“Is that so, Bowman?” Monroe demanded.
He knew it wasn’t true, Miss Pontus knew it wasn’t true, every fucker in the room right down to the big ass fly buzzing around the light fittings knew it wasn’t true. But that didn’t matter. Everyone knew the only truth which ever really mattered was the one spoken by the most powerful person in the room. And ninety nine times out of a hundred, that asshole was Saint Memphis.
“Yeah. Saint’s a clumsy fucker,” Blake growled, folding his arms as he leaned back in his chair.
He had a petulant look on his face like a little bitch but the fire in his eyes was back, just like it had been last night. And I was ready to stoke that flame whenever he needed me to for as long as it took to burn that grief right out of him. Because fuck letting him drown in pain when I could help him bathe in vengeance.
Monroe gave us a long look which said he hated us and everything we stood for which was tough luck for him because the whole world stood for what we did. Money was power. And we were money. Cut me open and I’d bleed green…or gold…or fucking platinum.
He was obviously satisfied that our brawl had come to an end and he stalked away with a contemptuous snort, pausing at Miss Pontus’s desk to speak with her. No doubt he was checking she hadn’t just pissed in those big Bridget Jones panties of hers. She sure as shit hadn’t come wading in to try and stop us and I was willing to bet she’d been doing her Hail Marys with vigour, just praying for a miracle to come save her from having to deal with us. And there he was, her Viking warrior come clad in sweatpants to save the day.
The look our English teacher was giving Coach told me she’d be more than willing to drop the Bridget Jones’s for him, but it didn’t look like he was taking the bait.
Monroe gave her one of those bullshit smiles he reserved for the rest of the staff then turned and beckoned to someone outside the door.
Tatum Rivers stalked into the room with her jaw tight and her hair devilishly un-styled. She was wearing a clean uniform, but she hadn’t taken care over the way it sat and there wasn’t a scrap of makeup on her tanned skin. I normally hated seeing people like that, with less than zero effort put in to anything at all about their appearance. But something about her being dressed like that was captivating. She looked fierce in her disregard for the social requirements – not like she was trying to act like she didn’t give a shit, but like she genuinely gave no shits.
“Miss Rivers seemed to have forgotten what time class started, so I took it upon myself to help her find her way here,” Coach Monroe said in a firm voice which told me he’d gone banging on her door to drag her here. And the look of venom Tatum shot him as she lingered by the door said she didn’t appreciate that at all.
My little Barbie doll had dusted herself off and picked herself up and come back swinging. Hell, it had barely been an hour since we’d torn her apart in front of the entire school and here she was, that chin lifted in defiance and war flashing in her eyes.
I was going to enjoy breaking her so much more than I’d ever even imagined and my pulse spiked as I waited to see what the hell she’d do next.
Kyan swept into the room before I could find out, damn near bowling her over. Blazer missing, sleeves rolled back, tie loose. Fucking dickwad.
His gaze drank in the sight of our new girl and his lips twitched as he recognised the backbone in her too. He looked at her like I imagined a wolf would eye a juicy caribou and she ignored him as surely as if he wasn’t even there.
“I like her,” he said as he dropped into the seat on my left.
“Keep your dick in your pants, the only thing you need to desire from her is her destruction,” I snapped.
I was pissed at him for being late. And dressed like that. And…was that a pair of fucking biker boots? I swear my fucking eye twitched so hard it was in danger of popping out. Only Monroe’s presence saved Kyan from me ripping those disgusting things off of his fucking feet and launching them out of the nearest window. Coach was the only fucker on staff who would punish me for acting out and I didn’t need the drama of that today.
The barest hint of a smirk danced around Kyan’s lips and I wanted to know exactly what he was so fucking happy about. Probably the boots stunt. Fuck him. Sometimes these games he played made me seriously consider cutting him from the inner circle. But if there were only two of us left in the Night Keepers, we’d be playing pretty loosely with the term circle. In all honesty, we were more of a triangle as it currently stood anyway.
