The Living: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 3)

by Cassie James

  We’re there before I know it, Jude parking and then coming around to help me out. Our fingers intertwine as we walk into the building. I lean into his side, and he glances down at me with a questioning look. “Thank you for doing this for me, Jude,” I say sincerely, squeezing his hand with each word, hoping like hell he understands just what this means to me. “You didn’t have to do this—you didn’t have to go out on a limb like this for me.”

  “Don’t be daft, Piper.” On any other day, he might have spat the words with just enough venom to let me know he was annoyed with my self-consciousness. His voice is soft today, though, and my heart stutters when he reaches with his free hand to brush his thumb over my cheek gently. “I’ll always be here to help you.”

  He squeezes my hand one last time before letting go as we get close to a receptionist’s desk. I start to slow, but Jude does the opposite. He breezes right past the spluttering woman like he owns the place.

  And for just a second, I get lost in the realization that it’s not Jude Alton, senior at Rosewood Academy that’s leading me through the legal office. No, it’s Jude Alton, the Hollywood Teen Heartthrob dominating the “On the Rise” lists all over Hollywood. This is the son of David and Naomi Alton, Hollywood’s power couple.

  He doesn’t knock before stepping into the large corner office at the back of the floor. No, he waltzes through with a type of confidence and familiarity that baffles me. A woman that looks like she walked straight out of a fashion magazine climbs to her feet from a high-backed leather chair to greet us. She shakes Jude’s hand and then mine.

  “You must be Piper,” she says as she gives me a quick once-over.

  “Yes.” She indicates to the seats situated in front of her desk before dropping gracefully back into her executive chair. “I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, Miss…”

  “Anne Kessler,” she offers, a surprisingly warm smile stretching her full pink lips to their limits. It takes all of my self-control to not turn to Jude and stare at him in disbelief. This is the most ruthless lawyer in Los Angeles? She strikes me more as an incredibly well-dressed kindergarten teacher.

  But then she pulls a thick file from her desk drawer and the warm smile fades like a falling star. When she opens the file folder, my eyes catch on highlighter yellow tabs peppering the first page of the contract. Her fingers tap over the document, and my eyes follow the motion, my stomach jumping at the sight of several different colored tabs skirting the edge of the document, too. Her eyes are shrewd when I meet them once more.

  “This contract is…” she trails off for a moment, peering at me from between narrowed eyes. Her gaze sweeps over my body more slowly this time, like she’s looking for evidence of the fact that I’m a robot—or maybe she’s trying to see the real girl hiding behind the veneer of a robot, my inner voice taunts—before finally meeting my eyes again. She quirks an eyebrow at me before finally continuing. “It’s interesting, to say the least.”

  Jude huffs impatiently. “All we care about Anne is whether or not you can help us.”

  She looks from him to me. “Piper, have the Hawthornes shared any proprietary information about you or knowingly caused damage to your hardware?” I bristle at the way she says hardware, and her eyes flash dangerously in the natural light of her office when I shake my head no. Technically, the reset only damaged my software, and the reset had always been an option. And while proprietary information about me had been shared, it hadn’t been by the Hawthornes.

  “No, ma’am,” I answer after a moment of tense silence.

  She makes a noncommittal sound and shuffles through the papers again, her index finger tracing lines of text as she flips to pages she has bookmarked. I shoot Jude a worried glance as the sound of shuffling paper fills the otherwise silent office. He shrugs and nods in her direction, directing my attention back toward the one person who holds the fate of my future in her dainty, manicured hands.

  “It’ll take time,” she finally mutters before glancing back up at us. There’s fire in her eyes as she locks her gaze on mine. “But I want your case, Piper. There’s nothing I love more than an underdog with a good story. I’d like to show these people that you’re more than meets the eye.”

  As she shakes my hand, I remind myself it doesn’t matter if she’s only into my case because it would make one hell of a splash if the news came out about what we were doing. The why doesn’t matter so much as the how—and if she can figure out the how, I really won’t care why.

