Kings of Quarantine: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  No one could get inside this school. It was a fortress with its high walls and armed security. So why did I feel so on edge?

  “Look at this masterpiece,” I said with a sigh as the three of us stood before the toilet paper throne Tatum had built alongside the stained glass window in The Temple. “Seems like such a shame to destroy it.”

  “Pfft,” Saint waved a hand dismissively. “We’re not destroying shit. Six packs will be more than enough to make our point.”

  Kyan had that look in his eye which promised trouble. And not just detention level trouble, he was looking for someone to lay into tonight for sure. Hospital trips would be required, therapy sessions in later life, the works. I just had to wonder who his target was, because going after Headmaster Brown seemed like the perfect way to get his ass hauled off to juvie. But as far as I knew, we weren’t going to be getting close to anyone else unless he had some other trouble planned.

  “We don’t have long to fuck around here, boys,” Saint warned. “Tatum is giving us a good alibi, but only so long as we make it back to get those watches from her before she completes the circuit and reaches Monroe again.”

  “Let’s hurry then,” I said, my skin tingling at the challenge. It wasn’t going to be easy to do all of this within the timeframe and I was itching to prove it could be done. It was perfect, Monroe himself would be our alibi and Tatum would back up the claim. There was no way Brown could pin anything on us.

  Saint moved away to grab his set of school keys from the safe hidden in the floor while me and Kyan grabbed a couple of twenty four packs of toilet paper each from the back of the throne.

  “I wish we could ram a roll of this right down Brown’s throat,” Kyan joked.

  “And another up his ass. He’d be auto wiping for a month,” I added and that even earned me a laugh from Saint.

  “I spoke to my mother again earlier,” Saint said as he hid the safe away again before coming over to grab two packs to carry himself. “Brown’s days here are numbered, I’ve got the board this close to moving forward with an act of no confidence vote. It seems there have been reports from hundreds of students detailing all of his failures in dealing with the Hades Virus. There was more than one account of people being stuck in uncomfortable and unsanitary places during that quarantine stretch. Danny Harper and three other members of the football team had to use a stationary cupboard to shit in for the two day period.”

  “I heard they made Bait sleep in that shitty cupboard too,” I said, my lips twitching in amusement at the idea of that.

  “I might have gotten a text request from a few of the footballers asking to take command of the Unspeakables during quarantine,” Saint admitted.

  “Imagine what fun we could have had with a few of them if they’d been stuck with us,” Kyan joked as we headed out of The Temple and up the hill towards Aspen Halls where Headmaster Brown’s office was located.

  I glanced at the others with their awkward packages of toilet paper and grinned. “Last one there has to offer to wipe Brown’s ass for him when we see him,” I challenged, my heart leaping at the idea of a race.

  “Fuck that,” Kyan burst into a run and I laughed as Saint and I followed.

  It was awkward as fuck to run up the steep hill while carrying the two huge multipacks of toilet paper, but I’d always been the fastest of us. Kyan chose boxing for his cardio if we weren’t on the football pitch so he was the easiest to beat. He might have been one big motherfucker, but he couldn’t chase someone down the way I could.

  Saint was my competition, charging up the hill like a rhino as he gripped the packs of toilet paper beneath each arm. We looked fucking ridiculous, but I ground my teeth and made it into first place by pure force of will. I couldn’t help but think that anyone who saw us could only imagine we had a major case of the shits and were racing to the closest toilet armed with the white stuff to wipe to our hearts’ content.

  I charged up to the door of Aspen Halls with Saint right on my heels, whooping my triumph to the night sky as the little victory set my body humming with satisfaction. Fuck, I loved to win. Even stupid shit like this. Didn’t matter. I still came out on top.

  There were several students sitting around the picnic benches beneath large orange flood lights at the top of the hill. They’d been arranged to offer a view out over the valley which held the campus and it was one of the preferred hang out spots on site.

