"Hey," Tatum complained like that was somehow offensive and I turned to her with a dark look, leaning close so that my words were spoken with our lips almost brushing.
"It's not an insult, Tatum," I growled. "I think it's pretty clear that all four of us would like exclusive access to your pussy and every other part of you if we could have it. It's only natural for a man to claim his woman and stamp his name all over her to keep every other motherfucker away. But that's not the situation the four of us are in."
Monroe muttered some asinine comment about her being his student and Kyan laughed like he knew something the rest of us didn't, but I ignored them.
"I...that’s..." Tatum actually blushed and it was so fucking adorable that I almost wanted to let her off the hook here, but this needed dealing with.
"I think we need to make it clear that Kyan's status as her husband doesn't give him any sort of say over the things any of the rest of us do with our girl,” I said. “Do you agree with that, Tatum?"
I leaned back to give her room to breathe and she licked her lips as she glanced between all of us before finally nodding her agreement.
"That was what I swore to first - to belong to all of you. I think it makes sense that that oath takes priority over the one me and Kyan made,” she admitted.
"I agree," Blake said instantly and Monroe nodded too.
"That's four against one," I said, pinning Kyan in my glare. "Are you going to continue to fight us on this or are you ready to agree to stop with your caveman bullshit?"
Kyan looked like he wanted to argue further and I couldn't even fault him for it. If there was a way that I could have come up with to make her mine alone I would have done anything it took to make it so. Well, anything other than turn against the men in this room. Our bond was the single most important thing in the world to me and if the rest of them felt the same then it was obvious that this was the only choice we could make. No matter what jealousy it created or how it might push us to compete for her attention and affection, we had to find a way to do this that wouldn't tear us apart, which mean we had to learn to share without killing each other.
"Fine," Kyan agreed. "But if you're all fucking her then I want in on it. At least some of the time."
Tatum laughed like this conversation was insane but after watching her with Blake and Kyan at once, I couldn't say I was totally against the idea of that. The main point was that nothing was off the table when it came to the five of us. Even Monroe wasn't bothering to make his protests tonight, though I was sure he was still trying to deny to himself that he wanted our girl as much as we all did.
"If I'm supposed to belong to all of you and let you...share me," Tatum said, seeming embarrassed about the idea of that though not flinching away from it either. "Then I want you all to swear that you only belong to me too. I'm not going to be used as some plaything for the four of you only to have to watch you fucking other girls."
"Done," I agreed without thought because I didn't want any other girl anyway. I was happy enough to admit that my obsession with her had gone that far because I was fairly certain it was obvious regardless.
Kyan and Blake agreed quickly too and we all looked at Monroe as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Just agree, asshole, it’s not like there's any other pussy you're chasing anyway, and we’re stuck in lockdown here for fuck knows how long, so what difference does it make?" Kyan pushed him and Monroe rolled his eyes but nodded all the same. I didn’t miss the blush that coated Tatum's cheeks as we all agreed to that or the smug ass look on her face. But I had to wonder if she had truly considered what she was getting by taking on four tortured souls like us. Either way it was agreed so I wrote it down.
I took a breath and pulled out the laminated set of rules that we’d laid out months ago, laying it on the table where everyone could see it. The first one was struck out, but at least I’d managed to preserve the rest up until now.
1. No Kissing
2. No foreplay
3. No sex
4. No touching while we share a bed
5. No entering the bathroom while I'm naked or on the toilet
6. I am allowed two hours of undisturbed study time at the library on every weekday
7. I am allowed one friend who you can not be a dick to
8. Once a week we will ALL eat pizza for dinner without cutlery
9. I am allowed to sit wherever I want in classes
The rules I’d laid out were beneath them too:
1. You will sleep in a Night Keeper's bed every night on rotation and they will have priority over you for 24 hours (6pm-6pm the next day).
2. You must cook breakfast for us every day.
3. You will wear whatever we decide on the day you are in our possession.
4. You will do as we say without complaint unless it conflicts with your rules.
"As for the rest of the rules, I think we need to have a fresh look at the no sex, foreplay and no touching in bed rules as some members of the group have been repeatedly flouting them and I am personally sick of being the only fucking person here who seems to give a shit about them,” I said seriously while Blake and Kyan high fived each other like dickheads.
"Scrap them," Tatum said without hesitation. "I'm not agreeing to any of you ordering me to have sex with you or anything like that. But if I want to then I don't want it to be off the table."
I fought to keep my composure as she suggested that, my brow furrowing as I wondered if it really might have anything to do with me or if she was just sick of feeling like she was breaking the rules whenever she was with Kyan or Blake. Either way, removing this rule would be good for me. I wouldn't have to deal with the constant rule breaks and I could just focus on all of the projects I was working to complete in my own time without being haunted by it.
The others all agreed without me saying anything and my jaw locked as I looked down the original list of rules.
"Are there any new rules which anyone might like to impose or any other rules which need to be amended?" I asked in a flat tone as I kept my gaze on the page.
