by Callie Hart
I roll my eyes, fighting back a dramatic sigh. “What is this? What’s the point? This is just another bet, isn’t it? You’re looking to redeem yourself after your last embarrassing failure and you figured I’d make an interesting new target in one of your wagers. Well, I’m not your plaything, Wren Jacobi. I was not put on this earth for your amusement. I’ll be cold and dead in the ground before I let you use my heart as a punching bag. So, you can just forget it. Forget me.”
Panic sizzles under my skin as Wren slowly gets up from the couch. His eyes are alive with electricity, that bottom lip of his trapped between his teeth again. My big speech hasn’t had its desired affect by all accounts. He prowls forward, his muscles shifting beautifully under his skin, and I nearly trip over my own damn feet in my hurry to back away from him. He looks like he’s going to fucking eat me. “My brain doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. I don’t just forget. If I want something, I can’t just move on and pretend like it doesn’t exist.”
I inch away from him, and my chest tightens when the backs of my legs hit the armchair I was sitting on a moment ago. I’m going to have to climb over the fucking furniture if I want to get away from him, which is not going to look graceful or dignified. I’ll willingly do it, though, if it means I escape him.
Wren has other ideas. He takes one last step, so close to me now that I can feel his warm breath skating over my cheek, can see the flecks of amber and gold surrounding the black well of his dilated pupil. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. If I even blink, I suspect that he’ll pounce and tear me apart. He takes hold of a lock of my damp, tangled hair, winding it thoughtfully around his fingers. “You’re not a bet, Elodie. I’ve had to bargain with them for you. I’ve had to break my own rules in order to claim you, and it’s cost me greatly.”
Over the top of my paralyzing panic, a hot, furious anger begins to rise. Who the hell does he think he is? So fucking entitled. So fucking arrogant. “You can’t bargain over a person. I don’t belong to any of you. I won’t be haggled over like a piece of meat.” My pulse is hammering at thirty different points all over my body: in my temples, in my ears, in the tips of my fingers. In my lips…
Wren stares down at my mouth. He’s stopped breathing, wound tight, coiled like a hunter, ready to attack at any moment. I—Jesus Christ, I’ve got to get out of here, before—
Wren tugs on my hair, leaning in even closer, his eyelids half closed as he angles his head to one side, assessing my features. I rock back on my heels. A weightless, terrible moment passes, where I register how unbalanced I am and I realize I’m about to fall. Then I’m sitting down heavily in the chair behind me, the air huffing out of my lungs as Wren continues to press forward. He places one hand on the arm of the chair, the other against the back of it, right above my head. I’m trapped in a cage made by his body, and all I can smell is him—a dark, heady, beautiful scent that teases the back of my nose. It reminds me of night blooming flowers, and cold winter walks with my mother, and the ocean, and my Uncle Remy’s carpentry workshop.
Holy shit. The next time I smell this scent, it won’t remind me of any of those things. Powerful enough to overwrite my memories, the next time I smell this scent, it will remind me of this moment, trapped in this chair, the way my heartrate is soaring and I feel like I’m about to die a most delicious death. “Get away from me, Wren,” I whisper.
He smiles sadly. “Wish I could, Stillwater. But it ain’t on the cards.”
I’m poised and ready to react. He’s about to fucking kiss me. I’m not afraid of it. I’m shaking all over and I can’t fucking think straight, but I am not afraid. “Back up, Wren.”
His lips are parted, his pupils close to swallowing up his irises. My palms burn, my fingers itching. I don’t trust myself to move right now. A part of me wants to slap the intense, doped, lust-filled look right off his stupidly handsome face. A part of me wants to fist a handful of his hair and pull him to me, so that his full lips collide with mine.
I want the kiss. I want him to suffer for this invasion of my personal space. I’m at war with myself, and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to react if he makes a move.
“Your heart’s racing, Stillwater,” he whispers. “I can see your pulse in the base of your throat. You want me.”
“I want you to leave me alone. I want you to stay away from my room.”
