by Becker Gray
True, but it would be worth it.
Aurora was one hundred percent worth it. If it meant that she was mine, I would happily take the beating, and Lennox would just have to deal.
Now, she was standing in front of me in that dress. It was flirty. Full of color. It made her look every bit a fairy princess. I didn’t even understand it. It was just above her knee, there was gray and pink, some kind of panel thing that was uneven with the dress. Simply stunning, like something off of a runway. Maybe I’d seen it in a show. Who the hell knew?
The point was being this close to her was driving me nuts. Her scent. Her voice. God help me, that laugh. From the moment she’d turned to me on the veranda, it was like being hit by a ray of sunshine. She’d taken me over. The princess owned me, and I didn’t even care, standing here in front of her, eyes wide. I knew that this was my chance to grasp something that was mine. Mine alone. And it would change my world forever.
Her smile up at me was sweet with a chaser of fire. I could deny her nothing. Whatever she needed from me, I would give it to her. Like her trusty knight, ever more.
I leaned forward, knowing that once I kissed her, that was it. There was this part of me, deep in my soul, that didn’t even give a shit. She owned me, and I was good with that.
Leaning down, I wrapped my hands around her waist, pulling her close, angling my head. When our lips were a breath of a whisper apart, she smiled, and my heart burst.
Her lips were like the softest velvet. Warm and inviting. She tasted like strawberries, and I knew I was going to drown in her flavor, in her scent, and I didn’t even care.
I ran my tongue over her bottom lip, and a groan slipped out. If I didn’t get myself under control, she’d know how desperate I was. Know how much I’d wanted her. I did my level best to keep my desire for her in check, to hold back that wild animal that wanted to take too much and possess her.
I slid my tongue inside her mouth, licking inside, exploring all the secrets she had to give, letting her keep a few to herself in the hopes that one day she would give them willingly.
One of my hands slid up her torso, just along the side of her breast, up over her shoulder. And then I cupped her face, gently rubbing my thumb over her jaw and cheek as I deepened the kiss.
Needing more, I pulled her in closer.
I wanted to give her everything.
She gasped into my mouth and looped her arms around my neck. As her fingers slid into the hair at the nape of my neck, I shuddered. Fucking hell. Aurora Lincoln-Ward was my own personal kryptonite.
I couldn’t stop. I knew that now. I would never be able to stop. I needed somewhere darker and more private. I needed time. All the time in the world so that I could take this further, explore more. Feel her hands on me in all those secret places.
I turned my head again, trying to pull back, trying to exhibit some amount of control, but Aurora’s hands tightened in my hair, her fingernails scraping along my scalp, and I shuddered again.
I wasn’t sure where the low growl came from, but it was slightly feral and desperate. And she was making this little sound in the back of her throat that only urged me on, pulling me deeper into the abyss. She was a siren, and I was the ship’s captain heeding her call. Because I was powerless to do anything else.
It wasn’t until the hairs at the back of my neck stood at attention that I realized someone was saying her name. “Aurora, where are you? Rory?”
I growled and tried to pull her farther into the shadows. But she pulled back slightly, and I had no recourse but to let her go.
She blinked up at me with wide, hazy golden eyes. “Phin.”
Her smile, the tease on her lips, pulled me back toward her, and I couldn’t help stealing another kiss. Then I pulled back and smiled down at her. “Aurora.”
Her grin was resplendent, and that light spread through me, making me feel like I could climb a thousand mountains. “Why don’t you go? I’ll meet you at the climbing tree by the koi pond when you’re done.”
She smiled at me. “You don’t mind?”
I swallowed hard. “No, I don’t. Go on, I’ll be right there waiting for you.”
She laughed. “Excellent. I’ll see you later.”
And I knew then I would never be the same.
* * *
Aurora
My skin was buzzing. I could still feel Phin’s lips over mine. The way he’d slid his tongue into my mouth, licking into me, it was almost like I could feel him moving inside me.
