Fraud (Antihero Inferno Book 2)

by Lily White

  After we’re whisked off to the where the event is being held, Mason and I immediately unlock our arms as he goes to find his real date and I stand pathetically against a far wall.

  It happens every time without fail. And maybe that’s another vein of dread I’m feeling tonight. Prom is in a few weeks and it will be the same story again.

  Except if I let this thing with Ezra go further, I’ll still hold up the wall at prom, I’ll just be doing so while watching him dance with another girl.

  Only a stupid girl would continue on with this and unnecessarily add to her misery.

  “We’re here,” Ivy shouts, a note of excitement in her voice.

  I have no idea why she’s looking forward to this. Gabriel still hasn’t gotten her back for the sex lube stunt at school, and parties are always his favorite place to target her.

  One would think after her Sweet Sixteen party, she’d have learned her lesson.

  Nobody knows how Gabriel managed to replace the net of balloons that were reserved to fall on Ivy when she walked into the room with a net full of dildos.

  There stood Ivy, surrounded by everybody who mattered, all our parents applauding how beautiful she looked in her empress gown and sparkling tiara, only for that applause to stop suddenly, every jaw slack, when we watched her get pelted on the head by a hundred rubber dicks.

  Gabriel’s silence during the incident was so pronounced even the adults in the room glared his direction, the rest of the Inferno standing with red faces and thin lips, tears leaking from their eyes from restraining their laughter.

  Sadly, that was just the beginning of what he did to her that night.

  Ava pulls the car up behind a long line of early arrivers, but only by our standards. We never show up to any event until it’s been in full swing for several hours.

  As usual, Kevin Landry’s house is filled wall to wall with a frenzy of high school students, all drinking or smoking, dancing or practically fucking right out where anybody can see them.

  His place isn’t as large as most of the typical hot spots, but his parents are out of town the most, which makes it possible for there to be a party every weekend.

  Ivy grabs my hand and shouts for people to move as we walk through the main part of the house en route to the backyard. They part on either side of us like waves, a sea of random faces smiling and calling out to say hello as we pass.

  It feels like I can’t breathe until we reach the French doors in the back of the house and escape onto the pool deck.

  Thankfully, this area isn’t as crowded.

  Several kids are skinny-dipping in the water, a few couples making out, but we navigate the perimeter to reach the pool house, a thousand square foot mini replica of the larger mansion.

  Only those sitting at the top of the food chain are allowed inside, my stomach already twisting at the thought of who I’ll see.

  It doesn’t help that as we’re heading in, Hillary Cornish and two of her friends are walking out, her hair a mess and lipstick smeared.

  She smirks at me, the expression not lost on Ivy and Ava. Ivy sneaks a side-eyed peek, and I can feel the protective energy rolling of her.

  Sadly, Hillary doesn’t know Ivy like I do.

  Dumb girl.

  Hillary’s smirk becomes a broad smile when she speaks to her friends, but with a voice loud enough for me to hear.

  “Ezra said I’m the only girl he’s actually wanted in the past few months. The rest he played. In fact, the last girl was so frigid-“

  “Is that why your breath smells like cock?” Ivy asks as she pushes past me to stare down Hillary. “I was wondering, but then again, it always smells that way.”

  Red hot anger flares across Hillary’s cheeks. “We just kissed-“

  “Uh, huh. I believe that about as much as I believe Ezra said any of that shit. Especially since it was Damon you were making out with. Or did you not know that?”

  Hillary flinches. “No, it was Ez-“

  “Really?” Ivy laughs. “You sure about that? Can you tell me whose dick you smell like right now? Do you know? Whose pubes did you just use as dental floss? Because I know the answer to that. Everybody in the pool house knows. But the joke is you don’t. So do you have anything else to say around my friend? Or would you like to go back inside and ask the twins which one just played you?”

  Tears shimmer in Hillary’s eyes that she blinks away, her chin tipping higher in feigned confidence.