  A group of footballers were sitting together. There were a few girls with them too and I noticed Mila Cruz eyeing me from Danny Harper’s lap, clearly still pissed about us laying claim to her old roomie. Tough shit there, sweetheart.

  I couldn’t help but grin as I spotted a few of the Unspeakables sitting off to one side of the space on their own table.

  “Oh look,” Kyan purred as he came to a halt beside us. “Fresh Bait.”

  The kid in question definitely heard that, looking up at us from beneath his head of half shaved hair. That shit was still funny and it had been over a week. When it grew back, I planned on making Tatum shave a cock into it next.

  “Is that toilet paper?” Freeloader asked, getting to her feet and looking like she might just salivate at the sight of our supplies. It didn’t surprise me that she was in desperate need of some of the white wipers, the other students would have come for her supply the moment theirs ran out.

  “Bet you wish you’d had some of these supplies the night you earned your name, eh Squits?” I called, spotting the shitter amongst their little gang.

  Chad McCormack and some of the other football jocks laughed along to give my ego a little top up. Not that it needed it. I had so many trophies that I didn’t know what to do with them all. I knew I was number one in everything without needing anyone to pat me on the back for it. But who didn’t like a little back patting from time to time?

  “Anyone who needs some toilet paper, follow us,” Saint called, his voice laced with compassion like he was channelling his namesake.

  The official story behind his name was that his mom had taken one look at his angelic little face when he was born and said that he was the only truly good thing she had in this life. And something truly good could only be a Saint. But I was willing to bet that was horse shit. More likely, she took one look into baby Saint’s evil little eyes and tried to give him a pious name to ward off the demon she could see peering back out at her from within them. It didn’t work of course. In all honesty, we were just lucky that he hadn’t self-combusted the moment he’d set foot inside The Temple and crossed onto holy ground.

  The Unspeakables hesitated, glancing between each other as they sensed a trap and to be fair, Kyan’s smile was enough to say that at least one of them would be getting their ass kicked tonight.

  He was always like this the night after he went to one of those fights in town. I kinda thought of it like him getting laid and having the best sex of his life and then the next night his body just craved a little more of that ecstasy, so he fed it another taste.

  And I knew that feeling well enough. I’d been fighting it ever since the night I’d spent buried in Tatum Rivers. I was caught on that girl, no matter who she’d turned out to be. I just couldn’t stop picturing all the things I’d done with her body whenever she was around me and of course I craved more. I hadn’t even been with another girl since her. Hadn’t even considered it. Which was too fucking weird not to mean something. But I craved her destruction too. In payment for what her father had done. It was tearing me apart. Like there were two pieces of my soul residing inside me now instead of one, but my flesh didn’t have room to contain them both at once. So I lashed out as each of them broke free of my restraint. It was why I’d had to drag her out into the woods with that gun. And why I’d had to kiss her the moment I realised I wasn’t going to pull the trigger. The push and pull I felt towards her was blinding. I just didn’t know which piece of my soul I was going to cave in to from one day to the next.

  Saint didn’t wait to check if the Unspeakables were
following us as he unlocked the door and we headed into Aspen Halls, but I noticed Bait peeling away from the group and scurrying off. Probably a clever move in all honesty.

  We strode along dark corridors and the sound of many footsteps following were punctuated by sniggers of laughter from the footballers as they came to find out what we might do next.

  We moved straight past the abandoned secretary’s desk and up to the oak double doors which hid Brown’s office.

  Saint unlocked it with one of his keys and I smirked as we sauntered into the wide space. The smell of old coffee and older books hung in the room and I glanced at the bookcases lining the walls for a moment before my attention settled on the mahogany desk which took up most of the space before the window.

  Brown had a brightly coloured baseball bat hanging on his wall, signed by every member of the Sequoia Black Bears and sitting in pride of place like he was claiming to be their friend or something. I bet he’d just bought the thing on eBay. I doubted any of the signatures were even real.

