Playboy Princes: Royals of Arbon Academy

by Eve, Jaymin

  “They locked me in a closet for three days, and I almost died.” I said it succinctly, like it was no big deal. But it was a big deal. I’d been struggling with myself ever since. And no matter how much therapy or training I’d been through, nothing ever let me forget the hunger and thirst. Fuck, the thirst had been the worst.

  “I remember my throat closing over,” I whispered. “Or that’s how it felt to me because my tongue was so thick I couldn't swallow. I couldn’t breathe. I was literally dying when they finally opened the door and dragged my body out.”

  His fists tightened further, veins standing out, but his expression remained neutral. It was only because I was trained to notice minute movements of the body that I even saw his hands shift. I was dying to know what he was thinking, but I had to get this story out first.

  “After that, it was like the monster in them had been freed. I was punished in so many ways I couldn’t keep track. But the closet, that tiny fucking closet was the worst. So many times I lay there in my own piss because it wasn’t large enough for me to go anywhere except where I sat. So many times I wondered if this was my last moment on Earth and if that would really be so bad. I was a fucking child, and I was already done with the world.”

  Tears tracked down my cheeks silently. Tracks of my pain. I allowed myself a second to feel them, and then I shut it down because I was not that person any longer.

  “How long were you with them?”

  “Too fucking long.”

  He shifted a little closer to me; I could feel the heat of his body, almost like the fire had somehow been lit.

  “Did you kill them?”

  I smirked for the first time since starting my tale. “Let’s just say they’re not around any longer to torture little kids.”

  I hadn’t been the one to kill them, but I’d set the situation up so they would be in the wrong place at the right time.

  Sensei had punished me for letting my emotions get the better of me.

  But it had been worth it.

  Brandon and Claudette—and possibly Alex—were going to face the same fate because apparently I couldn’t be the bigger person.

  Fuck that.

  Chapter 6

  After Rafe and I left his "special place," he waited outside of my room while I changed into a new uniform. The scratch on my shoulder only needed a patch and I was good to go, so we headed back to school. Near the dining room I started to drag my heels. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was be in the same room as Alex, where he’d expect me to play my part.

  I couldn't do it. Not before speaking to my friends and explaining that I hadn't just suffered some kind of mental break... Not before I spoke with Jordan.

  "Hey." I placed a hand on Rafe's forearm, halting him before we turned into the hallway that would take us straight to the breakfast room. He looked down at my hand on his bare skin—because he'd rolled his shirtsleeves up in that devastatingly sexy bad boy way—then gave me a brow raise. "About earlier. What you saw..." I trailed off as shame and guilt rushed through me. Not that I owed Rafe fucking anything, but it was how I felt nonetheless.

  I expected some kind of scathing insult from him, something about how weak I was to "fall" for Alex's lies again.

  That's not what I got.

  "It was a smart move," the grumpy royal commented, his lips tight with displeasure or disgust or something. "We didn't get much of a chance to strategize, but I probably would have suggested the same thing. Play along until we understand this situation better. Who knows what Alex would do if you tried to publicly end things with him?" He frowned, his gaze unfocused while he thought that out.

  I swallowed heavily, fear coursing through me. My friends—and Rafe—had always suspected Alex was behind Jasmine's death. And now I knew he was. Or at least he’d had a hand in it all.

  "He knows I know," I admitted in a small voice, feeling like the biggest moron on the face of the planet. Of course I should have talked out a plan with the other royals. What kind of idiot—

  The kind who had never known anyone she could rely on. That was what kind.

  Rafe said nothing, but the slight narrowing of his eyes allowed me to fill in the blanks.

  "Anyway," I hurried on, not wanting to dwell on my stupidity, "he told me that I need to keep dating him, publicly keep up the pretense or I'll get killed like Jasmine. Or worse."

  Rafe's brows shot up. "What's worse?"

  I shuddered. "When I overheard him and Claudette, she said something about Siberia and... forced IVF?"

