by L.J. Shen
“Don’t confuse yourself for someone strong.” He chuckled. “You will do nothing but suck my cock and cater to my every need this next semester, Good Girl. And fuck, do I intend to leave you with some nice memories and a few art tips.”
“Drop dead.”
“Soon, but not soon enough for you.”
“Kiss me,” I quipped, starting another mind game and trying to regain some of the power in our exchange.
His thick eyebrows dove into a scowl.
“Scared to catch feelings?” I smiled sweetly. “Don’t worry. I won’t beg for mo—”
He crashed his mouth down on mine like a storm, hungry and desperate and full of lust, and he grabbed my hair in his fist so I couldn’t jerk back and deny him the kiss. His tongue slicked over mine, giving it a playful flick, a been missing ya.
I moaned into his mouth, and he released my wrists, cupping both my cheeks and deepening our kiss. I used one hand to rake my fingernails along his back over his shirt, trying to leave marks. A deep chuckle seeped from the back of his throat.
“Peace Sells” by Megadeth played distortedly in both our ears through the still-working CD player.
Vaughn and I hated each other, but our bodies didn’t seem to share the sentiment.
What he failed to notice while threading his fingers through my hair, while devouring my tongue and conquering my mouth, was that I slipped my free hand under my mattress, retrieving a little pocketknife. As his lips moved from mine to my neck, making me drunk and delirious with need, I put the dagger to his throat, the blade poking his flesh. His Adam’s apple didn’t even bob when the cold metal met it.
I felt his grin against my skin, his teeth running along my jawline, teasing me lazily.
“You gonna kill me, Good Girl?”
I poked the dagger harder against his throat, my pulse exploding like fireworks. I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, and it remained steady and slow. Maybe Vaughn really was a psychopath. I’d never met someone so cool and unaffected in my life.
“Yes, if you don’t quit taunting me. We’re going to play by my rules on my home field.”
“Wanna bet?”
“You hooked Arabella up with the assistant’s job. You even got her daddy to shell out some money to make it happen. Why? You hate her.”
“I hate you more.”
“Again—why? I haven’t done anything to you. I kept your secret.”
Your stupid, meaningless secret, I wanted to add.
“You were a little pushover mouse, which turned me off. Now you’re a mouthy little shithead. That version of you pisses me off, too. But I don’t think you’re capable of digging this knife in, sweetheart.”
“Don’t try me,” I warned with a shaky voice.
I’d never hurt anyone before, but I knew Vaughn could bring me there. He always made me do crazy things. I’d stitched him up. Stabbing him seemed like coming full circle.
“You need a bitch to bring you down. I hope she’ll stab you while she’s at it,” Knight had said to Vaughn on the last day of school.
He wasn’t wrong.
Vaughn finally detached his lips from me, elevating his head just enough to look me in the eye in the dark. He was so heart-stoppingly beautiful, I couldn’t breathe.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I told you to do your worst. Play along,” he enunciated.
Lord. He practically invited me to hurt him. And I was going to do it. I rearranged the angle of the blade away from his Adam’s apple, picking a place where I couldn’t see or feel the bulge of a vein. When he stayed silent and still, I poked. I didn’t stop until a trail of thin blood began to run down into his black shirt, like a tiny river. I held my breath, watching the cut in his throat, mesmerized.
Before I knew what was happening, Vaughn had snatched the knife from my hand and pointed it to my neck, smiling politely.
“My turn. Now suck on it good. I know how much you like my blood. Arabella and Alice don’t call you Drusilla for nothing.”
I swallowed hard, but made no move toward his wound.
He was right, of course.
Drawing and sucking his blood turned me on, and that mortified me.
I knew I was going to get off on it, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“Nah. I think I’ll wait to see who cuts deeper,” I heard myself say.
I couldn’t believe those words had left my mouth. I was obviously drunk on our kiss. I didn’t want him to cut me. And I had no doubt he would. He was Vaughn bloody Spencer, for goodness’ sake.
