Michael looked at him with violent bewilderment.
“She didn’t tell you about that yet either, I see. Perfect, we can all have fun with that game a little later on together.” He turned toward the guards and told them to take the boys back to Lineage and wait for us there. “You, dear daughter, get to come back to the party with me.”
He stepped over to help me up off the floor, and as soon as I reached my feet, I spit in his face. He grabbed me stiffly around the throat and pushed his face against mine.
“You won’t be doing that again,” he threatened. “You will act in exactly the way that I tell you to act, or your boy-toys will start losing appendages one by one. Do you understand?”
“Don’t listen to him, Lisette, get away from—” one of the guards pummeled the crown of Julian’s head with his fist, and Julian’s head drooped down over his neck as if he were a rag doll.
“No!” I shouted. I looked at the other guards who were holding Michael and Adam by their throats.
Then I looked back at my father. “Okay,” I said in defeat. “I understand. I’ll do it.”
“Good,” he smiled. “Let’s go rejoin my celebration.”
24
The rest of the night felt surreal. My father and I rejoined the charity event, although it was stupid at that point to even call it by that name anymore, and he pretended that we had been happily reunited thanks to Marta’s insistence that I attend this evening’s event. Marta looked at him in complete and hysterical confusion as soon as she saw me on his arm.
I was pretty sure that she was hoping I would be dead by now. But she played along with it as though she had arranged the whole father-daughter reunion herself. I wondered what terrible things my father had done to Marta to make her so easily compliant. A seat was cleared for me to sit next to my father and I sat like an emotionless, soulless, shell of a human as I stared out at the people who whispered about me and pretended to smile.
I would have given anything to go back to the whispers that the kids in the halls at Goldshire used to do instead. I didn’t even listen anymore as the board members talked to my father and Marta about their ideas for upcoming events. All I could think about was Michael, Adam, and Julian, and hoping that they weren’t dead or dismembered back on the Lineage campus. When the evening had started to wind down, my father and Marta and I walked down to the street just before a black car pulled up in front of us.
“Get in,” my father said.
I obeyed, and then he and Marta slid into the seat on either side of me. As soon as the doors closed, the driver pulled away from the aquarium.
“I would have liked to have known about this before it happened there in front of everyone,” Marta complained to my father. “It was rather difficult to improvise when you put me on the spot like that.”
“I would have liked to have known that my daughter was still alive,” he said. “You told me that this would be taken care of before tonight. Imagine my surprise when I find her at my very own celebration.”
He had wanted me dead. My father thought I would already be dead by now.
Marta didn’t have a comeback for that. She sat silently for the rest of the ride. I wondered if she knew what he had done to her son, and I wondered if she even cared whether Michael lived or died. When the car pulled up to Lineage, we all got out. I stood there on the walkway in front of the main Lineage building, with my red silk dress covered in the blood from hugging the guys near the jellyfish exhibit, and I didn’t know what to do. Marta looked at me as if I were a stray animal, then she looked back at my father.
“Where’s she going to stay tonight?” she asked him.
“She can stay with the boys for a night. Maybe it will garner her allegiance a bit more for our discussions in the morning,” he answered.
“You’re not worried that she will try to escape again?”
My father made an obnoxious snorting noise at Marta. “What is she going to do, Marta? It’s not like she and three injured boys could get very far.”
Marta ducked her head and then reached for my father’s hand, which he then wrapped around hers.
Ewww.
“Let’s go,” he said as he pulled me alongside him.
Inside the main building, he called one of the guards over and instructed him to take me to the holding room. It sounded more like a prison than a school now. When I got there and the guard opened the door, I was relieved to see the three guys all there. They were all sitting on the ground and still shirtless, but very much alive. It looked like they had been trying to make a plan for something.
“Lisette!” Julian shouted as they all stood up and rushed over to me.
They each wrapped their arms around me until I was in the middle of one giant hug between them. I stood there for a minute and cried. When the guard slammed the door shut, the guys brought me to sit down on the floor with them.
And I studied their bruised and battered faces as they all spoke as quickly as possible.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Michael asked. “The situation doesn’t look very good, to be honest.”
“Are they going to kill us?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think they have something else in store for us,” he said.
“Like what?” I asked as I looked around at each of them. It was pretty clear that none of us knew what fate awaited us.
We talked for a while, and then, out of sheer physical fatigue, we all started to fall asleep. I was still in the borrowed cocktail dress from the aquarium and had kicked off my shoes to curl up barefoot and cold in the thin silk fabric between Michael, Julian, and Adam. I lay between them and we all fell asleep in a heap together on the floor, not unlike a pack of wild animals in their den. I didn’t want to think about what the morning would bring. I only wanted to stay close to them.
