Kings of Quarantine: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  “Kyan, give her her fucking bag back. She’s got her period,” he called down to the room.

  Kyan jumped up like there was a fire under his ass and I jogged downstairs as he took it out from a locked cupboard.

  He held it out to me with his brows pulling together and I rolled my eyes as I snatched it and hurried away towards the bathroom between his and Blake’s room. Haha idiots.

  I pulled the door shut behind me then dropped to my knees, pouring out the contents and hunting for the gun. The smile on my face died a violent death as I found it missing.

  Dread seeped through the pores of my skin.

  One of those assholes had it. But which one? And why wouldn’t they have freaking mentioned it?

  I tried to figure out the answer, but came up short. What were they going to do with it? They wouldn’t hand me into Headmaster Brown, he’d expel me and that would only be a good thing for me. But then again, they could hold onto it until they were done with me. Then give me up and get the police involved. Bringing a gun onto school grounds could get me time in juvie. Was that their end game?

  Holy shit. What the fuck do I do?

  My breathing grew ragged as I stuffed my hand into the secret pocket at the back of the bag and a sigh of relief escaped me as I found the letters.

  I zipped them back in safely, planning to write another one as soon as I could tonight. I had so much to tell Jessica. I just wished I could send them to her for real…

  My heart knotted and for a moment it felt like panic was going to claim me, but I shut my eyes, focusing on my breathing until I got myself under control.

  A fist hammered on the door, making me jump and I zipped my bag up, tossing it in the bath tub – AKA my bed - and moved to unlock the door.

  Blake stood there with a fierce expression on his face, his eyes sliding over me as his upper lip peeled back. “We’re going for a walk. Follow me.” He turned his back on me, striding away and I frowned as I followed.

  We headed through the church towards the door before Saint called after us, “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk,” Blake snapped.

  “You bring her back soon,” Saint growled.

  “She’s ours. Not yours,” Blake shot at him then caught my arm and dragged me out the door.

  My heart jack-hammered against my ribcage as he led me down the path alongside the lake, the dappled sunlight falling over us through the trees.

  “How long will Saint let us stay out for?” I asked, putting a little fear into my voice for added effect.

  Blake glanced down at me with a grunt of irritation. “That’s up to me, not him.”

  “Oh, right. But he’s the boss, isn’t he?” I fluttered my lashes innocently and he pressed his shoulders back, his features twisting in irritation.

  “No, he’s not the fucking boss. We’re a team.”

  “I see,” I said like I didn’t see and I sensed his posture growing even tenser. “So where are we going?”

  “For a walk,” he snarled and I suddenly realised why he’d brought me out here. It definitely wasn’t out of a desire to spend time with me. He was proving a point that I was his as much I was Saint’s.

  Quiet fell between us and I gazed out across the stillness of the lake, watching swans and ducks circling on the calm surface. The scene was picturesque, the late afternoon light glittering on the surface and making it look like liquid gold.

  “Let’s go this way.” Blake caught my arm, yanking me down a side trail that led into the woods. My pulse sky rocketed faster than Apollo 11 to the moon as we left the main path, way out of sight of other people. Blake felt like a bomb about to go off and the tension spilling from him made my palms start to sweat.

  My instincts were to try and defuse it so I cleared my throat and lifted my chin to look at him. “Hey…Blake?”

  He glanced at me with a dark glare and I felt like I was in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  My mouth opened and closed for a second before I forced out the words, refusing to be a chicken shit. “Things have really changed between us, huh?”

  He grunted, continuing to walk and upping his pace. I upped mine too so I could keep at his side. My dad often descended into moods when he was mad about something, and I knew how to coax him out of them with gentle words. I wasn’t sure if the same would apply to Blake, but I was damn well gonna give it a try. I’d felt a genuine connection between us before and apart from anything else, I wanted an explanation for why he hated me so personally now. Even if my dad was responsible for the virus, which I was still absolutely refuting, that didn’t make me culpable.

