by Becker Gray
And my dad?
Dead.
Murdered five years ago, killed by the fucking Morellis—not that we could ever prove it.
He would have been here tonight, I thought bitterly. He never missed anything. He was a busy man, certainly, and not always an easy man to love, but he did love us, and we fucking loved him.
And now he was gone, and sometimes it felt like all my mother wanted was for us to forget our own lives and jump right into forwarding his legacy.
But not that you care.
Not that I expected Mom to show up today anyway. After all, I wasn’t perfect, successful Winston, or forever-a-mess Elaine. And I wasn’t Tinsley, the baby of the family, who’d decided to go to school closer to home in Bishop’s Landing. I made a mental note to myself to check in on her later and make sure she was staying well away from trouble.
So, no Mom and gotta babysit Tinsley. Awesome start to the year.
Even Rhys’s parents were here. And given that Rhys was the devil himself, I was pretty certain he had nothing but disdain for them. It wasn’t a stretch; Rhys disdained everyone. If you weren’t Hellfire, you were on his shit list. Top of that shit list was Serafina van Doren.
New girl’s new best friend.
Stop calling her new girl. You know her name. After all you’ve been low-key stalking her for the past week and a half.
So sue me if I’d made it a point to know everything there was to know about Little Miss Perfect with the perfect parents. I made it my business to know. After all, I was in line to be valedictorian. If she was a threat, I needed to know that.
Also, I was a Constantine. I might not be my tightly wound oldest brother, but control was still in my blood. She was an unknown quantity and I needed to quantify her, that was all.
Oh sure, those are the only reasons.
My phone buzzed, and I scowled down at it as I headed towards the British literature stacks in the back. Clara . . . again.
Clara: Where are you?
Clara: Can you run interference?
Clara: You okay?
I tried not to be annoyed about my wellbeing being last. After all, Clara was Clara. And she had her own cross to bear. If Caroline Constantine’s parenting motto was rub some dirt on it, the Blairs’ motto was Mommy and Daddy know best. Which was why Clara pretended to date me, a Constantine, when she was really going out with a local boy and had been for the past two years. I told her that if the townie knocked her up, she was on her own though. Not because I didn’t care about Clara—she was one of my oldest friends—but because Caroline Constantine would kill us both . . . after the baby was born and she’d already whisked it off to Bishop’s Landing to play with bespoke silver rattles while wearing the same booties as the royal babies did or whatever.
I slid my phone back into my pocket without answering.
I couldn’t be bothered with Clara or her helicopter parents right now. The last thing I wanted to do was have to explain why my mother couldn’t be bothered to visit while I mustered up dry cheek-kisses and hugs to keep up the ruse that Clara and I were truly together.
The library, on the other hand, was safe. It was the first stop on back-to-school night. The headmaster always gave his address here, and Headmaster Briggs had already finished his pointless speech and then whisked the parents off to see the new swimming pool, which left my Pembroke sanctuary completely to me. Which meant I could lose myself in Keats and Longfellow as I waited for the wealthy and elite and the sycophantic to give me my campus back.
Amongst the stacks and stacks of books and the nooks and crannies, I’d learned to find solace. A little peace and quiet where no one would look for me. Sometimes, it was like they all thought I was a jock only and forgot that I was smart. And actually liked to read.
As I strolled along the smooth stone tile at the library, surrounded by the dark wood and stacks of books at the reference section, I inhaled it all. That smell of vellum and leather. It always brought a smile to my face.
Books helped me get out of my own head when my family was being waspish dicks, which was pretty much every damn day. Luckily, aside from Tinsley, I didn’t have to deal with them today.
I passed one of the stacks and paused, then took a quick sniff. What was that smell?
It smelled like something floral. Something sweet. It smelled like her.
The new girl.
Fucking Iris Briggs.
I’d gotten close enough to her that first day to catch a hint of roses and vanilla in the air. It wasn’t overwhelming like some girls who liked to drown themselves in the latest Dior or Lady Gaga, or God help them, eau de RiRi.
No. This was some simple essential oil type of shit. Just enough to linger and tease. Not enough to overpower. But she wasn’t here.
As a matter of fact, I’d barely seen her since that first day. It was almost like she was taking all routes to purposely avoid me.
Why do you care? You have Clara.
Yes, I did have Clara. At least, that’s what everyone believed. We were the golden couple, the ones people wanted to be like. I wondered how people would really feel if they found out just how fucked up Clara and I both were.
Well, they’re never going to figure that out.
When I turned towards the fiction stacks, I froze. There, perched on one of the rolling ladders, was the source of the rose and vanilla. The source of my fucking sleepless nights for the past week. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Her head snapped up and she gasped. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”
Why was she looking at me like that? All fresh faced with her sky-blue eyes and her dusting of freckles on display and looking so clean and fresh and fucking pure. I wanted to make her dirty.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
“I repeat. What the hell are you doing here?”
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s a free country,” she said slowly, as if she was trying to control her temper. “I’m reading. What are you doing in here?”