In the morning, Michael and I were sent for while Adam and Julian stayed behind in the room. I didn’t like the feeling of being separated from them. I was put in a guarded room to shower and clean up and change into a fresh set of clothes that had been left on the table for me. I took my time in the shower and tried to get rid of the chill in my bones by standing beneath the hot falling water. When I was done, I put on the jeans and sweater and waited. While I waited, I braided my hair and tried not to think of all the awful things that could possibly happen to us here.
The door to the room opened, and Michael was ushered in to wait with me. It looked like he had been given a chance to clean up too.
“How are you holding up?” he asked me.
“I should be asking you that question,” I said. “You guys have had the shit beat out of you more times in the last few days than most people have in a lifetime.”
He sighed. “You’re not wrong.”
Michael reached out to hold my hand. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something but then closed it again.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You were going to tell me how everything was going to be fine, and then you realized that it would be a lie. Am I right?”
He didn’t need to answer me; the look on his face was enough.
The door opened, and Marta appeared in the doorway.
“Mother,” Michael said as he walked quickly toward her. “You have to stop this. Tell Jack to let us go!”
“I can’t do that,” she said.
She almost looked a little sad, maybe even a touch remorseful, but I knew that couldn’t be right because Marta was an all-around horrible woman.
“What’s going to happen to us?” I asked.
A look of disdain coated her face when she looked at me. And she stared at me as if I were a rotten piece of fruit. “You are apparently going to be the new poster girl for Lineage. Your father would like you to present yourself as the beautiful new figurehead of our academy. The title is meaningless, of course, but simply a show to persuade trust from the community as we attempt to merge the two schools together.
“Like
hell,” I said under my breath.”
“Careful,” she warned.
“And you,” Marta said as she turned to her son, “are going to take your place as the new overseeing Dean of Goldshire? That will ensure a smooth, transitionary process.”
I could tell that he wanted to echo my same sentiment, but he withheld and bit his tongue instead.
“What about Adam and Julian?” he asked instead.
“Adam will stay here and keep an eye on things with Lisette. Julian will go back with you to Goldshire and help you there. Both men have been strictly warned that if they don’t follow Jack’s directives, there will be hell to pay.”
“And by hell, I assume you mean—”
She tisked. “Let’s not play games, son. You all either do what you’re being instructed to do, or you’ll be killed.” Marta turned to leave. “Oh, and you won’t be seeing each other again until after the merger is complete. You leave in an hour, Michael.”
As soon as Marta had left the room, I started to beg Michael not to leave for Goldshire. But as much as he didn’t want to go either, there was nothing that either of us could do.
“We just have to play the part for now,” he said. “Just give me some time to figure it out.”
The hour passed by too quickly, and before we knew it, the guard was opening the door again to get us both. Michael was escorted off the campus with Julian, and I was ushered into a private dinner with my father. I would have rather eaten glass than have been made to sit at a table with that man again. My father ate like a hound, shoveling food into his mouth as though he were using it to fuel his evil. He wasn’t an obese man, but I wouldn’t have called him fit either.
“Marta filled you in on what you’re going to do for me?” he said.
“Smile and look pretty?” I said with sarcasm.
“Perfect.” He said, looking pleased with himself at my response.
After an hour of sitting with him and not eating, he eventually dismissed me.
I had only made it a short distance down the hall when someone came up behind me.
“I don’t need an escort everywhere I go,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going to run away.” And even if I could run away, I couldn’t leave the guys behind.
“It’s just me,” Adam said.
I turned around and flung myself into his arms. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you. They said we could go back to staying at my apartment, and I thought you’d prefer that to staying in this building so close to your father.”
“God, yes,” I said.
Adam wrapped his arm around me, and we walked across the campus and back to his apartment. It looked like the locks had been stripped from every door, so there was no way to lock it, but at least it was somewhere that wasn’t under the constant watch of my father’s henchmen.
“I heard they took Michael and Julian to Goldshire,” he said as he dug around in the cabinets until he found a bottle of whiskey that was still almost full. “I don’t get why they’re letting those two guys be together. You’d think they would be worried about them plotting against them.”
“I guess they figure those two don’t like each other much. I really don’t know. None of this makes any sense. I’m surprised they’re letting us stay together, too, for that matter.”
“What is your father going to make you do tomorrow?” Adam asked.
“I think Marta is having members of the press come to cover the official merger of the schools. I’m supposed to smile pretty and act all happy and innocent. As if I could ever act innocent again,” I sighed.
“You are innocent,” he said. “None of this is your fault.”
I don’t know what possessed me to open my mouth about the stone room, but all of a sudden I felt like I needed to tell Adam about everything that had happened with Michael during my initiation.
When I finished telling him, he didn’t seem mad that I had kept it from him, which I guess I should have expected since he hadn’t been mad at me about sleeping with Michael either.
“So, you thought at first that it was me in that room with you?” he asked.
“Yes. When I realized it was Michael, I should have stopped right then and there, and I didn’t. I’m not sure why I needed to tell you about all that right now, but I just felt like I should.”
