“Well, technically, I think that corporations should take responsibility for their packaging and that blaming the state of our planet on straws is an irresponsible—”
Oscar leans down and captures my mouth, his fingers firm and possessive on the bottom of my chin. It’s enough to make me forget that twenty fossil fuel companies contribute a third of all carbon emissions. Shit, if climate change is going to kill us all, at least I’ll have this moment seared on my tongue like a brand.
“Just say thank you, Oscar and that will suffice.” He takes the seat next to me, making my stomach flip-flop dangerously. Tonight is our first night in the apartment, our chance to practice those ‘sleeping arrangements’ that Callum brought up the other day. At the safe house, we all slept in the same room. The bed was small and shitty, so the guys took turns rotating through some sleeping bags on the floor.
Here … is different. There’s a king-size bed in all three rooms. Also, the master is large enough that we could, like, maybe push at least two of them together …
I bite my lower lip, and the tension in the room winds into something tight and virulent. That’s what you get when you’re dating five red-blooded men all at once. They look at you the way you look at them: like something naughty and delicious that deserves to be licked. Only, I get whatever I give them back five times over.
“I have to see Pamela. Just … not quite yet. But soon. Then I’ll decide what to do.”
The easiest thing would be to just forget about her, make her disappear, but some part of me knows that I can’t just yet. I want some answers; I have too many questions. The biggest one, I suppose, is this: will Pamela Pence answer any of them?
Guess we’ll have to wait and find out, now won’t we?
“Your wish is our command,” Hael says, touching his fingers to his chest and throwing me a shit-eating grin. “So, Havoc Girl, who do you wish to take to bed in that big-ass room tonight?”
A snort escapes me as I glance over at the wall of windows and the sparkling lights of Springfield in the distance. Hmm. My nails dig into the black fabric of my sweats as I consider.
“Do you think … I mean, it’d be safest if we all stayed in the same room for a while, right?”
Aaron lifts a brow as I lean down and grab my drink off the table, a slight flush coloring my cheeks as I slip the straw between my lips. Somehow, even as he proclaimed to hate me with every breath, Oscar watched me enough to notice how much I love chocolate milk with straws, that this was my go-to drink in the Prescott High cafeteria.
“Don’t talk in circles around us,” Victor says, and I have to snort because I know he’s referencing that first day in the library when I sat down across from these assholes and asked for their help in extracting vengeance from a cruel and vicious world. “We don’t like it.”
“We really don’t like it,” Oscar echoes, leaning back against the arm of the couch and the few decorative throw pillows there like some sort of obscenely beautiful boy-king, set to inherit the earth in his tattooed hands.
“Maybe we should all sleep in the master bedroom?” I start, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the room where Vic and I fucked this morning. “It doesn’t have to be forever, but why not for now? While we finish school, while we deal with the GMP …”
I trail off, and I realize then that I’m still doing it, that I’m still asking.
I stand up quickly, moving over to one of the duffel bags still sitting on the floor near the front door. I extract the crown that Victor got me and set it on my head, moving back into the living room as Hael and Callum chuckle and Aaron smiles softly. Vic looks contemplative, and Oscar looks … enraptured? Is that even possible?
“What I meant to say was: we are all sleeping in the same room. Go get the other bed and drag it in there.” I turn on my heel and head down the hallway as laughter rings out behind me.
But guess what?
They do it.
They put the other bed in there, wedging it in between the wall of windows and the original bed.
It should be awkward, right? All six of us lying there in the dark together. Only … it’s fucking not. Because underneath the claws and teeth, the guns and knives, the blood and pain, we’re all seventeen and eighteen and lonely and desperate for connections that we can count on, love that only hurts in the best possible way, and companionship.
Family.
We find it there, in that room, in the shadows with the curtains parted and the city sparkling beyond the ring of dark woods that surrounds the school.
“Question,” Hael whispers, taking up the side of the giant bed that’s closest to the windows. “How do we broach the subject of sex?”
