I don’t have to hide it anymore.
I wrap my body in a towel and step out of the bathroom.
***
We arrive at Berlin Central Station with just over fifteen minutes to spare.
I drag my rolling suitcase behind me with my ticket and my copy of our itinerary clenched in my free hand. “Looks like our compartment has four seats inside,” I note.
“Oh, yeah?” Mandy asks, glancing up from her phone as we walk across the station towards our train.
I grin. “This means we might have two strangers to cozy up to for the entire six-hour trip.” I say it with a bit more excitement than I intended and Mandy regards me with a knowing glance.
“Strangers, eh?” she says. “And are these strangers tall, dark, and handsome?”
“They are in my head.”
“You waste no time, do you, Piper?” she laughs.
“I’m just eager to travel the world and meet new people, Mandy,” I say with a grin. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re implying.”
“I’m implying…” she moves her brown hair to one side of her neck as she fans herself off with her phone, “that this country might not be the only thing in heat right now.”
I laugh and give her a quick shove as our train comes into view. “I told you not to pack a bunch of sweaters,” I tell her.
“I thought Europe was supposed to be dreary and cold.”
“I don’t think anywhere in the northern hemisphere is dreary and cold in August, Mandy.”
“Well, I’m starting a revolution then. Germans are known for that, right?”
I shake my head. “Not the good kind.”
She shrugs and goes back to scrolling through her phone. We wait patiently in line as other passengers board the train ahead of us. My eyes scan the people and buildings around me, taking in one last dose of Berlin before the train takes me someplace new. I fill my lungs with the air around me and listen to all the different voices and dialects. It’s oddly familiar, but insanely different than the echoing halls of Belle Academy.
We step inside and I check our tickets one last time to verify the compartment number.
“It should be just down here,” I tell Mandy. My heart races with each step I take, knowing that every breath I take leads to a new experience. A new face. A new emotion. A new life. Everything around me wreaks of the unknown and all my senses buzz with excitement.
I grip the handle to the compartment and pull it open.
Oh, hell no.
Hell. No.
Chapter 6
Kai
“What the hell are you doing here?” she shouts at me. I’ve seen Angry Piper before, but I have never in my life seen her this pissed off. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bring me great pleasure watching her nostrils flare out like they are now.
She stands with her little fingers gripped on the compartment door handle. Her hair hangs down over her shoulders, clean and straight, blending in with her pitch black shirt. But I really notice her eyes first. Piper has never been known to wear make-up outside of her own natural shades, but right now, she wears thick, black eyeliner with smoky-gray lids. It’s a new look, and not a bad one for her either.
I stand up from my seat with enthusiasm. “You made this trip sound so wonderful we thought it’d be fun to tag along. Isn’t that right, Shawn?”
Her eyes dart downward at him in his seat, as if she never even noticed the second person in the room.
“Piper— move. Who is it?” Mandy Black squirms underneath Piper’s arm and spills into the small compartment. When she sees me and Shawn, her jaw drops with a precious smile. “Holy shit, guys. What’s up?”
“Don’t what’s up them, Mandy. They aren’t supposed to be here —” She turns back to me. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“It’s Europe Party Town, population we,” Shawn says. He blows a thick bubble with his pink bubblegum until it pops back against his face.
“It was all your dad’s idea,” I say.
“Excuse me?” she asks, her voice falling low.
“Well, after dinner the other night, he and I talked a little more about his concerns for your safety…” She stares at me like an angry viper, eager to rip my eyes out. “And long story short, we decided to surprise you!”
“Surprise!” Shawn adds.
Mandy steps towards me and sits down in the seat across from Shawn. “Sounds good to me.”
“That’s the spirit, Mandy!” I raise a hand and she high fives me. When I look back at Piper, I notice she’s staring her friend down, but my girl Mandy gives zero fucks in return. “Come on in, Pipes. You’re blocking the corridor.”
She refuses to budge. “How did you know we’d be here?” she asks.
It’s an obvious solution, one that I know she’s clever enough to figure out herself, but I answer her anyway. “Your dad gave me your itinerary.” I bend over and grab it from my bag. It’s a series of xeroxed pages stapled together haphazardly — because fuck her cutesy organization system. I drift towards her. “I know exactly where you’ll be everyday for the next five days. Shawn and I have already booked the adjacent rooms in all your hotels, so we can have sleepovers.” I smile a little wider, baring my teeth as I stare down at her.
She’s fuming. Really fuming. I feel my cock twitch in triumph, but the game isn’t over yet.
I still have five days to finish this.
Belle Academy Female #13. Piper Lynch.
It’s your turn.
***
The city of Berlin drifts away on the horizon behind us and soon, the window frames the lush and green German countryside for us. Piper sits in the seat across from me in the compartment with her head down and her itinerary in her hands. I catch the occasional angry glance in my direction, but it never lasts more than a second — not nearly long enough for me to flash her a cocky smile or a wink as I’d like to.
