Callous Prince

by Becker Gray

  So when the sun streaked in at six, I knew it was too late. There was no way to easily sneak out. When I jerked up in bed, he stirred, trying to drag me back to bed. His hand was already poised to slide back between my legs to its new home. “Lennox, we can’t. I have to go.”

  He frowned and whispered groggily. “We have time, don’t we?”

  I lifted my head and stared at the clock. “It’s 6:05.”

  He snapped to attention then, whipping around to glower at the clock. “Fuck. I didn’t mean for you to stay all night.”

  “I know.”

  In a flurry of arms and muscles and a very sexy expanse of bare male chest, he helped me find, then put on my discarded clothes. When he grabbed my hoodie off the floor, helping me into it, he frowned. “Do we try and sneak you out the door?”

  I shook my head. “The prefects do the checks at six-thirty. There might be some walking around already.”

  He cursed and glanced at the window. “There’s no way I’m letting you go back out there.”

  “I have to. I can’t go out the door.”

  “Well, what if you stay in here till seven?”

  “What, and casually walk out? Everyone will know I spent the night in here.”

  He lifted a brow. “Does that matter?”

  I tilted my chin up and met his gaze so he could see that I meant what I was saying. “No, not at all. I just don’t want you to get in trouble. My record is clean, not a single mark. Yours however . . .” I let my voice trail off. He was a senior and a Hellfire Club member, so likely it wouldn’t be too bad a punishment. But he’d had more than a few disciplinary marks. Mostly for drinking and insubordination towards prefects and teachers. A mark like this could get him suspended. Or worse, go on his transcripts for colleges.

  He nodded slowly. “Well, I can’t let you climb out the window.”

  “We have no choice, Lennox. It’s how I came in yesterday. It’s safe.”

  His brow only furrowed deeper. “It’s dangerous.”

  What was wrong with him? “How do you think I got in here yesterday?”

  “Sloane,” he pleaded.

  “Lennox.” I mimicked him.

  “Why are you so damn stubborn?”

  “Why are you so stubborn?” This was the only way, and he knew it, so why was he fighting me?

  “Christ, you could fall.”

  “Trust me, this is far less dangerous than when I’ve done it before. At least I can see my feet on the ledge this time.”

  He massaged the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t tell me that.”

  I frowned. Nobody worried about me. No one. Not ever. I wasn’t sure how I felt about his worry. “Relax. If anyone sees me out there, they’ll just assume it’s just me being weird. Or at the very least, me trying to assassinate you. No one will ever think that I’m actually sneaking out of your room after spending the night with you. And I’m good at climbing and sneaking. Promise.”

  He swallowed hard, then licked his lips as his gaze fell to my mouth. “Actually, maybe we should change that.”

  I lifted my brows. “What? Which part?” Then I zipped my hoodie tight.

  He cleared his throat, and a faint blush crept up his neck. “Yeah. Look, obviously we uh, like spending time with each other.”

  I grinned. “Obviously.”

  “So, I mean, I don’t want to make a big deal or whatever, but shouldn’t we just do it the conventional way? The hell I care if anyone knows you spent the night with me? Let the prefects dock me points. Fuck them. Besides, Keaton would fix it if they tried.”

  I blinked. He wanted this in the open. Where everyone could see.

  He didn’t know me well enough to know that not wanting to hide me was probably the number one way to my heart. “Okay,” I said softly.

  The furrow eased then. “Excellent. Meet me at the big tree at one.”

  I thought a moment. “After history?”

  “Yes.”

  I gave him a slow nod.

  A smile opened up his face. His eerie eyes glittered with pleasure. “I’ll see you then.”

  I grinned. “Right. So I’m going to go now.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, you should do that.”

  I laughed. “You should let me go, so I can go.”

  “Right. I’m going to let you go out there. Where it’s dangerous, or I could kiss you and keep kissing you until it’s 8:30 and all the prefects are already off to class. No one would notice.”

  He was tempting me. “Except, I have class at eight.”

  He groaned. “I want to kiss you more.”

  “I want you to kiss me more too. But I gotta go.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and tilted my head up. He was so much taller than me. I kissed his chin at first, and then he laughed and tilted his lips down towards mine. It was only when his tongue was in my mouth that I realized I probably had morning breath. Why was his so damn minty?

  I pulled away. “Oh my god, my breath.”

  He laughed. “I might have cheated. I have one of those Listerine breath strip things.”

  “What, and you didn’t offer me one?” I turn to the window.

  “You could just walk out the door,” Lennox said, his voice tight. “If we’re going public anyway.”

  “I’m not risking running into the prefects,” I informed him. “It may be all right for you, Mr. Hellfire, but I can’t have disciplinary shit on my transcript before I’m accepted to Georgetown. Not to mention, your disciplinaries are so long, this one might actually affect you.”

  “Dammit, Sloane—”

  I was already standing and finding my handholds. I could feel Lennox’s gaze as I tiptoed over the ledge all the way to the balcony and hopped down.

  Only then did I feel him breathe.

