Crap, crap, crap.
“Okay, fine, I want to buy your scent. So what? That doesn't mean anything. I just like it, and I recently ran out of my usual lemon meringue stuff.”
“It's Kenneth Cole Black, and I think even a poor, little peasant like you could afford it.” Spencer strokes his hand along the length of himself, and then rolls over, digging around in his nightstand for some lube.
This is getting seriously real, I think as he adjusts his phone, holding it up high over himself, so I can see everything. Like, everything.
Slowly, I set my own phone aside, and then strip my shirt and pajama pants, picking it back up to flash Spencer my newly nude self.
“Oh, come on,” he growls out, curling his lip up in a vulpine grin. “You're covering your chest with your arm, and … what the hell sort of panties are those? And why are you always wearing weird panties, Chuck-let?”
My cheeks go from pink to neon red.
“They're … you’ve seen these panties before,” I choke out, wondering why I still don't have that magic power to open up a hole beneath myself and fall into it. Death would be preferable to the level of embarrassment I'm experiencing right now. Yeah, okay, fine I’m wearing the crotchless panties that Micah found in my stuff when the boys helped me move. How coy must I be, to think everything is covered up when in reality, I’m flashing him the best bits? “The rest were … I had to wash them, and these …”
“Did you wear those just for me, Chuck?” he drawls, voice thick with lust. Oh, yeah, he’s definitely turned-on. And he most definitely doesn’t hate these crotchless panties as much as I do. “Tell me: did you fantasize about me pulling them off of you when you put them on this morning?”
“First off, you’re totally grasping at straws right now. Second, I'm only wearing them because I don't have any other clean ones,” I grumble, looking down at the big hole in my crotch—the hole in the fabric, I mean, not the … well, you know what I meant. I should've maybe thought about changing into something else before I stripped down to my skivvies.
“You still didn't answer my question,” Spencer urges, and I decide to distract him by slowly sliding my arm down my breasts to reveal, well, everything. His eyes sparkle, and he grins. “I still can't believe you were hiding them for all those months.”
“It sucked; it hurt,” I whisper, but I'm not really all that concerned with my breasts being bound. No, I'm all too focused on Spencer's reaction to them.
He strokes his hand down the length of himself, eyelids heavy and half-lidded. He’s watching me, his breathing coming in harsh, ragged bursts. I’d give anything to be there with him right now, lying with my head on his chest, my own hand taking the place of his.
As my thoughts run away with me, I slid my own hand under the panties, teasing some wetness up to rub myself. Spencer gets a nice view through the crotchless portion, but I don’t care. I want him to see. I’ve only got one free hand, but if I could, I’d touch my breasts, too. My nipples are aching, and all I can think about is Spencer’s hot mouth on them, his tonguing tracing circles around the stiff pink point.
Spencer groans and bucks his hips, thrusting into his hand, clearly imagining it’s me there instead.
“I want you so bad,” he whispers, his voice ragged and harsh.
“I can practically feel you, here.” My fingers dive in and Spencer makes this horrible, agonized sound, sweat beading on his forehead. He works himself faster and harder, and I match his pace. Our eyes both seem to drift up at the same moment, from our hands to our faces. Gazes locked, I work myself until he comes for me, spilling himself all over his own hand and stomach. The sight is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and within a few minutes, I’m climaxing, too, forgetting for a brief moment to be embarrassed that Spencer’s just lying there, panting and watching me touch myself. A small scream tears from me at the last moment, and relaxation floods my body.
I swear, I melt into those pillows.
For several minutes after, we just sit there in silence, staring at each other.
“You have no idea how much I miss you,” he says, and I shake my head.
“You have no idea how much we missed you when you went missing. Don’t ever do that to us again, okay?”
“I promise,” he says, but can someone really make that promise, to stay safe?
Sometimes that’s not entirely in our control, now is it?
