“Promise you’ll tie me up?”
He lets out a small huff as he effortlessly pulls himself back up. “Fuck me,” he grumbles under his breath, making a show of trying to concentrate.
I get up off the bench and walk over to him, playing a very dangerous game of temptation. Will I be able to resist touching him or won’t I? I lean up against the cool, metal frame, mesmerized by the slow-motion show of pull-ups happening right before my eyes. “What are you doing here? Usually, you work out in the mornings.”
A grin cracks across his face. “Didn’t have some chick snoring in my ear to wake me up.”
I grab his water bottle and squirt water at his chest. “You’re an ass. I don’t snore.”
He flinches from the cool water and kicks out his foot, slamming it into the water bottle and sending it flying across the gym as he laughs. “What makes you think it’s you I’m talking about, Jade?”
My mouth drops and I stare at him with a blank expression. “If you've been screwing Spencer this whole time, I’m going to be pissed.”
“Guilty,” he says with a wink. “Don’t tell him I told you though, he’s very defensive of our bromance. It really is a love story.”
I step into him and he releases the bar and lands right in front of me. “Tell me,” I say as he places his hands to my waist. “Do you fuck him as hard as you fuck me?”
Colton dips in and brushes his lips over mine before sliding his arm around my waist. His hands travel down to my ass, giving it a firm squeeze, and grinning back at me. “Only when he begs for it.”
I lose all train of thought and Colton laughs, knowing that he’s got me right where he wants me. Keeping his hands on my ass, he picks me up and my legs instantly wind around his waist. “Hold on, baby,” he murmurs.
I raise a brow as I thread my arms around his neck and hold on tight. “What are you doing?”
He releases me and I cling to him like a monkey as he reaches above him and jumps to catch the bar. My eyes bug out of my head while a flicker of disappointment flares through me thinking that he was about to try some kinky shit, though I guess that’ll have to wait.
He pulls himself up and I gape at the way his muscles bulge but the soft groan that comes from the back of his throat has my brows shooting straight up. “Dude, I’m not that fat.”
He laughs and instantly loses his grip, sending us both crashing to the floor. “Fuck,” he says, unable to stop the roaring laughter as he holds onto me, making sure I’m not hurt. “I didn’t mean to fall. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay but my ego is bruised.”
“Your ego is just fine,” he tells me, leaning back and staring at me as I sit in his lap. I meet his eyes as a seriousness comes over him. “I heard you had a visitor at school.”
“Bullshit,” I grunt. “How’d you hear that?”
A soft chuckle pulls at his throat “From what I can gather, Jess texted Milo to figure out who the hell he was, then Milo checked in with Spencer to ask if he knew what was going on, then Spencer asked Charlie if he’d heard from you, and then Charlie all but screamed it from the rooftops while on his way to ask me.”
“So, during all this, no one actually thought to ask me?”
His brows furrow as he thinks back over the explanation he just gave me. “I guess not,” he says with a shrug. “Are you okay, though? I’m assuming by the sarcastic mood you’re in, it all went to shit.”
“It bypassed shit and went straight to hell. It was awful, but ... I don’t know. It’s still Nic. I’m so mad at him but at the same time, he’ll always be my best friend.”
He raises a hand and brushes his fingers down my face, his eyes softening with emotion. “I know, Jade. Just give it time. As much as I want you to tell him to fuck off, I know having him in your life makes you happy, and I want that for you.”
“I know,” I tell him. “A weaker man would try to keep me away from him.”
“I trust you, Ocean. You’ve never given me a reason not to.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. “That means a lot to me.”
He nods, not needing to respond to that. “What are your plans this afternoon? Do you want me to call it quits for the day and we can fuck around or are you planning to work?”
I press my lips into a tight line. “Are you going to be offended if I say that I want to work? I’m not done sulking about what happened at school and I think the quiet time would help.”
“That’s fine, babe,” he says, getting up and offering me his hand. I take it and he hauls me to my feet in the blink of an eye. “You do you. I’ve got a contract to finish looking through and should probably call the cheapskate bastard back who I hung up on this morning.”
“My, oh my. And you have people out there thinking that you’re some kind of CEO, businessman extraordinaire. If only they realized that you throw tantrums and hang up on your business partners when they irritate your fragile little soul.”
“Fuck you,” he laughs, walking across the room and grabbing his discarded water bottle. “I am a fucking CEO businessman extraordinaire, now get your ass out of here and mop my dining hall, wench.”
“Careful, now,” I tease, walking out of the room and smothering my smirk. “You don’t want to piss off the help. Who knows what you might find in your breakfast in the morning.”
I hear his soft laughter flowing out of the gym as I make my way toward the staff quarters and instantly run into Mom as she steps through the entrance. “Oh, Ocean,” she says, looking anywhere but meeting my eyes. “How was school?”
I let out a soft sigh and pull her into my arms, knowing exactly what this is about. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m not mad at you.”
She throws her arms around me, holding me tight and burying her face into my neck. “Oh, I’m so, so sorry, my sweet baby. I don't know what came over me. I never should have hit you. My emotions were riding high and I was overwhelmed and the next thing I knew, my hand was cracking across your face. Oh, please forgive me, sweet girl. I couldn’t cope knowing that you were hurting over my actions.”
