by Lib Starling
“All right,” said the other guy. He was much taller than Jack – even taller, Roxy though, than Alexander. He stepped in front of Jack and placed a hand on his chest. “Back off.”
Jack slipped away from him. “Piss off, Darien. What do you know about it?”
“I know she’s not into you, Romeo, so go take a cold shower. Besides…” and the tall man held his friend with a long, meaningful look, “Alexander won’t like it if you make a move.”
Jack watched Roxy intently for a few seconds more, his face stark and hungry in the moonlight. Then he shivered, shook his head as if coming out of a trance, and abruptly stalked away, circling the yard and disappearing around the far corner of the house.
The tall guy grinned in a friendly, decidedly non-threatening way as he loped toward her, taking two porch steps with each easy, fluid stride. “Sorry about that,” he said, offering his hand to shake. “Things have been a little crazy around Alpha House tonight. I’m Darien.”
Roxy took his hand. “It’s okay – full moon, right? Or just about full, anyway. Always makes people act a little cuckoo.”
Darien’s expression grew suddenly sober, and he seemed on the verge of asking a question – but Roxy spoke on before he could. “I’m Roxanne, but everybody calls me Roxy. It’s nice to meet you, Darien. And thanks, for… for stopping him.”
“Jack’s a bit of a joker, but he’s mostly pretty harmless.”
Roxy stifled the urge to respond with sarcasm. Yeah, “harmless” until he stirs up the entire fraternity into an orgy of fat-girl jokes. You try being on the receiving end of that kind of bullshit and tell me how “harmless” it feels. Roxy had seen guys like Jack dozens of times before. She could recognize that class-clown mentality at a hundred paces – the kind of personality that thrived on earning laughs at the expense of others. But Darien had been sweet to stop it before it started, and he didn’t deserve her snark. “Thanks all the same. I appreciate it.”
“You’ve really caused a stir around here, it seems.”
Darien peered past her shoulder, but Roxy didn’t dare look around. She could still feel those hail-stone stares, even on the porch, and she knew the whole fraternity must be watching her, waiting to make their move. She didn’t want to appear weak, especially not to Darien, the only man here who seemed capable of treating her like a human being and not like a helpless bait fish in a pool of barracudas. So she laughed, even though she’d never felt less amused in her life. “I think you mean my friend Scarlett. The one in the red top. She’s hot enough to rile everybody up, for sure.”
“Uh, I don’t know about that.” Darien jerked his head toward the party, and reluctantly, Roxy risked a glance back into the house.
Scarlett, still drifting helplessly in Alexander’s orbit, had now taken to flirting with other men. She seemed to be operating on the principle that if she could draw some other guy’s interest, Alexander might grow suddenly jealous and step in to claim her. It might have worked at any other party, but this frat was still uncomfortably fixated on Roxy. Despite her resolve to remain unshaken and aloof, her nerves won out, and under the pressure of so many watchful eyes, she gave a shudder of dread.
In that moment, Alexander caught sight of her standing on the porch. He slipped away from Scarlett again; the doorway filled with his presence and he stood before Roxy and Darien, all smooth smile and precise, flawless charm.
“Your friend in there told me you’re new to Jackson Hole,” he said. His voice was rich and deep, and laden with a confidence as striking as his good looks. “I wanted to formally welcome you to the town… and to Alpha Delta Phi. Everybody calls this place Alpha House, of course.”
Roxy ignored his solicitous speech. “Which friend?”
“The flirty one with the red top.”
“Scarlett. She’s hot, isn’t she? You should hook up with her. I know she’d be more than willing.”
Alexander chuckled and shrugged his broad shoulders. “She’s a pretty girl, I guess. Persistent. But I’d much rather get to know you better.”
Roxy tried not to sigh. This was the part where the meltingly hot frat boy would try to finagle her upstairs into his bedroom. There, some spectacular brand of shame would be waiting – a few friends hiding in the closet to spy on how far he could get with the fat chick, with a wager among them over how long it’d be until one of them laughed out loud. Or maybe a phone discreetly propped with a view of the bed, recording what happened there for distribution at a later party. Or maybe he’d just steal her size XXL panties and run out into the party, waving them over his head like a victory flag while she tried to gather enough dignity to leave without bursting into tears.
