Several things occur to me then.
Aaron’s house is on the very edge of Prescott, straddling the official boundary of the Fuller neighborhood. He could’ve gone to Fuller High if he’d wanted, I bet. And Cal, he was talented enough that he could’ve run away all together, left this nightmare of a city behind. Hael could’ve quit school to work on cars. Oscar is too smart to be stuck in Prescott; he likely could’ve snagged the one and only scholarship spot that Oak Valley opens each year (each year there isn’t a school shooting, that is).
The only person who was truly and utterly stuck in Prescott High was … me.
“Excuse me,” I choke out, snatching the pile of bags and a single shoe box that Oscar has carefully gathered into a neat pile on the coffee table, and taking off for the bedroom nearest the bathroom. I slam the door behind me, putting my back to it and closing my eyes for a moment.
My heart races, and my spirit swells, and there’s nowhere for that energy to go but into my hands and fingers as I throw all the items in my arms onto the king-size bed against the far wall. It’s dressed plainly in white sheets, white pillows, and a matching down comforter. Is it wrong that my first thought is: will we all fit in here on this thing? Because the thought of being separated from any of my boys for any length of time makes me feel almost physically ill.
I shed my clothes as quickly as I can, yanking on a gray pleated skirt and a white button-down, a sky-blue satin tie, and socks that reach my knees. The shoes are last, these shiny black Mary Janes that remind me of the shoes Pamela used to make me and Pen wear on holidays, when we were still rich and she still pretended to give a shit about us, when Dad was alive and the Thing was a future nightmare I couldn’t have possibly fathomed.
As soon as I’m dressed, I tear out of that room like a bat outta hell and run straight into Victor’s strong, wet chest. He’s clearly just gotten out of the shower, beads of moisture clinging to his inked skin as he rests a palm on either side of the hallway, his obsidian gaze boring down into me.
“Bernadette,” he murmurs, and then he’s shoving me back into the room and pinning me against the wall. Victor’s mouth descends on mine, a slice of hot fury that burns me even as it soothes away all of my pain, all of my questioning, any lingering doubts that I might’ve had.
His tongue parts my lips like a spoken order, like he really is a king and I’m a loyal subject desperate to obey. Why I feel like this around him, I’m not sure, but I like it. When I’m with Victor, I don’t have to worry or wonder. He’ll take care of me, of us, of everything. In his arms, that’s where I feel the safest.
“Is there anything you need?” I whisper, trembling as he bands his strong fingers around my upper arms, making dents in the heather gray sleeves of the jacket.
Victor takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and then opens them again, unleashing the hurricane force of his stare on me.
“You.”
The towel around his hips drops to the floor as he steps back to examine me in the uniform, swiping his hand over his face with a curse. His temper is barely restrained right now. I can see the edges of it in the veins in his arms and neck, a muscle working in his jaw as he struggles to keep that beast restrained.
For now.
First chance he gets to launch it at Ophelia, and she isn’t making it out of this city with a pulse.
“The uniform really cinches the deal, doesn’t it?” he whispers, eyes sparkling, and I can’t decide if he asked me to put it on just because he’s a fucking perv who wants to nail me in what’s essentially a Catholic schoolgirl uniform (although Oak Valley Prep has no religious affiliation) or if it’s something else, something more. Proof that he can take care of me. Proof that he can raise us all up. Proof that this will all be worth it in the end. “You look every bit as aristocratic as Trinity Jade. Or Ophelia. More so, actually.”
“Should I add the crown?” I whisper back, feeling that intensity between us stretch and quiver and pull, my obsession feeding into his obsession until we’re just an endless loop of need and want and possession. Victor Channing is mine, and I don’t care about the fake fiancée charade we have to keep up: I’m going to remind every student on this campus at every opportunity I can that I can kiss Vic, fuck Vic, own Vic whenever I goddamn well please.
Trinity is going to hate me for it.
