In the Arms of the Elite

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Why not?” I'm studying him at the same time as he's studying me, drawing his fingers down the side of my face.

  “I've applied to Bornstead, you know. I'm as hopeless as the rest of those arseholes.” Windsor reaches up and pulls the hat from my head, tossing it aside. “My mother wants me to go to school in England, but I've never been interested.”

  “Bornstead, huh?” I ask, feeling this happy flush shoot through me. “What will you study there?”

  Windsor's mouth twists into a smile.

  “Do you want to kiss me right now, Marnye Reed?” he asks, completely side-stepping the question. “Because I'm dying to kiss you.” Windsor steps forward and curves his fingers gently against the back of my neck, breathing lightly against my lips before he finally closes the distance and kisses me properly.

  His kiss is just as possessive as Zack’s, but in a completely different way. Zack kisses like an alpha in need of a mate, while Wind … he kisses like a royal giving a decree. He commands me with his mouth, tasting me and offering up an exquisite burn of pleasure that has me gasping and backing away.

  A gloved hand curls around my wrist, and he yanks me against his bare and sweaty chest, the hardness beneath his riding pants pressing into my stomach. The way he looks down at me, I can see it. He doesn’t believe he can lose, not in this. His feelings for me might be genuine, but I don’t like the cocky attitude.

  “You better wipe that smirk off your face,” I tell him, but his smile simply stretches into a carnal grin. I’d say it were feral if it weren’t so polished, but there is that edge there, reminding me that no matter how good he’s been to me, no matter how loyal a friend, he’s dangerous as hell, too.

  “Make me.” Windsor backs me up toward the open door of a stall and pushes me in, sending me to my ass in a pile of warm, dry hay. He kneels down between my legs as my heart thunders a mile a minute, my pulse heating my blood and sending it to all the places my body wishes he would touch. “Make me, Marnye Reed. Tame the bad boy. That’s what you like, isn’t it? The chase, the challenge.”

  “It’s not like that,” I tell him, but maybe he’s right. Maybe I do have a thing for the broken ones? I like to fix things, make them right again, study the world and learn how it works. What makes this any different?

  “Sure it isn’t,” Windsor says, putting his palms on my legs and making me flush. He takes hold of my knees and carefully spreads my legs, maintaining eye contact with me all the while. “I hate your friend, but I like you too much to care.” He smooths his hands up the insides of my legs and makes me moan, the whinny of a horse two stalls down the only sound besides our labored breathing.

  Windsor leans down and presses a kiss to the inside of my knee, working his way up toward my panties until I’m panting and shaking, desperate for him to touch something besides just my leg. He reaches down with two fingers and pulls a condom from his boot.

  His boot.

  He was keeping one in his fucking boot.

  “You’re a monster,” I whisper, but I mean that in the most affectionate way possible as he finally leans down and nips at my panties, getting my clit just enough that my hips buck up involuntarily.

  “Maybe, but I’m your monster. You should see what I’ve got planned for that bitch Ileana Taittinger. When we get back to school, I’ll hand you her head on a plate as a Christmas gift.” Windsor sits up and opens his fly with deft movements of his gloved fingers, keeping eye contact with me all the way. He frees his shaft, and my breathing picks up an even quicker pace.

  But I can’t look away from him to see it. I’ll have to look later.

  The condom is on in seconds, and then Wind is climbing over me, still looking down into my eyes. He pushes my panties aside, positions himself at my opening, and drives into me with a deep, hard thrust. I see stars, and tears form at the edges of my eyes as he groans, some of that perfect princely polish falling away in desperate male sounds of pleasure.

  “Oh, fuck,” he groans, putting his face against my neck for just a moment to breathe, and then he looks back down at me with those hazel eyes, the gold bits seeming to shine even brighter than usual. I can feel him inside of me, taking up every spare bit of space. Windsor takes my hand in one of his gloved ones and puts it between us, encouraging me to pleasure myself with my fingers. “Oh yes, Marnye,” he murmurs, “so worth the wait.”

