Mad Love (Slateview High Book 3)

by Eva Ashwood

  “I know.” I bit my lip, my heart beating a little faster. “Do you have the wedding plans on your computer? I’d just like to see what you have so far.”

  A pleased look crossed his face at that, and he nodded, gesturing me closer as he turned toward the large computer screen that sat to one side of his desk. I moved quickly, my gaze falling to his fingers as they flew over the keys. He had typed out his password in front of me several times before, but I had never paid any attention then.

  Now, though, I watched each keystroke like a hawk, repeating the sequence over and over in my head even as the computer unlocked and my father pulled up his correspondence with the wedding planner my parents had hired. If I had been any other daughter and he’d been any other father, maybe I would’ve been touched that he was so deeply involved in the wedding planning process.

  But I wasn’t.

  He wasn’t.

  And I knew just what this was about.

  He wanted control over the entire event, just like he wanted control over everything else in his life.

  I feigned interest as he showed me the planned venue, even though my entire body tensed at the thought of walking down the aisle in the huge, ornate church to stand next to a boy I despised. Careful to keep my inner thoughts off my face, I turned to my Dad and dipped my head.

  “Thank you. I just… I just wanted to know.”

  “That’s good.” He smiled. “I knew you would come around to this. I’m happy to see you finally are.”

  I’m not! I wanted to scream. I never fucking will.

  But I kept my lips shut and slipped from the room.

  The next day, as soon as my tutor left at three o’clock, I made a beeline toward my father’s office. He was working from his office downtown today, and Mom was out doing who knew what.

  I slipped into the large, opulent room and glanced over my shoulder as I slid into the chair behind the desk. I had been repeating the password to myself all morning, focusing on that combination of letters and numbers more than any of my actual schoolwork, and I tapped it out carefully on the keyboard.

  Relief and gratitude rushed through me when the computer unlocked, the screen shifting to show several icons and file folders. Not sure how much time I would have before Dad or Mom got back home, I moved quickly, opening up the web browser before double-clicking on several files. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, but I hoped I would recognize it when I saw it.

  I’d spent months trying to guess whether my father was really guilty of the crimes he’d been accused of or not, and although he’d been released in the end, I needed to know for myself just what exactly he had done.

  He may not have done what he was arrested for, but that didn’t automatically make him a good person. He had claimed he wanted to turn over a new leaf when he got out of prison, but I no longer believed that. And I wanted to know what kinds of things he had willingly done in the pursuit of more power and prestige.

  “Come on, where are you? Show me something. Anything,” I muttered, clicking open his email.

  The cops had been through all of his stuff, and in the end, the only evidence of actual illegal activity turned out to have been planted. But still, I was sure my father had skirted as close to the line as he thought he could get away with, and I wanted to know the truth.

  I spent close to an hour poring over his files and emails, and then my fingers hesitated over the keyboard. I held my breath, peering closer at the screen at a name I recognized.

  Abraham Shaw.

  That was the name I had heard Flint mention all those weeks ago. Abraham had been a colleague of my father’s, and I was pretty sure they had worked closely together for several years.

  My heart beat faster as I scanned through several email exchanges between the two of them, chewing on my lower lip.

  Fuck. Dad didn’t break the law. Abraham did.

  It wasn’t spelled out explicitly, but as I read email after email, I became more and more certain that I was right. My father had leveraged his partnership with Abraham to make sure that every illegal action they had taken was traceable only to Mr. Shaw. That would’ve left Dad free to deny any knowledge or involvement if Abraham ever went down—except that Dad had ended up being framed instead.

  Abraham must’ve worked with Luke Carmine to set my father up, using his inside knowledge of the crimes they’d committed to make a compelling case against Dad.

  But the truth was, both men were guilty.

  Anger burned in my veins, and I decided to follow the rabbit down the hole as far as I could go.

  The first thing I needed to do was dig up more information on the history between my dad and his old business associate, so I searched all of his files for the name Abraham Shaw. A lot of what I found was boring and indecipherable, contracts and discussions of acquisitions that made no sense to me. But when I pulled up file marked “Untitled,” I found something much different.

  It was the record of a payment from my father… to Luke Carmine.

  I felt like I had cotton in my lungs. It was almost impossible to draw a full breath, but I forced myself to keep reading.

  Holy fuck. That’s exactly what it is.

  Abraham Shaw had paid Luke Carmine to destroy my father’s life, but he wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea. If I was reading this right, my dad had tried to screw over Abraham Shaw, to recruit Luke to take his old business partner down several weeks before my father’s own arrest. But Abraham must’ve offered more money or a better deal, because he’d somehow gotten Luke on his side instead.

  I blinked, staring at the screen as I tried to process this strange turn of events. No wonder my father had been so certain he’d been set up—he had been in the process of trying to set his once-friend up when he’d been arrested.

  Does he know that Luke is the one who arranged the frame job that landed him in prison? That he was double-crossed?

  As I gazed blankly at the screen, a door slammed in the distance.