Literally Vaughn bloody Spencer. And it was all my doing.
He poked the blade a little into my flesh, but stopped before it even hurt. “Fuck, you’re crazy.” He laughed, his eyes lighting up as if the revelation relieved him.
He now had a partner in crime. I didn’t say anything. Just waited for him to return the favor, so to speak. Then I felt something I hadn’t felt either of the first two times he’d kissed me.
His erection pressing against my stomach.
I was terrified and elated all at once. My heart jerked everywhere in my chest without a rhythm or particular pace.
I’d seen him hard before, kind of, when Arabella sucked him off, although he never did come. He was the least horny bloke I’d ever met. Vaughn’s eyebrows pinched together, and both our gazes skated down to the point where our bodies met, his groin against my belly button.
My heart. My wild, desolate heart couldn’t take all the adrenaline. My body, however, was coming alive in a way I’d never experienced before. Blooming, warming up, and begging for permission to grind against him.
“That,” he said, still pointing a knife to my neck, “never happened before. I usually…control them. Sorry.”
Did he just apologize for getting hard when we were pressed against each other? I wanted to laugh, but bit down my smile.
“You’re fine.”
“Unfortunately, so are you.” He looked back at me, a faraway, slightly shocked expression on his marble face.
“That sounds dangerously close to a compliment.” I couldn’t help but grin. Vaughn never said anything about how girls looked. He was perpetually immune.
“Suck my blood,” he said wryly, changing the subject.
“Will you stab me if I don’t?”
“Your neck is too pretty to slit. I could cut other things, though.” He ran the knife down to the center of my shirt, poking the hem.
My eyes flared, but I pretended to keep my cool. He tugged at the fabric, ripping my shirt open in the middle. My breasts were bare in front of him now, my nipples erect and pointing expectantly at his face.
Touch us. Bite us. Hell, put a ring on us.
Everything was swollen, with sex in the air. What was up with my idiotic body? This person and I hated each other. Tomorrow morning, we wouldn’t say hi in the hall.
“Suck. My. Blood,” he repeated, hovering over me. A drop of said blood fell directly to my mouth. I refused to taste it, pressing my lips together.
His hand moved between us, about to cut off my jammies. The knife trailed along the slit of my pussy through the fabric, and I shivered all over. I snatched his wrist.
“Christ,” I snapped.
I jerked him by the hem of his shirt, hungrily sucking on his blood. I didn’t know what it was about it that drove me mad—the fact that it was hot, metallic, and sweet against his cold, stony features, or the idea that I’d done this to him. I’d hurt the guy who managed to destroy everyone and everything in his way. I felt wetness pooling between my legs and found myself rubbing against him without meaning to, sucking harder on his throat and moaning.
I wanted him to touch me, and I didn’t care that I’d regret it tomorrow.
I wasn’t doing it to make him feel good. I wanted him to make me feel good.
And tomorrow, when the reality of Arabella, Pope, Vaughn, and me inevitably crashed over my head, at least I’d have one good memory to cling to.
; I took his hand and guided it between us, shoving it into my jammies with a lump in my throat as I continued suckling. His hand froze when it reached my waistline, refusing to dip farther. I frowned, peeking at his face. My lips felt puffy and sensitive.
“I want you to do this,” I confirmed, in case he needed verbal consent. He just stared at me, like I was a complete stranger.
“I don’t do that,” he said after a beat, his voice thick and strange.
“You don’t do what?”
His nostrils flared, the vein in his square jaw tightening in annoyance.
“Any of that.”
“Are you a virgin?” I joked, popping a brow.
He snorted in disgust, unplastering himself from me and standing up. It all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to decipher his reaction. He rearranged his cock inside his black jeans, grabbing his phone and a joint from my nightstand. Obviously, the twat had made himself comfortable before he woke me up. Again.
Only this time, I hadn’t pretended to sleep. No. I’d let him use me in my bed.