  The prince fucks me into the pile of hay with deep, quick movements, his hips pushing against mine as one of his gloved hands closes over my breast and he bites the nipple through the lace. I’m lost to him, completely and utterly destroyed.

  It’s quick and messy, our frantic coupling in the barn, but Wind is right: so worth the wait. My orgasm is like a ripple on a pond, starting small in my core and then taking over my body in waves until it’s a tsunami that destroys me from the inside out. Wind comes hard with a final thrust, so deep that I can feel him touch me in a place that feels both strange and good at the same time.

  My hands cling to his sweaty, bare back as he shudders and then finally goes still, bracing himself above me with his elbows. Another horse whinnies nearby.

  “Bloody hell,” he murmurs, staying right where he is, still sheathed inside of me. We’re both having trouble breathing, I think. “Bloody fucking cocksucking hell.” Wind finally looks back over at me and our eyes meet. It’s too much, looking at him while he’s still inside, and I try to look away. He touches my cheek with gloved fingers and forces me back. “You, Milady, are staying in my room tonight.”

  “I don’t know how the other boys would feel about that,” I choke out, but Wind just smirks and sits up, pulling me along with him, so that my head is against his sweaty chest, his heart thundering against my ear. I like that, hearing his heart.

  “Come find me in bed later and ask me how much I fucking care,” he says, and then we sit there together for a while in silence.

  When we come out of the barn a few minutes later, fully dressed, but still recovering from our encounter, I feel like Zayd is the only one that notices, narrowing his green eyes in our direction. Creed and Miranda are too busy fighting, Zack is keeping Charlie entertained, and Tristan is nowhere to be seen.

  Probably a good thing.

  Since I think Windsor wanted to kill him earlier.

  “Have a nice chat?” Zayd asks, leaning back on the bench and putting his tattooed arms out behind him. He’s still wearing the polo shirt, but he’s tossed the jacket.

  “You have no idea,” Wind purrs in his English accent, and I shiver.

  He’s been a good friend to me all along. Now, when I glance over at him, something feels different.

  Deeper, darker … impossible to ignore.

  “Right,” Zayd responds, voice tight and clipped with jealousy.

  Jealousy.

  How the hell am I going to manage an entire harem of bullies for the rest of the year?

  Guess only time will tell that.

  December at Burberry Prep is always fun. There’s a giant Christmas tree in the student lounge, but I’ve never really had the chance to appreciate it, considering my previous circumstances. It’s quiet and secluded up here, and the student council—most of whom I’ve never met—actually runs a tiny café where students can purchase coffee or croissants.

  It’s like … halfway between The Mess and the library, but without much employee supervision.

  Essentially, it’s the ideal place to get jumped.

  Since second year, I’ve been preparing my case against Harper.

  I’m not worried about her. Some of the others however, I’m struggling with. They all deserve to get theirs, but I’m not willing to break my rules, no matter what Zack says.

  “I like it up here,” I say, sitting next to Tristan on one of the leather couches in the student lounge. “The last time I was up here, I was giving Wind a tour of the school.” My face burns, and I do my best not to think about how much hay I had stuck in my butt crack. Or how I gave in and tiptoed to Wind’s bedroom
later that night. He spent almost two hours between my thighs with his mouth.

  “So do I. Too bad we wasted four years not using it.” Tristan Vanderbilt taps his fingers on the couch arm, and then pauses to look over as Lizzie Walton appears with a cup of coffee on a saucer, and a white bag in her other hand filled with pastries. “Excuse me.” Tristan stands up and then sets something down on the stack of papers in front of me, most of which are scholarship pamphlets I picked up during the academic fair last week.

  Tristan … kind of needs to apply to as many as he can.

  “I brought food for everyone, but …” She trails off and watches him leave before sitting down in the chair nearest me. I glance down at whatever it is that Tristan left, and then flush ten shades of crimson when I see it’s his test results, just like I saw with Zack, Zayd, and even Windsor. He emailed me his, and I just happened to have Charlie standing near me when I opened it …

  Needless to say, we had a small birds and the bees sex talk that ended with him giving me a book that looks like it’s from 1982, all about how people in love can make each other happy with their bodies … Gross.