“Well, unfortunately,” Roxy said, “we’re leaving soon. In fact, I need to round up my friends right now so we can get back to town before it gets too late.”
“You only just got here. Don’t you want to stay a while longer?”
A few members of the fraternity had trickled out onto the porch. They hung well back from Alexander, but their tense postures and rapid movements filled Roxy with apprehension.
“No, I don’t.”
Darien held up a placating hand. “Let’s not upset her,” he said to Alexander. “We don’t want a new resident of the town to get a bad impression of Blackmeade.”
Alexander turned a withering gaze on Darien, who subsided with a flinch.
“Roxy,” Alexander said, and stepped closer.
The way he said her name sent a hot shiver up Roxy’s spine. In that moment, held fast by his piercing, icy eyes, she could almost have let down her guard and given in to him – gone upstairs to his room, fallen into whatever trap he’d laid for her. All because of his stunning looks and the deep, compelling melody of his voice, that perfect balance of confidence and command.
But a shout sounded from the yard.
“Back off, Alexander!”
The tall blonde spun toward the challenge. Roxy tightened her fist around her car keys and staggered backward, colliding with Darien’s chest. His hands landed lightly on her shoulders for the briefest moment, steadying her – and Alexander’s spell was broken.
In the yard, wiry little Jack had returned from wherever he’d slunk off to when Darien sent him packing. He paced back and forth in the dust, his fists and jaw clenched.
Alexander chuckled as he watched Jack’s restless, angry movements.
“I mean it,” Jack yelled. “She’s mine!”
There was general laughter from the porch as the frat took in Jack’s claim. A few more bodies pressed out the door and leaned over the porch railing. They sensed the tension, the pot about to boil over, and in the mood of heightened danger and excitement they called their encouragement to Jack, egging him on.
Roxy looked around desperately for Scarlett and Brooke. “Darien, where are my friends? Have you seen them? We have to get out of here. Now.”
“Right. I’ll find them for you; sit tight.” He slid through the hooting, jostling crowd, disappearing into the house.
The moment he’d gone, the men pressed in around Roxy. They leered at her, licking their lips like animals on the hunt. One of them leaned close and buried his nose in her hair, drawing in a long breath and sighing. She squirmed away from him, but only bumped into another who gave a brief moan of pleasure at the contact. Roxy shrank from the sound.
Suddenly a hand flashed out of the crowd and clamped down on the porch railing, a welcome barrier between Roxy and the men to her left. Her frightened eyes traveled up the thick wrist, over a tracery of dark tattoos on the inside of the forearm, and crossed the well-defined lines of his upper arm before she found his face. He was dark and disheveled, with glaring black eyes and a scruff of rough hair on his cheeks and chin – an opposite in every way to Alexander. Yet this man, despite his ragged t-shirt and messy hair, had Alexander’s same air of natural command.
He snarled at the others: “Back. Off.”
To Roxy’s shivering, grateful relief, they did. The men s
tepped back, almost as if they couldn’t help but obey the dark-haired one – and as the space around her cleared, she sucked in an unsteady breath.
Out in the yard, Jack was still pacing. “I’ll fight you for her, Alexander!”
The frat boys laughed again – all except for Roxy’s protector.
“You, Jack?” said Alexander with a sneer.
“Come on,” Jack cried hoarsely. He took a few threatening steps toward Alexander.
The blonde turned to regard Roxy for a moment, as if debating whether she was worth the fuss. Then he calmly began to unbutton his shirt.
“Don’t do it,” Roxy’s protector said. “He’s just drunk, Alexander. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“He needs to learn to keep to his place.” Alexander slid his arms free of the sleeves and laid the shirt carefully over the railing.
“You’re a better leader than this. Don’t ruin the harmony of Alpha House over a girl.”
