Love knows no boundaries.
“You could've had a much different life than this,” Vic whispers, bending low and putting his head up against the side of my face. He rubs against me, teasing my smooth cheek with his stubbled one. It should be sweet, the way he's nuzzling me, but instead, all I can think of is a lion, maned and wild, rubbing up against his female.
It's a possessive move, a dominant one.
He wants to own me. Little does he know that a lioness can never be bought or sold.
I glance over, putting our faces precariously close together.
“They all wanted that for you,” Victor says quietly, dark eyes simmering. “An escape. A different life. A chance to be something better than a gangbanger.”
“They all …” I repeat slowly, thinking of the other Havoc Boys.
“Except for me. Some men sleep and dream. Some men have nightmares. You’re a nightmare, Bernadette, a beautiful nightmare.” Vic grabs my arm and leans in even closer, sending my pulse racing. “We’re both nightmares; we belong together.”
He kisses me, but it isn't a nice kiss. It's a move meant to seal this deal, mark me, stamp me with his name. I tear away from him and he pauses briefly to turn off the burner, glancing over at me as my heart races and I struggle to find my breath.
“That's what happened, Bernadette. We met up to discuss your price. They fought against me. They demanded we give you some bullshit, made-up price, some nonsense.” He laughs again, and the sound is that of a villain, staking his claim on the princess’ heart. Just like Callum. None of these boys are princes, not even Aaron. “We could've … no, no …” He rubs at his chin for a moment, the HAVOC tattoo on his knuckles making me shiver. No part of me believes I'm exempt from having that mark needled into my skin. “We would've done all the things you asked of us, and then set you free.”
“What the fuck, Vic?” I ask, backing up until my body is pressed against the fridge. I'm not afraid of him, far from it. I'm fighting the desire to throw myself at him, to tear his shirt off, to open his pants and free his cock. He can't know that I feel that way, not a chance in hell.
“But not me,” he repeats again, stopping to look me dead in the face. There's no sign of humor anywhere in his expression; this is not a joke. “I wanted you here. My love is selfish, Bernadette.”
“Love?” I ask, but Victor just smiles at me. You can only deny reality for so long without it coming back to bite you in the ass.
“I am selfish,” he says, exhaling and then moving forward. He pauses just two feet in front of me. “I could've let you go, but I wanted you here instead, wrapped up in Havoc. Wrapped up in me.” He turns and takes off toward the front door. I try to tell my feet to stay where they are, but I end up scrambling around the corner as he grabs the door handle and then pauses to glance over his shoulder. “So go ahead. Fuck Aaron if you want. I'm sure he'd be better for you than I am.” Victor opens the door and then pauses again, like he's just thought of something. “Better, maybe, but not like me. Nobody will love you the way I do, Bernadette Blackbird.”
Victor leaves out the front door, slamming it behind him.
I wait about three heartbeats before I turn and throw a punch at the wall. It cracks the drywall and leaves my knuckles a bleeding mess, but I don't care. It's better than what I really want to do right now: murder Victor fucking Channing.
“Did you mean what you said?” Aaron asks softly, surprising the hell out of me. Cradling my bloody hand to my chest, I turn around to look at him. He's sitting up now, his right shoulder still swaddled in a white bandage, his green-gold eyes hooded and dark with emotion. “That you love me?”
“Love isn't everything, Aaron,” I quip back, feeling wounded. “They all wanted that for you.” How dare he. How fucking dare he?! Victor pulled me into this mess because he wanted me? How messed-up is that?
I can’t decide if I want to kill him or fuck him right now. Best we just stay away from each other.
“It isn't nothing either,” he replies, exhaling sharply. His eyes drift to my hand, still cradled to my chest, still bleeding. “Are you okay?”
“I just punched a hole in your wall,” I respond dryly, sick at the idea of going back to school on Monday. Of seeing Kyler and Timmy, of knowing their brother is dead because of us. Because of Havoc. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Aaron starts, groaning as he moves to stand up. He barely makes it to his feet before he stumbles, going down to one knee beside the coffee table. If I still had a heart to break, the sight would shatter it. “We really need to talk.”
