“Dylan,” he replies, pulling me into a smoldering kiss. I struggle against him for a moment, but he’s too much for me, and I sink into him, allowing him to pull me under his spell. But even as I give myself over to the song of Gabriel’s body, his answer drums against my skull.
What does he mean, I remind him of Dylan? We’ve just had sex and he sees his dead best-friend? That’s dark as fuck.
I love it.
43
Mackenzie
The night blurs into one long, intense fuckfest. I come so many times from Gabe’s lips and cock that I lose feeling in my legs. Piercings are magical and everyone should have them.
We fall asleep just as the sun sets fire to the horizon, tangled together in the sheets, our skin reeking of each other. My dreams are filled with Gabriel’s heady scent and his tattoos dancing across my skin.
I wake to a delicious smell. Gabe’s at the door, talking to someone in the hall. He comes in, wearing only his jeans and carrying a tray piled with steaming food.
‘Mmmm, breakfast.” I rake my fingers down his chest, over those glorious tattoos. Gabriel laughs as he sets the tray down to pull me against him. I wiggle his tongue stud with my tongue, and he scrapes his teeth along my collarbone and our food is cold before we get to it.
Gabriel hands me a napkin as I tuck into my pancakes. They’re not as good as Eli’s, but still delicious. “So… our concierge says she saw Eli come into the club last night.”
“We didn’t see him?” I cock an eyebrow.
“I think we were… otherwise occupied.”
Ah. So Eli knows about us, then. I push my plate away. Suddenly, I’m not hungry. I scramble across the floor to find my clothes and pull my phone from my jacket. No messages from Eli or Noah. Nothing. Weird. Usually, Eli messages me several times a night with pictures of his cat.
“You okay? You look a little freaked out.” Gabriel leans across and swipes a syrup-drenched pancake from my plate. “You’re not having regrets?”
“That’s it exactly. I deeply regret not jumping your bones the first day at Stonehurst.” I hold up the phone. “I’m just thinking about Eli. Why would he come here when he said he needed to sleep?”
Gabriel snorts. “You may be a blonde, Mac, but playing dumb doesn’t suit you.”
“That’s fair.” I stare at the screen, my finger poised over the call button. With a growl, I toss the phone on the bed. Fuck Eli. And fuck his adorable kitty. He doesn’t get to make me feel guilty about the best night of my life.
Gabriel makes off with my second pancake. “So… you want to do something today? We could drive down the coast? I know this great private beach where we could skinny dip.”
“Tempting, but I think I need to go home.” Now my mind’s on Eli, I can’t stop thinking about him. I didn’t want him to find out like this, but that ship has sailed so now I need damage control because Eli Hart is smart enough to unravel my stolen life. Too much is at stake, and even though Antony’s assured me about Brutus, I can’t risk Eli doing something stupid that will destroy our whole plan. I need to talk to him.
It’s weird, because even though I know it’s pointless and I owe him nothing, I want to try to explain.
Gabe pays for a cab to take me back to Malloy Manor. Even though I’m desperate to crawl into bed, I hold Queen Boudica in my arms to steady my nerves and call Eli.
He doesn’t answer.
He ignores twenty-two other calls from me over the weekend, and an entire stream of nonsensical texts I frantically type out at 3AM Saturday night go unanswered. By Sunday lunchtime he’s either turned his phone off or it’s gone on strike, because it sends me straight to voicemail. I even call Noah, but he won’t answer, either.
I left my uniform at Gabriel’s from Friday night, so I take a cab there before school on Monday so I can change, and we can walk in together. The first thing I notice as we enter the central courtyard is that Alec’s car is gone from the fountain, and so is he. For the first time, I walk down the corridor and I don’t feel his snake eyes slithering over my body. I overhear two students talking about his father sending him to military school, and I burst into genuine laughter. Alec’s asshole will be ragged after a week as the army slut.
