by Eden O'Neill
I missed my mom, what I remembered of her. But mostly, I missed her because my dad had been so different. He had taken us to places like the lake and played sports with us, sports with Bru. I remembered not ever being in the house most days.
I always suspected my mom’s death may have had something to do with how withdrawn he had gotten. I’d been really little at the time, but a noticeable change had occurred in the house after my mom had died. She’d been killed while Bru and I were at school, a home break-in when my dad had been at work. Dad kept the news clipping of her obituary, and I caught him reading it all the time.
Well, he used to.
Now, it was in a box with the rest of who my parents were. Not much. IDs and other things. It was all just a box of fucked-up memories, and I never looked at it.
With a final stroke, I got to the end of the pool, panting as I thought about my father and all those memories far away. I started to get out when a howl sounded throughout the aquatic area. Like an actual howl.
A fucking animal.
Ares Mallick twirled a bat, spiked with nails poking out of the end. He had a lit joint in his mouth, grinning as he waltzed across the wet tiles fully clothed.
I shrank back, going deeper into the water. He chuckled, then howled again.
The others surrounded me.
Thatcher Reed and Wells Ambrose, large boys in their academy uniforms. They didn’t have bats, but they covered the exits to get out of the pool.
“All alone, little girl?” Ares stated, his eyes dancing wild. He flicked his joint butt into the pool water. “How unfortunate for you.”
“I agree.”
On the bleachers sat a boy, one I hadn’t noticed on the stadium seating used for swim meets. Dorian Prinze was all alone, but he took up so much of the bleachers one would have thought they were miniature. They labored and screeched with his weight when he came down them, and he had a bat too. It wasn’t spiked, but he still had a bat.
What the fuck?
I didn’t know what this was, watching as Dorian twirled his bat as well. He pointed toward Wells and Thatcher at the various exits. “Get her out of there.”
The two boys stripped.
Not completely, but they were definitely getting naked. Down to their boxers, they tossed their clothes, golden bodies stretching and flexing. Wells tossed me a wink before he did a side flip into the pool, and Thatcher jumped in his end cannonball-style. They came up with a snap of wet hair and slick muscles, proceeding to stroke out to me from various angles.
Freaking out, I splashed away from them, and from my closest exit, Wolf chuckled.
“Not so brave are you now, little,” he said, winking. He pointed his bat toward Dorian. “Don’t play with your food too much, Dorian.”
Wolf muttered something about going to watch the door, chuckling the whole way, and all the while, their other bros homed in on me.
Wells got there first.
His long reach shot out, tugging me. I got an elbow out of the water and clipped him right in his steel pec. That shit fucking hurt, but it got the job done. Wells cursed, but I barely got around him before Thatcher bear-hugged me from behind.
“Such a pretty, pretty princess,” he growled into my cheek, his tongue out and his earrings glistening from the pool lights. He actually licked my cheek like a fucking freak, and the feral noise he let out made my stomach curl. He grinned. “Mmm. Taste as good as you look. Like goddamn candy.”
“Let me have a taste, bro,” Wells crooned, getting closer. He seemed to have recovered from the job I did on his chest. His tongue came out too. “I like candy.”
“Get the fuck off me!” I bucked, but big boy had a good hold. He locked his big beefy arms around me, and he wasn’t letting go. I jabbed back. “Stop.”
“Ooh, there’s some spice in there, though.” Thatcher had his arms locked tight across my breasts, but that didn’t stop him from feeling up my arms. “Is that cinnamon, princess?”
“Oh, I really, really like cinnamon,” Wells stated, his eyes crazy and wild.
Was he getting off on this?
They both sounded as if they were. Wells stroked closer. “Don’t be selfish, bro. Share.”
“There’s enough of her for both of us.” Thatcher’s arms unlocked enough to come down to my hips. He drew me back, his dick hard and right up against my ass. He pressed his face into my neck. “I’ll take the back.”
I kicked, screaming, and a thundering twack hit from somewhere in the pool room.
Like wood hitting metal.
Wells and Thatcher whipped around, me with them. Dorian pulled his bat off one of the pool’s handrails.
“I said out of the pool.” He almost sounded bored. His bat touched his brawny shoulder, his boys redirecting their attention to fulfilling a command.
“Stop it! Let me go!” I bucked, both boys with their hands on me and no escape. I was also a sucky-ass swimmer, so they got me with ease to the pool’s handrails.
To Dorian.
The dark prince shot a hand out, grabbing me with his big mitts. He pressed me up against his big chest, academy uniform be damned.
He smelled so good, raw like heated flesh and scented boy. His breath was also minty, his eyes surging ebony coals.
He forgot about his friends. He forgot about everything when he strong-armed me and forced me back to one of the pool room’s walls. He still had his bat in his hand, something he used to hook behind my neck and bring me closer to him.
I was hugged between two thick arms, his friends behind him. Thatcher and Wells had a fascination in their eyes. Like two boys wanting to play.
Wanting to play with you.
I had a dark thought in that moment, wondering if these boys would do something to me I didn’t want done.
Would Dorian let them?
He scanned my eyes like he not only would but would ringlead that shit.