"Get rid of the one about entering the bathroom while she's naked too," Blake said, offering Tatum a dirty grin across the table and my grip on my pen tightened as I realised that left us with only four out of her nine original rules.
Kyan and Tatum agreed to that and I fought down the urge to freak out about this casual disbandment of an entire way of life. I had wanted to challenge the pizza night issue but if we dropped down to only three rules from her original list, I was fairly certain I was going to have a heart attack.
"I have issues with the rules about me making all the breakfasts and having no control over my clothes," Tatum began but she paused as she looked my way and I forced myself to hold her gaze as I fought not to crack a tooth. "But...maybe we can just agree that I'll get a bit of help with the breakfast clean up and that I can have some say on the clothes...some days."
I knew that what she was really saying was that she intended to start picking her own clothes on the days the others had control over her and I knew I should have argued against it, but at this point it felt like the world was caving in and I knew the others didn’t really give a shit about those things the way I did. Kyan and Blake were so pussy blind that they might vote with her against me, and then I wouldn't even be able to dress her on my own days. That was utterly unthinkable so I just gave a curt nod which was as close to agreeing with the idea of playing fast and loose with the rules as I could get.
No one had anything else to disagree with so I turned the page in my notebook and carefully wrote out the amended rules.
We all belong with each other exclusively.
Tatum is allowed two hours of undisturbed study time at the library on every weekday.
Tatum is allowed one friend who we cannot be a dick towards.
Once a week we all eat pizza for dinner without cutlery.
Tatum may select her own seat in class.
Tatum will s
leep in a Night Keeper's bed every night on rotation and they will have priority over her for 24 hours (6pm - 6am).
Tatum will cook breakfast for us in the mornings.
Tatum will wear the clothes selected for her by the Night Keeper who has possession of her that day.
Tatum will do as we say without complaint unless it conflicts with any of the above rules.
"Are the rules really necessary at all anymore?" Blake asked as I shoved them towards him for his signature.
"Just sign them and let's finish this fucking meeting," I snapped as I pushed myself to my feet.
Kyan made a joke about me keeping my panties on and I snarled at him as I turned and strode away. I could feel their eyes on me as I went but I didn't care. We'd covered the things we needed to discuss.
"Just leave the rules on the table for me once you've all signed them," I commanded as I made it to the door and I pushed my feet into my shoes. "I'll laminate them once I come home."
I stepped out into the cold as Kyan started laughing, the anger in my veins heating to the point where I either needed to find my own outlet for it or I was going to start a damn brawl with all of them and I didn't need that shit right now. I needed to calm down. I needed to get out of my own head and find a way to stop the frantic pounding of my heart.
I knew exactly why it was racing, too. Not that I wanted to think about that too much. But the rules which had been keeping me away from Tatum had just been severed with a finality that I couldn't ignore. The question was, would I take advantage of that?
Clearly I wanted to. No, fuck that, I didn’t want to. I ached to, hungered to, fucking needed to. This obsession I had with her was only growing stronger and I felt like I'd been denying myself of her for far too fucking long already. But I also knew that I was poison. The closer she got to me, the deeper I'd delve into her body and infect her soul. And even I knew that doing so would be the most selfish act I'd ever committed.
I strode up the path to Ash Chambers and made my way inside with a growl of frustration as I headed for the grand piano. I needed to lose myself in the movement of my fingers across the keys and drown this frustration in music.
I flicked on the low lights as I entered the cold room where the grand piano sat waiting for me in the shadows like a constant and stoic old friend looking forward to my return.
There was something undeniably comfortable about the enormous instrument, in knowing that there was little to no chance of someone moving it from this exact position while I was gone. I should have been beyond such small comforts, but I couldn't deny that I had come to rely entirely too much on the predictability of such things. Being here in this school had been like a balm to my wandering soul. I didn't like to admit to enjoying concepts like the idea of feeling at home somewhere, but I had come to accept that that was what I felt at Everlake Preparatory. Graduation was going to be a bitch. I'd wait for us to survive that long before I worried about it though. I already had thirteen different plans in place for what the five of us would do when we left this school, I just wasn't ready to select one yet.
I released a long breath as I situated my fingers on the keys, closing my eyes as I made an effort to banish some of the whirling maelstrom of the thoughts churning around my mind and I started to play.
I began with Nocturne in A Minor by Chad Lawson, the music pouring from my soul as the concentration it took to produce it made my bones ache with all the things I struggled to put into words or deal with in the ways that other people seemed to find so fucking easy.
One song flowed into another and another as my fingers danced over the keys faster and faster and I slowly began to relax.
I felt the faint gust of wind on the back of my neck as the door opened, but I didn't turn. There were only a few people who were foolish enough to interrupt me here and only one who I could imagine might want to. Though I never knew why she put the effort in with me that she did.
I didn't stop as I continued to play Nuvole bianche by Ludovico Einaudi though I felt her eyes on me like a flame scoring marks into my skin, branding me in a way which was irreversible and inexplicable and utterly addictive.
