I roll my hips up against him. I’m sore, but I want him. I push on his shoulders because I want to pause our kiss to tell him that I love him, too, that I’m so irreversibly in love with him. When I do, his mouth moves to my neck and he presses his hardness against my shorts, teasing me and making me crave his thick heat filling me to the hilt. I arch up, my fingernails digging into his back as I moan his name, pleading with him to give me what I need.
“Hell-fucking-no.” We both instantly still when we hear Tommy’s disgusted voice on the other side of the bedroom door. “You tell them they overslept. They’re in there moaning and shit.” I cover my face in equal parts annoyance and embarrassment, and I feel the bed shake with Zach’s laughter as he rolls off of me.
There’s a loud knock on the door that can only be Patrick’s, judging by the rudeness level. “We’re leaving in ten minutes with or without you,” Patrick booms.
I stick out my tongue and flip off the door with both hands, which makes Zach laugh so hard it can only be described as a cackle.
“Why don’t you go crawl back in your trashcan, you grouch,” I yell loud enough for Patrick to hear, and then chuck one of the pillows at the door. I hear Patrick laugh as he thunders down the stairs.
“Is this going to be an ongoing thing?” Patrick gripes as Zach stops to let me hop on his back for a piggyback ride across campus. It’s been a long day of classes, and Patrick is salty because Everly mutes her phone while she’s in class because he’s a psycho.
“Yes,” I chirp, holding onto Zach’s neck with one arm and swinging the messenger bag I brought today toward Patrick with the other hand. “Hold my purse.”
Patrick grabs the bag with one large hand and whips his arm back in preparation to chuck my purse across the green. I grin at him when Zach snatches it before he can follow through.
“You’re such a fun-sucker,” I tell Patrick, but he ignores me because we’re at Everly’s building. Patrick stomps inside to retrieve his woman, and I burrow my face in the base of Zach’s neck and breathe in his musky cologne.
“I missed you,” I whisper against his ear, and his fingers dig into my thighs where he’s holding me up to let me know he likes when I say things like this. I haven’t seen him since he dropped me off at my first class. I want to finish our conversation from this morning, tell him that I love him too. But it doesn't seem right to just blurt it out right now when it will definitely be a distraction for Zach. He needs to be on high alert, since we don’t know who’s involved in this mess and how far they’re willing to go.
Zach pats my leg and I understand that he wants me to hop down, but my feet barely hit the pavement before he’s pulling me to him, kissing the top of my head.
“I missed you too, baby,” Zach tells me. The endearment is natural, rolls off his tongue like he’s been saying it in his head for far longer.
“Watch it!” a male voice booms out, and I look over to see Jackie Bower headed out of the building and toward us, nearly tripping over loitering students. Her face is bruised and her lip is busted, which sadly seems to be pretty commonplace lately. It’s making it hard to tell who’s on which side, and the only thing I know is that the boys, Everly, and Cassandra are the only ones I trust at this point. Regardless, she looks absolutely wrecked.
“Jackie, wait,” I call out, but Zach snatches me up by the arm when I move toward her, keeping me safely at his side. She doesn’t say a word, but she does stop, giving me a dull look that I’m not used to from her. Usually, her stare bites and claws until it burns with her hatred, but today she just looks tired.
“What are you doing?” Zach hisses against my ear, and I lean into him, letting him know I’m not going to do anything zany.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, and her expression doesn’t change, not even when Patrick and Everly walk over to join us. “If you need help, you can just say so,” I say. “It’s not too late.”
“You can still do the right thing,” Everly says, linking her fingers with Patrick’s, and I’m not sure if it’s a sign of solidarity or if she’s trying to keep him calm.
Jackie, still stone-faced, says with a wavering voice, “You can’t say that without knowing all the facts.” Just as quickly as she appeared, she pulls her hood up over her long red hair and hurries off toward the parking lot.