He swigged the contents of his glass and let out a satisfied sigh after he had swallowed.
“Adam,” I asked. “Why have you been so cool about all of this? I mean, Julian was livid with me, and Michael nearly killed me instead of giving in to his feelings, but you seem to have your emotions completely under control. What’s your secret?”
He laughed. “Trust me; I don’t have anything under control at all. I’m just better at hiding it than the others, I guess.”
When we went into the bedroom, I pulled off my sweater and jeans and stood nakedly looking around for a T-shirt to wear to sleep in. Adam was getting changed too, or at least taking off his shirt and pants for bed. I couldn’t find a shirt and was getting ready to ask him if I could borrow one of his when he came up behind me, and his hands wrapped underneath my arms from behind and cupped around my breasts. I felt his lips kiss the back of my neck, and I gasped. He pushed his body against me, and I could feel his physical desire press in-between the back of my thighs.
“I want you,” he whispered into my ear. “I want you so badly, Lisette, and I know that you think I have this all under control, but I don’t. I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do, but if you let me, I want to show you what it would have felt like if it had been me in that stone room with you instead of Michael.”
I turned my body around in his arms until our chests were pressed up against each other, and I kissed him until I could taste the desire on his tongue. His hands slid down my body, and his finger slid the thin panties I was wearing off and onto the floor as he pulled me closer toward the bed. He sat down on the edge of the bed, with his swollen, hard cock between his legs, and I crawled onto his lap to give us both the moment that we should have had a long time ago.
Our eyes locked together as Adam held his hands against my hips. I slid down against his thickened girth, feeling him pulsing against my walls. With every rocking motion of my hips, my pussy swallowed him whole, spreading me while my body tightened around him as if it were the very first time all over again.
I couldn’t get enough. “Oh, God. Adam, please.”
I let myself get lost in the beautiful sensations even though the world was careening out of control around us. I pushed and pulled his body against the most sensitive parts of my own. He groaned as I pleasured myself against him, my fingers slipping between my dripping folds as I tickled my clit.
“That’s it. Come for me, Lisette.”
I whimpered in ecstasy. “I don’t want it to be over so soon.”
We bucked and swayed together. It was hard to tell where his body ended and mine began. My juices dripped down his shaft, lubing him up for me as he slid deeper with every thrust of his hips. My head fell back in torturous pleasure. I felt him wrap his hand around my wrist before pulling my fingertips away from my needy clit.
And just as I fought to get my hand back down there, I felt his thumb press against my swollen nub.
“Shit,” I hissed.
He growled against my ear. “That’s it. Lose yourself in me.”
The world around me tilted, as if the earth were being knocked off its axis. His lips attached to my neck and I spiraled into an endless abyss. Where I was headed, no one else mattered by me and him. Him, and Michael, and Julian.
The three men I loved more than anything on this planet.
“Lisette. Oh, my Liz. Shit. I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come.”
I captured his lips with my own. “Come for me, Adam. Let go with me.”
He held me still tightly against him as we both lost control, soaring over the edge and into the darkened waters of our lust. I fell against him, panting for air
as his shallow thrusts spurred his own explosive end. Feeling him grip my hair and growl my name stoked a fire deep within my gut. I felt my walls milking him for all he had before his cock painted the depths of my walls. I kissed his neck, over and over, before I raked my teeth down his pulse point. And when he fisted my hair one last time, he pulled my lips to his in a fevered kiss.
One that left me breathless as the evidence of our sins dripped from between my legs.
“Wow,” I whispered.
Adam kissed the shell of my ear. “What I feel for you is real. Please, never forget that.”
I didn’t want to sleep. I only wanted to keep his tongue in my mouth and his cock inside me until I couldn’t think straight anymore. I wasn’t ready to give him up. I wasn’t ready to relinquish him to the world just yet. Not after slicing off a moment of paradise for ourselves.
Why can’t life always be like this?
“Is that what it felt like the night in the stone room?” he asked as he flipped me over onto my back and laid over me. “Or is this?”
Before I could answer him, he thrust himself back into me and I clawed my fingers into his back. He pounded against me, revving me up for yet another round as the wet sounds of skin slapping skin filled the space around us. He hooked his arms underneath my legs and hoisted them to my chest. He folded me in half, my eyes bulging as his dick slid deeply within my body. I’d never felt this alive before. I’d never felt this lovingly used in all my life. And as my eyes rolled back in time with the curling of my toes, his mouth covered mine.
Swallowing my desperate sounds of heated pleasure as he filled me with his cock.
I groaned with joy. I gasped with delight. And as his fingers slid between my pussy lips once more, it wasn’t long before I unraveled again. With my tits bouncing and Adam planting his face directly between them, he growled so deeply that it rattled my ribcage.
Then, he fell over the edge with me one more time as his cock poured itself into me again.
Ruined: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 1) Page 16