Riot Rules

by Callie Hart

  His face is stony, but his eyes…I can’t decide if his eyes have come alive because we’re talking about something he cares deeply about, or if it’s because he’s angry that I invaded his privacy. “And how did it make you feel?” His voice is as smooth as silk, gentle as a caress, but he still looks like his mood might be tipping over into the realms of annoyance.

  “Like I was lost inside a waking dream,” I tell him. “I felt drunk, and happy, and like I was four years old. It made me feel…” I grasp for a word that will do the music justice, but there simply isn’t one. I make do with, “Alive. It made me feel alive.”

  Dashiell looks down at his hands. “It makes me feel that way, too.”

  “When I look up at the stars, I feel inconsequential,” I tell him quietly. “When I look through the lens of that telescope, it’s impossible not to marvel at my own existence. Amongst all of that nothingness, I somehow came into being. We’re all made of elements that were forged in the burning furnaces of the stars. Seven octillion atoms form the human body. Seven octillion. All of those atoms came from out there.” I jerk my head skyward, toward the sky. “Pretty impressive if you ask me.”

  He glances up at the observatory’s vaulted ceiling. He can’t see the sky—the dome’s shutter is firmly closed against the rain—but the ceiling is still a thing of beauty. It was painted way before I enrolled at Wolf Hall. In the forties, Professor Leidecker says. The dome arches, the ribs and the panels are all a deep royal blue. Someone took the time to plot out a map of the stars across them. The metallic silver of the painted constellations shines brightly against the rich navy, and while it’s not quite as stunning as the true night sky, it sure comes in a close second. Dash wonders at it, a loose smile playing over his lips.

  “Have you ever been inside Riot House?” he asks.

  “No.” The opportunity has been there. I’ve been invited through other people. I’ve just never had the balls to go.

  Dash turns his attention back to me, fixing me with those hazel eyes of his. “We’re having a party soon. You should come. I think you’d like the ceiling there, too.”

  I’ve driven past Riot House a million times. Every trip I’ve ever made down the mountain, I’ve peered through the trees, trying to catch a clear glimpse of the place. The tall glass, steel and stone structure has inspired a burning curiosity in me since the moment I learned it was there. Being offered a chance to explore the place is much like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. But…

  I set my jaw, steeling myself; I need courage for this question. “Are you asking me to go as your date, Dash? Or are you just telling me I should show up? Because this…” I gesture between us. “This is getting confusing, and it doesn’t feel good.”

  “Really?” He leans back against the telescope, hands still in his pockets, and a roguish smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “Seems as though it felt good to you last night.”

  Urgh. I swear to God. The guy can be so damn infuriating. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  He lets the smile fade. “Okay, fine. No, I’m sorry. I’m not asking you to go as my date, love. If I were to ask you to come as my date, life as you know it at Wolf Hall would turn to shit quicker than you can say ‘get me the fuck out of here.’ You’d never know another moment’s peace. Wren and Pax would make it their personal mission to raze your life to the ground, and I’d be expected to join in on the action, too. That what you want?”

  I leave his question unanswered and ask one of my own. The only one that makes any sense. “Why would they bother?”

  “Because. Riot House is more important than any one of us. The life we’ve built for ourselves is important to us. It’s a sanctuary. We defend against all outside threats, and girls are most definitely considered a threat.”

  “That’s why the three of you treat us like shit?”

  “Wolf Hall’s a private academy, but this is still high school. There’s a food chain here, just like everywhere else, and we’re at the top of it. We are a predatory species, Carrie, and you are our prey. We pursue you. We fuck you. We move on. Those are the terms in which we think of the female student body here. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “So…we can never be anything to any of you. None of you are allowed girlfriends?”

  He smirks at this. As if I’m asking him to go steady with him or something. “No. We’re not. It’s Riot House tenet dogma.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “It’s a hard and fast rule, Carrie. No circumventing it. No workarounds.”

  Bitter laughter bubbles up the back of my throat. “Believe me. You don’t need to explain how rules work. I’m bound by plenty of my own.”

