by Lily White
Quinton and Grady thought it was funnier than shit. Especially after pointing out my nose was red from where she’d headbutted me and now my cheek would match.
I rubbed at the spot she’d hit while walking close to her.
“I can beg.”
“Won’t work.”
One step closer.
“On my knees.”
“Still a no.”
Another step.
“With my face between your thighs until you forget what we did.”
Her eyes snapped my direction with a stare that was more threatening than the gun pointed at my chest last night.
“You’re joking, right?”
I wasn’t. My head tilted to the side, a gleam in my eye that promised I was dead serious.
Olly’s cheeks tinted red and I knew I had her.
Crossing the remainder of the room before she had the chance to hate me again, I jumped on top of her, holding my body up with my forearms so I didn’t crush her beneath me.
Our hands wrestled for the remote, but I was stronger. Hitting a button to turn the television off, I tossed the remote aside and stared down at her.
“It’s not my fault your fine little ass decided to pledge. We were only fulfilling our duties as head of the group.”
When her mouth corkscrewed into that angry smirk I loved so much, there was no turning back from what I wanted to do.
Leaning down, I held her glare and bit her bottom lip.
“Damn it, Soren-“
Too late.
I shut her up by closing my mouth over hers to shove my tongue in her mouth and steal the words she was going to say. She melted beneath me.
Defeated.
Turned on.
Still angry.
Which only made this better.
Her hands slapped at my chest a few times. Little flaps of her palms that were pathetic. It wasn’t that she was fighting me off, but more refusing to admit that she wanted this.
Defeated again, she gave in and I almost lost it when her fingers curled into my hair and tugged my face closer.
I only had a few minutes before she was angry again. What we did kept coming back to her like the tide, ebbing and flowing. One minute hating us, and the next...well...still hating us, but not as much.
Breaking the kiss, I ran my lips along her cheek to press my mouth against her ear.
“Task.”
You didn’t have to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes.
“I’m not doing a task. I only pledged so you wouldn’t kill Chad.”
“Task,” I repeated. There was no way in hell she’d get out of this.
Her chest puffed out with a heavy breath. “What’s the task?”
Her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
“Spread your legs.”
“No.”
My shoulders shook with quiet laughter.
“Why?”
Silence and then, “Because I hate you for one. And second, Nolan is downstairs and doesn’t want his skeezy best friend touching me.”
Not exactly accurate.
There was a time where Nolan would throw a shit fit every time I looked at his sister in a way that made it clear what I was after. For a year, he threatened to cut off my balls if I so much as brushed against her. His little sister was growing up. To him, she was still the annoying brat he wanted to ditch while we ran off, but I saw what she was becoming.
The moon and stars couldn’t quite compare. The sun wasn’t bright enough to hold a candle to her. There was nothing in the heavens that was more beautiful than a girl who gave the finger to the world and marched to the beat of her own drum.
Olly was different.
She wasn’t a pansy ass follower with a fake face and fake tits to match. She didn’t make demands of other people, and didn’t fall in line with the rest of them either. She was so gentle that it would have broken her heart to misstep and hurt something as meaningless as an ant.
Meaningless to us, at least. But not to her.
She saw value in what others considered garbage.
And for that, I couldn’t stop wanting her.
When Nolan got back to Winter Ridge from Oregon, I gave up the fight to ignore his sister and told him she would be mine.
He punched me in the face for it. I took the hit because it was deserved. But I didn’t apologize for how I felt.
“We shouldn’t talk about Nolan right now. Not with what I’m planning to do to you.”
She opened her mouth to complain, her lips slamming closed as I ignored her and crawled down her body. I shoved her thighs apart and hooked her knees over my shoulders thanking fuck that all she had on was a t-shirt and panties.
It wasn’t much of a barrier. Not from me. I made quick work of the thin material and feasted on her until she was begging me not to stop.
What we did in the next few hours was most likely illegal in a few states, but it made her stop hating me, at least for that moment.
Our bodies were entangled as we lay next to each other, our chests beating with labored breath.
“Dinner will be ready soon.” Not knowing if any of the assholes downstairs knew shit about cooking, I worried what we would walk into when leaving the room.
Still, my announcement surprised her.
“You all cooked?”
“It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, but-“ Her sated eyes met mine. “You actually trusted them in a kitchen?”
She had a point.
I pushed up from the bed to grab my clothes and rush down there. Planting a smacking kiss on her lips, I was tugging my jeans up.
“Come down when you’re decent.”
I winked and Olly pulled the pillow across her face. Cute as a fucking button, that one.
The kitchen looked like a war had gone off inside it, worse than the way it was left after the cops had searched the house looking for bodies. But the food smelled decent and they were setting the table.
It was all going as planned.
Our gift to her.
And our peace offering.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Olive
Dinner was actually good, which surprised me, and I was still sitting on the couch holding my full stomach when the first kids started arriving for the days-long party. Not in a mood, I was pouting because the boys refused to call it off when I begged.
