I don’t quite understand what he means, but I hope this was enough.
Even as my heart sings with guilt, as it brims with self-hatred, a small, tiny part of me feels warm.
And I hate myself even more for noticing it.
When I step into the hallway for lunch, I see Danyella. She notices me and her eyes go wide, but she can’t quite scramble away from me quickly enough.
“Please don’t run from me,” I call out, trying to grab her arm. She wrests it away from me, storming down the hall so quickly that I have to decide whether to full-on run after her and risk Chasm being unable to find me, or let her go.
I choose the latter, wringing my hands as I turn around to find him striding toward me with angry purpose.
“Little Sister, come on. You want to get chucked off the third-floor courtyard again?” I give him a look, but there’s no apology in his eyes. He’s dead serious right now.
That gods-forsaken phone buzzes in my pocket, and Chas and I exchange a look as I pull it out and turn it on.
If you’d like to see Parrish, you’ll need to do better than that. A lukewarm kiss hardly satisfies those sick little desires you’re harboring. I’ll give you until Sunday to impress me. Please don’t make me alter my plans, princess. I’ve worked hard to achieve these ends.
We study the text together and Chas curses in Korean.
I haven’t quite allowed the meaning of that particular message to sink in. Instead, I’m caught on something else. On several somethings, actually.
There are no security cameras in the bathroom to be hacked and observed. Chasm didn’t have his phone on him. My phone was inside my pocket. At best, if the Slayer was watching me through tech—as I’ve suspected from the beginning—he might’ve heard the barest of rustling. Nothing that Chasm or I said to one another would betray the fact that we were kissing and only kissing—a lukewarm kiss to be exact.
So how would he know that? How could he know that?
My hand slides down the strap of my bag and bumps into the metal heart pin that Tess gave me. I stare down at it, and several things happen at once. It’s like there’s an avalanche in my brain, like I’ve just figured out how to keep that check from becoming a checkmate.
And it isn’t by moving my king.
It’s by attacking with my knight.
I look up at Chasm, always the knight to Parrish’s prince. Now, he’s the knight to my queen. Let the blame fall on me for this.
“What?” he asks, blinking at me and waiting for an explanation. “You’ve got that look on your face. What have you just figured out?”
I’ve been searching for you for a long time, my sweet princess.
In this box, you’ll find my heart. Wear it always, or you’ll break it.
I’m not sure either of us would survive that.
That’s the note that I found with this pin, inside my nightstand drawer. It’s a gift that Tess never mentioned to me. Of course, at the time, I didn’t think anything of it. How could I? I’d just met Tess. She’d given me the tennis bracelet, and I already found her behavior odd. Later, on my birthday, she shoved that pink envelope in my hand and took off, never to mention it again.
It didn’t seem entirely out of left field that she might leave a gift and a note like this.
The skeleton key.
How could I have forgotten the skeleton key?!
I look up at Chasm again.
“I need to stop by my locker,” I tell him, doing my best to keep my voice neutral. I cannot give away the fact that I know this. One, I’m not sure if that note constitutes an order. If it does, and I chuck the camera, Parrish could suffer. Two, it’s now a tool in my box. There are plenty of places in the world where the all-seeing eyes of technology can be hidden from for a brief moment.
Tess has taken away all of my electronics. At present time, all I have are the phones—the one she gave me, and the one from Maxine. If I’m careful about where I use and place those items, and I strategically move the bag with the heart pin where I need it, I can orchestrate things specifically for the Slayer to see.
“O…kay,” Chasm hazards, giving me a weird look. But he escorts me down the hall anyway, waiting patiently as I dump my bag as well as my phone inside my locker. I give him a look, reaching out with my right hand for his phone as well. With a slow reluctance, he extracts his own phone and gives it to me to lock inside.
“Parrish mentioned the hedge maze,” I start, and Chasm’s eyes go wide. See, he’s one step ahead of me on one subject while I’m a step ahead of him on another. My assumption is that, because the hedge maze near the school’s side entrance is a popular hookup spot, there must not be any cameras there.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “I just need to grab something real quick.” He moves down a bit to his own locker—I’ve not seen the guy touch his locker once the entire time I’ve gone to school with him—and opens it, digging around for something and then stuffing it into his blazer pocket. “Come on.”
We head downstairs and out the side door where I’m most often picked up and dropped off.
Without hesitation, Chas jumps over the edge of the stone patio area and lands in the grass, reaching up to offer his hand. I take it and land with an ooph beside him, straightening out my skirt and hoping like hell we don’t have a lot of company down there.
He leads the way without a word passing between us, guiding me between two large statues near the front of the maze, and then winding his way into it. After a good dozen turns, I’m officially lost.
“I hope you know how to find your way out of here,” I say, letting my fingers brush against the leaves of the ‘walls’ to either side of me. “I’m assuming there aren’t cameras out here?” I ask as Chasm pauses in a dead end. The circular garden area is lined with white columns, a birdbath sitting pretty in the middle, surrounded by flowers in full bloom.
Chas turns to look at me.
“No cameras,” he agrees, studying me. The expression on his flickers briefly, like he’s torn by indecision.