  Sure about that? Alderman grumbles into my ear. From where I’m sitting, it looks like you could use a reminder, dumbass.

  “Then you’ll know that a rule like that can’t be tampered with. And believe me. You wouldn’t want me breaking it. Breaking this rule would hurt you. And despite how this whole thing might look and feel to you…I don’t want to hurt you, love.”

  The arrogance that usually laces his words is missing. The mocking tone, too. He’s sincere in this. For the first time ever, I feel like he’s giving me the truth, and it really fucking sucks because I believe him. I’ve broken a rule for him. Rule number three, to be precise. But breaking it was never going to hurt him. It will only hurt me in the long run. I hope it won’t come to that, but let’s face it. It probably will. If he breaks one of Riot House’s rules, it won’t be him that suffers. It’ll be me, at Wren and Pax’s hands, and from the look on his face that would be very, very bad.

  A horrible sinking feeling tugs at my insides. “Then…what? That’s it? We stay away from each other? We write last night off as a mistake and avoid each other until graduation?” That’s why he agreed to meet me here tonight—so he can tell me that what went down between us in the early hours of this morning can never, ever happen again.

  He pushes away from the telescope, sighing heavily as he makes his way toward me. I’m not ready to face those words just yet, though. I should be braver. I should be stronger, for fuck’s sake. This thing between us never even really got started. I shouldn’t be so upset about it ending, but I can’t help it. I am. I take a step back, and then another, until Dashiell’s walked me all the way to the observatory’s curved wall and my back is up against the ancient plasterwork. He braces his hands on either side of my head, a hungry, all-new light flashing in his eyes.

  “No fucking way, Mendoza. Your fate’s sealed. You belong to me now. You’re just gonna have to learn to live behind a few locked doors is all.”

  My heart’s a rabbit, kicking at my breastbone. “And what if I don’t like hiding behind locked doors?”

  “Oh, you will.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you’ll be locked behind them with me.”

  DASHIELL

  This is a compromise. A shitty one, but one I’ll willingly make. If we keep this thing a secret, then Carina stays safe, there’ll be no contention at home with my brothers, and we still get to have this.

  She’s so fucking beautiful it hurts. Her eyes are like chocolate. Not sweet milk chocolate, but dark, like the bitter, acerbic cocoa that makes your mouth ache. Her lips are full and so fucking soft that my mouth is still buzzing from the memory of them on my skin last night. I’m a stupid, sick son of a bitch. I knew the moment I gave in and pulled that glove off with my fucking teeth that I was getting myself into a world of hurt here, but I was so amped from running around the academy, and I was so sick of feeling like my hands were tied…and I figured fuck it.

  I’ve been waiting for the regret to arrive and kick my ass, but I realized around lunchtime that I don’t regret it. I don’t regret any of it. Even though my hands are still theoretically bound, I now have them on Carina Mendoza’s face, and I can feel the wetness of her hair, and I can smell the sweet
, floral scent of her skin, and I can’t stop feeling like this is right.

  She blinks up at me, a frightened wild animal slowly learning to trust, and fuck me if my dick isn’t instantly hard. I switched on a couple of small floor lamps when I arrived at the observatory. I drew the black-out curtains at the two small windows. The cavernous space is dimly lit, but the lamps cast a lovely cool glow across her skin. She’s luminous, pale and beautiful as the moon.

  “If you’d rather shut this thing down, then say the word and I’ll go,” I tell her. “But you and I both know you don’t want me to go. You want my hands on you. You want me stripping you out of these wet clothes, and you want my fingers inside you, don’t you, love?”

  She blinks, flustering a little. Oh, my, my. Pretty, fiery Carina. You talk a big game. You want people to think you’re so in control, so wise to the world, when really you’re as sweet and innocent as they come. “I—” She ducks her head, but it’s no good. I’m still cupping her face in my hands and I’m not letting her off that easy. I hold her in place, silently asking her to give me what I need. She flushes, and the delicate pink burn to her cheeks makes my heart slam like a piston.

