Then with a sharp breath that pushes out his massive chest, he becomes himself.
He becomes dark in his intentions and dangerous in his beauty.
He looks me up and down in his villainous way before taking a couple of steps closer to me and I go a couple of steps back.
“So how about I make you another promise?” he offers like the devil he is.
“What promise?” I ask, looking up at him.
But not for long because right in front of my eyes, he does something incredible.
He does something that I never even imagined he would do.
Right in front of my eyes, Reed Roman Jackson slowly comes down on his knees.
The sight of it is so shocking that my hand sticks out on its own and grabs hold of his shoulder. His hoodie.
“I don’t know… what you’re doing,” I whisper, looking into his eyes, which are on level with mine.
Because he’s so, so tall.
His answer is to smile lopsidedly and grab my ankle.
Before I can even utter a word, he’s taken off my shoe and given me my breaths back. When he goes for the other one and brings me back down to earth, taking off the added four inches of my height, I want to hug him.
I don’t even care that now he reaches the top of my head easily.
I don’t even care that the stark difference in our sizes makes me look all helpless in front of him.
“Tell me about your promise,” I whisper, putting my other hand on his shoulder as well and clutching his soft hoodie.
His gaze turns liquid. “You take off that dress and braid your hair.”
“And?”
His fingers still circle my ankle, squeezing. “And you dance only for me.”
“What would I get in return?”
“And in return, I won’t ask any other girls to dance for me.” Another squeeze of my ankle and I bite my lip. “Only you.”
Only me.
He just said that.
And maybe it’s not exactly what a girl hopes to hear from a guy. It’s not a declaration or anything. Just a little promise. And for now, it seems like enough. It seems enough to make me smile and wiggle my free toes on the ground in happiness.
It seems enough that I step closer to him and my bare feet graze his bent knees. “On one condition.”
“What?”
I dare to touch the ends of his dark hair; they’re as soft and silky as his hoodie. “I hear you love your Mustang.”
His eyes narrow in suspicion. “I do.”
I want to touch his stubble as well, the thing that appears every evening to bother him, but I’m not that bold so I satisfy myself with playing with his soft, soft hair.
“People say that she’s your baby.”
His hands go to my waist. “She is.”
I suck in a breath at how easily he can span my slender torso. “I want you to give me a ride.”
He digs his thumbs in the soft flesh of my stomach. “Ride to where?”
I don’t even have to think about the answer, and good thing too, because all my thoughts are gone except the one.
He’s touching me so possessively, like how a sculptor touches their creation maybe, with authority, with a sense of ownership. “Back to those woods where the party was that night.”
He studies my face for a few seconds. “You want me to take you back to the woods.”
“Yes.”
“Alone? At night.”
I nod, biting my lip.
“What do you think your four older, overprotective brothers would say about that? About me breaking the pact.”
Oh right.
The stupid pact.
“I won’t say anything to them. Ever,” I promise, so easily falling into his trap.
“You won’t.”
“No. And my curfew isn’t until eleven.”
That brings a smirk on his face and makes him grip me tighter, like he’s never letting me get away now. “Curfew.”
I grip him tighter too because I’m not running away either.
I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve become reckless now.
A girl who wears provocative dresses for a villain and asks him to take her out to the woods at night.
“Uh-huh.” I nod. “You can bring me back here before that and no one will ever know.”
“Are you asking me to keep another secret, Fae?” he rasps, looking all wild and wicked. “Because you know my price, don’t you?”
“Yes. And I’ll give it to you.”
“You will, huh.”
“Yeah, I’ll dance for you. For as long as you want.”
Because I’m his Fae, the dancing fairy and he’s my Roman, the wild mustang.
I imagine telling my brothers about him.
About Roman.
I daydream about all the things I’ll tell them. I’ll start with how amazing he is with Tempest. This is something my brothers will definitely relate to, him being an older, overprotective brother like them.
I’ll tell them that last month when Tempest got really sick and she made one call to Reed, he abandoned his classes and his practice for the day and drove up to New York City. He argued with the teachers, with the headmaster even, and got her out of the dorm within the hour. He brought her back home and for days, he took care of her.
I saw that myself.
That week, every day after school, I went to visit her and he’d be there, reminding her about meds, feeding her soup, hovering with a big frown and a grumpy face when she’d disobey.
I’ll tell my brothers that it reminds me of how they take care of me when I get sick.
Then I’ll tell them that like them, he buys me Peanut Butter Blossoms.
One day we were driving by Buttery Blossoms — he gives me a ride in his Mustang almost every time I go to their house to visit Tempest on weekends; at first, I thought she’d be mad at me for ditching her but she encourages it, me spending time with her brother — and I pointed it out through the window and told him all about it.