“No shit,” I murmur, moving over to him and helping him back onto the couch. He slumps into the cushion with a groan, letting his head fall back into the pillows. His eyes are closed, but his teeth are clenched. It's pretty obvious he doesn't like feeling so helpless, but he just needs to give his body time. He'll be back to being an asshole before the week is out. “You need to sit down. I'll … bring you tacos.” I start to turn away, but he curls his fingers around mine and squeezes them tight.
He may as well have wrapped that inked grip around my heart.
“Bernie,” he pleads, and the depth of emotion in his voice makes my heart stutter. I close my eyes against a surge of my own feelings; I'm just not ready to face them all yet. “Please, sit down.”
“The tortillas will get cold,” I argue, even though my hunger pangs have disappeared completely. How can I eat after what Victor just told me? He made me sign my life away in blood, but … he also just told me the other boys didn't want that for me. I'm so confused. What does Oscar care about me? Likely, he just wanted me gone, but Aaron … I look back at him, and our gazes lock. “I can't go to my grandmother's house, not now, not ever,” I tell him for the second time, just to make sure he’s really getting it. I got no response last time, none at all. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“I do,” Aaron chokes out, closing his eyes. He lets go of me, but I don't leave. I can't imagine being anywhere but here right now. This is where I'm meant to stand. “I know that, but I worry about you.”
“Really?” I ask, cocking a brow in a way that makes me think of Vic. I scowl, but Aaron's eyes are still closed, so at least he can't see me. “Could've fooled me. How do you show that worry, Aaron? By watching as your friends drag me off, by letting them lock me in a closet?”
“Bernadette,” he starts, dropping his chin to his chest. He drags both tattooed hands over his face. “There was no winning for me, you know that, right?” He drops his hands to his lap and looks back up at me, anger darkening his face. “I had two choices: lose my sisters and be a piece of shit not worthy of you … or I had to give you up so you could have a better life.”
A sick sad feeling shoots through me, taking over my body, infecting my bloodstream. I don't want to feel this way right now, drowning in empathy. I'm pissed. I have a right to be pissed.
“That's what I thought I was doing,” Aaron continues, leaning back and putting his left arm on the edge of the couch. The way he tilts his head and frowns at me, he's got the cocky asshole thing down pat. From here, it looks an awful lot like a defense mechanism. “I thought I was setting you free, Bernie. You don't need to be stuck in Springfield with a bunch of kids and a whole lot of baggage.”
“It's a little late for that now, isn't it?” I snap back, turning fully around to face him. “So maybe you stop with the bullshit and man up. I'm not going anywhere now; my fate is sealed in blood.”
“It doesn't have to be,” Aaron says, breathing hard, like maybe this is too much exertion for him. My eyes slide down his chest and stomach, admiring the deep grooves of his muscles. He's bulked up a lot. When we were in freshman year, he was just a skinny little thing. Skinny little thing with a big cock, but still. I frown. “We can talk to Vic; we can talk to Oscar. After graduation, you can walk away from all of this.”
I just stare at him.
“You castrated a boy because I asked you to. Callum killed a boy because
he had to. All of that blood, it's on my hands, Aaron. There's nowhere else for me, so stop looking for a distant locale to drop me in, some fairy-tale of a life you wished I lived. Vic is right: I'm a nightmare. I exist in the night; my only light is the moon and the stars.”
“Stop that shit,” he snaps at me, acting like he's going to get up again. I move forward and push him back with a hand on his chest, shoving him back into the cushions. And then, for some reason entirely unknown to me, I straddle him, pinning his body to the couch with my own.
He looks at me like I've just gut punched him.
“You don't have to take what Vic says at face value,” Aaron pleads. Unlike Vic and Oscar, he's not above it. Underneath the pleading though, his hatred for Vic is just barely concealed. “You're not like this, Bernadette. You're not one of us.”