Alexander, with unreadable placidity, watched his black-haired frat brother for a few seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity. Then that low, powerful voice slid through the night like silk. “Fuck off, Chase.”
Roxy gasped as Alexander leaped from the top step. The movement was so sudden and so powerful that she could scarcely believe what she’d seen. One moment Alexander was standing unruffled and easy on the porch; the next he was a streak of white in the moonlight, falling on Jack’s much smaller form with a fury that made the assembled crowd howl with excitement.
Alexander and Jack rolled over and over in the yard. The thud of fists against hard flesh pounded through the night, and grunts of pain came from both men as their bodies blurred into one tangle of thrashing limbs. Jack fought his way out of Alexander’s grip and crawled a few paces away, but Alexander was on him again in a heartbeat, kicking and pummeling. Finally Jack curled in a ball on the ground, shielding his head with his hands. Alexander aimed another kick at his ribs.
Chase shook his head. “God-damned idiots.” Then he raised his voice. “All right, Alexander. He’s had enough.”
But a strange, cold fire had come over the fraternity’s leader. Chase’s words only seemed to push him into a greater fury. He swung another blow of his hard, marble-white fist at Jack, who cowered and whimpered in the dust.
“You,” Alexander grated, “do not… challenge… me.” Each word was a strike. “She… is… mine!”
Roxy realized with a sudden chill that this fight was serious – and it was about her. This was no prank, no set-up for some carefully planned humiliation designed to impress the skinny girls and the rest of the frat. This was a deadly serious confrontation, and somehow – impossibly – both Jack and Alexander saw Roxy as the prize to be won.
She gaped down at the fight, paralyzed with disbelief. She couldn’t even flinch in surprise when Scarlett, Brooke, and Darien appeared at her side.
Scarlett stared down at the spectacle of the shirtless, grappling Alexander in horror. “What the hell’s going on?” she finally choked out.
Chase, still gripping the porch railing protectively, never took his eyes off the fight as he spoke. “They’re fighting over your friend.”
“Brooke?” Scarlett said.
“No,” Roxy whispered. “Me.”
Scarlett gave Roxy a disbelieving frown and her pretty mouth opened, harsh words ready to fly. But before she could say anything, Chase launched himself over the porch railing.
He landed in the yard with a scattering of dust and sprang between Alexander and Jack.
“Enough,” Chase barked, thrusting out his tattooed arms, pushing Alexander away from his victim. “Get a hold of yourself!”
Alexander snarled wordlessly, and one hand, quivering with rage, reached for the gold chain that hung at his throat.
“No,” Chase warned. “Think about what you’re doing. This isn’t the way a good leader behaves.”
“Get away! Let me finish this little piece of shit.”
“You’ll have to go through me first,” Chase said calmly.
“Gladly.” Alexander balled his fists. “You obviously can’t obey an order from your leader any better than he can…”
“Jack’s my pledge brother. Alpha House defends its members – even against our own leader, if necessary.”
Alexander’s sharply indrawn breath sounded clear and hard across the expanse of the dusty lawn. But as he stood facing Chase, the shuddering rage drained visibly from his body. His shoulders stooped a little as he regained control, as if the fury that drained out of him left exhaustion in his wake. Then turned back to the crowd on the porch with a crooked smile.
Jack had landed a few blows of his own; Alexander’s once-perfect face was swollen on one side, darkening into an ugly bruise, and his lip was split. A trail of dark blood ran over his chin, dripping onto his chest in droplets as black as tar in the moonlight. But he climbed the porch steps with the same casual, easy grace he’d shown before the fight had erupted.
The members of Alpha House fell back from his advance. Alexander paused in the ruddy light of the doorway and turned back to stare for a moment at Roxy.
“Party’s over,” he said, and strode inside.
.4.
C hase helped Jack to his feet, then pulled one of Jack’s limp arms over his shoulder to hold him up.
“Hell of a fight,” he said.