“The crown would definitely add to the appeal,” Victor growls, stepping forward and sliding his hands up and underneath my skirt to cup my ass. “But I’m not about to let you leave to go look for it. You asked if I needed you? Well, I do.”
He drops one of his big hands between my thighs, lightly stroking up the seam of my cunt. He finds it easily, even with the barrier of my panties between us. I’m already wet, soaking the fabric and making him grumble in pleasure at the damp feeling against his calloused fingers. Because he’s an animal, because he’s the basic, primal male to the wild, unrestrained female inside of me, he can’t resist tugging the fabric of my underwear aside to get to my bare cunt.
With heavy bedroom eyes, Victor drinks me in, slicking a single finger between my folds and groaning when he feels exactly how hot and slick I am between the thighs. His cock pulses and throbs with the need to fill me up, to conquer that space and make it his own. I can’t seem to look away as he slips two fingers inside of me, making my lips part with a pleasured sigh as my head falls back against the wall.
It’s obscene really, to fuck in this uniform before I’ve even attended a single class in it, but what can I do? My boss needs me, doesn’t he? My husband. The king to my queen.
When Victor withdraws his hand from my panties, I almost scream. He smirks at me, like he can sense exactly how I’m feeling as he adjusts his grip from my most private parts to his own, using my lube to slick his fist up and down the length of his swollen cock.
“I know all the things you say about me,” he says, almost as if it’s a challenge, a smirk building on his mouth as he regains that control, pulling it around himself like a blanket. Watching it happen is nothing short of miraculous.
“What things?” I query back, my cheeks flushed, my nipples so hard that the lace of my bra feels suddenly like a torture device.
“That I’m basic,” he growls, dropping first to one knee and then the other, hand still stroking and playing with his cock. “That I’m an animal, that all I know how to do is rut like a dog in heat.”
“I never said that verbatim,” I retort, but it’s too late. Victor has to prove that he still has control over himself, despite his reaction to Ophelia’s taunts. He reluctantly releases the grip on his dick just long enough to drag my panties down my legs and then pull them off, tossing them aside and then encouraging me to spread my legs.
His hands cup my ass as his face falls between my thighs, his tongue sliding hot and wicked across my cunt in just such a way that my knees quiver. Shit, fuck, son of a bitch. He eats me out like it’s a pleasure, a rite of passage, something to be savored and enjoyed. It most certainly isn’t a chore, the way Vic goes about doing it.
My eyelids droop, but I force them to stay open so I can stare down at his crown of purple-dark hair. When my fingers find it and grab hold, he growls at me, his face still pressed tightly to me, sucking and licking and nipping at my clit and folds.
Victor bands an arm across my belly when I start to collapse, effectively pinning me to the wall. It’s insane how strong he is, how the muscles in his arm lock in place and keep me there even as I push at him with my hands, my nails cutting grooves through his tattoos.
“Vic,” I murmur, as he keeps his head beneath the pleats of my skirt, mouth working against my body like a starving man. His tongue is hot and vicious, carving valleys through my flesh that make my lids flutter closed. My hands spasm, digging into the fabric of my skirt and, conversely, the top of his skull. “Fuck, I can’t do this.”
A sound escapes that I struggle to control, echoing in the nearly empty bedroom as I dig my fingers in even harder, the orgasm riding me t
he way I’m sure Victor wants to but that he won’t allow himself to do. Not right this second, not when he’s feeling this way. Even though the thought of him riding me in wild, unrestrained abandon gets me so hot that I can barely breathe through the idea.
“Maybe I could … I could lay down …” I pant, but he ignores me.
Damn if I can stop him when he’s getting what he wants.
With his right arm still banded over my midsection, Victor works the fingers of his left hand into the scalding heat of my core. At the same time, he makes sure to work his tongue around my clit, gently sucking the hardened nub into his mouth before grazing it with his teeth. My hips buck up against his face, but he holds me still, pinning me in place until a climax rips through me like those flames I saw in his eyes just a few minutes earlier.
