by Kit Kyndall
She was fine with math, and since she was in the beginning French class, she didn’t have any worries about that. She was catching up on her literature, but she was definitely behind in government and economy compared to where she should’ve been by now, and her world history was a couple of centuries behind.
“I don’t mind if it takes us a hundred years to catch up on two centuries,” said Lex when he heard that.
She looked up and met his gaze, grinning at him. “I guess I don’t mind that either.” They were so close, their faces just inches apart. It wouldn’t take much to lean over and kiss him.
Fortunately or unfortunately—she couldn’t decide which—Lex opened her history book, and they started discussing the War of 1812.
She did her best to concentrate, but it was difficult when his fingers kept trailing up her arm, and he was wrapping her hair around his finger continuously before releasing it just to do it all again. Her body was an entire minefield of nerve endings, and when he put his hand on her bare knee, edging up a couple of inches under her skirt, she let out a startled gasp.
He froze and immediately pulled his hand away. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat.” I was trying to reposition.”
He really might’ve been, since they were pressed closely together, or he might’ve been casually touching her leg. She didn’t really know, but she wanted him to do it again. She made an effort to switch positions nonchalantly over the next few minutes as they continued to discuss history. She was just about in position, so she put her hand on his thigh, leaning against him slightly. “I understand what you’re saying about this, but I just don’t understand why they couldn’t find peace sooner.”
“People like to fight. Men especially like to fight.”
She rolled her eyes as she looked up at him. “That’s kind of sexist.” As she spoke, she moved her hand just an inch higher. She was amused by the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed.
“I’m not saying women can’t be bloodthirsty too. They can fight for whatever they believe in or are trying to protect, but men are naturally more aggressive.”
She couldn’t help a small laugh then, but she quickly stifled it to maintain the quiet of the library. “I can tell you’ve never been at a clearance sale or in a girls’ locker room.”
His eyes gleamed with interest. “I haven’t, but if you’d like to give me the tour, I wouldn’t say no.”
She squeezed his thigh, as though punishing him lightly. “What a horrible thing to suggest. I’d never do that.” It was difficult to maintain her serious expression when she looked up and caught his grin though. “Why would you want to look at all those half-naked girls anyway?” She arched a brow.
He paused for a moment, apparently sensing danger. “Maybe not all those girls, but there’s one I wouldn’t mind looking at.” As he spoke, he stroked his hand fully through her hair instead of just wrapping strands around his finger. He leaned a little closer, lowering his voice slightly. “She’s a really pretty girl, and even the horrible swimsuit she has to wear can’t hide how pretty she is everywhere.”
It was starting to get hot in there, and even as her hand went a little bit higher up his leg, she used the other one to fan her face. “You should probably get to know her better before you decide to look at her in the locker room.”
He nodded. “I definitely should. I think I’ll study with her every day.”
“I’m not sure how much studying is happening,” she said, dropping the pretense that he was talking about someone besides her. “I’m supposed to be thinking about the War of 1812, but right now, all I can think about is kissing you.”
He grinned as he lowered his head. “What a coincidence. That’s all I’m thinking about too.”
His lips pressed against hers a moment later, giving her plenty of opportunity to pull back. She didn’t though. Candace when all-in, pressing closer and lifting a hand to hold his hair and keep him against her. His arms molded around her, and one of his hands dug into her lower back a little more forcefully than necessary, but she didn’t mind. It was just a reminder he was holding her like this.
He coaxed her lips open, moving at a gentle and steady pace that she matched. When his tongue surged into her mouth, she stroked it with her own before following him back into his mouth. It would’ve been easy to deepen the kiss, but he apparently had more awareness than she did, because he pulled back a moment later. His forehead rested against hers, and he was breathing deeply.
She realized she was as well. Her breaths were raspy sounds, and her chest heaved. That brought it against his with each exhale, making her nipples tingle. She looked up at him, speechless.
With a sigh, he pulled back a little farther. “I really do want to help you study, so we should probably get back to it.”
Handsome, sweet, and responsible. Normally, she’d consider that a trifecta, but she couldn’t deny she was a little put-out with his responsibility right then. Though she barely knew him, she would’ve been happy to spend the next hour just kissing him instead of studying.
It was later than she’d realized when she left the library. Lex walked with her to the quad near their dorm, and they stood together staring at each other for a moment, an awkward silence falling between them. “Thanks for your help,” she said finally.
“You’re welcome. Same time tomorrow?”
She nodded. “I’d appreciate it. Hmm, well, good night then.”
“Candace.” He called out, putting a hand on her shoulder when she started to walk away.
She paused and looked up at him. “Yeah?”
“We’re not studying now, so is it all right…?” He trailed off.
She nodded and grinned, moving closer to him. His head dipped down a moment later, and their lips touched. It was a light, brief kiss, and then he was heading off to his dorm while she planned to continue on to swim.
She was nearing the swimming complex when hands reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into the space between two of the buildings and slamming her against the wall. She let out a squeak as the air rushed from her, and the jolt jarred through her body.