Yeah, you really showed him this time, Lenny.
Daft, daft girl.
Shame flooded me as reality trickled in.
I’d asked him to finger me.
And he said no.
I sat up, crossing my arms over my chest.
“If you come here again, I’ll aim the knife at a vein, and I’ll dig much deeper.”
“More for you to suck on.” He shrugged carelessly, lighting his joint and tightening the laces of his boots. He didn’t even spare me a look.
“Or maybe I’ll just kill you next time. No one’s going to miss you. Maybe your mum,” I mused, snapping my lips together.
“Doubtful,” he spoke with the lit joint in his mouth, tucking his Zippo into his back pocket. “But if you kill me, I’ll kill you, too. So we can join the Tinsall ghosts. Isn’t your room the very place she killed her husband? Kinda fucked up, GG.”
How did he know about the ghosts?
About my room?
He’d only been here for summer session. Once. And he hadn’t talked to anyone.
My expression probably gave away my shock. He smiled his rare, patronizing grin that drove me to murder.
“Fairhurst ran his mouth about your daddy’s little playground. You grew up here, but I know secret places you would never dream of finding yourself. If you play your cards right, and prove to know how to suck a cock, I might show you some of them—just as long as you don’t confuse this for a relationship, or expect me to get you off. I don’t get people off. Other people’s pleasure turns me off.”
He said the words so frankly, I almost thought he was joking. He advanced to the door, calm and serious.
“You expect me to make you come, yet you won’t make me come?” I asked when he had his back to me, at the threshold to my room.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why any girl would agree to that. Yet dozens of girls at All Saints High had. I’d witnessed it myself.
“Slow learner, but she’s finally getting it.”
He didn’t bother stopping before he slammed my door shut.
The next day, I managed to get rid of my parents, who had come along to help me settle in at Carlisle.
My dad went hunting with a bunch of his rich-ass buddies on the outskirts of wherever-the-fuck we were in Berkshire. Mom was busy furnishing my room and spending time with her GBFF (gay BFF), Fairhurst.
I started my morning at six o’clock with a jog to let off some steam. Discipline was going to be the key to surviving this bitch for six months, and I had plenty of it. After a quick shower, a coffee, and a smoke, I picked up the two keys to the cellar where I kept my work in progress and hit the studio. Apart from Edgar, I wasn’t going to let anyone see it before it was done. That was the opposite of the point of having a prestigious internship, but fuck it, I didn’t come here to learn.
I came here to avenge.
Getting into my studio was a tad harder than breaking into the Pentagon. I’d put an entire system in place to ensure complete privacy. To start with, the room used to be the castle’s pantry—cold, dry, and underground—a perfect cave to keep marble and stone. There were two doors, and therefore two locks, so no one could see what I was working on.
And I was working goddamn hard to make sure mine was the best art piece.
I picked up a drill and began wrestling with the sculpture, stone dust gathering at my feet. Metric’s “Help I’m Alive” blasted through my earbuds as I worked. The shape of the statue was starting to sharpen and take on three dimensions. I’d thought about this piece more than I liked to admit while I was fucking around in the Hamptons, playing normal with my extended family for a few weeks earlier this summer. I’d ended up sending it straight to England, because I couldn’t stand to look at it, and I knew there was a good chance people would be able to see it if I worked on it there.
I penciled reference marks, cut, carved, shaped, and polished the sculpture the entire day, knowing Lenora was probably somewhere upstairs, wandering aimlessly, trying to figure out where the fuck I was. She was free to do whatever she wanted with her mornings and afternoons. I wasn’t going to use her services, unless her lips counted as service when they wrapped around my cock every night.
As long as I kept tabs on her, she was good to roam free and play with her garbage.
I tried to push last night from my thoughts—specifically the part where she’d pushed my hand into her jammies. I thought I’d handled it fine. Though she did suspect I was a virgin.
Fuck.
