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

by Elena Monroe

  Surviving is a lot harder as an adult. When you’re younger, it’s all fun and games, how far could you push the line, how mad could I make people, how thin was the ice under my feet, when really I practically got away with murder.

  As an adult, you have to conform: get a job, pay bills, don’t live like an animal—and, if you fall on your face, well, you better like dusting off your own knees.

  I was a Destiny’s Child anthem for independence.

  Just what I wanted.

  Throwing myself into fighting the good fight tamed a lot of the wild, the competitive, the child still wanting to piss people off just to be left alone. It gave me purpose. So why am I drowning in expectations?

  And killing myself to meet them all...

  I woke up the next day, still in Vic’s shirt, with the Saturday morning glow pouring through the crack in my black curtains. Scrubbing my face, I sat up before I pulled the material to my nose, taking a big inhale of Vic’s cologne that still soaked the white button up.

  Something in me recognized it not only as competition, but comfort…

  Maybe it was winning in my sights over a giant.

  Maybe it was how immaculate the kiss we shared was.

  I had never been kissed the way Vic kissed me. I never chose the cleanest men to date or fuck; normally, they lived a lifestyle even less conventional than mine. Artists, musicians, writers, directors—anyone who loved giving the world full of expectations a middle finger.

  Those kind of men kiss you like the world is poison and your lips are the cure—messy, violent, and destructive.

  Not Vic.

  Vic kissed me like it was an honor, a privilege, a small glory. A kind of glory I could still taste when I closed my eyes and replayed the moments of our vulnerabilities protruding further than we’d like.

  I wasn’t much different than Vic; it was almost embarrassing to not have noticed until last night. He liked winning, and so did I. He liked meeting all the expectations placed upon his shoulders, and so did I. He was battle ready, and so I was I. We were two sides of the same penny, designed slightly different, but valued at the same.

  I was fighting to win against a corporate giant with my eyes closed, and I never saw my enemy for what he was: a man robbed of the lesson of losing.

  If you never lose, then you can’t truly enjoy the win.

  Boy #13 in my contacts made my phone vibrate so loudly that it shook Vic from my memories.

  BOY #13: I’m buying pregame party favors. Any requests?

  ME: Nah. Good old Blue Ribbon works for me.

  I almost forgot who Boy #13 was until he mentioned party favors and pregaming. Now I almost regretted accepting the offer of going out with him tonight. Boy #13 is notorious for getting so wasted that he forgets he likes me, but that was kind of what I liked about him…

  The challenge of convincing him he likes me just not when he’s drunk.

  The last time we went out, he decided he was going to fight the bartender for cutting him off, fought off two bouncers on the way out, and fucked me senseless in his car in the parking lot.

  Boy #13 was built like Thor with the matching blonde locks and a hammer in his jeans. He was volatile and toxic, if we were being polite. At his worst, he was verbally abusive, but I could handle myself. I hadn’t been a victim since that day the cops told me I was the victim of losing my parents, and I wasn’t going to let some hot drunk push me into a corner.

  It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and I growled at myself for wasting precious daylight. I needed to check in on the team and make sure we were ready for the rally coming up. Nothing we protested was simple. No, the rally coming up was for the planet, not some hideous fast food place or some small injustice. This was oil drilling in Alaska being voted on in California.

  Once I sent a dozen texts and emails, I could finally call my Grams before I had to shower Vic off. Boy #13 would smell another man’s cologne a mile away, and when planning to pregame, I didn’t need him to lose it before we even saw one song played.

  My Grams was a feisty, still active, and very independent woman. She refused to be put in a home, and she swore like a sailor, which wasn’t far off from her upbringing as a general’s daughter. She was a hippie, handing down every unconventional trait to my mom, who passed that down to me too.

  After it rang a few times more than usual, I got nervous. She was getting old, too old to be by herself, and I was avoiding that fact of life. Losing my last anchor to this world was a pain I wasn’t ready for, no matter how tough I seemed. No amount of loss will ever prepare you for more loss. I decided to send her a text instead... She was probably just busy gardening or baking.

  ME: Grams, I need to ask you about my last name.

  GRAMS: Well, shoot, darling. I don’t got all day.

  ME: HR pulled my file, and my last name was wrong. Did mom and dad ever use another last name?

  GRAMS: I don’t remember yesterday or what I had for breakfast, Justice. Why are you digging all this up?

  ME: Grams, I’ll come visit soon, okay?

  I felt my resolve fade against her fragile age and not wanting to be the one to add more stress to the pot. My youth was enough to give her grey hairs, but trouble as an adult meant something worse. I was questioning my own loyalty by integrating my Grams, all because Vic somehow managed to feel more comforting than anything else in my life.

  It was simply a mistake by HR. I needed to let it go.

  Boy #13 picked me up with music blaring and a sloppy kiss that made me wanna wipe it from my lips along with the extra saliva he left there. Already drunk and probably high, I had a feeling tonight would end in a disaster, so I had better soak it up now.

  He managed to not say one word directed towards me the entire drive.

  He was lucky he was hot and knew how to make me come without a guidebook.