“Elodie.”
My voice is uneven and full of nerves. “I know you’re lying.”
Slowly, as if he’s got all the time in the world, Wren shakes his head. A droplet of water falls from the riot of curls that are hanging down into his face, and it lands right on my mouth. “I haven’t lied to you. I never will. I’ll give you all my dark, ugly truths, even though they’ll frighten you, Little E. I won’t hold back. You…” He dips his head, and I freeze beneath him. The air between us buzzes, brimming with a tension so sharp that it bites at my skin. Millimeter by millimeter he leans closer and flicks out the tip of his tongue, licking the water droplet from my lips. I close my eyes, my lungs seizing.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“You are going to be mine, Elodie Stillwater. Of all my sins and misdeeds, making you fall in love with me will be the very worst of them all.”
11
WREN
FOUR DAYS LATER
I walked her back to the house.
Against my better judgement. Against every impulse roaring through my body, I walked her back to the house and I didn’t lay a finger on her. Thus far, the only part of my body that has been in contact with Elodie is my tongue, and that blissful moment when I dared to lick her delectable little mouth has sustained me through some highly frustrating, very long nights.
She hasn’t looked at me since. I’ve passed her in the hall. I’ve watched her in class. I’ve sat in the same room as her, buffeted by her tangible rage, and every second of it has been heaven. She hasn’t left Carina’s side. I know she’s making sure that we aren’t alone together, and this little game we’re playing has driven me to the point of insanity. I could have pulled her into a closet by now. I could have dragged her into the locker rooms, or cornered her in the cafeteria, or stalked her right into the girl’s bathrooms, but I’ve come to the glorious realization that this thing between us—this intoxicating anticipation that keeps me awake when I throw myself into bed at three in the morning—is so much more entertaining than trying to quicken the situation along.
She will come to me. She won’t be able to resist. It’s only a matter of time. And I have plenty of things to keep my mind occupied while I wait for her curiosity to get the better of her.
DAMIANA: Wen R U gonna give it up? U know we make sense. We’re cut from the same cloth. Why would U wanna settle for some prissy little prude wen U already know how good I taste?
Damiana tasted like desperation. It coated my tongue and left an oily residue in my mouth that three days’ worth of Listerine couldn’t budge. I thought about sterilizing my junk in bleach after I was dumb enough to fuck her, but I figured my dick had already suffered enough and settled with a scalding hot shower instead. A master craftsman should take better care of his tools.
I did complete a full profit and loss assessment the night I allowed Dami into the house and I screwed her over Pax’s poker table. At the time her neediness was something I deemed manageable, but that was after a bottle of vodka and two Percocet. It was also before I knew Elodie Stillwater even existed. And now I find the consequences of my little tryst with Wolf Hall’s resident viper were not worth the twenty-one minutes of bare flesh and porn star approved moaning that she offered in exchange for a ride on my cock.
ME: Let it go. Some mistakes aren’t destined to be repeated.
DAMIANA: MISTAKE? U weren’t calling it that when I swallowed ur cum, motherfucker.
I pocket my phone and jam it into my back pocket, growling out loud. Crazy bitch isn’t worth another megabyte of my data. I shouldn’t have replied in the first place, but I figured
there was a chance she’d walk away and let this thing go gracefully. Girls like Damiana never know when to give up, though. They persist and they persist until they’ve thoroughly embarrassed themselves, and even then they won’t fucking drop it.
The land surrounding the house is a bog. It rained all week, an incessant downpour that only paused long enough for Dashiell to talk me into a race up Mount Castor (which I won). This morning’s the first day that any of us have woken up to blue skies, and the pale, almost white dawn has made me unreasonably irritated. I liked the dense, angry cloud cover and the charged, threatening energy that’s been hanging over Wolf Hall. It exacerbated the roiling tension that’s been building between me and Elodie. It felt like that moment right before you come, when you hold your breath and you feel that pleasure mounting, and you’re riding this wave that will crest over you any second. This morning’s sunny, fresh beginning feels like that wave failed to crash, leaving me left unsatisfied and wanting.
