Nefarious Boys: A Dark High School Romance (Broken Saints Society 3)

by Leia Thorne

  “Why?” I demand. “How does one mistake change the way you used to feel about me?”

  “Used to feel,” he stresses.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “God, you are so vain.”

  “No, I’ve just seen what indifference looks like. My parents. Everyone around me, pretty much,” I say with a clipped laugh. “You’re angry, Roland, that means you still care. You’re hurt, enraged even, but you wouldn’t feel those emotions unless somewhere inside, you still cared about me.”

  He groans and drives a hand through his disheveled hair. “Christ, you’re relentless.”

  I arch an eyebrow. Taking a few steps closer, I put myself right before him. I can smell the scent of his sandalwood cologne. I can feel his body heat, and every molecule in me is urging me to connect with him. “I care about you,” I say, my voice breathy.

  His slate eyes lift to meet mine slowly, a sadness buried beneath the anger. “If you got hit by a bus,” he says, “I’d care. Does that count?”

  I huff a derisive laugh. “Wow. So it’s like that?”

  He shrugs. But he doesn’t leave. He stays close to me, his gaze level with mine. I take a chance and ease even closer, and gooseflesh rises along my skin.

  “We used to have the best hate sex,” I say, my voice a veiled whisper.

  I see the muscles of his neck clench tight, his body flexes with restraint. “Don’t go there, Sawyer…”

  But I already am. If this is all I can have of him, if this is all he’s willing to give me now… I unfasten the buttons of my blouse. His gaze drops to the swell of my breasts over my bra.

  “Jesus…just don’t,” he says. He grabs my wrists, halting me from exposing my breasts. “Don’t be this desperate, Sawyer. It’s not a sexy look for you.” He notices the Broken Saints ring on my finger, and a disgusted expression mars his features. He releases me and he turns to go.

  Righteous anger sears my nerves. “I’ve turned my back on my friends. I’ve become a recluse. Sadie freaking Bishop mocks me openly in school. Seriously. Sadie and her little twit minions. That’s how far I’ve fallen on the food chain.” I storm after him and grasp his arm, forcing him to look at me. “What else do I have to do to prove myself to you? Do you think I’ve upended my entire life for fun?”

  I yank the silver ring off my finger and slap it on the table, driving my point home.

  He bites his lip ring, his eyes flaring, before he says anything in response. “What do you want?” he demands.

  Confused, I shake my head. “I just told you—”

  “No,” he cuts in. “You’re saying all the right things, but not a single one of them is what you truly want. I thought I knew what that was before I walked into the tower and had my heart ripped out of my fucking chest.” He’s breathing hard, my grip on his arm falters, and I lower my hand.

  I don’t know what to say. “I’ve been messed up for a long time, Roland,” I say. “I don’t know what…” I turn my head away, unable to look into his eyes any longer. “I just want us,” I say.

  It happens so quickly, I forget to breathe. Roland’s mouth captures mine, my breath stolen. I moan into the kiss, every muscle in my body aching for that connection. When he turns his head to the side to gasp in air, he says, “Fuck, Sawyer…I can’t fucking do this again.”

  My stomach bottoms out. I push my fingers into his hair, brace my forehead against his, clawing to get closer. “Please…” I practically beg. “I just need to feel you inside me…”

  His hands are on me then. His fingers deftly working open the rest of my blouse buttons. He hoists me onto the table, his hands drag up my plaid skirt, fingertips sliding under my panties and tearing them down my legs.

  When he touches that needy spot between my thighs, I feel his body tense and shudder against me. “Jesus, you’re so wet. You’re killing me…”

  There are no more words between us as I pry his belt buckle loose and lower the zipper. My hand circles his hard cock, and I love the way he groans against my neck. His scent, his sounds…it’s like coming home; I’ve felt so incomplete with this distance between us.

  Our lovemaking is quick and dirty. It’s fulfilling a need that we’ve been depriving ourselves. I plant my heels on the edge of the dining table, my thighs spread wide to him, as Roland thrusts inside me. Hard. Fast. He fucks me fiercely, like I might slip through his fingers if he lets up for one second. And he’s not letting go.