  The venue was flooded with young adults and teens in all black with an abundance of tattoos and holes in their faces that made my skin crawl knowing they shoved a safety pin through their own skin.

  Leaning onto the bar top, I asked the bartender for a standard beer, even though that wasn’t going to cut it when catching up with Boy #13. One of us had to be semi sober in this scenario.

  Turning around, I realized I had lost him all in the time of ordering a beer.

  Great.

  Walking over to the crowd pressuring the stage, I stood towards the back, where I didn’t have to hold on so tightly to my beer. Scanning the crowd, I saw a guy standing above the crowd like he could be walking, not on water, but people.

  Long hair, a leather jacket, and strong arms hoisting him up while he was shouting every word of the song.

  I was entranced by him instantaneously.

  Mystery Man was hard to miss, looking like a God above a sea of black.

  Sipping my beer, I couldn’t peel my eyes off him, watching his every move, even his limbs thrashing around a mosh pit. It wasn’t until I choked on the cheap beer when I saw him pull back his hair into a low bun that I realized I knew him…

  Vic.

  Vic the Dick.

  Vicy.

  My boss and sole proprietor of seeing me vulnerable was the apple of my eye tonight. I turned a flushed red almost on command.

  It’s like closing your eyes on the sun, and when you open them, everything is in a new filter. Somewhat polluted with sunspots and flares, but the image isn’t any less beautiful.

  I had forgotten all about Boy #13 that I came with when song after song started and ended.

  Finally, after a few beers, I was able to drag myself away from staring at Vic like some kind of awestruck teenager. I wandered down odd hallways in search of a bathroom after pounding back the piss-water beer. The buzz was clouding my vision into a dewy haze with the graffiti popping off the black walls in the rundown venue.

  Slipping behind the big door with both privacy stalls and urinals in one place I picked the least messy of the stalls. Each bearing different issues, and it real
ly just depended what you could handle. Some pee on the toilet didn’t bother me if I had enough toilet paper to scrub it off vigorously.

  After squatting above the toilet bowl, I sighed out loud against the relief of holding it in so long. After exiting the stall I could barely see in, I stood up, realizing exactly how drunk I was, when all the beer seemed to settle in the pit of my stomach.

  All the beer felt like I poured acid directly on all my senses able to make good decisions when I tossed my hair in the mirror with my eyes screaming fuck me—except I wasn’t thinking of Boy #13.

  Not even a little.

  I spun around almost too fast when I leaned into the counter trying to gain some balance before throwing myself back out into a crowd pulsing with the music, when I saw Vic standing there against a wall, watching me the same way I was watching him.

  The entire room felt hot and sticky with lust. Our eyes locked, only making my skin tingle with goosebumps and my panties dampen by sheer willpower.

  I was waiting for something to actually catch fire, for us to collide or combust. You couldn’t have this much heat between two people and have nothing happen.

  Consent be damned. He could do anything to me, and I would find a way to be okay with it.

  VIC

  Justice must have been on her way to feeling good, already buzzed off her ass or semi drunk, because she didn’t notice me staring at her from behind for longer than reasonable. She was always a kind of sharp that made going unseen hard; she anticipated every move I made.

  I watched her smooth down her hair that could have been neon against all the black in this venue. She continued to pull at the black liner at the edges of her eyes, and I swore I watched her features melt into this lust I wanted to bottle up.

  If only they sold that at the merch booth. Then I wouldn’t need Justice for my fix.

  I could feel someone burning a hole in the back of my head, even with the music blaring and the crowd moving like a wave before she even realized I noticed her. She thought she was being subtle, but nothing about her was subtle.

  We could have bantered, exchanged blows, but instead, I took exactly six steps over enemy lines into her territory. Standing like a tower above her, I watched her chin lift, and my hands almost knew what to do without any real thought process behind the movements.

  My thumb pushed her chin up even more, and our lips collided in all the heat around us. Her lips were stained with strawberry lip balm, cheap beer, and the sting of a Warhead all at once. I couldn’t get enough of her when my tongue fed itself right into her mouth like a snake.

  That’s what the Clave was—a snake in the grass, always there, but blending in so well you didn’t notice us until it’s too late.

  Her lips nipped at mine, and I didn’t care who saw, who needed to pee, or how fucking dirty this bathroom was. My body dropped only enough to lift her up by the backs of her thighs to help her sit on the counter, legs spread, and my body pushing its way between them. Her leather skirt with her stupid ass pink Converse weren’t my taste, but my body responded like they were.

  My cock was pushing against my zipper, begging to be freed, when her palm slid down between our bodies. Her lips sucked on my tongue, and I pulled her head back, just to make a point, that I wasn’t on a leash, but she certainly had more than my balls in her grasp.

  Her hand closed around my thickness in my black skinny jeans I hardly ever got to wear. They weren't dress code approved.

  I groaned against her mouth on mine and her hand playing a dangerous game, as I pushed her skirt up enough to make her legs fall open even more. I heard a girl’s laugh behind me stumbling on drunk legs while I undid the button and zipper on my pants in a hurry.

  “People are looking,” she said, while her tongue licked up my throat to my jawline and my hand was full of myself.