  “You okay?” Lizzie asks me, waving her hand in front of my face. I look up and force a smile, folding the page in half, so she can’t see it. If Tristan gave me this then … but I notice that she’s also got a folded in half piece of paper clutched in her hand, too.

  No, I’m being paranoid. I’m imagining things. I’m …

  “Why did you pick me?” I ask suddenly as Lizzie sets her food down and tosses shiny dark hair over one shoulder. She freezes, like a deer caught in the headlights. I mean, I’ve heard this story from Zack, but I want to hear it from her, too.

  “For …”

  “The bet,” I clarify, as if there was anything else. My hand subconsciously reaches down to rest atop my slashed out infinity tattoo. I know it’s all in my head, but it feels like it burns sometimes. I just hate the way the world works, how the super-rich control everything, and how they rule without compassion.

  The Club is … just that, but on a smaller scale.

  Nothing is different; nothing has changed.

  “Right.” Lizzie sighs and closes her eyes. Her all-black uniform is perfectly pressed and polished, much like Tristan’s, never a fold or wrinkle or stitch out of place. When she opens her amber eyes and looks back over at me, I keep my gaze neutral. “It feels so stupid now, but … back then I was so angry. Your mother’s new husband, Adam Carmichael, he’d been sleeping with my sister.” I wait, seeing if she might elaborate a little. Fortunately, the silence, filled only with the clink of cups and the distant murmur of a coffee grinder, seems to spur her on. “And then there was you, this … easy target. You were going to school with Zack, and … to be honest with you, I didn’t care. I hated Adam, and I hated the Carmichaels, and I just …” She trails off again and looks away, toward the snack counter. “I didn’t think of you as a real person back then, just a distant object. I thought of them all that way, all the Plebs.”

  My mouth tightens into a thin line as Lizzie looks back over at me.

  “That’s it? I was collateral damage? Nothing more?” Somehow that makes it even shittier.

  “Well, that, and when Zack mentioned you in passing, I … maybe I was jealous. He called you beautiful. I’d never heard him talk about a girl like that before.” Lizzie and I stare at each other, and her face flushes. Hopefully she realizes how ridiculous she sounds. “I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. I’ll say it forever if I have to: I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry now,” I tell her, and then I guess maybe her embarrassment is too much, or I’ve pushed her too hard or something because she gets really freaking cranky then.

  “Look, you’ve gotten your revenge on me. You have Tristan now, and what do I have?” She stands up and knocks her bag of pastries to the floor, spilling crumbs everywhere, her black pleated skirt swirling around her thighs. “I have nothing. Nobody. Nobody likes me at this school. I came here to help you, I …” She trails off, and then pauses when she realizes I have no plans to engage her on this.

  “I had you on my list, you know, for revenge.” I stand up and gather my things in my arms, my bookbag clutched in tight fingers as I look over and meet Lizzie’s eyes. “But you were so heartbroken when you saw Tristan and Harper engaged that I couldn’t do it anymore. That was it. I thought you were hurting enough. But if I’d wanted to, I could’ve gone a lot further. Look, I’m giving you a fair shot at him because I want him to be the one to make the decision, but what you did to me was wrong. I hope you truly realize that.”

  I take off, and then pause when I hear the clattering sound of broken glass, glancing back over my shoulder to see that Lizzie’s knocked her coffee cup and saucer to the floor. She’s quite literally panting with frustration, but I don’t have the time to deal with it.

  Something else is going on with her, and it has nothing to do with me.

  Later that same day, when I’m walking out of The Mess with Miranda by my side, Harper comes storming down the hallway in a violent rage. She pauses next to me, teeth gritted, and jabs me in the chest with a finger.

  “I’m biding my time, but when I finally do deal with you, Reed, you are fucking dead. Do you hear me?” She shoves me back, and Miranda goes for her, but I hold her back, waiting until Harper’s around the corner before I let go. I’m about to head off in search of Wind when he finds me, like he always does.