  After hopping the ledge to go back to the girls’ side, I turned back to him and gave him a saucy smile and then winked. He just rolled his eyes and shook his head. When I sauntered into my room, Sera was sitting on her bed, cross-legged, fully dressed for class and waiting for me. “Oh my god, you are so late.”

  “I’m not. I have plenty of time to shower and get ready for class.”

  “Yeah, I know you do. But that’s not the point. You’re so late for me, because I have a seven o’clock seminar, and I need to be able to hear all the juicy details first. Did you bone?”

  My face flushed. Sera jumped up off her bed. “Oh my god, you did.”

  I shook my head. “No, no. But I mean, we did kiss and stuff.”

  Sera’s eyes went round. “Oh my god, ‘and stuff’? You need to tell me everything.” She frowned as she studied her watch. “God, I hate you. I only have ten minutes to get down the stairs and then eat, and then run to the seminar. But when I get back this afternoon, you and me, we’re doing a full deconstruction. Do you get me?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I get you.”

  I watched my best friend prance out of our room. I could only laugh. I had never in my life snuck in before. This is a whole new experience, and I loved every moment of it.

  At one o’clock, my palms were sweating. I had no idea what any of this meant. Were we together now? All morning my stomach was tied in knots. I was barely able to eat. I’d seen him a few times in the hallways, and he would give me this wide grin whenever he saw me. A couple of times he winked. We had history together, right before the lunch hour, and he took his usual seat, which was far behind me in the back. I could feel his gaze on me the entire time.

  When that final bell rang to free us, we walked through the doorway together. It was packed and crowded as we all were trying to hurry up and get out to our respective lunch meetings and study groups. His pinky found mine for the briefest hair of a second, and he leaned close. “I have something to do, so I can’t have lunch with you. But I’ll see you at one, yeah?”

  My skin heated, and I flushed. I was convinced everybody could tell. I was convinced everybody must know. But everyone around us acted completely normal. As if Lennox hadn�
��t just been holding my hand. Or that I hadn’t just spent the entire night in his bed. This was crazy.

  So, as I marched towards the big tree in the center of the campus, my stomach knotted even more. I’d had lunch with Serafina and Aurora, and Serafina had showed amazing levels of restraint in not forcing me to talk. I think she gathered that I didn’t quite want to tell Aurora yet. Lennox was her brother. It was complicated, and I didn’t really know what was happening. I knew that when we got back this afternoon though, I’d have to tell her everything.

  There was a part of me that was worried none of this was real, and that I’d imagined it all. But there he was, sitting on a blanket, underneath the big tree, looking as if he owned the damned thing. He had on a rumpled blazer, hair looking perfectly windblown. It wasn’t fair that he looked so good.

  When I approached, he smiled and then stood up, deftly coming towards me. I was hyper aware of how everyone might see whatever we might do, but then he smiled. And I promptly stopped giving a rat’s ass. “Hey.”

  He grinned at me. “Hey to you too. How was lunch?”

  “Good. You know, just the girls.”

  He grinned. “Did Serafina grill you?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I didn’t really know what I could tell Aurora and what I couldn’t.”

  He laughed. “You can tell Aurora. I told her first thing this morning.”

  “Wow, she didn’t even say a word.”

  “Well, she was waiting for you to tell her.”

  I groaned. “Now she’s wondering why I didn’t tell her. Great. We should have coordinated.”

  He laughed. “She’s my twin sister. Basically, as soon as the dorms were open to each side, she was knocking at my door wanting to know what the hell I’d been doing last night.”

  Heat suffused my skin. “Excellent.”

  “Look, I didn’t go into detail. But I did tell her I was with you.”

  “Right. Okay.” How was I going to navigate this?

  “Relax, she was really happy.”

  I would be infinitely more comfortable with a battle plan. “Lennox. We should have—” I paused when I noticed him staring at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He grinned. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

  I swallowed hard. “Ohhh-kay.”

  “You’re okay with that, right?”

  I nodded. Except, I was freaking out because what if in the harsh light of day I didn’t measure up or something? Stop overthinking this. Squaring my shoulders, I said, “Yup, go ahead. Do your worst.”

  “I’ll have you know that it’s my best. Just so we’re clear.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so,” he said with a low chuckle.

  “Let’s do it.”

  He walked up to me, slow and sure, and then leaned down with a smile before his lips met mine. “Just so you know, from our peripheral vision, everyone is staring.”

  Heat lit my cheeks, but I wasn’t going to be deterred. I tilted my chin up and kissed him back. When he pulled away, he took my hand and gestured towards the blanket. “I got you something.”

  My cheeks were still enflamed, and I tried not to look around to see who might have noticed, because frankly, I didn’t really care what they thought for the most part. “You got me a present? You didn’t have to.”

  He laughed. “I know I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. That’s the point.”

  I ducked my head. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that usually the things most guys got girls, I was not into at all. He pulled out a box that looked about the size of something like a necklace, and I was worried. I didn’t like necklaces. They interfered too much. They were easy to catch on things. But if he gave me a necklace, I would wear that necklace every damn day.

  His laugh was low. “Don’t look so worried. Just open it.”

  I plastered a wide smile on my face, hoping that just this once I could lie. And lie well, because I didn’t want his feelings hurt. Nonetheless, I opened the box. And then my heart skipped. “Oh my god.”