“Perfect,” I say, exhaling and reaching up to push my hair back from my face. “I just realized that the heart pin on my bag is not only from the Slayer but also a camera—”
“What?!” Chasm chokes out, taking a step closer to me. My eyes snap up to his, finding him wide-eyed and panting. His shoulders heave with his heavy breaths, and his hands are clenched into tight fists. “That’s why … ah shit.”
“Why, what?” I ask, frowning as his amber eyes slide to one side.
Then I remember the actual content of the text.
The kiss … was not enough.
My breath catches and I take a step away from him, bumping my back into one of the white stone columns that surrounds the edge of the clearing. The sun is shining brightly, but the walls of the maze cast deep shadows over the pretty little garden area; I’m standing in one of those shadows now, looking at Chasm and trying not to feel all of the horrible things that I’m feeling.
I shift slightly, rubbing my thighs together.
He purses his lips for a moment and then slides his tongue along his bottom lip to flick against one of his lip studs.
“Mm,” Chas starts, studying me as I stare up at him. He mutters several things in Korean and then looks straight at me. “Fuck it.”
He steps forward and gathers me into his arms, dropping his mouth not to my mine, but to my neck. His lips brush over my pulse point, his tongue flicking out to taste the faint saltiness of my skin. My own hands betray me, mimicking my rebellious heart as they fist in the front of Chasm’s blazer, drawing him closer to me, encouraging him to be the bad guy, just the way he asked me to.
My dark knight.
Parrish’s dark knight.
Even if he has to do awful things to keep his title.
Chasm licks and kisses the side of my neck, his own sounds of pleasure mimicking mine. If he’s that excited just by touching me, then what will he be like once I touch him?
My hands undo the button on Chas’ blazer, fingers fumbling with the buttons on his shirt next. He lets out a deep, almost agonized-sounding groan as I finally break through his clothing, pressing my fingertips to his taut belly and then dragging them up to his chest.
He drops his own hands down to his slacks, undoing them with frantic efficiency before he reaches into his pocket and withdraws the item from his locker.
It’s a condom.
A fucking condom.
Just like the handful he gave to me and Parrish that day. Parrish. Even as that traitorous little piece of my heart dances with joy at finally being able to explore my feelings for Chasm, the rest of me breaks and shatters.
I come apart that day; I transform into a different person.
I’m not sure that it’s a person that I’ll ever truly be able to like.
I’m a cheater. I’m cheating on Parrish. I’m betraying Parrish.
But I’m doing it to save his life.
Chasm opens the condom wrapper and carefully rolls the lubed latex down his shaft while I watch, panting and shaking, my hands still on his chest. He does it easily, like this is something he’s done before. But then he looks up at me and meets my eyes with a stare so powerful that it nearly staggers me.
“You were right,” he says, his voice husky and dark, so different than I’ve ever heard it before.
“Right?” I reply, my own voice strange and rasping. “About what?”
“About me. I’ve … I’m a virgin.” Chasm just stares at me as I blink back at him in disbelief.
“The way you kiss, the way you …” I trail off and gesture down at his cock. He’s holding it in his right hand, the condom slicking his fingers as he squeezes just a bit and then lets out a ragged exhale.
Without another word, Chasm slides his hands up and under the pleats of my skirt, his fingers curling around the waistband of my panties. He yanks them down, and I help him, watching as he squats and pulls them off one foot and then the other.
He stands back up and then reaches around me, grabbing me by the ass and hefting me up with a surprising amount of strength. My legs go around him as he presses the combined weight of our bodies into the column. Our mouths clash as I wind my arms around his neck, holding him close and gasping against his lips as he reaches between us with his right hand.
Chasm guides himself to that aching wet heat between my thighs, and I have a sudden, horrible flickering memory of Parrish in this exact same position. Without warning, Chasm thrusts forward, pushing himself inside of me so deeply that I forget how to breathe for a minute.
All I can do is cling there, cling to him, my hands grasping at the back of his blazer, his hair. My broken fingers ache, but not as much as that sore spot between my thighs. It’s brand-new all over again, and I’m free-falling. I’m so full of emotions that I don’t know what to do with any of them.
Part of me wants to cry, part of me wants to laugh. The rest of me gives into that brimming heat, into the tension that’s been stretching tighter and tighter with each passing day. Chasm adjusts his hands so that he has a firm, hard grip on my ass, and then he starts to move, slamming our pelvises into the column.
He’s so warm, pressed up against me like that. I squeeze him even harder, nuzzling my face against the side of his neck and making him moan. He turns his head slightly, putting his lips near my hair, and he says such wonderful, sweet-sounding things in Korean.
My legs tremble as I keep them wrapped around him as best I can, the pleasure making me feel weak and boneless. I wish we were at home in a bed together, with all the time in the world to explore. Like I did with Parrish.
I fling that thought as far and hard as I can, grinding my pelvis against Chasm’s. He feels so good that it’s hard to remember that we’re actually at fucking school right now, that we’re in a hedge maze where anyone could walk in and see us.
That we’re cheating on Parrish.
That we’re doing this at the whim of a serial killer.