“Jesus,” Aaron murmurs, but not like he isn’t curious himself. He’s lying on my right side, one arm banded over my stomach. Oscar is on my left, lying on his back, his profile the only part of him that I can see. Cal lies between him and Hael while Vic is on Aaron’s other side, a nightstand between him and the wall.
And I love it here.
I love this.
Does it make me selfish that I want to keep this arrangement forever and ever? I can’t decide. The only thing I know is that even if it does, I want it. I want it more than anything.
“The one thing about royalty,” I start, quoting a song by Bohnes called “Middle Finger”, “is that we love to feast.”
I turn toward Aaron and then gently encourage him onto his back with a palm to the chest. He whispers something that I can’t quite hear but that I’m pretty sure is thank fucking god before I start to slide that palm down his ripped abs, brushing across the thin trail of hair below his belly button. It’s a delicious sensation, an anticipatory moment, before I dip beneath his waistband altogether. Even though it’s dark, and I can barely see him, I’ve got the image of him in my mind’s eye, tousling his wet hair with the towel earlier, pants clinging to his slender hips.
And oh, the sounds he makes when I wrap my fingers around the base of him and squeeze. That’s poetry enough. My lips part as I scoot closer, searching out the hardened points of his nipples with my tongue.
“Oh, I see how it goes,” Hael starts, but then there’s the sound of rustling fabric and a groan from him that speaks to self-pleasure. “Hey Vicki?”
“Swear to fuck, if you call me that again …” Victor starts, and then he lets out a long, tired-sounding sigh. But not in a bad way. More like … he finally feels like he’s allowed to have a moment of rest? “What do you want, Hael?”
“Lube. I put like, four or five bottles in the drawer over there.”
I laugh, even as Aaron moans and bucks his hips up against my hand. Behind me, I can feel the tension in Oscar’s body. He isn’t sure what to do, and he doesn’t like that. Fuck, it’s a state the man doesn’t find himself in often. He always knows what to do. Just … not here, not tonight.
“Rules for sex are,” I continue as the bottle of lube makes its way from Vic’s hand to mine. Our fingers tangle in the dark, driving lust and heat and fire into my body even from such a simple touch. I briefly withdraw my hand from Aaron’s pajama pants, filling my palm with a generous amount of lube before passing it behind me. It goes right over Oscar and into Callum’s hand. “Whatever the fuck we want. Anything. As long as it stays within this group and we use a safe word for any situation that makes us uncomfortable. I think mare’s nest would be an appropriate one, if you guys are in agreement.”
Vic gives me a saucy look, likely because he remembers offering me that same safe word during our threesome with Aaron.
“There could never be another safe word,” Cal agrees, his voice as much a part of the shadows as the darkness itself. Husky, full of depth, crafted of violence but wielded with rough pleasure.
Aaron shoves his pants down his hips, giving me better access to the velvet heat of his cock. My slick fingers find purchase around the base, my hand tightening until he finally lets out a sharp gasp, his own hand lifting up to tangle in the loose blond hair at the
back of my head.
Oscar shifts again, and I realize that he’s sat up behind me. When I glance back, I see that he’s leaning against the headboard, shirtless and limned in the faintest bit of moonlight from outside the window. As soon as he sees that I’m looking at him, he puts his hand down his own pants and my breathing gets a little quicker, a little more erratic.
I turn back to Aaron, my fist turning in a corkscrew motion as his own grip tightens in my hair.
“Harder,” he says, and I feel my nipples tighten into diamond points. For someone that’s so sweet to me outside the bedroom, he definitely knows what he wants when we’re in it. I oblige him, tightening my inked left hand even more and then pumping him with a ferocity that should have him crying out in pain but instead only makes him suck in a sharp breath.
Victor adjusts himself on Aaron’s other side, turning to look at us. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can better make out the expression on his full lips: amusement. Which, knowing Vic as I do, is something I most definitely did not expect.
