologne that he used, woody and dark. Somehow, it was relaxing and aggravating at the same time.
“I most certainly did not miss you,” I said, putting my hands on my wide hips. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Daddy has money,” Apollo answered, slowly moving the tip of his tongue over his lips.
“Your dad paid off the school to let you back?” I asked, shaking my head.
“I wasn’t talking about my father. I was referring to myself,” he replied, raising his eyebrows a few times for effect.
“You’re disgusting,” I said, scrunching up my nose. “Did they really let you back in?” I asked, not fully believing that the school would be that sleazy as to accept bribes from a simple jock like Apollo.
“I’m standing right here,” he answered with his arms stretched wide. “Larger than life, sweetheart. I can do anything I want.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, shooting daggers through my eyes. I tried to look threatening, but I doubted that it would work against him. Normally, guys backed down when I got feisty. Apollo? He fucking lived for it.
“Sweetheart? Are you not sweet?” Apollo asked, leaving his position against the locker and walking a circle around me. “I seem to remember you begging for my cock just weeks before I left.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to crack under pressure. “I was drunk,” I said through tightly clenched teeth. My shoulders came up defensively as he walked behind me.
“Off a single glass of wine?” He mused, shaking his head. “Come on, sweetheart. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I told you not to call me that,” I said. “I’m not your sweetheart.”
Apollo finished his circle around me and stopped to stand inches away from my face. “Alright, Georgia. That still doesn’t explain why you were so desperate to have your pretty red lips wrapped around my throbbing cock, now does it?”
I could see the reflection of my face in his large pupils. I was pissed off, and he reveled in my anger. My copper hair hung straight to my shoulders, moving like silk, no frizz, no mess. That’s how I kept it, and no amount of harassment from Apollo would change that. I needed to remain cool.
I relaxed the cramped muscles in my face, pouting out my lips just enough to appear in control of my emotions again. Apollo played a hard game, but I was used to it by now. I hadn’t forgotten how to fight back just because he had been gone for a year.
“I asked for your cock so I could slice it off,” I whispered, challenging him with a deadly stare.
He narrowed his eyes at me, allowing them to flicker down for a brief moment in submission. Yes, I could read him well. He wasn’t going to win this one. Men were so obsessed with their penises that any threats against them would throw them off. Apollo was no different.
He stepped back. “It’s a shame we were interrupted. I would have knocked you up in an instant.”
Apollo’s baby inside my belly was an image I didn’t need in my head. I was lucky enough that my friend Cora i
nterrupted us by accident, breaking my temporary lapse in judgment. I would have regretted having sex with him.
I blinked slowly, reminding myself that he derived pleasure from my reactions. I could let my anger loose when he wasn’t around. For now, I had to stay strong.
“I’m sure you’ll get kicked out again soon. Until then, stay out of my way,” I said, turning to leave him.
“See you later, my little Georgia peach,” Apollo said in a deep voice as I left.
I shuddered at his words, as though my body was trying desperately to shake them off, but they wouldn’t leave so easily. I was in total disbelief that Apollo was back after his year-long break from Winterlake Prep. It all seemed like a cruel joke, but I knew that security around here was tight. He couldn’t have just snuck in.
I cursed beneath my breath as I trudged quickly down the familiar hallways of the school. This was my last year here, so why did he have to come back and ruin it? I could have graduated in peace, but instead, my life was back to the hellscape that it had been when he first began bullying me.
Apollo, a rich douchebag who had a prick for a brain and more muscles than he had control over. He had no tact, no style, and no sense of right and wrong, dancing around gleefully in a place that few people cared to go.
That was because it was a place that would make people hate you. It was shocking to me that the entire school hadn’t turned against him by now, but he was far too handsome and successful for that to happen.
They didn’t care about being nice here. I found that out in my first year when a group of girls began teasing me about my copper hair, calling me carrot top, freak, and stupid just for the way I looked. Most of the girls here were blonde, and if they weren’t naturally, they would bleach it until it was like straw on their poor tired scalps.
They feared to be different, to be an outcast. I already was, so it didn’t bother me. Things weren’t actually that bad once Apollo was kicked out. He was what made people gang up on me. After he was gone, peace returned to my life. I was able to disappear and go unnoticed at the school. I could concentrate on my grades and slip through without causing a stir. It’s what I wanted.
But now, things were changing again. Apollo was back, and he seemed like he wanted a bigger piece of me than the last time he came. His teeth could bite deep into my core, and he knew how to jerk and roll so that he tore out chunks of me like an alligator doing its death roll.
I was in for a ride. That much was for certain.
Chapter 2
You can’t wake up from real life.
I wanted to believe this was all a big prank, but the smug look on Apollo’s handsome face had told me otherwise. He was back, and that meant my life would be returning to turmoil soon enough.
I had managed to find peace in the flawless halls of Winterlake Prep School once Apollo had been kicked out. There was no doubt in my mind that he had been the one tampering with the school systems to keep his grades up and him on the football team as captain, but nobody had been able to prove it directly.
The only thing anyone knew for certain was that his written grades didn’t match the ones in the database, and that was enough to throw the book at him, rendering his little football career null. He vanished after that. I assumed his parents had him transferred to a different school, but that was clearly not the case anymore. He was back at Winterlake.
