I laid there with my eyes open until he woke up too.
“Hey, you,” he said as he looked over at me. “How long have you been awake?”
I sighed. “Only a few minutes. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Still upset, but at least I’ve stopped crying.”
He tilted his body toward me. “It’s not a bad thing to cry. You know you don’t have to hold in your emotions with me, right?”
“I know,” I replied. “Julian?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m going to do something that you’re not going to like.”
Julian slid his shoulder out from under my head and propped himself up on his arm beside me.
“What do you mean?” he asked as he looked down into my face on the pillow.
“I can’t keep living like this, knowing that my mom’s killer is walking around Lineage as a free man. I won’t ever have peace until I bring whoever it is to justice.”
“Lisette, what are you thinking about doing?”
Even I felt my eyes harden. “I’m going to infiltrate Lineage.”
Julian shook his head. “We already tried that twice, and it didn’t work.”
“No, I mean, I’m going to actually infiltrate them. I’m going to pretend to have feelings for Adam so that he can get me into their school. He told me that a current student can sponsor someone else. That’s how he got in. If he thinks I want to be with him, then he might be able to get Marta to approve the transfer.”
“No,” Julian said firmly. I think it was the first time in a very long time that I heard anger in his voice directed toward me. “You absolutely can’t do that. That’s literally the stupidest thing I think you’ve ever said. Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be? You’re thinking about breaking into an institution that you already suspect is responsible for killing your mother, and you want to go in there? Are you crazy?” said Julian.
"Absolutely not, why would you think that?” I asked.
“It’s way too dangerous to even consider doing. Besides, you don’t even really know this Adam guy. What if he’s the one who killed your mom?”
I don’t think I’d ever seen Julian get that mad over something with me.
“You can’t stop me,” I said stubbornly. “I’m a grown woman, and I’ll do whatever I want to do.”
He sat straight up. “Damn it, Lisette, can you cut the crap with the lone warrior bullshit? I know you’re a grown woman for Christ's sake. Don’t you think I’ve noticed? Just because we’ve been friends since we were kids doesn’t mean I can’t see you for who and what you are now. I’m not trying to act like your older brother; I’m trying to protect you from your bull-headed self before you rush headfirst into something that gets you killed. You don’t need to remind me that you’re all grown up now, I am tormented by that every time I look at you.”
“What?” I asked. “What have I ever done to torment you?”
Julian looked at me in a way that I’d never seen him look at me before, at least not intentionally.
“Every day, I have come here to make sure you’re in class, not because I care about your GPA, but because I can’t stand not being next to you for the whole day. Every time you get yourself into trouble, I come to rescue you, not because I don’t think you can take care of yourself but because I want to be the one to take care of you.” Julian hesitated as he tried to decide whether to continue on or not. “And every day that you change your clothes in front of me or ask me to stay the night with you because you don’t want to feel alone, I hold you and look away, not because I am immune to the fact that you have become the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but because if I let myself think of you the way that I want to think of you, then I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from wanting to make love to you.”
I stared into Julian’s eyes and too many feelings washed over me. I didn’t know to what to say. He and I have always teetered on the edge of being “more than friends,” but we’ve never acted on any of the feelings between us. He wasn’t alone in what he’d said, though. I’d felt it too. There were moments lately that I’ve felt a pull toward Julian that I had trouble shaking off.
And once he’d said it aloud, I could honestly say that I’ve felt the same way.
“Julian—” I started to say.
I didn’t finish talking, however, because he leaned down to kiss me and all of my words became suddenly unimportant. All that we needed to know was on the tip of our intertwining tongues. The desire for each other that we’d been keeping inside for years was suddenly released, and as I tangled my fingers up in his messy brown hair, I pulled him over me in the way one would cling to their lover, not their friend.
Julian climbed over me and laid his body gently on top of mine. The more our heads turned from side to side, and our tongues pushed deeper into each other’s mouths, the more I wanted him.
“Lisette, you know that I want you,” Julian said as he lifted his head up. “But I don’t want to rush this with you now.”
“How is this rushed?” I laughed. “We’ve been waiting for years.”
“I know,” he said. “But that’s not what I meant. I want you forever, not just for this moment. Promise me that you won’t go through with what you were thinking about doing.”
I sighed. “Julian, can’t we wait to talk about this later?”
“No, we can’t. I don’t want to see you get hurt. I care about you too much, and I won’t let you put yourself in any more danger. Please promise me that you’ll forget about trying to get into Lineage and that you’ll forget about doing any sort of stunt with Adam.”
“I promise,” I said, accompanied by yet another heavy sigh. But as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt guilty for lying to him. Julian and I never lied to each other; it just wasn’t something that we did.
Not until right then, anyway.
