7. Landon
7
Landon
M y head throbbed from a combination of alcohol and the pain in my fists.
A curtain of dark hair obscured Thea’s face as she finished tending to my fucked-up hands. From the way she’d expertly dressed them, I guessed she’d done this before.
It didn’t make a lot of sense, but since I knew nothing about her, I didn’t dwell on it.
Maybe she had an older brother who enjoyed beating people up? Or a cage-fighter ex-boyfriend?
Hopefully not the latter. I wasn’t into sharing. Unless it was with my friends.
Then I was down for it.
“You look good on your knees for me,” I commented with a grin. Her head snapped up, her eyes flaring with irritation.
“We’re done here.” Before I could attempt to take back my stupid bullshit words, she’d thrown the medical kit at me and stormed out of the bathroom.
Why was I such an asshole? I was so used to spouting shit to girls who’d do anything to get into my pants that I’d assumed Thea had offered to tend to my fists because she wanted a private moment.
I’d clearly misread the situation. And her. But the night was young. There was still time to salvage things.
I put the medical kit on the counter and headed back to the party. Everyone had forgotten about me beating on Dirk. They were all too drunk and high on drugs and lust to care about a dickhead like Dirk.
It was a mystery how he ended up at our party, anyway. He wasn’t my friend. Maybe Cassian knew him. Although I doubted Cassian would give a damn about me rearranging Dirk’s face. That dude gave no shits about anyone these days.
He’d well and truly checked out after his last visit home. We definitely needed to chat about what his father had said, but he’d brushed me off each time I asked.
“Landon, where did you go?” Penny appeared in front of me, her blond hair mussed up and her lipstick smeared. I sneered with distaste.
Normally I’d be all over Penny like a rash, but the sight of her eager-beaver eyes and trout pout did nothing for me. Sure, she was pretty, and yeah, she sucked my dick well enough, but I wasn’t feeling it tonight.
Penny stroked my bare chest and pouted. “Want me to suck you off?”
“No.”
Her smile dimmed. “You can fuck my ass if you like?” she offered hopefully, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers and pushing her tits forward.
Jesus, had she always been this desperate? “I said, no, Penny. Now fuck off.”
“But Landon! You told me I was your favorite girl!”
Her eyes shone with tears. Jesus Christ. I was not in the mood for this shit.
“Fuck my life, I lied, OK? I was horny, and you were there. The end. Now be a good girl and get the hell out of my face. I need a fucking drink.”
When I looked up, Thea was watching the exchange with a smirk. She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and mouthed asshole at me. Shoving Penny aside, I tried to reach her, but she spun around and disappeared behind a wall of people dancing.
Since she seemed to want to stick around, I diverted into the kitchen for a drink. Kyril passed me a bottle of tequila while necking Gray Goose straight from the bottle.
“What’s eating you?” he asked, swiping away on his phone.
“Nothing.” A long swallow of my favorite brand of tequila soothed my ragged thoughts. Some of the tension in my shoulders eased, and after a few more mouthfuls, I felt better.
The pain in my bruised fists lingered, but the alcohol surging through my veins like wildfire had muted it.
“So are you going to tell me why you decked Dirk, mudak ?” Kyril fixed me with one of his trademark glares. The sort of expression that made grown men tremble in their boots right before they pissed themselves.
“He annoyed me.” I looked away and pretended to watch some chick give one of Cassian’s hangers-on a lap dance. She was so drunk she nearly fell sideways. It was kinda funny.
“Hmm.” Kyril clearly wasn’t buying my horseshit. “So nothing to do with the little cyka you were eye-banging?”
“Don’t diss her,” I growled, disliking the way he trash-talked Thea. Sure, he hated all women, thanks to his perverted bitch of a stepmother, but I wasn’t about to let him talk shit about the girl I liked.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise at the venom in my voice. “You like her?”
I needed to be careful about what I said. We were a closed group. Sure, we all fucked around, aside from Milo, but there was an unspoken agreement not to let women come between us.
If Kyril thought I was truly into Thea, he’d tell Cassian. And as much as I loved my friend, I didn’t want him all over my business, and more importantly, I didn’t want him all over her.
He was a handsome bastard. I was too, but women invariably gravitated toward him first, especially once they realized who he was. While I was heir to a title that stretched back hundreds of years, our family’s wealth was much depleted because of a dissolute great, great uncle who’d gambled away a fortune back in his day.
Thanks to that fucker, not to mention the enormous death duties when my grandfather died, we were no longer as rich as the Duke of Westminster.
Not that we were poor by any stretch of the imagination. Far from it. But Cassian’s family had acquired a significant fortune after his father made some extremely savvy business deals, both legal and illegal.
“She’s pretty,” I admitted. She was far more than pretty, but I wasn’t about to tell Kyril that.
He watched me for a few more seconds before pushing away from the counter.
“Don’t get in too deep, Lan. We got enough shit going on this year.”
“Message received and understood, El Capitan.” I saluted him, knowing it would piss him off, and sure enough, he growled in response.
“Go fuck some other bitch if you want to get your rocks off. You know nothing about that girl. She could be some plant sent to find out shit about Cassian. You know how reporters love to dig.”
He made a good point. Only last term we found out a temp in the admin department was a reporter for a red-top newspaper. She’d wheedled her way into one of our parties and snapped some incriminating photos of Cassian getting a blowjob from some blue-blood ho. His father was furious, and the girl’s parents immediately pulled her from the college.
Coming as it did on top of the scandal that forced Cassian to come here rather than Cambridge, things were tense for a while. Luckily, some shit related to a prominent MP hit the news not long after, and Cassian’s heavily pixelated BJ photo soon got brushed under the proverbial rug.
“She’s not press. I’ll donate my right nut to medical science if she is.”
He snorted. “Pretty sure medical science wouldn’t want your ball given how overused it is.”
“Rude!”
“But true. You’re a whore, Lan.”
The truth hurt like a rusty razorblade slicing through my eyelids, but I forced a smile. “Guilty as charged.” We clinked our respective bottles of booze together.
“Now go get laid while I make sure that insane cyka , Olivia, hasn’t crawled into Cassian’s bed again.”