Wrong Crowd (Kingsley Academy Book 1)

by Lisa Helen Gray

  “Now can we go,” Selina hisses, dragging me by the arm.

  “Yeah,” I tell her, nodding. Then find myself smiling. It felt good to let off some steam. As we’re down the street, I begin to laugh. “Thanks for bringing me. This is exactly what I needed.”

  She looks at me like I’m a mess, but then begins to laugh herself. “We can call Curt to come get us. Let’s just move further away from the house. People will begin to leave now and we don’t want to be caught up if another fight breaks out.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I blink awake when a creak in the floorboards sounds close. I still on the bed, my cheek to the pillow and my gaze away from the door as I train my ears to hear another sound.

  Any kind of sound.

  I can’t hear anything, but it doesn’t mean something or someone isn’t there.

  I can feel it. Chills break out over my body and cools parts of my skin that are damp with sweat.

  I had come back from the party with Selina and headed straight for my room, deciding I would wait until tomorrow to explain what she saw with Carter. She might deny it to my face, but there was no mistaking the fact that she liked him. It was written all over her face.

  I inhale when no other sound is made. I slide my fingers through the back of my black knickers that have firmly wedged between my arse crack to pull them out.

  I literally only had energy to pull on the tank top I had on earlier when I got back. The adrenaline that was pumping through my body had completely worn off before we even hit the gated community. I was out before I could even conjure up images of Kaiden and what he looked like fighting. He was lethal.

  I roll over, pulling the hair out of my face, and stare up at the ceiling. A shadow at the end of the bed catches my attention, and a small, startled scream bubbles up my throat.

  No sound has chance to escape as the dark, looming body jumps over me and a hand is clamping down over my mouth so hard my teeth dig into my bottom lip.

  “Wha—” My yell of outrage is muffled when the hand presses down harder.

  They lean down, and I get my first glimpse of Kaiden. He surges forward, his face a breath away from mine.

  “Shut the fuck up!” he snaps.

  One hand goes around my neck, tightening, and a cold shiver of fear runs down my spine. His weight settles down on me, and a different kind of shiver runs through me.

  What the fuck is he doing?

  His hand at my mouth moves, yet he keeps his other hand at my throat, his fingers digging in with a warning, to remind me he’s there.

  “Get off me,” I hiss quietly, placing my hands on his chest to push him. His hand tightens, and I stop, pulling back to glare up at him.

  “What game are you playing now?” I tense slightly at the predatory tone in his voice.

  “I’m not the one playing games,” I snap, closer to his face.

  “You were at a Remington Academy party.”

  I can’t work out if he’s pissed I was at the party because they have this rival shit going on or because I went to a party. It’s hard to get a read on him any other time, but in the dark, I can only go by the tone of his voice.

  “Get off me,” I try again, not bothering to hide the annoyance.

  “Don’t push me, Monroe. You won’t like the consequences,” he growls, the weight of his body feeling heavier. “Now tell me, why were you at that party?”

  Does he have… is that… No, surely not. I’d love to ask if that’s a gun in his pocket, but I’m almost too scared that the answer is yes.

  My core tightens, and I hate my betraying body for it. He shouldn’t turn me on. His dick, even though covered in rough denim, shouldn’t turn me on. But it does. And every time he slightly moves, rubbing that rough material across my clit that is barely covered in the thin cotton material, there’s no mistaking the pleasure running through my system.

  I’m sick.

  There’s no other excuse for it. I’m a sick, sick person.

  I almost want to disobey, to see exactly what he would do. He might look relaxed, but there’s no mistaking he’s a wolf ready to pounce on his prey.

  I also don’t want to get Selina into shit, so I lie. “I heard about a party and I went.”

  His body tenses above me and the room grows silent. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but I can feel angry waves coming from him.

  “You lied,” he whispers, and a sense of foreboding spreads through me.

  “Why should I tell you anything? Why are you even here—in my room, Kaiden? For someone who doesn’t like me so much, you sure want to spend time with me.”

