Dare Me: A Bully Romance (Legends of the Ashwood Institute Book 1)

by Jayla Kane

  But… Is that what would happen with Raven?

  If I went over there and woke her up with a kiss… Up top or down below, at the moment I didn’t particularly care… Would she look at me and ask what I wanted?

  And what the fuck would the answer be?

  Because I wanted to know what happened to Tristan—I wanted that more than anything.

  At least until yesterday.

  Now I was having to deal with the fact that I might want something else more, and it was completely fucking me up.

  I hated her. Hated. She was the single worst thing that ever happened to me, the betrayal that destroyed me forever.

  And I’ll be goddamned if I could even think her name without getting hard.

  It would be different, I told myself, if she wasn’t so… Responsive. A part of me couldn’t stop reliving the sound of her gasp as I wedged between her legs, my lips an inch away from her skin. I kept hearing it and hearing it and hearing it… It’s like I was going crazy.

  Raven moaned softly in her sleep, and I almost jumped out of my chair. As I watched, her legs parted at the knees, dropping open and pulling the sheet further down with them. Fuck me. I could see all of her breasts now—those perfect vanilla tits, the sweetest pink nipples I’d ever seen… Her long white belly, and the slope of her hips as her fingers slid over her skin, lower and lower. I wondered if she was awake and deliberately fucking with me, but no; her eyes were closed, her lips puckering in that child-like way that only happened when she was deeply asleep. Her nipples grew hard, and I realized she was… Turned on. She was dreaming about sex.

  As far as I knew and all my spies in high school could verify, Raven had never even kissed anybody. No boy-friends; no one would dare, I guessed, given that they knew they would probably join her as a permanent target in my crusade. Because Raven was definitely gorgeous—she wasn’t a simple beauty, and she didn’t emphasize or use her looks at all, but that was an undeniable fact. Raven was exquisite. Every inch of her; I could admit that even in high school, when I was deliberating the pros and cons of running her over with my truck as I stared at her from across the parking lot. But as far as anybody knew, no one had gotten to enjoy that body.

  Unless you counted me, right now, staring at her with my mouth hanging open and my dick so hard it hurt.

  Raven’s hands slid along the inside of her thighs and I thought that any second she would wake up, see what she was doing and freak out—any second, I told myself, her eyes would flutter open and she would look down and… Fuck. And what?

  What did I even want her to do, this lying bitch I told myself I hated? Huh? Did I want her to beckon me over so I could finish the job? Jesus. I bit my tongue again, forced myself to turn back to my desk, and slid a notebook onto the floor. Sure enough, I heard a startle from the bed and allowed myself to glance at her reflection in the screen of my laptop. “Good dreams?” My voice sounded too husky, raw, but she wouldn’t notice that fresh from sleep. She’d just notice that her tits were hanging out and her legs were spread.

  I heard a soft harrumph and smiled in spite of myself, and then she rolled onto her other side and went back to sleep.

  I should’ve just let her keep going and enjoyed the show, I thought, cursing myself.

  It was all I could stomach, no matter what my dick thought. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself—couldn’t make her hang around me naked, every inch of that creamy skin begging to be licked. Now I knew her nipples and her lips were the same rosy color, and all I could think about was whether or not her pussy was the same shade of pink. That was enough. I was driving myself insane.

  When she woke up, we’d get to work, and I’d find a way to deal with this feeling, whatever the fuck it was…

  Before I did something we would both regret.

  Chapter Nine

  Raven

  I was laying in the same bed, but Jake was with me. His shirt was off, the way it was when he ran around during football practice and I stared out at him through the window in the school library, last year, our senior year. He was so beautiful—that copper skin tasted like salt, and he gave me one of those mischievous smiles, a real one, his full lips drawn up at the corners and his eyes warm and soft, the brown and green blending together in a braid around his iris, long lashes fluttering as he gazed down at my naked body. His hand was on my belly. Just the lightest touch… And then it was going lower, and lower, and—

  Fuck! What the hell was that noise?