“Take a seat, Rivers,” Monroe commanded as she continued to linger. The only empty seats in the room lay to either side of our lineup and even without someone telling her the rules, Barbie was bright enough to guess that they weren’t up for grabs. “NOW!” Monroe barked, making her flinch. I liked that. That little flash of fear followed by even more outrage.
I licked my lips as Monroe pointed her toward the desk beside Kyan, and Barbie raised that chin higher as she actually dared to walk towards it. She wasn’t even going slow, stalking towards the desk with every intention to claim the damn thing. My dick twitched and I ran my tongue over my teeth as I watched her coming for us.
Blake was glaring at her like he’d set her alight with his gaze alone if he could.
My face was a mask like always, but my heart was thrashing harder with every step she took. I devoured that wild look in her eyes, that freedom which promised to never be tamed. And I wanted to tame her more than I’d wanted anything in a long time. I wanted to bind her and chain her and bring her to heel and stamp out that determined glint in her eye, replacing it with nothing but devotion. If I hadn’t been sold on my plan before that moment, I was now. Tatum Rivers was the breath of fresh air I’d been craving, the challenge I’d been needing and the bet I was going to win with myself.
Monroe called his victory too soon, leaving the room with a sharp look at us before she made it to the desk. The door snapped closed behind him and Miss Pontus eyed us warily as she smelled trouble brewing.
“I’ve got it,” Kyan murmured before either Blake or I could claim responsibility for this issue.
And in all honesty, right now, he was the best man for the job. We wanted her scared and Kyan tended to achieve that with the least effort.
He let Tatum walk all the way to the desk before standing suddenly, blocking her way into the chair behind it.
“You lost, baby?” he purred as he towered over her and her jaw ticked as her gaze dragged over him.
“I was told to take a seat beside the biggest asshole in the room so I’m pretty sure I found the right place,” she replied coolly.
A lot of the sheep in the class sucked in a breath like they thought Kyan might rip her damn head off. But despite popular belief, that wasn’t how he hunted. Especially when his prey looked like her.
“Naw,” he replied casually. “You’d wanna sit next to Saint in that case.”
I would have bristled at the insult if it hadn’t been the truth.
Tatum’s eyes skipped to me and I cocked my head as I regarded her with interest, waiting for her next move.
“You look like shit, Saint,” she purred. “What happened, did your house elf forget to iron your uniform today?”
My jaw locked tight as her insult hit the mark and I fought the urge to look down at the roughened state of my uniform following Blake’s attack. It needed fixing and she’d already figured out how much that must have bugged me. But I wasn’t going to let it show. I might have had a low level obsessive compulsive disorder, but that only made it easier for me to spot the weaknesses in others too.
“Actually, I set that fucker free a long time ago. The little asshole kept walking in on me when I was jerking off,” I replied coldly.
Her eyebrows arched but before she could come back at me with some pretty insult, Kyan lifted the desk in question off of the floor and heaved it over his shoulder. He snagged the chair in his other hand and Tatum’s full lips popped open as he carried the whole lot straight towards the front of th
e class at a casual pace.
“Please be careful with the furniture, Mr Roscoe,” Miss Pontus warned in a high pitched voice which the entire class ignored.
“The Unspeakables sit in the front row,” Kyan said casually as he walked past the very row he was talking about. “But, you-” He slammed the desk down on its feet so close to Pontus’s desk that it must have been touching it. “Can sit in front of them.”
I allowed myself a smile at that. Sometimes I wanted to kill Kyan for his lamentable choice of clothes and lack of decorum. I mean, honestly, what was with the fucking boots? But when he did shit like this, it was easy to remember I loved that fucker like he was my own brother. This was perfection and he knew it. I could tell by that smirk he hid beneath his thumb as he rubbed at the corner of his mouth.
My Barbie doll was still standing beside me, lips pursed with rage as she glared at Kyan.
