Theoretically, everyone knows that each Student Council position is individual, that there are no party platforms or anything like that. But only theoretically. Either Church will win—and with him, the other guys—or else Aster and her friends will.
The way that room picks up and all eyes flick toward the three new girls in their well-pressed skirts and ties, I have a feeling that the vote is leaning toward Aster.
With a sigh, I slump in my seat and resist the urge to scroll on my phone. It's painful to watch though, seeing my boys give all the right answers while Mark and his stupid meathead roommate—Gareth, apparently, is his name—goof around.
There has to be some way for us to kick their asses, right?
After the debates, everyone files out and the halls are filled with gossip. People are definitely looking at us in a different way than they used to before. Student Council only, assholes just doesn’t seem to hold as much weight as it did.
“You said you had a plan,” I whisper to Spencer as we watch Mark from across the hall, leaning against his locker and flirting shamelessly with Aster. He doesn’t even try to hide it. Like, how does he not know this is all going to get back to Selena? Maybe he just doesn’t care? “But you still won’t tell me what it is.”
“You’ll see,” Spencer says, but his eyes are bright as he watches our rivals basking in the glow of an adoring crowd. He glances down at me and cocks a brow. “What? It’s a surprise! I’m still working on it. I need my dad’s help, and we don’t have that great of a relationship, so … sort of banking on his guilt to make this work.”
“Guilt over what?” I ask, and Spencer makes a bit of a face.
“He left my mom to go live in Paris with his mistress and his other kid, sort of a royal piece of shit.” He looks right at me and then puts his hand on the wall above my head, looking down at my face with all due seriousness. “That’s why I don’t like lies, Chuck. He lied to me, and my brother, and my mom. And then you know what he did? He came back and my mom took him back, and guess what? He still lies about the shit that he does, and she doesn’t care. Jack doesn’t even care.” He pauses for a moment, still watching me with those intense eyes of his. “But I do.”
“Of course you do,” I say, trying to keep my voice soft. “You have big feelings.”
Spencer thinks for a moment, and then smiles.
“Yeah, I guess I do?” he says, pausing as a student approaches us warily. “If you’re trying to buy from me right now, it’s not happening. Not until we win the elections.”
“Cheap ass!” Mark calls out, snickering, like we didn’t catch him trying to abduct me in London. What a piece of work. He seems to think he’s untouchable, but I know better. It’s just a matter of time before he gets his. I don’t know what the boys plan on doing about it, but they’re not going to let it go.
Not a chance in hell of that happening.
By Friday, there’s a buzz humming through the school that I can’t quite puzzle out. Mostly because nobody likes me. Partially, I blame the boys for that. They’ve been super overprotective, but considering I’m being hunted by a murderous cult, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.
“What is going on?” I whisper as Spencer walks me down the hall, squeezing a stress ball in his right hand. I’m not gonna lie: it’s a sperm stress ball. Like, it looks like a giant white sperm. They gave them out for free in health class, and everybody thought they were hilarious. I keep seeing white sperm stress balls everywhere.
“You’ll see,” Spencer says, grinning as he glances over at me. “Church isn’t the only one who can scheme and throw his weight around.”
“Meaning what?” I ask as we head in the direction of the auditorium to cast our votes. They’ll be tallied up by volunteers from the Adamson staff—including my father, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Dave—and the winners will be announced at a special ceremony at the end of the day.
Frankly, I’m not all that hopeful, but none of the boys seem concerned, so I’ve been trying not to let it bother me.
“You’re a real hard-ass, Hargrove,” a boy in a junior’s uniform says, flipping us off as he passes by.
Now I’m really curious to find out what’s going on.
“Chuck-let,” Spencer says, turning and pushing me gently into one of the decorative alcoves that lines the walls of the school. It’s this big stone archway that’s just deep enough for two people to hide in … I mean, if anyone walks by and glances over, you’re screwed, but there’s at least some privacy here. We’ve tested out six or seven of them for, like, research purposes. And obviously at this point, you know that by research purposes, I mean make-out sessions. “Don’t you like a little mystery in your life?”