My body spasms around his hand, a groan slipping past my lips that I can’t control. But there’s certainly no rest for the wicked as he shoves up to his feet, grabs me by the skirt, and yanks me forward. I’m tossed onto the bed, face-first, and then Vic is doing exactly what he wants to do by mounting me from behind.
His cock is scalding and almost too thick at this angle, making me scream as he drives into me hard and fast. That’s when his control finally reaches its tipping point, and he fists a hand in my hair, yanking my head back and fucking me with just a fraction of that violent, unrelenting rage.
The insistent friction of his cock burrowing into me, and the wild, masculine sounds he makes sends me over the edge yet again, and then I’m coming clamped around him, my muscles working his body until he spills his seed inside of me.
With a final thrust and one, last agonizing groan, Victor collapses on top of me, breathing hard and curling his fingers through my own on either side.
“Feel better?” I whisper, and he gives a dark chuckle, his huge body crushing me into the mattress just the way I like. I could live in this position, with him still inside of me, pinning me down like a butterfly who has no wish to escape.
“You always make me feel better, Mrs. Channing,” he murmurs, nuzzling against the side of my head before climbing to his feet and leaving me feeling cold and needy and irritated all at once. How is it fair that I have to conquer a whole new school today when I just became queen of my last one? How is it fair that I can’t spend all day in bed with these boys when that’s the only thing in the world I feel like doing right now? “Come on, wife. I’ll help you clean the cum off, so you don’t have it running down your legs on the first day of class.”
“I seriously fucking hate you sometimes,” I grumble as I push myself up into a standing position and find myself facing down Victor Channing the way I did in the hall that first day of school, when he called me a ballsy bitch, and I snapped right back at him. He captures my chin in his fingers and stares me down with such a genuine look of love and affection that it’s impossible for me to say anything snarky or cranky or distinctly south Prescott in nature.
“Well, I seriously fucking love you all of the time,” he tells me, and I groan, letting my lids fall closed because I just know that I’m not getting out of this room without saying it back.
“I love you, too, you fucking asshole,” I grumble, and he chuckles, planting one last kiss on my overheated mouth before sending me off to face an entire school full of spoiled rotten prep school brats.
Because I’m just that much of a south Prescott ho, I decide to slip a tampon in instead of showering down, so I can carry a little piece of Victor Channing around with me all goddamn day long.
Alright, let’s do this.
I push open the doors to my first class of the day and I swear to you, there isn’t a student in that room who doesn’t turn to look at me. First contact. Earth has finally been visited by aliens.
Trinity’s expression doesn’t change as she takes in the ring that’s now sitting pretty back on my finger. Take a good, long look bitch, I think, wondering if she ever really wanted to fuck my man or if it was just her brother she was into. For all I know, she’s just an extremely talented actress.
Good thing I’m more than familiar with those. Oscar is a master thespian, of course.
I move down the steps toward where her majesty sits, pausing beside her and planting my hands on my hips. I’ve rolled the waistband of my skirt up the way the Prescott High cheerleaders do before they kick the Fuller girls’ asses and tear out their extensions with nails that could make Michelangelo cry. That shit is art.
“Mind if I sit here?” I ask as the teacher—this uptight man in a gray suit—stares at me like I’ve just taken a shit on his classroom floor. I smack my gum, content to wait in silence as Trinity takes me in from my feet to my bloodred hair to my eyes, half-lidded and lazy. I’m not afraid of her, and I’m certainly not afraid of any asshole in this school.
“If you must,” is Trinity’s only response as I slide onto the bench seat beside her. The room is tiered, like an auditorium or a gymnasium or something. The teacher stands up front like he’s on a stage, shaking his head as he goes back to his lesson plan. He doesn’t bother to introduce me to the class, doesn’t even acknowledge me. Glad to see that classism runs thick in this place.
I smack my gum again and Trinity cringes.