“I heard you up late last night,” Monica teases when I appear in the kitchen, groggy and bleary-eyed but smiling like an idiot. “Your new guy seems pretty awesome.”
“How much did you hear exactly?” I ask, pouring milk into a bowl and trying not to think about the Monica/Cody thing. She betrayed me, and things will never be the same. But also, I missed her. It's a weird conundrum, playing out inside my chest. Better to be here than with my aunt or mother though.
Seriously, like way better. I'm mostly left alone at the Peters’ place. Dad isn't happy about it, but I'm attending school, and my grades are so much better than they used to be. The curriculum at Adamson is so far beyond anything we do at SCHS that for once, I'm actually at the head of the class. Church's tutoring sessions certainly didn't hurt.
“Um, mostly a lot of moaning, but a bit of a scream, too,” Monica laughs, and then squeals when I flick cereal at her. “But seriously, for you to let yourself go like that, he must be really special.”
My cheeks flush, but I lick my lower lip.
“He is, but I’m not,” I mumble, and she gives me a look, her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Seriously? Does he know that?” she tosses her glossy espresso hair over her shoulder and then surreptitiously sneaks a peek at her phone. Monica's dating some rich douche bag from Burberry Prep Academy. Guess I can't really judge though, considering that all my new friends in the Student Council are also rich douche bags. Except ... maybe they're just rich, and not so much douches? “And what about your hottie twins? Charlotte, do not even start getting down on yourself right now. Clearly, they all see something in you.”
“I guess.” I scoop a bite of cereal into my mouth as Monica puts a hand on her hip and gives me a look.
“For real?” she asks, and then her face softens slightly. “I mean, look at you. You’re seriously fucking cool, dating three dudes like that. It's our time, you know? Like after centuries of patriarchal bullshit, a little polyamory is the least men can do.” She hits the button on the blender, and churns up this green gunk that I wouldn't eat unless I were a literal cow whose favorite foods were cud and clover. It even smells like dirt.
“Are we okay?” she asks after she turns it off and transfers it to a stainless steel thermos, glancing over at me with as much indecision and shame as I've ever seen in her face. Anger rides hard in me, but I push away the pain of that single day, and try to remember all the good times we had together.
It works, at least a little.
“We could get there,” I say, “as long as you let me stay here the rest of the school year.”
“Oh, for sure,” she gushes, trying to keep her cool. I can tell she's excited though. I think, despite the amount of people she surrounds herself with, that Monica is secretly lonely. I think before I met the Student Council, that I was, too.
“Once trust is broken, it takes even more to heal that wound than it does to start fresh, but let's try, okay? I miss you.” Monica's cheeks flush and she nods, but there's a determination in her gaze that I appreciate. “Should we go surfing after school? I haven't been in forever. We'll be lucky if I can manage to stand up on the board.”
“Oh hell yes. I'll gather the girls ... but only if you want?”
I nod.
When I moved to Connecticut, I put my life on pause, just waiting around for it to start up again. I won't make that same mistake again.
Besides, the busier I keep myself here, the faster the days will go by, and I'll get to see my friends again.
And my … boyfriends.
Like, plural.
>
How weird is that?
When the first of May rolls around, I start counting down the days until school is out. Nothing's happened at Adamson since I left, and I start to get this sick, guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Is Eugene dead because of me?
I know that's a strange thought, but clearly the people responsible for his murder are the same ones after me, the ones who left the notes telling me to leave. If I'd gone sooner, would that have stopped the violence? Would that have saved Ranger from almost drowning?
There's no way to answer that, so I don't try.
Instead, I finish up the day and then sit waiting for Monica until I get a text telling me she's stuck making up a math test. She promises she'll only be a half an hour, so I decide to wait in the back courtyard area, lovingly referred to as Dandelion Court since, you know, our gardening club sucks, and the place is filled with big white dandelion puffs.
Sunning myself on one of the brick walls, I pull up Jenica’s journal and start reading. I’ve been trying to get at least a page or two in every night, but it wasn’t until last night that I really started to get to the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean bad stuff.