  I cling to him just as hard, my arms latched around his shoulders, fingers branding his skin. Marking him as mine.

  When I feel him getting close, his whole body racked with tense restraint, we come together in a violent outpour—a frenzy of tangled arms and legs and lips. I lock my ankles around his hips, my breathing labored, as I let my body come down from the bliss.

  He smoothes my damp hair back from my forehead and places a kiss to my brow, holding me close until his own breathing regulates. “I hate that I need you this much,” he says, voice strained.

  I know the feeling. All I can do is kiss him, letting him know in my way that I understand, that I need him, and I never want to hurt him again.

  “This doesn’t change anything between us,” he says, eyes lowered to the floor. “It was just…”

  “Cathartic,” I supply.

  He nods limply. “Closure. Moving on.”

  But god, I hope he doesn’t mean it.

  As we’re silently situating our clothes, Roland chuckles.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I guess I hit a button on my phone,” he says, showing me the screen. It’s a blacked-out video. He plays it, and the sounds of our lovemaking fills the room.

  I laugh. “Please delete that.” But something clicks inside my head, and I jump off the table.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “My room. Come on.” I lead the way upstairs and head to my Mac. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about this…” I sign out of my Skype account and flip over to Gage’s ID. “Gage has used my Mac before to log in to his accounts.” There’s a saved password. Thank you, Apple. I log on, and within a few seconds, I’ve found the saved video chats.

  “It’s virtually impossible not to leave a trace of something in this tech world,” I say, as I scan the videos. Then my cursor hovers over one contact, my blood becoming ice in my veins.

  Tabatha de Pont.

  “What the hell is Gage doing Skyping with Lesley’s mother?” The chat is dated a few months back. I click open the saved call, and their conversation starts.

  “Gage, I expect that you’ve made your introductions with her.”

  “Yes, chairwoman. And when I’ve completed my task…?”

  There’s a lengthy pause. “The society will roll out the red carpet for you. Is that what you want to hear?”

  He laughs. “It doesn’t hurt. So, this Remi St. James. I can’t help but notice she looks a lot like—”

  “Do not say her name,” Mrs. de Pont says.

  “If I’m going to do this, I want to know if it’s true, Mrs. de Pont. Your daughter discovered the truth of her adoption, and look what happened. Surely you don’t want history to repeat itself.”

  “Fine. You’re so perceptive, Gage. Remi is my daughter’s biological sister,” she says. “She’s not to discover this until I deem ready. Is that understood, Mr. Astor?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The call ends, and I close the video. “Oh my, god. Remi and Lesley are sisters.”

  “How is that even possible?” Roland says.

  “I don’t know, but if it’s true, Remi needs to know. I think she’s in danger from more than just Gage.” I look at the screen, at Mrs. de Pont’s face. What could she possibly want with Remi? Why would she need Gage?

  “So,” Roland breaks into my thoughts. “All this secret society stuff. I guess it’s real.”

  I’ve teased Gage for ages about his ridiculous infatuation with secret societies. And all along, it was real—and he’s
kept it from me. “We need to find out what society, and what exactly a chairwoman is.”

  We need to find out a hell of a lot more, but it’s at least a starting point.

  “What other chats does Gage have saved on his account?” Roland asks.

  I scroll through them quickly, looking for anything that stands out to be about a society, and notice the Skype chat that Gage, Remi, and I took part in before her initiation. The one where I and Remi sat right here on this bed and performed for Gage. He saved it; of course he did.

  I peek over at Roland, hoping he doesn’t notice…and when he looks away briefly, I delete the file.

  “I’m sending the chat with Mrs. de Pont to my phone,” I say, completing the action. “We can go through the rest of the files later. Right now, I want to get to Remi.”

  If it’s not already too late.