  His eyes sparked like a tropical storm, and his fists clenched into tight balls at his sides. "Leave it to me," he said, his voice like rolling thunder. "I'll get more information. But I find Alex's reaction interesting."

  I snorted. "Oh? How so?"

  Rafe gave a small shrug. "It almost sounds like he's trying to protect you from someone else. Which makes me wonder just how deep this shit goes."

  I blanched, but nodded. He was absolutely right.

  His palm reader lit up and buzzed, and he glanced down at it with a frown. "I have to go."

  That was it. Just... I have to go.

  "Wait!" I blurted out as he started to stride away from me. "What am I supposed to do now?"

  He barely paused a second as he responded. "Exactly what you've been doing all along, Violence. Keep your enemies close."

  I flipped off his retreating back. I couldn't help myself.

  My own palm reader buzzed, and I clicked open the message that I knew would be from my best girl friend.

  Mattie: you okay? just saw Alex at breakfast and he looked shockingly alive.

  I sighed, dreading her reaction to this change of plans. Not that I really had a "plan" to start with, but I would bet money on Mattie having some loud, shouty things to say about me continuing to date Alex. Even if it was all a farce.

  Me: Yeah, all good. I'll explain later.

  My palm reader buzzed back almost instantly.

  Mattie: lunchtime?

  My stomach flipped. It was almost lunchtime, and Alex was going to expect me to play the part of his besotted girlfriend in front of the whole academy.

  I stood there, chewing my lip and debating what to reply. I needed to tell her now, not later. Before she heard from someone else that Alex and I had been making out in the hallway like we were... ugh... in love.

  "Vi," someone said, and I startled. My gaze shifted up from my palm reader and collided with Jordan's tawny brown eyes. "Is it true?" His face was tortured. "You're back with Alex? After everything you told us... everything we told you..."

  He wasn't just referring to Alex's betrayal. He was talking about how he’d confessed to liking me, kissed me, saw me naked, knew I'd fucked Rafe... and then I'd run away without having the decency to discuss it all further.

  So much for being the badass, fearless Violence. I was nothing but a coward.

  I shook my head, closing the gap between us by a few steps and reaching out to touch his arm. He held them tightly folded across his chest, and the muscles contracted beneath my fingers in a way that sapped my mouth of all moisture.

  How the fuck had I ended up in this situation? I'd hardly spent any time with Jordan at all, but the interactions we had had... Yeah, I guess I liked him too. A hell of a lot more than I liked any of the other guys in this fucking academy, anyway.

  My brain conjured up a flash memory of Rafe's head buried between my legs, my blood smeared on his strong hands as they held my thighs apart... almost like it was accusing me of lying to myself. Weird.

  "It's not like that," I insisted, my voice pitched low and urgent. I couldn't let my friends think that of me. If I was going to make it through four years of schooling at Arbon Academy, I couldn't go it alone. I needed support. I needed my friends. All of them. "Can you..." I sucked in a breath, thinking as fast as my brain would go, then heaved a sigh. "Do you think you could cut classes this morning with me? I want to fill you in on shit. And I think maybe we need to talk about, you know,
things."

  “I can cut class; they don’t give a fuck what the royals do.”

  Right. I’d forgotten that small detail. I was the only one here who had something to lose in this insanity of a situation.

  Jordan relaxed minutely, reaching out and gripping my hand. He pulled me along the hall, and once again, I was going in the opposite direction to Alex and the school, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

  Unlike Rafe, Jordan didn’t take me to a hidden piece of paradise. Nope. Dude deposited me in his room, on his bed, slamming and locking the door behind us.

  A small laugh escaped and Jordan zeroed in on that, his eyes narrowing. “What’s so funny, Cinderella?”

  I shook my head. “How the fuck I keep finding myself in these situations, I’ll never know.”

  Jordan stalked across the room toward me. There was literally no other way to describe his walk, filled with arrogance and long-legged grace. I had a feeling he might be almost as good a fighter as Rafe, judging on the way he moved. “Maybe you like trouble, little princess.”

