Callous Prince

by Becker Gray

  No.

  Not just a girl, not just a boy.

  I was Sloane Lauder, and this was Lennox Lincoln-Ward.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  Without a word, I scrambled off Lennox, retreating back several steps as panic clawed at my throat. People thought I felt nothing, that I was a robot or some kind of stoic, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I felt everything, every single thing, which was why I needed my father’s lessons and karate so much. I’d needed to learn control, to learn patience and discipline, and it was only the years of training, years of practicing calm, cool control, that helped me find my breath again.

  I looked down at Lennox, who was now up on his elbows in the grass staring at me like there was going to be a test later. The fact that I was leaving him high and dry for the second time this week didn’t escape me. How could it, when the evidence was so proudly—and urgently—tenting the front of his shorts?

  “Come back here, Sloane,” he said, his accent curling around the words like the fog curled around my ankles. “Come back here and finish what you started.”

  “No,” I said. But it came out shaky and uncertain. He stared at me a moment, his chest moving up and down, his pulse pounding in his throat.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, as if he didn’t care at all, and then he slid his fingers in his mouth—the same fingers that had been in my panties just moments earlier—sucking them, licking them, getting them wet. And without a single beat of hesitation, he pushed his hand past the waistband of his shorts and took a hold of himself, giving his length a short, rough stroke with his wet hand.

  A sound left me then, a guh noise, like I’d just been punched in the stomach during sparring practice. Even though his dick and his fist were covered by the material of his shorts, seeing him lick his hand—the hand that tasted like me—and then stroke himself was painfully hot. A conflagration of crude and arrogant sexiness that should have been straight up illegal.

  A jolt of fresh need sparked between my thighs, and I almost wanted to join him, to kneel beside him and wrap my hand over his hand and help him.

  A bell tolled through the fog, as familiar as it was solemn. Seven a.m. Classes would start in 90 minutes. More importantly, various teams would be out for their morning practices momentarily, and we’d no longer be alone on the field.

  To my great disappointment (and shame at the aforementioned disappointment), Lennox realized this too and stopped that wonderful stroking motion.

  He pulled his hand free and rolled to his feet with enviable grace, although there was nothing graceful about the prominent column of his cock still pushing against the front of his shorts. “We’re not done,” he promised. “Saturday. The gala. We’re finishing this.”

  “I told you,” I said, shaking my head, as if I could shake off the strange slick of regret spilling through my chest. “I’m going with Rhys.”

  “Maybe. But you won’t be leaving with him,” he said enigmatically, and then turned towards campus and stalked off into the fog. Within a handful of steps, he was no longer visible, and I was left alone, damp from the grass and trembling at my lack of control.

  7

  Sloane

  This couldn’t go on.

  This . . . this hold that Lennox had on me, it had to stop. How had I let an argument turn into a closet fingerbang? How had I let defending myself turn into a second fingerbang?

  On the practice field no less?

  No, I was better than this. I was better than having pants-feelings for my gold-eyed tormentor. I was better than letting my father down because I couldn’t keep control.

  “You seem, uh, intense today,” Cash remarked from the bag next to mine.

  I grunted in acknowledgement, giving the bag several jab-knee combinations.

  “Well, more intense than usual,” Cash amended. “You okay? Are you having trouble with one of your . . . you know . . . cases?”

  He whispered the last part as if my helping people around the school was some kind of state secret. It was kind of cute, actually.

  I delivered two more combos—hard and quick enough to send the bag swinging—and then turned to face the sophomore. Like his cousin, Keaton, Cash was blond and tall and broad-shouldered, although unlike Keaton, he hadn’t yet filled in all that height with muscle yet. He would though; he had the kind of frame that promised power and strength. But I knew he felt self-conscious about his still-wiry body. Enough that he joined me in the gym every chance he got.

  At least, that was one of the reasons he joined me in the gym.