“Mom, it’s fine. Really. I love you and I shouldn’t have broken the news to you like that, but I couldn’t hold onto it anymore. You needed to know and I didn’t want you to hold back from being happy again.”
“I know sweet girl,” she says, taking my shoulders and pulling back to look me in the eye. “I appreciate that but either way, I shouldn’t have laid a hand on you and I’ll regret that until the day I die.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, giving her an encouraging smile. “I can get revenge when you’re an old lady and I put you in a nursing home.”
She sucks in a sharp gasp. “You wouldn’t do your sweet momma wrong like that.”
“Just you wait and see.”
She shakes her head and goes to step around me when she stops and looks back at me. “What are you doing here? I didn’t have you scheduled to work. You need to catch up on your studies so you can get into a good college.”
“I know, I just had a shitty day at school and thought that I could use something to keep my mind off it.”
Mom shakes her head. “Absolutely not. You’re not using work as an escape. Why don’t you head up to the library and pick something to read? That should take your mind off whatever awful things happened at school. You love reading and you’ve hardly read anything since moving here.”
I press my lips into a tight line and meet her eyes. “That’s not actually a bad idea.”
“Good, now get out of here and go and relax, but don’t take your eye off the time. You always tend to get lost in those books of yours and next thing you know, you’ve missed dinner and it’s after three in the morning.”
I laugh, knowing just how right she is. It’s a sickness really.
Mom disappears and I’m left to make my way up to the library. I find the elevator and within moments, I’m stepping through to my favorite room in the house. I’m still baffled by how amazing this is. What normal people have a
fully stocked library in their home? It’s insane.
I quickly begin my search, desperately trying to ignore the memories of Colton devouring my pussy like a fucking king on these very shelves. It doesn’t take long before I’m getting lost in the titles and covers, scanning over the blurbs and picking out a whole freaking pile that I wish I could somehow read in one night.
I narrow down my search and am just about to settle on Jaymin Eve’s latest release when the elevator pings and the doors slide open. I freeze on the spot as Casey steps through to the library and the second she lifts her eyes from the ground, she stops and we stare at each other like deer caught in headlights.
“Umm …” I say awkwardly. “I was uhh, just leaving.”
“Oh, umm … you don’t have to leave on my account. I’m just going to grab a book and go read in my room.”
“Okay, sure,” I say, still unable to move from my spot. “You don’t mind that I’m reading your books?”
Her eyes flitter across the room as though she’s trying to look busy as she searches for her book but it’s pretty damn clear that she’s just trying to avoid making awkward eye contact with me. “I mean, are you going to bend the pages or write notes in the margins?”
I suck in a horrified breath. “No.”
“So, how do you mark your page?”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you had to put the book down to go and pee or something like that, what do you do?”
My brows furrow, trying to figure out where the hell she’s going with this. “I put a bookmark in and then go pee.”
Casey shrugs her shoulders. “Then I don’t mind, as long as you put it back exactly where you got it from, I don’t care. It took me forever to organize all of these books.”
“I can imagine,” I say, noting how not only are they arranged by genre, but each of those genres is also organized into alphabetical order. “You’ve got a pretty good system. It was really easy to find what I was looking for.”
“Oh, yeah?” she questions, spying the book in my hand. “Who are you reading?”
I hold up the book to show her the cover. “Jaymin Eve,” I say. “She’s freaking amazing. Have you read her?”
Casey’s face lights up like Christmas morning. “Hell yeah! Of course, I have. Jaymin is incredible. I love her work. I fell in love with her back in the ‘Hive Trilogy’ days. That series rocked my world. Have you read Amo Jones or J Bree? I was going to start ‘Hannaford Prep’ today.”
“No way. I finished that series just before I came to Bellevue springs. It’s so fucking dark and twisted.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” she says as her eyes widen. “Come and check this out. If you love that shit, you’ll love this.”
I find myself following her deeper into the library and somehow we spend the next hour going over all the books that we’ve fallen in love with and with each new title I list, she instantly adds it to her Amazon cart and hits buy. I gape at her, wishing I had that power with my credit card … oh, wait. I don’t even have a fucking credit card.
We sit down on the egg chairs and get comfortable while going over everything and working out the best reading orders for all the new stuff coming in. I mean, did Casey and I just become friends? I have no idea but I think I like it.
“Can I ask you something?” I question, leaning back into the egg chair and looking over at her.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“What’s the deal with you guys and Colton?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know … there’s just this huge divide between you all and it’s kinda sad. I know if you guys gave him the chance, he’d be more than happy to start building the relationship between you. I mean, I don’t have sisters but I have more than enough family in the Widows and I don’t know if I could survive with that kind of break between us.”
Casey shrugs her shoulders and seems to wander off inside her mind before finally letting out a sigh. “I don’t know. We moved away, or at least, Mom took us away when we were fourteen. Colton came with us originally but Dad came and forced him back here, and that was just it. We never saw each other and just kept growing apart. Mom never even attempted to reach out to him after that. She took it as some kind of personal attack, but he was just a kid. It wasn’t his responsibility to be the parent. Mom failed there, but don’t tell her I said that. She’d tear me a new asshole.”