  “Good dreams?” That was a voice from my nightmares, I thought, then shook my head at myself, sleep still tangling my mind. No… No, that wasn’t the voice of my enemy, the Jacob Warfield that had hunted me, tried to break me. That was… Someone else. The lust-filled dream from before just colored the voice, made it… Husky. Filled with desire.

  And Jake didn’t want me like that, unless you counted my dignity as part of my sexuality… In all honesty? I was definitely leaning towards compartmentalization myself, no matter what my mom’s pop psychology books recommended, because I just could not reconcile my body’s response to his attention with the way he enjoyed humiliating me. It simply did not compute, as Charlie might say.

  I sighed and drifted back to sleep, hoping to be visited by someone—anyone—that didn’t have a personal grudge against me. I’d even settle for one of the few townfolk that hated me based on my last name; at least that qualified as a general grudge against my family, instead of a specific one against me.

  A specific grudge, an individual grudge that I definitely deserved.

  Anyway. Nightmares it might be, but nightmares I understood; I did not understand dreaming about a smiling Jacob Warfield, his copper hand on my pale skin, my name on his lips.

  It didn’t take long for the dark to claim me again.

  Chapter Ten

  Raven

  When I woke up, the room was dim, the sky outside a dull, bleak violet that told me we’d just passed over from twilight into early night. I opened my eyes wide and started to roll over when I felt something firm against my back.

  Sitting upright and twisting in the bed, it took me a minute to register what I was seeing. Jake was sprawled on the mattress next to me, fully clothed, one arm flung over his eyes. He had a double instead of the usual twin so there was plenty of room, but we’d been sandwiched together like puzzle pieces in a jigsaw, his other long arm beneath the pillow I laid on, tucked into his side. He still had shoes on, his feet dangling over the edge of the bed. He must have been completely exhausted, I thought, and then realized if he looked at me right now he would see me looming above him, half naked. I tried to pull the sheet out from under him, but he was too heavy; I thought about yanking it and dumping him off, but didn’t want to deal with whatever twisted punishment he’d come up with afterwards. Instead, I crept down to the end of the bed naked and decided to make my escape. I slipped over the edge without bumping into his feet, snuck over to the wardrobe and dug out a hoodie of his, yanked it over my head and went to slip into my boots. Just as I straightened back up, realizing if I bent over in this thing I would be giving everybody behind me a good look at my ass, I heard the solid thump of two size fourteen sneakers hitting the floor. “Did you finish all that pizza earlier?” When I spun around, my hand instinctively going to my rear and pulling the hoodie down, Jake was doing a lazy full body stretch, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  I’ll be honest: I kind of forgot what I was doing for a minute.

  Jake’s arms were extended all the way out, his long torso taut as he reached for the ceiling, his eyes closing momentarily as a giant yawn escaped from his mouth. And he was… Glorious. Absolutely stunning—I forgot for a minute that I hated him, that I was running out, that he was evil… All I could think, seeing every gorgeous muscle and sinew and tendon flex and contract, was holy shit.

  “You’re staring again,” he said in a far-too satisfied way, but I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “You pretended to be asleep so you could watch me crawl arou
nd naked,” I snapped. “I wouldn’t say I’m staring. I’m glaring.”

  “Semantics,” he said in an off-hand way, then stood up and started walking towards me, his face immediately hidden by the darkness in the room. He was a moving shadow. I backed away, reaching down for my backpack, but he was quicker; he slipped around me and leaned against the door. “You weren’t thinking of leaving, Sineater, were you?” I slung my bag over my shoulder and decided to confront him head-on.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what.”

  For fuck’s sake. “Yes, Master.” I practically snarled the word. “I have to go do normal human things, like eat something besides pizza and make sure my mom knows I’m not dead—” Oops. That was the wrong thing to say.

  “Oh?” He pressed me, seizing on my guilt immediately. “Would she be sad if you didn’t come home?”

