THE TEST: Secret Society Dark Romance (4Horsemen Series Book 1)

by Elena Monroe

  “Because I’m letting you.”

  His fingers snuck between my legs, unable to close them unless it was around his body, I felt them actually pinch my clit. Clamping down on every nerve, I felt my body shake uncontrollably when his hot breath rained down on me.

  “Letting me? Mouths like that don’t get what they want...” The mounting tension on my clit felt relief I didn’t want. “I never lose; it would be wise to remember that.”

  My hands got to work in the absence of his fingers when his grip on the tie loosened. I undid his designer belt and watched him let me. He untucked his shirt, having no choice but to let go of my restraints altogether.

  He didn’t lose, but I wasn’t exactly getting the short end of the stick here.

  Shoving my hand inside his pants, I snuck my way behind his enemy lines, the band of his underwear, and felt along his length. His was rock hard for someone who doesn’t give in or lose too easily.

  A grin made my lips thin out and stretch when I massaged my palm against him, making sure my fingers closed around him to elicit a kind of groan I didn’t think Vic allowed to come from his mouth.

  He was the kind of guy who probably fucked silently and deadly. He couldn’t give anyone the satisfaction of a victory over him.

  There was nothing left to say, and I looked up at him instead of at his crotch, half expecting him to kiss me. His lips dropped to mine, heads touching, and his breath shaking no matter how much control he had, but the kiss never came. One sudden movement later, he was fishing my hand out of his pants and tugging on the tie around my wrists in a way that made me sit up taller.

  My arms still fastened, only now around his neck, he pushed his pants down before tugging me further down the desk. Wrapping my legs around him, every limb was contorting around his toned body, as I felt his tip nudge at my heat.

  “Just do it already,” I pleaded for him to stop teasing. I didn’t care if it hurt. I wanted all the men I fucked to hurt. If they hurt enough, you might learn your lesson to not get too attached.

  A weakness for assholes with commitment issues.

  Exactly, I can’t lose any more people, so bring on the pain.

  Vic wasn’t a gentleman. He wasn’t going to confirm or wait for permission. He was always exactly a coordinated missile launch code ready to stick at all times—never sorry for the damage they do.

  It was perfect.

  “Harder,” I moaned out, as I felt him stretch, tear, and thrust between my legs.

  “Just lose gracefully already,” he groaned, and his ridge jerked inside me so hard I felt the reverberation wreck my body with an orgasm.

  Gracefully wasn’t the right word for the way my legs were shaking against his hips.

  To think the tension would just melt away at the hands of an orgasm was childish. The air was still heavy, and at this proximity, it felt like suffocating.

  His hand flat on his desk right under my asscheek, I was still restrained when he stood up straight and freed my hands with one hard yank on his tie. Tossing it down, he started to do his pants back up and fix his unbuttoned shirt.

  “What was the message?”

  Still trying to catch my breath, I coughed out, “Khaos said he’s going to send your tenth birthday photos in a companywide email.”

  Sliding off his desk, I collected my phony papers that I came in with and snagged the folder with Abigail’s name on it—the exact way I intended.

  He never loses, but I never give up.

  VIC

  Khaos may be the least responsible, least reliable, and definitely the most chaotic of us four, but he was sending me a message—a message only he knew I would understand.

  I liked to imagine if I was never born into this life, I might carry some of his kind of fun.

  On my tenth birthday, when Grimm was Jason still, we buried his dead cat in my backyard instead of eating cake. It was one of the only times the four of us banded together to handle something. The most recent time we did that was when Grimm decided he was going to fall in love with a girl outside the Clave a few months ago.

  I voted to kill her and get the mourning over with.

  I was overthrown.

  Justice just marched her ass over to my side of the battlefield and used her pussy as a weapon. Challenging me the way no one ever did was an understatement.

  All the women I knew and fucked used their pussies as a means to an end. Desire driven and desire’s ends.

  No ulterior motive.

  With Justice, there were ninety different motives, and I had to prepare for all of them.

  Sitting back down in my leather office chair, I shot Khaos a text to confirm the message. Knowing him, it could have been a fluke, and he really did have some embarrassing photos of me.

  ME: 10th birthday photos? Company wide email? Really?

  KHAOS: I told her that like a week ago…

  KHAOS: Might wanna handle that before she starts asking Grimm questions too…

  I couldn’t even manage a response, when it felt like my entire body turned scarlet with anger. My hand around my phone was tight enough I was convinced I would either crush it or melt it down just from my sheer touch.

  Justice knew exactly how to use information to her advantage, and it ended up getting the best of me.

  I didn’t even care that she was questioning people when I was the fucking punchline in every sentence.

  A few large steps was all it took to bring me to the threshold between us, but when I pulled the door open, Justice wasn’t at her desk.

  Another winning blow to my ego.

  For the tiniest second, I wondered to myself if this is how women felt when I would take what I wanted and leave the rest.

  Conquered.

  My dick felt used, ego bruised, and now I had to learn my enemy better.

  Who was Justice Fritz, and why did she have the upper hand?

