by Becker Gray
All around me, limousines dropped off the children of the world’s wealthiest at the Everwood Country Club, this year’s location for the Halloween Masquerade Ball. Nestled along a lake, surrounded by the jaw-dropping fall foliage, the country club was the perfect location. The employees had set lights into the water along the property to carry on the fairyland theme.
Knowing I’d be drinking, I’d opted for the safer option of the limo. Some of the other lads had caught a ride with Owen.
I wanted to leave, just say fuck it all and head back to campus, but Keaton was riding with me, so I had to wait. I was in the middle of texting him when I saw Owen and Rhys coming my way.
Owen, as to be expected, was in cold control. If he’d been in the mood to display any emotions, he’d likely be disapproving of my antics inside the ballroom. Owen was our living and breathing Ice King. He didn’t fucking get it. He had no feelings. Or he’d been smart and learned a long time ago to lock that shit away.
Just seeing Rhys’s face again made me want to raze every car on the jammed country club drive. He gave me nothing. He was always a cool and contained sociopath. “What the fuck, Rhys?”
He gave me his barely-there smile, those cruel eyes crinkling at the corners, telling me that he’d been looking forward to this. “What the fuck what?”
“That kiss, that fucking show—what the hell is wrong with you?”
He grinned then, and it was so strange to see a full-on smile on his face, I almost didn’t know what to do.
You kick his arse, that’s what you do.
I re-focused myself. “You’re such a piece of shit. You don’t even want her.”
“But I do want her. She’s interesting to me.”
Owen could see where this was going, and his lips pressed into a harsh line as he stepped between us. “Lads, get your shit under control. This isn’t the place to do this. Teachers are milling about. You two tossers want to take a hunk out of each other’s hides, you do it where it can’t be seen. And where you won’t get blood on my tux.”
“Careful, Mr. Robot, somebody will begin to think you care.”
He lifted a dark brow. “Hardly, I’m just calculating the odds of who to bet on in this fight. I’m inclined to put my money on Rhys, because he’s not whining like a bitch.”
“Fuck you. And for the record, I have exactly zero fucks to give about teachers.” What, like they were going to expel me? I was fucking royalty.
You are also the son of royalty. This is what’s expected of you.
I knew what I needed to do, but unfortunately, I couldn’t stamp down the fury.
Rhys was laughing now. What the hell was he saying?
“I have to tell you, Lennox, I’m amused by your response. I thought you hated her.”
“I do. The point is, she is mine.”
Rhys’s eyes went wide. “She’s yours?” Mirth laced each of his words.
“Yes, that’s right. Mine to torture. Mine to ignore. Mine to pull along on a string like a puppet. Mine,” I ground out. Her father had ruined my life. Systematically. Everything was gone because of her family. And so, if I was going to take my revenge, it was going to be through her. And Rhys wasn’t going to ruin her before I got there.
“Did you tell her that? Does she know she’s—” he made air quotes. “Yours?”
I lunged for him again, and this time, Owen put a hand on my chest, more than capable of stopping me. We were about the same height, but I was leaner. He had a good twenty pounds of muscle over me, but I was meaner. I spun out from him, elbowed him in the chest for good measure so he’d back off, and Rhys just taunted me, “If you want her, you are more than welcome to try and take her from me. But I’m not going to just give her to you. I think I’ll play with her for a while. You know, she’s surprisingly a good kisser. Soft lips. The way her tongue tentatively seeks yours out as if she can’t believe her luck. God. I always find that a major turn on. These quiet girls, they’re the best ones in bed. It’s going to be fun finding out with Sloane.”
I lunged at him again. This time, Owen had an arm around my waist, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keaton running towards us too. Fuck. Not Keaton. He was building up for the pro rugby season. Shit.
“Guys, what’s going on? You don’t want to do this out in full view.”
Rhys grinned. “Hey, I’m a lover, not a fighter. I prefer to destroy people without my hands, but if it comes down to it, I will use them.”