Shawn sits beside me with a big grin on his face as he and Mandy chat casually with each other. When I pitched this trip to him, he immediately agreed to it — knowing full well that it could end with him losing our bet. Coming on this trip meant I would be preoccupied with Piper while he kept Mandy Black company. He’s had a thing for Mandy for as long as I’ve known him. I thought sleeping with her as part of our bet would have torn our friendship a new one, but he couldn’t care less as long as I filled his head full of information about how she likes it. (Rough, in case you’re wondering. She likes it rough.)
“Mandy, how about you and me go check out the bar car?” Shawn says as he stands up and stretches his legs.
“Sure,” Mandy says. She gets up and I notice Piper shooting her a glare, but Mandy counters with a passive shrug.
“Drinking age is eighteen in Germany, right?” Shawn muses. He passes me a not-so-subtle wink as the two of them slide the door closed, leaving Piper and me alone with each other at last.
I look across the compartment at her. She’s ignoring me, of course. Her smoky eyes hang low, studying the printed map lying on her thighs. She’s got the entire trip marked out on it. A red line begins in Berlin and travels south to Italy, then back north to France and… England? I crane my neck and get a better angle to confirm it.
“You know, Piper,” I begin, clearing my throat. “I don’t think dear old Daddy will appreciate you straying off your itinerary—”
She grips the paper with sharp nails and slams the clear plastic cover down. “Go away, Kai,” she snaps as she pulls a German fashion magazine from her bag and whips it open to pretend to read it.
Fuck.
If I intend on sealing the deal during this trip, I’m going to have to warm her up a bit. She’s already pissed off with me, so I’ll have to be stealthy about it.
“Hey, Pipes,” I say.
“What?” she grits through her teeth.
“Has anyone ever told you how pretty you look when you’re angry?” I ask.
“All the time.” She doesn’t even glance up from he
r magazine.
“I figured, but I thought I’d say it just in case…” I keep my eyes on her, hoping to catch the sudden sight of chinking armor, but she’s giving me nothing to work with. “Looking forward to Harvard next week?” I ask.
“No.”
“No?” I raise my eyebrow, genuinely surprised by her response. “I thought you lived for that kind of thing.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Okay then…” She still won’t look up. I’m hit with disappointment as I long for one of our long-winded verbal sparing matches. I hate Monosyllabic Piper. “I have one more question,” I say, feeling the dull sting of desperation, “and I want you to be honest with me. How many times have you thought about me naked?”
And just like that, she finally looks up at me. “Seriously?”
“Fifty? Sixty?” I grin. “You’re thinking about me right now, aren’t you?”
“No,” she answers.
“Sure you are. It’s simple psychology. I tell you not to think about green elephants and suddenly, you’re thinking about green elephants. Now, Piper, I know it’s difficult for you, but please… don’t think about me naked right now.” I lock our eyes and give her a devious smile.
It’s the ultimate Hail Mary pass of getting inside Piper Lynch’s white cotton panties. I’d relied on subtle gestures and kind words up until now, but maybe a more straight forward approach is necessary to thin the ice.
She keeps her eyes trained on me and lets the magazine fall to Mandy’s empty seat on her left. “All right, Kai,” she hums between her lips. “I am thinking about you naked right now.” She closes her eyes and my briefs feel a little tighter. “I’m imagining your strong chest. Your thick, manly arms. Your chiseled, washboard abs…” I bite my inner cheek as I watch the sultry movement of her red lips. “All the way down to your—” her faces falls and her eyes flutter open — “Oh.”
I sit back. “Oh?”
“It’s a little small.”
“I can assure you that my dick has received the most generous of accolades,” I argue, playing off her reaction. “It’s like reading reviews for that new Mad Max movie.”
“It’s underwhelming and tries too hard?”
I flinch at the quickness of her wit, stunningly mesmerized by her all over again. It’s a side of her I’ve never seen before. The Sexy and Playful Piper Lynch. “You bite your tongue,” I say.
“I’m just passing on what I’ve heard, Kai,” she says. “Apparently, your size isn’t as impressive as your fan club leads you to believe.”
“Who told you this?” I inquire. “I want names.”
She smirks. “Fat chance.”
“Was it Mandy? Judy Stamper? Delilah Monroe?” (Belle Academy Females #22 and #17, respectively.)
“Your mother.”
My jaw drops. “I am speechless… and slightly confused.”
“Good.” She snatches the magazine back off the seat next to her. “Maybe I can finally get some peace and quiet in here.”
Piper fucking Lynch. Where has this side of you been all my life? My heart races like never before. “I would be happy to clear up any confusion in this area for you, if you’d like,” I say, poking her a little further.
“No, thank you.” She reaches up her neck and scratches an inch on the back of her head. Her fingers push her raven black hair behind her shoulder, revealing a dark red and purple mark along the side of her neck.
“Whoa—” I lean forward. Her eyes flick back at me and she quickly fluffs her long hair back into place to cover it up. “Wait — what is that?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she answers.
I don’t like her eagerness in concealing it. I’ve played more than enough contact sports to know what she’s trying to hide. “That’s not nothing, Piper. You didn’t have it the other night. Who did that to you?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “It’s nothing, Kai.”
