Page 1 of Rome
Prologue – “When Caleb met Abby”
Ten Years Ago
Caleb
I glanced around the crowded hallway, wishing like hell that summer break hadn’t ended two days ago. I fucking hated being stuck at school all day, although I guess there were a few perks to starting our junior year. Some of those perks were walking my way right now. I tilted my head a little as I ran my eyes up and down their bodies, making it damned obvious that I was checking them out.
Cheerleaders, in their short skirts and tight little sweaters with the stupid-ass school mascot on them, all of them looking like carbon-copies of one another. Blonde with too much make-up, perky tits, slim hips, and long legs – and every damned one of them willing to ride my cock, if the hungry looks they were shooting my way were any indication. I smirked as I thought of my dad’s MC, and the club bunnies who hung around the clubhouse, hoping to snag a 5thCircle Guardian for themselves. These girls would fit right in with that crowd.
“Fuck me, would you look at the tits on that one,” Cole muttered as he walked up next to me. The girls’ interest ramped up even more, seeing my identical twin with me. Yeah, some of these girls wanted to know what it would be like to fuck both of us. Too bad for them, Cole and I weren’t into that shit. I wouldn’t mind sharing a girl, but I sure as hell didn’t want to do that with my twin.
My brother nudged me and tilted his head slightly to the right. “Purple shirt,” he murmured just loud enough for me to hear him over the din of slamming locker doors, giggling girls, and obnoxiously loud dude bros trying to act like their balls had finally dropped over the summer.
I casually turned as though I were talking to him and cast my eyes in that direction. Hmm, not a cheerleader, but she had definite possibilities. Curly red hair, tight ass. Yeah, she would do. I took a step in her direction when a group of three girls walked by. They were huddled together, laughing at something, completely oblivious to me and the fact that they had just cut me off from getting to the cute redhead, who was now headed in the other direction. Dammit!
I heard a loud snicker and glanced over my shoulder to find Cole laughing. “Cockblocked much?” He just laughed harder when I raised both hands to flip him off. I opened my mouth to tell him how much he fucking sucked as a brother and as a wingman, when something caught my eye just down the hall behind him.
She was a short little thing, probably just an inch or two over five feet, books in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. By the way she was consulting the paper, then looking around, I’d guess she was new here, and probably a little lost. What caught my eye was her long wavy hair, a brown color that I’d heard one girl describe as chestnut once, creamy white skin, and the kind of curves that girls in this school rarely had. Her dark red shirt was stretched tight across a pair of heavy tits that would be more than a handful, and her jeans were molded to full hips and the curves of an ass that could bring a man to his knees.
I felt my dick start to chub up, right there in the middle of the fucking hallway, as I imagined getting my hands on that ass. I was a horny teenager, just two months shy of my seventeenth birthday, so getting an inappropriate hard-on was nothing new. I’d been getting off with girls since the summer before I’d turned fourteen, then fucking my first one at my birthday party a few months later. She’d been a senior, Olivia something-or-another. Cole had lost his virginity that same night, to Olivia’s best friend. After all this time, and probably dozens of other girls since then, Olivia’s first name and a vague memory of her face is all I could really recall.
This was different though. This wasn’t just the urge to get my dick wet. This was…interest. Interest in talking to her, interest in running my hands over that long, dark hair to see if it was as silky soft as it looked from here. Definite interest in those curves that were making me pant like the unabashed horndog that I was.
And then she looked up and met my eyes for just the briefest of moments, before some fucknut in a football jersey bumped into her, pulling her gaze from mine. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were from this distance, but I could see that they were huge, dominating her heart-shaped face. Her mouth, though, fuck me, her mouth was the stuff of dreams. Full, pouty lips that looked like they were made to suck cock. My cock, in particular. I adjusted myself in my jeans as my boner gave his approval for that idea.
I vaguely registered that Cole was still running his mouth, and looked over my shoulder for a second as we were joined by our cousin, Austin, who was almost a year younger than we were.
“What’s up, dudes?”
“I’ll catch up to you two dickwads later,” I said, waving them off as I turned back toward the little bombshell, only to get a glimpse of the back of her head, that silky-looking hair swishing from side to side, as she hurried down the hall before being swallowed up by the crowd.
“Fuckin’ hell” I growled. The bell rang for first period, adding to my frustration. There was no way I’d be able to find her now. Luckily, the school wasn’t that damned big. I’d catch up to her sooner or later.
Three days later, I was getting frustrated and pretty damned irritated because I hadn’t seen the curvy brunette again. I’d had Cole and Austin looking for her, too, giving them her description, and making it clear that if they found her, I’d already called dibs.
They’d both given me shit about that, but they hadn’t gotten a good look at her. They had no idea how fucking hot she was.
“She must have just moved here,” I’d told them when we’d ducked out for lunch that first day, heading to the Burger King around the corner from the school. Technically, we weren’t supposed to leave the high school campus for lunch, but technicalities didn’t really apply to us. Everyone around here knew who our old man was, and they were wary about pissing off his family, so they pretty much turned a blind eye to the shit we got up to.
The only one who really didn’t give a fuck that our dad was an MC President was our baseball coach. Cole and I had both played for Coach Jenkins since our freshman year, and the man was a hard ass who didn’t care who you were or what you did, as long as you could play ball. If you could, you were golden. If you couldn’t, then you got the hell off his field. Cole and I were both more than decent players and had even attracted attention from some college scouts. Neither of us were interested in going to college though. We were both planning to prospect for the club as soon as we graduated, and I had my eye on an apprenticeship at the club’s tattoo studio. I’d always been good at art and had a talent for drawing. Being an ink slinger seemed a better career than most.
“How do you know that?” Austin asked, stuffing his face with French fries and sucking down a big gulp of his Dr. Pepper.
“She wasn’t here last year, dumbass.” I flicked a wadded-up napkin his way, ignoring the way he flipped me off in return.
“Hey, genius, did it ever occur to you that she wasn’t here last year because she’s only a freshman?”
I shook my head at my idiot brother. “You didn’t see the curves on her, bro. No way she’s that young. Wouldn’t surprise me if she was a senior.”
So, I’d kept an eye out for her, looking for her in the hallways during passing periods, in the parking lot before and after school. Hell, I’d even stayed on campus yesterday and eaten in the goddamned cafeteria in hopes of getting a glimpse of her. Instead, the only thing I got was a piece of shitty pizza that tasted like tomato-flavored cardboard.
I’d kept an eye out for her, but that hadn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on other girls either. Two days ago, I’d allowed one of the blonde cheerleaders to take my mind off my fruitless search, letting her corner me in the hallway at the end of the day. We’d spent a few minutes making out, which ended up with her grinding on me in the darkened doorway of the band room, before the band director had caught us and told us to move along.
This morning, I was determined to either find the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, or to find a way to stop thinking about her. I’d just about jerked my dick raw thinking about her in my bed the last three nights and had rubbed one out in the shower before school every morning just imagining her with warm, soapy water gliding over her skin.
Now, it was about ten minutes before first period started, the same time it had been the day I saw her, and I was hanging around in the same hallway, in more or less the same spot.
“Hi Caleb.” I turned at the sound of that slightly breathy voice, and saw the cute redhead from the other day, the one I’d been ready to approach right before I’d spotted the smokeshow with curves for days.