  The other reason was fairly apparent in the way his eyes kept flicking down to my damp sports bra and sweat-slick stomach.

  “I’m fine,” I said, tilting my chin up in the universal eyes up, buddy move.

  He flushed and locked eyes with me, swallowing with what looked like embarrassment. Poor kid. He really was a sweetheart.

  “You don’t seem fine,” he said, and I had to admire his balls. Not many people dared to disagree with me. “Can I help?”

  I shook my head automatically. I didn’t accept help for anything; it wasn’t in my nature. And I could hardly explain the problem to Cash. Either of the problems, really—neither how I accidentally kept dry-humping Lennox Lincoln-Ward, nor how my father needed me to scrape up illegal dirt on Lennox.

  A prickle of guilt needled through my chest as I remembered how my father was also investigating Cash’s family.

  Antiquities fraud was antiquities fraud—if his relatives had done it, then that was that and they deserved to be investigated. But looking at this cute puppy of a sophomore, with all that messy hair and those hopeful eyes, I just . . .

  Well, I didn’t feel awesome about it. That was all.

  “If I can help with anything, let me know,” he said softly.

  I didn’t love lying, but if I was going to be a good spy, I’d need to embrace it, so I forced myself to nod and say, “I will.”

  He smiled—a slightly crooked smile with a megawatt dimple in each cheek. He really was going to be a heartbreaker soon. “And if all else fails, go full WWJBD, am I right?” He clapped my shoulder and then left the bags, grabbing his water bottle and trotting off to the locker room to change out.

  WWJBD?

  What would Jason Bourne do if he had to look at Lennox’s laptop?

  I stared at the bag for a moment, stunned at my own ineptitude.

  I’d been going about this all wrong, searching for windows of opportunity the way a civilian would. Looking for the easiest solutions, the most obvious ones.

  But Jason Bourne didn’t search for windows of opportunity—he made his own windows.

  Or crashed through them dramatically, but whatever. That didn’t materially change my point.

  The point was Jason Bourne would find a way to Lennox’s laptop no matter what. And I would too.

  Seven hours later, and I was really, really realizing why Jason Bourne only did the shit he did in the movies and not in real life.

  I was a dab hand at picking locks—a skill Aurora had taken up with ease when I taught her—but I knew going into his room through the door was a no-go, no matter how late and seemingly asleep the dorm was. Lennox had a twin arrangement to what Aurora had in the girls’ dorm: his security team slept on the same floor, and one member was always awake, patrolling the building. Additionally, there were cameras watching the hallways—monitored more or less consistently by the team—and the last thing I wanted was for there to be any record of me doing anything near Lennox’s room.

  So the interior of the building was out. But the exterior . . .

  Pembroke was an old school, and while an old school meant constant renovations and unreliable air conditioning, it also made for very climbable exteriors. Sills and lintels and gables and string courses and entablatures and trellises. Trellises. I mean, what level of trust do you have in your students if you cover the outside of their dorm with trellises? That’s just asking for people to sneak out
.

  Or in, in my case.

  I knew the way from my previous lube and toothpaste missions, so I had a plan. I glanced behind me to make sure the campus lawn was still completely and utterly empty, and then I made my careful way up and over to the window I wanted, using the trellis and the occasional lintel to climb it. It was cold enough that my hands already hurt, even inside my thin leather gloves. My breath puffed out in thick, white clouds every time I exhaled.

  Dad would hate that I’m doing this.

  He would hate it because not only was it dangerous, but because it was legally dicey.

  And by legally dicey, I meant very, very illegal.

  But part of me suspected he knew I’d have to bend some rules in order to get what he wanted, and I figured he wanted the info more than he wanted me to have a rigid code of ethics.

  And it was okay that my code of ethics wasn’t that rigid, right? I mean, I wouldn’t call it flaccid—I had some hard limits around what I considered right and wrong—but a little laptop spelunking didn’t bother me. And neither did a little window-peeping.

