Noble Savages: A Dark High School Bully Romance Box Set

by Rina Kent

  Because he’d break it without a second thought.

  “Camden—”

  “But,” he squeezed my jaw tighter. “Last night… all I could think about was the hurt on your face, and about Hunter telling me that he saw you crying.” His grip relaxed and he smoothed his thumb over my chin. “I don’t want to break you, Eden. I just like to fight you, and I like it when you fight me. But I’ll stop… I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t even you,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

  “Then what was it?”

  This was it. Warning bells sounded in my mind, red flags raised, my shield tried it’s best to come up between us. If I told him what mattered to me, he’d know how to destroy me. No more rumors, no more jokes. He wouldn’t need them. He’d have real ammunition.

  My eyes were dry, but inside I was drowning.

  “I’m losing my chair. I’m not eligible to play at the fall concert. If I don’t get my math grade up, I won’t be able to play at the winter concert. It could hurt my chances of getting into Berklee.” I took a shaky breath. “I can’t let that happen.”

  My eyes were still closed, but I felt Camden pull back. Our noses no longer touched. His minty breath no longer tempted me to do things I knew I shouldn’t.

  “Eden.”

  I tentatively opened my eyes and stared into a pool of color that reflected something I couldn’t quite define.

  “Let’s go study.”

  Cam

  She was staring up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Her lips were twitching, as if she were reciting something. All she had written was the problem number.

  “What are you doing?”

  She jumped, and her eyes shot to me. “Cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse… right?”

  I bit one side of my cheek to keep from smiling, but Eden caught my amusement anyway. Her eyes narrowed, and she fixed her gaze on the opened textbook in front of her. I waited a minute while she stared at the words on the page to see if she had any idea where to go next.

  Nope.

  “You know you don’t have to memorize it, right?”

  “I’m not memorizing the textbook. I’m just thinking.”

  I chuckled. “No, I mean cosine. Just remember SOHCAHTOA and you’ll be able to figure it out.”

  She glanced up, confusion wrinkling her forehead. “What?”

  I sighed. “SOHCAHTOA. It’s an anagram. Some old hippy, caught another hippy, tripping on acid… we can make up a dirtier one if you want.”

  I gave her a wink, but my smile faded when she still didn’t catch on. She was staring at me with her brows pinched. She looked like I was trying to sell her drugs.

  “Look.” I scooted over to sit next to her on the bed and took her pencil. After flipping to a blank page, I scribbled the letters and wrote the meaning of each one. SOH= sine, opposite, hypotenuse. CAH= cosine, adjacent, hypotenuse. TOA= tangent, opposite, adjacent.

  Her eyes widened, and she flipped through her notebook. She stopped on a page and read over it for a minute. “Holy shit.”

  Sure enough, the anagram was written right there.

  “This was one of the days I had ISS… I didn’t know what it meant.”

  Guilt flickered, but I said nothing. That was the day Eden learned I’d sent that picture around the school. The day she’d stormed into my calc class in a fit of rage, or maybe it had been desperation. Whatever it was, it’d been my fault. If I’d known what it’d lead to, how much orchestra meant to her… I’m not sure I would’ve done it at all.

  The crushing look in Eden’s eyes when she’d talked about losing her chair reminded me of Hunter last year when he’d gotten a concussion and had to sit out the rest of a game. It’d torn him up, and I’d never understood how anyone could have that level of passion for something. It was just a game. In this case, it was just a concert.

  But to Eden, it was everything.

  She wrote some numbers down in her notebook and grabbed her calculator. Her movements were jerky, like she was excited. Her teeth sunk down on her bottom lip, and after she typed into the calculator, she held it up for me to see. “Is this right?”

  I took it and double checked her work. “Yep.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, a heavy sigh brushing over her lips. She closed her eyes, looking a thousand pounds lighter. When she opened them, she turned to me and smiled. “Thank you.”

  Two words I never thought I’d hear out of her mouth. But fuck, they sounded sweet. I stared at her lips a little too long before pointing to the textbook. “Come on. Do another.”

  With a nod, she went back to it. The problems were just for practice, so once Eden got the hang of it, we moved on to the next concept. Eden was… behind. By a lot. Several times she got frustrated enough that it’s like her mind shut off and I had to pull her back. My guess was that was what kept her from learning this shit in the first place.

  It didn’t matter, though. There were many things people might’ve found unpleasant about me, but the one thing I did have was patience. I waited for her to realize how important this test was, and she did. Every time. She huffed and shoved the textbook away from her only to bring it back, avoiding my pointed stare.

  She was beautiful when she was angry. When she was fighting, even if it was herself. Her cheeks flushed and frustrated fingers mussed her hair. Her nostrils flared. Fuck, it was sexy.

  I was lost in thought, staring at her parted lips, when she glanced up at me from the calculator. She handed it over, looking noticeably more confident than when we’d started studying several hours ago.

  I checked her answer before closing the notebook and tossing it to the side.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, wrinkling her brow and reaching across the bed for the discarded notebook. I pressed my hand over hers when she made contact with it, and her eyes shot to me.