  For the first time, I see his face clearly. He looks and smells freshly showered, which is probably what took him so long to seek me out. His bottom lip is torn, and so is the edge of his eyebrow, close to his hairline.

  It’s unfair that even beaten he looks like a god. A dangerous, sexy god.

  He smirks, resting on his elbows so he’s barely hovering above me. “You think I want you?”

  On a shaky whisper, I reply, “Yes.” I don’t believe it. I think he just loves toying with me. He likes getting a reaction out of me.

  I hate that I like it.

  And now I feel like I’m playing a part in the Rihanna and Eminem song, ‘Love the Way You Lie’.

  He runs the tip of his finger down my throat, down my chest, where I’m not wearing a bra. I can see my nipples through the white, thin material, but in my defence, I didn’t know the psycho would break into my room.

  “Did you wear this for me?” His voice is low and seductive.

  My body trembles until I’m visibly shaking. “Yes, because everything I do revolves around you.”

  He chuckles darkly, his fingers circling my breast. “Yes, it really does.”

  “Why are you being like this?” I demand, trying to wiggle away from his touch. It just causes me to rub up against him, causing friction I really don’t need stimulating me right now.

  I try to swallow the moan, but it’s no use. He hears, his eyes darkening with a heat I’ve not seen before.

  He doesn’t speak, continuing his torture on my nipple for a moment longer. And I let him. Because my head and heart might hate him, but my body has other plans with him.

  “Please stop,” I plead, but it falls out half-arsed. It doesn’t even sound convincing to me. I groan when his fingers continue a trail down my body, skimming across my hip bones to the top of my knickers.

  “Why are you doing this?” I try again, attempting to wriggle free. He’s half onto me now, weighing me down so I can’t do shit. The other half is lying on the bed so he can watch what he is doing to me.

  He looks away from what his fingers are doing, and I try to concentrate when he leans down closer.

  “Because you’re Ivy Monroe. I hate everything about you; what you represent, where you come from, and who you come from. While you are here, I own you.”

  “Nobody owns me,” I whisper, moaning when his fingers slide into my knickers.

  His smirk spreads. “I do.”

  “What, you want me to be your girlfriend?”

  Is he crazy?

  He laughs, and it’s the first time I’ve heard a genuine one from him. He looks different, relaxed, and his eyes shine with a light I’ve not seen from him. But it’s gone in a second, and for a moment, I’m sure I imagined it.

  “You are nothing to me,” he warns.

  His fingers begin to circle my clit in a smooth, circular motion. My toes curl, and I arch a little off the bed. I should scream for Selina, for Annette, for him to stop.

  Nothing comes out but the sound of a moan.

  He chuckles again. “Because, you see, I have you right where I want you.”

  My body tenses as he begins to move faster, sliding his fingers through my wetness, and fuck am I wet. I can feel it dripping between my arse cheeks.

  His thumb rubs at my clit now, and I cry out when he shoves in two fingers, not slow and steady, but rough and hard.

/>   “Oh God!”

  “Your mum ruined lives when she was here. She fucked with the wrong families.”

  I want to question him, to tell him I’m not my mother, but his fingers work faster, harder, and I feel my lower stomach tensing, an orgasm cresting.

  “Figuratively and literally speaking.”

  His voice is hoarse, low, but the warning and hatred is still there, heightening my arousal. Why it feels good when he’s being cruel makes a tear slide out from the corner of my eye.

  “Kaiden!” I moan; a plea, a curse.

  He makes a noise at the back of his throat, shoving another finger roughly inside me. I cry out, turning my head away from him.

  He removes his hand, and my body relaxes against the mattress. But then his fingers, coated in my arousal, grip my chin, forcing me to look at him. He leans forward, licking away my tear.

  “Suck.”

  “W-what?”

  He shoves his fingers in my mouth, and I gag, but do as he demands. I feel him tense when I swirl my tongue around the tip, sucking off my juices.