  All of us had been hauled in here more than once for a dressing down from our noble head, and it was beyond time for us to remind him who the fuck he was dealing with. We were the next generation of men destined to rule his little world and it was past time he adjusted to that fact.

  “C’mon in, Deepthroat,” Kyan called, that darkness in his gaze deepening as he moved forward and ripped the plastic packaging off of the first pack of toilet paper.

  The girl in question sidled in, her eyes wild with fear and pathetically, still a hint of lust aimed at Kyan too. That shit was sad. He’d made her life hell since the incident and in all honesty, I was surprised she hadn’t transferred schools. Saint had wanted her expelled after the shit she’d pulled but Kyan refused, preferring to dole out his own punishment for what she’d tried to do to him.

  I snorted a laugh as I moved to rip the plastic off of the other packs of toilet paper with Saint and started arranging them on Brown’s desk in the shape of a giant cock with knobbly toilet paper balls.

  “On your knees, Deepthroat,” Kyan growled. “That’s your favourite spot after all.”

  Deepthroat dropped down in front of him and I swear the girl was salivating at being so close to her dream of sucking him off. She had stalker issues for sure.

  Kyan balled up the plastic wrapper in his hand. “Open wide.” She did, her graze drinking him in as he stood over her in his wifebeater with the muscles of his tattooed arms flexing. He’d never lost a drop of the rage he felt towards that girl and I could easily admit, I hadn’t either.

  Kyan lurched forward and shoved the plastic wrapper straight into her mouth, forcing it to the back of her throat and snarling as she jerked away from him, choking on it.

  I laughed but it wasn’t my old boisterous laugh, it was a dark and cruel thing which appreciated the girl’s suffering. Maybe that meant I was an asshole. But that girl had slipped Kyan a roofie, dragged him into her dorm room and gotten his pants half way off before he’d come to his senses enough to find her with her mouth wide and his cock in her hand. At the time he’d barely managed to get the fuck out of there. But the next day when he’d slept it off, the three of us had kicked in her door and found a stash of the pills alongside a huge collection of photographs of him which he hadn’t even known she’d taken. If she’d been a dude he probably would have beaten her to death, as it was, the three of us had done a damn good job of ruining her life. There were reputation destroying rumours about her circulated throughout all of high society and we’d even set plans in place to bankrupt her family after we graduated. Kyan just wanted to wait until then so that he could torture her before he never had to see her again.

  Deepthroat fell to the floor, clawing at her mouth to tear the toilet paper packet back out of it as she gasped for breath and I snorted a laugh as Kyan came to help us finish up our sculpture.

  “Perfect,” I announced, snapping a photo of our masterpiece as Saint smirked triumphantly.

  Movement beyond the window behind Brown’s desk drew my attention for a moment and I frowned as I looked out into the dark at the main gate.

  For a moment, I could have sworn I saw someone slip through it, but with the light of the room reflecting off of the glass it was hard to be sure. It looked like Kyan might not be the only one flouting the quarantine rules though. My gut squirmed uncomfortably at that knowledge. That virus had torn through my mom in little more than a week and stolen her from me. I didn’t think we should be fucking around with the rules put in place to protect us from that shit, and tomorrow I was going to be talking to Saint and Kyan about us laying down the law about it. I was too young to fucking die.

  “Punch?” I snapped, my grief tainting my words as it reared its ugly head. I was starting to wonder if Saint had been entirely right about me channelling it into rage all the time. Sure, it gave me an outlet but it didn’t feel like it was actually helping me to chip away at the pain at all. When I poured the torrent of emotion I felt over my mom’s death into anger, I felt seriously close to losing control. And after dragging Tatum up into the woods, I had to wonder just how far I was capable of going if I didn’t get a handle on this.

  Punch eased into the room looking sheepish. There was a dude who’d taken his punishment seriously. I’d even seen him cry once. And after the way he’d flattened me with that punch last year, I wasn’t going to waste any time feeling bad for him. That said, I was willing to offer him an out. We actually could do with him back on the football team and he’d served his time.