A few months into the school year, Jenica was close to having a nervous breakdown. Between schoolwork, her new relationship with Rick, and trying to decide on a college, she ended up making some fairly questionable decisions. Spencer’s brother, Jack, sold her some coke, and some pills, and the entries after that are much different.
I think she may have been a bit of an addict.
Today, I was walking back to the dorm when I realized I just needed a minute to myself. I took off through the trees, and I started running with no idea as to where I was going. That’s when I ran into them.
They didn’t want me there; they were pissed.
Things got bad, like really, really bad.
So I ran home, and I locked the door, and I put my hands over my ears.
This is going to come back to bite me in the ass, I just know it is.
My mouth drops open, and I flip back and forth between the previous pages to see if I missed something. But no, Jenica was just purposely vague. I mean, it was her journal after all. Guess she didn’t expect anyone else to read it. Either that, or she was high when she wrote that section. Who knows?
With a frustrated sigh, I continue on, but the next few pages are fairly boring. Her boyfriend Rick seems like a chauvinistic prick, but there’s nothing about whatever happened to her in the woods.
I flip through a few weeks’ worth of entries, and then pause on the page with the symbol. Jenica’s sketch doesn’t look hurried or unsure; it’s like she was drawing from something in real life. I slip the stone from my pocket and examine it. The boys and I have tried to research it, but there’s no information on this symbol. It looks like a lot of other well-known symbols, but it isn’t a match to any.
With a sigh, I tuck the stone away again, and turn the page.
Right here, it looks like a whole section was torn away. I zoom in on the image, and there it is, clear as day, the edges of ripped paper next to an entry about Lionel Murphy. He’s such a good, kind-hearted friend, the only sort of person I could share so much with.
Huh.
Yep, they were dating behind Rick’s back, no doubt in my mind.
I'm halfway through the next page when I hear a noise. I lift my head up, expecting to see another student, the janitor, a faculty member. But instead, there's nobody there.
Whatever.
I start reading again when I hear the sound of boots on gravel.
This time, when I look up, I see a guy standing just down the path from me. Wearing a hoodie that's cinched tight over his face.
What. the. fuck?
“Uh, can I help you?” I choke out, and then the guy's racing down the pathway toward me. I drop my phone as I roll to the side, and a baseball bat slams into the brick wall where I was just sitting.
This so isn't happening! I think as I scramble to my feet and take off, finding the double doors to the hallway locked. I yank on them, and then out of some deeply buried instinct, I duck.
The baseball bat hits the bullet-proof glass of the windows and bounces back, making my attacker curse.
I'm already scrabbling away, using the wall to stand up as I head for the open window behind a wooden garden box filled with vegetables (and dandelions). I vault over the box, crushing a cucumber in the process, and then shove the screen out of my way, crawling into the classroom and landing on the floor in a panting heap.
Unfortunately, there's nobody in there, so I'm still on my own. I race toward the door and fling it open, letting myself into the empty hallway.
The second of my two attackers is standing there, a knife in hand.
Jesus.
“This is insane!” I scream, my voice echoing in the empty hallway. Where the hell is everyone? I take off for the cafeteria, slipping on the floors as I pound past the picnic tables in the direction of the fire exit. There are footsteps behind me, closing in fast. And even though I’ve been surfing lately, I’m still a bit out of shape; I'm panting like crazy.
My third attacker, much smaller in build, leaps out from behind a trash can, wearing yet another nondescript black hoodie and wielding a Taser. A freaking Taser. And where’s mine when I need it? That’s right, back at Monica’s because I’m not allowed to bring freaking weapons to school. Fuck my life.
Trying to stop on those waxy floors is a recipe for disaster, and I end up skidding, slamming into the legs of douche bag number three. She—this is most definitely a she—gives a feminine grunt, and collapses on top of me. She can’t use the Taser in such close proximity, but she sure as hell can hold me as long as she needs for the other two guys to get here.