  He’s hard against my thigh. I can feel it. The crazy part of me wants to reach for him, beg him to fuck me so hard I black out. The other is weeping in the corner of my mind, begging him to stop degrading me this way.

  “Good girl.” He removes his fingers, yanking down my tank top and baring my breasts. He reaches down, taking one in his mouth, and I cry out. He bites down hard, but my clit pulses all the same.

  With pleasure comes pain.

  With pain comes pleasure.

  It’s a fucked-up cycle I can’t make sense of in my mind.

  Another tear slides down the side of my face when he shifts to his knees, between my spread legs.

  I try to close them on him, but his hands wedge them apart, pulling at my hamstrings.

  “Kaiden,” I whisper, feeling the burn everywhere.

  He reaches a hand down between my legs, rubbing my wetness over my clit, my slit, before shoving two fingers back inside me.

  I moan, my hips thrashing side to side. “No.”

  His slides his fingers out, adding a third one once again and ramming them so hard inside me my back arches off the bed and I can’t mute the sound coming from my throat. He grins, placing his free hand at my breast, squeezing.

  When he runs the wetness over my clit again, I nearly shoot off the bed. He circles my virgin arse, and the glint in his eyes tells me he knows that.

  And he’s enjoying my discomfort.

  “You like being played with,” he rasps, looking down at me.

  “Please, not there,” I beg when his presses his finger there. The pressure feels foreign, uncomfortable but pleasurable. I’m surprised when he obeys, instead sliding his fingers through my sex.

  “Maybe I should fuck you.”

  “No,” I tell him, shaking my head, yet my body tells another story when it rocks against his hand.

  He chuckles. “I’m going to break you.”

  “I hate you!”

  He shoves his fingers back inside of my sex, his thumb at my clit. He hits a spot inside me that sends every nerve ending wild.

  “You’re going to wish you never came to Cheshire Grove.”

  His breathing is laboured now, his fingers twisting inside me, making that spot come alive again. I can feel it everywhere.

  He hovers above me, his lips above mine as he continues to play. Sweat is beading at the back of my neck and my breasts bounce with each rough thrust of his fingers.

  “I don’t believe you came here for no reason. I don’t trust that you have no idea what is going on. You want to play games? Game on. But I’ll win. Every single time. I won’t have you fucking up their lives.”

  Who are they? His brothers? Grant? Nova? Who?

  “I don’t—” I pause, crying out as my orgasm builds and builds to the point I can no longer hold it at bay.

  “I’m going to have fun breaking you—just like your mum broke them.”

  I come apart, my entire body lighting up, and before a sound can move past my lips, Kaiden surprises me by kissing me.

  I grip his shoulders, kissing him back. It’s demanding, controlling and filled with passion and fire.

  Then he’s gone.

  I’m breathing heavily when I open my eyes. His fingers leave my body and my sex pulses with aftershocks.

  I lean up on my elbows, watching him clench his fists at the end of the bed, staring down at me.

  “Kaiden?” I call out hesitantly, unsure of what all of this means. Did he finger fuck me into submission, or was it a way to say he can control me? Or for his sick pleasure…

  “Tonight, I saw what you did. You hit that guy who was going to take Lucca out from behind. Then with me.”

  “I was trying to help,” I snap defensively. The way he says it… accusingly, like I’m the one who orchestrated the whole thing.

  He presses his fists into the mattress, leaning towards me. “You’re lying. I don’t fucking trust you.” He scoffs, looking at me in disgust. “You drop your knickers at a sneeze in your direction. I saw you.”

  “Saw me?”

  I’m so fucking confused. A headache forms, and I grab the thin blanket and cover my body. He snickers, his lip curling.

  “Carter. I saw him over you. You wanted it.”

  “No, I—” I start, but he growls low in the back of his throat.

  “So whatever game you think you are playing, don’t. Because I’m warning you, I can make your life hell for however long you’ve got left. You leave and I’ll follow. I’ll make sure you never get a job, not even sucking dick for a living like your mum.”