Using sex metaphors is a mistake. I just have to think the word and my mind goes overboard, painting graphic images of Elodie, naked and spread out for me. I haven’t let myself imagine what it would feel like to fuck her. I can’t imagine it. In my daydreams, I get as far as hovering over her with my dick in my hand, rubbing the tip against her pretty, pink little pussy, and my mind just fucking blanks.
She isn’t a virgin. She’s been fucked before, I can tell, but that doesn’t matter to the cock-blocking bastard inside my head, who keeps telling me that she’s pure and my cock has no business being anywhere near her cunt.
Pax whistles through his teeth as he pulls up through the black, sucking mud in front of the house at the wheel of his Charger; he’s chewing on a tooth pick that he shuttles from one side of his mouth to the other, left to right, left to right, left to right. “You’re gonna owe me a car wash, you know that, right? This baby was clean when I pulled out of the garage and now look at her. She’s fucking filthy.”
“If you took as much care in your presentation as you do in that car, people wouldn’t mistake you for a vagrant all the time,” Dashiell says in a sunny voice.
“Fuck you, Lord Lovett.” When anyone else calls Dashiell by his full title, it’s typically said with a certain amount of gravity and respect. When Pax uses our friend’s full title, it sounds like he’s chewing on wasps. Dashiell’s impervious to Pax’s foul moods, though. He gracefully slides himself into the front seat next to Pax, folding his body like a fucking dancer as he crams himself into the car.
All of us are painfully aware of the fact that none of us should get along. Pax is the spikiest, angriest, poutiest guy I’ve ever met. The chip on his shoulder is glaringly obvious and kind of sad, really. Dashiell’s spoiled rotten and so hopped up on Valium and Xanax that his world is fluffy and so mellow through his medicated rose-tinted lenses that he barely exists in the same plane of reality as us at all.
And me. I’m the recluse. The pressure cooker. The guy who hardly speaks, who’s skin begins to itch if he has to say more than three sentences in public, in fact. Who hates almost everyone, and finds the idea of having friends hanging around utterly repugnant.
Pax and Dashiell somehow worked their way under my skin, though, until it felt normal that they were just there all the time, bickering and sniping at each other, roughhousing and calling on me to mediate their dumb, affectionate arguments; now it would be weird if they weren’t around, taking up space and irritating the shit out of me.
Pax cackles like a deranged hyena as he peels out of the driveway and heads in the direction of the academy. Any other day and the three of us would have run the two miles to Wolf Hall and wouldn’t have broken a sweat, but it’s Friday. We’ll be burning down the mountain the moment the final bell of the day rings, and we won’t be coming back until the early hours of Monday morning.
“How many people are gonna be at this thing anyway?” Pax grumbles.
“Five hundred and change. The crème de la crème of East Coast society. My father hasn’t set foot on American soil for three years, so even the most pampered, blue-blooded snobs, from the old money to the nouveau riche will be crawling out from under their rocks to pay tribute to the old man.”
Inwardly, I groan. Five hundred people, all crammed into the same ballroom, waiting for their turn to bow and scrape at the feet of a man most of them have never even fucking met. Sounds like pure fucking torture. Add in the fact that it’s a black-tie event and I’m looking forward to tonight’s charity dinner about as much as a root canal, sans anesthetic.
“You’re quiet back there,” Dashiell accuses, looking over his shoulder at me where I’m sprawled out across the back seat of the Charger. “Goddamnit, Jacobi. Are you physically incapable of sitting up straight?” He curves one of his dirty blond eyebrows into a question mark. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you utilize a chair correctly. You know you’re supposed to bend in the middle and sit at a ninety-degree angle, yes? Your posture’s atrocious.”
“My posture is directly correlated to my level of interest in my surroundings.”
“Ouch.” Pax fakes a sniffle of hurt. “Sorry if we’re boring you, Your Highness.”
