Page 127 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
I pull her face forward, so that our lips are touching. She tastes like tears when I lick her mouth, but that’s okay. Those tears belong to me as much as her smile or her laughter. When you accept a person for who they are, you don’t choose bits and pieces. You accept every part of them, right down to the rotten bits. Because everybody wants somebody to love their rottenness.
Even me.
“Do you understand?” I ask her, and she hesitates just enough that I’m forced to squeeze her chin again to get her attention. “Is Kali here?” I ask, and she nods. I hate that she’s seeing things, that I promised I could protect her all by myself when I knew that was a lie. She has to be a part of this as wholly and completely as anyone else; Bernadette has to protect herself.
Because she might not know it, but she’s the final name on her own list. Every mistake she’s ever made, every bad memory, every misstep, she lets those things haunt her. She’s that now, in the form of Kali Rose.
“She won’t leave me alone,” Bernadette hisses, like she’s both furious and afraid, all at the same time. “And I can’t handle it anymore, all the stress and the fear and the frustration. I just want to revel in my own glory, my own pain. All of it.” I smile a little, but she can’t see me so I make sure to kiss her until she can’t breathe.
“Bernie, the only person who can get rid of Kali is you. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, learn from them, and take my hand so we can move onto the next big thing. If life isn’t always moving forward, then it’s stuck in place and sinking. You are my queen; you deserve that fucking crown; Kali doesn’t matter. None of them did. Not Coraleigh, not even Neil. Shit, Trinity Jade is nothing. They’re all just obstacles for us to get past. Do you understand?”
She hesitates for a moment, but when she nods, I can feel the movement against my face.
“I’m going to fuck you now, recruit,” I say, and she shivers as I grab her ass again. “This time, are you going to follow my goddamn orders?” There’s a long pause there before I slap her ass and she lets out a gasp of pleasure.
“I prefer Aaron’s spankings,” she murmurs, and I growl, surging to my feet and slamming her back against the wall of the closet. Bernadette’s arms go around me as our mouths meet, my tongue obliterating hers, punishing her into submission. At the same time, I rock my hips against her so hard that I’m sure her ass is putting a dent into the goddamn drywall.
“You only prefer Aaron’s spankings because you know he isn’t serious about them,” I snarl, licking the side of her neck. If she thinks I don’t notice every new hickey, every new finger-shaped bruise that the other boys leave on her skin, then she’s got another thing coming. I’ve memorized them, a pattern that I have to repeat, to redo, to control. “And you know that I most definitely am.”
I reach between us and free my cock from my jeans, pushing her panties aside with two fingers and finding her so goddamn wet that she’s soaked her thighs. The scalding heat of her body triggers my most basic instincts in a way that breaks the definitive control in which I live my life. My hips drive forward, my cock filling her up as she cries out and clings to me, letting me have my way with her in the closet where she was once my prisoner.
It’s so fucked-up, so wrong, so broken and so dark.
But I can’t help it.
I’m filled with a jealous rage at having to share her. When I kiss her, thrusting my tongue between her sweet lips, I can taste that same envy. We’re both being torn apart by it, by wanting each other so fiercely that we can’t breathe.
And that’s how I like it.
I mount her the way I did that first day, rough and wild and unapologetic, until I’m coming so hard that I see stars.
Bernadette’s breathing is heavy in the dark as she clings to me, nails digging into my upper arms, face pressed into the hollow crook between my neck and shoulder. Carefully, almost reverently, I adjust my grip on her ass, holding her instead of crushing her, and then I carry her out of that stupid fucking closet and over to my bed.
I lay her body carefully down on it as she looks up at me, black pleated skirt wrinkled, an old metalcore band t-shirt twisted around her waist. Slowly, and with great care, I undress her, our gazes locked on one another, our breathing matched.