It was true. Rhys never needed to lift a finger. The guy was always working out though. Fucking Muay Thai or whatever it was that he did all the time. He had his trainer personally come to the school. Who the hell did that? But despite being probably more than capable of using his fists, Rhys was mean as a snake. He preferred to destroy you with words.
So beat him at his own game.
“You can let me go. I’m not going to fucking hit him.” Lies. All lies.
Keaton laughed. “I love you, man, but I don’t believe you.”
“Rhys, you know what, you can have your fun with Sloane. It’s all right. I get it. You’re bored, but you’ll get tired of her too.”
He grinned. “I don’t know if I will. You know, she’s fascinating. Smart as a whip. Slightly deadly. And she’s unusual. God, those lips. I mean, it must kill you that you’ve never tapped that at all, because wow, the girl can kiss.”
It felt like there was a dragon in my chest trying to claw its way out.
Be smart. Use his one weakness against him.
I forced myself to still then. “You know what, you’re right. You can get whoever you want. And yes, I’m losing my shit. I don’t like someone stealing my toys. But you do have a point. We’re all free agents here, except for Keaton, and that’s by choice. But we should think outside the box, explore opportunities we’ve never considered before. You know, Sera was looking damn fine tonight. Well fit. Gorgeous, really. But that red dress, her mask, the hood, she looked like something from Venice. I think I’ll find out just what she had on under those skirts, yeah?”
I found out in those two seconds exactly what happens when you poke a dragon. I’d miscalculated. And unfortunately, I was the only one being held back by our friends.
Rhys was quicker than a flash. It was almost like the motherfucker flew into the air, and he was on me. His first hit grazed just off my jaw because I turned to go with it.
When the rest of my mates realized they were holding the wrong arsehole, they tried to go for him, but he was quicker.
I’m not proud of it, but I did give him a good sucker punch to the kidney. But Rhys really was the devil. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t moan. But he did hiss and turn on me, his hands knotted into tight fists, but this time, Keaton had him. He’d hooked Rhys’s arm and wrapped it around his back. Owen planted himself in front of him, like a statue made of ice. Both of them were muttering something in low tones.
Now free, I stood at my full height and grinned. “Yeah, everyone knows how hot Sera is. Now I’m going to find out just what she tastes like.”
Rhys snarled at me. “If you put your fucking hands on her, I will kill you.”
Being the arsehole that I was, I grinned back. “Oh, but I thought Sloane was the most interesting person to you. I guess not. I think I’ll go find Sera now and see what she’s up to.” Then I deliberately turned and stalked away.
It was a calculated risk. He could have lunged for me. We were too evenly built, so it would have been one hell of a fight. But I was confident that Keaton and Owen had him. So I continued on my way, and I didn’t turn back.
I’d considered Rhys a friend, but he’d stepped over the line, and I was going to make him pay for it.
3
Sloane
“Thank you,” the junior said gratefully. She looked around the empty classroom, as if to confirm again that we were alone. “You’re sure it’s gone?”
I uncrossed my arms and gave her a sympathetic but utilitarian nod. “He had it in his photo library, a
nd he’d emailed it to himself, but he hadn’t sent it to anyone else yet. Both the phone and the email have been scrubbed, along with his cloud storage.”
The junior slumped in relief. “Thank god,” she murmured. “Thank god.”
Her asshole ex had threatened to send a nude picture of her to everyone at the school once he found out she was dating a new boyfriend. I took care of it last night, using some stealth and a few sturdy lockpicking tools.
“I’m so glad I came to you,” she said. “Do I . . . like . . . owe you anything?”
I shook my head. “Free of charge.”
She squinted at me. “Are you like Pembroke’s revenge porn vigilante or something?”