“Could you not do that?” she asks finally, after I do it three or four more times. I glance her direction, noticing the way her hand shakes as she attempts to answer some questions on her iPad, tapping the stylus against the screen as the teacher’s voice drones by like so much background noise.
I’m not here for the education, y’all.
“I’m surprised you’re not in mourning for poor James,” I say, and just the sound of his name makes Trinity’s skin prickle with goose bumps. She hates me so much that I can see her repulsion in her skin, written there the way the story of my life is written in ink across my own body. I lean back in the seat and my pleated skirt rides up dangerously high, exposing the tail of the dragon tattoo that graces my hip.
Trinity’s eyes fixate on it before lifting up to my face.
Her expression is empty and blank, like a shell of a person. Regardless, I can practically smell her disdain.
“Without me, Maxwell Barrasso would’ve rounded up your little baby gang already. You’re lucky you’re still here and not on the chopping block during one of his special auctions.” She turns back toward the front of the room, stylus hovering over the screen of her iPad. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to focus on my schoolwork. Unlike you, I have my sights set on an Ivy League education.”
I just smile at her. And I keep smiling at her until she turns to look at me again. I don’t even have to say a fucking thing to piss her off. Just seeing my rachet ass in her fancy prep school is infuriating enough.
“What?” she snaps, but I just turn slowly toward the front of the room, unsurprised to find that I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in this class. Prescott High is part of the lowest tax bracket in the entire state. How can we be expected to compete? The only way to destroy the wealth gap and bring the best, brightest minds to the forefront of society is to equally fund public schools regardless of tax bracket. But I’m sure Trinity wouldn’t give a shit about any of that.
“I’m just thinking of all the ways to make a person bleed,” I say, and then I park my chin in my hand and pretend like I actually give a fuck what the teacher has to say. The only reason I get through it is because I’m sore between the thighs from Vic’s monster cock. I snap my gum again and Trinity clenches her teeth.
At lunch, I find Victor standing in the cafeteria in his gray jacket and blue tie. He glances my way when I move up to stand beside him, his intimidating bulk an obscene blotch against the genteel aristocracy that slithers through this prep school like a nest of snakes.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” he asks me as I turn back to look at them, a sea of identical jackets and ties and silver spoons shoved up too-tight assholes.
“Putrescent. Remind me what we’re doing here again.” I make a hissing s
ound of disgust as Trinity lifts her hand and waves for Victor to join her at a table in the center of the room. They don’t have cafeteria food here, by the way. They eat from a menu. There are waiters.
I remember this book I read once, written by a girl who attended Burberry Preparatory Academy—one of the wealthiest private schools in the country. She talked about this, this … restaurant-esque quality to her school lunches. I was disgusted then. Now, looking at it in person, I kind of want to puke.
I miss Prescott High already.
“God.” I gag on the eleganza of the whole scenario, wishing I were at Wesley’s with a greasy burger and fries with a side of ranch. “How many months until graduation?”
Victor’s mouth twitches, and the only reason I find any reason to be in good spirits at all is that he looks so fucking delicious with that gray jacket tugging at the broad expanse of his shoulders that I could just cry.
“June twelfth is graduation day,” Vic tells me, and I force my brain to shut down so I can’t calculate exactly how many months away that is. My jaw works for a moment before I shake my head.
“I can’t do it,” I say, backing away from the room as Trinity shoots a frown our way that’s so severe it’s likely to leave a permanent mark across the bottom of her pretty face. I guess she was under the impression that Victor would, like, still humor her by eating at her table the way he did at the lodge. Unfortunately for her, the humiliation of having her peers see me all over his dick while he gives her the cold shoulder is part of the fun. They’ll know she’s supposed to be engaged to him, but also that even if he is a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks, he couldn’t give two fucks less about her. “I don’t want to eat in here. Let’s get chips from the vending machine or something.”
We exit out the cafeteria doors just in time to run into the other boys.
And I must say, I have to take a moment to appreciate the view.
Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5) Page 27