“Do you?” I retort, letting my bookbag fall to the stone floor, so I can put my arms around Spencer’s neck. He leans over me in that way I like, one of his arms above my head, his lips curved into a feral grin. “Because last time I surprised you by telling you my dick was actually a vagina, you freaked out.” He rolls his eyes at me, but he can’t argue that point, now can he?
“This isn’t a lie though, just a surprise.”
“A surprise that’s going to win us the elections?” I clarify, and the grin is back.
“As soon as we do, we’re going to rain terror down on Mark and all of his idiot friends. Oh, and that Aster chick, too. Either she’s sleeping with a creep or she is a creep herself, I don’t know, but I don’t like her.”
“What are you planning on doing?” I ask as Spencer tucks the sperm-y stress ball into my pocket and I make a face.
“Besides kissing you, you mean?” he pretends to clarify, sliding the fingers of his left hand along the length of my jaw. He cups the back of my head and then moves his other hand to the opposite side, holding me still and stroking his thumbs down my throat. “We can do all sorts of fun things to them. Move their lockers, change their class schedules for next semester, swap their dorm room assignments. Never underestimate the power of petty bullshit. Mark’s already like an ugly pimple ready to burst. If we poke and prod, he’s going to fall apart, and we’ll be able to get him.”
“And by get him …” I start as Spencer laughs, low and throaty, making my toes curl in my shoes. A man shouldn’t be able to smell so good, by the way. It’s making it freakishly hard for me to concentrate.
“Bury him six feet under, in the dead of night, in the old cemetery by the railroad tracks,” Spencer whispers, and then he laughs, moving away from me. I grab onto his blazer and yank him back, kissing him on the mouth and opening my lips for his tongue. Several minutes later, we come up for breath, and he smirks. “Your mouth is a good motivator, Chuck-let, you know that?”
“So, the plan with Mark …?”
“We report him—to authorities outside of Nutmeg. Shit, we report those authorities, too. There is a chain of command for this stuff, you know.”
“Won’t his ultra-rich family just take care of it the way yours does for Jack?”
“Between the five of us,” he says, as students pass by in small groups, whispering about the elections. “We’ll take care of it. But we need as much evidence as possible first.” Spencer leans in closer, one of his hands traveling down my side and cupping my ass through my skirt. He exhales sharply, like he’s seriously holding back right now. “You know I have a thing for schoolgirl uniforms, right?”
“You’ve never said as much, but I could tell.” I grin back at him. “You’ve fantasized about screwing me in this, huh?”
“Screwing, making love to, fucking, doing it … all of the things.”
He nuzzles the side of my neck and makes me go weak at the knees.
“We should really get to the auditorium to vote,” I whisper, knowing the others will come looking for us if we don’t show up soon. Mr. Murphy walks past us, my eyes briefly meeting his over Spencer’s shoulder, but he knows better than to stop or say anything.
“What if we just … made it quick?” he asks as he runs his tongue across his low
er lip and I inadvertently mimic the motion.
“Where should we go?” I whisper back, totally getting off on the conspiratorial nature of the moment. My heart gallops like a herd of wild horses, manes billowing in the wind, whinnying softly … Eww. What? Eww. No, that’s not poetic or cool-sounding whatsoever. The hell is wrong with me?
“Go?” Spence asks, kissing down the side of my neck as he slides his hands underneath my skirt, palms sliding up my bare thighs. “We don’t have to go anywhere. I want to do it right fucking here, where anybody could walk by and see.”
“Are you nuts?!” I choke out as his fingers knead the soft flesh of my ass. “We’re being hunted by a cult, remember?”
“We better make it quick then, huh?”
He lifts me up and pins me against the wall with his body, my arms automatically encircling his neck, fingers digging into his silver hair. Our mouths meet in a hot, desperate tangle as he presses his erection against me. My lips part in sweet surrender to his tongue, and I can already tell by the heavy weight of my limbs and the flutter of my lashes against my cheeks that I’m giving into him.