  I spent the rest of the afternoon Googling her instead of actually returning calls, placing orders, and collecting payments like I should have been. Coming up semi-empty, I only found social media pages filled with photos of protests, equality images, and her at rallies, looking like a warrior with her sign and bandana.

  Giving up around lunch, I exited the black hole known as Justice.

  There were only two people who would give me the information I wanted: my dad or Khaos. One was not an option unless I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  Even if it was justified, he’d make sure I felt like a failure for asking him for anything.

  That was his MO: treating me like a failure when I pride myself on not losing. It had been that way since my birth mom skipped out on us. I always thought it was a lesson in being hard and untreatable, yet it didn’t matter—that was practically leather and steel now.

  Khaos’s side of the office was a wreck—not messy, but an actual wreck. Caution tape and plywood decorated the space like it belonged here in an office that brought in billions a year.

  Fucking weirdo.

  His assistant tried to stop me from bypassing him completely. Throwing up a hand, he silenced down pretty quickly when he probably realized how I was.

  “Vic the Dick! What are you doing so far from your cage?” Khaos rode past me on his skateboard to the ramp in his office.

  When did his brand of chaos get fucking… worse? What’s worse than chaos?

  “What do you know about Justice?” I stood planted, very still, making sure nothing was touching my poise.

  He picked up speed to go up the ramp and paused right on the edge, standing there in suspended balance, making me wait.

  “Well, she’s getting good at picking a hand, and she’s friends with Abigail…”

  I wasn’t going to ask what the first part meant. I knew better than to ask Khaos about his games.

  “Not the obvious shit, dumbass. Her file, what’s in it?”

  Dropping in and idling the board in front of me with a feigned hurt expression all over his face. “Vic, that’s against c
ompany policy. Why would I do that?” He broke into a fit of laughter when he got zero reaction out of me.

  That was the thing about Khaos: Someone always had to be laughing.

  For me? Losing.

  For Grimm? Living.

  For Bowen? Uncomfortable.

  We’re a real fucking riot.

  “Bro, she’s actually had a rough life. Her parents died when she was younger, and she lived with her Grams in Costa Mesa. Do you think she had to help her pee and shit?”

  Khaos hated all things related to death or getting old. He wanted to be young forever.

  “How did her parents die?”

  Stepping off the skateboard, he walked over to the desk and sat in the center with his legs folded under him. “Well, it’s been real. That’s all I know… I should get back to work.”

  I tried not to laugh at him, not in his face anyways. You never know how fragile a grenade is until the pin is removed. I wasn’t about to find out.

  “Work? You never do work. What are you hiding?”

  Khaos looked like a fucking child, sitting on his desk, with all of his limbs prezteled and his eyes clear of any guilt. Whatever he knew was worth hiding. Whatever he knew, I was going to find.

  “Not a rabbit hole you want to fall down, Vic. It might change you…”

  Last words in an argument, last words in general, had a way of lingering longer than normal words. Last words rang through the air longer, because they split the earth open, and you could either fall in or adapt.

  I always managed to adapt to my new environment.

  Walking into my now wreck of an office with papers everywhere, my desk now at an angle it wasn’t before from practically inserting myself into her cervix, and all the pens rolling around the surface. It was chaos, and I hated it.

  Tidying up the mess, I stacked everything neatly, when I noticed the green file was missing. It was pretty hard to miss; Abigail’s file was thick enough to throw at someone and they’d probably topple over.

  We all had a file… even the four of us. Documenting everything from birth, to school, to your personal life that you don’t even share with anyone else. The Clave saw, heard, and knew everything.

  Pushing my office door open with fury, I saw her desk abandoned, and I knew she had made a break for it, probably hauling ass out of here before I could catch up to what she was doing.

  If it wasn’t bad enough that she bested me at my own games, she bested me in a way I didn’t see coming by taking something that wasn’t hers to take.

  JUSTICE

  Abigail’s file was thick with a rubber band around it, and the papers were all different shades of white, like they all originated from different places.

  It was violating to read someone’s life story without their permission, like plucking it from a Border’s biography shelf, but here I was, thumbing through the pages of Abigail’s life.

  Every piece of paper had a purpose and a snake curling around the letter C stamped on every edge, like some security measure.

  The first page was her application with a thumb drive stuck to the inside fold in a Ziplock baggie. I was afraid to plug into my computer right now, but I was going to hold onto it until I was ready.

  The Clave had enough of her.

  Thumbing through the rest, I had a detailed summary of her love affair with Grimm that I was already semi privy too. The details in this folder were only filling in the blanks.

  Grimm was supposed to marry the blonde bitchy Barbie.

  Grimm killed the priest who hurt Abigail.

  Grimm also killed Oscar, so it’s safe to say he would kill anyone who hurt her.

  Grimm had also gotten her pregnant…

  That was news to me, and honestly, the anti-climactic confession was insulting. I was pro-choice, so there was nothing stopping her from telling me.

  Slamming the file shut, I fell back against my pillows in bed, looking at the stars stuck to the ceiling. I was piecing it all together in my mind and drawing lines like constellations.

  Abigail was a good girl with a spine made of steel. If anyone was going to piss off the Illuminati, it was going to be me.

