Beautifully Yours: A High School Bully Romance (Voclain Academy Book Three)

by Jordan Grant

  He doesn’t give me long to think about it. He places one hand on the inside of each of my thighs and spreads me wider.

  “Open for me, Stormy,” he says, and there’s that name I love again. I nearly moan aloud.

  The thick head of his cock is right there, ready to halve me.

  “I want to see all of it,” he growls, pushing my knees open even wider.

  “More,” he demands, spreading me.

  “More.” His thumbs open me up even further.

  I am unbalanced and laid bare before him when he grunts in approval and slams into me, his cock filling me to the hilt.

  “Oh, God!” I cry out, and he goes still, leaning over me so that his words wash across the column of my neck.

  “There’s no God here, sweetness. Only me.”

  He slides out slowly until he’s all the way out and slams back inside.

  “Say my name,” he growls.

  “Ian,” I moan as he thrusts again, the move violent, sending my fingernails clawing against the grass to prevent my fall.

  His hands bite into either side of my thighs as he spreads me even wider. He can fit between them now without his legs even touching me. I am unsteady in this position, only connected to him where his cock slides in and out of me and where his hands grip my legs, holding me upright.

  He rocks against me again.

  “Fuck,” he says with a moan. “You feel so good, so wet for me, so tight.”

  The compliment leaves his mouth with another pained groan seemingly ripped from him unwillingly, but my body doesn’t care if it’s willing or not. It clenches around him as he starts to withdraw, and we both moan this time.

  “I want to hear you when you come,” he growls before he slams into me again, his hip bones biting into my ass with the hit. He starts to pick up his pace, and every part of me rocks with his movement. My breasts swing. My thighs jiggle. My entire world moves.

  A heat builds deep in my belly to the sound of him fucking me, the clap of our skin colliding and his ragged breath with every withdrawal.

  He thrusts into me again and again and again, and…oh…I’m going to…

  “Scream my goddamn name!” he roars, and I do as I clamp down around him. He thrusts once more and jerks behind me, emptying into me as my elbows give way, my top half collapsing against the grass while he stays there, inside me until he’s finished. When he’s done, he stands quickly and starts getting dressed, pulling on his briefs first, then his pants. I drag myself up to sit back on my knees.

  “Ian,” I say, wanting to tell him everything, wishing he would just ask.

  “Yeah?” he says, sliding into his cleats.

  “Will you stay with me tonight?”

  He freezes, a pained expression crossing his features before he asks, “Is that what you want?”

  I nod, and my heart is beating so fast in its desperation to have him close to me.

  He frowns, and dread sinks low in my belly, but there’s still that silly flicker of hope that can never be extinguished.

  “Well, we don’t always get what we want,” he murmurs, walking away from me and disappearing into the darkness.

  28

  Ian

  I fucked up. I shouldn’t have slept with her. I should have taken Laurie What’s-Her-Face up on her outstanding offer and done my best to fuck Harlow out of my system. I knew I shouldn’t have slept with her, but I did it anyway…twice, and now all the progress I’ve made over the past few weeks—the time I’ve spent trying to rid my mind of her existence and give myself a Harlow-themed lobotomy—has been wasted.

  She’s a drag of nicotine when it’s been too damn long without a cigarette.

  She’s the pull of the bottle when nothing else will quench my thirst.

  She’s the hit I crave when I’m jonesing for anything to take the itch away.

  Seeing her across the ping-pong table from me tonight, the front of her dress clinging to her skin just enough to tease, her blue eyes darting across the table as she planned her next move, and then doing her little celebratory dance when she missed yet again as she tried to protect me—like I’m the one who needs goddamn protection—it was too much. No man could handle that shit. It’s amazing I didn’t pin her to the ping-pong table, gawkers be damned.

  She has no right to care when she threw what we had away for no reason.

  No right to keep spouting her riddles—that she did what’s best for us, that she wants to protect me, that she loves me—when she’s the one who abandoned everything we had.