“I want to do it without a condom so bad right now,” he growls, one of his hands slipping between us to open his slacks. My eyes are closed, my pulse pounding inside my head. I don’t have the strength to say no, but at least he does. “But I won’t.”
“Because Ranger would kill you if you did it again,” I whisper and Spencer groans, freeing himself and then digging a condom out of his blazer pocket. I chastised him the other day for carrying them around all the time, but then I did stick several in my bookbag, just in case.
Teenagers are straight-up hoes.
Spencer slips the condom on, letting the wrapping fall to the floor, and then waits for me to hook my panties to the side with two fingers.
His eyes meet mine as he lines up with my opening and thrusts deeps, filling me up and pushing my body into the stone wall with the weight of his own. The pleasure is immediate and intense, releasing a flood of hormones into my body that make me feel both heavy and weightless, all at the same time.
Our mouths find each other again, searching and claiming, as he finds a rhythm that works, grinding me into the alcove with frenzied thrusts. The wall has no give, so each movement sheathes him fully inside of me, taking my breath away. A scream rests in my throat, but I bite it back.
Half the fun is the risk of getting caught, but also … there are few people at this school who I wouldn’t lose my shit over catching us like this.
“Oh, Chuck,” Spencer moans as he sucks on my lower lip. “You feel so damn good.”
His hands cup my ass, holding me up effortlessly as he moves, my pleated skirt bunched up around my hips. It could be weird to find a school uniform so erotic, but … I fantasize about the boys in their uniforms all the time when I touch myself. Which, you know, is just a little bit more often now that Church and I have finally done it. I’m not so scared of him hearing me from across the room.
“More, Spencer, more,” I murmur as he rocks our bodies together, the motion of his pelvis rubbing my clit in a way that makes me think I might actually be able to get off during this little quickie.
My hands scrabble at his back, fingernails digging into the champagne fabric of his blazer, as our lips clash in fire and desperate, primal heat, stifling our moans and grunts from the rest of the school.
“I want you to come with me,” I whisper, gathering him close, our breath mingling as we stare into each other’s eyes. My body tightens around his of its own accord, an orgasm spiraling through me in a brilliant, blinding wave. Another kiss from Spencer cuts off my sounds of pleasure as he pushes into me, again and again, finishing himself off just a few moments later.
We stay there panting just long enough to hear the soft clapping of several hands.
“Bravo,” the twins say, appearing in the alcove behind Spencer’s broad shoulders. “That was a fantastic performance.”
“Oh, Chuck,” Micah mimics, clasping his hands together and fluttering his lashes. “You feel so damn good.”
“I’m going to fucking strangle you,” Spencer growls out as he struggles between us with the condom, just barely managing to get it out and off without dropping me.
“Are you both too stupid to live?” Ranger asks, but I can see the pulse in his throat thundering. He liked what he saw, that’s for sure. “Chuck is being actively hunted, and you thought a quickie in the hallway was a good idea? You know how vulnerable and oblivious you two looked just now? We’ve been standing here the whole time, and you didn’t even notice.”
“More, Spencer, more,” Tobias wheedles, his voice high and fluttery.
“I don’t sound like that!” I gripe at him, struggling to fix my wet panties, my bunched-up skirt. Spencer ties the condom off and looks around for a trash can.
Magically, Dad appears as if summoned to ruin my fucking life, and Spencer’s forced to shove the used condom into his blazer pocket, grimacing as he does it.
“What’s going on here? You’re supposed to be in the auditorium right now. Or do you not take these elections as seriously as you should?” Dad eyes me and Spencer with a suspicious glint in his blue eyes.
