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“Including you?” I ignore her question. “Would you kill to be his pet, Winter?”
She sneers at me. “I’m not going to be his pet. I’m going to be his bride. The lady of the manor, just like you said. And once I’m that, you can’t fucking touch me, Athena. I can do anything I want to you, and who’s going to stop me? Dean? He doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“You might be wrong about that.” That grin is still plastered on my face. “Don’t worry, Winter, I don’t fucking want him, just like you said. I just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into. The kinds of things he’ll demand from you. He won’t ask. He’ll just give orders, and you’ll open your mouth and your legs, or he’ll go somewhere else. To me. And if you try to stop him?” I laugh, a sound that’s almost a cackle. “You don’t want to know the kind of pain he can make you feel.” I lean closer to her, and she flinches back as my hand wraps around her throat again, this time just holding her in place, not squeezing. “Pain and pleasure all at the same time. Pleasure you’ll hate yourself for wanting. You think you can handle that when you can’t even handle me?”
Winter wriggles in my grasp, opening her mouth to respond, but then her eyes go wide in the same second that I feel a pair of hard hands dragging me backward off of her.
The triumphant smile on her face tells me who it is before I even hear Dean’s voice.
Fuck.There goes my carefully orchestrated plan. All because I let this spoiled bitch get the better of me. I’m kicking myself as Dean’s deep, cultured voice fills the room, and I can feel everyone go very still, including Winter, who was in the process of straightening up and brushing herself off.
“Everyone, go to the main room,” Dean says. “Athena, you’re coming with me.”
He doesn’t let go of my wrists. Winter beams at me, laughing as she waggles her fingers in my direction. “Bye-bye bitch,” she says, and I lunge in Dean’s grasp; that hot anger is washing over me again. I want to slap the expression off of her face, claw her eyes out where she stands.
But that’s what got me in trouble in the first place.
Dean spins me around once he has me in the hall, grabbing my chin and tilting my face up. He bends down to sniff my breath, and my face flames with embarrassment because everyone passing us to head to the main room as instructed can see. “Too much to drink?” he asks, his voice low and threatening. “Did you think you could get away with embarrassing me here, Athena? With hurting the woman who is intended to be my wife, eventually?”
“I had two shots,” I manage, despite the crushing grip he has on my face. “And Winter brought it on herself. If she wasn’t such a fucking cunt—”
Dean’s other fist wraps in my hair, and he yanks me around, shoving me up against the wall. “You never learn, do you, little pet? Well, you’re going to now. You’re going to be punished in front of everyone here, and they’re going to see as much of you or more than those pledges saw that night in the basement. You’re going to learn to fucking obey, or you’re going to wind up chained in that same basement like a dog instead of a pampered pet. Do you understand me, Athena?”
Tears rise up in my eyes, but they’re frustrated, angry tears, not sad tears. “Do whatever you want to me,” I spit out. “I’m not letting you win this game, Dean. No matter how much you make me come, no matter how good you can make what you do to me in bed, I’m not giving you anything.”
Dean grins down at me cruelly. “Oh, don’t worry, little pet. You won’t be coming tonight.”
That’s where you’re wrong.I’m scrambling to think of how to salvage my plan as he grabs my wrist, hauling me away from the wall and dragging me stumbling after him into the main room. Someone has cleared off a table that was being used for beer pong—even the most elite of frat parties needs that staple, I guess—and I can see the splashes on the sides as Dean drags me up to the edge of it. It’s not a folding table, though, it’s a heavy wooden dining table, which makes me want to laugh. Of course, no one here would lower themselves to play a game on a fucking ten-dollar card table; instead, they’re willing to splash beer all over a piece of furniture that probably cost thousands of dollars.
The room is packed to the gills. Everyone who is anyone is there, every pledge, every frat and sorority member on campus, so many people that some are spilling out of the doorway, everyone jostling for position, drunk and eager to see the Blackmoor pet get punished.
Actually, let’s be honest. They’re just excited to see a half-naked girl and what’s going to be done to her, like a live porn show.
Cayde is standing to one side of the table, his face grim, and he shoots me a glare that clearly says this isn’t your fucking plan. It’s clear he’s pissed, and I can’t blame him this time really, I’d led him to believe that he was going to be able to stake his claim on me tonight. Instead, Dean is going to solidify it by punishing me in front of everyone. Unless I think of a way to salvage my plan fast, it’s going to be beyond fixing. If one of the other guys doesn’t throw down a gauntlet tonight, by tomorrow, it’ll be all over campus that ninety percent of the students here bore eyewitness to the fact that Dean Blackmoor has claimed his prize. After that, the bloody sheet at the Halloween ritual will just be a formality, just something he has to do to keep up the tradition. Everyone will know.
I think of what that means for me if I lose tonight. If I can’t follow through with my plan. A life as Dean’s fucktoy or a Blackmoor servant as my only two choices, trapped on the estate forever, maybe even with a tracker in me for good measure, like an actual housepet. I know by now not to ignore Dean’s threats. A life of relative comfort, sure, a life where I don’t have to worry about things like bills and rent, and I know a lot of people would trade freedom for that.
But not me. I’m not about to willingly hand over my life to this arrogant asshole just because he thinks he deserves it, that he can win a human being along with the whole fucking town.
I try to think of my namesake, of what the Athena of old would do if she knew she was about to not only lose the battle, but the whole fucking war.
The problem is, I’m just about out of time.
When Dean tells me to take off my panties, the entire room goes quiet. I know the clock has run out.