Perhaps coming along for her safety wasn’t the worst idea in the world after all. “Piper...” I stand up and stare down at her.
“What?” she glares up at me with her little blue daggers.
I’m not about to sit here and let her lie to me about this. I reach out and brush her hair aside again. She withdraws from my touch, but I’ve got her trapped between myself and the seat. I fish my fingers beneath the neck of her shirt and I see the bruise, purple and spotted blue, traveling down to her collar bone.
“Excuse you!” She grips my hand and forces me away.
“How did that happen, Piper?” I ask, seething.
“None of your business, Kai.”
I stay in place above her. “How did that happen, Piper?” I ask her again.
She heaves an angry breath. “It happened during sex, Kai.”
I pause. “What?”
“There,” she says, staring up at me with spite in her eyes. “Now you know. Your stepsister is a total nympho. Happy?”
My eyebrow twitches along with my cock. “Kind of.”
She sighs and raises her magazine again. Her eyes scan another page, obviously pretending to ignore me.
Piper fucking Lynch. I was wrong about her this whole time. Here I was, laughing at Shawn for even suggesting that she’s anything more than an innocent virgin…
I sit back down across from her, feeling the sudden sting of rejection at the very idea that someone else has gotten inside of her first. “So, you like it rough, huh?” I say. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I like it a lot of different ways,” she says, her eyes locked on the foreign written word in front of her.
I shake my head. Piper speaks some pretty decent French, but she doesn’t understand a word of German — or so I believe. What else don’t I know about her? What else has she hidden from me since we were kids? She’s not even trying to hide the bruise anymore. It’s prominently on display, her hair pushed back behind her neck where I left it. “You shouldn’t let guys do that to you,” I say.
She breaks her silence with a scoff. “Excuse me?”
“You could get hurt.”
“If a man goes too far, I say something,” she says. “If he continues, I leave. It’s all very simple.”
The experience in her words gives me chills. “Still…”
She looks over at me with an angry twitch. “I’m not going to change just because it makes you feel a little uncomfortable.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I explain. “I’m just suggesting you be careful.”
“I am careful.”
My eyes drop to her neck again. I want to say something more about the giant bruise creeping up towards her fucking face, but I keep quiet. I try to imagine what kind of man caused it, but I push that thought away faster than it formed. The idea of her with someone else, after obsessing about her for so long, hurts in ways I don’t expect.
Piper quickly exhales and lets the magazine slip from her hand. “You’re being a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”
“Over what?” I ask quickly.
“Oh, please...” She raises an eyebrow. “I know all about your little bet with Shawn, Kai.”
My heart sinks, but I don’t want her to see that. “I didn’t strangle the girls in our class, Piper,” I argue.
“No, you just collected and traded them like baseball cards,” she bites. “But you’re wasting your time here, Kai. You’ll never get a full set.”
I stare back at her. Sexy and Playful Piper is gone. This is Evil and Vindictive Piper. The more familiar Piper. “You sound awfully confident about that,” I smirk.
“We both know there’s only one reason why you came on this trip and it sure as hell has nothing to do with my safety,” she says, her voice unwavering. “Let me be crystal clear about it right now. It’s not going to happen.”
“You say no an awful lot for a self-proclaimed nympho.”
“Even in Germany, Kai.” Her lips curl. “Nein means nein.”
“And for the record, your Daddy didn’t send me here to k
eep you safe,” I blurt.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, he just didn’t want his little slut of a daughter getting passed around the entirety of Eastern Europe.” She stares back at me with a bright blue fire and I know the instant the words leave my lips that I’ve gone too far. I choke on my tongue. “That didn’t come out right—”
“Oh, yes. Please tell me how that was supposed to come out,” she says with her voice laced with ice.
“Piper…” A wave of nausea strikes me cold.
“You know what… never mind,” she says. “I’m bored.” She stands up and pulls the compartment door open.
I whisper her name again, but my voice is too low for her to hear it before she slams the door closed. Not that she would have stopped to listen to what I have to say anyway.
Fuuuuck.
Chapter 7
Piper
“Come on, Piper. It’s not that bad.”
I stare at Mandy across the tiny table of the diner car. “Yes, it is that bad. I came on this trip to get away from Belle Academy and Kai fucking Casablancas—”
“Calm down,” she warns softly as my voice gets a little too loud. Her eyes trace a halo around the room, reminding me of the other passengers scattered throughout the car.
I take a deep breath to try and relax myself, but it does very little calm my nerves. “I just can’t win with him…”
“What is it with everything between you two being some kind of competition?” she asks. “Why can’t you two just be?”
I lay my head down on the table and feel to the womb-like rocking of the train car shifting back and forth along the tracks. Why can’t Kai and I just be? I’ve asked myself the same question a million times before. Sometimes, for a brief second, I think it’s possible and then he opens his mouth and I’m reminded once again why we can never just be.
UNTOUCHED (Midwest Alphas) (Book 1) Page 17