  “Come on, don’t—”

  “Don’t. What.” The words were seething. Full of hatred. Because his mom was dead, and he was the one left behind to wonder why his brother wasn’t coming home. I really fucked that one up.

  “Fine,” I snapped, throwing my hands up in the air. “Fine! What shall we do, oh great one? Oh Master of Games most high?”

  “Knock that shit off, for one,” he said in his regular voice, and I rolled my eyes at the ceiling and pressed my palms against my temple, hoping I didn’t get a head-ache from processing so many emotions at once. “We need to do a little re-con, Bird.”

  “What?”

  “You are going to go with me to a party, and we are going to find out who wanted to be Game Master, and who wanted to throttle me for getting rid of Tanglewood.” He was leaning casually against the door again, looking down at me; I could see his expression now that my eyes had adjusted to the light, and there was nothing benevolent about this invitation. Jake pointed towards the wardrobe where I stole his hoodie earlier. “Your costume, Bird.”

  Oh, no. Fucking fantastic. Jake was going for the Asshole of the Year Award; he probably had me dressed up as a bag of dicks, or in a transparent negligee. So imaginative.

  Instead I opened the wardrobe… And saw nothing. Spinning around, I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not going out naked.”

  “No, sadly, you’re not,” he said, and reached over to flip on the lights. “Then again, I might have seen enough of your ass for one day.”

  I turned back to the wardrobe and saw a slinky, skin-tight black dress with a pleated bottom hanging on a hook inside the door. It was so small it looked like a stocking, and I assumed it must stretch because otherwise I’d be able to fit exactly one leg inside. There was a delicate pair of black lace panties with it, and they were wider than the damn dress.

  I spun and stared at him; Jake gave me a smile so sweet it probably tasted like ice cream. “I said I might have seen enough of your ass for one day.”

  It took everything I had not to march out of the room, saying fuck it to the whole thing—to the Society, to the Institute, to him. To the goddamn Vault, to my mother’s promises when I was a little girl that one day I would be able to take care of everything and anything, because we were magic. To the dream of being able to… To fix things.

  That’s what halted me.

  If there was even a shred of a possibility… I sighed and glanced at him over my shoulder. He was still leaning against the door, his expression carefully blank.

  Fuck it, I thought, and pulled his hoodie off and carefully hung it where I found it, not wanting to deal with his temper tantrum if I dared drop it on the floor. I stepped into the slinky underwear and pulled the dress down over my head, wiggling my hips so that it fit, grateful that my bra hadn’t wound up in the garbage with my other clothes. When I turned around, I still felt naked.

  Jake’s eyes flashed in the dim light, and then he removed himself from the door. “Let’s go, Sineater,” he said cheerfully, and I sighed and followed him out.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jake

  Fuck, she looked good in that dress—good enough to eat. Literally. I could spend an hour on that ass alone, before I stuffed my—

  Oh my god, I thought, disgusted with myself. Did I have some kind of fetish for women that I wanted to burn in hell? That might explain this. Because nothing else did.

  “Listen,” I told her, shoving my thoughts away, “we’re going to the Delta party, and there is at least one person there that hates me—”

  “Only one, huh,” she grumbled, and I rolled my eyes at her before continuing.

  “Percy Hatchett is pissed that this girl Bailey has a thing for me; he was also pretty blatant about wanting to be Game Master last year.” Secret fucking society, I said. Oh yeah, she said. It’s all hush hush. And here we were, with all the players beginning to crowd the board, years and years after those whispered conversations, feeling rebellious and thirteen years old and completely smitten. I was becoming more and more convinced that this was just another stupid way for Ashwood to compete with the Ivy League—look! We’re just like them, we even have a—drum roll, please—secret society.

  This might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

  Eh.

  Fuck it. It certainly wasn’t the worst. Or the most boring.

  “Why’d they pick you?”

