Page 95 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
I laugh in his face and push past him.
“It’s the color of blood,” I tell him matter-of-factly. “There’s nothing pretty about this drink.”
“It’s the same color as your hair,” he informs me, but I ignore him, moving through the crowd and pausing by some girls who are busy discussing their character cards.
“I’m fucking the master of the house,” I tell them, pouting slightly, the way the French maid in my stereotypical imaginings might. “But don’t tell anyone. Last night, I saw blood on his shirt just before I took it off.”
The girls all stare at me like I’m an alien creature, most definitely not used to the presence of someone from Prescott High at one of their parties.
“You’re the Havoc girl, right?” one of them finally asks, finally choosing which switch inside her privileged brain to flick. When I first approached them, I could tell they were torn between ripping me apart for being different and falling in love with me. One of the girls is already breathing heavily, like she’d fuck me in the bathroom if I so much as asked.
“That’s me,” I tell them, lifting my glass in salute. “Forgive me if I’m a little off. Fucking five dudes on the regular is exhausting.” That’s a lie, it’s thrilling. You just don’t want them to know how fucking thrilled you are. You love this, love being bad and finding yourself in trouble and feeling emotions like thunderstorms.
I exhale.
“Jesus,” one of the girls says, forgetting for just a second to filter her disgust. She blinks and the emotion is gone. “So why is Jimmy panting after you?”
“Jimmy?” I ask, and the girl lifts her glass in indication. I follow the direction of her bright blue drink with my eyes, finding James Barrasso at the bar, mixing two drinks. Jesus, this guy. He’s clearly making more of what I’ve already got in my glass. In a minute here, he’s going to come back and offer one to me. “Ah, a nickname for James,” I murmur, thinking of the book, Practical Magic, and the movie that followed. Personally—and I know this is a cardinal sin among book lovers—I prefer the movie.
I finish my drink, so that James aka Jimmy can have an opening when he comes over here.
I turn back to the girls.
“Are any of my boys watching?” I ask in a scandalous tone. But again, I didn’t need to ask. I can feel Aaron and Oscar staring at me. Callum is long gone, buried in the crypt of the house, and Hael is too busy collecting gossip to look my way. Maybe that means he trusts me? Or maybe he’s too jealous to look?
My skin burns in all the places his fingers touched me. I want to go find out if there’s a maid costume in that room, put it on, and fuck his brains out in the guest room, on top of everyone else’s expensive coats.
But, business first. Pleasure later.
“The tall one in the suit,” the bisexual or pansexual or whatever girl asks me. The way she describes Oscar, I can tell that she’d fuck him, too, if he were to offer. Even better if we both did, at the same time. I smile into my empty drink.
“Oops,” I say as James slides up alongside of me, offering up one of the drinks.
“Not sure if I got the ratio right, but I tried,” he explains, nodding at my empty glass. “Shall I take that for you?”
“She’s not going to fuck you, Jimmy,” the mean girl says, the one with the nose that’s too sharp. Hope she sued her plastic surgeon for that botch job. Looks like shit. I have to hold back a laugh.
“Why not?” James asks, and I wonder why he hasn’t smiled sloppily and said call me Jimmy, babe. Ugh.
“Because I’m married,” I say, wiggling my fingers to show off the ring that Victor gave me. It’s nice enough that the other girls actually nod in approval. Even to their rich sensibilities, a thirty-thousand ring is okay-ish.
“Not for long,” the spiteful cunt with the fucked-up nose says. She smiles to soften the blow, but I realize then that she never flipped that switch from disgust to interest. She hates me the way Trinity does. Jealous and seething. I’m not saying this because I think I’m fabulous. I just think people always want what everyone else has. Nothing is more desirable than something that isn’t yours yet, but could be, if you just played your cards right. Nothing is prettier than the forbidden, nothing shines so bright and so wicked on a moonlit night. “You’re getting an annulment I hear?”
“What?” one of the girls asks, blinking like she’s just realized she’s stumbled onto a juicy secret. “Am I missing something here?”
“Look, I’m fucking the master of the house and he had blood on his shirt. You want to weigh in on that?” I snap, getting annoyed all of a sudden. When I look back, I see Victor’s still talking to Trinity. He’s smiling, and she’s laughing. Trust your motherfucking husband! I tell myself, but it’s so damn hard. He isn’t making it easy either, Mr. Hard to Fucking Get.