  Chapter 11

  Gage

  I cruise the backroads of Crescent Valley with my Audi top down, letting the cool night air cleanse my mind. The chairwoman is keeping close tabs on me lately, which is making it difficult to work my magic on Remi.

  Tabatha de Pont being certifiable is also becoming quite a cock block. The chairwoman is insane; I truly believe somewhere in her warped mind she believes Remi is her dead daughter. Which is putting me in an uncomfortable position. Normally, I’d have no concern whatsoever with what happens to Remi…but our fates are tied.

  At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past couple of weeks as I’ve been pondering my dilemma. Yet there’s a small sliver inside me, a tiny niggling voice calling bullshit.

  I care about her.

  My thoughts wander to the moment I battled a similar complication. The night I told Lesley she was adopted.

  You don’t have the de Pont bloodline, you don’t belong, Less. How are you going to convince a whole society that you’re a de Pont? The truth will come out. It always does. Someone will use it against you, or simply dispose of you.

  Lesley was living in fear from that moment on. My plan worked. So well, in fact, that she threw herself off a balcony.

  At least, that was the initial theory. I’m not so sure about that anymore. One, there’s the video that suspiciously cuts off, leaving us guessing who else was with her that night. Two, my gut instinct just doesn’t believe it.

  I know Tabatha is delaying sending me the video. She’s buying time. She’s setting me up to permanently exile me from the society. I’ve been using this time to try to set my own dominoes into place.

  Remi is one of the dominoes.

  I know it has to be done, and yet…

  I slam my hand against the steering wheel. Don’t be a pussy, Astor. You have one job to do, and that’s to get Remi to sign over the new legacy Tabatha is bestowing on her. Only, how the fuck am I supposed to do that now that Tabatha has made it crystal freaking clear that I have no place in the society?

  I pull into Emry’s driveway and park. I didn’t bother calling him to announce my arrival. I want the element of surprise. Over the past week, I’ve narrowed down a very short list of people who could possibly obtain a copy of that surveillance video, and Emry is at the top.

  When Mrs. Leighton answers the door, I put on my most charming smile.

  “Hello, Gage. This is a surprise,” she says.

  Exactly. “Good evening, Mrs. Leighton. Is Emry home?”

  She welcomes me inside their house, a near replica of the Kardashian’s mansion that Emry’s mother is obsessed with. Her perfectly sculpted body and glowing dark complexion is patented in the same vein. “Emry is in his quarters,” she says.

  I give her another lusty smile, then head up the curved, golden staircase. Emry’s parents are filthy rich, and I bet could give the Kardashians a run for their money. I reach Emry’s door and test the knob. Unlocked. I don’t bother knocking and head right in.

  He’s seated in front of his Mac screen wearing big silver headphones.

  I shut the door and head his way, pulling one of the earphones off his ear. He startles. “Holy shit,” he says, touching his chest. “You scared me.” Then he realizes I’m here, in his room. And that means it’s probably not good. “What are you doing here, Gage?”

  I prop myself against his glass desk. “I figured since you were apparently having a hard time getting me updates, that I’d make it easy and come to you.”

  He rolls his chair back. “Yeah. All right. The letter.”

  I nod once. “I’m assuming the letter was a tactic to buy time.”

  “Not when I first mentioned it,” he says, his large brown eyes imploring. “Look. They were being super sneaky, something is up.”

  Something is up, and that’s why I’m here. “You leaked the video at homecoming.”

  His face blanches. “What? That’s ridiculous—”

  “Stop, Emry. You’re so transparent.” I move off the desk and stride toward his bookshelf. “Your father owns Leighton Tower. What kind of access does he have to the rooms? Specifically, the penthouse.” I glance over at him.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Sure you do.” I pull a book off the shelf and flip through it idly. “I admit, it didn’t dawn on me right away. You played the letter angle really well. The whole diversion tactic worked. Focus on Sawyer and her conspiracy.”

  He rubs his palms over his jean-clad thighs. “You’re so deep into your own bullshit. I didn’t air the video, but if I did have a copy, I would’ve done so in a heartbeat.”

