project

by Torrance, Asa

  “My sister,” I say, deciding to beat him to the punch. But even the simple admission of it feels like a blow, wrapping itself around my heart like barbed wire until I can hardly breathe. I turn around as anger surges through my every nerve, not wanting anyone to see me like this, let alone one of my enemies.

  I don’t say anything else before I begin walking away. Jessa’s death makes me vulnerable in a way I don’t want to be. If I don’t want it weaponized against me like an injected venom, I’m going to have to strike first. I know the gangs are more than ready for a battle, but I can do them one better.

  I’ll give them a war.

  14

  It’s a sunny afternoon as I walk into my neighborhood after being dropped off by the bus. The ocean nearby scents the air with the smell of saltwater, and I take big, cleansing inhalations of breath.

  For a second, things start to feel normal again. I can forget everything I want to forget, and keep the parts I want to keep. I can forget Damien living at my house, forget the ways he’s promised to destroy me, forget the reason I’ve made myself a willing participant in his game of cat and mouse.

  The things I choose to keep are enough to make me blush, walking home alone, the veil of normalcy I’ve been constantly trying to impress on other people since Jessa died pulled up for just a second. For as long as I live, I never want to forget the way Damien’s hands feel against my body, the way he can light me up inside with a passing palm or sinfully probing fingertips.

  As much as I don’t want to admit it, being with him makes me feel alive. The relationship we’ve managed to forge since he’s been back may be one based in fear, but that was enough to stir up other feelings. I’m already thinking about him all the time, but it’s no longer in the context of wondering what he’s going to do next to make me miserable. He’s veered from that path, and now the coin toss lies between pleasure and pain.

  The way I’m thinking about him is dangerous. I’m using the history we have with each other as a reason to get attached. If anyone else had pulled the shit he has in the past few weeks, I would have seriously called the cops by now.

  Only, no one else has the leverage on me he does.

  As many times as I’ve tried to defend myself, I know it’s indefensible. And so the game continues.

  My eyes flutter closed as I hear an engine roaring down the street behind me, heading in my direction. Only Damien’s car makes that particular noise, one I’ve committed to memory. I should be jumping into the bushes by now, trying to evade him, trying to run.

  Instead, my feet stay firmly planted like they’re stuck in glue.

  There’s no escaping someone you live with anyway.

  Damien’s green Falcon pulls alongside me, the brakes coming to a screeching halt that makes me cringe.

  I turn and make eye contact with him for the first time since this morning. The last time he looked at me was in the bathroom, after I had just had his dick pressed firmly into the back of my throat. He drove me to school after that, giving me the cold shoulder the entire time before dropping me off at the stairs and peeling off.

  But now he’s willing to look me in the eye again, and there’s almost a hungry quality to his stare. “Get in,” he tells me.

  For someone who wants nothing to do with me at school unless it’s to humiliate me, he sure does want a lot of my time outside of it. I narrow my eyes at him. “We’re literally a block away from the house.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have time to waste,” he tells me. “And with the way you walk, one block could take all day.”

  I frown, but get into the car anyway, surprised at how at home I feel. If being with Damien is a prison, it’s a cell I’m anxious to get back inside.

  “So,” I say playfully. “Where are we going?”

  He turns and looks at me in the passenger’s seat and it’s the first time I spot the bruise spreading across his right cheek.

  “No more questions,” he tells me, hitting the gas to make my body smack against the seat behind me.

  “Not even about why we’re in such a rush?” I utter, but the fear somehow feels exhilarating.

  “Because I’ve got somewhere to be,” he tells me. “And you’re coming with me. Plus, I don’t want your mom seeing me like this. She’ll ask too many questions.”

  “So you admit something is wrong then?” I say.

  “I never denied it,” he counters. “I just said no more questions.”

  I cross my arms, unable to keep myself from pouting at him from the passenger’s seat. “Well, that bruise on your face definitely wasn’t there this morning.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” he murmurs.

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  Remind me again why I’m obsessed with this asshole?

  Damien cocks an eyebrow at me and gives me a squinty little grin worthy of all my swooning. God damn him. “I got my face busted at the cemetery,” he tells me casually.

  “The cemetery?” I repeat breathlessly. “What were you doing there?”

  “What do you think?”

  The car slides into the driveway of my house before I even realize we’re home. I’m so distracted by the unanswered questions I have. Then again, Damien scrapping at a graveyard is a purely Damien move, so drenched in novelty and random chaos it’s not even surprising.

  He cuts the engine and looks at me. “Go get dressed.”

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I shoot back, knowing my hesitancy to immediately do what he says is a way to get the better of him, even if it’s only temporary.

  His eyes pass over me, skimming over my bare legs and stopping at the hem of my skirt resting in my lap. It feels like I start to hold my breath as I wait for him to touch me, to slide one teasing palm across the top of my thigh to make me shiver.

  But he doesn’t, because withholding a touch I’m expecting is just another power play. I grit my teeth.

  “I’m not taking you somewhere in your fucking school uniform, Windy. Now hurry up.”