Dashiell angles the rearview mirror to face him, using it to check his tie in the mirror. Ties are not mandatory at Wolf Hall; Dash wears it of his own volition, which is just fucking sick in my book. “He’s bent out of shape about the new girl,” he says, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “He’s taking his time with this one.”
“I’m not taking my time. I’m laying the groundwork. There’s a difference.”
Dash ignores me. “How long did it take him to sully Erica Judge when she first showed up?” he asks Pax.
“Two hours, thirty-eight minutes. From setting eyes on her for the first time, deciding he wanted her, getting past the small talk, actually fucking her in the art room, and her parents turning around and coming back to get her. Two hours and thirty-eight fucking minutes!” Pax crows. “Living fucking legend. Pretty little Elodie’s been here for two whole weeks now, an’ he’s barely even looked at her. Waste of fresh meat, if you ask me. If you’ve changed your mind about our deal, man, we can trade back, y’know. Corsica’s one of my favorite places in the world, but that girl looks like she’s got one of those perfect, tiny, neat little porn star pussies. I’d love to crack that oyster open and go hunting for the pearl.” He holds up two fingers, flicking his tongue between them, making a grotesque slurping noise, and the back of my neck prickles. I kick the back of his headrest hard enough to make his skull bounce off the calfskin leather.
“Hey! What the fuck, man!” Pax glares at me over his shoulder. “If you’re having trouble getting your dick hard, I got plenty of meds that’ll help you get the job done. Pull that shit again, though, and you can get out and fucking walk.”
“Fine,” I hiss.
“Fine, you want some dick pills?”
“Fine, pull over. I’ll get out and fucking walk.”
“Don’t be a little bitch, Jacobi. We’re five hundred feet away from the entrance.”
“Stop the car, or I’ll do more than kick a headrest,” I purr, in a flat, calm, perfectly amicable voice.
“Jesus Christ,” Dash groans. “Let him out before he blows like fucking Etna. There’s no need to get so grouchy, y’know,” he tells me, spinning around in his chair. “You like something about this girl. For some weird reason, you’ve decided she’s the Morticia to your Gomez. There’s no need to let your temporary insanity cause contention between the three of us, though, is there.”
The Charger’s tires kick up hunks of gravel as Pax purposefully slams on the breaks. I open up the door and climb out into the cold.
Dashiell offers me a winning smile. “Take a minute to think about what really matters on your pilgrimage to school, won’t you, fella? See you in three whole minutes.”
The Charger jumps its brakes, surging down the driveway towards the academy’s imposing building, and a thick cloud of exhaust fumes envel
opes me for a second, obscuring the dismal view up ahead.
I wish it would fucking rain again.
I wish the day, along with Dashiell’s father’s vexing charity dinner, was already over.
I wish my smug fucking friends weren’t right.
My attention’s inexplicably snagged on Elodie, and her appeal seems to grow on a daily goddamn basis. Under any other circumstances, I would have charmed the back teeth off of the girl and screwed the living shit out of her already, but this isn’t about sex. It isn’t not about sex, I s’pose. But it’s more about the quiet confidence the girl puts out. It’s about her upbringing, and the things she’s experienced, and the way she sees the world. I want to know what’s going on inside her head.
I want what any guy in my position would want: her complete and unconditional surrender.
Pax and Dashiell wait for me on the worn marble steps that lead up to the entrance of the academy. They’re of a height, and their builds are pretty similar, too. That’s where their similarities come to a grinding halt. Without me, the two men standing side by side in front of those lacquered black doors would probably despise each other with a burning intensity usually reserved for members of opposing religions.
“That little time-out fix your salty mood, princess?” Pax asks. His eyes are still full of fury over the headrest incident. He won’t forgive me until I apologize, and even then he might not absolve me of my heinous crime; that car is his pride and joy.
I couldn’t give a fuck. Today, I’m surrendering myself to my saturnine funk. It can fucking have me. Pax is gonna have to wait ‘til tomorrow if he wants any sign of remorse out of me.