I scowled. Maybe no one had told her how things worked here. I asked the questions. New girl provided the answers. That’s how it was supposed to go.
“Don’t you know it’s back-to-school night?”
The narrowed eyes turned into a full-fledged scowl. She lifted a brow. “You might remember my father is the headmaster? I don’t need to be there for back-to-school night.”
“Well, then, does your father know you’re here?”
There, in her eyes, that quick shift of her gaze, and then the slamming shut of the book. “Look, this library is enormous. We can both find corners and avoid each other, right?”
“Oh no, if you look, the library is really only big enough for one of us.”
“Well, I’m not leaving. So you can either get used to that idea or find somewhere else to hide.”
“Who said I was hiding?” Why did she see so damn much?
“Come on, everyone else is with their parents, having fun, taking a break from classes, introducing their friends, introducing their teachers. You’re skulking around the library with me. You already know I’m avoiding my parents. Why are you avoiding yours?”
I studied her. She wasn’t beautiful. Not in the ordinary sense of the word. But she was striking, completely engaging. From her bright red hair to those blue eyes. The dusting of freckles on her nose. Her straight, even, white teeth to that complete doll bow of a mouth. A bottom lip plump enough to make me want to bite it.
“You know those pigtail things make you look like you’re twelve.”
She frowned at that. “That the best you got? I asked you a question.”
I shrugged. “You’re in my hiding spot. I’m not really one for the whole parental love fest.” Also . . . neither was my mother.
“I didn’t see your name on it. It’s a library. Everyone is welcome to come and read books.”
What was it about her that irritated me so much? I didn’t like that she was in my space. I didn’t like that she’d taken my sanctuary. I didn’t l
ike that she so casually stood here, wrecking the only peace and quiet I knew I was going to find today.
I didn’t like her, period. “You have ten minutes to find your book and get out.”
She hopped down from the ladder, placing one of the books on the ground on her neat little stack of other books. “Oh, I think I’ll stay.”
“I think you didn’t hear me.”
She tilted her chin up. “Oh, I heard you. I just don’t care. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t seem to find a fuck to give about your opinion.”
I don’t know what possessed me, but I boxed her in, causing her to back up against the books. “You are a mouthy little thing, aren’t you?” I reached out a finger and toyed with a stray tendril of hair. “What I’m curious about is what would make the headmaster’s daughter hide.”
“I don’t think you’d get it if I told you. Besides, you don’t get something for nothing. I tell you, you tell me.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“Oh my god, you’re so full of yourself.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Somehow, fighting with this girl made my skin tingle. I could feel it reverberating from my toes to the top of my head. She was irritating. A complete klutz. Mouthy. I didn’t like that at all.
My dick was eager as ever to disagree with me. He and I were currently not on speaking terms as every time I thought about Iris, he got hard. Like a moron. “I don’t think I like you very much.”
She tilted her chin and smiled up at me, completely unafraid. Her gaze locked on mine, too direct, seeing more than I wanted her to. I planted both hands on either side of her head. “Tell me why you’re hiding in here.”
“Like I said, you first.”
Her tongue peeked out to lick her bottom lip, and I bit back a groan.
What the fuck was that?
I wanted to go and slide up to that flame that sparked around her, like a clueless moth, flapping to my death. And when she licked her lips again, I forgot all about why I shouldn’t do this or how stupid it would be if I did.
Nope. Instead, I just leaned in and kissed her.
She tasted like strawberries. Sweet, with a little chaser of sharp tang. When she parted her lips in a gasp, I deepened the kiss. Licking into her mouth. Desperate to taste what I could before this all ended.
But still, a part of me waited. I waited for her to push me away. I waited for her to tell me to stop. I waited for that signal.
I wanted that signal. I wanted her to set that line I would not cross. But, instead, she let me kiss her.
Even better, or worse, depending on how you looked at it, she kissed me back.
I angled my head with a groan, dipping my knees slightly so I could capture her mouth better. She was so small in comparison to me.
My tongue stroked over hers, darting and playing and sliding. She further tortured me by making this meowing sound at the back of her throat. Did she know that it made me want to take up residence right fucking here and never leave?
The sound was part whimper, part moan, and all mine. It was the kind of kiss that was full of promise. Still, warning bells rang in the back of my mind because I should not be kissing this girl. I did not have time for this shit.
Hell, I didn’t even like this girl.
Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that.
Despite myself telling my brain not to give in to the command, my hands slid to her face, and then in her hair. I fought with the braids until they started to unravel. With the silken weight of her hair flooding over my fingers, I cupped her cheeks and a whimper broke. The clash of our tongues sent a shiver with a lava chaser through my veins. I wanted to consume her. I could kiss her forever.
Before I knew what I was doing, she mewled again and arched her back, bringing her hips slightly forward, seeking . . .
I would like to be able to say that this kiss was nothing, that I didn’t care, that she was only mildly fuckable, and I was bored with no one better to do. But that little motion told me that she wanted me . . . me, not anyone else, me.