  No right at all, and yet she keeps doing it, pushing my buttons like she’s trying to get the right combination to watch me explode.

  When I yanked her away from the table, I knew what I was doing. When I led her away from the party, I knew what would happen, or at least what I wanted to happen.

  I thought I could fuck her out of my system, one last romp, and I’d be able to let her go.

  But then one quick fuck turned into two, and it would have been an all-night affair if I hadn’t forced myself to walk away.

  I walk down the cobblestone path, headed back toward the party. I don’t want to go back though. I want to turn around and run back to her and remind her again what she lost when she ended things. I want to go back and demand answers, but she’ll never give them up, not until she’s ready. I want to fucking hit something, but the only things around me at the moment are tall oak trees, and I’m not in the mood to break my fingers.

  “Fuck!” I bite out the curse, tipping my head back to the sky as I do. My fingers fist at my sides as I tell myself to keep walking. The more distance between me and her, the better, though part of me worries I could walk the Earth and not cleanse her from my mind.

  I should be thinking about how she fucked me over. I should make myself remember to hate her beautiful guts, but instead, I’m thinking about how she looked beneath the moonlight, her ivory skin so pale in the dark as she fell to her knees and submitted to me.

  How she mewled for me, arching her back when I slammed into her.

  How she felt, clenching around me, every muscle on her going rigid as she threw her head forward and came.

  I never should have fucked her.

  My cleats pad against the grass as I leave the stone path and continue across the lawn. The bass of the music vibrates in the air, and I hear the cheers of my classmates as someone kicks ass in beer pong. I pass the garden shed, spotting Harlow’s discarded panties on the manicured lawn. I reach down and snap them up quickly, stuffing them into the waistband of my pants. I’m not a creeper. I’m not going to keep them and sniff them every so often like a total weirdo, but if I don’t grab them, someone else will, and then they’ll pass them around the party like a trophy, waving them in the air and whooping with the crowd.

  No one holds my trophies except me.

  The air stinks like the skunk of pot and the low burn from the fire pit. It smells like someone smoked the expensive stuff, the shit Chase gets from his guy that’s infused with tea leaves or some shit and carries with it the bite of mint.

  Great, now my friends are definitely not only drunk, but they’re probably also high, and I don’t know which one of them is worse after they’ve lit up. There are only two options for Archie when he smokes: either he becomes a giggling clown who can’t so much as think the word fart without falling out of his chair with laughter or he’s sitting there, staring up at the stars, his head craned all the way back like with his last remaining brain cells he’s trying to go all Neil deGrasse Tyson and solve the mysteries of the universe.

  If Everett joined in, then he’s definitely spaced-out, joining the astronauts in lunar orbit. He’ll have lost his filter sometime after the second drag, and I can vow from experience how fucking annoying it is when he’s going off about how much he loves you, bro, and patting your head like you’re his mom’s cat. Last time, I about the bit the fucker when he came at me, his arms outstretched like he wanted a hug. He didn’t want a hug. Freak asked for
a cuddle.

  Chase definitely lit up since it’s his personal stash loitering in the air like it owns the place. Dude’s like Archie, except his two levels are chill and downer, and it’s fifty-fifty odds which one will show up. If it’s chill Chase, he’s all right, likely to lock himself up with a guitar and bang out a single. If it’s downer though, he’ll get all sad and angry and try to start at least one epic fistfight. I got a black eye this summer when the high dumbass started shit with a bouncer.

  I round the corner of the shed and keep walking past the pool. The water’s got to be freezing, but some of my brothers from the football team cannonball into it, stark-ass naked as the day they were born. The girls on the sideline giggle and screech, holding up their phones as they video the whole drunken spectacle.

  Shit.

  I’m ready to find my car and hightail it back to campus already. It’s Halloween, and everyone else seems to be having a good time, but I’m in no mood to watch people I barely even like do stupid shit. Before I saw her tonight, maybe, but now, I remember what’s she like, what I’ve been missing, and nothing else compares. I’d rather sit and wallow in my own solitude in my dorm than pretend it does.