  I see her resolve forming. She takes a deep breath and nods. “Yes. I want that.”

  Brave, brave, Carrie. No tremor in her voice. No hesitation now. I could growl, I’m so fucking pleased with her, but she speaks again, and my attention is drawn to her mouth. “I want more than that. I want your sweat and your come. I want your body. I want it all. But I want the rest of you, too, Dash. I want your mind. I want your thoughts, and your feelings, and your music, and…and…all of you. If I can’t have that, too, then I don’t want any of it. What would be the point?”

  Well, fuck. I’m not prepared for this. I’ve been greedy, ticking off in my head all of the things I want from her. I don’t just want her body, either. I want anything and everything that makes her Carrie. I want her smile. Her laughter. I want the way she frowns when she’s staring off into the distance, thinking about something. I want her intelligence, and her sharpness, and the way she hums under her breath when she’s working in the library and she thinks there’s no one around to hear. I have not, for even one second, contemplated that she might want more from me in return. I haven’t considered that there would be a cost, and this is a cost.

  If I hand all of those parts of myself over to her, I’m leaving myself wide open and vulnerable. I’d have to let down walls that were built years ago if I’m even going to try and let her in, and who knows if that’s even possible? The walls are so much a part of me that there might not be much left over once they’re gone.

  “I’m not in the business of making promises I can’t keep.” The change in Carrie is small. I see when her disappointment hits her, and it affects me more than it should. “That said, I’ve never been a defeatist, Mendoza. I’ll give whatever I have to give. Will that be enough?”

  I am a beggar trying to buy the moon with a dollar. This is the worst trade in the history of bartering; there’s no chance that she’ll accept. Only she does. Undeserving though I am, Carrie nods her head and holds out her hand. “Whatever you have to give is plenty.”

  I need to keep my traitorous mouth shut, but this feels wrong, like I’m cheating her out of something. I’ve walked out of restaurants with too much change in my pocket, and lied through my teeth to score a better grade, but I can’t let Carrie enter into this agreement without being sure she knows what she’s doing. I could never live with myself. “How can you be so sure?”

  She looks at me, somber as a judge, and speaks slowly. “Whatever you give light to will grow, Dash. Feed something and it’ll flourish. Care enough and the fragile thing in your hands will strengthen. I have faith that you’ll give me what you can until there’s more of it to give. That’s all.”

  Jesus fucking Christ. I’m in way over my head here, and I have not been good enough in this life to have earned a second of this girl’s attention, but I’m going to take it, because an opportunity like this doesn’t come around twice. I’m lucky that I’m here experiencing it now, for fuck’s sake, and not stuck back in England, already promised to some dull thoroughbred filly that my father set me up with.

  So, I kiss her, and I mean it more than I’ve ever fucking meant anything in my life. Her mouth is sweet and tentative, but not for long. One sweep of my tongue and the girl goes up like she’s a tinderbox and I’m the match. She threads her fingers through my hair, fisting her hands around the strands and I’m caught off guard as she tugs my head back. I meet her gaze, my mouth slightly open, fighting back a smile at her audacity, and she does something that sets a blaze burning in the pit of my belly: she stands on her tiptoes and she flicks my top lip with the tip of her tongue, licking at me like I’m the foam on top of a fucking chai latte.

  “Oh, you did not just do that,” I tell her. “You did not.” I grab her by the waist and lift her, and she cries out in surprise. God, I could get used to that sound. I’d gladly coax that startled little yelp out of her every damn fucking day and still want to hear it all over again. Her legs wrap around my waist. I carry her around the other side of the telescope, too pleased for words when she sees the nest of blankets I arranged there for us before she arrived and she smiles.

  “Presumptuous,” she whispers.

  “Prepared,” I fire back. “It was raining. I didn’t want you catching a cold in the middle of summer when I stripped you bare.” I figured after what went down between us last night that there was a chance I’d get to have her again, but I wasn’t banking on it. I was telling the truth when I said I just wanted to make sure she was warm. I knew, the second I opened that door and saw her standing there in the rain, hair dripping wet, her big brown eyes full of surprise and relief, that I wasn’t going to be able to keep my hands to myself, though.