She opened her mouth to scream out of instinct, but a hand clamped over it. Eyes wide, she looked up and recognized Dalton. That he’d been the one to grab her should’ve been a relief, since he was technically her stepsibling, but she felt no sense of reprieve. She just felt fear, and a tingling in her stomach that she didn’t want to identify. She glared up at him since her mouth was covered, struggling to talk.
“I knew you were a whore, just like your mother. You barely know Lex, but you’re already kissing him. He was all over you.”
She rolled her eyes, wanting to point out a kiss was hardly Lex “all over her.”
“Thanks for proving me right though. I knew a little slut like you couldn’t keep your legs closed for five minutes once you got here. Are you hoping to find a mega-rich boyfriend just like your mom did?” He sneered.
Anger filled her again, and she lifted a knee to slam him in the groin. Her aim was a little off, and she hit his thigh instead. That was enough for him to drop his hand from her mouth. She started to shove away from him, though he pinned her back against the wall. “Don’t talk about my mom, you pig. She’s not a whore and—”
Before she could finish what she wanted to yell at him, his mouth slammed down on hers. There was nothing gentle in this kiss, and he didn’t give her a chance to pull away. He ground his lips on hers, almost like he was trying to punish her. She could taste blood in her mouth from where her lip grazed her own tooth, and she whimpered as she tried to push against him.
Her struggle changed things slightly, and the harsh kiss gentled, until his lips were moving over hers in a coaxing fashion. That was so much harder to resist than when he’d been inflicting the kiss on her as an act of cruelty.
She hated that she was attracted to him at all, and she hated that her body responded as he kissed her. Tears burned in her eyes, and she couldn’t decide if the
y were from shame or rage.
He pulled back slightly, glaring down at her. “See? A total whore.”
Without thinking through the consequences or anything else, she brought back her hand and punched him as hard as she could in the nose. Blood sprayed, and his eyes widened as he took a step back, pressing his hand his nose. “Bitch.”
“I’m not a whore, and neither is my mother, so stop calling her and me that.” With a kick to his shin, she grabbed her stuff and ran while she still had a chance. Her hand stung, and she shook it as she rushed to the relative safety of dorm A. She wouldn’t forget the look of murderous rage on his face, and she knew running had been the safest option in the moment.
Only when she was safely in her dorm, deciding to skip her swim for the night to stay locked behind the safety of the door, did she let herself to think about the kiss, and how it morphed from something angry and painful to something that had set her nerve endings on fire.
Had he planned to do that, or had he just kissed her to prove to himself she was what he believed? Not that kissing boys made a girl a slut in her opinion, but she knew how boys could be with their archaic double standards. Had it all been a plot to hurt her, or had he succumbed to an unacknowledged desire as well?
Without answers, she wasn’t going to assign him motives that mitigated his shitty behavior. Even though she found him attractive—especially because she found him attractive—it would be wise to steer clear of her stepbrother as much as possible.
Chapter Ten
Dalton held fast to his nose as he went to his dorm room, seething with rage, but also uncomfortably aroused. He hadn’t planned to kiss her, but she’d been right there, pressed against the wall, with her lips parted. She’d been yelling at him, and it had seemed like a logical way to shut her up.
It had also been a temptation he’d been denying that he felt since he met her, months before the wedding. For a moment, she kissed back as though she liked it and him. Then she’d shown her true colors, and the bitch hit him.
He ignored a niggle of guilt suggesting he might’ve deserved a punch due to the things he’d said. If she’d been a normal person, someone of his social standing and not from a gold-digging whore, he never would’ve spoken to her that way.
What did it matter, since she wasn’t one of his kind of people? She was the daughter of a gold-digger, and she was clearly cut from the same cloth with the way she was going after Lex already. Look at how she let him kiss her just after kissing Lex, and she even kissed Dalton back.
There was clearly more to Candace, and he couldn’t help wondering if he could find a way to explore it. She responded to him when he was angry and kissing her, so how would she respond if he weren’t raging at her? Would she be sweet and welcoming, or would she guess he was playing with her and push him away?
Was he really playing with her though? Had it been a game tonight? He could freely admit it hadn’t. He couldn’t pretend it had been either. When he saw her kissing Lex, it had driven him into a state of anger. He wanted to think it was because it was Lex, a boy he’d hated since they were in the same prep school, but he suspected there was far more to it. He’d been jealous enough times in his life to know how to label it, and he couldn’t pretend like it hadn’t been angry jealousy that had driven him to pull her into the shadows, pin her to the building, and kiss her senseless.
When he entered the rec room, he heard his sister gasp. She came running to him, stopping to grab tissue out of the dispenser and pass it to him. “Oh my gosh, what happened, Dalton?” She was clearly concerned as she fussed over him.
He glared, but it wasn’t for her. “That little skank hit me.”
She frowned. “Candace?” At his nod of confirmation, she grinned. “You have to tell the headmaster right now. He’ll have to suspend her, and that’ll be the end of it. The trash won’t be here any longer.”
