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“I know,” I murmured back at him and accepted his rough stubbled nudges against my neck. It felt good on some level. I felt alive. “I’ll try to be good.”
“That’s all I want, for you to be a good girl,” he said.
I wasn’t a good girl. I couldn’t be a good girl. Fuck being a good girl. There was that fucking stubborn part of me again, flaring up and beating at the bars in the cage in the middle of my head where I’d locked her.
We meandered down a paved walkway through trees and smaller buildings done in the same gothic style as the main campus. All around us, the group got louder, and the laughter grew more raucous as more people joined us. Beer and hard alcohol were passed around, but I turned it all down. I wasn’t sure about drinking, and I knew I didn’t like beer.
“Come on, babe,” Alexander said and held a small bottle of clear, strong alcohol up for me to smell. I gagged at its scent, and they all laughed even harder. “That’s Jeff’s gardener’s homemade moonshine. You could have two long drinks of that and wake up next week.”
I shook my head, and they laughed again at me, but I didn’t care.
We finally reached Tyne hall, which was more like a large Edwardian estate home on the edge of the campus. It was huge, dark, and ready for us.
Alexander pulled me with him as we walked ahead of everyone else, right up the front steps and through great double-arched oak doors. The hinges creaked loudly as we pushed them open, and I coughed at the puff of dust they gave off.
“First ones here!” Alexander announced as if we were some explorer crew and not a group of teenagers looking to get drunk and do bad things.
“Not quite,” a voice said from the darkness. I heard somebody strike a match, and a flame flared up, lighting a candle. “I claim this party in the name of the Lowers!”
Luke held a lantern with a single flickering candle in the middle of it. He lifted it over his head where it shone down on him, making him fiercer and more feral than before. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.
Next to me, Alexander growled, balled his hands into fists, and set off to drive them into Luke’s face.
But me, playing the part of the socially graceful Upper fiancée, stood in front of him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and said, “Let’s go find somewhere to talk.”
He got my meaning, shot Luke a look of sheer, cocky triumph, and dragged me into the dark of the mansion.
I gulped, looked back at the single light glowing under Luke’s beautiful face that was now joined with Rome standing next to him, and I wondered how I was going to survive any of this at all.
CHAPTER17
“What’syour Lower boyfriend doing walking around like he owns you?” Alexander demanded the moment we found a room down the hallway. Somewhere to be alone, so he could berate me away from the others.
“I said, what’s he doing here?” Alexander demanded and grabbed hold of my forearm, squeezing it in his hand. There was light coming through the window from the streetlight along the parking lot. That was it. The entire room had a strange underwater feel, a blue-green flickering of shadow and light that distanced us from the others. Their voices were muffled, and occasionally, I heard an outburst of laughter.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I supposed I should whimper if I was playing my part, being a good Upper fiancée. But I wasn’t. Not there in that light, already feeling like I was straddling two worlds, the darkness in my head and the pastel bullshit of Crimson Academy. “I didn’t tell him about it. I just found out this evening, like three hours ago. You were there.”
“Then how did he find out?” Alexander persisted. “Did you text him the details when you and Victoria were getting ready after dinner?”
“I don’t even know his number,” I replied through gritted teeth. I had an image of me before the accident, the type of girl I’d been. I would have curled and twisted under the force of his fingers on my arm. I would have whined for him to stop.
Now? I wanted to kick him in the balls and slam my fist into the back of his head, and I was sure I knew how to do it. It was a muscle memory. My body knew how to react if only I’d set it loose. I could ride inside the darkness, a homunculus watching as the flesh took care of the disturbance from our fiancé.
But that wasn’t an optimal solution either. I was acutely aware of how precarious my position was at Crimson, caught in the spider web of this bizarre world of Uppers and Lowers. So I yanked my arm free from Alexander and stood close to him. My face was an inch away. The blue-green glow illuminated his face, giving him an other-worldly beauty that caught my breath with the suddenness of my attraction.
“I get it. You’re jealous,” I hissed at him. “But guess what? I’m not your princess, I’m a kitten, and I have claws. If you can’t handle me having particular tastes, then you can’t handle me at all. And I know you want to handle me, Alexander. I can smell it in your sweat. I drive you crazy and haunt your fevered dreams. You can’t do a damned thing about it.”
His eyes were glittering with anger and unspent desire by the time I was finished, and he grabbed my arm again. But this time, he was gentle, and he held me loosely. I didn’t try to break away.
His other hand came up, and he traced my lips with his finger.
“You are fucking infuriating, Willow,” he rasped. “You aren’t behaving the way you’re supposed to. You aren’t obeying me at all.”
“But you like it,” I said and ran my tongue along the pad of his finger. “You really fucking like it. You want more.”
“Oh yes,” he said, his sharp intake of breath giving away how much I owned him just then. “I want more of you. I want all of you.”
“You can’t have all of me, but I will give you a taste,” I said and took his hand in mine. I wrapped my lips around his finger and sucked it like I’d suck his cock if I had it in my mouth. His breathing was harsh and unsteady as I pulled his finger out, forced his hand down my stomach, and lifted the hem of my dress. “You can have this.”