  When I got to my destination, I raised myself high enough on the trellis that I could peer inside. And what I saw there satisfied me. I’d made a pit stop at Rhys’s window on the hunch that the Hellfire Club would be in there, doing whatever it was they did when they weren’t making the rest of the school miserable. They were probably deflowering virgins or drinking the tears of the damned or something equally monstrous—although when I finally got a good look inside, it appeared that they were all arranged around Rhys’s TV, watching an episode of a reality show about drag queens. Keaton Constantine was arguing with Phineas Yates about who actually won the lip-synching competition, and the argument erupted in some kind of wrestling/fisticuffs scenario that had equal parts laughter and yelling. I was about to scan the room more thoroughly when Rhys—who was sprawled on his bed like a Roman emperor—slowly swiveled his head toward the window. As if he sensed my presence.

  Shit.

  I ducked lower on the trellis, knowing full well I hadn’t made any noise, but also knowing full well that if Rhys actually came to check the window, I’d be hosed.

  WWJBD?

  Jason Bourne would probably fling himself into the bushes below and then sprint off to find a car chase to get involved in, honestly, but I didn’t have ankles of steel. Or a car.

  Instead, I trellis-scrambled—quietly—over to the corner of the building and edged around it, praying Rhys hadn’t decided to come look out his window. Which, given the lack of yelling/cat-calling/devilish laughter, he hadn’t. Thank god.

  Only a few more bays down, and I found myself safely on Lennox’s windowsill, perched like a pigeon. Well, okay. A pigeon if it had a boot collection that would put the Matrix franchise to shame. I paused for a moment and took stock of what I’d seen in Rhys’s room. I’d seen all the boys there, right? Including Lennox? Surely, I had. Surely, he was in there, arguing about wigs and lip-synching with everyone else.

  Which meant I was all clear to do what I needed to do next.

  Like all the rooms in this building, Lennox’s had a casement window, which usually meant a vertical latch, but in the case of this old window, there wasn’t a proper latch at all, just a hook and eye lock painted over so many times that the hook was too fat to properly rest in the eye anyway. I pulled a slender jab saw from my boot and slid it into the frame. With an embarrassingly little amount of effort, I had the hook undone and half the window swinging open.

  I was, as they say in the movies, in.

  The room was dark and silent, just like I’d anticipated. Excellent. I lowered my feet carefully to the floor, and then once I was off the sill, I swung the window mostly closed behind me, clamping off the flow of chilly air. The last thing I wanted was for Lennox to come back to his room and find it strangely cold.

  I used the moonlight to navigate over to his desk where his laptop sat on a surface cluttered with finance magazines and newspapers printed in German. I slid into the desk chair and opened it up, not surprised to see that it was password protected, but not happy about it either.

  I had something for this, a little toy I’d lifted from Dad last year: a smartphone loaded with just one program. I could plug it into almost any device running standard software and bypass a one-step password lock. It wouldn’t work on anything truly protected—nothing governmental or corporate—but for personal devices and school devices, it worked like a charm. Perfect for tonight.

  But suddenly, I wasn’t wild about using it on Lennox’s things. For the very dumb and illogical reason that using it made this whole “spying on a classmate” thing feel wrong somehow, when it didn’t really before. Which made zero sense at any level, because I’d already broken into the room and planned to invade Lennox’s privacy, so what was a little electronic help along the way?

  And anyway, this was basically nothing I hadn’t done before; I’d broken into countless classmates’ phones to hunt for pictures that didn’t belong to them, and I’d broken into many a dorm room to hunt for stolen jewelry, tablets, and things.

  The only thing that was different this time was Lennox.

  Was how I felt about him.

  But if I really wanted to be an INTERPOL agent one day, I couldn’t afford to be squeamish about these things, right? Even if my mark had given me the world’s best orgasm on a dewy practice field that morning?

  WWJBD, Sloane.