And that heat in his eyes didn’t leave.
I’d seen this look before on him, like that day he’d spotted Principal Mayberry and me in the hallway together.
Like he hated. Like he hated me.
Pure.
All-consuming.
Hate.
He appeared as if he despised me, which made no fucking sense.
I didn’t know this boy.
Even still, his dark gaze shifted across me, the bat digging into my neck so bad I thought he’d snap it in two. He had my hands pinned against his chest, trapped between my breasts and his hard pecs.
That was how hard he squeezed me.
This wasn’t a lover’s hug. This was how an enemy broke another into submission. I wriggled, but he only tightened the hold.
“Go to Wolf,” he breathed over my mouth, hot while at the same time being cool. He still tasted like mint, but no gum. He turned toward his friends. “Leave.”
Thatcher tsked. Like actually tsked like a goddamn loon. He was a little boy not getting his candy. He frowned. “D—”
“I’ll kick every inch of your ass,” he shot. “Leave now. Go to Wolf.” He faced me again, his friends gathering their clothes, then ambling out of view in the distance. Dorian grinned. “Now what are we gonna do?”
I shot my head forward, but I’d give it to him.
He was quick.
He had the reflexes of an athlete, easily dodging the headbutt, but the attempt pissed him off. He chuckled manically as he grabbed my hands in one fist, then used his bat to spread my legs apart.
“Stop it. Stop it!”
He pressed the bat right between my legs. He smiled. “You’re in my way, little fighter.”
“What are you talking about?”
He inched up closer, and the air seeped from my lips. “And I don’t like it when things are in my way.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
His bat didn’t stop.
He moved slow with it, and my thighs trembled around it. My legs hugged the wood, and I swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this?”
He didn’t stop, and I gasped when he was mere inches away from my pussy.
I throbbed. He was too close, and my teeth clacked when his hard body pressed against me. I’d dampened his dress shirt, the white material clinging to his hard chest. He noticed me staring at it and chuckled. “You like what you see?” he asked, his bat tap, tap, tapping between my quivering thighs. “Let’s see how you like this.”
My hips arched when he grazed my pussy, and I shot my head forward again.
He dodged it only too easily, angling his head away. The flick and sway of all that blond across his eyes only made him too sexy, and I hated myself for the thought.
I hated I wet my lips.
I hated I drenched over his bat like some psychopath, trembling as much from fear as something else I didn’t like.
My nails bit into my secured fists as he rubbed that bat into my sex, his name falling breathily from my mouth.
He noticed.
He noticed a lot of things as he played. He smirked. “You like this,” he said, a statement. He eyed me, that lovely face so beautiful and wicked. “How much do you like it?”
He rubbed me again, rubbed me faster, harder. I shoved at him, but eventually I slacked, my teeth biting my lips. My nipples beaded bullet hard. I actually tried to rub them against him, but couldn’t with how he held my arms.
“Dorian…”
That was when he stopped, full-on stopped. He pulled the bat from between my legs, leaving my thighs quaking beneath me. He hooked an arm above my head, his face washed of his wicked grins. His gaze smoldered. “You’re to leave my school. I want you out.”
I scanned his eyes, disoriented.
Unable to freaking breathe.
I still felt his bat between my legs, the rapid heat. “What?”
He chuckled like I’d said something funny, twirling the bat before touching it beside my head. “You’re making a lot of noise for me. Getting in my way. You’re to leave my school.” He tipped my chin with the bat. “You don’t want the alternative.”
I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, making noise for him? What the fuck?
He didn’t say, but he did let go. My back hit the wall with the release, my wrists red and prickling from where his digits had pinched into me.
“You don’t own this school.” That was the only thing I could come up with. He didn’t own this school.
He looked at me like he did.
He smiled at me as if it were so, a dark smile, a foreboding smile. He pointed that bat at me. “You either don’t exist in this school or I make it so.” He lifted his hand. “Your choice.”
He touched the bat to his shoulder, waltzing out of the pool room. I touched my head back to the wall, looking up.
What the fuck just happened?
Chapter Twelve
Sloane
By the end of the school day, I’d been given a new name: Vapor. It was written on my locker when I went to get my things. Apparently, Dorian was literally trying to make it so I didn’t exist. I was vapor. I was nothing.
The pranks started the next day.
It started out as little stuff, people throwing shit at me in class behind the teachers’ backs. I got wads of paper tossed at me. Spitballs.
Amateur stuff.
I’d gotten more ridicule than that over the years with all the schools I’d been to. But by the end of the week, they upped their game.
People stopped acknowledging me, like literally looked the other way as if I didn’t exist. When I did overhear people whispering, they used the word “Vapor” or “that girl.” I’d literally become Voldemort, or the girl who should not be named, overnight.
And the pranks didn’t stop.
I never saw people doing shit, but they somehow did it. I found sanitary napkins stuffed in my lockers. Like enough for them to fall out in an avalanche and make everyone laugh. Of course, when I looked at said laughing folks, they didn’t look directly at me. I was still Vapor or that girl. I was apparently the idiot who’d pissed off the Legacy boys, and they were getting people to do shit in their honor.