“I assure you, sir,” Church begins, taking control as always—a trait I am beyond appreciative for. I’m just not the leadership type. “We take our duties very seriously.” He puts a hand over his chest, and I swear to god, the clouds shift above the school, letting in three gorgeous rays of sunshine through the stained glass above our heads and painting him with a halo. “The Student Council is the heart of Adamson Academy, a prestigious and well-run institution with the finest staff in the country. Today, when we win the elections, I promise you that we’ll begin implementing positive change at the student level.”
“No wonder he’s in all the brochures,” I grumble, as Dad narrows his eyes.
“I liked you before, Mr. Montague, but you’re pushing your luck now. Get your tardy selves to the auditorium now.”
“As you wish,” Church replies, but it’s said in just such a way that it couldn’t possibly be taken as anything but genuine. Somehow, though, I think Church does it on purpose, just to be even more ironic. Dad takes off, and Spencer waits until he gets around the corner before making a face and jogging over to one of the trash cans to drop off the condom.
“Now my pocket’s all wet on the inside,” he says, and my face heats up with an inferno of embarrassment.
“What is wrong with you?!” I snap at him, grabbing onto his sleeve and shoving him a bit. “Don’t say things like that.”
“I want you to come with me,” the twins chortle together, and I press my hands over my ears, blocking out their teasing. What I can’t block out, however, is my smile.
Especially when, later that day, the announcements are made, and my boys win the election.
Score one for Chuck and her forever crew, and fuck you, Mark. Fuck you.
I’d almost forgotten how intimidating the long table in the Student Council room was, considering I’m now dating every single guy on the other side of it. But when I first came in here, brandishing my new locker assignment, I was nervous.
The room is intended to be intimidating, dimly lit with floor-length beige drapes over the windows. The ceilings are at least twenty feet tall, the bookcases that line the walls just as impressive. There are iron sconces on the walls, two decorative chaises on either side of the doors, and a pair of curved staircases behind the boys, made up of gleaming wood with brass accents. There are only about ten steps on either side, leading up to a second level and a small walkway that wraps the room.
It’s seriously way over the top for a high school Student Council, but hey, rich people do horribly ridiculous and disgustingly excessive things all the time. I read about this one politician who claims he’s out for the little guys that has solid gold elevators, gold plant pots, and gold ceilings in his home (one of his homes anyway). Serious douche-canoe alert.
Talk a
bout trying too hard; no amount of money could make that guy cool.
“You can’t do this!” Mark shouts, gesturing at the boys with his new locker assignment—as far from mine as possible on the Adamson Academy campus. “I’ve had that locker since freshman year.”
I stand to the side, clutching the council iPad, and trying not to enjoy Mark’s pain.
Then again, he did try to kidnap me in a cemetery, so I guess I’m justified in feeling a bit smug about it.
“We actually can and did,” Church says, sitting in his throne, right behind his shiny President sign. The other boys all have these languid, self-satisfied smirks going that are about a hundred times worse than the ones they wore when I initially stormed in here complaining about my locker. “We’ve also just gotten the headmaster to sign off on moving your work duty from the chicken coop and garden, into the kitchen.”
“So, you just suck up to your daddy and get whatever you want, huh?” Mark asks, sneering at me. What I find ironic about his statement is, my dad doesn’t do shit for me when I suck up. And Mark’s dad bought him a private jet for his sixteenth birthday (the boys told me this). So if anyone is getting favors from daddy, it isn’t me.
“Actually, Headmaster Carson, in all of his infinite wisdom, has noticed the tension brewing between us and thought it best if we didn’t interact. You’ll be washing dishes and helping serve food three days a week.” Church taps his fingers on the surface of the table, clearly ready to be finished with this conversation.
“I’m not the fucking help!” Mark roars, and my blood starts to boil. Thoughts of Mom come rushing into my brain and I take a challenging step forward.
“You’re right, you’re not the help. You’re less than the leftover meatloaf that you’ll be scraping from pans in the school kitchen. Any one of those people working in there is a better person than you, you spoiled rotten little brat.”
Mark starts toward me, but all five boys rise in unison and he stops, fully aware of what they’re capable of.
The Forever Crew Page 21