We head in the same direction, but at a much more glacial pace. Zach wraps an arm around me and says, “If it weren’t for Cassandra still being in the hospital and needing to find out what happened to Darcey, we’d be out of this hellhole.” He squeezes me to his side as we reach the truck. I turn to Zach, intending to say that living on high alert is going to catch up to us probably sooner rather than later, but I’m cut off by Everly’s scream.
We rush to the back of the Escalade, and I immediately drop to my knees when I see Miles lying unconscious on the asphalt, blood all over his face.
18
Zach
Without saying a word, we begin working like the team we’ve become. Everly and Kennedy are instantly kneeling down beside Miles, checking him over. I’ve already got Henry on the phone, and Patrick is standing guard, making sure no one passing by will be able to see Miles.
I can already see that he’s becoming more alert and responding to Everly as she checks his pupils.
“Can we take him to the hospital?” Kennedy asks a little too loudly in her panic. ”We can’t call the police.”
“Are we just saying pointless shit to hear ourselves talk?” Patrick snipes at her, and I almost lose it. I normally don’t care about their harmless bickering, but right now she’s scared, and I don’t like his fucking tone.
I don’t get a chance to say anything, though, because she stomps over to stand directly in front of his towering frame. She points a brightly manicured finger up at him and says, “We’re stuck in a shitty situation, and it’s getting shittier by the day. Do you want to find out what happened to your sister, or no?”
He doesn’t say anything, and I know he’d never put his hands on her, so I stand back and let them work this out.
She stares him down until he finally nods before glancing over at Everly.
His eyes snap back to Kennedy when she says, “Then stop barking at everyone and help me. We’re going to have to do something, and fast, before one of us ends up dead.” She spins and looks at me, and I can see the sheer panic marring her features when she whispers, “We’ve only got each other.”
Everly looks over her shoulder at me and then nods toward Patrick, who’s facing away from us again, shoulders bunched. “You’re going to have to help get him in the truck,” she tells me.
Miles grimaces and tries to sit up, but is unsuccessful.
“I’m okay, I just want to get back to the hospital to check on Cassandra,” Miles slurs his words, and I realize he’s worse off than he looks.
Everly cups his face, and he looks up at her through glassy eyes. “What happened?” she asks softly, and I watch as she presses two fingers to the side of his neck, probably checking his heart rate.
“I went to see Cassandra at the hospital, but on my way back out to my car, two of the Learys jumped me. I don’t know which two.”
“How did you get here?” Kennedy asks as Patrick and I grab Miles, and Everly whips the middle door of the SUV open for us to hoist him in.
“I think they drove me.” He sounds disoriented, and I’m starting to wonder if getting his ass kicked is the only thing that’s going on here. I climb in next to him and gesture for Kennedy to slide in on my other side.
Once Everly is in the front passenger seat, Patrick cranks the engine on and speeds out of the parking lot.
“Did they give you anything?” I turn his head to look at me, and one look is all it takes for me to see his eyes aren’t glassy from emotion, he’s fucking high. He’s got a busted lip, which is probably where the blood came from.
I hear Kennedy gasp, and I reach over and place my hand on her thigh, squeezing enough to let her know it’l
l be okay and that she needs to hang in there with me. I love that I can convey that with just a touch and a look. I feel her relax, even though her eyes dart back over to Miles.
Miles shifts in his seat and leans against the window, fogging it up with his shallow breaths. I glance up and meet Patrick’s hooded eyes in the rearview mirror. He looks absolutely livid, and I’m guessing he’s wondering if this is what happened to his sister. Did they drug her up and throw her down the stairs?
“Today was a warning,” Patrick says through gritted teeth. Even though Everly is on the phone with Henry again, giving him an update, she reaches over and places her hand on Patrick’s shoulder.
“It’s not going to stop unless we do something about it,” Kennedy says. “We can’t just let them pick us off one by one.” She leans across me to check on Miles’s breathing, and I take the opportunity to slide my arm around her and press a kiss to the side of her head.