  “That’s enough for today. You can come back over tomorrow if you want to.”

  “Camden, I have to—”

  “You will,” I said with certainty. She was getting it now. Maybe she could stand to study a little longer, but I couldn’t stand having her on my bed one more minute. Not with her nose in a textbook.

  Study time was over.

  Her throat moved as she swallowed, and she drew her hand away from mine. This was the time when she could tell me she wanted to go home. She could get up, leave, and even come back tomorrow, and I’d act like nothing happened.

  But I wanted her to stay.

  “Thanks for helping me,” she said, closing her textbook and leaning off the bed to tuck it into her bag. Her sweater pulled up, exposing the tanned skin of her back, and the tip of purple panties. My cock began to harden, but another thought occurred to me.

  “Are you adopted?”

  Brother’s hair was light. Mom was blonde. Stepdad was, well, stepdad. Eden’s hair was nearly black, and her skin tone was many shades darker than theirs.

  She straightened and swatted her ponytail over her shoulder before turning to me. No emotion showed on her face. “No. My biological father is Cuban.”

  She said it like that was a question she got asked a lot.

  “Your last name is—”

  “My family’s last name is Thompson. I’m a part of my family. We had it changed when I was ten. Is this of interest to you?”

  Her tone was clipped, but still, her expression didn’t change. Sensitive subject? Well, well, well, the girl with the perfect family was a little dysfunctional after all.

  “Where’s your real dad?”

  Now her eyes narrowed. “At home. With my real mom and my real brother.” She stood and ran her palms along her sweater to smooth the material. “Which I need to get to.”

  “Wait,” I said, standing and blocking her way to the door. “I’m sorry. I was just curious.”

  “Curious?”

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced around my room, pausing when she got to my desk. I followed her gaze. No one was ever here, so I didn’t think much
about it, but I guessed the three monitor system might’ve been a head scratcher.

  “Where are your posters?”

  “What?”

  She held out her palms to gesture toward the room. “Your football posters. Girls in bikinis. Cars. Where are they? I mean, you’re Camden Knight, right? Why is there a bookshelf with classic literature instead of magazines? Why does your computer look like something out of a security office?”

  I glanced around trying to see what she saw. The walls were empty, but… so? So what if I liked computers, liked to read?

  “Is that fucking with the dumb jock image you want me to have?”

  “Nope.” She shrugged. “Just curious. Hey, where are your parents?”

  “That’s enough, Eden.”

  “What?” She laughed dryly. “I thought we were learning about each other?”

  A sharp pang pierced my stomach, and the skin on my face stretched as it hardened. She fucking knew. She’d seen me. The question was when. Was it today because I invited her to my room, or was it before that?

  I’d brought girls to my house before. I’d used the fact that my parents had money to my advantage. They’d drool and gape in awe as soon as we pulled up to the house, and by the time I got them to the guest bedroom, my pants were around my ankles and their mouths were on me. It was so easy. Too easy. I wondered if I’d brought them in here, if they would’ve had the same questions Eden did, but I doubted it. All they saw was a football star and money. None of them saw me.

  This was my space, and I’d invited Eden into it.

  Why?

  “Sorry,” Eden said, uncrossing her arms and letting them dangle at her sides.

  I shook off the blow and rolled my neck. “For what?”

  I walked to the bed and flopped down on it, leaning my back against the headboard and hanging one foot over the edge. I closed my eyes and tried to appear as relaxed as possible. “Don’t you need to go?”

  She sighed and a few moments later the bed shifted with her weight. I opened my eyes and peered at her, sitting on the edge with her hands in her lap. She was staring at me, sadness in her expression. No, not sadness… pity.

  “Eden, seriously, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but stop. My parents are out of town this weekend. They’ll be back on Monday.”

  “It must be lonely.”

  A bitter laugh rumbled my chest. “It’s Saturday. I’ll be at Hunter’s tonight, surrounded by my friends. Where will you be?”

  “They don’t even know who you are, though, do they? That’s what I meant. It must be lonely to have to hide yourself like you do.”

  My eyes widened and I gave my head a shake. “You’re reading so much into nothing.”

  “How many times have you referred to me as a band geek?”

  “What?”

  She twisted to face me fully and brought one leg up on the bed. “You’re the one that photoshopped me. I thought you’d paid someone to do it, but you didn’t.” She gestured toward my desk as if that made it obvious. I guess it kind of did.

  “You like computers. You like math. You like freakin’ Shakespeare. All I’ve ever heard about you was that you liked football, and yet…” She glanced around the room. “No football.”

  “Just because I don’t hang up tacky posters doesn’t mean—”

  “Just because my skin is different from my family’s doesn’t mean I have issues over it, either. Just because my biological father is gone doesn’t mean I don’t have a dad. It doesn’t mean anything, just like your stuff ‘doesn’t mean anything’, so why don’t we respect each other’s privacy and not poke?”

  My mouth hung open to tell her she was wrong, but after a few seconds, I let out the breath I’d been holding and nodded.