  I slap the book closed. “Because you’d want to humiliate me?”

  He shrugs. “Because I’d want Palmer to see just how dangerous and despicable you and Sawyer truly are.”

  “I want the rest of the footage,” I demand.

  “Christ, Gage. I swear, I don’t have it.” He holds up his hands in defense. “Listen. I did log on to the Tower’s servers with my father’s passcode. Once.” He holds up a finger to stress his point. “He has access to everything at Leighton Tower. But you have to understand, it’s a huge violation of privacy…my father could get into deep shit if anyone found out.”

  “That he’s a perv?” I say.

  He scowls. “No one watches the surveillance,” he says in defense. “It’s for security purposes only. Just in case…”

  “In case someone dies?” I say, hiking an accusatory eyebrow. “Someone did die, Emry.”

  “Shit.” Beads of sweat form on his forehead. “Gage, you can’t tell anyone—my father would… Well, you’d know what my father would do to me.”

  I don’t know if he’s more concerned about a possible killer on the loose, or his father discovering what he’s done. When I first approached Emry, he was a badly beaten pulp of a boy. I’ve helped build him up into the man he is now, but at times like this, I can still see the fear he harbors for his father.

  I walk toward him and hook my hand around the back of his neck, bringing him close. “Your father never has to know about this,” I assure him. He nods his understanding, and I back away. “So, what did you find when you logged into the tower server?”

  He shakes his head. “I checked the log a year ago, when Lesley committed suicide. I wanted to know what the police had found. And what you saw on that video was it.”

  He might be lying…still. “You do realize that admitting you accessed the footage after her death looks bad, right? It implicates you.” I watch him closely. “One could theorize that you did so to delete the footage, to remove yourself from the scene.”

  He stands abruptly. “Hold the fuck up. I had no reason to want Lesley dead.”

  I blow out a long breath. “I don’t know, Emry. You were pretty clear with me the night of homecoming, about what you were willing to do to have Palmer all to yourself. Maybe Lesley posed a threat to your relationship? People have done far worse in the name of love.”

  “You twisted bastard,” he says, his eyes igniting with rage. “And this is exactly why I want Palmer far away from you.”

  I settle on th
e edge of his bed. “Fine. Just get me the full footage of that night, and you’ll have your wish.”

  He exhales audibly. “I damn well wish I could. I told you, it’s gone. Damaged. Deleted. Whatever. It doesn’t exist.”

  “How is that possible?” I say.

  He shrugs. “The room surveillance runs off of Wi-Fi. There could’ve been an outage. Or—”

  “Or what? Because that’s a pretty big inconvenience that the Internet went down right at that exact moment, don’t you think?”

  He drives a hand through his shock of wavy hair. “Yeah, I agree. It’s more likely that someone was aware of the feed and disabled it.”

  I curse. “But a tech can spot that in the network log,” I say, thinking out loud. “There was no report of that, was there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never read the police report, have you?”

  No. No, I haven’t. And I think it’s time to wade into that dark, murky water. “New mission,” I say, rising to my feet. “I want to read the official report. And…” I consider what I’m about to reveal carefully. “I want the police report on Remi’s accident.”

  Just because Emry wasn’t behind the homecoming stunt doesn’t mean I can completely trust him. He did try to set Sawyer up, to use one of his closest friends as a bargaining chip, after all. I need him, and I need to keep him close.

  His eyebrows draw together. “What do you want with Remi’s file?” he asks.

  I head to the door. “Probably better if you don’t concern yourself with that.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to get those files?” he demands.

  “Use your imagination,” I say, as I head through the door, tossing over my shoulder, “And if that fails, use your parents’ filthy money.”

  The lake is placid, the night crisp and clear. This is usually my favorite place to sit and think, but the space feels tainted now. Memories of Sawyer and my Broken Saints assault me; what we used to be. How clear the path once was.

  I’m counting on Emry to get me the information I need. He’s let me down so much lately… He can’t let me down again. But until he proves himself worthy, until he gets me those files, I need some answers now.