The second thing I notice is that Eli and Noah aren’t here, either. I ask Chad, and he says neither of them was at track practice in the morning. My stomach twists. I know why Eli isn’t at school, but Noah?
What’s up with that?
44
Mackenzie
Gabriel wants to hang out after cheerleading practice, but I tell him I have too much studying to do. It’s not a lie. What I want to do is find Eli and see if he’s okay, but I have an essay due for Ms. Drysdale’s class that I’ve put off to the absolute last minute and I need to pass this time.
So I walk home alone as the sun streaks pink flames across the sky, relishing the chance to be with my own thoughts for a while. I nod to Tiberius in his car on the corner, and check behind me for anyone watching before I duck into the woods to approach the maintenance shed. Queen Boudica meets me at the top of the stairs, her tiny body rumbling with pleasure at my return. It’s nice to be wanted.
I take Queen Boudica through to my bedroom and drop a handful of cat treats on the rug while I flick through my playlist. The latest Octavia’s Ruin album blasts through the speakers, filling my head and my heart with Gabriel’s bewitching voice.
I’m pulling off my Stonehurst uniform when I get this itching feeling crawling along my skin, like I’m being watched.
Eli’s here.
I guess we’re having that talk now.
I retreat into the bathroom, pull on a pair of designer jeans and a pink racer-back tank. I peer out my window, which is on the same side of the house as the ballroom, overlooking the pool. I can’t see him anywhere. Then I notice a light at the front gate.
Hmmmm.
I walk through the house to a dusty sitting room at the front I never use and peer out the window. Sure enough, someone’s out there with a flashlight.
Fuck. Why isn’t Tiberius all over this?
Fear twists in my gut as the figure shimmies up the gate like he’s a fucking chimpanzee after the best bananas in the jungle. Joke’s on him because I don’t have bananas, but I do have a brand new knife from Antony. I withdraw it from my pocket and slink into the shadows at the edge of the window, watching the intruder as he vaults over the wall and lands on top of an impressive cactus. He curses as he shakes his leg, which is now stuck with hundreds of spines.
I start as I recognize him.
Not Eli.
Noah.
He limps up to the window and knocks on the glass, then jabs his thumb in the direction of the front door. My mind flicks back to the police officer who came to the door all those weeks ago and started this whole nightmare. I glare at Noah through the glass. Why’s he come here like this?
I take my time getting to the front door. I don’t want him to think I’m desperate to know why he didn’t answer my call or wasn’t at school today or why he’s shown up, here, on enemy territory.
As I crack the door, Noah’s already halfway back down the driveway, a trail of cactus spines scattered in his wake. He turns and runs back, pressing his face in the narrow gap.
“Hello.”
“Just open the damn door so we can talk like normal people,” he growls.
“We are not normal people, Noah. I’m not in the habit of opening this door to anyone, most especially people who hate me.”
“I want to not hate you.” He searches my face with those intense eyes of his. It’s as though in those dark depths is a museum of locked rooms and dark spells – all Noah’s past hurts and present rage painted bright across his soul, but he’s got the lights off so all I can see are the edges. “Tell me something that makes me not hate you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “So this is the wrong time to show you my ‘Hitler is my Homeboy’ T-shirt.”
The corner of Noah’s mouth tug
s up. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s the start of one.
It looks good on him.
Damn good.
“I came to talk about Eli. And… other stuff. But mostly Eli. He saw you guys at the club on Friday.” Noah’s shoulders rise and fall. “You and Gabe. Heading upstairs to the bedrooms.”
I nod.
“He’s not taking it well.”
“Does he want me to kiss it better?”
“This isn’t funny.” Noah’s eyes flare with fire. “I’ve just come from his place. He’s… I haven’t seen him this bad since you left. Don’t you see? This is you deserting him all over again. I know you’re a stone-cold bitch with ice for a heart, but I thought you at least cared about Eli—”
“I do care.” I glare at Noah. “Eli doesn’t have a right to be pissed at me. He has no claim over me. If you want the truth, Noah Marlowe, I slept with Gabriel and it was brilliant. But I’m not his girlfriend.” I open my hands. “The truth is I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
Noah’s jaw is so tight I’m worried it might snap. “Why him?”