  I rested my head against the headboard and waited for her to leave. There was an awkward tension in the room, and it was difficult to pinpoint which one of us it originated from. Probably both. We were exposed to each other, our insecurities hiding behind a curtain that’d been pulled back.

  She didn’t make any move to go. She sat there staring at her lap, picking at a fray in her jeans. I’d gotten my wish that she’d stay, but now I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  Careful what you wish for.

  “Does Paige ever talk about me?”

  I let her words register before I sat up straighter. I scooted toward her on the bed and braced my palms on the edge. That was why she wasn’t leaving. There was more she wanted to know.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged. “Can you just answer the question?”

  “Leilani and Jade are bitches. They like to talk shit, and they pressure other people to do it. So, yeah, sometimes she talks about you.”

  “What does she say?”

  I searched my memory for specific things, not that I would’ve told any of them to Eden. She was making it clear Paige’s betrayal hurt her, and I wouldn’t add to it, but I was curious myself. The disloyalty between Eden’s friends was baffling. If Sebastian wasn’t trying to get with her, he’d have turned on her too.

  Now that I thought about it, Paige didn’t say a whole lot. She mostly just laughed along. She’d told me things because I’d asked. Paige had confirmed that Eden was a virgin, never had a boyfriend, played the cello, hated the jocks and thought she was better than us. Paige had told the others that last part as well, and that’s what had really gotten them going. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was true, but it was.

  I wasn’t mad at Eden or anything. She didn’t know us, and there were groups we saw as beneath us too. Like band geeks for example… and computer geeks.

  “She says you’re a very good girl.”

  Eden huffed and stopped picking at her jeans. “Right, and I’m sure she put it in those words.”

  “Does it matter?”

  She waited a few seconds before shaking her head. “I guess not.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I told you Trey cheats on her every chance he gets?”

  “No,” she said, turning to face me. “It wouldn’t.”

  Of course it wouldn’t. She wasn’t Leilani. I couldn’t count the number of times someone had told me Leilani and I would make a great couple. Or even the number of times Leilani had said it herself. We went to every function together, we had sex on occasion, but there was nothing there. No matter how much she wanted there to be.

  Eden was Leilani’s opposite.

  I cupped her face and leaned in, waiting right in front of her lips to see if she’d close the distance this time.

  She did.

  Soft lips tickled mine before she pressed herself into me. My other hand reached up to cradle her face, and a bolt of lightning tore down my spine.

  It felt like this last time. Like I was a wolf smelling blood. A need erupted inside of me, and I pushed myself harder against her. My tongue prodded between her lips, demanding access to her mouth. I made my way through with a bit of resistance and tasted her, my cock hardening in response.

  She was a little awkward and hesitant, which made the fact that I was her first kiss make sense.

  I was her first kiss.

  I urged her back on the bed and climbed on top of her, running my hands up her sides and pulling her sweater up to the edge of her bra.

  She gripped my hands and broke the kiss with a gasp. “Wait.”

  No, was my first reaction, but I let her guide my hands away.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Why?”

  She swallowed before taking a shaky breath. “Because we’re not dating. We don’t even like each other.”

  I reared back and glared at her. “Eden, I fucking like you. I told you that.”

  She leaned on her elbows and peered at me. Her eyes were filled with want. I could see it. She fucking wanted this.

  “You don’t even know me.”

  I placed my hands on her shoulders and eased her back to the mattress. “So let me get to know you.”

  “That’s not the
way it works.”

  My eyes ducked to the smooth skin of her stomach. It moved with her breaths and my gaze lowered to her hip bones, peeking out of the top of her jeans. Saliva pooled in my mouth, and I inhaled a sharp breath.

  She wasn’t pushing me off of her. She wasn’t acting as if she were uncomfortable.

  She wanted this.

  A thought occurred to me and I tried to inject some tact into the question.

  “Have you ever given yourself an orgasm?”

  Completely fucking tactless.

  My eyes flicked to her face and noted the red tinting her cheeks.

  “Yes or no?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  I shifted myself lower so that my mouth was at her waist. I nipped the skin above her hip bone and ran a trail of kisses across her stomach, pausing just below her belly button.

  “Camden,” she said, placing her hand on my head and weakly urging me off. If she thought saying my name would get me to stop, she needed a better method.

  “You’ll like it,” I promised, popping the button on her jeans. “We don’t have to fuck. I’m just gonna make you feel good.”

  “I’m not a slut,” she blurted, probably more for herself than for me.

  “Eden, look at me.”

  She propped herself onto her elbows and peered down at me. She was aroused. It was apparent in her flushed cheeks and dilated pupils, but there was something else that looked a lot like shame.

  “Liking sex doesn’t make you a slut. It makes you human.”

  “Really?” She snorted. “Because you didn’t seem to think that before when you were telling the whole school what a—”

  “I lied to them. I always lie to them, just like you said. But I swear, I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”

  She shook her head. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  I curled my fingers under her panties and prepared to pull them down, but she squirmed and gripped my hands to yank them away.

  “I said no!”