  He gets out of the car, leaving me to watch him walk around the front of it and head towards the house. I jump out, slamming the door shut behind me as I trot after him like his own personal lapdog. “Well, can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

  Damien stops at the front door, and I nearly slam into him. “You’re hopeless, you know that?” he asks, staring down at me.

  “I just want to dress appropriately,” I tell him, twisting my lips in the face of his piercing gaze. The way he’s looking at me makes me want to simultaneously look away and fall deep into his stare. His eyes look like they could preserve me in amber, a fate I feel like I’d be all too willing to accept if it meant he was the one keeping me forever.

  “Dress inappropriately, Wind,” he tells me in a low voice, one that’s meant for my ears only.

  I raise an eyebrow, secretly intrigued. “Why, so you can parade me around like your little plaything?”

  “Exactly,” he replies, pressing a palm into the wall behind my head and trapping me with his arm. “I want everyone who sees you tonight to want to fuck you.” He leans in towards me. “And I want to walk around knowing I’m the only one who can.”

  I frown, mouth twisting again, an obvious limbo between a smile and a grimace. His eyes trail down to my dancing lips with a satisfied look before he turns away and unlocks the door.

  I can’t believe Mom gave him his own key, I think begrudgingly as I follow him inside. He strides towards the kitchen, probably to get a drink of Gatorade or whatever it is testosterone-filled boys do after they get into a fight.

  Only he’s not a boy anymore, and he may look like a man but that doesn’t feel right either.

  To me, Damien Black is pure demon. There’s no other way I’d be so willing to do everything he says. It may be the threat of blackmail, but other times it just feels like being under a spell. He can compel me with the simplest hazel-eyed stare, or one word growled from full
lips I ache to kiss again every time it happens.

  I slam my door shut behind me, cursing the lack of a lock the way I never have before. Worrying about privacy with my mother has never been a thing, but with Damien, it’s a whole other bag of rocks.

  Whatever. If he wants to walk in on me as I delve through my wardrobe looking for something to wear, so be it. It’s not like I’ll be pulling off some sort of secret alchemy. There’s no science to dressing the way he’s asked me to dress, which is undoubtedly like the Snake Eyes’ harem girls at school.

  Short skirts. Tits out. And don’t forget the teasing smiles, lips ready and willing for dick.

  A sigh escapes my lips. I know I shouldn’t think that way. Who gives a shit how some girls choose to get by at our fucked up school? Maybe if I had the confidence they have, it wouldn’t have taken me eighteen years to have my first kiss.

  Not that things like that even matter in the real world.

  Then again, I know I’m a walking contradiction. I’ve spent all this time writing hallmarks like that as trivial, while at the same time supposedly saving myself for the one person who would make them special.

  But Damien took them from me, my first kiss, my first orgasm at someone else’s touch, hell, even the first time I sucked a dick.

  Guess I’m not so different from the Snake Eyes girls after all.

  I didn’t fight him when he did any one of those things, and it wasn’t just mere compliance. I spent years wanting him, and that want is going to be a hard weed to uproot from the soil of my mind.

  I throw open the folding accordion-style doors of my closet, surveying the clothes inside. The only problem with being popularity challenged the way I have been my entire life is my complete lack of clothes good for going out.

  My dream of dressing appropriately? What a joke.

  Nothing I own screams Snake Eyes girl. Everything I own screams eclectic weirdo who spends ninety-five percent of my time in a uniform. I reach out, grabbing a shimmying sequin skirt and holding it up to my waist.

  Fuck, even my uniform skirt is shorter than this.

  Hurry up, Damien’s words ring out in my head. If I didn’t have that parameter, this could take all day. I’d go through all my clothing, getting more and more frustrated at the lack of promiscuous hemlines until I went crazy.

  And lately, I’ve already been going crazy enough.

  With literally no time to second guess, I reach forward, grabbing a black sundress with spaghetti straps and a runched back and pulling it off the hanger.

  When in doubt, wear black. Especially in Diablo Beach.

  Disrobing from my school uniform, I pull the dress over my head, smoothing it over my body and checking out my reflection in the mirror.

  The bodice sticks to me like a second skin, but I frown at the lines of my full-coverage bra sticking out just past the fabric of the dress. In a few quick movements, I reach behind me, unfastening my bra and sliding it down my arms. Pulling the dress back up, I survey my newly freed bustline, my breasts curving just above the thin black fabric.

  This is going to have to do.

  I slide on a pair of white Converse before running my fingers through the natural waves of my hair. With no time to straighten this morning, I’m not used to the way my hair dances and tangles with itself during the day. But paired with the sundress, my crazy loose curls somehow fit.

  I throw open my door, gasping at the sight of Damien standing right behind it like the devil incarnate. He looks ridiculously good, a fucked up rebel without a cause, dark hair combed up and back in a cresting wave and plain white T-shirt sticking to the swell of hard muscle underneath. Leaning against my doorframe with a finger clipped casually into the front pocket of his jeans, his eyes tick up to my face in a way that makes me blush.

  “Um…” I say stupidly, but my mind won’t function. I want to ask him how long he’s been standing there, but as he raises to his full height again and towers over me with an appraising look, the question goes out the window.