  5

  Tyler

  Piper lounges at the foot of my bed, scrolling through her phone instead of working on the homework she’s supposed to be doing. I sit quietly, content to watch her as she laughs at something she reads. This feels so damn normal that it makes my chest ache. In a good way. I wish I could hold on to this moment for forever.

  Her eyes dart my way and she catches me staring. “What?”

  I shrug, not answering her. I’m sure I’d sound like an idiot if I tried to put my thoughts into words right now. She looks back at her phone, the moment easily forgotten. I keep silently studying her, trying to memorize every detail. She looks so relaxed, the most relaxed she’s been since the failed reset. Since before that, even. It makes me dare to hope that things might actually turn out okay. There’s no one that deserves that more than she does, not after all the shit she’s been through over the past… God, I can’t believe it’s already been eight months.

  “You’re being a creep, Ty.” She doesn’t even look up from her phone. It’s amazing how she can feel my eyes on her like that. Even still, I don’t look away. “Seriously.” She rolls onto her side, propping her head up to meet my gaze. “What’s the deal, Ty? Kitty got your tongue?”

  I snort out a laugh. I’m pretty sure she meant that as a crude joke, but the delivery was pretty flat. It’s adorable how bad she can be at dirty humor. Heaven forbid she ever tries actual dirty talk, I might give myself a stroke trying not to laugh at her. Now that is one hell of a punchline to a dirty joke.

  She pouts at me, already reaching for her phone yet again. This time, I move my foot and give the offending device a neat kick across the bed. She shoots me a glare even as her lips start to turn up in the corners.

  “You don’t get to come hang out at my house to avoid Jackie if you’re just going to ignore me the whole time,” I tell her. She rolls her eyes, but there’s a playful glint in them. My dick twitches as her pink tongue darts out and wets her lips. The little minx knows exactly what she’s doing, too.

  “I’m sorry, Princess. I didn’t realize you needed to be the center of attention, too. I always thought that was more Jude’s M.O.”

  “Pipe,” I say, drawing out the nickname into an impossibly annoying whine. “Soccer’s over for the season and I’m not playing club soccer this year. What am I supposed to do, just come home and do nothing every day? And it’s not like you’re coming here with me and letting me do you. Fuck, I’m bored. Entertain me.”

  “You’re a big boy, entertain yourself.” I’m not sure she means it as erotically as it comes out, but my dick twitches again, and I’m pretty sure I am going to have to entertain myself in the shower the second she’s gone.

  A wicked smile crosses her lips as she sits up, fingers grazing the buttons of her shirt. She’s teasing me. And fuck do I love it. She takes advantage of my distraction to dive across the bed and grab her phone. I let my head fall back with a groan. Her and this damn phone.

  Piper laughs just seconds before she launches herself up the bed, elbowing me slightly in the side as she drapes herself half over me. My eyes land on the spot where her skirt has ridden up to show off most of her thighs. She’s got one settled over my leg, and I reach down to run my hand over her smooth skin. The mood goes from playful to charged in no time. I run my hand up to her waist and then flip us before she can realize what’s happening. I look down at her, pinned down to my bed, her eyes starting to droop already as she tilts her head for me to kiss her.
>
  I swoop down to capture her lips in a greedy kiss. She’s been to my house a handful of times since the pool incident, but this is the first time we’re alone, and all I can think about is that look on her face in the pool. Watching her come undone by Jude’s hands.

  I can’t believe that’s what I’m fucking thinking about right now.

  One thing I can say for certain, I never in a million years thought I’d ever get any kind of pleasure watching some other guy finger-fucking my girlfriend. Boy, was I wrong. It was so damned hot. Especially because while Jude was making her feel good, she was watching Brennan and me. Jacking off had never felt as good as it did with Piper as an audience. Even now, I could feel myself going rock hard picturing that look in her eyes as she watched me touch myself.