I shivered as I ran to the party.
Throngs of people in their glittery resplendence made it difficult to find Sera. When I finally found her, she was near the fountain giving wait staff instructions like a drill sergeant. God, she was so smooth and efficient. I wished I could be like that. That cool confidence that exuded from her. Sometimes it was funny because she was far more the queen than I was, and I was descended from literal royalty.
Most would say that came from being a van Doren. And maybe it did, but knowing Sera, she was just badass. Full-on badass. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. And I was lucky she was my friend.
When she saw me coming, she smiled. “Hey, I saw you talking to my cousin Ethan. I’m so sorry. He can be a lot. And he’s been drinking, so he’s extra touchy.”
I shrugged. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. I also talked to the bar staff and had them start watering the hell out of his drinks. He’s so drunk he won’t even notice. I told the bartender that after three more he’s to discreetly lead Ethan to the loo in the back. And by loo I mean a cab to go home.”
Sera grinned. “See, you’re the best co-hostess.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m watching you. How’s everything going?”
“Oh fine, you know—” She studied me for a second. “You look flushed. And your eyes are bright. You look happy. Why the extra happiness? Ooh, I saw Jayden Mills come through here. Were you talking to him?”
I loved that about Sera. The idea of a hot influencer turned movie star hitting on her friend made her infinitely happy. Not even a hint of jealousy from her, like, ‘Oh my God, I want Jayden Mills to look at me.’ Nope. Just genuine happiness for me.
“No, actually. Um, not Jayden Mills.”
She grinned. “But someone. Somebody is responsible for that flush in your face. Who is it? Tell me. Tell me everything.”
Sera had this energy about her. If you couldn’t keep up, you were going to forever feel that sting of her disappointment.
“It was Phin.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God. Ooh, first of all, Lennox is going to kick his ass.”
I laughed. “You know, I’m not even sure he cares.”
Sera grinned. “Fantastic. That’s exactly what we want. We don’t want somebody who’s going to be cowed by your brother. But we also don’t want Lennox to decapitate anyone.”
I knew for a fact Sera liked Lennox. But she always made a face when someone else said his name, as if she thought he was too overprotective. Not like she wasn’t herself.
But she was the kind of friend that was always there whenever you needed her. It didn’t matter what time or where you were in the world. If I was in Prague and I called her to say, ‘Hey, I’m in jail,’ she’d have her lawyers on a jet posthaste.
Not that I would ever be in jail. Not after what happened with my father. Even my wild-child streak had limits. I knew that after what he did, there would come a time when I’d have to stop playing and toe the line. He ripped apart the family reputation, and we still hadn’t recovered. And then Lennox had learned that he’d had a child with the woman he’d stepped out on our mother with. As if the sex, lies, and stolen money weren’t bad enough, he’d ripped away the illusion that we’d been his only family too.
God, he was the worst. I couldn’t ever be the one to disappoint my mother like that again. Ever.
Serafina smiled. “You look really happy, babes.”
“I am. And PS, he was a really good kisser.”
She lifted
a brow. “Hah. Phineas, who knew?”
“Well, haven’t you known Phineas half your life?”
She shrugged, probably because she’d known almost everyone at this party for almost half her life.
That was Pembroke in a nutshell, really. Connections dating back decades, generations, maybe even centuries.
“Yeah,” Sera said, her mouth twisting into a rueful smile. “We met at somebody’s wedding here on the estate when we were about ten. I remember him getting me to jump across a koi pond. I missed and fell in. I was horrified because my dress was a disaster and I knew my grandmother was going to be mad, and God help me if my mother saw me drenched. But you know what? Phineas jumped in too, so then he became a mess. And then he claimed that I tried to help him out and he accidentally pulled me in, deflecting all blame from me. I’ll never forget that. Phineas is a good egg.”
“Did you get into trouble?” I asked.