Dalton hesitated, unsure how to answer. Though it had been their initial plan to get her expelled within a short time, he was discomforted to know he didn’t want her to go yet. “No, not yet.”
Malone put her hands on her hips. “Why ever not?”
He shrugged. “It’ll be more fun to torture her for a bit longer, don’t you think?”
Malone looked uncertain for a moment. “I thought the most important thing was getting rid of her?”
Yeah, that was what Dalton had said himself. Here he was now, walking it back, and he couldn’t help thinking that was because he’d kissed her. He wouldn’t admit that to Malone though. “I just think we should have a little more fun first. When she’s back home, Dad will protect her if we try to mess with her there. This is our best chance to really show her why she doesn’t belong.”
Malone seemed to think it over for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. There are a few things I had in mind that I wanted to do to her.”
“Me too.” Those words stayed with him as he excused himself to go to his dorm, locking himself in the bathroom he shared with Seth before dealing with the nosebleed. When it stopped, he decided to take a hot shower.
He turned on the water as hot as he could stand and stepped in, washing off the blood. He closed his eyes, imagining her there with him. He wanted to punish her, to hurt her for making him bleed, but when he closed his eyes to imagine what he would do to her, none of it was painful.
Instead, it was just her on her knees, her mouth wrapped around his cock, as she sucked him off while he kept his hand in her hair, holding her tightly against him. His hand went around his cock, mimicking the motions her mouth made in his mind, and he jerked off to images of Candace kneeling before him, completely in his power.
Chapter Eleven
Jonas loved his morning walks across the grounds of BriarEdge so he could check on the roses. They were as hardy and hale as ever, because he kept them that way. At the first sign of struggling, he interceded to give them exactly what they needed. That was a skill he’d learned from his father, and the memory went so far back that he didn’t actually remember learning most of what he knew. It was more like he’d been born with the knowledge of how to care for the Claymore roses.
The sight of the briar bushes never failed to stir his appreciation for their beauty, but he was more appreciative of a different kind of beauty this morning. As he rounded a row of hedges, he almost stumbled into Candace. He put a securing hand on her arm when she looked like she might windmill backward to avoid slamming into him. “Are you all right?” he asked after she appeared steady.
She laughed a little awkwardly as her cheeks flushed. “Yeah, thanks to you. I’m sorry that I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
He grinned. “I guess I wasn’t either, or it’s a blind intersection.” As he’d hoped, the silly comments elicit a bigger smile from her. “Where are you rushing off to?”
She blinked. “Nowhere, really. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. I was walking with a lot on my mind.”
Her eyes looked a little red and puffy. He frowned as he left his hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Have you been crying?”
She sniffed for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No, it’s just allergies.”
He didn’t believe her, but he wasn’t going to call her a liar. “Is it the roses? I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about that. When Miranda Claymore donated the land to the school, she stipulated that seventy-five percent of the roses had to stay alive, or the land could be taken away and put into a trust.”
Her eyes widened. “No, it’s not the roses. Maybe it’s just lack of sleep. I had trouble falling asleep.”
He started walking, gently steering her with him. She fell into step after a short pause. “Why couldn’t you sleep? Bad dreams?”
She shrugged. “Not a nightmare. Just heavy thoughts.”
He swore she muttered something about her life being a nightmare, but if she did, she clearly didn’t want him to actually hear it. “What are you thinking about? Are you worried about passing you
r classes? I know this place is tough. It was certainly far too tough for me—and way too expensive for my parents even with a discount on tuition since Dad had the contract for the roses.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Mostly my stepbroth…siblings…stepsiblings. Driving me nuts.” She waved a hand. “I know you told me before your father worked on the roses, and you inherited the business, but I didn’t know you could have gone here.”
“Yeah, employees and contractors’ kids can go if they have good enough grades, but from the few I’ve seen do it, it’s usually an exercise in misery for them. They’re kicked into the eskie group, and that’s the end.”
She shuddered. “I really hate that term, and I’m not even a scholarship kid.”
He nodded. “It is pretty rude, now that I think about it. I’m sorry I used it.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe it’s just me who dislikes it.”
“I know something you can’t dislike.” With a grin, he pulled her closer, indicating she should lean down to look at the roses. “Have you ever seen one like this?”
She leaned closer, inhaling before closing her eyes for a moment. She looked like she was lost in bliss, and Jonas’s gaze dropped to her lips. Plump and full, he couldn’t help wondering what they tasted like. He cleared his throat, trying to clear his thoughts in the same way. “It’s a Claymore rose.”
“I’ve never heard of them. I didn’t even know there were types of roses besides colors.”
Passion ignited in him and suffused his words. “Oh, there’re tons of varieties. The Claymore was bred from crossing the wild dog rose and the sweet briar varieties especially for Miranda Claymore by her husband. Ike was an oil baron, but his hobby was botany, and he knew how much Miranda loved roses. He came up with the Claymore rose just for her, and the land was filled with it. The school cleared out the allowed twenty-five percent when they inherited the land, but we still had all the roses you see around you. I’ve never had to plant more, because I take care of what we already have.”
