Chapter Twenty Seven
I hang back near the gymnasium door, keeping my promise to watch over Harper while mentally cataloguing every idiot who so much as looks her way.
I tell myself that staying close to the exit means I can leave whenever I want, but that’s a lie.
I couldn’t walk away from Harper any more than I could leave my balls nailed to the railing I’m leaning on.
After leaving the cafe, she insisted on going back to her dorm to change into ‘more appropriate clothing’.
But now, as I stare at her bent over a sheet of MDF in leopard-print lycra, I wish I’d dragged her out in the baggy sweatpants she’d had on before.
Her curves are on full display for anyone who dares to look, her stunning face is frozen with concentration.
Then there’s her tongue poking out from the corner of her mouth.
A tongue that’s good for so much more than simply dragging along the underside of my cock.
Said-cock jolts in my boxers and I have to sneakily rearrange myself.
How can she still be affecting me this way?
Harper is pure sin wrapped in a silent strength others don’t have the right to see.
I no longer crave her insults like whips, slicing through whatever soul I have left.
I crave her compliments. The hidden smiles and light touches.
How she’s building me up, brick by brick, showing me a path I never thought possible.
One that’s led me here, watching the set up of a farce.
The talent show is in two days, and somehow, I’m supposed to believe the anarchy before me will turn into a performance worth watching.
Contestants are scattered across the basketball court, practicing their acts while art students frantically paint props and backdrops.
A guy on a unicycle juggles between two ladders while students hang glittering stars from the basketball hoops.
A wannabe opera singer goes off key when the unicycle juggler bumps into a passer-by and the paint they’re carrying splatters all over her dress.
The whole thing’s a disaster in motion, and this is just the rehearsal.
Harper’s in the middle of it all, on all fours, bobbing her head to music only she can hear.
A paintbrush in her hand, another tucked behind her ear, she’s working on a night-sky skyline backdrop.
Every so often, she glances my way, probably to check if I’m still here, and grins with satisfaction.
I raise my brow as if to say, Babygirl, I’m not going anywhere.
“If you’re going to stand there glaring like a gargoyle, you might as well make yourself useful,” Addy calls out as she strides over, attitude dripping from her.
Her tiny shorts and gym vest show off her tattooed arms and legs, the colorful ink a complete contrast to the black and gray that cover mine.
There’s a streak of blue paint on her forehead that ruins her attempt at a glare.
I don’t need a sign to display Addy’s dislike for me, and the feeling is mutual. Ever since she violated my toenails. I picked the polish off in the end, but the pink twinge lingered so I colored over them in black sharpie. It seems to have held up and Harper is yet to say anything.
Planting herself in front of me, Addy tries to push a giant, metallic star into my chest. I make no move to accept it.
“I don’t trust you,” I growl, pinning her with a deadly glare. Addy rolls her eyes, unaffected and perhaps a little amused.
“And I don’t care. But since it’s your name we’re working our asses off to promote, you can at least hang some stars.
” I follow her pointing finger just in time to see a large, slobbery dog in a pink, ruffled dress plow into a ladder on stage, the student who was at the top now dangling from the basketball hoop. Yeah, no. Not happening.
Ignoring the imp in front of me, I head straight for Harper.
Plucking the paintbrush from behind her ear, I kneel beside her, dipping it into the white paint tub nestled between her thighs.
She grins but doesn’t say a word, which is fine by me.
Talking would only make the descent from my throne so much worse.
Focusing on the backdrop, I help Harper paint the hundreds of tiny windows on the skyscraper already outlined by someone else.
Essentially, it’s one giant paint-by-numbers.
Harper is in her element, humming her tune, lightly bobbing her head.
Pulling my wireless headphones from my sweatpants pocket, I lift Harper’s phone from in front of her and pair them.
For the millionth time, I’m about to demand she adds a passcode to her phone when the music bleeds into my ears.
Of everything I would have guessed she’d listen to, it never would have been this.