  He chucks something at me, and I catch it, realizing quite quickly that it’s not something I want to be holding onto at all. It’s a wet, soggy bra. Not mine, most definitely. Somebody else’s.

  “Eww.” I drop it and Wind catches it in quick fingers, tossing it into the nearby trash can before Ms. Felton and Mrs. Collins come around the corner with a sobbing Ileana between them. She’s holding her hand over her chest and weeping.

  “I promised you I’d deal with her.”

  “Windsor,” I start, a warning note in my voice. He looks back at me with a dark expression that quickly morphs into a hunger that my body responds to, even if my brain rebels against it. “What did you do?”

  “I posted Ileana’s private messages to Harper on Becky’s Facebook page. Becky …” He pauses again as Becky Platter rages past us, barely glancing in our direction. “As I was saying, Becky shoved her down the stairs and poor Ileana landed chest first. I think … you wouldn’t say pop …” Wind snaps his fingers and smiles at me while Miranda gapes at him. “I think you’d call it rupturing. Her breast implant ruptured. I know you abhor violence, but to be fair, even I couldn’t have predicted the outcome.”

  “Her boob … ruptured?” I ask, and then I wipe my hands desperately on the front of my uniform. “What was I just touching then?!”

  “Oh, that? When they got in a fight at the bottom of the steps, Becky snapped Ileana’s bra and tore it off. I simply picked it up. The wetness is just bottled water that Becky threw on her first. Like you said, let them hang themselves, right?” He shrugs. “I couldn’t have done a better job myself.”

  I almost feel sorry for Ileana. That is, until I remember she tried to drown me, then brand me. That, and whatever she said about Becky must’ve been bad for things to go down that way. Still, that’s sort of a horrible way to go.

  “Why do the mean girls in books and movies always have breast implants?” Miranda murmurs under her breath, reaching up two fingers to touch the side of her head. “It’s like, somehow demonizing women for daring to follow the patriarchal ideals of beauty and femininity is somehow satisfying to the masses?”

  “Or … she fell down the stairs and landed on her chest after Becky read that Ileana purposely snooped in the Platters’ home office and leaked confidential papers regarding the family business. There’s that, too.” Windsor pauses, exhales, and then lifts his palms up toward the stone ceiling. “I’m not one to pass judgement on good fortune, but I also feel like I still owe you, Marnye. Wait for it. I’ve got other ideas in store for you.
” He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, then a slow, languorous one on my lips, and then stands up to straighten out his black tie and blazer.

  When he takes off that time, I know he’s up to no good.

  And that his no-good … actually looks really good on him.

  The week before winter break, I’m desperately trying to juggle schoolwork, worry for Charlie, and the last of my revenge plots before school lets out. Also, I’m trying really hard not to have a heart attack because I have a half-dozen emails in my inbox, just waiting to be opened.

  One is from Bornstead University, located in northern Colorado, the school of my dreams.

  Everything I’ve suffered, everything I’ve worked for … it all comes down to this moment, doesn’t it? This one, final moment.

  “I can’t do it.” I push the tablet aside and put my hands over my face. I’m shaking all over. “I can’t look at it. Somebody else open it.”

  “Nah, babe,” Zayd says, pulling me into his lap and nuzzling his face in the spot between my neck and shoulder. “You’ve worked your ass off for this. We can’t take that glory away from you.”

  “You can’t, but I can,” Creed says, taking the tablet and giving the first of the emails a tap with his finger.

  “You say glory, but …” My heart sinks as I imagine reading rejection letter after rejection letter. I stuck at Burberry Prep, despite all the horror, because I wanted the best high school education possible. Good high school means good college means good job means … I can take care of Charlie for the rest of his life, give him a good retirement. I always promised I’d buy him a speedboat as a gift when he turned sixty. “It might be all heartache.”

  I’m only half-serious really because even though I’m worried about Bornstead—it is the most prestigious school on this half of the United States—I know I’ll get in somewhere. If my plans work out, I’ll be valedictorian (sorry, Tristan, but you can be salutatorian with my congrats) and I’m basically guaranteed a spot at most four-year schools.