  I was prepared to fight to get answers, but the shock of her secrets had me blown over, literally. Mumbling into the air, I was missing Abigail.

  Fuck, Abi. What did you get yourself into?

  Sitting up and taking a swig of my tap water (yes, I was one of those people), I dragged my laptop to my folded up legs and pushed the USB into the side, silently waiting for the icon to pop up. No part of me was prepared to see what was hiding on this drive.

  Double clicking it, a black screen appeared on my screen with typewriter font: A short film by Khaos DuPonte.

  I waited for the black screen to disappear, and suddenly my heart felt clenched in a fist. I wasn’t sure if I was, in fact, still breathing anymore.

  It was Abigail’s room.

  Our apartment.

  Whatever happened to her happened right here, a living room between us, and I didn’t notice.

  My speakers blared with a scream, shaking breaths, and heavy boots against hardwood floors, until Abigail appeared in a frame not staying still.

  It was an amateur film for sure.

  The picture looked distorted and scratched on purpose, but it only made it harder to follow. There were too many clues, too much to dissect, and too much that made my head spin. I felt like Abigail watching her true crime shows, and my eyes were wide enough to search the screen for the smallest clue to solve her missing person case.

  The jostled cameraman couldn’t keep a steady shot, and it ended with Abigail’s empty bed and drops of blood staining her off-white sheets.

  That wasn’t there when the cops came.

  It was surprising the cops came and left without any real care. Bureaucratic red tape stopped them from doing their jobs until 48 hours had passed. I even got berated for calling it in so soon and wasting their time.

  Slamming my computer closed, I sat still, shaking with guilt I knew wasn’t just mine. No, this paralyzing guilt belonged to the guys just as much as me.

  Maybe to Grimm even more. Whatever happened… he let it happen.

  My phone buzzed under my thigh. Picking it up, I assumed it was one of the one night stands in my recent history. I don’t love doing repeats, unless it’s worth my time. It was probably the only part of me Vic could relate to—our flagrant disregard for human connection.

  I was surprised to see a number I didn’t save pop up on my phone. I saved everything in case a one night stand involved too much alcohol, and I couldn’t exactly remember the guy in question.

  VIC: I could fire you for stealing.

  It became clear upon reading the message exactly who it was: my boss.

  ME: But you won’t.

  VIC: Don’t test me. You’re alive for a simple courtesy that I have to extend. I would have killed you and Abigail the minute you both became problems.

  ME: I’m sure you always kill the competition before the real contest even starts.

  I watched the three dots bounce up and down for longer than Vic would need to reply when the message appeared.

  VIC: It’s a sure fire way to win, and I never lose. Bring my folder back here. Don’t be stupid. If I ask twice, there’s a fucking problem.

  I could feel his tone searing me from the comfort of my room, and it only made me pissed off that he perfected being that kind of angry. He knew I took the folder after hypnotizing him with my pussy power, and maybe that was stupid, but I would rather show him my whole hand than tip toe around, being someone I’m not.

  I am the person plotting against you… Nice to meet ya.

  I’m not gonna play the part of a good secretary; now it’s a real challenge.

  Marinating on all of the evidence I scanned over for hours, I stopped to check in on my life. Not every aspect revolved around Abigail being missing, no matter how much I wanted it to.

  Besides infiltrating the Clave and searching fo
r my best friend, I was an activist at heart. It was the only piece of my parents that I carried with me, besides their photo in my locket that I never took off.

  Resistance was a strong word. We were more of a bitter interference ruining your day and plans to be a shitty person.

  Peta.

  Feminism.

  Equality.

  Human rights.

  Saving our planet.

  Corporate bankruptcy.

  You name it, and we probably were the ones who organized the rally you saw splashed all over social media. Also, because of us, our hackers knew some tricks to get our good work seen.

  Meadow, my right hand when it came to our interferences and one of said hackers, ran the day-to-day, while I worked. I also managed a few side hustles to keep funding our screaming matches with the United States of America.

  Ironic, huh? Using Illuminati paychecks for a good cause, while they burn our human rights to the ground with a smile on their face.

  I wish only working at the Clave was making ends meet, but it wasn’t.

  I had rent to pay and protests to fund, which meant I picked up any kind of side work I could. I was one of those people who didn’t have many qualms when it came to selling parts of me off for what I needed.

  What I needed was going to do me better than feeling weird about someone staring at my tits while I dusted a table.

  Topless Maids weren’t objectified the same way as sex workers or even exotic dancers were. It was a different kind of lurking eye—a different kind of creepy that gave you a special kind of chill under your skin.

  It paid three hundred an hour to just clean houses without a top on in a maid’s outfit. I’m sure anyone given the opportunity would sign on the dotted NDA line too.

  It wasn’t easy shifting from a pissed off man-child during the day to middle-aged men with money to burn at night, watching girls clean. It was much easier when I didn’t work so directly with Vic. We toyed with each other more than we actually got any work done. Not that he actually ever explained what he did or how I could help any. Instead, random skeevy guys would call and place orders, demand to talk to Vic, or even give me coordinates.