  My heart drops when he says it. “Tell me what she did that was so wrong you would treat her daughter like this. A daughter she didn’t look after. One I don’t think she loved. Tell me!”

  He stands, his eyes still cast down. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, deadly and filled with vengeance. “She destroyed the people who tried to save her.”

  “Wait, what?” I say when he moves to the door.

  With his hand on the door knob, he pauses, looking over his shoulder. “The difference between you and her—the only fucking difference,” he states, before delivering the blow, “is that she had people who wanted to save her. There’s no one in this world who can save you from me.”

  The door slowly clicks shut behind him. I curl into a ball on my side, a single tear sliding down my face and onto my pillow.

  I can’t believe I let him do that to me. I’m revolted with myself for letting it happen. He didn’t force me. I could have screamed at any time, told him to stop, but I didn’t. It made me feel alive. It made me feel something.

  I’d slept with one person, one time, and that took me months and months to let happen. But he’s right: he didn’t have to work for anything before I dropped my knickers.

  You aren’t this person, Monroe.

  I sigh, sitting up. I’m not this person. I don’t let people get to me.

  Fuck him. Fuck Kaiden Kingsley. I’m not my mother. I’m not a slag. I’m Ivy fucking Monroe, and I take shit from no one.

  He thinks he can break me.

  But what he doesn’t seem to realise, is you can’t break something that’s already broken.

  CHAPTER TEN

  My mind wouldn’t shut off. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kaiden. How he could make me want him one second and hate him the next.

  It was driving me insane, and I couldn’t shut my mind off long enough to find sleep again. I could still feel him, feel what he did to me, the rush of emotions and self-hatred. He made me feel weak, and it’s the one thing I’m not. I’ve lived through tougher things.

  After what seemed to be hours of tossing and turning, I finally got up to change into some fresh underwear and put on a pair of sleep shorts and tank top. I didn’t think he’d come back, but I also wasn’t taking chances.

  Stepping back into my room, my gaze drifts over to next door. There’s a lamp on, the room l
it in a dim glow, but I don’t see any sign of Kaiden.

  Why am I still thinking about him? I want to smack my head against a wall. This is just crazy.

  Sighing, I head out of my room and downstairs, needing a glass of water. The house is eerily quiet during the night. I’m thankful for Selina staying here while Nova’s gone until morning. Still, the place gives me the creeps at night.

  I grab a glass from the top cupboard before taking the orange juice out of the fridge and pouring myself a glass. I down half the glass, then refill it before putting the juice away.

  Taking the glass with me, I move to the door.

  The house is so big, too big for Nova. I’ve learned over the past few days that it’s her childhood home. I knew it belonged in her family, but I presumed she’d inherited it from her granddad or something.

  She was raised in this house with Mum, her brother and their parents. Their granddad moved to America not long after his wife died. The family history went on and on, and it was hard to keep up with Nova when I hadn’t met any of them. Or seen pictures, except the one in her office.

  Even the room I’m staying in once belonged to my mum. It had clearly been decorated and refurnished since, but still, it’s surreal. Nothing in this house screams the mum I knew. Not one thing.

  The deeds are now in Nova’s name as her brother—my uncle—lives in America, where he oversees the family business there with their granddad.

  It’s all too much to process. I thought my family died with my mum. I had made peace with the fact I was going to be on my own in the world, and then Nova knocked on my door and shocked the hell out of me. I’ll never forget the feeling of the blood draining from my face when I saw her. I thought she was my mum. I was seconds away from fainting when she rushed out and explained who she was.

  And now here we are.

  I head towards the cinema room, but pause before I make it to the door. Nova or Annette hadn’t taught me how to set it up, and I don’t fancy spending half the night figuring it out.

  Walking back through the kitchen, I head to the other side of the house, seeking out the stairs I noticed on my tour of the manor. If I can’t watch a movie to pass the time, then maybe a book will do.