  With a sigh at my flexible morals, I plugged in the smartphone and ran the program, watching the screen flash and scroll, poking idly at the newspapers on Lennox’s desk. I’d taken some minimal German in middle school, and mein Deutsch war sehr schlect, but I could make out that the newspapers focused on business and finance, just like the magazines. Not exactly light reading.

  Why would a boy in high school need to know so much about finance?

  Hmm.

  Maybe my father was right. Maybe Lennox was into something shady like his dad—going into the family business as it were.

  The phone flashed a final time—unlocking the laptop screen and also showing me his password too. Non ducor, duco.

  I am not led, I lead.

  I snorted.

  Lennox was a prince through and through, I guess. Or just a gigantic asshole.

  I navigated over to the internet browser and opened up his email account. It was all in German, and I had to rely on my shaky language skills to skim through his folders and most of the subject lines. But even with my bad German, I could see that most of the emails in his account were from a lawyer. And several words didn’t exactly need a linguistic expert to parse into meaning: bank in German was bank, money was geld, funds was fonds.

  I replaced the password-cracker phone with a tiny external hard drive, screenshotted any email that looked suspicious, and then dropped them onto the drive.

  I didn’t feel disappointed that the boy I’ve fooled around with twice might be into some suspicious shit, I definitely wasn’t feeling that at all.

  But if I had been—if there was a tiny part of me that had fallen under his cold, delicious spell—it would have sucked. It would have felt like my stomach was crawling with bugs, it would have felt like the worst kind of reminder that Lennox was a bullying, selfish douchebag.

  Ugh.

  I combed through the rest of his inbox, catching everything I could, hyperaware of the clock in the corner of the screen. While I fully believed that Rhys was an actual vampire who never slept, Lennox always looked well enough rested when he joined me for my balls-early runs, which meant he probably got a decent amount of sleep. Which meant he could be heading back here at any moment. And as much as parts of my anatomy buzzed and sparked at the thought of another confrontation-that-might-lead-to-fun-times, I categorically did not want him to find me. Especially now that I knew Dad was right, and Lennox was moving his money around.

  I’d finally worked my way up to the last email at the top—the most recent one—which came with several official-look
ing attachments.

  Attachments that looked a lot like bank transfer notices.

  More disappointment bug-crawled in my gut, and I found myself hesitating when it came to documenting it and saving it to the external drive. The rest of the emails were smoking guns, but this was the bullet, and if I showed this to Dad . . .

  Wait, what was I thinking? This was what Dad wanted—what I wanted. If Lennox had moved money someplace he shouldn’t have, then that wasn’t on me, that was on him.

  I squared my shoulders and made images of everything—but stopped at the last moment, catching a few words in the email itself. Words that normally didn’t come with shady bank transfers. Familie. Haus. Universität.

  Kinder.

  Nicholas.

  Family. House. University. Children.

  Nicholas.

  Who was Nicholas? Had my father mentioned a Nicholas in his call?

  My fingers paused over the keyboard, and I tried to think. Was this truly something that needed more dissection? Or was I just grasping at anything that might make Lennox seem like—well, like not his father?

  Fuck.

  Fuck, I didn’t know.

  With a muttered oath, I made screenshots and moved them over, and then I quickly deleted all the images, emptied the trash, and cleared the history of everything ever.

  Time for the rest of the desk.

  The middle drawer and top two drawers were painfully organized—pens, pencils, paperclips. A rubber stamp embossed with his Pembroke address and a stamp with his Liechtensteiner address. They were like the drawers of an accountant and not a horny teenage boy. The bottom drawers were all meticulously alphabetized files.

  They were labelled by school subject and year, but as I went through them one by one, I saw that some labels were clearly decoys. Hon. Global Lit. - 10th Grade, for example, held more financial-looking documents in German. Philosophy of the Greek Golden Age was a series of letters from a British solicitor. And Hon. Biology - 11th Grade had no biology homework at all, only a single letter. Written by him to someone named Nicholas.