  I am intercepted before I even make it back to the party to tell Everett he can either ride back with Chase or head back with me now. Laurie What’s-Her-Face blinks up at me like she’s got something stuck in her eye. Normally, she’s got the whole doe-eyed look practiced to perfection, with big brown eyes that look like they came out of a hentai video—thanks, Archie, for that lesson in cartoon porn. Right now, Laurie’s not pulling it off, and whatever she’s taken is not helping her chances.

  “Hey, there, s…strrrangggeerrr,” she says.

  Jesus. Somebody come to my rescue and just kill me. It’s bad enough when she drops a pencil in front of my desk in physics class and bends over so I know she isn’t wearing any panties. Her other favorite tactics include wearing a black pushup bra beneath the thinnest white button-down she can find, “accidentally” playing the video of her riding some guy for me when she tried to show off her summer vacation, and inviting me over to, quote, “study and whatever,” on not six but seven fucking occasions.

  Tonight, she’s dressed up like a Playboy bunny, except one of her ears is bent in the wrong direction, and she definitely hasn’t realized it yet. Her boobs push the limits of her plum-colored unitard, and I bet if I asked her, she’d spin around and show me her bunny tail, if she hasn’t broken that off somewhere too.

  I say nothing, hoping she’ll get the hint.

  “Where are you going, big man?” she purrs, and I know it’s supposed to be a compliment, but it sort of sounds like she’s trying to call me her daddy. Ugh. Gross.

  My half-mast, thanks to going down memory lane with Harlow, deflates. My balls want to suck up into my body and hide.

  “I’m leaving,” I deadpan, moving to step around her.

  “But whhhhyyyy?” she whines, and I feel the words scrape against my soul. Could she be any more annoying? I can’t believe I even considered screwing her tonight. She is boring, basic even, and I need hair like lightning and irises the color of the eye of a hurricane.

  I need my perfect storm.

  I don’t answer her question and side-step around her, my gaze scanning for Everett. Where the hell is he so I can get out of here? She clamps her talons around my bicep, her fingers cold and clammy.

  “Don’t go,” she murmurs, doing that broken blinking thing again. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

  “Let go, Laurie,” I tell her, baring my teeth with my words, but she doesn’t back down.

  She just smiles like she’s happy I even know her name, which honestly has got to have happened through like osmosis or something because I definitely didn’t want to learn it.

  She runs her free hand up my chest, and I look down, watching as her fingers climb, her pink fingernails lightly scratching my skin as they go. I should feel something—I mean, she’s a warm-blooded, willing girl—but I don’t. It’s like I’m watching her through a television, and it’s not my body she’s laying her claws on.

  “We could have fun tonight,” she tells me. Her fingers crawl like a spider across my pectorals. I want to swipe them away like they are one too. “I’d let you do whatever you wanted to me, you know? And I do mean whatever you wanted.”

  “Stop,” I say, and when she continues touching me, I add, “I’m not interested.” She frowns, and I realize I’m going to have to appease her crazy ass. God, I am tired of this conversation.

  “Some other time,” I offer. Like when I’m dead.

  This doesn’t appease her though. Her scowl deepens, and at this rate, she’s going to develop premature wrinkles across her forehead.

  “What is it with you and that girl?” she snarls, her fangs finally coming out to play. “Everyone knows Harlow is a stuck-up bitch. You’re way too good for her, Ian.”

  The tether on my patience blows the fuck up. All I see is the blaze of my rage. She doesn’t even deserve to be on the same continent as Harlow.

  I shove her away from me, a palm hitting each shoulder. She stumbles backward with an oomph before she rights herself, and now, she’s grinning at me.

  What. The. Actual. Fuck.

  People are starting to notice, and I definitely don’t need a video of me putting this bitch in her place all over the Internet.

  “Yes, baby,” she says, the words slithering across her tongue. “You can do that and so much more.”