  My body tensed as my head whipped up, and I quickly closed up the apps on my dad’s desktop, put the computer back to sleep, and bolted from the room. I ran up the stairs on tiptoes, my bare feet silent on the smooth marble, and when I reached my room, I closed the door and leaned against it, sliding down until my ass hit the floor.

  Everything he’s told me is a lie.

  My father had pretended he was an honest-dealing businessman who’d been wrongly accused, set up when he was totally innocent.

  But he wasn’t innocent.

  He was as guilty as Abraham. Maybe even more so.

  I wasn’t sure why that even surprised me anymore. But it did. Despite everything that’d happened over the past several months, there was a part of me that had still clung to hope that some parts of my life hadn’t been based on lies.

  But as I looked around at the lavish surroundings of my large room, I felt more like a stranger in this place than I ever had before.

  It wasn’t just that I didn’t belong here now.

  I had never belonged here.

  Eleven

  I told Poppy I wasn’t feeling well when she came to fetch me for dinner, and although I expected one of my parents to come and drag me downstairs, neither of them knocked on my door.

  My stomach kept tying itself into tighter and tighter knots as my thoughts spun around in my head. I couldn’t quite figure out why it bothered me so much that my father had broken the law. After all, the Lost Boys broke the law all the time. They worked for a man and for an organization that thrived on illegal activity.

  So what was the difference?

  Honor, a little voice in the back of my head whispered.

  The Lost Boys had it. Even Nathaniel Ward had it.

  They all existed on the wrong side of the law, but they still lived their lives according to their principles. Their own moral code.

  The Lost Boys could be threatening and dangerous, but they used their power at Slateview High to keep the peace—something not ev
en the school admins or teachers could do.

  Nathaniel was ruthless in his operation, but even he had lines in the sand he wouldn’t cross.

  My father, though?

  I kept waiting for him to reveal a better side of himself, but instead, he showed me over and over again the lengths he would go to for his own benefit.

  It made me sick to think about how much of the wealth and privilege I’d grown up with had probably been acquired by someone else’s downfall. That seemed to be my father’s usual method of operation.

  The dinner hour came and went, and even though I’d planned to sneak down for food later in the evening, I had completely lost my appetite. At a little after nine, I threw on a soft nightgown and brushed my teeth, then crawled into bed, eager for sleep to claim me.

  It did, and quickly.

  My whirling thoughts slowed as the pain in my chest settled into a dull, throbbing ache, and my eyelids drifted closed.

  When they flew open several hours later, I wasn’t sure what had woken me until I heard the sound of my phone ringing again. I rolled toward the nightstand and snatched it up, blinking blearily at the screen. The time read 12:02, and the caller ID read Bishop.

  A little jolt of adrenaline ran through me as happiness that he was calling mixed with worry.

  Why he is calling so late? Did something happen?

  I swiped to answer quickly, bringing the phone to my ear. My parents were in an entirely different wing of the house, so I knew they wouldn’t hear me, but I kept my voice low anyway.

  “Bishop? Is everything okay? What’s going on?”

  “Happy birthday, Coralee.”

  His smooth drawl cut through my fear like a knife, and I blinked into the darkness. “What?”

  “Well, it’s your birthday today, isn’t it?”

  “Y-yes. Just for the past few minutes, yeah.”

  “What kind of boyfriends would we be if we didn’t call to wish you a happy birthday?”

  Something so sweet I could hardly bear it spread through my chest, and I closed my eyes, dragging in a deep breath.

  “We miss you, Cora,” Misael said softly, and I realized Bish must’ve put me on speaker phone.

  “So fucking much,” Kace added, and the strain in his voice told me more than his words ever could.

  They missed me the same way I missed them. With a deep, aching hunger, a need that would never be satisfied by anything else.

  “I miss you guys too,” I whispered, not even trying to hide the naked emotion in my voice.

  I had been dreading my eighteenth birthday. In my mind, all it did was bring me one step closer to becoming a married woman, and I’d had no desire to celebrate it. But the fact that the Lost Boys had remembered, that they’d called just a few minutes after midnight because they couldn’t even wait until tomorrow to wish me a happy birthday—it made a smile curve my lips even as tears pricked my eyes.

  They cared for me.

  And they didn’t just tell me that, like my father and mother did. Like so many of my friends did.

  They showed me. Over and over, in big ways and little ones, they showed me how much they cared.

  “I wish you were here.”

  “We wish we were too, Princess,” Misael said quietly. “But we didn’t want to risk it again after last time. We don’t want to get you in more trouble. If you want us to though, we’ll be over in—”

  “No!” I almost sat up, then settled back down, still clutching the phone to my ear. “No. Don’t. I don’t want to risk you getting caught. I just… I just wish I could see you, is all.”

  My voice broke on the words, and I could hear each of them react with a low noise. I could imagine them all sitting on Bishop’s couch as he held the phone out, could picture them all leaning toward it slightly as if that might somehow bring them closer to me.

  For a moment, there was silence on the line. It felt heavy, full of all the things none of us were saying. All of our fears, our worries. Our pain at being separated.

  Finally, Bishop spoke. “What would you do if we were there right now?”