“Why not him?” I shoot back. “And while we’re on the topic, why you?”
“What the fuck do you mean?” he growls.
“I know why this matters to Eli. He thinks we have a connection because we were friends when we were kids, but so what? A lot has happened since then. I’m not the same person, and he needs to stop believing I am. I’ll only end up hurting him worse, and I don’t want to do that to him. What I want to know is why it matters to you.”
“I’m here for Eli.”
I fold my arms and fix him with my Ice Queen glare. “As Gabriel would say, bollocks.”
Noah turns away. I sense a hundred unanswered questions rolling through his head. Finally, he decides on one. “Eli says you don’t remember what happened four years ago. He says you’ve got some specific type of amnesia. Is that true?”
I buckle under the severity of his gaze. My hand flies to the locket at my throat. Right now I really, really don’t want to lie to Noah. “I remember some things. I know your brother died because my father gave him experimental supplements that caused his heart to fail. But I don’t know what I did specifically to make you hate me, beyond the fact that I wear the surname Malloy. I know that doesn’t excuse your pain, but that’s the truth. I don’t fucking remember.”
Noah looks back at me then. The anguish in his eyes is so raw, so primal, it draws me toward him. The two of us are magnets drawn together by wrath. “My brother never would have taken those pills if it weren’t for you.”
I unlock the door and hold it open, not wide enough that he feels as though it’s an invitation, but enough that the two of us breathe the same air. I sense the tension coiling around him, wrapping his body in a cocoon of hostility that’s supposed to repel me but draws me like a Valley Girl to a designer shoe sale.
“I don’t know if you ever met him – he was four years older than us. Top of his class every year, star athlete with a shot at the Olympic team, but he wasn’t full of himself. He was the nicest fucking guy you could ever hope to meet, so much nicer than I could—” Noah stops himself. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows once, twice. “One day at school, Eli was out sick and you sat with me at lunch. You told me that your father was looking for athletes to trial a new performance-enhancing drug. All-natural, developed from an ancient remedy, won’t show up on a drug test. You set up a meeting with our families. You—”
A sound explodes between us, like the pop of a Champagne bottle being opened, only louder. Chips of concrete blast off the side of the house and rain down on me and Noah.
I don’t have time to form a question. Noah’s body slams into mine, pushing me to the ground as a rain of bullets hits the house behind my head.
45
Mackenzie
My back slams against the tiles. Noah kicks the front door shut. The security lock clicks in place, and the pop of the bullets reduces to a dull thwack as they hit the bulletproof door.
That’s right. My house has a bulletproof front door, bitches.
“What the fuck was that?” Noah breathes hard, his chest heaving against mine.
But I can’t focus, because Noah fucking Marlowe is on top of me, and I can feel every part of him press against every part of me. And I flash back to the party when our bodies mashed together and I squeezed him and that fucking beautiful moan he made—
“Gunshots,” I answer when I find my voice. “They’re gunshots.”
“I know that. I mean, why the fuck is some maniac shooting at your house?”
I have no idea. Well, I have some idea. If I’m right, it’s very, very bad. But I’m not ready to look at this situation intellectually while bullets still riddle my front door.
I grab Noah’s hand and drag him to his feet, then take off down the hall.
“Mackenzie, we have to—”
Queen Boudica saunters out of the kitchen, licking her lips. “Mew?” she asks. I fling her into my arms and toss her over my shoulder. She howls with outrage and scrambles for freedom, but no way am I letting her run around with an active shooter outside.
“Mackenzie, what are—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl. I drag Noah into the study and yank the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in a sharp downward motion. A bookcase swings outward, revealing a steel-lined room about the size of an elevator shaft. I leap inside. Noah stands there, mouth open. I fist his shirt and yank him in after me.