It meant I could no longer walk away. I could no longer trust my thoughts and actions, because I slid my hands further into her tresses, tightening my grip, and I shook the leashes of control off, kissing her for everything I was worth, making the kiss count for everything with a girl I didn’t like.
She was just someone I needed in this moment. Just call her a chaser of bad dreams, because with my lips on hers, I didn’t think about the loneliness. I didn’t take into account how isolated I felt most of the day. It didn’t occur to me to feel unwanted, unloved, because in this moment, this girl who I barely knew, was letting me kiss her and she was kissing me back.
When she rolled her hips again, a growl broke the hushed moans.
Was that me?
It must have been, because I pressed her body into the stacks, my hands sliding down to her waist, then her ass. I picked her up, bracing her against the shelves. Squeezing her ass and holding her the way that I needed so her heat gyrated against my dick.
Fuck. Me.
I felt like the top of my head was going to blow off. Like I’d voluntarily tied myself up with a live wire and I couldn’t fucking stop.
What was I doing? I had to think about Clara. This would be bad for the two of us if someone fucking saw.
But Iris wasn’t Clara. And something about that made this far hotter.
A loud bang downstairs startled us apart, just enough that she tore her now-plump and bruised lips from mine, but we still shared breath. The startle wasn’t enough for me to let her go though. I still held the firm cheeks of her ass in my palms, and I couldn’t help another squeeze.
She wasn’t like the other girls wearing thongs and skirts so short a brisk wind would tell me who had a carpet or hardwood floors. It was hotter somehow that my hands were on her ass and I was the only one who knew she was rocking bikinis. My blood ran with lava at the idea that her pussy maintenance practices were somehow still a mystery. I loved being the only one even close to knowing.
Her gaze leveled on me as she dragged in sharp pants. This close I could see just how thick and dark her lashes were. Not from any assistance of monthly trips to the esthetician, but because those were simply her lashes.
Iris was purity personified, and I wanted to be the asshole who made her dirty.
Her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but her eyes were glassy, unfocused. Likely a mirror of my own.
That line I’d been waiting for her to draw, she drew it then with a gentle push at my chest, and I eased her down, but not before rocking her once more against my steel-hard dick.
She needed to know what she’d done to me. She needed to own some of that responsibility. When her feet touched the ground, I pushed away from the devil’s own temptation and stalked from the library as quickly as my legs would carry me.
3
Iris
A week later, and I could still feel Keaton Constantine’s lips against my own.
His kiss had been hungry. Angry. Like he was furious with me for being kissable. Maybe even for being alive.
And his hands—his hands had been everywhere. Taking apart my two braids and sifting through my hair.
Big and rough on my bottom as he lifted me up and rubbed me against him.
And that thing I’d rubbed against . . .
Being the headmaster’s daughter meant that I’d missed out on a lot of the usual boarding school experiences. No fooling around after hours, no parties where I could’ve gotten hot and heavy with a boy. No fumbling sex in a dorm room.
But even I knew what Keaton had been pressing against me in the library. Even I knew that it would be as big and unapologetically male as the rest of him.
Keaton Constantine had been hard for me, the headmaster’s daughter. He’d wanted more than kissing, and I think I would have given it to him. Anything he wanted, because in that moment, the entire world had shrunk to only us, and there were only lips and tongues and t
hat maddening flicker of heat between my legs. Like someone had lit a sparkler low in my belly.
And then he’d left.
I’d pushed him away to catch my breath, and he’d turned and left me there without another word.
What the fuck?
“Earth to Iris,” a concerned British voice said, breaking through my thoughts.
I turned to see Aurora Lincoln-Ward staring at me, a delicate eyebrow arched over an unnerving gold-colored eye.
She was Lennox’s twin sister, and they were alike in several ways: an accent as a gift from their British father, pale, unearthly features, and an inborn arrogance from having a mother who was a minor Liechtensteiner princess—which made them royalty, too.
Like Lennox, she had bright gold eyes. Like a bird of prey. Or a lioness. Eyes she set off to her advantage by dying her white-blond hair a shade of inky, midnight black.
But unlike her twin, Aurora adored Sloane.
Luckily for me, she was also unlike Lennox in that she hated the Hellfire Club and every single boy in it. So when she’d learned that I’d accidentally pissed them off on my first day, Aurora had sworn me her friendship and protection, just as Sloane and Serafina had.
It was a good feeling. I’d never really had close friends before, not from school at least, and I needed them now more than ever.
I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat, feeling a little squirmy from the memory of Keaton’s kiss. “Yeah?”
“I was asking you what this was all about,” Aurora said, tugging at a letter sticking out of my notebook. She kept her voice down because our photography seminar had technically started, but the teacher was still at the front fiddling with her laptop and trying to get today’s presentation on the screen. “Why is it written in French?”
My face heated—half excitement, half nervousness. “I applied to the Sorbonne for college, and even though I’m still waiting for a formal acceptance letter, they invited me to apply for a pre-degree program there. It starts in November and goes until July, and I’d get to work with the professors and professional photographers in Paris . . . It would mean getting a head start on the other students. Maybe even on my career.”