AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I had a lot to compare it to,” I said. “And it was better than pretty good.”
She smirked. “For you, maybe.”
I pulled up to the gate at my grandfather’s estate. “Like I said, a fluke.”
“No way to know,” she said. “Since it’ll never happen again.”
We stared at each other a few seconds, the air between us suddenly heavy with tension. I swallowed and gripped the top of the steering wheel with my left hand, letting my right rest on the gear stick. “Unless…”
“No way,” she said. “We couldn’t.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. Of course not.”
She glanced at the huge estate, the buildings all set up together like a little matching village. “I mean… Nobody could find out.”
“Nobody found out last time.”
We stared at each other again.
“Nah,” I said at last. “It would be suicide for me. If you ever told…”
“If you told, it would ruin me.”
Our gazes locked, some silent battle of wills to see who wanted this more, who would give in first. It was insane. I knew I shouldn’t. It was bad enough that I had to pretend to be cool with the Dolces for one fucking weekend instead of just avoiding them at school all the week like I usually did. Would I really dive in a pit of poisonous vipers for some new pussy?
I already saw Royal every Saturday night when he fought at the Slaughterpen. But that was different. That was my domain. Plus, he was fucking huge and won nearly all his fights, which meant he made money for me every week. But that wasn’t why I tolerated him there, why I’d agreed to move the fights to the warehouse his family owned. One of life’s few satisfactions that remained was watching him bleed, even if I wasn’t the one throwing the punches.
I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his punches, though. I’d walked over the eggshells of their kingdom for a year, getting my finger chopped off and my hand burned and my dignity stripped. Alone, I was no match for them. They were meaner and crazier and more vicious than I’d ever be, and I couldn’t beat them.
Suddenly, I understood Preston, though. His impotent fury, his vindictive rage. He couldn’t leave them alone, couldn’t accept defeat. He poked the nest again and again, even knowinghe was the only one who got stung. He said he’d take whatever little victories he could get, even ones they didn’t know about. Now I had the chance to do the same. I hated the Dolces with a burning passion, and I’d accepted that they won. But if I could walk around knowing I fucked their queen…
I already had, but this was different. Back then, she was nobody, just a new girl. She wasn’t theirs. Now, she was the closest thing to an official girlfriend Royal Dolce ever had. They’d been together for a year. I thought about how I’d feel if I found out he and Dixie were fucking behind my back, how the betrayal would kill me, even if she wasn’t my girlfriend. I’d lose my goddamn mind.
“Grandpa Darling’s treehouse is right there,” I said, nodding to the west side of the property. It was hidden behind the barn and some other outbuildings, but every Darling grew up playing in the giant treehouse as kids and sneaking up there with girls or booze and nudie magazines when we were teenagers.
“I heard your grandpa’s a creep,” Gloria said.
“It’s true.”
“We could go back to the pool house,” she said. “Recreate it. See if it was a fluke.”
“Good thinking,” I said, backing up and swinging the Mustang around.
“I know where they keep the key,” she said. “They let us use the pool, since we don’t have one. And I can park my car in the garage, so my family thinks I came home and I’m still sleeping.”
“Can we keep the lights on this time?”
“I don’t think we’ll need them,” she said.
She was right. It was almost full daylight out by now. I glanced at her, wondering when she was going to change her mind. And if she didn’t, was I?
Was she setting me up so the Dolce boys had a reason to kill me?
Nah, that was stupid. They didn’t need a reason. They thought they were above explaining themselves. And their reign of terror was more intimidating if they could strike at any moment, for no reason at all.
They were probably going to kill me one of these days, anyway. I might as well enjoy the time I had left. I could give them a reason to want me dead so it wasn’t for nothing. Hell, if it was as good as I remembered, fucking Gloria one more time might even be worth dying for. It wasn’t like I was doing much with my life anyway.
A few minutes later, I was driving past the burned ruins of Devlin’s old house—their resident pyromaniac didn’t let that house stand long after his parents left it—and the house next door, where I lived for the first few years of my life. Now the Dolces occupied the house. I was tempted to slow as we passed it, but there was no one outside to see me making off with Royal’s toy, anyway.
