Chapter Twenty-Two
“I don’t like that you’re here by yourself during the week, sweetheart,” Zeus mutters as he leans over and pushes open the door to the Briarthorn dorm building. “Especially with the O’Sullivan girl right across from you.”
“She wouldn’t try anything on campus, especially after today’s roster broadcast,” I offer.
I just have to make sure I’m not stupid enough to find myself alone with her again off-campus . Who knows who the Irish have aligned with? For all we know Trick and Smiley are now drinking buddies.
“There’s plenty of room back in the apartment,” he presses.
“If I don’t live on campus full time, I can’t do my job. And if I can’t do my job, I may as well just drop out and move to Greenland,” I remind him, the resignation thick in my voice. “It’s not like I’m here for the education.”
“I know, I know,” Zeus grumbles, and I’m nowhere near prepared for when he suddenly hooks a muscular arm around my waist, hauling me in. “I just want you close, so sue me,” he mutters, burying his nose against my loose hair.
I almost squeak when he takes a long lungful of my scent.
Jesus Christ.
I’m still expecting to wake up from this fever dream, but the hard masculine body pressed against mine feels too solid and too good to not be real.
“I’m just enjoying at least sharing a zip code with you again,” I murmur warmly. I glance up at him from beneath my lashes and he rewards me with a blinding smile.
“You are, are you? Not quite satisfied with the current bounty on offer from your Pantheon , darling?”
His smile is pure Grayson smugness now and it earns him a harsh slap to his chest.
Like I needed the reminder of the messy fucking hole I keep digging for myself. Spending a few hours in the forced proximity of our Crew’s apartment, playing Happy Teammates was torturous enough.
I think it’s different, with them. You’re different.
“Careful now,” he grins down at me, blue eyes bright, “You’re already at six.”
My eyebrow quirks up in interest as I duck around him to use my room key. “Oh, really?” I drawl as I unlock the door and push inside. “Six what? Six solid hours of uninterrupted sleep? Yes, please .”
Jesus. Was my voice always that husky?
I don’t manage to take even two steps before Zeus is through the doorframe and crowding my back. One arm snakes back around my waist, slamming me back against his chest, while the other slams the door shut behind us.
When the locks slide home, he spins us, shoving my front roughly up against the back of my dorm room door. The entire structure rattles with the impact.
His chest follows, pressing me flush with the wood.
“Six stripes of this bratty fucking ass, that’s what,” he growls against my hair.
All the oxygen whooshes from my lungs.
Then his body shifts and suddenly I’m airborne.
“ Zeus! ” I manage to choke out—right before my hips slam into the armbar of the couch and I’m pitching forward at the waist. My hands slap down on the cushions, only just breaking the rest of my fall and saving me from a mouthful of soft suede.
Zeus answers me with a hissed curse of his own as he slides his hands under the hem of my sweater and tries to hook my leggings. “Why did you insist on wearing the world’s tightest fucking pants?” he mutters darkly. He tugs at the waistband, trying in vain to gain some sort of traction over my hips. “Like Fort fucking Knox .”
I laugh into the cushion.
Bite off more than you could chew there?
“C’mon, boss,” I snark, “When do I ever make anything easy for you?”
“ Never, ” comes his hissed reply. “But you’ll learn to.”
My chest empties again at the dark promise in his voice. “ And you’ll learn to love it,” he vows, and it sends a shiver dancing along my spine.
There’s a rush of cool air across the tops of my cheeks as he finally manages to wrestle the leather pants over the peach of my ass. He peels them straight down to mid-thigh before he replaces the tight caress of the pants with twin grips of his own.
As he squeezes a handful of each cheek with those large, warm hands, he groans brokenly, “ Fuck , I was right—you weren’t wearing anything underneath.”
“I hate the lines,” I breathe hoarsely. I’ve never felt more exposed.
Or turned on.