The corners of my mouth pulled up. I liked the idea of being a resident vigilante, but really I just had a keen sense of justice, and—much like Liam Neeson—a very particular set of skills. Over the last two or three years, I’d become something of a Veronica Mars here at school, helping students out when the administration couldn’t. It was unbelievable the amount of boys who thought sending a girl’s nudes around was a totally justified thing to do, but I also had my share of “is he or she cheating?” cases and a fair amount of theft. It kept me from getting bored, kept me sharp and proficient at moving through the shadows, and also it was just fun. Satisfying.
Some students had sports, some had parties—I had this.
“I’m just happy I could help,” I told her.
“Me too,” she said. “Thank you again.”
I nodded and made for the door.
“Hey, do you know anybody at Croft Wells who does what you do?” she asked.
Croft Wells was another coed prep school only an hour away, and Pembroke’s eternal rival. Despite that, there were still a healthy amount of cross-school friendships and even dating. “I don’t,” I said. “Why?”
The junior sighed. “My cousin says there’s been some girls attacked at parties over there, and they don’t know if it’s like one guy or a bunch of guys or what. The police and campus admin have been no help. Seems like the kind of thing you’d be good at.”
I frowned at that. “When was the last assault?”
She shook her head. “They stopped in the spring. Maybe the attacker got bored?”
Or he found a new hunting ground.
But I didn’t tell the junior that. “Probably he got bored,” I said reassuringly, and then I stepped through the door and made my way to class, vowing to keep an eye on things here at Pembroke.
I had no way to get to Croft Wells, but I’d be good and goddamned before I let an asshole get away with that here at Pembroke.
“Rhys is looking at you,” Sera announced a few hours later.
Even in the clanking, chattering din of Pembroke’s giant, vaulted dining hall, I could hear something strained in her voice. I glanced up from my dog-eared copy of The Book of Five Rings and gave her a quelling look. “Stop it. You know I don’t care.”
“You certainly seemed like you cared at the masquerade a couple days ago,” she pointed out.
“It was just a kiss,” I said, going back to my Musashi. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“For ‘not a big deal’, my brother went totally off his trolley,” Aurora said cheerfully. “And Rhys is still looking, by the way.”
For the millionth time, I wished Tannith were here instead of spending the semester in Los Angeles. Because normally we absconded to the library together to read during lunch, and so it never mattered what Rhys Huntington was or was not doing.
To satisfy my friends—and not because I cared that a certain gold-eyed prince might also be sitting there—I looked over at the Hellfire Club’s table across the hall. They sat at the far end of the wood-ceilinged, portrait-bedecked space, right under the largest stained glass window in the room. A cluster of gorgeous, insolent boys, sprawled in their chairs like so many bored lions. The bright autumn sunlight through the glass lit their table with shafts of blazing orange and glowing ruby—as if hellfire truly burned in the air around them.
Fitting, since next to Lennox sat the devil himself, grinning at me from across the room like we shared some kind of secret. I ducked my head as soon as I realized we’d met eyes, but it was too late, of course. Rhys had obviously been waiting for just this moment.
“Rhys is standing up,” Sera said, her voice still strange. “He’s walking over here.”
“Oh, Lennox looks quite tetchy now,” Aurora said, sounding pleased. She took typical sisterly delight in anything that annoyed her twin. “Yes, very tetchy indeed.”
I couldn’t help it; I lifted my head again, my eyes sliding right past Rhys’s approaching form to Lennox again. Even at this distance, I could see the hatred sizzling in his eyes and the angry tilt to his mouth. The same look he’d leveled my way since that first day in freshman seminar.
I’d long since stopped trying to understand why Lennox Lincoln-Ward hated me—although I used to think about it constantly, used to wonder if I could fix whatever it was. Or at least change it so that he’d stop. It couldn’t be that I’d offended him before the first day of freshman year, because until then I’d gone to school in D.C. And it couldn’t have been anything I’d done that morning, because when I initially walked into the seminar, he’d looked up at me and offered me a careless grin—like he wanted to know what my lip gloss tasted like but he was too lazy to try to find out.