Did it matter how I handled it? She was a fucking no one. Why would I care?
Okay, Vagina McPussyson. Deal with this eternal question after you’re done working.
At around six pm, I heard a knock on the outer cellar door. The way it was designed, there was a cobblestone stairway with a door at the top and another one when you reached the bottom of the stairs. Wiping the sweat and dust from my brow, I turned around and fished for the keys in my pocket. I didn’t wear a protective suit, goggles, or a mask while sculpting. If my lungs were going to collapse at twenty-five from being filled with stone, weed, and tar, so be it.
I opened the first door, and when I reached the top of the stairs, I pressed an elbow against the second.
“Secret word?” I growled.
If it was Good Girl, who’d somehow found me, I was going to chain her to her bedpost and have her suck a gallon of my blood as punishment, watching as she squirmed in embarrassment as she did.
“Bugger off,” I heard Edgar Astalis growl from the other side. The secret word we’d agreed on was Michelangelo, but bugger off seemed more fitting.
I’d told the old man he could monitor my work when we’d agreed I’d take this gig. Someone had to make sure I wasn’t going to present a twelve-foot marble dick at Tate Modern six months from now.
I unlocked the second door, motioning for him to come downstairs.
When we stood in front of the sculpture, he frowned.
“I’d like to make one thing clear,” he said, staring at the general shape I’d worked my ass off on all day.
“I know you made things difficult for Lenny in high school. And for the most part, I turned a blind eye to it, because I believe it is our job to pave our own way in life. But if you try to hurt my daughter—or do it unintentionally, for that matter—I will make sure no gallery in Europe will ever work with you. Am I understood?”
“Perfectly.” I shoved my fists into my pockets, all calm. I took his threat in stride—not necessarily because I didn’t plan on hurting her, but because I wasn’t counting on getting work as an artist. I sculpted because I liked doing it. I could work as a roofer and be perfectly content.
He shook his head.
“The heads are disproportionate. The composition feels wrong. You might have to start from scratch.”
“Fuck that.”
“Watch your language. And as I said—you might. This is not up to par with what I’
m used to from you. You’ve put your skill into this, but where’s the rest of you? You need to bleed your heart into this piece.”
I don’t have a heart. “Working on it,” I said instead, ignoring the fact that he was right.
I’d gotten sloppy, not because I lacked the talent or technique, but because staring at this statue was hard, and doing it justice was damn near impossible. The air was thinner at the top. The more successful you were, the more suffocating the expectations for your work became—another reason why artists were depressed all around.
His eyes roved the sculpture. It felt like he was ripping my guts open, poking at my organs.
He shook his head. “Work harder. Connect with this piece,” he rumbled, his voice as big as his body. “Professor Fairhurst is looking for you. He is upstairs. Oh, and Vaughn?”
I turned to look at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You cock this sculpture up, you make me regret giving you this internship, and I assure you, Daddy Spencer is not going to save you this time.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had threatened that my last name wouldn’t get me out of trouble.
But it was the first time I’d believed it.
I pushed Harry’s office door open without knocking, leaning against its frame when I realized what I’d walked in on. He had a guy—a student, I bet—bent with his elbows pressed against the windowsill, pants down, his milky-white ass hanging in the air. Harry was inclined, ass on his desk, pants open, stroking himself and enjoying the view.
Bored, I took out my phone and checked the time, whistling the Kill Bill theme song.
“Bollocks,” Harry groaned when he heard me, shoving his half-saggy cock back into his pants unhurriedly, like I’d interrupted his meal or something.
The teenager at the window straightened his back and proceeded to fall on his ass with a surprised yelp.
I yawned. “Please. Not on my account. You look fucking cute together.”
“Truly?” The young guy eyed me with huge, green eyes while standing up and fumbling for his jeans.
My name had been a big deal in this place due to my summer session shenanigans all those years ago, and a sour face like mine was hard to miss. He knew who I was.