  “Let me break this down for you,” I snarl, peeling her hands off of me again. I tower over her, letting my words drip like acid rain atop her head. “I will never fuck you, not now, not ever, not if you were the last goddamn woman on earth. Leave me alone and learn to take a hint.”

  Her mouth falls open as the students around us snicker. Nothing like old-fashioned social embarrassment to make a point.

  I start away from her, leaving her standing there as she gapes at me like she can’t figure out what’s happened.

  Well, that makes two of us, Laurie What’s-Your-Face, I think. Only my confusion has everything to do with Harlow Weathersby and nothing to do with you.

  29

  Harlow

  I smooth my dress in front of the full-length mirror in my dorm room. It’s a white boatneck pencil dress with an overlay of navy blue lace that starts at the short sleeves and ends just above my knees. I’ve paired it with a set of matching suede Manolo Blahniks that strap at my ankles. The dark blue color brings out my eyes so that they gleam like shards of ice in the mirror, though the smoky eyeliner Raven recommended definitely helps. I want to look nice today because today’s the day everything finally goes back to the way it should be.

  After seventeen tortuous weeks, today is the day I tell Ian, the day Finn finally comes clean and makes good on his promises. I’ve done what I can to make sure he holds up his end of the bargain. I’ve tried to record him a couple of times now, discreetly hitting the button on my phone when he arrives out of nowhere at my side like a gnat, but at best, the recordings are slightly incriminatory. At worst, it sounds like he’s an asshole, and being an asshole alone isn’t a crime. I still have hope though, because I heard from Molly that Ian’s attorney is filing lawsuits against everyone from the police officers to the district attorney to the judge for delaying his case.

  Finn’s had his fun, months of watching Ian suffer as his family’s connections ensure Ian’s case never even gets to a courtroom, leaving him dangling on the hook like a stuck worm. Today, I tell Ian everything. I just hope he understands I did it all for him. I hope he forgives me. It’s been a long, tortured semester, but I’m going to make it right as soon as the charges are dropped and Finn’s held up his end of the bargain.

  I join Molly and Raven in the den I share with Molly. Raven lies stretched out across our futon, her Louboutin-encased feet dangling off the end, while Molly relaxes in the lounge chair, her legs crossed as she swipes across her phone. Raven blows out
a huge pink bubble of gum before she inhales it back inside her mouth with a pop. She glances up from her phone at me and whistles.

  “Freaking gorg,” she says as usual.

  “Thank you,” I say. “You all look nice yourselves.”

  Molly uncrosses her legs and shows off the front of her blush-pink chiffon dress.

  “I do clean up well,” she agrees, throwing slight shade at Raven, who snorts with her laughter.

  “We ready to do this?” Raven asks, letting her phone fall flat to her belly.

  “Ready,” I say as Molly stands from the lounge chair.

  We take the stairs, bypassing the elevator that’s got a line halfway down the hall. Our shoes clack against the steps as we descend, heading toward the awards ceremony across campus. It’s not even technically the end of the year yet, with final exams continuing for another two weeks, but this is to celebrate the fall sports and performing arts accomplishments, the accolades recently received by the Academy, the new hires, the retiring professors, and any endowments made by our donors. Attendance is mandatory for all Academy staff, faculty, and students. Semi-formal attire is also required with a reception to be held afterward.

  It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him, really seen him, since the Halloween party. He’s avoided me in the halls, pretended I didn’t exist in Mr. Collins’s class, and no-showed to every hangout planned by our friends, but he can’t get out of this one, and I know it. Molly told me his parents are receiving an award for an endowment established by their company, Beckett Enterprises, which will fund the renovation of the gymnasium and the building of a state-of-the-art sports complex. His father would expect and require Ian to show a united front.

  “Have you heard anything about Ian’s court case?” I ask Molly. I try to sound casual, but I fail completely. The words are rushed, each one running over the one before it.

  Molly shakes her head as we continue toward the performing arts center, and my heart sinks. Ian would tell Everett and Everett would immediately tell Molly, but no news is good news, right?