  He grinned. “Do you like it?”

  I grinned so wide my cheeks started to hurt, and he stared at me. “Do you have any idea what you look like when you smile?”

  I tried to control it, but there was no stopping that grin.

  “No.”

  “You have the most amazing dimple. It’s really cute. You look adorable. And stunning, and beautiful, and you know what, I’m glad you don’t smile more often. Otherwise, somebody else would have noticed. This way, I can keep you all to myself.”

  “You’re ridiculous, but thank you.” Nestled in the velvet of the box, was an ornate switch blade. When I lifted it, I tested it on my finger. Perfectly balanced. Outstanding craftsmanship. And on the hilt of it was what looked like a fairy. “This is amazing. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome. Now, I did get this information that a lot of couples carve their names into this tree, so we’re going to carve our names on it.”

  “I had no idea you were so cheesy.”

  He grinned. “Just call me cheese master. Now, hand it over. Let the man get to work.”

  I frowned at him as he took the knife. He was holding it wrong. He was going to hurt himself. I watched him as he found a patch on the bark and started to try to etch. I was worried with the way he was using it. I gently put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Why don’t you hand it over?”

  “No, I can do this.”

  I laughed. “No, I know you can. I’m just saying that maybe you let someone who handles a knife regularly do this.”

  He looked at his etching and frowned. And then he nodded. “Yeah, good point.”

  With a grin, I took the knife from him, and then resumed what he’d started to carve. I etched our initials onto the side of the tree, and then I stepped back and smiled.

  He whistled low. “Well, I’m glad I let you do that because what I was doing was not going to work.”

  I glanced up at him. “Thank you for this. I didn’t—” How the hell did I explain to him that I never thought I’d be that girl. To have someone like this. Someone who made me feel fluttery and light. Who saw me for who I really was. There was too much to say, so instead, I said, “This is the best day.”

  I switched the knife again and placed it back in its box and into my backpack. Lennox pulled me to him as we sat under the tree, then pulled out earphones for the both of us. “So, why don’t you explain to me about why the hell you used to kiss Rhys?”

  I laughed. “Haven’t we been over this? It’s really been eating at you, hasn’t it? Are you worried that I’ve been crawling through Rhys’s bedroom window too?”

  He smirked. “I know for a fact you would never sneak into Rhys’s room. You don’t trust him. Unless, of course, you’re holding onto his throat. You don’t trust him as far as you can throw him.”

  I shook my head. “You’d be right about that.”

  The smirk softened into something happier. Warmer. “So I know I’m the one you trust,” he said quietly. “Which for me is the best of all.”

  I could barely look at him when he was smiling like that. “Why do you see me so clearly?” I whispered.

  The answer seemed to be easy for him.

  “I’ve always seen you clearly, Sloane Lauder.”

  18

  Sloane

  The week was like a dream. A dream I’d never dared to have, because I’d hate myself for wanting it. Wanting the boy who’d made my life hell since ninth grade.

  But he was so much more than that, wasn’t he? He was so much more than his sharp edges—he was full of love for his sister, he was a loyal friend, he was obsessed with making my body limp with pleasure.

  He was obsessed with my smile.

  Every night I snuck into his dorm room, and every night we kissed until we couldn’t breathe, until the only thing we could do was touch and touch and touch, until we were both shivery and sated.

  The first night we did this, I thoug
ht maybe we’d finally have sex, that maybe we’d finish what we’d started in the maze. But when we were kissing in his bed, and I asked him if he had a condom, he’d stared down at me with his gorgeous golden eyes and said simply, “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean, not yet?” I’d whined, taking his hand and pushing it into my panties so he could feel how wet I was. “I want it now.”

  “But I want it perfect,” he’d insisted. “You deserve better than a bloody dorm bed, Sloane. Give me some credit. Besides, if all this pussy needs is to come, then I know something that might help . . .”

  And then he’d disappeared beneath the blankets, all gold eyes and wicked grins, and then I was too distracted to protest about anything.

  So yes, the week was a dream. Of his hot kisses and greedy touches, of walking together through the halls, of knowing our initials were carved into the school tree, of being his.

  But it was a dream threaded through with a nightmare—because between every kiss, between every lick of his tongue or slide of his fingers—the truth lurked.

  I’d spied on him. For the one person Lennox could never forgive.

  I’d spied and stolen, and even if I hadn’t given the letter over to my father, I’d still given him everything else. I’d still taken the letter when I had no right to, and I still hadn’t told Lennox that I did.

  I’d still treated Lennox like he was his father, when his father was all he’d ever tried not to be.

  “Earth to Sloane,” Cash Constantine said. I looked up from where I’d been staring at my wrapped hands. I needed to unwrap them, I needed to shower and pretend to go to bed so I could sneak into Lennox’s room, but my father had texted an hour ago and it was all I could think about.

  Dad: lmk if you see anything new from our friend. from our original friend too.

  He wanted more on Lennox. More on Cash too, although I didn’t know how many ways I could tell my father Cash was no more involved with trafficked antiquities than he was involved with competitive pie eating.