We rolled over next to each other so that we could stare in each other eyes and kiss some more before we got up. It dawned on me that we almost had sex, and had he not stopped to ask me not to go through with my plan, we probably would have. The next time things were to get heated between us, I already knew that I didn’t want to stop. But I did think I wanted to tell Julian something.
“How many girls have you slept with?” I asked him.
He crooked his eyebrow. “Why?”
I shrugged. “I’m curious.”
He cocked his head. “That doesn’t seem like something that matters or something that you’d really want to know.”
“Well, I do,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate. “Four.”
I pouted a little bit without realizing that I was.
“Why?” he asked. “How many guys have you slept with?”
When I didn’t answer, he leaned forward and kissed my lips so softly that it tickled a little.
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you,” he said.
I don’t know why I was embarrassed to answer that with a “yes.” There were plenty of women my age that hadn’t had sex yet, at least I thought there were. I just hadn’t found the right person yet, or I hadn’t been looking. Maybe it was because I was waiting for Julian.
He smiled gently at me and ran his fingers through my hair. “You know how we always joke about how it’s hard to tell sometimes where your body ends and mine begin?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I like that about us.”
“I like that about us, too.” He smiled. “When I make love to you, Lisette, it will be the epitome of that feeling. Your body and mine will be one.”
“Is that how it was with the other four girls?” I asked.
I wasn’t trying to be hurtful. I was just hurt. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like I had any right to be jealous about other girls that Julian had been with before we ever even admitted that we had those kinds of feelings for each other.
He stroked my cheek
with his knuckles. “Anyone that I have been with was simply a diversion to keep myself distracted from how badly I wanted you. None of that matters anymore, okay? The only thing that matters now is us.”
“Okay,” I said as I leaned forward and kissed him back.
We laid in bed together for a while before I had to get up and go to class. I stretched out the time until I was too late to care and figured that I’d get to the lecture hall whenever it was that I arrived. Julian had a masterclass that day too, so I wouldn’t see him until later on that evening. Everything outside the door to my room was still awful chaos, but inside of my room, everything was perfect, and Julian and I were happy. That was why it was going to be so hard to do what I was about to do next. I had never been without Julian, and I never wanted to be. I had never lied to him or broken a promise we’d made, and I felt like there was a chance that there would be no coming back from this.
Aside from my mother, Julian was the most important person in the world to me. All I could do was hope that he would understand and that he cared about me enough that everything would still be okay. I should have told him that I was going to go to Adam and try to get into Lineage anyway, despite his advice and despite my promise to him. He deserved the truth from me and not to have to find out from someone else. But I knew that if I told him, he wouldn’t have let me leave at all. And as much as it terrified me to think about upsetting Julian or making him upset with me, I just couldn’t let go of my mother’s death. I couldn’t let my kind, hardworking mom, who had fiercely protected me every day of my life, die in vain.
Julian would understand. He would be mad at me for a little while, but then he would understand.
He had to.
When we left my room, Julian went in one direction toward his masterclass while I went in the other, toward the lecture hall. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned around and walked in the direction of Lineage. When I got to the edge of the campus, I retraced the same route along the edge of the tree line that led to Adam’s apartment. Then I knocked quietly on his bedroom window until he opened it and let me inside.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought I told you not to come back here again.”
I grinned. “What can I say, I don’t take direction well.”
“Apparently,” he said as he rolled his eyes at me.
I peeked around his shoulders. “Is Michael here?”
“No, he’s in some meeting or something in the Dean’s office. Why?”
I nodded. “Because you and I need to talk.”
8
There’s a place on Lineage grounds that Adam said he goes to when he needs time away from all the people around him. It was too dangerous for me to stay in his apartment to talk with him; Michael could have come back at a moment’s notice, so Adam took me to his special place. I had no idea the campus was so vast and even less of an idea how beautiful certain parts of it were.
The cemetery seemed like an odd place to go sit and have a conversation, but I was surprised by how incredible it was once we got there. It seemed even more strange that a school campus would have a cemetery on its grounds, but I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me…it was Lineage after all. And in my mind, that word rang with the stench of death. I couldn’t believe how many tombstones there were. We walked between the old and crumbling tombstones until we found a small clearing of grass to sit down on.
“No one will find us here,” Adam said as he crossed his legs to sit down next to me. “I’ve been coming here for months, and I’ve yet to see a single person ever visit this cemetery. So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I want to come to Lineage,” I said. I wasn’t going to pussyfoot around it. There wasn’t time.
“You’re already here,” he said, looking confused.
“No, I mean, I want to attend this school.”
Adam made a noise that sounded like an amused snort of some sort. “That’s impossible. And why would you ever want to attend Lineage? You hate it here.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I scooted closer to him. “The cemetery isn’t so bad.”
“Well, I’ll remind you that beneath this lovely, gothic-looking graveyard, there are a whole lot of decaying bodies. Most of which were probably killed by people here, if we’re being honest.”
