by Elle East
I couldn’t believe it, but I had actually had a really good time, probably one of my best nights so far at this school—I couldn’t believe I was thinking that. I realized that I was hoping it wasn’t just a one-time event—and not just because I needed to get close to them to help my mom.
I needed to remember all the terrible things they’d done to me, because if we kept hanging out then it would be hard not to fall for their charms. I was worried I would start feeling guilty about turning them in and I couldn’t have that. I needed to remember what they’d done.
Chapter 26
It turned out to not just be a one-time thing; the Kings started inviting me to hang out with them regularly. We didn’t hang out in public, which was fine with me—even though I was a bit offended that the Kings were embarrassed to be seen with me—because I didn’t want the scholarship students to know. I was still being invited to Moviefest and sitting with them in the dining hall—and I’d started sitting with them in our classes again too—so I didn’t want to screw that up by letting them know I was hanging out with the other half of the Royalty, their main bullies at the school.
We mostly went to their place, which would surprise me every time with some new extravagantly rich thing that I would discover. They had their own on-demand chef who would come into their suite and prepare food in their fully stocked kitchen. They had every type of video game console you could imagine. They had a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping-pong table. They even had a balcony with a hot hub that overlooked the ocean. Their place was insane and despite how much of a “guy’s place” it was, I felt really comfortable there.
We were hanging out one evening, eating burgers that their chef had prepared, when for some reason cheerleading came up. I internally groaned, the way I did whenever I even so much as thought about cheerleading. My brief stint as a cheerleader was so embarrassing that I was pretty sure I would be re-living that memory and cringing for years to come.
“Our school doesn’t have them, Grayson. You would know that if you actually came to our games,” Archer was saying.
“I come!” Grayson protested. “I just have to smoke a bit before to make them actually interesting so I guess I’m not all there.” He laughed. “I’m all like let’s go Falcons, let’s go! Woot woot!”
Everyone froze, all eyes on me. I guess there was no avoiding it now, I had to address the elephant in the room. I lowered my burger to my plate.
“It’s fine, guys. That was SO embarrassing, but I admit that it was probably pretty funny to watch. They made me do it, the Queens—which I’m sure you know. They taught me that stupid dance and helped me get dressed so that I wouldn’t wear any underwear. It was weird though, I didn’t have that much to drink, it was only a couple shots so I can’t believe I was that out of it, I should have only been tipsy. So weird.” I shook my head in disbelief.
I picked up my burger to go back to eating when I saw they were all sharing a look. I didn’t like when they did that; it made me feel excluded, like they were having a conversation right in front of me in a different language.
“Maddy,” Brett started. “You know they spiked your shots right?”
“What?!” I dropped my burger. “With what?”
“We don’t know. Some drug that makes you less inhibited, less aware of your surroundings. I think it was something like Rohypnol,” Archer said.
“I got roofied?!” I shrieked.
“Yeah, but not a lot,” Grayson shrugged.
“Not a lot?? I still got roofied, that’s a pretty big fucking deal,” I said, incensed.
I couldn’t believe that the Queens could do that to me. I knew they were terrible people but to drug someone was so serious and dark, I just couldn’t believe that high school students could be capable of that. I couldn’t believe that they would go that far.
“Well yeah, I agree with you, no one likes to be roofied. Victoria’s an asshole,” Grayson said.
“Why didn’t you guys stop her?” I couldn’t help but ask about the other elephant in the room.
We hadn’t talked about how the guys had treated me in the past, we just kind of avoided it and I had been too cowardly to bring it up before tonight, but I couldn’t ignore it any longer. This was serious.
They all looked down sheepishly.
“We didn’t know,” Brett said finally. “We didn’t know she would do that.”
“You guys constantly talk, you all sit together for meals and I see you talking. There’s no way you didn’t know.”
“Sure, we talk all the time but it’s superficial stuff. Victoria doesn’t consult us on her plans. We found out about that after it had happened,” Archer explained.
I wanted to believe them but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they weren’t being completely honest with me—but at the same time I wasn’t being completely honest with them so could I really be that mad?
I was distracted for the rest of the night and went home early. I couldn’t believe that someone was willing to risk my life just to humiliate me. This school was a lot more fucked up and dangerous than I had thought.
When I got home, I tried to study a bit but my mind was too distracted. I got ready for bed instead and was going to call it an early night when I heard a knock on the door. Who was coming over this late? I wondered. I barely ever got visitors, and I never got them this late at night. I cautiously pulled open the door just a crack to peek out and saw Brett standing there, his face looked drawn and preoccupied. I opened the door fully.
“Hi,” I said. I looked around his broad shoulders to see if the other guys were with him, but he was alone. “What’s up?”
“You left early, I just wanted to make sure you were ok.”
He looked at me earnestly and his words touched something deep inside myself that I thought was frozen against them forever.