My eyes flash back up to Patrick in shock when he says, “We need to call Andre.”
Once we’re home, Everly busies herself getting Miles’s face cleaned up while Kennedy distracts him with a story about when she worked at a gym in high school. I rub my hands over my face and sit down next to Patrick on the couch as we wait for Tommy and Henry to arrive.
“Why’d they write you up?” Miles smiles up at Kennedy. She’s perched on the arm of the couch he’s sacked out on, holding his hand while Everly cleans the blood from his scalp.
“Because the asshole wouldn’t stop trying to massage my shoulders at work, and when I told him I didn’t like it, he asked me if I didn’t get enough affection as a child,” she chirps, bugging her eyes out to convey her disbelief. “So I asked him if he was dropped on his head as a child, and apparently that wasn’t allowed.” She breaks her serious story-telling facade when Miles laughs.
I watch as she uses the back of her hand to feel his forehead. Despite the concern of whatever drugs he may have been given, Henry advised if he was alert to bring him home instead of the hospital.
“Why’d they drug him? We already quit hockey,” Patrick says to me quietly, and I understand by his tone he doesn’t want the girls or Miles to hear.
“Maybe to keep him disoriented enough so we’d find him laid out?” I can only guess. “If he hadn’t been drugged, he would have gotten up on his own.”
Patrick only nods, and then his attention is back on Everly.
Tommy quite literally barrels through the front door, with Henry entering behind him at a much more dignified pace.
“Broooo,” Tommy exaggerates the word, whipping his puffy winter coat off like an exasperated five-year-old. He nearly pushes Kennedy out of the way to hover over Miles, checking out his injuries. “Those motherfuckers.”
“Came out of fucking nowhere,” Miles says, shaking his head, and I’m glad to see he’s not as groggy as when we first found him.
Henry clears his throat, and his eyes are locked on Patrick. “You’re sure you want to do this?” He holds up his phone to indicate he means calling Andre.
“We’re out of plays.” Patrick shrugs, nodding toward Kennedy. “She’s right. We’re sitting around, waiting for them to call the shots or leave us alone. Andre is our only chance at this point. He’s got the cops after him, and his family is framing him for shit they’re doing.”
His eyes follow Everly as she disappears into the kitchen with the first aid shit I didn’t even know we had in the house.
“What changed your mind about him?” Tommy asks before flopping down on the sofa next to Miles.
“Darcey.” Patrick leans back against the couch with a huff. “I was wrong about all of it. She loved him. And I think he loved her too. I’ve read every word in that journal of hers.”
Not one for sentimental shit, Tommy asserts, “Let’s do it then.” He waves to Henry, gesturing toward the coffee table.
Henry clicks a few buttons on his phone as Everly shuffles back in and tries to sit on the arm of the sofa next to Patrick, but he scoops her onto his lap. Henry sets the phone in the center of the table. He switches it to speaker phone, and as the ringing begins, Kennedy makes her way over to sit between Patrick and me. I lean down and give her a soft kiss as I pull her close to my side. So much has been going on, I haven’t been able to talk to her about the bombshell I dropped on her this morning.
I love her more than anything, and it’s been that way for a long time. I want her to know that I’d rather die than hurt her and that my drive to protect her will always trump my anger. That I choose not to be like my father because of her. No matter how jealous I can get, how obsessed I am with her, I’d never turn on her. She’s what keeps me going, and I can’t imagine going back to life without her.
I’m torn out of my thoughts by the static clicking of someone answering the phone. A familiar male voice says, “I wondered how long it would take you to call.”
Similar to Andre…but not. My stomach coils in realization.
I hear Everly gasp, and then the voice begins laughing. She lunges off of Patrick’s lap and grabs the phone.
“Which one are you?” She grits her teeth.