  “Someone has to set a standard.” Pushing her panties aside with my other hand, I felt exactly how much she hated me. Not very much, if we were only judging based on her soaked through panties.

  “Do you always need to prove a point?” She wrapped her legs around the back of my thighs, pulling me into her, while my tip still in my grip rubbed against her clit.

  “Do you always need to fight me?” I let my voice get huskier on the choked up groans I wouldn’t let out, and my lips dragged against the soft skin on her shoulder. Grasping her thighs in my hands, I yanked her towards me, teetering on the edge of the counter and driving myself deep inside her with no warning.

  Her moan drained out of her throat like a slow leak, while her hands drug graves in my skin. My dick forced her into giving up the last word, and it almost felt as satisfying as her vice grip on my cock.

  Keeping her close, I thrusted into her deeper and deeper, every time begging her to fight with me, banter with me, put me in my place once more, but she was too close to coming to formulate anything.

  She was tense, coiled around me and legs shaking so hard I almost felt bad for the guys who had come before me.

  Had none of them gotten the job done?

  Had no one made her come so hard she fell silent like she needed to focus on this moment?

  Sex was a fucking Olympic sport that always ended in cheering for me. I never purposely perfected any skills, specifically ignoring the only one Justice managed to steal from me.

  Kissing.

  That was a door I didn’t want to open, but her thin, soft, lips were some kind of weapon made to take me down.

  “Tell me you’re on birth control.” My mouth stayed open on her hot skin, and my thrusts became messy along with my breath as I slowed my hips down to a painful pace. I needed an answer before I unloaded between her legs.

  A husky yes poured from her lips, and I felt our bodies get flush and stiffen as we rode through the feeling. We were both breathing too heavily to control our chests, a light sweat covered our limbs, and my dick was still jerking like it needed more of her, even though I hadn’t even pulled out yet.

  “Jesus,” she hummed, still holding onto me.

  My mouth was wide open trying to take in as much air as possible, taking in her scent, and leaving this fucking dirty bathroom out of it. “I prefer God.”

  Realizing the proximity might count as after sex cuddling I pulled myself away only enough to stuff myself back into my pants and stand up straight like nothing happened. I was blatantly ignoring the fact that we just got the best of each other. We finally let all the ways we felt impressed with each other act like a grenade, forcing us to huddle together for safety.

  We were bomb shelters for each other.

  So much safety my dick hid between her legs. Gotta reserve the best parts of ourselves to survive.

  She jumped down from the counter, landing heavy on her pink Chucks, and pushed down her skirt. My eyes were still stuck on her iridescent legs when I noticed the evidence of what we had just done dripping down her inner thigh.

  Grabbing a paper towel, I closed the gap between us again to run my hand up the inside of her legs, “Pretty sure the caveman you came with will notice that.”

  I saw her vulnerability that existed turn to stone right in front of me, like Medusa's tricks. “So you did notice me?”

  “Did I say I didn’t?” I fixed my leather jacket and watched the onlookers still moseying around, waiting to see what we might do next if we gave this little fucks to literally fuck in a public bathroom.

  Pushing past me, Justice shoulder checked me, making sure I noticed her one more time before we went back to our own sides of the room.

  She came here with that caveman, and I was here to blow off some steam. The moment we shared was just that—a moment.

  The room was darker than before; everything turned down while the roadies set up for the main act, who I came here for. The energy was sitting in the air, ready to explode, when the lights cut off and the band took the stage. This energy was addictive, electric, and exactly enough to make me forget all the expectations of my life outside this building.

>   I blended into the crowd, in the shadows, watching Justice hang off the caveman’s arm, while he pounded back beer after beer. She was putting on a show, but she hadn’t found me in the crowd again. I could see her eyes shifting over the bodies intensely.

  The entire night, I was distracted by Justice and the guy by her side. Seeing her by anyone’s side kicked up the same feelings I got knowing men were paying to watch her clean topless in a polyester maid’s uniform.

  They didn’t even spring for the good stuff.

  Once the concert ended, I watched her then drunk company turn into a kind of vile wasted that kept grabbing around her elbow and pushing her forward to the fresh air outside. Following them a few feet behind, careful not to be noticed, I heard his sharp tongue puncture her feminist beliefs when he associated her skirt with the ability to call her a slut.

  “You like the attention, don't you, Jus-tice?” He stumbled over his own words, and yet his grip wasn’t disarmed at all.

  I watched her body noodle, giving up control, and letting him toss her around the sidewalk, most likely forgetting where he parked, while I got closer to them. I relinquished being unseen in the wild case she would let me help her.

  “Justice, you good?” I asked her, with my hands still in my pockets, trying to create a sense of support instead of the dominance I tended to have.

  She yanked her arm out of his hold and faced me, her face twisted up in annoyance that I was witnessing her being the one thing she wasn’t—weak.

  Weak just to go with the flow.

  Weak for a man.

  Weak for everyone else.

  Her cheeks flushed, and I could see patches of red appear on her neck and chest. “I can handle myself, Vic.”

  The guy next to her was my height with the same kind of long hair full of kinks from it being pulled back—only the blonde Nordic version. Where I was dark colors, dark features, he was the opposite—light.