“I’m fine. I just have a lot of studying to do and…” Looking into his hazel eyes, I realized that I didn’t want to lie to him. “It was finding out that I had been drugged. That bothered me and I just wanted to be alone for a bit.”
He nodded. “I understand, I can’t imagine learning something like that.”
“I just can’t believe the Queens would do that. I could have been seriously hurt, like they could have gotten a bad batch or I could have had a bad reaction or I could have fallen and split my head open—I don’t know what, just something could have happened, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” he said with such sincerity and pain that it made me ache. “We would have stopped it if we had known. She went way too far.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered.
He looked away and clenched his jaw. He shook his head and said in his deep, rumbling voice, “I’m still sorry.”
He looked back into my eyes and without thinking I leaned forward and kissed him hard. I kissed him with all the pain and confusion I felt. I kissed him with all the anger I had towards him and the other guys. I kissed him like I’d never get another chance to again.
I could feel that he was shocked for a second, but just for a split second, before he wrapped me up in his giant arms and picked me up like I weighed nothing.
He matched me movement-for-movement. I clung to his thick neck and kissed him ferociously as he grabbed my ass and picked me up so that I wrapped my legs around his waist.
I had been the aggressor initially, but he was kissing me with such passion that I found it almost impossible to keep up. His lips and hands were claiming me with such authority and need that I couldn’t do anything but be swept up in it.
I barely registered that we were moving and dimly heard my door slam shut, but I didn’t care, I was consumed with Brett’s body and that was all that mattered.
Suddenly, I felt us fall, and I gripped onto him even tighter—if that was possible—and then my back hit the soft bed.
I was in bed with Brett. Those words flashed through my mind. Only a short couple weeks ago I would have thought that was impossibl
e, but yet here I was, clinging to him like I was scared that if I eased up for just a second he’d be gone—and he was doing the same to me.
Our mouths desperately came together again and again. My hands ran along the huge muscles of his back that were flexing as he held himself above me and tried to touch all of my body at once. I was pulling him towards me, trying to feel every inch of him that I could reach.
He was wearing just a thin gray t-shirt, the jacket that he had on when he was at my door must have been stripped off as he was carrying me to the bed but I hadn’t noticed. I pulled at the fabric urgently. I needed to feel more of him. It felt like we had been lost for years and suddenly found each other again.
He pulled back for just a split second and I surged up to meet him, unable to be apart for even a moment. He pulled the shirt over his head with one hand while he grabbed me with the other. Our lips met again like they had been separated for years instead of seconds. He grabbed the bottom of my tank top and pulled it over my head before pulling me back against his large body.
When my breasts met his bare chest was when I realized I wasn’t wearing a bra. I had changed into my pajamas before he came over. I didn’t care though because it felt so good. I pressed into his hard chest and he moaned, the sound shot waves of desire through me. His skin was smooth and warm against mine and felt amazing.
He pulled away from me and the sudden cold made me whimper. The sound I made was so full of longing and need that I even surprised myself, I’d never heard a sound like that come out of my lips before.
I barely had time to open my eyes before they slammed shut again when a hot mouth touched my sensitive nipple. He ran his tongue around the outside, teasing me, before giving me what I craved. Brett had skills and before long I was panting, my fingers running across his short hair and gripping him to me.
He placed a kiss just beneath my breasts and my breath caught in my throat as I realized he was going lower. This had all happened so fast, but felt so right.
He placed kisses down my front until he got to the border of my leggings. He kissed all along just above the waistband and I was practically crawling out of my skin to get him lower. These weren’t slow and teasing kisses, these were hungry and needful like he couldn’t hold himself back for very long. I had never gone that far with a guy before but I felt powerless against my body’s desire and couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.
His strong hands gripped my hips hungrily. Subconsciously I lifted up my butt and then in a flash my pants and underwear were gone and thrown across the room. I gasped and then Brett was on me again, kissing me like he wanted to devour me. I kissed him back just as hard and clung to his large bare shoulders.
He surged against my unprotected flesh and I felt his erection throbbing against me between my legs. My nails scratched down his back and he growled, such a primitive sound that it made me shiver.
All that separated us was a pair of boxers and a pair of slim-cut slacks—which must have been painfully tight on him by that point. I moved against him and wrapped my legs around his waist, gripping onto him with all my strength. He moved down and bit my neck lightly and I let out a moan that could have come out of a foghorn.
Was this really happening? I wondered in a daze as he kissed fire up and down the side of my neck. Were we really doing this? I didn’t want to think; I wanted to just feel and at that moment it felt right.
I let myself be consumed by the untamed inferno that was Brett. I felt him reach between us to the zipper on his pants and my heart leapt out of my chest. Soon nothing would separate our bodies.
I wanted it.
There was a sudden knock at the door. The sound cut like a knife through the sexual fog that had consumed us. I sprang up, pushing at his unmovable chest.
“Coming!” I yelled.