“No, actually, I didn’t. Somehow the Yates family is the one family even my grandmother can’t look down on. If you say Yates, she’s like, ‘Yes, they’re a good family.’ It’s really funny. She respects them. And so that respect extends to Phineas too.”
“And you and he never—”
Sera laughed. “Oh God, no. Phin? Come on, there’s something so puppy-like about him. And he’s so earnest. An earnest, horny puppy.”
I laughed. “I like that about him, I think.”
“Which is good. You need earnest. I do not need earnest. I need someone who’s an old soul, you know?”
And I did know. Sera needed someone who could match her energy and intellect. A queen needs a king and all that.
“Well, if you don’t need me, I’m going to, um, you know, go find Phin.”
She grinned. “Hell yes, you are. No one’s broken any bones or started any fires, so let the party continue.”
“All right, well . . . we’ll be at the oak tree.”
She laughed. “Ah, the family tree. Are you guys going to carve your names into it too?”
“No. But it’s next to the koi pond, so I’ll see if he pulls me in.”
She laughed. “You know, most people love koi ponds, but they’re gross. So gross, and they smell like fish.”
I laughed. “You know, they have all the koi in there.”
“Oh yes, the koi. All right, you have fun. Hey, Rory?”
I whirled around, practically twirling. “Yeah, Sera?”
She grinned. “I’m happy for you.”
“Me too.”
I couldn’t run out to the tree fast enough. I looked at the koi pond a little differently than I always had, knowing that at some point, Sera and Phin had played there. And I could almost see little Sera in my mind. But little Phin, I couldn’t picture.
I called out to him. “Phin?”
I didn’t see him at first.
But once my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I saw him easily enough in the waning light. When I saw him, my heart squeezed.
A pair of slender hands were around his waist.
He was with a girl.
He was with a girl and she had her hands on him.
I froze in place and didn’t make a sound. They were moving. Wait, was he grinding on her?
Did I run? Did I confront him?
He’d just kissed me. How in the world? Why in the world? Why did he even tell me he’d love being anywhere I was? Why did he tell me to meet him here? Just so I would see this?
Was this a game to him?
Was I a game?
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
I realized that I’d spoken out loud as Phin shoved the girl away from him and then turned to me. “Aurora, wait.”
His mouth was swollen and wet—this hadn’t been a quick kiss, either. Even if it had started off unexpected, he’d kept on kissing her long past the moment he should have.
“Really? Jesus, you were just kissing me thirty minutes ago. Is this some kind of game to you, Phineas?”
He glanced back at the girl, who was giving me an evil smirk. I recognized her in a vague sort of way. Lea Clayton. She went to Croft Wells, Pembroke’s rival prep school, and she was one of Keaton’s cousins.
“No, listen,” Phin said, those brown eyes so gorgeous and so, so open. “Please.”
And I nearly caved. I almost stayed to listen to his excuse. But then my gaze dropped, and I saw the thick length of him pressing against the fly of his suit pants. He was hard.
Kissing Lea Clayton had made him hard.
He’d gotten hard with a girl who wasn’t me while he was waiting for me to come back to him, just another in his line of girls to get off with.
He seemed to realize what I was looking at, and he stepped forward. “That’s not—This isn’t—”
But I whirled around, not allowing him to finish his sentence. Phineas seemed to forget that I ran cross country, and I was likely faster than he was at a distance. I took off into the outskirts of the property where he wouldn’t find me. Then I could lose myself in the party. Or I’d just go up to the boathouse and hide.
I’d made a mistake. I’d let myself believe, like an idiot. I had trusted Phineas Yates, and he’d made me regret it. But now I knew.
Never trust a Hellfire boy with a smile.
I was going to make him pay. I was going to make him hurt as much as he’d hurt me.
And I knew exactly how to do it.
I knew exactly how to out-playboy the school’s most notorious playboy.
Chapter Three
Aurora
Spring of Senior Year
“You can’t kill him just by staring at him,” Sera told me.