I had plenty of suitors. Apollo wasn’t the only one that was after me. James, Bradly, Cooper, the list went on. None of them were quite the same as Apollo, though. They weren’t desperate to get into my pants, so as a result, none of them did. Apollo was actually the only man that had ever come close, and I hated him for that.
Had Apollo been a respectable guy, maybe he would have stood a chance at having me, but he was the worst kind of guy possible. He was the type that fathers feared their daughters would date, the kind of man that would fuck you, not because he loved you, but because he hated you. He didn’t want to date me; He wanted to own me.
I pushed the silky strands of hair from my face, tucking them behind a small ear as I leaned over my books, trying to concentrate on studying for the exam I had later that week. It was a difficult task due to Apollo’s reappearance at the school, but I couldn’t let him sink his claws that deep into my brain. Unlike him, I was a good student with a future ahead of me.
I clicked my pen so fast that it sounded more like a hum than a series of snaps. I realized that I was too loud, so I flung the pen in between my fingers and began twirling it. I was full of nervous habits, and today they were present in everything I did.
What was the square root of negative one, and why on earth did that even matter? I scribbled a question mark into my notebook and slammed it shut. I could study more at home tonight.
I lifted my head and looked around the library, scanning the shelves of perfectly organized books for any sign of Apollo. He never stepped foot into the library, but I was still paranoid that he would make an appearance. There was no telling how much he had changed since I last saw him. He was definitely bolder than before, which was impressive in a way because I knew him to be quite bold already.
There was no sign of him. I would have smelled is cologne before he arrived anyway. It moved ahead of him, polluting the air in front of him with the sweet and musky smell of the wood and spices. That smell would cling to you for hours after you came in contact with it.
I could still smell just the faintest whiff of Apollo’s cologne on me now. He hadn’t even touched me, and yet the essence of him clung to the fabric of my white sweater, weaving itself into the strands, unwilling to leave me alone.
I needed a stiff drink and a cigarette, but I had kicked both habits since Apollo left. He was the one to get me started with all that, offering me my first cigarette when I met him last year. This was before I knew about the kind of man that he was. No woman should start smoking at 18, so as soon as he left, I threw out my stash and stopped going out so late. I was better than that.
I wasn’t the only girl at Winterlake Prep to smoke. There were tons of other students that partook in the cancer sticks they sold at the gas station right outside the school. There’s something about rich kids and trashy behavior. They loved it, perhaps as a way to rebel against their wealthy parents. I was pretty sure that the smoking rates at Winterlake were higher than in any public high school.
Whatever the case, I found myself slipping into a similar mindset when I had met Apollo. Now that he was back, so were the urges to act up. His presence alone was enough to influence me to behave improperly.
I wasn’t going to get much more work done in the library, and my next class was soon. I stood up, pushing my chair back and grabbing my books off the glossy wooden table. I dropped them into my slim black bookbag and tossed it over my shoulder.
It was warmer in the hallway than it had been in the library. It was always like that, probably because of all the movement down the halls. Not very many students spent time in the library, which was one of the reasons I enjoyed it in my time between classes.
I bounced down the hall, changing my actions to change my mood. You can influence a lot of your thinking just by the way that you move, and I took advantage of that little life hack this afternoon. I needed any boost in morale that I could get.
Chapter 3
What are friends for?
Cora was lounging in the hallway, leaning against her locker like she had been waiting for me for ages. She looked like she had something to say, but I suspected I already knew what that something was. Her face lit up when she saw me approaching.
Cora was a gorgeous woman. Her high cheeks were decorated with a splatter of faint freckles, and her lips were the sweetest heart shape imaginable. For some reason, Apollo never harassed her, but she hated him just the same.
We could read each other’s minds as I got closer. Our facial expressions changed to the same bitter loathing that could only be found when we spoke of Apollo.
“He’s back,” she s
aid, shaking her head.
“I know,” I said. “I already had the displeasure of running into him. I think he was waiting for me after class.”
Cora balled her small fist. “He’s such a creep. How the heck did he get back into school?”
“He claims to have paid his way in,” I said, leaning back against the lockers with her.
“Do you believe that?” Cora asked, her eyebrows squiggled in a puzzled way.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think maybe there wasn’t enough evidence against him to keep him out.”
“I don’t know how much evidence one would need. He was literally he only person to have grades that differed on paper and in the system.”
“Yeah, that really irks me. I thought I was done with him,” I said sighing.
“You are done with him. Just because he’s back doesn’t mean you need to engage with him,” Cora reminded me, placing her pale hand on my shoulder.
“You’re right. I was so surprised to see him, though. I kept my cool, but he really knows how to push my buttons,” I replied.
“That’s why he likes to mess with you. He knows you’ll react to it. Do you see him coming around and messing with me?” Cora asked, cocking her head to the side.
I laughed. “I don’t think anyone would mess with you, Cora. You’re too sweet.”
Cora punched my shoulder. “But I can be mean,” she said, frowning.
I rubbed my shoulder. “Ouch, okay, point taken.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I just want you to stand up to him.”
“I already do,” I replied.
“Um, I don’t think so. Do you remember when I caught you two at that party, and you literally were clawing at his pants? You were going to have sex with him.”
She was the second one to bring that up today. I wanted to forget about it, but she was right. I had let him get to me before, and he was going to try it again. Things had to play out differently this time, or I would have my legs spread for the school bully by the end of the year.