“Are you sure you want this? All of us sleeping in here with you every night?” he asks with a harsh laugh, stripping his own pants off and tossing them to the floor. I see that’s he pulled out one of the other lube bottles from the drawer. “You’ll be attending Oak Valley with a perpetually sore and swollen cunt, and I doubt you’ll get a whole hell of a lot of sleep.”
“If I don’t like it, I have my safe word,” I say, and then I drop my mouth down to Aaron’s dick, tongue swirling around the head as he hisses and uses his hold on my hair to push his cock even deeper into my throat.
“Play with my balls,” he murmurs, and my body flushes with heat. I love hearing him tell me what he wants, and I extra fucking love that he’s not afraid to do it in front of all four of the other Havoc Boys. I slide my mouth up his cock and then adjust my attention to the tight heat of his sack, licking the silky skin and sucking it into my mouth. Behind me, I hear one of Cal’s beautifully broken groans and a sound of pleasure escapes my own throat, fluttering against Aaron’s balls as they tighten against the onslaught of my mouth.
He massages my scalp as I slide my tongue up toward the base of his shaft, tasting the lube there and finding it fruity and sweet, like peaches. A smirk takes over my mouth as I sit up and snag the discarded bottle that’s lying next to Vic. He’s just sitting there, playing with his monster cock and watching me pleasure another man with an expression akin to a king on his throne. This is all for his pleasure, his entertainment. Dickhead.
I steal the lube and sit up, tearing my shirt over my head and chucking it aside before squeezing a generous amount of lubricant on my breasts. Oscar’s staring at me with a hunger that’s so sharp that I wonder if it isn’t cutting me, if he isn’t making me bleed without my even knowing it.
Cal and Hael are both lying back beside him, doing their own thing, listening more so than watching.
Aaron looks down the length of his body at me as I prop myself up on one elbow.
“Give me your hand,” I tell him, and he does, allowing me to press his palm against the silken side of my left breast. I position myself so that my tits are on either side of his cock, using my own hand to press against the opposite breast, creating a tunnel of soft flesh to surround his rigid shaft. He licks his lips, his hips rising up to take advantage of the slick plush cushion around his dick. With his hand on one side, and mine on the other, my breasts are pressed nice and tight, giving Aaron the friction he needs to really get off.
“Fuck,” Oscar grinds out, gripping his own dick so tightly that I worry he might hurt himself. He pumps his fist up and down as the moonlight catches on the little metal swords pierced through his nipples. On my other side, Victor does the same. Hael groans in unabashed pleasure while Callum’s ragged noises tear me apart and put me back together, all at the same time.
I work my breasts on Aaron’s body until his dick begins to twitch, and I worry that he might come before I get what it is that I really want: him inside of me. The nice thing is, if I accidentally push him too far, then I can use a different boy. For as long as I live, I doubt I’ll ever have to deal with the annoyance of going unsatisfied.
When I go to sit up, Aaron makes a growling sound of displeasure, and I find myself being flipped over, my arms pinned up on either side of my head. His eyes find my breasts just before his teeth do, and he bites down so hard on my nipple that I cry out, the sound echoing in the empty apartment. Only … it’s empty in furniture and things only. In every other way, it’s full. Bursting, really.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Aaron murmurs, mouth still pressed against my breasts, tongue teasing my nipples and probably tasting that peach lube I slathered all over them. He moves his mouth to mine, but when I arch my back up and try to kiss him, he pulls away smirking.
“You fucker,” I breathe as he moves his hips forward and slides his cock against the fabric of my pajama pants, the head of his dick pressing against the almost painfully swollen nub of my clit. Aaron laughs, the sound low and soft, just before he drops his hot lips to my neck, kissing and sucking on me in just such a way that I’m sure every person on campus will be able to see the mark of Havoc on my skin.
“I can be,” he murmurs, scooting back so that he can grab my sweats and slide them down and off, tossing them onto the floor before moving back between my thighs. He cradles my head between his hands and finally drops his mouth to mine, tasting me with a sweetness that reminds me of being fifteen again, before Penelope was gone, before Callum lost his dream of dancing, before the whole world shifted and tilted and broke.