Resigned to the shitfest of idiot kids that would soon fill the house, I got up from the couch and climbed upstairs to get ready. Soren and them had cleaned up after dinner, and I had to admit I was enjoying how they all were busting their asses to apologize for what they did.
Wondering how long I could stretch this out, I tugged on a pair of jeans and red shirt and marched into the bathroom to brush my hair and do something with my face.
My eyes were still puffy from crying last night, and I had marks on my wrists from being tied up, but all in all, I didn’t look horrible.
Thankfully, they had thought to stop by the house before abducting me to grab some clothes and whatever else I might need. The tampons tossed in one of my bags made me chuckle.
“Just in case. It’s girl shit. We thought you might need it,” Quinton had explained when I’d held them up in question.
Freaking men.
They’re clueless to just about everything.
My bedroom door burst open fifteen minutes later, just as I was running the brush through my hair one last time to tame the ends.
“Bitch! Where are you hiding?”
“In here,” I called, not surprised to see that Kendall was one of the first to arrive.
She slid into the bathroom on slinky steps that matched her slinky dress. I eyed her, shaking my head in disbelief because it was thirty degrees outside. Shea walked in beside her just as half dressed as Kendall.
“I’m so happy you changed your mind and came tonight.”
Arms wrapped around me with the burst of excitement.
Why she was happy, I didn’t know. It
wasn’t like she needed me to wander around the house with a red cup of alcohol in hand pretending that the loud music, writhing bodies and open drug use was a good time to be had.
“It wasn’t my choice.”
Dropping the brush on the bathroom counter, I turned to face the two girls. “I was abducted and dragged here.”
Shea laughed. “Sure you were. Stop being so dramatic.”
I could have kept going in a bid to convince them, but what would be the point? They were only half interested anyway. Behind their eyes, I could see they’d already moved on to the next topic they wanted to discuss.
“Elizabeth is here.” Kendall’s eyes tipped up, her mouth stretching into a disgusted curl, every feeling she had for Elizabeth obvious in the expression.
“I bet she tries to hook up with Soren first and then moves on to the others when she’s done with him.”
Shea nodded in agreement. I objected silently, not wanting to tell them that Soren had all but tattooed my forehead with his name in his bid to claim me.
Not that I was upset about his sudden transition from playboy to...whatever he was. The only thing I knew was that he’d promised that life in Winter Ridge would change after tonight.
The parties would stop (after this one, of course, because it was too late to cancel). The pledges would be dismissed. The tasks would end and he would devote his life to helping old ladies cross the street, or whatever he said. I didn’t believe him entirely. It wasn’t like Winter Ridge had a traffic problem caused by toddling bitties, but I understood what he meant.
He wanted something with me, and was willing to do what it took to prove he changed.
My heart fluttered at the thought and every damn butterfly took flight, my cheeks beaming despite trying to keep this new relationship secret.
“What’s your issue with Elizabeth?”
She wasn’t so bad from what I remembered of her. I mean, yeah, she was Little Miss Bitchy like Teagan, Maia and Camilla had been, but Elizabeth was less vocal about it. As if she were dragged along by the other three, but didn’t really enjoy making other people’s lives hell.
Kendall’s expression darkened, but she shook her head and was back to the fake smile within seconds.
“I don’t have an issue with her. I just hate how she comes back to town and immediately returns to her old slutty ways.”
Panic grasped at my heart with knobby fingers.
“Was she doing something with Soren before you came upstairs?”
Holy shit. It took all of ten minutes and he’d broken his promises to me.
“No...”
I breathed out. At some point I would have to learn to trust him.
“...but you could tell she wanted to do something with him. She was standing on one side of the room, eyeing him where he stood on the other.”
Shea chimed in, knocking me out of the way of the mirror with her hip.
“The way she was looking at him made me think she’d start rubbing up on the furniture next like a cat in heat.” Flicking her hair into place, she looked back at me. “It was really pathetic.”
Yeah, it was and I tried to tamp down the jealousy and possessiveness inside me. Regardless of my attempts, the feelings were still there and I wanted to rush downstairs, not so much to jump between them, but more to see how Soren acted.
Somehow I knew he would avoid Elizabeth like the plague, especially if she had her sights set on him, but there was still a nagging whisper that warned me what he’d said to me about being together couldn’t be real.
That whisper was part of the reason I didn’t want to say anything to Kendall and Shea. I was too worried that the entire thing would blow up in my face and my heartbreak would become the next gossip around Winter Ridge.
“We should go downstairs,” Kendall suggested to my emphatic agreement. “The bar has already been set up and it’s better to get some drinks before this place is filled.”
Couldn’t agree more, I thought, but not because the alcohol was calling to me. More like I was curious to see what it would look like for Soren not to be surrounded by a bevy of female admirers for once.
At least, he better be. I’d stashed away the tire iron beneath my bed and was still quite willing to use it.