  Her eyes flick to me as a sneer curls her mouth, but rather than saying a word in her defense, she hisses, “Fuck you all.”

  We watch as Hillary and crew storm off, a dangerous feeling fluttering inside me that I know I need to quash.

  Hope, no matter how unwarranted, is infectious. It’s pernicious, all soft and warm, a ray of sunshine striking cleanly through a thick carpet of dark clouds.

  I shouldn’t hope for anything.

  Still, I do.

  “Was she really kissing Damon?” I ask, my voice weaker than I like.

  Blue eyes flick my way, Ivy’s thin shoulder shrugging as she wraps her arm with mine to walk me into the house behind Ava.

  “I have no idea. I just said that to piss her off.”

  The hope I feel dies a tragic death, but I refuse to mourn its demise. It’s better not to have it. Not to care. Especially when secrets have a way of getting out into the open and I have a future to protect, even if I don’t want it.

  Once inside, the loud music assaults us, neither Ivy or Ava feeling as heavy as I do. They’re not afraid of having their hearts broken, aren’t burdened by the knowledge they have no control over their lives.

  Ava is going off to Yale when we graduate and Ivy is still undecided, but at least they have options I don’t have.

  “Gabriel’s already piss drunk,” Ivy whispers in my ear, laughter coating her voice. “I told you I have nothing to worry about tonight.”

  I glance over at where most of the Inferno guys are seated and roll my eyes at the girls standing or sitting around them, desperate for attention.

  Ivy is wrong if she thinks Gabriel hasn’t planned something. The second we walk into the room, his emerald green gaze lifts and seeks her out.

  Amused by how the two of them always look for each other without realizing what the rest of us know about how they really feel, I make the mistake of glancing left to find another dangerous stare locked on us, this one a pretty amber color with green flecks you can only see when up close.

  My first thought is Ezra, but the truth is it could be either of them. I can’t claim to have superiority on Hillary. I never really knew who was tugging me into a room, whose lips brushed mine, whose voice whispered words in my ear that made me melt.

  “I need to go,” I say, yanking my arm from Ivy’s hold.

  She turns to stop me, but I’m too fast as I weave my way past a crowd of bodies, cutting through them like a warm knife through butter. I have no idea where I’m going, just that it’s away from Ezra or Damon or both.

  Unfortunately, the best laid plans and innocent of intentions have a way of going south fast.

  I realize it as a hand locks over my arm, my body melting at the touch, my brain short-circuiting as I’m dragged into a separate room, my eyes clenching closed as a door shuts.

  My back presses against a wall, the cool temperature of the plaster sinking through my dress to tease my skin, the heat of warm lips running up my neck the perfect counterpoint to a wave of cold tremors racing through me.

  “You were going the wrong way.”

  A smile tugs at the corner of my lips, both happy and bitter. “I don’t think away from you is the wrong way.”

  Fingertips tempt my skin as they skitter over my neck to brush away my hair. I’m so out of my element with him that I could be floating in space, my legs kicking and arms doing a breaststroke even through there’s no water to propel me back to Earth.

  His warm palm slides up the line of my jaw, his thumb sweeping over my cheek.


  “It is.”

  And then his lips are on mine, the tip of his tongue flicking out to taste my mouth. I hold it closed, refusing to kiss him back, refusing to speak, refusing to let his touch render me boneless and stupid.

  My refusal means nothing.

  Not with heat surging through me.

  Not after my mind loses the ability to function.

  Not after I stop caring for once that I was raised only to care about the future my parents decided for me.

  “Who are you?” I ask because I always ask.

  He grins against my mouth. “Does it matter?”

  Instantly I remember what Ivy said to Hillary, the tears in Hillary’s eyes, the fact that Hillary had been kissing one of them at some point before I arrived tonight.

  It’s a blessing when I realize that none of it matters. That regardless of what I do right now, and regardless of who I do it with, I’m still going to marry someone I don’t want.

  “No,” I whisper, my heart thudding against my chest when his lips grin against my mouth.