“So the special thing about them is that the crumb is peanut butter and the frosting is chocolate. When usually people have a chocolate crumb and peanut butter frosting. See? Special, right? But I can’t eat too many. Ballet and all that. And the other day my partner told me that I was getting too heavy for him to lift. Can you believe that?” I chewed on my lips. “Maybe I should go on my juice fast this weekend. I can easily –”
I stopped talking when the car suddenly came to a halt and in a flash, he climbed out of it. I climbed out after him and watched him stride over to Buttery Blossoms.
A minute later, he came out holding a familiar pink box.
“Your partner is a pussy,” he growled, thrusting it into my hands. “And juice fasts are fucking stupid.”
And like an idiot, I hugged that box to my chest, blinked up at him and whispered, “You know, you shouldn’t really curse this much, Roman.”
His jaw clenched at that and his eyes grew all hot for a second before ordering, “Just get in the car.”
And I did.
Yeah, I’ll tell them about that.
All my brothers would love it because they think my juice fasts are stupid too.
And maybe if I tell them all this, they won’t hate him so much.
Maybe Ledger won’t fight with him.
Like he does one day at practice.
I’m not sure what happened because I wasn’t there but when Reed shows up at the auditorium with a nasty split lip, I know.
That something happened between the two of them.
But the worst part is that he won’t take care of it.
He absolutely refuses to take care of it in the coming days. Every time I ask him to, he goes, it’s fine.
So one day I decide to take matters into my own hands and after my practice, as he’s helping me pack up, I lock the door of the storage closet like he did that first time.
It’s a bad idea, I think.
Because when he turns at the sound, glances at the door before glancing at me, the space shrinks and grows darker.
“Did you just lock the door?” he asks, his wolf eyes alert and pretty.
“Yes.”
He leans against the shelf, folding his arms across his chest. “What about your brother who’s waiting for you in the library?”
His hoodie’s off and so I try not to look at the tiny hills that his biceps make under his light-colored t-shirt. “Well, he can wait another ten minutes. I don’t care.”
A smirk appears on his lips, all split and still pretty. “Ten minutes, huh. Living on the edge, are we?”
I stand on the stepstool to get my hands on the first aid kit on the storage shelf by the door. “Yeah. He’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think ten minutes is enough.”
When I get it, I step down and turn to him. “Oh, it’s enough. Trust me.”
He hums, almost thoughtfully, still looking at my face. “I mean, sure. I could take care of you in ten minutes.”
“Take care of me?”
Licking his lips, he nods. “Yeah. Twice.”
“Twice what?”
“Fair warning though,” he goes on, ignoring my confusion. “I’ll want to do it one more time just because I think I’ll be fucking addicted to your taste. I’m already fucking addicted to your scent. Jasmine, is it? But you’ll be trembling, and you’ll tell me to stop so I’ll decide to have mercy on you. Just this once.”
Taste.
What…
My eyes go wide when I understand, when I get what he means.
And when I do get it, his features grow sharp, dangerous… seductive. “But then it’ll be my turn, Fae. And trust me when I say that ten minutes is not going to cut it.”
“It’s n-not?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m not so easy to take care of. When you’re done taking care of me, you’ll be going home with scraped up knees and swollen, dripping lips. Your brother will take one look at you and call the cops on me for doing bad things to his sister’s pretty mouth in a storage closet. Not that I mind. But yeah, your math is slightly off there. I don’t think ten minutes is enough.”
The first aid kit’s digging into my ribs by the time he finishes.
And I think I already have bruised knees and a swollen mouth, just because of the picture he’s painted with his dirty words. I think my brother would know it anyway, that I was with him in a storage closet.
“It’s geranium. And sugar. M-my scent.”
“Geranium.”
I nodded. “Yes, it’s rare. It says on the bottle. I like rare body oils.”
“I bet.”
I hug the first aid kit to my chest even more tightly. “I…”
I don’t know what to say except, I’ll do it.
Oh my God, that’s what I want to say, isn’t it?
I want to tell him that I’ll take care of him for as long as he wants.
I’m a ballerina. I’m not afraid of a little pain in my knees and bleeding skin.
I’ll take care of him just like I dance for him in the woods when he puts on the music in his Mustang and sits on the hood to watch me.
Like he’s the king of the world and I’m his slave girl.
Like he’s my villain and I’m his ballerina.
But then he moves away from the shelf and approaches me, taking away all my thoughts.
He glances down at the first aid kit and my blinking, blushing face. “Do it.”
My heart stops beating. “What?”
“You want to take care of my split lip, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do it then.”
Then without me having to say it, he drags the stepstool over with his foot for me to stand on. So it’ll be easier for me to reach his injury. And all the while I take care of his bruise, my knees feel sore and my mouth feels swollen.
But I guess most of all, I want to tell my brothers how he helps me with my routine.
They all know my love for ballet and my ambition to go to Juilliard once I graduate from high school. It’s my dream to dance for the New York City Ballet Company one day and all four of them have always been supportive of it.
So I know they’ll definitely approve of the fact that Reed helps me practice.
Sure, it takes a little convincing on my part to get him to agree because when I first proposed the idea, his exact words were, “I’m not fucking twirling.”