  “Fuck you, Bird,” I said absently, about to continue, but I froze when she startled me by touching my arm. Hesitant but firm, her little hand rested briefly on my bicep, and the point of contact felt like it was burning me right down to the bone. I recklessly ripped out of her grasp. “What?”

  “Why did they pick you?” She kept her voice low; we were entering the lower floors now, and although we couldn’t see anyone close by voices carried easily in the cavernous hallways. “Why did the Society choose you over Darcy Party or whatever the hell his name is?”

  “Percy Hatchett,” I said, fighting back a grin, “and I have no idea.”

  “None?” She stared at me again—not, as she said earlier, a glare—and I shrugged. “They just sent you a birthday card or whatever and gave you a nice big high five at the first meeting?”

  “No,” I said, facing her. “They didn’t.”

  “I haven’t found anything about the initiation rites for the Third Circle, even though I’m technically a member of the Council,” she said, and I could tell she was thinking out loud rather than speaking to me; she snapped to attention and narrowed her eyes at my face. If I remembered correctly, there were five members of the Council that made up the Third Circle, which was the highest level you could reach in this ridiculous secret society. I was a member of the Second; the Sineater was in the First Circle. Made no sense. Whatever. “Did you even have to let them know you wanted it?”

  “There was no Facebook page, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Then how? And why—why did they choose you, Ja—Master?” She was glaring at me now, alright, and to my eternal surprise she reached out and landed a light punch on my chest. “Think.”

  “If I thought you deserved to know this shit, I would’ve already told you,” I growled, but she just continued looking up at me like I was a goddamn moron. “Bird, this isn’t the place—not that it’s any of your fucking business—” Although it was, technically, because we were supposed to be a team… I’d been relying on Hunter too much for shit she was supposed to do, that we were supposed to be doing together, and outsourcing low level jobs to minions we were supposed to share. But I hadn’t told her any of that, because I’d been too… Busy. “I just want to deal with this thing tonight, okay? And then we can—”

  “How am I supposed to deal with this thing if I don’t know anything?” She crossed her arms, and I recognized her stance from high school. It was a pretty good Fuck You stance.

  “By acting like a beautiful cock-hungry slut and telling him you wish you were his Sineater, Bird,” I snarled, and she huffed out a long, frustrated breath. I swallowed the sour taste in my mouth and leaned casually against the wall, giving her a practiced smirk. “Shouldn�
�t be too hard. You were pretty good at it earlier in the office.”

  She gaped at me, horrified, and I turned and nonchalantly kept walking. It took a minute, but the slam of her boots on the marble floor told me when she approached, and when she passed. Raven didn’t bother looking at me as she shot over her shoulder, “I’ll tell you what I find out later, Master.”

  I considered thinking of a reason to keep her with me, but by then she was already on the Commons, her black hair shining beneath the orange streetlights, her back to me, and that impeccable ass further and further away. Sending her to Delta house alone made me nervous, but hopefully she’d have the common sense god gave a lug nut and hang out in the main room until I got there.

  I waited in the shadow of the columns leading into the entryway of the dorm to follow, giving my hard-on a chance to subside, but no dice.

  Apparently, I wanted to go to hell with her.

  I strode down the steps and whistled as I went; Delta house was a kind of hell, I supposed. Let’s see what happens in the ninth circle, I thought, and started whistling as I texted Hunter, the Society’s phone tucked in my back pocket.

  Chapter Twelve

  Raven

  I have never been inside a frat house before, but I’ve seen plenty in the movies; this one was nicer, if anything, but I think that’s a credit to the general snobbery of Ashwood itself and the Institute specifically, rather than the frat. Delta house—short for something, but I didn’t remember or care about the full name—was probably worth investigating as a hotbed of Society activity. It was certainly the richest frat, as each of the members had a net worth that would make a bank sweat, and that was before they inherited their trust funds. I was a little surprised they didn’t try harder to recruit Jake, given that he seemed like prime Delta material, but I was sure he wanted to focus on Society business first. When we were younger I told him… Ah, didn’t matter now.