I slam my hand into the control panel, and the door swings shut, the locks engaging with an electronic hiss.
“Mew!” Queen Boudica cries.
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Panic room,” I gasp. Is it just me, or is it hard to breathe in here?
It’s probably something to do with having my chest pressed up against Noah. Queen Boudica squirms against my grip, her claws raking across my shoulder. I relax my hold so she can step onto the top of the control unit. She curls up there, whipping her tail across my face as if to inform me she’s pissed off.
“Is this room secure?” Noah asks. His breath’s a little raspy, too. I chalk that up to the fact he just about had his ass made into Swiss cheese.
“It’s invisible from the outside. You’d have to know it was here in order to locate it. So unless the shooter is some old close family friend my father let in on his little secret, we should be safe.”
“I don’t know what’s safe right now,” Noah growls. “Someone shot at us, and now I’m locked in here with you.”
I nod, then realize that’s pointless to do in the dark. I feel along the panel for the button that turns the internal light on. The first try, I get a sprinkler. Queen Boudica yowls with fury. I quickly turn that off again. On the second try I pop up the footage from the CCTV cameras. On the third try I manage to get a low red LED strip to light up, illuminating the corners of the room and giving me a faint outline of Noah’s features.
“We can’t have the lights on.” He reaches up to turn it off.
“Relax. They can’t see it from outside. The walls are so thick, we won’t even show up if they do an infrared scan of the building. At least, that’s what the manual said.” I think. After I read all the books in the library, I moved on to the panic room manual. (Hey, you try being stuck in a mansion for four years with only a cat for company). I got halfway through the weighty tome when Queen Boudica let a rat loose in the ballroom and I used the manual to crush it. I wasn’t going to pick it up again once I’d covered it in rat innards.
But Noah doesn’t need to know that.
“Impressive.” Noah gazes around, his hands fiddling with something in his trouser region. I hear a clattering noise. “Shit. I dropped my phone.”
“Serves you right for playing with yourself during our time of crisis.” I focus on the CCTV cameras, flicking through the different views. I can see the damage to the front door and stone pillars from the bullets, but no sign of a sh
ooter near the gate or at the perimeter.
Noah does this weird penguin hobble, but his shoulders are too broad for him to bend down. “Can you pick it up? We need it to try and call for help.”
“Oh sure,” I roll my eyes, even though he probably can’t see. “With you in here taking up all the valuable real estate. I’ll just wrench my arms out of my sockets to save your precious phone.”
“You should be able to manage it. You were always freakishly flexible in gym.”
“There’s flexible and then there’s defying the laws of physics. Besides,” I slam my palm into an invisible panel on the wall. A dial pad and receiver slide out. “We don’t need your phone. This is a secret line. No one can tap it.”
“Impressive.” There’s a dark edge to Noah’s voice I don’t like. “Howard Malloy thinks of everything.”
I grab the phone on the wall and punch in a number. “Antony? I need your ass over here, now.”
“At your Barbie Dreamhouse? Why? Someone giving you trouble again?”
“Close. What happened to Tiberius? Someone shot Barbie’s Dreamhouse to hell, and I need you to take care of it. ”
Even in the low light, I can see Noah’s eyebrows shoot way up.
“I’ll find out,” Antony growls, and the fury in his voice is terrifying. “I’m on my way. Stay where you are.”
I burst out laughing. It’s a joke we have – he can see from his phone’s ID that I’m calling from the panic room. I’m not going anywhere.
I hang up the phone. Noah cups his hand on my shoulder, his fingers digging into my collarbone. It hurts. Maybe the situation has my head all fucked up, because I don’t want him to stop. “What do you mean, take care of it?”
“It’s better you don’t know. Antony will call when he’s assessed the situation. He’s the only person who has this number.”
My Stolen Life: a high school bully romance (Stonehurst Prep Book 1) Page 22