  Cupping my face with two hands, he nips at my bottom lip, his voice a growl. “Good.”

  My mouth opens and his tongue dives in.

  I let him kiss me without caring which twin it is, because in the end, when I’m married to a man I don’t love and living a life I don’t want, none of this can matter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Emily

  I don’t know what I’m doing.

  Or why I’m doing it.

  Or even how for that matter.

  I just am.

  Maybe it’s to rebel against my pre-ordained destiny. Or to flip the finger to my parents. Or to steal from Mason all the things he doesn’t want and that I don’t want to give him.

  He’s a boy...

  That’s just the way it is...

  And so is the person kissing me now. Can I be blamed when he’s just doing what boys do?

  A thousand excuses and explanations roll through my head, one after the other, a parade of them, complete with dancers, and floats and large balloons that people fight to control in turbulent weather.

  I’m angry and I don’t know why it matters now. I’m desperate, which is why my fingers curl over shoulders wider than mine. I’m turned on because I’m letting someone touch me when I know I shouldn’t.

  Damon or Ezra.

  It can be either of them, and I’m not sure I care right now.

  Because this isn’t about the boy. It’s about me taking back what destiny and family obligations have stolen.

  A low sound vibrates in his throat when I pull my lips from his and tilt my head. It’s all the permission he needs to run those lips down the line of my neck, to flick his tongue over the taut tendon. I shiver against the new sensation, caring more about rebelling than who this even is.

  I should care which twin I’m with.

  I want to.

  This entire thing started with Ezra, but I don’t really know him. We haven’t talked much beyond the secret moments we’ve stolen, haven’t done more than kiss and touch, his hands greedy and mine demure. I haven’t let his fingers explore places they shouldn’t, haven’t yet crossed that line.

  Except now, when his hands slide up the outside of my thighs and my skirt is pushed higher, my modesty snaps back in place, my heart thumping hard before I finally stop him, my mind screaming the same thought over and over until it volleys from my throat.

  “Stop. I do care.”

  Amber eyes trap mine so fast and fierce that my breath catches in my lungs. He dips his head in that feral way he always does, bringing us to eye level while still somehow hovering over me.

  I watch the corner of his mouth tug up.

  “Why?”

  “I just do. Who are you?”

  A wicked glimmer brightens his eyes for only a second. “Ezra.”

  “Promise?”

  He nods his head, his fingertips tracing lines down my thighs, teasing the flesh.

  I can’t help it. Jealousy roars through me, wild and unfettered, and I have no idea where it came from. I have no right to be jealous, but I am.

  Maybe it’s because I have no experience with this. Or maybe I’m placing too much importance on a boy who gave me my first kiss. I’ve heard that happens. I just never understood it until now.

  “Were you just with Hillary?”

  Before he can answer, the door pops open, a line of soft, yellow light seeping in to break up the heavy shadows in our dark room. Ezra’s head snaps in that direction, his jaw tight, his body going frighteningly still.

  I don’t know who’s at the door, nor do I care when I see for the first time the pattern of an ugly bruise on Ezra’s neck and shoulder, the dark blue-black stain dipping down beneath the collar of his shirt.

  Without thinking, I grab the fabric and yank it down to see the shape of a handprint, four distinct fingers leading to his collarbone that I trace with my own, the touch snapping his attention back to me.

  “Who did that to you?”

  Anger flashes in his eyes, that and something else I can’t name. He pushes away from me, but I step forward to yank at his shirt again and see the damage.

  I’m not even thinking, I just feel so full of fury that someone - anyone - hurt him like that. It’s visceral, this feeling, as if I have some claim on him that gives me the right to be mad. I barely know him and already, I want to shelter him from some unknown danger. I want to stand in front of him and rage at whoever believed they could touch him without my explicit permission.

  And really, how ridiculous is that? The twins fight for the fun of it, but I’m still livid at the idea that a person believed they had the right to hurt him back.