  “Be a lamb and hold this for me,” I pulled a lighter from my pocket and tossed it at him. He fumbled the catch and dropped to his knees as he scrambled to pick it up.

  Hmm, if his catches have gotten that sloppy then maybe we don’t need him back on the team after all.

  “What’s this for?” Punch asked, his eyes flicking between the lighter and the cock shaped heap of seriously flammable toilet paper as he figured it out.

  Saint laughed darkly in that way that told me his monster was feeding off of the fear in the room and I had to say that I was developing a taste for it too. Before I’d lost my mom, it had been more about power for me than getting off on inciting terror, but the more I focused on that aspect of my position as a Night Keeper, the more I found I liked it.

  “I just thought you’d like it as a gift,” I said innocently.

  “Can everyone here attest to the fact that the Night Keepers delivered all of this toilet paper to Headmaster Brown’s office as requested?” Saint asked, his gaze sweeping over the crowd who had followed us here. “And that we left the room without doing anything at all to damage Brown’s property?”

  A chorus of yeses swept over us and I exchanged a smirk with Kyan.

  “Good.” Saint headed towards the door and I fell into step with him.

  Kyan hesitated for a moment before crossing the room to pull the signed baseball bat from its holder on the wall. He casually swung it back and forth as he barked at Deepthroat to get out of the room, then he moved to join us by the door. She scrambled to comply, still shooting him looks that told me she’d be getting herself off over this interaction later on tonight when she was all alone in bed.

  Punch tried to follow too, but I held up a hand to stop him. “How would you like to end your term as an Unspeakable, Punch?” I asked casually.

  “It’s been a long time since anyone called you Toby Rosner,” Saint commented lightly.

  “Is that his name? I thought it was Willy Cockfist,” Kyan joked and the football team all laughed along, loving their position in the inner circle so much that it didn’t even occur to them that they were one fuck up away from being an Unspeakable themselves. But I guessed no one liked to think of themselves as having the potential to be one of the dregs of the school society.

  “I can end my term?” Punch asked, licking his lips hungrily as that little thought slithered into his head and set his pulse racing.

  “Sure,” Saint said casually.

>   “If,” I added, fixing my gaze on Punch and smirking as he instantly dropped his eyes to scrutinise his shoes. “You do something to impress us...”

  “Like what?” he asked hungrily, apparently needing more than a lighter in his hand and a desk full of kindling to put two and two together.

  And as much as I would have enjoyed sending Brown’s desk up in flames myself, you couldn’t hold onto power like ours if you got your own hands dirty in stupid ways. Brown knew we were coming here tonight with all of this toilet paper. If we set his desk alight it would cause us a pretty big headache with the school board for our parents. We wouldn’t get expelled for a stunt like that, but they’d probably try and punish us in other undesirable ways.

  Much better to get a patsy to do it for us so that we wouldn’t have to take the fall. Besides, Punch’s dad was big in the oil industry. Old money. No way was he going to get expelled for it and I was willing to bet he’d suck up a year’s worth of detention to get out of the Unspeakables. The rest of his group were staring at him wide eyed with a mixture of fear, jealousy and even full on fury at the injustice of him being offered this chance when they weren’t. And sure, we could have offered it to any of them. But some of their crimes were worse than others. And he was the only one who could be of some use to us when he returned to society by re-joining the football team. Hell, in ten years we’d probably all be sat around laughing at some fucking posh party about the way we used to fool around at school and he’d be laughing along with us like he hadn’t been made into our little bitch for nearly a year. But that was just how our world worked. And if he wanted to claw his way back up towards the inner circle then this was his shot. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be getting another.

  Punch swallowed thickly, his gaze flickering between the three of us like he might discover a scrap of mercy. But hell, we were being lenient as fuck here. We hardly ever offered people a chance like this.