  He slides a finger underneath the thin strap holding up one side of my dress and gives it pull, lifting one of my breasts and letting it fall again with a quivering shake. I bat his hand away and the exchange feels almost playful, smirks we’re all too willing to let sink away curving both of our lips for just a split second.

  “I thought we were in a hurry,” I say.

  Damien gives a nod, his eyes still anchored in my cleavage before he pulls his gaze up to my face. “Grab a jacket,” he tells me.

  I cross my arms, unintentionally thrusting my boobs into greater view. I know we’re on the verge of winter, but him telling me to cover up hits different than him just telling me how to dress. “Why?”

  His eyes tick over in annoyance at my challenge. He reaches out, grabbing a worn-in denim jacket from a hook on the back of my door and thrusting it at me. I take it from him reluctantly and slide it on. Being just slightly less exposed does feel a little more like me. “Don’t worry,” he tells me sarcastically. “People will still be able to see your tits.”

  I glare at him. “You still haven’t told me why.”

  “Because,” he murmurs, letting the grin slip onto his face again like a passing storm. “It gets cold at the beach.”

  15

  The sun sets early now, and by the time we make it down to the coastline, it’s well past sunset. There’s only the smallest tinge of blue and orange left on the horizon, the rest of the sky giving way to an inky black night.

  Perfect for my mood, and a perfect reflection of the intentions I have for Windy.

  She trails behind me as we travel down the crumbling hills of sandstones, on our way toward the DBB, the Diablo Beach boardwalk. Or rather, under it.

  I turn around and latch onto her hand, dragging her forward to keep up with me. “Hey!” She gives a little yelp as her feet tumble through the sand.

  “Come on, Wind. At least act like you want to be here.”

  “And what if I don’t want to be here?” she counters, fingers wrapping around my hand in a way that feels good. For a second, it throws my frustrations with her straight out the window.

  “That’s where the acting comes in,” I tell her. “Right now, you’re acting like the world’s best study buddy.”

  She scowls at me, a response I knew was coming, but one that thrills me all the same. I love making her pouty lips curve in any direction, but smiles are so hard to come by I’ve started craving the frowns.

  I slow our pace until our feet come to a standstill in the sand. “Come on,” I say. “I know there’s a bad girl somewhere under there. I just saw her this morning.” I pull her towards me. “And last night.”

  She lets her hand rest against my chest but she doesn’t push away. “I’m more than just your little moaning whore, you know,” she tells me, but her eyes stay locked on mine, daring me not to hear the need in her voice.

  I grin, feeling the head of my cock twitch towards her, envying the places my fingers have already been. But there’s more at hand right now than just her and me. I slide a thumb down her cheek, tilting her head up to look at me. “Just project some confidence. This gang, they’ll eat you alive if you don’t.”

  Windy narrows her eyes at me, looking momentarily stung. “And you’d let them?”

  “If I tell you I’ll protect you, it won’t give you any reason to change,” I reply, knowing damn well I’ll protect her regardless. I didn’t lose the leverage I had with Sylas Andreas’s Cadillac for nothing. I wasn’t going to pay for her just to let the rest of the Snake Eyes tear her apart.

  That job is exclusive to me.

  I use her silence to break our stare, letting her mill over my words as I pull her forward again. I can see shadows illuminated by a fire built into the rocks underneath the boardwalk. This is the gathering place.

  Music blasts from speakers that have been expertly placed in the best way to exploit the DBB’s natural acoustics. Walking underneath
its dark canopy is like entering another world. The ocean stirs around cement pillars and creeps against the sand, threatening to grab us and sink us into its depths.

  “What do you say, boys?” I ask jovially as I clap hands with Ace, who’s already got a bikini-clad girl hanging off his arm despite the chilly temperatures. Never far behind, Fabian gives me a nod. “Is it a full moon tonight?”

  “I’d say we still have a few more hours until the water makes its way up to the rocks,” Ace tells me. He eyes Windy standing behind me with a curious look, but he knows better than to not acknowledge someone I’ve brought with me. “M’lady.”

  I pull her forward, wrapping my arm around her waist to press her body against mine. “Go get us a drink,” I tell her, able to feel the way she’s clammed up around the rest of the gang. I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling generous enough to give her an out, but I can tell she needs it. Besides, I don’t need her cramping my style while I talk business.

  “Yeah, babe,” Ace murmurs at the girl he’s with, and I bet he doesn’t even know her name. “Why don’t you lead the way?”

  She gives a shrug and nods towards Windy, the two of them taking off with as much chemistry as chained up prisoners.

  Ace gives me a look as Fabian steps forward. “Christ, dude,” he says, eyes examining my face. “What happened to you?”

  “Talk about it later,” I say, brushing off his suspicious look with a pointed look of my own. “Right now, I just want to get as fucked up as possible.”

  “You’ve come to the right place then, amigo,” Ace says with an amicable smile, the one that melts girl’s panties off when used in conjunction with a game-winning throw. Having Ace as a member of the Snake Eyes is a contradiction to everything I thought the gang was before I joined it. Rude, crass, fucking deranged. The gun-obsessed fiends who never let their tag dry from the wall before painting another one.

  Now I know things are more varied than they seemed before.