  They say redheads have fiery tempers, and judging by what I’m feeling now, they’re right.

  “Who?” I demand.

  The anger bleeds out of him to be replaced with amusement, Ezra’s lips curling at the corners despite the way my brows crash together and my mouth thins into a volatile line.

  There’s an odd kinship between us now, a bond forged in fire and the threat of violence. Ezra recognizes in me what he has in himself, even though I don’t throw punches and I appear weak and pampered on the outside.

  The truth is far darker, and judging by the look on his face, he sees it and likes it.

  “Are you mad?” he asks, soft laughter lining the question.

  “I’m pissed.”

  Ezra rushes forward and I step back. My thighs hit a barrier, my bottom falling to sit on a mattress. Before I can push to my feet again, Ezra is above me, against me, all around me.

  Feral.

  There’s no other word to describe him.

  His teeth nip at my skin just above the neckline of my dress and I can’t move.

  Not one inch.

  I’m frozen in place, partly terrified because I’ve never been on a bed with a boy before, but mostly because that boy is Ezra and I have no idea what he’s thinking.

  The new terror chases the old anger away, his expression changing to see it.

  Head tilting to the side, he pushes up to his knees that straddle my legs, reaches behind him and pulls his shirt off.

  I go still again, except this time there’s a lake of lava expanding through my body, hot and vengeful, my mind swirling with such rash decisions and chaotic thoughts that I’m in a vacuum of sorts, time frozen, my hand reaching out past the incandescent fury to trace the shape of spider webs.

  “Who did this?”

  They’re everywhere, like paint splotches on a well-used drop cloth. One bruise fading into another, dark at the center before they spin out in a web of threads, the color changing from black to purple to blue and green.

  Everywhere.

  All over.

  “They don’t hurt,” he whispers as my fingers trace a particularly ugly one.

  My eyes snap up to his face, the anger returned, which only makes him smile.

  “Who?”

  Instead of answering me, he cup
s my face with both hands and kisses me, his lips forcing mine apart, his tongue sweeping in to taste the anger I’m feeling, as if my fury is a drug that gets him off.

  Hands hesitant, I run my palms up his chest and over his shoulders, gentle, so extremely gentle because I can’t stand the thought of adding to the marks on his skin.

  So lost in my worry for him, I forget that I’m in a dark room with a boy on a bed, and that lack of realization is why he is able to lay me flat, to crush his body to mine.

  The panic doesn’t return until his knees cage my legs together, his hand sweeping behind my neck to hold me in this blistering kiss as his other hand drops to tickle my skin with curious fingertips.

  When his palm flattens against my breast from over my dress, I freeze again, every muscle tight and painful.

  “I haven’t...”

  It’s a whisper against his lips, an embarrassing confession, one that catches his attention and forces his eyes open.

  Now I feel awkward lying here with a boy straddling my legs and his palm on my tit. We’re staring at each other in the shadowed room, my eyes filled with fear and his telling me nothing at all.

  “Never?”

  The question falls off his lips, half a tease and half honest shock. Rolling my eyes, I attempt to ignore the embarrassment I feel, my sudden attempt to shove him off a wasted one since he’s twice as big as me.

  Even for his size now, I realize Ezra still isn’t fully grown. He’s eighteen just like me, but not a man. I’ve seen men and I’ve seen high school boys. There’s no comparison. It makes me wonder what Ezra will look like when he’s older, when his body has filled out fully and experience has sharpened his mind.

  I bet he’ll be even more terrifying than he is now.

  “Just let me go,” I breathe out, my eyes dancing anywhere to keep from looking at him. The ceiling, the wall, the door across the room I can use to get out of here and forget this happened.

  His fingers squeeze my boob, just a light flinch of his hand before he pulls it away and presses his palm on the mattress by my head.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why,” I answer, still refusing to meet his eyes. My cheeks are burning from the blood rushing to them, and I wince when his fingers touch my jaw. I struggle against him turning my face so that I have no choice but to look at him.