“I can try,” I said, crossing my arms and glaring at the tall, brown-eyed boy currently laughing at the other side of the marquee tent erected on the Yates’ lawn. He was surrounded by the usual clump of Hellfire boys: Keaton Constantine, their sort-of leader; Owen Montgomery, the only one of them who had any manners; Rhys Huntington, who had a breathtaking capacity for both cruelty and mindfuckery but also had random moments of humanity; and of course my twin brother, Lennox. Even with my white hair dyed black, we were definitely stamped from the same mold—high cheeks, straight noses, golden eyes. The aristocratic looks came from our mother, but the eyes were all our father’s.
Even my father’s eyes were the color of money.
Lennox flashed me a look after he caught me staring at Phin, the faintest possible arch to his eyebrow. He didn’t need to do anything else, however—his message was loud and clear.
Are you going to behave?
I gave him a short nod and then forced myself to turn back to Sera and Sloane, where Sera was trying to convince Sloane to borrow a pantsuit of Sera’s. We were here because I had the worst luck in the world, and somehow the daughter of my mother’s cousin had fallen in love with the nephew of Phineas’s dad while they were studying together at Oxford. Or something. The upshot was that I was one of Elsie’s bridesmaids, and Phin was one of Jackson’s groomsmen.
It was bad enough having to see him here at the engagement party, and then later on at the rehearsal and ceremony, but it was worse seeing him here, in this particular place. Because the Yates family had offered up their palatial Bishop’s Landing estate for all the engagement festivities.
Which meant that we were on Phineas’s home turf.
At least I had Sloane—here as Lennox’s date—and Sera. Since the marriage was that of a princess and a Yates, it felt like the entire world had been invited. Or at least Pembroke’s entire world.
“Tanith was smart not to come,” Sloane grumbled as Sera measured Sloane’s waist with her hands, still not letting the pantsuit thing go.
“She couldn’t come; she had internship stuff,” I said, looking back over my shoulder to see if Phin was still flashing that traitorously big smile all over the place.
He was.
“No, she volunteered for internship stuff so Owen’s mother could come to the party knowing that someone was holding down the Gotham Girl o
ffice for the weekend,” Sera said, finally stepping back from Sloane with the forlorn sigh of someone who knows how much better her friend would look if they took her fashion advice.
“See? Getting out of a party and sucking up to her boyfriend’s mother,” Sloane said. “Genius. Oh, gross. That guy is trying to get your attention again.”
I looked behind my other shoulder to see a blandly handsome young man lifting his hand and jerking his head to the empty chair next to him, as if to say come sit. I gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned back to my friends.
Brantley Nichols had been trying to put the moves on me ever since the engagement party started, and after a few minutes spent talking to him, I was just plain not interested. He was good-looking in an aggressively suntanned, aggressively well-dressed kind of way, but everything about his personality felt like it had been swept together from scraps left on the rich-boy floor. Owning horses was not a personality trait. Neither was being “really into regatta culture.”
I was from England! Horses and regattas didn’t impress me!
Also, when I’d finally given him a chance and struck up a conversation, he’d put his hand on my thigh under the table. Like under my skirt, sliding up, fingers spread. I’d slammed my drink down, stood up, and stalked off—doing anything more would have caused a scene—but clearly he didn’t get the memo about why I’d left because he was still gesturing for me to come over.
Gross.
I would have been disgusted by it at any time in my life, but after what happened this Christmas break, I was extra wary around pushy men.
“He wants under your Vivienne Westwood skirt,” Sera said wisely.
“He’s going to get my Vivienne Westwood skirt shoved up his bumhole if he doesn’t get the hint,” I muttered.
“It would be a good way to piss Phin off, though,” Sera mused. “If you let Brantley canoodle with you publicly.”
“A of all,” I said with dignity, “I do not canoodle. I steal kisses, eat hearts, and step over the bodies on the way out the door. B of all, Brantley goes to Croft Wells Academy. You know how I feel about people who go to Croft Wells. C of all, I don’t care about Phin!”