I couldn’t wait to earn some more of those hate filled looks for myself soon. And if I got my way, it really would be soon. Who was I kidding? I always got my way.
She tossed her long hair and stalked away, acting like social ostracism meant less than fuck all to her. And maybe it did. If her daddy was fucked up enough to release that virus into the world then who knew how depraved his golden girl was? And if I was honest, I was hoping she was pretty damn depraved.
She fell into the seat at the front of the class, refusing to look at Kyan as he leaned over her desk, dominating it until she was forced to acknowledge him.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” he asked her, his voice dangerously low.
“Thank you?” she asked, her upper lip peeling back. “Well I suppose that from here I have a good chance of hearing everything the teacher has to say…and as a bonus, I don’t have to suffer through the choking stench of your aftershave.”
“Do I look like I wear aftershave, baby?” Kyan teased. “This godly smell is all natural.”
“Perhaps you should take a bath then?” she hissed.
Kyan’s hands landed flat on her desk and he leaned right forward into her personal space.
“Wrong answer, baby,” he growled, the threat in his tone enough to make several of the other class members cower down in their seats.
Not Tatum though. As Kyan stalked back towards us, she only straightened her spine further, refusing to bow to the pressure of our gazes on her back.
“She needs to feel the pain her father has given me,” Blake growled, speaking the first words he’d uttered since she’d walked into the room.
“She will,” I promised, my gaze fixed on her unruly blonde hair as I pictured fisting it in my fingers, knotting it up and making her scream for me.
“How?” he demanded as Miss Pontus finally started the class and the other students began to murmur about Macbeth as she set today’s work.
“Is she going to become one of the Unspeakables?” he asked, pressing for answers as Kyan leaned closer to listen in too.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,” I said, deciding to reveal my plan to them. Every moment I spent in her company only confirmed that my infatuation with her still wasn’t waning. I needed an outlet for that desire. One that I could use again and again and again until I’d gotten her out of my system.
“I say we fall back on the legends that gave us our name,” I said, eyeing the assholes in the row before us to make sure they weren’t prying.
“The Night People?” Kyan asked, raising an eyebrow as that idea intrigued him.
“Yeah,” I said. “One legend in particular, the one that includes the sacred stone.”
Kyan blew out a breath of surprise and Blake turned to me fully with pure hunger in his eyes. Hell, he might have needed this more than I did. We used that legend as a threat all the damn time, but we’d never gone so far as to implement it before.
“You want to make her touch the sacred stone?” Kyan asked, his eyes lighting up with that idea.
“And bind herself to our desires and eternal wishes,” I purred.
I didn’t know why the three of us had taken such an interest in the legends of the Kotari tribe who had once lived on this land, but we had. And there were more than a few tales amongst them that could be turned to our advantage when we wanted them to. But we’d never used the sacred stone legend before. The one which stated that a sacrifice who touched the stone and swore themselves in debt of the Night Keepers would be forever bound to do their bidding. And if there was one girl I wanted bound to do my bidding for all of time then it was definitely my very own Barbie doll.
“That legend says the sacrifice has to choose to have their soul bound to the Night Keepers,” Kyan said, waving a hand like he was dismissing the idea. “She’d never do it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I hissed, my gaze still fixed on Tatum as she leaned forward to write something down. “She’ll swear it. She’ll fucking beg for it by the time I’m through with her.”
“How?” Blake asked, his eyes lighting at the idea.
“We make her life unbearable unless she agrees,” I purred. “She’ll have no choice but to lay her soul at our feet.”
“You really think we can make her bow?” Blake asked.
“I do.”
“Well, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Kyan announced.
“Then be prepared to see it.”
Kyan snorted a laugh and I smiled as my gaze stayed rooted to our target, our enemy, our Tatum.
She already belonged to the Night Keepers.
She just didn’t know it yet.