I just didn’t understand what I’d done.
I mean, I got that I’d talked back to Wolf. I had called him a bitch a time or two, but none of that had resulted in the hate that I’d gotten seemingly overnight from the dark prince. He’d come at me hot with little to no explanation.
And they still hung out with Bru.
He’d started his football stuff, and he now left before I woke up and returned long after I’d gotten home from school. He was at football practice. At least, that was what I’d had to sleuth about the house to discover. I found his football schedule on the fridge and gear in random places. He mostly kept it in the garage, but I still saw it.
My brother suddenly had this other life I wasn’t a part of, and whenever I did catch him (aka tried to say hi to him), he barely looked at me. I was sure he’d heard about the whole “vapor” thing.
Not that he did anything about it.
I hadn’t expected my little brother to fight my battles for me, but I assumed, unlike the rest of the school, he’d at least have my back. I knew we felt different about things that had occurred that first day at school. He was under the belief I’d gotten myself into this mess, but all this abuse from his “friends” was a new level.
Those dicks even had someone mutilate my gym stuff.
I’d literally caught some chick with a Court ring dunking my clothes in the girls’ locker room toilets while her friends watched. I yelled at them, but they divided like scared little bitches, and when I went to tell my gym teacher about it, the man hadn’t even looked at me. He just told me to get a new set from the extras before class.
And he hadn’t used my name either.
Dorian Prinze and the other Legacy boys certainly had clout around here, and their latest prank came in my English class.
My bag was buzzing.
Like it was buzzing to the point where the teacher had to stop class and see what was going on. Everyone looked around but they homed in on my stuff when the sound was so obviously coming from my direction.
I made the mistake of opening my book bag publicly.
A million and a half dildos buzzed around in there, and the teacher asked me to leave class to take care of it. I dumped the whole thing in the trash, then went to my locker instead, too embarrassed and frustrated to go back to class. I thought the dildo nightmare was over.
But then I opened my locker.
More fell out, a never-ending sea of pleasure wands at my feet and right when the bell happened to ring. The hallway filled with students as I did all I could to stuff them all back into my locker.
Laughter ensued around me, mocking me, and this whole thing was getting completely ridiculous.
He’s taking things too far.
I wasn’t going anywhere, but I also wasn’t submitting to the likes of this shit either. I’d been bullied before, and these Legacy guys weren’t breaking me.
Dorian Prinze wasn’t going to break me.
I slammed my locker, then stormed the halls.
I found Dorian at his locker with the rest of the Legacy spawn, laughing with all their women and, in Wells’s case, a guy and a girl. It seemed he was pretty open with his tastes.
He saw me first when I charged up, mentioning something about “Pretty, pretty princess.” Ares shot him a look, and Wells cleared his throat.
“Afternoon, Vapor,” Wells corrected, the latter apparently being my official name, and Dorian barely looked up from his conversation.
A conversation he was having with my brother.
I recognized a Windsor Prep playbook when I saw it. Bru left his own copy around the house enough for me to see.
Currently, he was nose deep in it with the dark prince. I’d heard Dorian was actually the quarterback, the arrogant fuck.
I shoved him. Like legit, lost my mind and shoved Dorian in the middle of the hallway. The colossal man boy barely
moved, a smirk to his ridiculously perfect pouty lips, but all activity in the hallway stopped.
His boys stepped around him immediately. Even Wells who was more or less the laid-back one. He puffed up like I’d actually taken a piece of candy from him this time.
Seeing all this activity obviously blew Bru’s mind. I hadn’t told him about my near assault, so all this was pretty much coming out of left field for him. I had no particular reason not to tell him about everything, but maybe in the back of my mind, I feared if he’d even care. I mean, my brother cared about me. Of course, he’d care but he also had been pretty vocal that I’d been the one bringing all this negative shit into my life.
He believed these guys to be his friends.
Maybe that was me falling on the sword a little bit too. His life hadn’t been ruined by all this shit, and I didn’t want to have to be the killjoy.
It still sucked when my brother growled at me in their defense.
“Sloane. What. The. Fuck?” Bru questioned, but even though I was falling on the sword, I wasn’t not going to stand up for myself. I didn’t care who his little friends were.
I edged around him, sneering right at the dark prince. “This sophomoric shit needs to stop now.”
I admit I was acting braver than I felt in that moment. I’d never been handled this much in school, and Dorian was, well, Dorian. He was all presence, all commanding and beautiful. Where he moved people followed, and I might have found that sexy had I not known about the piece of shit he was.
The one who stomped all over people beneath his designer military boots.
He was the only one who didn’t dress by the school’s code. Even Ares buttoned up and tucked in his shirt by the time first period started. Today, Dorian had on a wool sweater shoved up to his big arms, that chrome Court ring blinging on his hand. His had rubies for the eyes, something I’d never seen on anyone else’s.
Dorian raised a hand, and his boys relaxed. The activity in the hallway also proceeded to move.
God, why do they all listen to this asshole?
Because he was one, completely.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, eyes dancing at me. Without missing a beat, he went right back to talking to Bru. He flipped that playbook right open, even doing a little dramatic dampening of his finger before turning the page.