“What is it that’s going on here?” I said in a solemn tone. “What is this school covering up?”
Adam didn’t answer me. This wasn’t working, and I only had one shot at it. I needed to convince him to bring me here with him.
I scooted myself to sit close enough to him for our thighs to touch and then set my hand onto his lap. I looked into his dark eyes with as much urgency and longing as I could muster, and it surprised me when it didn’t feel quite as pretend as I had expected it to.
“Adam, you came back to the halfway house to see me. You broke into my bedroom window to come and warn me because you said you were trying to keep me safe. It’s no secret that you have feelings for me.”
His body seemed to lean forward slightly as if he were trying to breathe in each word that I said.
“I never forgot about you either. On the night my mother was killed, I forgot about everyone else there besides her…except for you. When I’m with you, I feel safe, and as much as I try to stay mad at you for keeping secrets, I can’t. You told me you weren’t responsible for my mother’s death, and I believed you. I also think that out of anyone here, you’re the best chance I have of not ending up meeting the same fate that my mother did.”
He scooted closer to me. “I would never let anyone hurt you, Lisette,” he said.
He was so close to me now that his slightly-open mouth gently touched mine, and his lips slid against mine in such a seductive way that I had to keep myself from losing my focus.
“I know you wouldn’t,” I whispered.
I was struggling not to lose my words as the tip of his tongue lightly traced across the underside of my lip.
Oh my god, if this is just pretend, then why do I want to kiss him so badly. What am I doing?
I put my hand against his chest and felt his taut muscles tense in response to my touch. “I want to be here with you,” I said as I pulled the words out to say to him before I completely lost it. “Please,” I uttered. “I don’t want to go back to Goldshire, I want to stay here with you.”
That was the end of the conversation. I had planned to wait for his answer, for an agreement that he would help me get Marta to approve a transfer so that I could begin to uncover the truth about my mother. But he didn’t wait, and neither did I. Adam’s lips came over mine, and I felt his tongue push into my mouth.
And while I’m not sure what happened, I suddenly went from pretending… to not.
I didn’t even think about Julian as Adam got up onto his knees and then came down over me. I felt the soft grass against my back, and Adam’s hard ache pressing against my pelvis. There, between the grave markers, we were a tangle of grasping limbs and gnashing teeth as we gave in to the undeniable chemistry that had brewed between us regardless of all the reasons it shouldn’t have. I wrapped my legs around his waist and urged his body into mine. Adam breathed audibly in response to my movement and reached his hand up under my shirt. I didn’t want to stop, not this time. I pulled at the bottom of his T-shirt until he arched his back, and I was able to pull it off and over his head. When I saw his chest, I paused. Adam’s lower body pushed against mine as if he couldn’t bear the thought of stopping. He lifted his torso up anyway, though, and waited as I ran my fingers along the top of his chest and looked in awe at what I saw there.
Across the entirety of his chest was a darkly-inked, elaborate tattoo that looked like tree roots growing out from his sternum and up into the bottom of his shoulders. The roots curled around each other in great detail, some of them had thorns that seemed to create the visible illusion of cutting into his flesh. The rest were soft, however, and rendered with such detail that I thought I could
almost feel the smooth texture of their tips.
“This is incredible,” I whispered as I looked wide-eyed at the way the lines curved against his muscles and felt as if I was touching a piece of art. “What does it mean?”
“I’ll tell you sometime,” he said as he lowered his body over mine again.
I stared with new eyes at him as he brought his face to me again, and instead of seeing an enemy, this time, I saw a lover.
“What is going on here?” a harsh voice shouted.
Adam lifted his head quickly but kept his body against mine. It felt as if he was using his body as a shield to cover me. It was one of the Lineage security guards. I had no idea how or why they would have found us inside the graveyard, and from Adam’s expression, neither did he.
“Is that you, Adam?” the guy asked, obviously recognizing Michael’s roommate and Marta’s adopted pet student.
“Yeah,” Adam answered. “Now, leave me alone.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the guard said once he saw who it was that Adam was with. “That’s a Goldshire girl you’ve got there, and you know that’s not allowed. Not even for you. She’ll need to come with me.”
“No.” Adam snarled as he stood up next to me. “We’ll both go with you. And Marta won’t be happy when she finds out you’ve harassed my girlfriend and me.”
Girlfriend? Holy shit, he’s going along with it.
I got to my feet and stood slightly behind Adam with my shoulder pressed up against his back. And when he reached around to touch me, I could’ve sworn he was using himself as a human shield.
Why did he feel the need to do that with a simple old security guard?
“Well, how about we let Marta decide that for herself? Follow me,” the guard commanded as he waved his hand to summon us along with him.
Ruined: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 1) Page 5