  The hardest thing about this was that I was going to have to be honest and face the consequences if Blake threw that truth back in my face. But him and his friends had done far worse to me than that. So it was worth the risk.

  “I thought there was something real between us before…stupid as that might sound,” I said tentatively and he blew out a hollow laugh.

  “I played you from the very start. You looked like a good fuck. Shame you were below average.”

  I pursed my lips, refusing to let that crap fly. I could take the bullshit insults, I could even take the punishments, but that was just a bare faced lie. “Horse shit. Guys can’t fake it in bed, I know how much you enjoyed it. Especially when you dominated me.”

  He shot me a look, fury flaming in his eyes. I swear if I touched him right then I would have gotten third degree burns. My heart pounded madly from the intensity of his expression and something about me was suddenly drawn to that fire in him. I wanted to reach out to see if I really would get burned. I wanted to feel the full raging force of his passion. And for half a second, it looked like he wanted that too. But then he turned away again and kept marching up the track, his shoulders stiff and his muscles bunching.

  “At least admit you liked me before you found out who I was,” I demanded. “Come on, Blake, we got along. We had fun. I liked you.”

  He came at me fast and I threw up a hand to shield myself, my palm slamming against his chest. But he was like a freight train as he shoved me back against the wide trunk of a tree and my heart leapt into my throat.

  “I hate you!” he roared in my face, spittle peppering my cheeks. The roiling depths of his hatred blazed through every part of his flesh, shining there like diamonds. It made me shrink and my heart crush. I knew they all hated me and yet I’d never felt the pure intensity of that hate from one of them until now. “I hate that I touched you, hate that I fucked you. I hate myself for ever wanting you,” he spat and I realised I wasn’t breathing, I was holding my breath, waiting for him to hurt me. I could feel how much he wanted to by the way he was leering at me, the way his palms were slammed either side of my head and his arms were straining against the inside of his sleeves.

  Words fluttered to my lips and I feared saying them, but I had to. I had to.

  “It’s not my fault your mom died,” I whispered as fat tears slipped from my eyes out of nowhere. I didn’t know if I was hurting for me or for him.

  He roared again and I flinched as his fist came at me, bracing for the impact of knuckles against flesh. But his fist collided with the tree beside my head. Then he shoved me to the ground and I scrambled backwards, watching as he punched and punched and punched. His knuckles splitting, bleeding, staining the bark red.

  “Stop!” I cried as he lost it, hitting and hitting until I feared he was gonna break bones. “Blake stop it!” I screamed. I didn’t know why I cared, but I did. I stupidly did.

  I got to my feet and caught his arm, trying to pull him back.

  He shook me off with a snarl, but he finally stopped hitting the tree. Blood coated his hands and he stood there panting, looking murderous as he glared at me.

  I took a shaky step forward, reaching out as more tears spilled from my eyes. I knew his pain. I’d felt it, drowned in it. And I wanted to heal it for him because I’d always wished someone would come along and do the same for me. I placed my palm
against his heart and felt the powerful thrum of it against my skin.

  He swallowed, unmoving as he stared at me, his dark green eyes flickering with a thousand emotions. All of them bad.

  “Don’t let this make you into a monster,” I breathed as a tear dripped from my jaw to land on the dead leaves at my feet. The wood was so quiet, I heard it hit the ground.

  Blake pulled away from me, shaking his head. “It’s too late for that, Cinders. It already did.” He turned, heading away into the woods and I knew he didn’t want me to follow.

  The world seemed to lighten around me as he disappeared, his presence as heavy as a shadow. I reached up to wipe my tears away, drawing in a shuddering breath before turning back down the path.

  Blake would probably be gone a while so I didn’t head back to The Temple. I went back to the main path and sat on a bench that overlooked the lake. I watched the trees bow in the wind and the lake ripple. I listened to the mournful tune of a hawk as it swept across the still water. And I let my heart break for Blake Bowman. Because his hate was dipped in so much pain, that it hurt me too.