“Stop acting like I'm the girl you gave up years ago,” I growl back, curling my hands over his shoulders. I dig my nails into his skin, refusing to stop, even when he cringes. Underneath the heel of my left hand, there's a healing wound, but I don't care. My own shoulder twinges in pain. The bandage hidden beneath my borrowed tee is likely wet with blood, but I don't feel like leaving to change it right about now. “You're not the same boy either, and I will never, ever be the sweet little thing you abandoned when I needed you most.”
“Don't talk like that,” Aaron snarls back at me, hissing in pain when I grind the heel of my hand against his shoulder. “I believe in you, Bernadette, even if you don't believe in yourself.”
I throw my head back with a laugh, wondering if I really am a perfect slice of sin, Vic's wicked other half. We could do horrible things together. Fuck, we could topple cities. We could rule the world. Or the underworld, at the very least. Despite his tough, new exterior, Aaron is still trying to be the good guy. It's a tired shtick.
I drop my head back down, so I can look at him. And then I roll my hips.
Aaron groans as the baggy t-shirt rides up and my panties slide against the bulge in his sweats. He's hard for me, despite our arguments, despite his pain. I push against the bullet wound in his shoulder even harder, staining the bandage red with blood, and he sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth.
“Aaron,” I begin, rocking against him again, knowing that Vic won't have gone far. Likely, he's right outside the front door. Shit, maybe he's watching me again? One can only hope. He deserves to see this, deserves to see me and Aaron wrapped up in each other. “If you don't start treating me like a member of Havoc, instead of your childhood sweetheart, we're going to have problems.”
“How do you want me to treat you then?” he barks back at me, gritting his teeth. I'm pissing him off. Good. That's how I want him. I don't want him gazing at me like I'm the love of his life, like he needs to set me free, send me off to Nantucket to lounge on the beach and sip cherry cola as I make eyes at the town cutie. That's not my life. That's not what I'm destined to do.
Fate has never been kind to me, so I decline to be kind to fate. I'm going to twist my entire destiny and put it on a course that I've chartered—even if that course sends me straight into the pits of Hades.
“Treat me like the newest member of your little gang. Treat me like an initiate, but keep in mind that one day I'll be queen.” Aaron's eyes narrow, his mouth tightening into a thin line. He doesn't like the implications—that by marrying Vic, I'll be his queen—but he doesn't challenge them. Not yet. That's what I want. I hadn't realized it until now, but that's what I need. I want Aaron to stand up for me, to fight for us, for what we could have been.
Whether he likes it or not, I'm a part of Havoc. Blood in, blood out, right? And I don't know how long this particular arrangement—that is, me being the only woman in the group—is going to last, but for now, I'm going to take advantage of it.
These boys are mine, even if they've managed to royally piss me off. I'm going to use them the same way they're using me.
“You want me to treat you like shit, huh?” Aaron quips back, scowling at me. I'd say it doesn't fit his face, but I have to face reality the same way he does: Aaron is not the boy I grew up with. I am not that girl. We have to accept who we are together, or else we're never going to get along. That, and I have to know all his secrets, all of Havoc's secrets. I need to know if they've castrated someone and carved Rapist into their forehead. I need to know if they have a video of my sister and the Thing. I need to know what Kali truly paid them and why they did what they did to me. “Because I can do that.”
“How many girls have you been with since me?” I ask, rocking my hips again, feeling his muscles tighten underneath me. Carefully, I peel the bandage from his shoulder, staring at Nurse Yes-Scott's tiny, little stitches, watching the blood ooze out from between them. He's going to have a nasty scar there, no doubt about that. Aaron doesn't say anything for several minutes, so I push my panties against his crotch again. They're soaked straight through. I wonder if he can feel that when he reaches down and grabs my ass in two tattooed hands.
“Are you hoping for a specific answer?” he asks, looking me in the face, his eyes the color of the fall leaves outside, this glorious mix of green and gold and brown. Nuanced, just like he is. “Because you're not going to like it.”
I go still, pausing the movement of my hips, waiting for an answer to a simple question.
“Will I be jealous?” I ask carefully, feeling that hungry monster inside of me, green with envy and eating up self-confidence that I know I have. I've got plenty to burn, so it doesn't shake me too much, but I need to hear this answer. I need him to tell me he slept with a hundred girls, but that all of them had my face, that he used them because he couldn't have me. That's what I want to hear. Instead, he surprises the shit out of me.