“Let go of me!” I scream, and the sound of a door slamming in the kitchen area echoes around the room.
“What on earth is going on out here?” one of the lunch ladies asks, storming out the gate that leads to the kitchen with a knife in her hand. The girl I’m all tangled up with kicks at me, and curses, rising to her feet. I’m not fully convinced one angry lunch lady is enough to stop these freaks, so I scramble forward toward the exit, using the handle to pull myself to my feet.
The door swings open in front of me, letting in a wave of sunshine as I spin and slam my palms against it to force it shut.
The last thing I see before it closes is the trio of hoodie-wearing assholes staring at me. Turning, I find myself looking at a group of goth kids smoking cigarettes. I smile; they don't smile back. And I make myself walk as slowly as I can past them.
Nobody follows me out of the cafeteria, but whatever these psychos are trying for: it's working.
I'm scared shitless.
Intimidating me while I was at Adamson, sleeping in Jenica's room, exploring the girls' dormitory, that made sense.
This … doesn't.
What in the ever-loving fuck is going on?!
“You have got to be fucking kidding me?” Tobias murmurs as Spencer paces behind him. Micah's sitting on his brother's left, while Church lounges in the background. Ranger gets up close and personal with the screen.
“Do you think your attackers were male or female?” he asks, mouth in a tight, thin line. He looks ready to kill somebody.
“Two males, one female, just like we thought,” I say, exhaling and rubbing my hands over my face. I reported the attack to the security office, but after searching the campus, there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. The security cameras just so happened to malfunction during the incident. Although they took my report, I could tell the two male police officers were skeptical of my story. Dickheads. “Do you think I should call my dad and talk to him about it?”
“Hell yeah I do,” Ranger snaps, closing his eyes and covering his mouth with his hand. He opens them again, those dark sapphire irises cutting straight through me. He's all the way across the country and yet, he could kill with that glare of his. “This is fucking seriou
s.”
“He's not going to believe me,” I murmur, but Ranger gives me this searing look. I wonder if he really does think of me like a replacement for Jenica? I hope not, I think, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa in Monica's guestroom. That's how big this place is, the bedroom has its own fireplace and seating area. I hope they don't end up losing it to foreclosure like Micah implied.
“He will. He sent you away for a reason. He knows more than he's letting on.” Ranger exhales. “Have you had a chance to finish the journal yet?”
“I'm working my way through it,” I say, my mind drifting to Jenica. She really did write about some fucked-up things, but she also wrote down her fears, her hopes and dreams. Knowing she's gone, it's a tough thing to get through. When I read it, I always feel like crying.
“We've been digging into things here, but it's been quiet since you left. What I don't understand is why you'd get notes telling you to leave, only to have your attacker chase you down?”
“Could be a prank?” Spencer suggests, putting his hands on the back of Tobias' chair and leaning in. I inhale and breathe in the scent of the Kenneth Cole Black fragrance I purchased, specifically for these sorts of moments. His turquoise eyes catch and hold my attention. “Have you told anyone else about the notes or the attacks? Monica? That douche, Cody?”
“Nobody,” I say firmly. And really, that's not exactly their style. Monica is too mean girl, and Cody is … well, he's not all that smart. Subtlety isn't exactly in his wheelhouse.
“So the notes aren't necessarily tied to the attacks,” Church muses, leaning back in his chair and crossing his long legs at the knee. “We're looking for two different factions.”
“Someone was trying to protect you,” Tobias says, exchanging a look with his brother. Micah's brows go up. My eyes slide to Church, whose half-lidded stare and overly calm demeanor make me wonder. He locked me in the trunk that night; someone let me out. Someone who had keys, but didn't have to go into the house to wake Dad up. And that same someone was waiting to chase me with a knife, and yet …
The Ruthless Boys (Adamson All-Boys Academy #2) Page 18