  Fuck, she is pure perfection. I set her down on the blankets, brushing her hair away from her face, and the vision of her lying there beneath me, her nipples stiff and poking through the thin material of her t-shirt, pulls the air right out of my lungs.

  I’m not supposed to have this. I’m not supposed to feel this way. I’ve become so accustomed to the knowledge that I’ll be bargained off like a poker chip by my father at some point that I haven’t let myself imagine what it would be like to actually care about someone. It seemed like a futile exercise. And now here I am, kneeling over a goddess, about to feast on her, and my stupid heart’s doing all kinds of unexpected gymnastics. The thing about gymnastics is that you need training to land the moves correctly, and I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I’m probably going to wind up breaking something far more painful than a bone.

  I try to be careful when I tug up her t-shirt, but I’m not very good at careful. My hands weren’t built for it. She gasps as I rip the damp fabric from her body. I have my own shirt unbuttoned and discarded in a heap on the floor in no time. Shoes toed off. Pants kicked aside. Carina already took her shoes and socks off, soaking as they were, so only her jeans and her underwear remain. She hikes her hips up for me so I can peel the sodden denim from her beautiful fucking legs, and then—

  —then I stop what I’m doing, and I just stare at her. “Holy shit, Carrie. You are the most incredible thing I have ever seen.” The compliment falls so short of what I really want to say, but I’ve been rendered stupid. Her tits, straining against the burnt orange lace of her bra, are phenomenal. The creamy swell of her skin overflows beneath the lace, the deep blushed pink of her nipple peeking through the gaps, making my dick throb between my legs. Her panties are tiny and black, the material cutting high up to her hipbones, and I want to rip them off with my goddamn teeth.

  I prowl up her body, my cock officially aching now, straining against my boxers. It’s begging to be put to use, but I’m in no rush. I want to feast on her and fucking enjoy her. I want her panting, and begging, and writhing, and that’s going to take time. She lost her virginity yesterday. She’s still going to be sore. I have no expectat
ions of her riding me like a porn star.

  Does it make me a perverted, sick fuck that her innocence turns me on? Yeah, sure it does. I don’t fucking care. I’m not ashamed to admit it: the fact that I’m the only guy she’s ever been with makes me feel like a king. A heads-up would have been nice yesterday, but I’ve moved on from that now. My dick is the only dick she’s ever taken. My mouth is the only mouth that’s ever tasted her. My fingers are the only fingers that have ever dipped inside her.

  I made her mine in so many different ways yesterday. The primal, neanderthal part of my brain likes that. It approves so very fucking much. She sucks in a sharp breath when I lower my hips letting the weight of my cock butt up against her clit through her panties.

  I wait before I apply any more pressure. “That okay?” Fuck, my voice is so rough, it sounds like I smoked two packs of Marley Reds before I left the house to meet her.

  Carina nods, eyes wide, pupils blown. Carefully, she places her hands on my chest, her palms resting on my pecs, and she’s so hesitant and shy that I have to bite back a satisfied snarl. She wants me, but she’s still a little intimidated by my size and my weight, resting on top of her. God help me, but I’m evil for enjoying the little spark of panic I see in her eyes. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I’m okay. It—” She swallows, and I’m mesmerized by the muscles in the column of her throat working. “It feels good.”

  Tender-hearted Carrie. So wide-eyed. So naïve.

  She’s everything good in the world.

  I’m a sick and twisted, dirty motherfucker. I’m going to wind up corrupting her, and what could be more beautiful? I get to watch this girl discover her weird. She’s going to go from inexperienced, shy and cautious, to bold, demanding and freaky right before my eyes. There’s no question about it. From her clothes, to her hair, to her personality, there’s nothing vanilla about this girl. She’s loud, and bright, and brave, and I can’t wait to witness her transformation.