“Too bad, troublemaker, because as soon as I get you back to my place, I’m leaving some new ones with my crop,” he growls. “But looks like I’ll have to make do with my belt today.”
My intake is sharp and he pauses, taking in the quivering muscles of my thighs.
“Would you like that, darling? Can I mark up your gorgeous cheeks?”
I enthusiastically nod my assent.
“Yes or no?” Zeus asks firmly. “Out loud.”
My pulse swishes in my ears.
The only two words I want passing your lips are: ‘yes’ and ‘sir’.”
“Yes, sir?”
“That’s my girl,” he grits through his teeth as he yanks my hips up. I squeal out as the movement tips me further forward, bringing both my ass and pussy up even higher. The new angle has my forehead pressing against the backs of my hands.
“ Fuck , this fucking ass . Do you know how many men are going to die before this is all over, sweetheart?” This groan is hot against my skin. “How many I’m going to have to kill just for knowing this even exists?”
My eyes hood with his ragged praise. I might be a proud card-carrying member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee , but your girl’s got enough cake for a healthy-sized serving.
Zeus straightens and then the opening clink of a metal buckle fills the space, followed shortly by the silky thwhip of a leather belt being yanked impatiently from its loops.
There’s a short pause—right before an experimental snap .
I brace.
“How many did I say?” he barks.
“Six?”
“Six, sir ,” comes his firm correction.
I gulp.
“ Six, sir ,” I breathe, making a mental note to price a new arm cover for the couch.
Every muscle is poised, frozen in anticipation for his next move;
Everything but my heart. It’s about to beat right the fuck out of my chest.
“Are you ready?”
My fingers curl against the suede cushion beneath them.
“Yes, sir.”
“This is for the two months I went without seeing you, hearing you, smelling you,” he says, his tone imperious. “Count for me.”
The crack of his belt colliding with my right cheek is like nothing I’ve felt before. There’s a moment, right at impact, where everything stops—my overthinking, my trepidation, my self-loathing—even my headache.
Everything suspended, for a singular heartbeat—right before the lightning strike.
And then the pain registers and it all rushes back in together at once.
“ One, ” I gasp out, but it’s followed quickly by a moan when Zeus’s palm caresses the blossoming welt. “More?” he asks, lowly.
“Yes, sir,” I choke.
“This is for coming home to me for the first time in two months—covered in another man’s seed,” he says, his voice like a thunderstorm. It clashes with the sound of blood pulsing everywhere in my skull until it feels like it comes from all directions.
Fuck!
His possessiveness is a tangible thing, and I can feel its weight wrapped around me like a noose.
My chest constricts, but not with discomfort, but rather with the warm, satiated feeling of reciprocation.
Crack.
The second impact, this time on the left, rocks me forward in its ferocity.
And this time the moan comes first.
“Two.”
“This is for not trusting me and fighting your need to let go,” Zeus continues, still in the same harsh, commanding tones. Crack.
“ Three.”
“For turning my head with your cunt in these pants during the Labor,” he hisses. Crack.
“Four , ” I warble in reply. I can feel the slickness over every inch of my bare pussy and inner thighs. All the way down to where the offending pants bracket my knees.
“For wearing nothing underneath them,” he barks on his fifth swing.
“Five,” I cry out.
My pussy does too. She’s weeping real tears.
Zeus growls and everything clenches.
“And this is for the hundred lives I’ll have to take so everyone knows exactly who you belong to.”
The sixth and final impact of his belt sends me sailing over the edge. Literally and figuratively. My orgasm shudders through my entire pelvis, every muscle and nerve clamping down around nothing at the same time as my entire body pitches forth with the impact.
“ Fuck .”
I’m not entirely sure which one of us says it, or if we both shouted it—because just as I’m sagging under the weight of boneless limbs, I feel a different impact—the hot stripes of Zeus’s cum landing across both my cheeks.
His hands land on the hollow of my waist as he collapses around me, careful not to press his hips against my abused cheeks.