This day was already the longest one of my life. And as lunchtime scraped around, I knew it was time for me to face the dining hall again. Except this time, I was going to be ready for the Night Keepers’ horse shit. In fact, I was gonna order up a gift basket of Viking goodies including a longsword and a war horn for Mr Monroe. Because as much as I hadn’t wanted to come back to class, or this damn school for that matter, I now had him to thank. Because now I’d seen how much I got under those three demon boys’ skin. I itched at them like a rash that needed more than a course of antibiotics to fix.
I was here to stay. Not by choice, but screw it. I might as well make the most of the one weapon I had against them: I hardcore bothered the fuck out of them. And the more defiant I was, the more angry they seemed to get.
In truth, my plan was probably insanity. Baiting the Night Keepers was an extreme sport in itself. And I knew the more I pushed back at them, the more hell they’d rain down on me. But bowing wasn’t in my nature. I wasn’t made to sit at the feet of preppy assholes who thought they owned the world. I was made to rule them.
I didn’t know if Mila was avoiding me or not, but she hadn’t been waiting for me in the hall outside my morning classes like she had on day one. That hurt more than I wanted to admit, but as I walked up the tree-flanked path to the Redwood Dining Hall, I spotted her lingering outside the door. She was combing her fingers through her mane of hazel hair and when she spotted me, her eyes widened. I thought she was about to bolt, but she did the opposite. She rushed toward me, throwing her arms around me and crushing me to her chest.
I was so taken aback, it took me a second to remember to hug her in return.
“Are you okay?” she asked and my heart melted at her words. The hardness I’d been offering the world all morning softened and I tried not to fall into the pit of hurt inside me. She cared. She was probably the only one in this whole school who did.
“I’m alright,” I promised.
“I didn’t throw my stew,” she said with a sniff, stepping back with honest-to-god tears in her eyes. I’d never had a close girl friend besides my sister, but I’d always wondered what it would be like. I’d gravitated towards boys in my past schools. Dad said it was because Mom had left when I was young and I’d never needed anyone other than Jess to be my bestie. He also said I was too much of a Tom boy because of him. But that wasn’t quite the truth. My mum ditching out on us had left its mark on me, sure. But being raised by a ma
n hadn’t made me any less of a woman. I was the way I was because of a thousand reasons. Some of them because of her, most of them not. It was funny really, she probably thought leaving would mean she had no influence on my life. But the absence of someone was an influence. Abandoning your three and six year old daughters and workaholic husband had to have an effect. But she was never going to define me.
“Thank you, Mila,” I breathed, squeezing her arm.
Her eyes glittered as she pulled herself together and she glanced over her shoulder as if she expected someone to be behind her. It angered me that she was afraid because of the three muske-turds. I could see she was tough, but maybe she’d had a point before. The Night Keepers didn’t take kindly to being messed with, however strong you were.
“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” she said, breaking a smile and I released a dry laugh.
“If there was ever a time it was due, it’s now. But I’m not gonna say I regret it.”
“Are you crazy? You are gonna fall in line, right?” She gripped my hands and squeezed so hard it hurt. “Please tell me you’re going to be sensible, Tatum? If you do as they say, they’ll lose interest, they’ll-”
“Stop,” I cut her off, a frown tugging at my brow. “They’re just boys, Mila.”
“How can you say that after what they did to you?” she breathed.
My throat thickened as I pulled my hands free of hers. It wasn’t like I wanted to become their new chew toy. And the shame of what they’d done to me just a few hours ago was still burning through me. But bowing wasn’t the answer. Screw that. I’d die first.
I eyed Mila with a sigh, knowing there was no point in having this argument so I changed tact. “I’m glad you’re still talking to me…” A beat of silence passed between us. “My dad didn’t do it, you know. And I didn’t know anything about this, Blake edited that tape to make it sound like I did.”
“I know, I could tell,” she said with a firm nod then lowered her voice. “Have you spoken to your dad?”
Kings of Quarantine: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 1) Page 16