I scoff and try to smother a laugh.
Casey continues. “Colton’s done a lot of growing in the last few years. I guess ... I don’t know … things just got worse from there. Everyone grew hostile and the disconnect between us just got bigger. Cora and I would speak to Colton every now and then but it wasn’t anything deep just, ‘Hey, how are you?’ You know, that kind of stuff.”
I nod and feel a heaviness come over me. “I think he’d actually like to get to know you both as adults now. I mean, I can't exactly speak for him. We haven’t actually discussed it or anything, but what big brother wouldn’t want his baby sisters in his life?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, I know that I miss having that same relationship that we used to have. Cora has a slightly different view on it, but I feel like she could come around. She’s so bitter. She’s a lot like Mom.”
“No shit,” I laugh. “The apple didn’t fall far from that tree.”
“Yeah … about that,” she says with a cringe. “I’m kinda over the fighting. I'm not exactly a grudge holder like that, so if you’re down with being cool, then I am too.”
I raise a brow. “Yeah?” I question. “I don’t think your sister feels the same.”
“No, she doesn’t and she’d kill me and instantly accuse me of jumping ship, but I can see how much you mean to Colton and if I’m going to have any chance of having him in my life, then I need to get on board the Ocean train. Though, turns out it's not actually that bad. I didn’t realize we would have so much in common.”
“To be honest, I really thought that there wouldn’t be anything under the sun that we would have in common but it’s nice to know that we do.”
“Exactly,” she says with a beaming smile before glancing down at her book and pulling her feet up under herself. “Now shut up, I’ve been dying to read this series.”
“Right back at ya,” I grin, resting back into my egg chair with an odd smile. I can’t exactly say that becoming friends with Casey Carrington was on my agenda today, but a part of me is actually kind of happy about it, unless it’s a trap, of course, but something tells me it was real, and for some reason, I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.
With that in mind, I open the book to page one and lose myself in one of the best stories ever told.
Chapter 15
I walk into the main house early on Tuesday morning, feeling a million times better. Maybe Mom was onto something about reading a book. I didn’t exactly get through much of it after spending a good portion of my afternoon hanging out and talking books with Casey, but the little time to myself where I could get lost in another world helped to put things into perspective.
Nic fucked up and that’s on him. It’s in the past and while he has a long road ahead of him to earn my forgiveness, there's no point spending my time worrying and hurting over it.
It’s time to worry about the more important things, like getting good grades, and being the first person on either side of my family to go to college. I can do it. I know I can.
I walk into the kitchen to find Charlie and Colton hovering over the coffee machine, very impatiently waiting for their caffeine hit by pressing every button on the machine and getting aggravated at the poor thing.
“Hey, you,” I say to Charlie as I stride past him, leaning between the boys and grabbing the power cord for the coffee machine and plugging it into the wall with an amused smirk. “Where the hell have you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Both of the boys studiously ignore the fact that neither of
them was smart enough to check that the machine was plugged in and get busy actually turning it on. Charlie leans against the counter and gives me a beaming smile. “I figure since Colton here is too fucking lazy to step out of his big ass mansion these days, you could use a lift to school.”
“Well, well,” I say, watching Colton roll his eyes at his friend’s comments. “Wouldn’t that be a treat.”
Colton gives me a blank stare. “You realize that there’s at least thirty … no, twenty cars in the garage that I’d allow you to drive. You don’t need to keep getting lifts every day.”
I narrow my eyes at my irritatingly sexy boyfriend. “Why can’t I drive all of them? You know, I don’t think I’ve really gotten the feel for the Veneno. I could take that one to school.”
Colton shakes his head as Charlie howls with laughter. “Over my dead fucking body. After you stole it and took it for a girls’ day at the hair salon, I won’t even let you breathe near it.”
“That’s okay,” I laugh. “You’ve got to sleep at some point and when you do, when you least expect it, I’m going to take them all. I might invite the Widows over and we can figure out which one of your babies goes the fastest.”
He shakes his head as Charlie grabs a bagel off the counter and begins slathering it with cream cheese. “Careful, Jade. Keep making threats like that and I'll have to tie you up for real.”
Charlie’s brows shoot up into his hairline. “Wait … why does it sound like you’ve done it before?” My eyes flick to Colton’s wide and panicked as I recall sneaking down from the library at 1 am this morning after finally putting my book down and having him do just that. “You have, haven’t you? Fuck, I didn’t realize I was in the midst of two kinky fuckers. Damnnnn.”
I bite down on my lip, desperately trying not to react. With a guy like Charlie, if you give him an inch, he won’t just take a mile, he’ll run with it until there’s nothing left to take. All while keeping that cheesy as fuck grin on his devastatingly handsome face.
Colton scoffs. “Please, I’ve heard your stories, man. Tying a chick up and fucking her until she screams is nothing new for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a whole closet full of dirty little secrets.”
Barbie B*tch: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Rejects Paradise Book 3) Page 14