  I start to run my hand up Piper’s leg, more than happy to play now that I’ve gotten her attention away from the fucking phone for a minute. She stops my wrist with one hand and pushes at my chest with the other. I roll away from her with a groan. Dammit. So much for that particular brand of entertainment.

  She doesn’t let me get far before she throws her leg across mine. Suddenly, she’s straddling me, her fingers making short work of my shirt buttons. Yeah, I can get behind this.

  She runs her nails down my bare chest and I fucking shiver. “Let’s play a game.”

  I nod. God, yeah. Whatever she wants.

  “Twenty Questions?” she suggests. She smiles down at me in the most wicked way, but I’m helpless to do anything but nod right now as she sinks her nails into my pecs. “What were you thinking about… that made you hard?” She wiggles against me, as if she really needs to verify how hard I am right now. Her smile is teasing, but from the way her eyes cloud, I think she somehow knows exactly what I was thinking about. She just wants to make me say it.

  She’s fucking evil.

  “That’s not how you play Twenty Questions,” I protest, my breath coming out in stupid goddamn pants. I wrap my hands around her biceps and try to drag her down to cover my whole body with hers, but she doesn’t give an inch. Instead, she rolls her hips against me, forcing a groan out of my throat.

  She pushes herself up to her knees over me, eyes steady on mine as her fingers hover over the button at the bottom of her shirt.

  “What are you doing? You’re driving me crazy.” She’s got about two minutes before I say to hell with it and flip her over on this mattress. I love some good foreplay, but this is just too much and too goddamn slow.

  “I’m making up my own version of Twenty Questions. Since you’re so worried about the rules, apparently.” She laughs lightly. “For every truthful answer you give me, I’ll undo a button. Lie to me, and it’s game over. I’ll go home. Do you understand?” I nod easily. I don’t give a shit what kind of game she wants to play, not if it means she’s going to get naked for me. She smirks at how easily I give in. “Now, what were you thinking about, Tyler?”

  “The night in your pool.” She clenches her thighs, pulling her knees tight against my side as I groan. I’m on sensory fucking overload as I watch her slowly unfasten that one button.

  “About me jumping in?” She quirks an eyebrow, clearly enjoying toying with me like this.

  “No,” I manage to grind out as I reach for her thighs, yearning to run my hands over her skin. She slaps my hands away, though, fixing me with a hard stare as she moves her fingers to the next button on her top. I stare at that goddamn button as I grudgingly admit, “I was thinking about Jude touching you.”

  “Mmm,” she hums as she pops the button, revealing the waistband of her skirt and the barest glimpse of her taut stomach. “Were you thinking about how you and Bren touched yourselves while you watched him make me come?”

  I barely manage a strangled whisper. “Yes.” She pops another button.

  “You couldn’t help it, touching yourself while he was putting his fingers inside of me, could you?”

  My dick twitches in response to the filthy question. Holy fucking shit. Who the hell is this? Piper’s never tried to dirty talk before, and I think that’s a total fucking travesty because it might be the hottest fucking thing that’s ever happened to me. I was wrong to think she’d be bad at this. So, so wrong. I nod, answering her question, and she rewards me with another button and more of her creamy skin.

  “It turned you on.” It’s not a question, but I find myself nodding along anyway. Her lacy bra peeks out from behind the gaping shirt as she loosens another button. “You don’t know why it turned you on so much.” She undoes another button, not bothering to wait for me to nod or try to speak through my tight throat. “You’re curious about what would happen if we all fooled around like that again.”

  The smiles that stretches over her lips is goddamn dazzling. I have no idea why the fuck she even bothered with her game of cat and mouse if she already had the answer she wanted. But then she’s undoing the last button, letting her shirt fall open and giving me an eyeful of her heaving tits as she leans forward.

  She plants a hand on the bed on either side of my head, the lacy front of her pink bra scratching against my chest as she whispers, “Good boy,” against my lips. And hell, I hate how much I like the sound of that.

