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Propelling me forward in a rush, I drop my mouth back to hers. Nipping her lower lip, she hisses, and I flick my tongue over the sting, sucking on her mouth, her tongue, my savagery finally showing, my kiss clinks our teeth together.
Someone hollers my name, and she flinches, knocking her head back into Rex's face making him grunt, tearing her lip from between my clenched teeth, a ruby of blood beading on the torn skin. That's when I feel it.
The anger.
Rage.
It's bitter and twisted. Thick on the back of my tongue. So when I answer the incessant, drunken fucking bellowing of my name.
King.
It's a roar that spears out of me like jagged, inverted claws, the type that tear and shred and kill, “EVERYONE OUT!” my voice booms around the room, over the music, the dying laughter, giggling. “NOW!” I bellow.
No one questions it, me. The music cuts, the front door opens, and I feel people leaving more than see or hear it.
Ears buzzing, back rising and falling rapidly with my quickened breaths, my heart races until it feels like it's going to burst free of my throat.
Poppy's fingers connect with my spine, her hand cautious as she wraps it around me, fingertips feathering over my heated skin and then they're braver, her hand splaying over the center of my back, my phone still pressed beneath her thumb, into her palm, between us now. A firm reassuring pressure to my spine that has the steam billowing out of my ears, deflating my chest.
Slowly, inhaling a deep breath, I turn to look at her, a crease between her brows. She says nothing and I think, maybe, I want her to, but then Rex is walking around us both, jerking his chin in an'I got this'motion.
“Everyone out,” he calls, cheerier than me, he continues his chipper bullshit with, “thanks for coming… Great to see you… Sure thing, see ya… Bye now.”
The door slams, Poppy's hand drifts away, and I'm spinning around at the loss of contact, catching her dainty wrist in the lock of my encircled fingers, taking my phone back and shoving it into my pocket.
I can't speak, baring my teeth, as I stare at her, only a few inches shorter than my six-foot-five frame. Poppy looks up at me, chin tilted like my finger and thumb still hold it towards me. She lifts her other hand, eyes on mine, and places it to my chest, over the hammering of my heart, her gaze dropping to it for just a second, before lifting her sight back to me.
Lynx is at her back now, but he doesn't touch her, encroach on my space, waiting for my temper to implode or explode. Sometimes it's both, always one or the other, but it's never been neither.
Lynx's red-brown eyes are a shock of warmth against his bleach-blond hair, light skin. I've missed his face, this past year, nothing has been the same. We're going to have to re-find a routine, something organic. Not forced. Healthy. Better.
“You good, brother?” his deep, sullen voice asks, no smile on his lips, but I imagine one there, playing pretend for just a moment, I nod and he exhales.
“I can go,” that's what she says.
“Do you want to?” I ask her, “Go?” a frown on my brow I can't help forming. “Lynx can walk you back to your room,” I offer, because he has a room on campus now too, by order of the dean, a condition of his return.
Poppy's eyes flicker over her shoulder, catching Lynx's gaze as he steps up beside her, checking her briefly, like he's making sure she's in one piece. It's the same look we all give each other, whenever one of us has a moment. It's like she's one of us already, and she doesn't even know it. Has no idea what we're like. Who we are. What we do. How we work.
“I can leave if that's what you want,” she lifts a slim shoulder in an unbothered gesture, but I feel the stiffness of the action like it were my own limb aching.
I reach up, tucking a strand of thick hair behind her ear, a row of piercings lining the length of it, lobe to cartilage, the spiked backs catching the pad of my finger.
“I want you to stay,” I tell her, watching the most miniscule of pinches of her face, seeking out her true reaction. “Only if you're comfortable here. If not, we'll take you back.”
She swallows, looking down, and I feel deflated, expecting her to want to leave.
“I'd like to stay,” it's barely a whisper, but it's enough, the spoken words immediately being locked up tight in the vault inside my head.
Acceptance.
I curl a finger beneath her dipped chin, dragging her attention back onto me, her eyes lifting as her neck cranes back.
“Then you'll stay.”
Chapter 9
POPPY