The door closed again but I knew she wasn't the one who had left. I could feel her presence in the room as keenly as if her hands were on my skin.
I didn't make any acknowledgement of her arrival until the piece had finished and I reached out to turn the pages of my sheet music, though it was more to give me something to do than any great need to see the notes laid out on paper. Once I had perfected a piece, I rarely needed to refer to the sheets to perform it. I just knew it, better than I even knew myself. I could feel it living in me, waiting for its chance to burst free and fill the room with its beauty.
"I take it Kyan was the one who encouraged you to come here?" I asked her as I toyed with a few notes, mostly to stop the silence from stealing the air in the room.
"How did you guess?" Tatum asked.
"Because for the one of us who is the most adamant that he has no heart, he is the one who knows how best to show he cares without words," I murmured, still not looking at her, though I could feel her drawing closer behind me.
"How so?" she asked as if she hadn't noticed for herself, but I knew she had. It was why she spent time with him the way she did, why she touched him the way she did, why she looked at him the way I pretended not to be jealous over even though sometimes I felt like it would burn me alive from the inside out.
"He just knows how to make the smallest gesture or concession in the way that counts the most and he doesn't ask for any recognition of it either. He also knows how much to push me and how often I can tolerate it at just the right level to make sure I'm never too dependant on my foolish belief that I can control the world around me."
It was a self pitying kind of thing to say but maybe I was feeling sorry for myself tonight. The rules had all changed and I didn't know if that was one of the best or worst things that could have happened to me. It had opened up the possibility for me to claim everything I'd dreamed of claiming from the girl who was standing in the shadows behind me, but it had also taken away my excuse not to have it.
"He's a good man," Tatum agreed and I almost smiled at that.
It was funny how we could both come to that conclusion over someone who we knew for a fact took pleasure in violence and had killed more than once. And yet I was certain that it was true right down to the core of my being.
"If you stay here, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to maintain my control with you, Tatum," I warned her. "If you stay, you're making this decision for us."
"I'm not afraid of you, Saint."
"That really only makes this worse," I told her. "Because if you're not afraid then you must be seriously underestimating me."
"Or maybe you're the one who is underestimating me," she replied and I couldn't help the small twitch of my lips to her words. Never had a truer word been spoken; I’d been underestimating her since the day we’d first met.
"Come over here then, let's see what you've got." I inclined my head to the bench beside me and my skin prickled as my awareness of her presence sharpened until I felt like I was drowning in it.
When she dropped down onto the bench a few inches from me, I inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of her while never once pausing in the movements of my fingers over the keys.
"Can you play?" I asked her, and from the corner of my eye I saw her shake her head.
"I've had so many hobbies over the years that I couldn't even count them if I tried, but I never once got the feeling I had the aptitude to attempt a musical instrument," she explained.
"It's easier than it looks," I murmured as I slowed the movements of my fingers and slowly played the introduction to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for her, making it easy for her to follow the pattern my fingers took across the keys. "You try."
I drew my hand back and the music withdrew from the room as she turned to look up at me, biting down on her lip and forcing my attention to her mou
th as she hesitated.
"There's nothing easy about that, Saint," she protested and I sighed, reaching out to take her hand and place it on the keys.
I encouraged her to press down on them in order, but her fingers resisted the movements of mine and she frowned as she tried to concentrate on what I was showing her too damn much and hit the wrong notes.
"It's not supposed to feel like that," I said in a low voice, reaching out to smooth the creases from her brow and giving her a light smile as she stared up at me in surprise like she thought I’d be angry over her doing it wrong. But the piano was where I came to vent my emotions, I wasn’t going to be angry at her for attempting to understand that. "You have to feel the music. Let it use you as a vessel to travel out into the world. Don't overthink it."
"I don't underst-"
I huffed in irritation as I tried to figure out how else to show her what it felt like to me, the silence of the room offending me now that the piano lay unused before us and I wound my arm around her before hoisting her into my lap.
Tatum gasped as I situated her on top of me and I reached my arms around her as I laid my fingers down on the keys once more.
"Place your hands on top of mine," I instructed, my chin almost leaning on her shoulder. "Rest your fingers on each of mine too and relax, let your hands move with mine. Okay?"
She nodded wordlessly and I began to play Unchained Melody by The O’Neill Brothers. It was a hauntingly beautiful piece which I'd always loved because of the way it almost made me feel real heartache as I brought it to life. But as I played it with her, her hands caressing mine, the notes coming alive as if it really were both of us playing, I swear I felt something in the music which I'd never noticed before. Something sweet and pure and almost hopeful which had my heart thumping solidly in my chest.
I kept playing and Tatum slowly turned until she was looking at me over her shoulder, our hands still moving in perfect synchronisation as the music came to life all around us.
Something about the way she was looking at me was stealing my concentration from the piece and as it drew close to the end, my hand slipped and I hit the wrong note, a curse spilling from my lips a moment before her mouth met mine.
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