“Carter still hasn’t figured out which one of us had our hands around your pretty little neck, huh?” I see the color drain from Everly’s face as she drops the phone, ending the call. Patrick doesn’t lash out like I expect him to. Instead, he pulls her to him, cradling the back of her head as she burrows into him.
19
Kennedy
“Damn, that’s hot,” Zach hisses as he steps into the shower behind me. I lean back and grin up at him as he scowls. Guys are giant babies when it comes to the temperature of shower water. We both need this after everything with Miles, and then finding out that the older Leary boys have Andre’s phone. I know he was a dickwad to a lot of people, but I really hope he’s okay. I believe Everly, I don’t think he’s capable of half the shit he’s being blamed for.
I dial the faucet back to luke-warm at best and flick some of the spray toward Zach. “If I freeze to death or die of pneumonia, I’m going to haunt you.”
I expect him to come back with something flippant, but instead he grips my hips and pulls me back toward him with enough force that my ass pushes back into his erection.
He nips at my neck and then huskily whispers against my ear, “I’ll keep you warm.”
Instinctively I reach up, wrapping my arms around his neck, and almost instantaneously, he dips his head and captures my lips with his. His large hands cup my breasts, and I arch into him. I’ve always found Zach conventionally attractive—tall, muscular, and with a smile that probably dropped more panties than I care to know about. But I never thought anyone would be able to elicit such responses from my body by just a touch or a whisper. Sometimes all he has to do is look at me, and I’m ready for him.
I feel his tongue on my neck as he lets his hand drift down my stomach, his heated touch mingling with water and soap suds. Just as his expert fingers find my wet folds, I let one of my arms drop and I reach behind me, circling my hand around his impressive length.
He sucks in a sharp breath and I smirk, but only for a second before two of his long fingers begin pumping rhythmically inside me, and he pinches my nipple just hard enough to make pleasure burn low in my belly.
I grind back against him roughly, causing his fingers to lose their place inside me. I need more of him, I need all of him right now. I lean forward, pressing my hands against the cool tile, and arch my back so the tip of his hardness rubs against my opening.
Immediately, one of his hands finds my hips and the other fluidly slides down my back, causing my ass to jut out further against him. A groan leaves his lips as he pushes against me, but pulls back when just the tip slides in.
“I’ve gotta get a condom.” The desperation in his voice is palpable, and what I’m about to tell him is either going to go really good or really bad.
“I’m on the pill,” I pant out as he pulls me back by the hips, allowing his hardness to
tease my aching core.
He stills, but keeps me pressed tightly to him.
“Since when?” he asks, leaning forward and growling the words against my ear. I can hear the jealousy tingeing his tone, and while it’s unnecessary, and I’d never admit it to him, it sends a jolt of excitement through me.
A couple flippant responses swirl around in my mind, like the fact that he knows he was my first, my only, but I decide not to toy with him. I want him too much to play any games right now. “Since I realized I wanted you to fuck me.” My voice is needy, husky, and he seems to enjoy that because his teeth scrape my shoulder and his fingers are back inside me, giving me just a taste of what I’m craving.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” The jealousy is gone, and I can hear the concern he has about this, mixed with untenable desire. I know he’s apprehensive because of how many partners he’s had, but he’s healthy and always used protection with them.
“I want to feel you, Zach. Just you,” I encourage him, looking over my shoulder and into his eyes, then sputtering when water gets in my mouth. I expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t, he’s looking at me in a way that I don’t think he ever has.
“Keep talking,” he whispers. His eyes are reverent, taking in my body as his hands caress my sides, from my ribcage and smoothing down to my hip. “Tell me what you want, Kenney.”
“Zach,” I plead, bracing my palms against the tile and grinding back against him. The tip of his erection passes over my entrance with the movement, but teases us both by gliding right past it and rubbing against the sensitive spot that drives me wild. “I want you to show me how much you want me right now. We can make love later,” I promise, trying to convey what I need from him, but not really having the words to express it.
Damaged Elite (The Darlington Elite Book 2) Page 18