  6

  Piper

  Over time, the one thing I’d come to expect with Roman was that he was incredibly no fuss. He moved through the house almost silently. So quiet most of the time you could forget he was even there. Which is exactly why it scares the shit out of me when he knocks on my bedroom door once before sticking his head in my room.

  “Fuck!” I yell as I jolt up from where I’m lounging on my bed. His lips turn down in an obvious sign of disapproval. I hate that it makes my stomach lurch knowing I’ve disappointed him. I’m still mad at him for not stopping Jackie when he had the chance. But still, some insane part of me hates to see him look at me like I’ve done something wrong. “Sorry. You just scared me. I didn’t realize you were home.”

  Having a night in the house with just me and Dad is a weird and rare fucking occurrence. I don’t know, maybe it happened more when his real daughter was alive. But it hasn’t happened at all since I’ve been here. Jackie’s got some event in the Valley tonight, I just assumed he’d be there with her.

  “Did you want dinner?” I breathe a soft sigh of relief as I realize he’s going to let the cursing slide.

  It’s hard to believe this man is really Jackie Hawthorne’s husband. He’s so different from her, and everything I know makes me think that’s the way it’s always been. He’s the only member of the family that seemed to have any genuinely fond memories of Piper when he filled out his questionnaires. Silly things. Like sneaking away for ice cream together that time Jackie put the house on a dairy-free diet.

  It makes something in me hurt a little, knowing he shared those things with her, but he’s wanted almost nothing to do with me. Some of it I know is just leftover hurt from 2.0. She wanted so bad to comfort these people who were supposed to be her parents.

  And while I don’t share that particular sentiment, it still feels like there’s a bond missing between us that I crave somehow. I can’t quite explain it—but it feels like we should be more connected than we are.

  In a different reality, one where I wasn’t a replacement he didn’t want, and Jackie wasn’t breathing down everyone’s neck, I like to think we might have had the chance at an honest-to-god good relationship. Then again, in an alternate reality where I wasn’t meant to replace his daughter, I wouldn’t have existed at all.

  Wanting to itch this sudden craving for his fatherly attention that I can’t seem to ignore, I nod and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. “Are you cooking?”

  He grimaces. “Apple Pan?” he says, instead. It takes only a split second for the words to click in my mind. There’s a memory—well, a photo. It’s older, not that recent. The little dive restaurant is a definite hole-in-the-wall, the kind of place I wouldn’t expect Piper to have gone. But that’s the place he’s talking about. The na
me is big on the sign hanging over the counter in her picture. And there are comments joking with her friends about how she’d only ever eat at a place like that for her dad. How it’s a place he used to go while he was in college. How it’s the only place she’d be caught dead eating a burger.

  They’re Piper’s memories with him. But now he’s offering to share the place with me. “Sounds great,” I answer him honestly. “But you should probably change first.”

  He glances down at his work clothes. An expensive and well-tailored suit that makes him look every bit the multi-million dollar real estate agent that he is. He laughs, seeing exactly what I’m pointing out. He can’t go to a place like Apple Pan dressed like that without turning more than a few heads.

  “Meet me at the car in fifteen?”

  “Sure thing,” I manage to tell him, even though a part of me stops breathing when I remember the last time we were in the car together. But Jackie’s not here. I’m pretty damn sure I’m safe with Roman as long as she’s not involved.

  A long moan fills the air. Holy crap, that was me. This pie is just so damn delicious. Roman laughs as I shove another bite into my mouth even though I’ve barely finished chewing the last one. He doesn’t really have any room to laugh, not when he’s stuffing a massive bite of burger in his mouth. It’s a little gross, honestly, the way we’re eating right now. But Dad looks so happy as he shoves a fistful of fries in his mouth that all I can do is shake my head and let out a laugh of my own.

  Jackie would never be caught dead in a place like this, and my heart hurts a little for Dad. It’s clear that he loves this place, that it’s been important to him for a long, long time, and that—once upon a time—he loved being able to share it with his daughter. It wasn’t like he could bring his wife here now that his daughter is gone.