None of that matters as much as the feel of his fingertips digging into my ass, the fullness inside of me where our bodies are pressed together, the way his breath fans my hair when he groans with each thrust. Chas licks my ear, murmurs to me in Korean, pulls me as close to him as he can get me.
I lift my head up, pressing my own mouth against the side of his neck, licking and sucking and biting him in just such a way that I know we’re both going to struggle to hide the marks. Still, I can’t stop. My hungry mouth teases and tastes him before I turn my head and find his lips waiting there to meet mine.
Our bodies grind and writhe, pressing into each other, claiming one another.
“Tell me what you need,” Chasm finally chokes out in English. I’m fairly certain he asked that same question three or four times in Korean first before remembering that I don’t speak his language just yet. “What do you need, Little—”
He stops himself from finishing that nickname with visible effort.
He’ll never be able to call me that again after this, will he?
“My … my clit,” I manage to get out, even though it’s embarrassing and admittedly a little bit weird to be telling Chasm to touch me like that. We’re supposed to be friends. Not … whatever this is becoming.
He pulls back from the column, taking the entirety of my weight into his arms and then moves us just a few steps to the grass. Chas falls to his knees before pressing me into the lawn with his body. He adjusts himself so that he’s just a tad higher than he might need to be, using each movement of his hips to slide his shaft down and into me.
The movement is just enough to stimulate me where I need it most.
“Just like that, Dakota,” Chas whispers, moving more quickly, his breath coming faster and more ragged. Little beads of sweat form on his forehead as we drive each other closer to the edge, my hands desperately clawing at the back of his blazer, as if I’m simultaneously trying to bring him close and also shove him away.
The pleasure crests and then breaks, and my entire body goes completely stiff. My fingers dig into Chasm’s back as I let go, shuddering as the intensity of the climax washes over me. It’s almost too much. I almost want it to stop. But it takes hold of me anyway and sweeps me under.
Subconsciously, I recognize Chasm groaning deeply, his body just as stiff as mine as he presses into me hard enough to drive my ass into the soft dirt. He thrusts a few final times and then collapses, barely managing to catch his weight on his elbows.
“Holy shit,” Chasm moans, dropping his head against my shoulder. I’m almost shell-shocked beneath him, staring up at the blue-blue sky with its fluffy white clouds and its almost annoyingly brilliant sunshine. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the bell ringing to indicate the end of lunch.
We’re going to be late for class.
Chasm draws back, looking down at me as if to check that I’m truly okay with this. Whatever he sees seems to freak him out a little.
“Little Sister,” he starts, and then cringes visibly. “Dakota. Are you okay?”
“I’m …” I start, sucking in a sharp breath as Chasm pulls away from me. My body feels almost instantly cold and bereft, and I hate that. I hate that I loved being with Chasm just as much as I enjoyed being with Parrish. “I’m okay.”
He turns away from me to remove the condom, tying it off and then, with a slight cringe of his own, tucks it into the pocket of his blazer.
“I’m going to hell,” he mutters again, just like he did the day we delivered the box. “Yep. All the way to the bottom of the fiery pit.” Chasm turns back toward me again, holding out a hand to help me up.
I almost don’t want to touch him. What’ll happen if I do? Will it spark all of that fire again? Or will I just drown in my own guilt.
Shoving those thoughts aside, I reach up and take it. He yanks me to my feet with such force that I stumble into him, my hands on his chest, his amber eyes gazing down at me.
“I’ll …” he starts, but then his voice just
trails off and we’re staring at each other again. “Shit, this is weird.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I choke out, curling my fingers in his undone dress shirt. Chasm’s arm curls around my waist, drawing me close. He nestles his head against my hair, and I realize with a sudden sharp stab of fear what, exactly, it is that’s off about this.
The fact that it isn’t actually weird at all; it feels too natural.
“I like this too much,” he murmurs against me, his arm banding even more tightly around my waist. “It might be an order from the Slayer now, but … what if I don’t want to give this up?”
I have no answer to that question.
Also … I didn’t bring the pin camera nor my phone with us. As comforting as that idea is in so many ways, it also means that the Slayer won’t know what we’ve done. He won’t see that we’ve taken things beyond a kiss.
We’ve just betrayed Parrish in order to save him, and yet we didn’t offer any proof of it all.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Tess is furious about my being late to fifth period. Apparently, the automated system that calls parents when students are marked as absent goes off about ten minutes into class, sending a text message to the number on file. I, unfortunately, was fifteen minutes late.
Between retrieving my panties, combing my hair with my fingers, and picking grass off my uniform, I’m lucky I made it to class at all. I sat there shaky and disoriented and completely uninterested in anything but the memory of what I’d just done.
Now here I am sitting in Chasm’s sportscar—in the backseat by choice—and wishing that Kimber wasn’t chattering away in the front. Chas gets us all drinks at a drive-thru, his eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror every so often to search for me.
I find that it’s hard to look at him, so I don’t return the favor, staring down at my phone and trying to figure out a way to sort of … let the Slayer know what happened in a way that implies that I’m not aware that he couldn’t see us in the maze.
Payback Princess (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer Book 2) Page 17