I can’t say that I don’t wish things had been different, but I also can’t say that I’m not happy with where I am right now, using all of those broken bits to create a mosaic of stained glass that’s twice as beautiful as any solid piece I might’ve had before. When the light hits it, it paints the world in vibrant color.
Our tongues dance together as Aaron finds my opening, sliding forward so slowly that I ache and writhe and squirm, trying to get just a little more, impale myself a little harder. He keeps complete control of the moment, but not in a domineering way like Vic or an obsessive desperation like Oscar. He just knows what he wants, and he’s okay asking for it.
And what he very clearly wants is me. Us. This. All of it.
We start to move together, our hips creating this coordinated song and dance. Flesh against flesh, the sweet music of wet bodies, our fingers tangled, our eyes locked. I can hear other sounds, lewder ones, groans and curses. I can smell the tang of sex in the air as Aaron tastes my lips, making love to my tongue at the same time he does to my pussy. There are promises in his kisses, in the movements of his hips, the way his muscles tighten and quiver as he approaches his climax.
For the briefest of moments, it’s just me and him again, losing our virginities to one another in a suburban bedroom on the border of Prescott and Fuller while his mother cooks downstairs and the world keeps spinning the way it always does.
The climax takes me first, and Aaron keeps me pinned in place while I quiver and shudder, my silken inner muscles clamping around him and milking him like my body wants something I’m not ready for. But, well, I’ve been taking the pill at the same time every day for extra assurance, so it can do whatever it wants. It feels good anyway, to complete the primal dance of mating with the boy I first fell in love with.
My body goes slack beneath his, but I keep my thighs spread wide so Aaron can use me to find his own orgasm. He pulls back from our kiss, just so he can watch me as he comes, his lids fluttering, my fingernails digging into the tight muscles of his ass he pumps hard and fast a few last times and then collapses on top of me.
I close my eyes as his breath flutters my hair, listening to the chorus of ragged breathing in the room, trying to see if anyone else is still going. But no, it’s nothing but panting and a faint chuckle from Hael’s direction.
“The family that jacks it together stays together,” he says, an
d Victor lets out an annoyed groan, chucking a pillow in his direction as I open my eyes and Aaron rolls off to lie between me and Vic.
“Thank you,” I tell them, and the playful bickering ceases right away. Nobody asks what I’m saying thank you for—they know it isn’t as simple and stupid as me thanking them for performing a group masturbation. It’s because they love each other as much as they love me, and there’s nothing but death that could ever pull the six of us apart.
I manage to last two weeks at Oak Valley Prep before I give in to one of my many obsessions.
Pamela Pence.
Mother.
Murderer.
Sitting inside the county jail, I rest my elbows on the scratched surface of a small white table and wait for Pam to be brought in. Meanwhile, I tell myself that everything is okay when … none of it is, really. None of it.
She murdered Penelope, I tell myself, but despite holding onto that knowledge for over a month, I don’t believe it. Rather … I don’t want to believe it. My stepfather was the Thing, right? This awful, evil, barely human monster. It only makes sense that he would be the one to end my sister.
Yet …
Pamela sits down in front of me as I raise my gaze from the surface of the table, the fingers of my tattooed left hand tracing a word scratched deeply into the plastic. HAVOC, it says. Because I scratched it there just now, without any of the officers in the room noticing.
“Bernadette,” Pam says, smiling when she sees me. But not like she’s happy I’m there, more like she’s relishing the idea that I might be suffering. She must be able to see it in my face. “I’ve been telling that pretty young officer everything I know about your little gang.”
My turn to smile back. It isn’t easy, especially when I take in Pamela’s disheveled appearance. I’m so used to seeing her in designer clothing, flawless makeup, and coiffed hair that the person sitting in front of me might as well be a stranger. She looks younger this way, somehow. More vulnerable. I think again about her age-gap romance with my already married father.
Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5) Page 30