It’s cheesy and old school, a boy-band’s concoction of electric guitars and drums.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask, more to myself. Checking her Spotify, the album cover shows five sets of overgrown fringes and juvenile faces. Turning my headphones off, preferring to sit with the chaotic background noise in the gym, Harper gives me a tiny shrug.
“If you don’t like it, then don’t be here.” Her smile widens, although she tries to conceal it behind her hair. With her phone still in hand, I switch her implants from the music to the microphone app and hold it close to my mouth.
“Let’s ditch this. They’re doing just fine here,” I say just as a loud crash and scream sounds behind us.
Harper flinches, the white paint of her window smearing out of the lines.
I ignore the cries for help, focusing on making the timber of my voice as husky as possible.
“My place isn’t far. We can sneak out and be back before they’ve gotten this mess under control.
I’ll be quick,” I lie. I’m never quick, but she doesn’t complain once we’ve started.
It’s getting her away from Scum and the other meaningless things she distracts herself with that’s the real trick.
Harper tries to make a noise of annoyance but it comes out weak.
“How are you still horny? A gigolo gets less sex than you.” Dumping the paintbrush into the pot, I sit back on my hunches, bringing the phone to my lips.
“I don’t think you understand that you’re on my mind constantly.
Your eyes and your perfect tits and your curves.
The smell of your shampoo, the birthmark on the bottom of your right foot.
How beautifully you take every inch of my cock, how you ride me until you collapse.
I think about fucking you every minute of every day, and at night, I dream of more ways I could defile you.
It’s a visceral need Harper. There’s never a moment that I’m not hard and throbbing for you. ”
“Rhys,” Harper turns her head to scowl pathetically, a tremble in her words and a searing hot flush in her cheeks. “There are people around.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I need you naked and in my lap in the next ten minutes or I’m going to cause a scene.
” Switching off her phone, I hand it back and stand to leave.
The outside air is a blessing, but it does nothing for the erection becoming obvious through my sweats.
I wrap my hand around myself, leaning against the building wall, trying to relieve whatever pressure I can.
Harper has no idea how hard it is to be near her and not touch her. Literally hard and aching. The fact that I even try shows that she has me well and truly whipped.
I enjoy pain, revel in punishments, and actively seek retribution against the world, but I hate this.
This is a torture unlike any I’ve ever known.
She makes me bleed from the inside out, reopens old wounds that used to crave for affection and shows me a future I never believed possible, only to hold it just out of reach.
I’m a monster. I’ve been pushing her away since before I even knew she existed, carving a path of destruction that would make me forever unlovable.
Unable to take the burning inside my chest any longer, I figure she isn’t coming.
Striding down the hillside, I head back to my house, longing to hear her footsteps following.
It dawns on me that I just fucking left her alone and vulnerable, which I specifically told Clayton I wouldn’t.
Well, fuck him. If he wants to be her watch dog, then he’s welcome to it.
I can’t be near her another second and not claim her brutally the way my soul desires.
Now faced with my empty living room, I don’t know what to do.
The book throne is intact, although the rest of the texts have moved to make room for the nerds that occupy my pad every evening.
It’s tempting to use my frustration to undo all of their hard work, tossing the hardbacks into the hot tub and using the paperbacks as fire fuel, but I don’t have the energy.
Neither do I want the fleeting satisfaction of aggressively jerking myself off. I don’t even want a smoke.
I just stand here, arms by my side. I don’t often think about my way of life, since I’m stuck in an endless cycle of self-sabotage and vengeance, but I don’t think I can go on like this for much longer.
The yearning, the intention to drop all of my anger and become Harper’s loyal simp, and then the hatred that settles in after.
Since when did I care who I was and who I hurt?
Since when did I feel like I have no place in the world without her.
The door slams closed behind me, pulling me from my thoughts.
I turn just as a fist connects with my cheek.
My head wheels to the side, my smile growing in an instant.
All trepidation that I’m losing my touch vanishes as I gaze upon Harper, her green eyes feral and her fury palpable.
I don’t need to change or be fixed. Not when my little minx is just as twisted as I am.
Not when her hunger stems from a violence that’s dying to break free.