  Tatum swung her foot around and caught me in the side just beneath my ribs, knocking the air from my lungs in the process.

  I backed up and she lunged forward, her gloves striking my chest, once, twice, three times before I managed to switch from defence to offence and throw a punch into her stomach.

  The grin on her face told me I’d fallen for her trap a moment before she twisted with the motion of my strike, making it into the space on my left. She was so damn quick that I couldn’t defend against her kick to the backs of my knees even though I saw it coming.

  She was fucking brutal in her strikes and my knees buckled.

  Tatum followed with a blow to my gut before leaping on me and taking me to the floor.

  I slammed onto my back with her straddling my hips and she grinned down at me in triumph, tendrils of blonde hair slipping from the knot she’d tied it in to hang down around her face.

  I panted beneath her, trying to look pissed about her taking me down and failing as she pressed her gloves down on my chest to brace herself.

  My gloves fell to rest against her thighs and a breath of laughter escaped me. “I don’t teach many students who can match me,” I said as I studied her blue eyes. “Whoever taught you was damn good.”

  “My father wanted me to be the best in everything I could be,” she replied, her voice husky as she tried to catch her breath. “I had private training in all kinds of weird and wonderful things. But kickboxing was the one that I stuck with the longest.”

  That should have pissed me off. Of course the little princess had the best training. Daddy used his wallet to make sure she did. But somehow I didn’t mind it so much in this instance. The super rich were always so wasteful with their money, so dismissive of it despite how much it meant to everyone else. Being in the top two percent often made their children feel so entitled, so special, like their shit didn’t stink just as much as the next guy’s. But with this, at least he’d been spending his money on giving her skills. Something real and not dressed up in bullshit.

  “You could think about going pro,” I said, not that I thought for a minute that she would. This kind of thing was a hobby to someone like her. She didn’t need to go pro when she didn’t need money. It was just another shiny little badge to add to her dowry when she was auctioned off to the highest bidding asshole as a trophy wife.

  “Do you really think I’m good enough?” she asked, surprising me as her eyes glimmered at the idea.

  “Yeah,” I replied, my glove shifting slightly where it sat against her thigh. I wasn’t really touching her. The thick padding of the boxing glove was more than a big enough barrier between us, but I could feel the transfer of the movement against my knuckles just as surely as she could feel it on her leg.

  “Then maybe we should be having more of these sessions,” she said slowly, cocking her head a little to see if I might want that. And despite the fact that I’d already had to rearrange my schedule with a bunch of other students to fit in these sessions and I absolutely had no spare time to up her training schedule, I found that I did want that. I really wanted that.

  “I can try and find some extra time…maybe on the weekends?” I suggested before I could stop my mouth from running away with me. I’d literally never offered a student a portion of my free time before. That was my own. But this wasn’t just about her training. It was about Saint Memphis too. That was what I cared about. And if it got her out of his clutches a little more often as a bonus then I was even more prepared to do it.

  “I’d really like that,” she said, a genuine smile gracing her full lips.

  She was still straddling me. We’d both caught our breath, I’d clearly lost our bout, there was no reason for us to be in this position. I should have been telling her to get up, but I didn’t.

  Tatum shifted a little like she was thinking the same thing, her back arching as she pressed down on my chest through her gloves like she was about to stand. But she still didn’t. And for a moment, I didn’t feel like I was looking at a student, I was just looking at a girl. A girl with blue eyes which beckoned me to dive into their depths and full lips which were toying with a smile. A girl who was wearing a push-up sports bra that I’d been trying not to notice for the last hour and a girl who was currently sitting with her thighs spread over my hips.

  I shifted forward suddenly, sitting up and sliding her back before she got a hint of where my mind had just wandered to from my dick swelling between us.

  That would be just what I needed. A student telling the headmaster that I’d tried to dry hump her during a training session. Nice job, asshole.