“I haven't slept with anyone since,” he tells me, and he sounds almost … shamed by it. “I gave up the only girl I ever loved; I hurt her. I don't deserve to be happy, and I most definitely don't need to fuck somebody I don't like. That I'll never love.”
I stay stone-still, unsure about what to think. He said I wasn't going to like his answer: he was right. He isn't supposed to be able to surprise me, to convince me that he's got a spark of the old Aaron deep inside somewhere. That isn't fair, not when I've just finally embraced the dark side.
“You're lying,” I snap back at him, moving to stand up, to storm out, to get the fuck out of this house and away from these boys. I don't know what to think when I'm around them, how to act. But Aaron doesn't let me go; his hands tighten on my ass, bruising me, holding me in place. In retaliation, I stick my thumb into his wound, and he grits his teeth so hard I'm afraid he's going to break one off.
“Why the fuck would I lie about that?” he snarls back at me, using his hands to guide my hips, so that our pelvises grind together. It's been years since I last slept with Aaron, since right before we broke up. Well, except for that one time … I don't let myself go back to that memory, focusing instead on the ardent intensity of the moment.
“Because you thought I'd enjoy such shallow sentimentality?” I quip back, cocking a brow and then reaching down to curl my fingers beneath the bottom of the t-shirt. With an indolent sensuality, I strip it off and toss it aside, leaving my breasts bare and right at the level of Aaron's face. He exhales, and his warm breath feathers across my nipples, hardening them to fine, pink points.
“It isn't sentimentality, Bern. It's just how I fucking feel.” Aaron gathers me close, wrapping tattooed arms around me. They feel like home, those arms, but like I've walked into an entirely new renovation. I'm liking it, I'm just not used to it, not yet.
My head falls back as I groan, tangling my fingers in Aaron's auburn hair as he swirls his hot tongue around my nipple. His arms hold me tight, almost possessively. No, not almost. Definitely possessive.
Well, if Aaron wants to take me away from Vic, he's going to have to stand up for himself. He's going to have to fight.
I'm not expecting him to bite my nipple, and I cry out, clamping my hands over my mouth and cl
osing my eyes as I remember the girls are upstairs. I told them to stay put, but … Shit. The fact that we could get caught should make me stop. But I can't. Guess I'm just that weak.
My hips seem to be moving of their own accord, stroking Aaron's bulge against the torrid heat between my thighs. It's not enough though, not even close. Just a fucking tease.
Aaron lifts his head up, running his tongue across his lower lip. The sight of that just undoes me. I drop my head to his, thrusting my tongue between his lips as his arms tighten around me. Our hips start to move faster, his pelvis coming up off the couch to grind against me. Our mouths feast on each other, like two hungry beasts in desperate need of a mate. I can taste Aaron on my lips, like sweet cherries and heartache, that's what he tastes like, what he's always tasted like.
Someone like Vic is easy, because you always know what to expect, where you stand.
Someone like Aaron is dangerous. He's unpredictable, his morals mean too much to him, and he has the potential to crawl inside your soul and ruin you, wreck you from the inside. I let him in once; I let him have all of me.
And he threw it away.
For Havoc.
For motherfucking Havoc.
“Havoc,” I murmur, and Aaron groans against my mouth as we kiss. “I'm calling Havoc.”
He grabs a handful of my panties and then simply tears them off, rending the fabric and chucking them to the floor. His right hand finds its way between my legs, stroking my wet folds and making my hips buck with pleasure. When he slides two fingers into me, I work my pelvis even harder, grinding into him and fucking his hand like it's his dick.
The movement of my body is working Aaron down there anyway, my ass rubbing up against him as he flicks his thumb across the swollen nub of my clit. His mouth envelops my right nipple again, scalding me, chasing the pert pink point with his tongue. My breath is coming in shallow pants as I hold his head against my chest, his tongue greedily lapping at my flesh.
Chaos at Prescott High Page 8