“Maybe one day I’ll learn to live with your Boys,” he concedes, breath warm against my neck, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you are mine. ”
The worst thing about losing out on the First Labor victory?
It wasn’t our failure to decipher the full scope of the directive before the rest of the competition. It wasn’t even the fact that one of the aforementioned competitors was a complete and total unknown.
It was the absolute radio silence from Sebastian.
The weight of it hung over us all like the Sword of Damocles.
Not even Dominic had uttered a word on how deeply his disappointment ran; he’d simply accepted the first of my Symposium reports in silence before marching straight back home to Lexington.
And not knowing how the Gray Man was going to retaliate burned like hot coals in my stomach. All hours of the day . It also didn’t help matters that my head was constantly on the verge of splitting right down the middle—and absolutely nothing in my usual repertoire seemed to be helping.
The side effect is a sort of state of involuntary detox, yet I'm still expected to lurk around this school—sussing out and ambushing potential recruitment targets like some kind of criminally-minded charity mugger.
If only I could have Jax come to my dorm every night and work his magic.
Is it possible to get spanking funded as a therapy line item?
My head would live in empty bliss if so.
“Does Papa Grayson know you’re hooking up with both his sons?”
It’s not so much the words themselves as it is the graveled accent that pulls me up short, like someone just yanked on my strings. It’s an accent that definitely should not exist inside the hallways of Rox Academy and it snaps my head up immediately.
Over to where I find one of the Donato twins leaning casually against the entrance to the senior staff lounge, arms crossed and a dangerous glint in his eye.
The single, white streak bisecting the shock of dark, chestnut hair, marks him as the elder of the two.
And the most ruthless.
“Raphael, what in the fuck are you doing here?” I hiss, eyes darting to the staffroom over one of his muscled shoulders.
“Hello to you too, blondie,” he laughs roughly and my jaw flexes in irritation.
I’m already fighting nausea and a looming migraine. The last thing I need is to be standing here in a verbal joust with a flirty hitman while my body is forced to purge and my stomach moves through each of the 42 Knots.
To say I was on edge would be an understatement.
“Why are you here?” I ask again, more firmly. “The North is forbidden from interfering. I know you know this.”
“Not here to cause trouble,” he winks. “Maybe I just missed your pretty face, you consider that?”
Jesus Christ.
I drag a hand down my face and then immediately wince. I probably already look like a raccoon with all the sweating I’m doing.
“Rafe, your lungs don’t fill themselves without causing trouble,” I groan. “Seriously, no one needs you or your brother stirring shit up around here when we’re already living in the middle of Ace-controlled territory.”
He pushes up off the doorframe, straightening to his full height. Then he drags that unnerving gaze down the length of my body.
“Heard there was an opening in the Art department—and well, y’know how good I am with my hands,” he rasps.
I didn’t think my muscles could feel any stiffer, but they do. They turn to stone.
There are definitely no staff openings, Art department or otherwise.
Unless he made an opening.
But did Midas send him or is he just here to play his own games? Unfortunately, knowing him—and his brother—both scenarios are just as likely.
I just need to find out if he’s here for work…or ugh —pleasure.
“Convenient,” I hedge, shifting on my feet.
“Very,” he smirks as he watches me pull out my phone before tossing me a two-finger salute. “Say hi to Jaxy for me, won’t ya? He sounds like he might be just as good with his hands.”
And then he kicks off the door’s frame, disappearing back into the faculty lounge with the sinful swagger of an Underworld celebrity.
God fucking damnit.
He’s been watching my dorm?
Me
Heads up, there’s a Golden Boy in the Rox henhouse
Me
Might want to check if the Herald’s announced any new contracts
Zeus
I’ll look into it.
Me
Still no Foster?
Zeus
Negative.
The last thing I need is to pile more shit on Zeus’s plate, but having either of the Donatos sniffing around is never a good sign. And if Gabriel is also playing house in Rox City, then those odds of trouble are literally doubled.