  I pushed her back until her ass hit the mat between my thighs and we were sitting looking at each other with too much expectation hanging in the air between us.

  I knew what she wanted from me. She wanted some magical solution to her troubles with the Night Keepers and I really wished I could offer her that. But the only thing I could really do was support her in this plan to bring them down. And I also knew that what I was pushing for would only throw her further into their net too. But the problem with those boys was that they were like a dog with a bone. There was no way she was escaping their teeth unless she pulled them out one by one.

  “Have you made any progress with them?” I asked, not needing to say who I meant.

  She drew her legs back off of mine and crossed them beneath her as she thought about that.

  “Maybe. It’s hard to say for sure. I can’t get anywhere with Blake anyway. He hates me with a venom so toxic it infects me even without me getting close. He’s just hurting so much that he’s blinded by it, consumed by it and I’m afraid of what will happen when all of that pain comes to a head.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen some of that myself.” Blake’s game on the football pitch had been suffering lately. He was growing hot headed, losing control and suppressing his grief. The way he was acting could only really end one way. Badly.

  “The worst part about it is that I feel like such an idiot for buying into his charm before all of this. I was even warned about it. Mila told me what would happen if I hooked up with him, but I-”

  “You and Blake were together?” I interrupted her, my tone sharper than I’d meant it to be. “As in, you fucked him?”

  Her lips popped open as if I shouldn’t have said that. And fuck, I definitely shouldn’t have said that. But I was surprised, she seemed like a smart girl, I just hadn’t expected her to join the queue waiting to screw the Night Keepers’ fuckboy.

  “Are you seriously judging me for getting laid?” she growled, those blue eyes flashing in warning.

  “I’m not judging you for getting laid,” I snapped. “Everyone likes fucking, princess, it’s what we’re built to do. I’m judging you for choosing Bowman when you could have had your fucking pick.”

  Her lips parted as a blush touched her cheeks beneath her freckles and the look was so fucki
ng cute that I couldn’t quite manage to stay mad at her. When the innocent act wasn’t being faked, she really could pull it off.

  “I just thought I’d be ghosted afterwards,” she managed to say, dropping her gaze to her red boxing gloves as she pulled them off. “I didn’t realise he’d turn into an actual psychopath and start acting the way he has been. I mean, Christ, when we were together that night he was funny and sweet and generous and so fucking-” She cut herself off and glanced up at me like she’d just realised she was telling her teacher about how it had felt to be screwing someone and that blush only heated beneath her freckles.

  “At what point did he suddenly change then?” I asked, as my mind absolutely didn’t linger on the word generous. Because I really doubted that she meant he’d paid for her drinks all night. I was gonna guess that reference had more to do with the things he’d done to her body when they were alone together. Things that had made her pant and beg and scream- I realised she was talking again and bit down on my tongue to cut off those fucking ideas.

  “The next morning…he got a phone call in the night from his dad and disappeared for hours. I fell asleep when he was gone but when he came back he was just so…hateful. I didn’t realise it at first, but after we, um…” She blushed again and I could hazard a good guess at what they’d done. Not that I gave a shit. “Anyway, afterwards he basically said thanks and can you fuck off now. So I did. I put it down to him having gotten what he wanted from me and assumed we’d leave it there and forget all about it.”

  “But he didn’t?” I asked, pushing even though I could tell she didn’t really want to tell me. But I wanted to know. It didn’t really make any difference to my plans either way, but I wanted to hear it from her lips. I wanted more ammo to stoke my hatred of these spoiled, entitled pricks who thought it was alright for them to use people and throw them away like it didn’t matter at all.

  “When I went to breakfast after I’d gotten changed in my dorm, he and the other Night Keepers had found out about my dad.” Tatum studied her gloves like she couldn’t bear to look at me as she told this story and my blood heated as I forced myself to listen to it. “They got all of the students to throw fish stew all over me. And Blake also…played the audio of us having sex for everyone to hear…”