I looked around desperately for my clothes, but they were thrown all over the room. I spotted my uniform coat hanging next to the door and dashed for it. It was not very long, but it was long enough to cover to the tops of my thighs. I threw it on and looked back at Brett. He looked like a guy who had just been interrupted mid make-out session. He was frowning as he quickly pulled his t-shirt over his head. I got a peak at his stomach muscles and the sexy “V” that they formed, before his shirt came down and concealed them again. I had the strongest desire to run my tongue across those hard muscles.
I shook my head to clear it and opened the door. Cecily, Ava, Graham and Vijay were standing there, smiling.
“Hey! We just wanted to see if you wanted to eat a lot of junk food and study for that Chemistry test together...” Ava trailed off as she took in my naked legs, barely covered by a coat, and then her eyes wandered behind me and grew wide when she saw Brett.
I followed her gaze and saw that Brett had put back on that serious, brooding look that he always wore around everyone. I guessed that I was one of the few who had seen the real passion that lurked behind those somber eyes. Now he looked intimidating and dangerous. If I hadn’t just felt his hands all over my body and his lips against mine, I might have been scared of him.
I could tell the other scholarship students were shocked—and scared. The last person they expected to see in the Bell Tower was one of the Royalty. Their eyes moved from Brett to me and I saw as they put two-and-two together and realized what we had been up to.
Cecily and Ava’s mouth’s dropped open. A pained look passed across Graham’s face and even though Graham and I weren’t anything close to official, I still felt bad. Based on his reaction it was clear now that he had liked me and catching me barely dressed with one of his enemies couldn’t have felt good. He thought I had chosen the asshole over the guy who was better for me—maybe he was right.
“Now isn’t a good time,” I stuttered, I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Thanks for inviting me though.”
“Ok,” Ava mumbled, still staring at Brett like she’d been walking in the woods and stumbled upon a vicious bear by accident and was scared to move.
There was a long moment of silence where we all stood still, unsure of what to do. Finally, Brett simply commanded, “Leave.”
The scholarship students dashed down the stairs in a heartbeat. We were alone again. I turned back to him. He looked at me with those pouty lips, that strong jaw, and those guarded eyes.
“That was rude,” I told him wearily.
The night had been a rollercoaster of emotions and I was suddenly very tired. I was pretty sure I had just lost my friends—forever this time. There was no way they’d ever trust me again after finding me making out with a King.
He didn’t react, just continued to stare at me with an assessing look. I met his gaze and glared back into those hard depths.
Finally, he looked away and walked over to pick up his coat, which was halfway between the bed and the entrance. While he slipped into it, I opened the door even wider indicating that he should go.
He walked slowly to leave and on the way out he stopped in front of me. He towered over me but I refused to look up at him. I wanted him gone. I was done with his douchebag behavior for one night.
He left, and I slammed the door shut.
My mind was racing. Had I really almost slept with Brett?? What the hell just happened???
Chapter 27
We were getting close to the end of the term; it was only a couple weeks away, and so everyone was shifting into serious study mode. I hadn’t heard much from the Kings in a couple days and I started getting worried that my little make-out session with Brett had ruined any chance I had of finding out what they were hiding. I was too embarrassed to meet their eyes in class and the only time we ever hung out was after school in their room and they had stopped inviting me so I didn’t know where I stood with them.
I didn’t want anyone to know about Brett and I because they’d think I was a slut for getting with someone so easily after they were so awful to me, but for some reason I especially didn’t want Archer and Grayson to know. But I was sure Brett had told them, they
were best friends and lived together, there was no way he wouldn’t.
I was sitting alone again in class and in the dining hall. The other scholarship students had gone silent when I went to sit with them and I could feel the tension. When I turned to Ava and asked about it, she reluctantly told me that they all wanted the best for me but felt I was making a dangerous decision by “getting close” with the Kings—Ava had used air quotes and it stung, they probably thought I was sleeping with all three of them and judging me for it, but to be fair I would do the same thing if I was in there shoes.
She said they cared about me but they couldn’t put their own futures at risk. I understood, but it still hurt to lose their friendships right after I had just gotten them back. I wished I could tell them the real reason I was hanging out with the Kings, but I couldn’t. They all looked miserable when I stood up to leave and that was a small consolation.
One day I was walking back from class when Grayson cornered me in an empty hall. He grabbed my elbow and led me to a secluded spot. My heart started beating faster as I stared into his piercing dark brown eyes. He wore that stupid smirk that both made me want to smack him and kiss him. His chocolate hair had grown out a bit on top and he had shaved new designs in the sides. His clove and moss scent enveloped me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“That’s not a very nice way to greet people.”
His eyes narrowed in smug amusement like he loved to test how far he could go with me. Push my buttons and test my limits.
“I was enjoying the peace and quiet,” I shot back, but it wasn’t true, against my will I was missing them like crazy.