It wasn’t until he heard my name that he’d swiveled his head to stare at me—lips parted in shock, eyes bright with fury—and then abruptly scooped up his bag and stormed out of the room.
And after that, the true torment began.
Lube in my book bag, caricatures drawn of me in bathrooms, classroom projects replaced with a single, thoroughly dead rose. The rumors he started about me—some silly, some ridiculous, some vicious as hell—and his cruel laughter following me everywhere I went.
And his presence.
The presence of him was its own torture.
He didn’t stalk me, I wouldn’t go that far, but he haunted me, he encircled me and bedeviled me, made it so that every corner of Pembroke was suffused and pervaded with him. He would be in doorways I needed to go through, blocking my escape, or sitting at my desk before class started, eating an apple and staring at me with glittering eyes. He’d be at my chair in the library when I’d come back from grabbing a book, his three-thousand-dollar Italian shoes kicked up on the table, or jogging behind me as I did my morning run on the track, never approaching me or coming closer, but keeping pace with me perfectly no matter how much I sped up or slowed down.
Being raised by my father meant that I was more capable of defending myself than anyone knew, and it also meant I wasn’t in the habit of taking anyone’s shit. For every time I found my books and tablet slicked in lube, I discreetly and efficiently picked the lock to his room and replaced his hair gel with KY and his toothpaste with Astroglide (for variety). I wasn’t a fan of bathroom vandalism, but I did help myself to some classified student records early on, and then occasionally amused myself by distributing his cell phone number to giggling freshmen eager to kiss a real-life prince.
And when he blocked a doorway, when he sat at my desk, when he ran behind me every morning with a gray hood drawn over his striking blond hair—I never let him see the fear that sizzled over my skin. I couldn’t.
Because if he saw the fear, then he might see how it mingled with other feelings. How the adrenaline made my blood spark and made something deep in my core go all twisty and hot.
He could never know.
I could survive his hatred maybe, but his pity?
His smug superiority once he learned that under my defiance crawled something much, much more embarrassing than fear?
I didn’t even think I could attempt to endure that. I would have to move and change my name. I would have to change all distinguishable identifiers. I would have to dye my hair and wear colored contacts and take the helix piercing out of my upper ear. And I really liked that piercing.
No, he could never know.
Which actually made it very convenient that Rhys was coming over to our table just now. Although he’d been as bad to me as Lennox had over the years—I suspected the most creatively depraved of the bathroom graffiti was the work of Rhys’s degenerate mind—I really hadn’t minded kissing him at the masquerade. And I minded even less that it made me appear indifferent to Lennox, that it made it very clear I did not think about Lennox in any kind of kissing capacity ever—that I did not sometimes let my hand wander over my body at the thought of Lennox’s mouth or his lean body or his elegant, long-fingered hands which looked like they’d feel so very good shoved into my panties.
Rhys was an opportunity to protect myself, and I’d learned early on from my father never to waste those.
My father.
I had wondered before . . .
Well, there had been a scandal with Lennox and Aurora’s father, years ago—a massive Ponzi scheme and substantial prison time after. INTERPOL had been the investigating agency, and it had been the US and several European bureaus working together to make the arrest. I’d asked my father about it once, not long after Lennox’s torment had begun, but he told me he had only consulted on the case once and barely looked at it after. So I knew his vendetta couldn’t be about my father.
Maybe Lennox merely hated anyone or anything to do with INTERPOL? But Aurora had mentioned more than once that both she and Lennox were very happy about their father being in prison and hoped he’d stay there, so it made no sense to hate me over a father whom they were quite satisfied to have rotting in prison.
It couldn’t be that. So what was it?
“Ladies,” Rhys was saying as he sauntered over. “How beautiful you all look today.”
“We’re not interested,” Sera replied shortly. “Fuck off.”
The evil grin faded, replaced by a look so cold that even I fought the urge to shiver.
Sera, for her part, just continued glaring up at him.