“Hey! That’s extremely offensive,” I told him from the stage. “Ballet isn’t just twirling. There’s like a hundred different things, techniques, that you do –”
“Well, you can call it whatever the fuck you want. I’m still not fucking twirling.”
I stood there, staring down at him in his seat in his favorite third row, all sprawled-out thighs and large chest, masculine and stubborn.
And gorgeous.
In that moment, I hated how gorgeous he was.
“I can’t believe that you won’t help me. I can’t.” I threw my hands up in the air. “And for what? Because ballet threatens your masculinity? That’s it, isn’t it? You think twirling will make you less of a guy. You think twirling is feminine. Meanwhile, you don’t even care that chivalry is dying. That you’ve killed it. You’ve killed chivalry, Roman. Today. Right here, in this auditorium. And this is a crime scene. Crime. Scene. Murder. So –”
I went quiet when he stood up and started to walk toward me.
Before I knew it, he’d crossed all the rows and, putting his palms on the edge of the low-rising stage, lifted and swung himself onto the stage in one smooth motion. Just like that.
Without breaking a sweat or even taking a breath, he approached me and I asked, “What are you doing?”
“Showing you how chivalrous I can be.”
“What?”
“Usually I don’t mind being the bad guy, but I don’t like to be accused of crimes I haven’t committed. So if you want me to twirl, I’ll fucking twirl and save you from distress and be your knight in fucking armor.”
“Knight in shining armor,” I said as soon as he finished.
He narrowed his eyes at me dangerously. “What?”
“You said knight in fucking armor. But it’s knight in shining armor.” I peered up at him through my eyelashes. “So you’re my knight in shining armor.”
“And if you want to be rescued, Fae, you need to start talking really soon and tell me what the fuck you want me to do before I change my mind.”
And since then, he has helped me with my routine.
He has lifted me, assisted me with jumps and leaps.
He’s made me better.
Surely if I tell them all of this, they won’t hate him, will they?
They can’t.
I mean, yes there’s this rivalry and years of hatred between him and Ledger, years of them sabotaging each other on the field and at practice just to have the top spot.
But can’t they move past it?
Can’t Conrad see that Reed isn’t as selfish as he thinks he is?
He’s so much more than just a villain.
He’s an amazing big brother. A protector.
A guy who keeps his promises. First by apologizing to Ledger that night, and then, by not even looking at another girl.
Because he hasn’t.
Not since he made that promise to me, the night he took me for a ride in his Mustang for the first time.
I haven’t seen him with a girl in the hallways. I haven’t seen him flirting or taking any interest in them. In fact, the other day I overheard a few girls talking in the restroom during lunch. About how Reed has seemed distant and distracted over the past few weeks.
See?
He can be a good guy, if he wants to be.
Only he doesn’t want to be.
Not right now at least.
Not as
I watch him on the soccer field, practicing with the team.
Well, there’s no practice going on right now because the two star players are currently facing off against each other.
It’s the same scene from that game weeks ago, the one that started everything.
Ledger is all angry and bunched up and Reed is cool and relaxed.
I know I should move on and not get involved. I never have before.
I was actually on my way to my own practice at the auditorium.
Tomorrow is my show that I’ve been practicing for for months and we’re doing a full dress rehearsal.
Actually, tomorrow’s also the day of the championship soccer game for Bardstown High and I’m still trying to figure out how I can both watch the game and make it to my own show.
But anyway, right now my plan was to just watch him play for a few minutes, hidden away behind the bleachers, and then leave to get to my own rehearsal.
But now I’m walking toward them, toward the crowd, the two camps, the Mustang and the Thorn.
Conrad and his assistant coaches are trying to settle everyone down. But when Con glares at Reed, snaps something at him and points to the bench, I know that it’s only going to exacerbate the problem.
Reed glares back at Con and I grimace, thinking that he’s going to say something to my brother and his coach, something disrespectful. But thankfully all he does is spit on the ground and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and leave.
Or is about to, when something happens and it’s Ledger.
Just as Reed is about to turn away, Ledger taunts, “Hey, Jackson! Can’t wait to beat you tomorrow. Once and for all. You’re going to regret not taking your dad’s advice and quitting the team. You pollute everything you touch anyway.”
Oh crap. Ledger!
He was leaving, leaving and my brother had to go and ruin it.
Reed’s dad is a touchy subject.
I know that.
So apparently, his dad, the famous builder who owns everything in this town, hates the fact that Reed plays soccer. According to him, it’s a huge waste of Reed’s time because he wants his son to take over the business.
“My dad is an asshole,” Tempest told me one day. “Like, a complete asshole. A negligent father. Bad, cheater of a husband. I’m glad I live far away from him. Though I miss my brother. I hate that he has to deal with our dad alone. And mom’s no help. She lives in her own la-la land. But honestly though, Reed wouldn’t let me deal with him anyway. He likes to protect me from stuff.”
A Gorgeous Villain Page 9