I took one final glance in the mirror. Shrugged that I looked halfway decent. And then followed behind my two friends, my eyes searching the large living room as we descended the stairs.
Soren was tucked away in a corner of the room, Nolan and Quinton by his side and Elizabeth standing in front of them. Kendall hadn’t been lying. That girl was dressed to impress with Soren as her main target. She casually reached out to laugh and touch his arm every time he said something.
I stumbled over my jealousy for a moment, but then inwardly cheered to see him step farther away from her, keeping himself just out of reach. She would scowl, but then turn her attention to one of the other guys, her smile not as bright to look at them.
“See what I mean?” Kendall whispered in my ear. “I’m surprised she hasn’t shoved him on a couch yet to straddle him.”
If she did, I might have to use the tire iron on her.
We were halfway down the stairs when Soren’s dark eyes tipped up. Tracking me, just the corner of his mouth curled. I didn’t know what he was thinking when he looked at me like that, but I was sure it involved some form of torture.
I’d never been more a glutton for punishment in my entire life.
With effort, I broke our stare and followed Kendall and Shea into the kitchen. They went about mixing up their concoctions in red Solo cups, the two of them talking a mile a minute, while I did my best to keep up with the flurry of topics.
Losing the battle to follow their train of thought, I glanced around the room at the different groups of people.
None of them glanced back, which was fine by me. My eyes dragged to the arched doorway just in time to see Elizabeth walk through. And if I had to be honest, the two years since she left town had been kind to her.
Her brown hair had grown out to the middle of her back and she must have paid decent money for the golden highlights that framed her heart shaped face. She always had a perfect nose and bright green eyes that were almond shaped, but she looked slightly older, which filled in the features better. As usual, her makeup was on point and her clothes must have cost more than my car.
She searched the kitchen, for who, I had no idea, but those green eyes stopped when they saw Kendall. I didn’t like the look of that mischievous smile that tilted her lips or the extra strut to her hips as she approached us.
If you’ve ever seen the way a cat walks while sneaking up to a fight, this girl was the perfect picture of it.
“Hey, Olive.”
Elizabeth gave me a sidelong glance as if I were nothing more than a buffer for her to zero in on the real prize.
Kendall and Shea turned at the sound of Elizabeth’s voice. Shea scowled immediately while the color drained a little from Kendall’s face.
“It’s great to see you three. How long has it been?”
Long enough for your friends to be slaughtered, I thought silently. I wasn’t particularly sure of proper party etiquette, but I assumed bringing up murder was frowned upon.
Kendall recovered quickly, her smile matching Elizabeth’s.
“Oh, wow. I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you were attending college out of state.”
If I hadn’t known better, I would have believed her.
Elizabeth tossed her hair over her shoulder and grinned.
“Yeah, I’ve been attending Dartmouth. It’s amazing living on the East Coast. So much better than here.”
She paused, pure evil shining behind her stare. A little tilt of her head was followed by, “Didn’t you all graduate already? Why are you still in town?”
Neither Shea nor Kendall answered her, so I filled in the uncomfortable silence.
“They’re going to Clement Community College.”
Shea elbowed m
e in the ribs and I wasn’t sure why. When Elizabeth’s expression transitioned into a pout and she went on and on about how great that was without really meaning it, I knew. Her voice was so fake that it was plastic rolling out on the long sheets stores use to wrap furniture.
The conversation was stilted at best, a lie here, an untruth there, three girls who were doing their best to insult the other without it being obvious.
Thankfully, I wasn’t included, so I stepped away, my head bouncing back and forth like I was watching a tennis match.
But then that’s when it happened.
“Well, it’s been good talking to you all. I hope you stick around for a while. We have so much planned for the night.”
I didn’t think the comment was all that bad until Elizabeth locked eyes with Kendall, laughed, and said, “Woof.”
She could have slapped Kendall in the face and it wouldn’t have stung more. While I stood confused why the sound was so bad, Shea glared at Elizabeth as Kendall’s face glowed red. I could feel the heat of hatred rolling off both of them, but neither said a word in response.
Elizabeth left us with a little flutter of her fingers and a wink, her hips working in a way that would put prostitutes to shame as she walked off.
“What was that about?” I asked, not comfortable with the way they stared after her.
Kendall bounced back again fast enough to give me whiplash. Smile in place, she took a sip from her cup before swallowing.
“What? Oh, nothing. I have no idea why she said that.”
Shea laughed it off. “Let’s go dance.”
I scurried along behind them into the living room, my eyes drifting over to catch Soren watching me. He waved me over, but I shook my head, still unsure about whether I wanted to go public about our newfound relationship.
Without daring to sip the drink in my hand, I dumped half of it in a potted plant we passed while following Shea and Kendall to the makeshift dance floor.
We wiggled and shimmied through three or four songs, sweat dripping down my temple as more people poured into the room and added to the warm temperature.
Another song with heavy bass began shaking the walls when a hand wrapped over my arm. Turning, I grinned to see it was Quinton.
“What’s up?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the music.