“I’ll kill him,” Jack muttered thickly. One of his eyes was already swollen shut. His lip was fat and bloody.
“No you won’t. Let it go, man. You know you can’t stand up to Alexander like that. If you weren’t so damn drunk…”
“’Sgot nothing to do with it,” Jack slurred. “I want her. I’d want her even if I wasn’t drunk.”
Chase didn’t try to argue him out of that stance. He understood the feeling all too well. Roxy was impossible to ignore, with her voluptuous beauty, intoxicating smell, and fierce, fiery personality. The mystery of exactly who she was – the faint hint of likeness Chase had sensed in her, back in the kitchen – made her just as impossible to resist. Alpha House was straining at its seams with desire for her; every single man in the fraternity stared at her with the same consuming hunger that Chase felt writhing in his own soul.
Yet Alexander was their leader, and he had set his sights on Roxy. “You can’t just go after what Alexander wants,” Chase reminded Jack. The words came reluctantly, dragging in his chest. He remembered Katrina, and bitterness rose in the back of his throat. You can’t go after what Alexander wants… even if you had the girl first.
Chase caught sight of Logan milling with the others on the porch. He waved his friend over and passed Jack into his care. “Get this guy into bed. He needs to sleep the booze off, and he’s going to hurt like hell in the morning. He could use a good night’s rest.”
When Jack had stumbled away, leaning on Logan’s shoulder, Chase returned to Roxy’s side. Her girlfriends stuck tight to her side, and all three women looked wide-eyed and pale in the wake of the fight. Darien was still hovering around them, keeping the rest of the brothers back with quiet, cautious gestures.
“All right, ladies,” Chase said, “Darien and I are going to walk you to your car. And then you’re going straight home. Right?”
Roxy nodded wordlessly.
As they made their way down the street toward a little green Jeep, Chase felt the tension and fear ebb from the girls’ bodies. They began to breathe more easily, and Scarlett and the lanky, sandy-haired one even laughed a little, obviously relieved at putting that terrible fight behind them. They climbed into the Jeep, but Roxy hesitated with her keys in hand. She turned to Chase and Darien, her green eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Thank you both.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry… I know it’s stupid to get upset.”
“No,” Darien said gently. “Things got a crazy back there, and fast, too. It’s all right to feel shaken up. I’m a little rattled, myself.”
“Ha,” Roxy said drily. “Full moon… alw
ays makes people crazy, like I said before.”
Chase raised his brows and gave Darien a long, steady look.
“Is Jack going to be okay?” Roxy asked.
Chase reached for the door handle and pulled the driver’s side open. “We’ll take good care of him, I promise. He’ll be all right. Sore for a few days, but it’s not the first bad fight Jack’s been in.”
Roxy looked in surprise at the open door, at Chase holding it for her. Then she glanced up at his face. The tears were gone, replaced by a warm affection that shone through the very genuine shock. “Nobody’s ever opened a door for me,” she admitted, and smiled self-consciously.
That look of melting gratitude, that hint of sweetness and vulnerability hiding behind Roxy’s tough exterior, sent Chase’s troubled soul soaring on the brisk night wind.
“Be careful out there,” he said as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “The full moon makes people crazy.”
It only took half an hour for the party to clear out. The rest of the girls from town scrambled for their cars and sped back over the hill toward Jackson, and when the last of them had gone, Chase joined a few of the brothers in tidying up.
Not that Alpha House was ever especially neat. Alexander kept the place and the brothers in fairly good order, but even with his influence, the fraternity was still nothing more than a group of guys in their early twenties, living in their own space for the first time in their lives. Beer cans were collected from the yard and the porch, but rather than toss them into the recycle bin, some of the brothers set about constructing a pyramid against the house’s outer wall. Inside, as Chase helped transfer the drinks from the ice barrel to the basement fridge, Logan tacked a pink bra (it had been found draped mysteriously over the back of the couch) above the fireplace mantel where it hung among Blackmeade pennants and framed pictures of infamous Alpha Delta Phi brothers of years gone by.