  I was shaking my head before he even finished. “No. that’s not it at all. Trouble finds me, I don’t go searching for it.”

  Liar. Yeah, I kinda was. But for the most part I kept myself out of anything too dark. I had limits. I’d always drawn a line and I’d stayed firmly on the side closer to the light. But now. Now I kept slipping and finding myself in these murky shades of gray. Pretty soon I would be in too deep.

  “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, standing. He was towering over me, staring down, and it had shifted the balance of power too much for my liking.

  Jordan shrugged, but his eyes weren’t giving me the same indifference. “It’s private. Figured you didn’t want this spread around the school.”

  I sobered at the thought. “It’s kind of life and death right now,” I admitted. “So private is definitely best.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, I quickly blurted out my next line. “I have to pretend to date Alex otherwise he basically told me I’d end up the same as Jasmine. I’m trapped like a fucking mouse that was too stupid to see the danger until it was too late. Kissing Alex in the hall made my skin fucking crawl and if I could have killed him without repercussions, right then and there, I would have.”

  Needing to do something, because the intensity of his gaze was almost as disconcerting as Rafe’s when he locked me in, I started to wander around the room, trying to find something personal about Jordan in here. There were a few photos only, mostly of him and Rafe, but also two with his parents. I recognized the king and queen of New America. Unlike their heirs, they were often in the public eye.

  “I’ll head back in summer for a week,” he said from right behind me, and I would have jumped, but I’d felt him at my back a second before he spoke. “Be nice to see them and my little sister.”

  I spun, blinking up at him. “You have a sister?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, she’s twelve. Pain in my ass, but also the best fucking kid in the world.”

  His face got all soft when he spoke about her, and I felt my heart start pounding like a drum in my chest. When he leaned in close, I started breathing embarrassingly hard. “What are we going to do about Alex?” he asked, and it took me far too long to register the question.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Reading between the lines of what he said, this is much deeper than any of us realized. It’s beyond just a simple arrogant fuck who thought he could force me to be his baby maker. The princess ballot was created with the sole purpose of ensuring genetically perfect royal heirs, whenever there wasn’t a match found in the royal circles. These women probably don’t even realize they are being manipulated, but it’s pretty clear that the dudes they marry are well aware of the situation.”

  Since my royal friends didn’t seem to know about it, it had to be one of those “need to know” situations where you only found out if you were one without a match.

  Jordan was quiet, his gaze assessing. “We should check in on the previous winners. See where they all ended up.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it without alerting whoever might be watching that we’re looking into it.”

  Jordan just grinned, white teeth blinding me with their perfect straight sheen. Genetically blessed bastards, him and Rafe both. “You’re in safe hands. There’s a way to disable tracking on these palm readers. If you know what you’re doing.”

  I shook my head. “Mattie didn’t mention it to me.”

  He let out a rumble of laughter. “Mattie doesn’t know. It’s New American technology. Not available to everyone, even that ratty little nation that developed one of the most important advances in war that we’ve seen in a hundred years.”

  I nudged him as I went past, back to the bed. “They’re not ratty, you snobby jerk.”

  He shrugged. “Facts are facts, Vi.”

  Their arrogance knew no bounds. “Who decided that two of the most powerful princes in the world would be best friends?” I grumbled. “How you two fit both your heads in the same room is beyond me.”

  Jordan didn’t look remotely offended. “We’re good at a lot of things together. If you’re interested in finding out.”

  I met his gaze fully then, wondering if I’d just heard him right. “Are you telling me that Rafe is okay with sharing a woman with you?” I couldn’t imagine that scenario, not if Rafe truly cared about someone.

  But… stranger things had happened.

  Jordan shook his head, as darkness filled his eyes. The joking flirt was gone then, replaced with someone that had a core of steel and shadows. “Talk to me about the game plan for Alex.”

  And just like that, we were back to business.