  There was a teasing growl in his words, and I knew he was trying to distract me from my heartache. It didn’t quite work, but I loved that he was trying. And despite the pain that still bounced around in my chest, I smiled slightly as I considered my answer.

  “I would kiss you. I’d kiss each of you, over and over and over. Until I could taste all of you on my tongue. On my lips.”

  A soft groan came through the line, and I was pretty sure it came from Kace. An answering ripple of heat moved through my lower belly, and I squirmed under the soft blankets.

  “What would you do if you were here?” I whispered.

  “How ’bout this, Coralee?” Misael said. There was something in his voice that made my breath come faster. “We’ll tell you what we’d do, if you promise to do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The butterflies flapping in my stomach insisted they already knew exactly what he meant, but I wanted to hear him say it. An ache was building inside me, making my core feel swollen and needy. It’d been too long since I’d seen these boys who owned three pieces of my soul. Too long since I’d touched them.

  “Since we can’t be there, you’ll have to do it for us.” Misael’s tone was low and teasing, and I could picture the mischievous glint in his dark eyes. “So if I say I’d run my hands over your milky skin, that I’d squeeze your tits and play with your nipples till you were moaning and writhing…”

  My breath caught in my throat, and a gush of wetness dampened my panties.

  “Then I would do it,” I whispered, one hand gripping the phone tighter while the other began to roam my own body, pushing the fabric of my nightgown out of the way as my fingertips teased my nipple.

  “Yeah.” His voice was strangled, and I swore I could hear heavier breathing from the other two boys. “Do it for me, Coralee. Let me hear you moan.”

  His words seemed to travel straight to my clit, and just as he had commanded, I writhed restlessly, my hand massaging my breast with a harder touch as I pinched and pulled my nipple. When I switched to the other one, it was already peaked and sensitive, and I let out a low groan as my clit throbbed.

  “Fuck, yes. Like that.”

  Kace’s voice was hard and rough, and I moaned again at the sound of it. Everything about these boys turned me on, and if all I could have right now was their voices, their grunts and moans, I would take it.

  “Kace,” I murmured, still tugging hard on my nipples, making jagged bolts of sensation tear through me. “I want your cock in my mouth. I want to suck you and lick you until you can’t take it anymore.”

  I had never understood why his dirty talk always turned me on so much, making my whole body electric with need even as it made me blush. I still didn’t quite understand it, but my own filthy words were having the same effect on me, as each word brought with it a vivid image, a remembered sensation.

  “I like when you grab my hair while I’m sucking you,” I said. My hand left my breasts, trailing down over my stomach before delving beneath the waistband of my panties. “I like when you use me like that.”

  “Fucking hell, Princess.”

  He sounded like he might be dying. Like my words might be killing him.

  I grinned, biting my lower lip. I liked having this kind of power over him—liked being able to drive him crazy like this. But I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want to torture him.

  My hand moved down farther between my legs, brushing over my clit before delving into my wet core, and my entire body shuddered.

  “I’m touching myself,” I murmured. “You guys touch yourselves too. Imagine it’s me. My hand. My mouth. My… pussy. My ass.”

  I stumbled over the words a little, but any embarrassment or awkwardness I might’ve felt was fading quickly as sensations flooded me. For the first time in days, I felt right. I felt happy and whole.

  “Fuck,” Bishop bit out, and I could pict
ure his cock straining against his pants.

  “Uh, Princess, normally when we all take out our dicks around each other, it’s ’cause you’re here. You’re in the middle of all of us,” Misael commented, humor in his voice. But I could hear the need there too.

  They might never have done something like this before, but I was almost sure they would tonight. Because I had asked. Because they never liked to deny me anything. And because they needed this just as much as I did.

  “I am there,” I said softly, bringing my arousal-slicked fingers up to rub at my clit, teasing myself with light touches at first. “I’m right there with you. I want you all so fucking bad.”

  “Fucking Christ.”

  Kace’s words burst out of him, and a second later, I heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper, and the rustling of clothing.

  My heart rate spiked, my clit throbbing harder and harder as my fingers worked faster.

  “Are you touching yourself, Kace?” I gasped.

  “Yes,” he gritted out, his voice clipped. “Fuckin’ my fist. Wish it was your tight little pussy.”

  My whole body jerked at the sound of his words. I was on the verge of coming already, but I didn’t slow my fingers. I didn’t want to hold it off. I would come for these boys. Then I would come again, and again, and again.

  “I don’t,” I rasped, arching my back, rubbing my sensitive nipples against the blankets. “I want you in my ass. Just like you promised. It’ll be tight, Kace. I know it’ll be so tight. But I know you’ll take care of me. You’ll make it feel good.”

  The breathing coming through the line was heavier now, three distinct patterns of breath. I could hear other noises too, more wet sounds of flesh on flesh, that made me certain the other boys were touching themselves too.

  “I’ll always take care of you, Princess,” Kace muttered, a dark promise in his voice that made my toes curl and my hips buck off the mattress.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered brokenly. “Gonna come. Gonna—”

  My core and my ass both clenched rhythmically as an orgasm plowed into me, and I had never felt more empty in my life.