  Chapter 7

  Jordan and I ended up spending most of the day in his bedroom. After he did something technologically impressive to disable any tracking bots from my palm reader, we spent hours pouring over old news articles about previous ballot winners. When we’d exhausted those resources, we moved on to even older information about the rise of monarchies and rumors of an infertility problem.

  Mattie and Nolan had joined us before lunch, and we’d filled them in on everything. Good thing, too, because she’d arrived all red-faced with anger and accusing me of being brainwashed. Apparently Alex had been making sure the entire school knew we were “still together” and “totally in love.” Gag.

  “Hey, I have an important question,” Nolan said when we stopped to eat the food we’d ordered up from the kitchens. There were numerous perks to being a student at Arbon Academy, and room service was just one of them.

  “Go on,” Jordan invited, taking a huge bite of pizza. The pizzas at Arbon were out-of-this-freaking-world good.

  Nolan frowned thoughtfully, chewing his own mouthful. “How come Rafe isn’t here with us?” He arched a brow at me, and the food stuck in my throat. “I know you guys have had your issues but I figured you’d... uh… worked through those?”

  My face heated, and I did everything possible to avoid Jordan’s intense stare. Despite my plan to speak with him about his confession, we hadn’t broached the subject. It was just sitting there like this giant pink elephant in the corner of the room that we’d both been ignoring. Still hadn’t stopped the occasional accidental-on-purpose touches as he’d helped me navigate my palm reader more efficiently.

  “Wait, when did you work through things with Rafe?” Mattie asked, and I froze.

  Fuck. I hadn’t told her…

  Clearing my throat, I wiped my hands off on a napkin. “I’m sure Rafe has better things to do than help the poor little charity case with her boy troubles.”

  That was probably unfair. He’d been nothing but understanding with me after watching me suck face with the enemy in the hall. But I was barely holding it together around Jordan. Add Rafe into the mix, and I might end up committed. Or naked.

  My cheeks burned hotter—if that was even possible—as fantasies of Jordan, Rafe, and me naked flashed
across my mind, and my thighs clenched involuntarily.

  “Besides, I think we almost have this worked out. Right?” I gave Nolan a very clear shut-the-fuck-up glare, which he probably understood.

  He took another bite of his pizza, seeming to let the matter drop.

  But then… “Are you guys avoiding each other ’cause you fucked?”

  I choked on my pizza, and Mattie started laughing.

  “What? Violet and Rafe? As if!” She snickered, then sobered when she realized no one else was laughing. “Wait, what?”

  I cringed. Hard. What the hell had I been thinking? I mean, obviously I hadn’t been—at all—at least, nothing beyond my need to wash Alex off my skin and out of my heart.

  “Well, this is awkward,” Nolan commented, oh so helpfully. “So I guess Violet forgot to tell you about how Jordan kissed her, too?”

  “Dude!” Jordan exclaimed, and I dropped my face into my hands with a groan.

  “Wow,” Mattie spluttered. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed or jealous. I mean, Rafe and Jordan.”

  She flashed a sweet but nasty smile at her brother. “You didn’t throw your dick in the ring too?”

  Nolan was not perturbed by her question. “Nah, I think Violet already has her hands full. I mean, I’ve seen the size of those two monst—”

  Jordan punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to all but knock him off the bed. I worried at first he’d choked on his pizza, he was coughing so hard, but it was mainly laughter. Dumb fuck.

  Mattie turned her full focus on me. “Are you really okay? I mean, Alex is a lot to deal with, but throw in Rafe… I’m worried about you.”

  I swallowed hard. “The heartbreak is one thing. I was the idiot who didn’t read between the lines, so caught up in the ‘romance’ he was wooing me with. I’m sure I’ll be over it soon, though. It wasn’t like we were together very long. And Rafe… that was just quick”—Jordan cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. It really hadn't been quick, to be fair—“revenge sex. I needed to cleanse the palate so to speak, and Rafe was both convenient and strong enough to handle my rage.”