12. Kai
Chapter 12
Kai
Fuuuuck, my head hurts. I should’ve stayed at the frat house, where there’s an unlimited supply of painkillers, drawn shades, and soft bedding. But Rooke made his standards crystal clear when I applied to be his TA.
He expects a hundred-and-ten percent from his students, but from me demands two-fifty. Which didn’t scare me back when I took the job, but things have changed since then.
I need Rooke as much as he needs me.
Maybe even more .
So I dragged myself to class, and I tried to look like I wasn’t dying inside. I think he bought it, but it’s always hard to tell what’s going on in Rooke’s head.
Fuck, I’m regretting it though. The beers were fine. I can drink plenty of those and be a-okay, but I didn’t stop there. Whiskey got involved, and that’s when shit really hit the fan.
One shot, two shot, four.
But I still wasn’t drunk enough to drown out Haven’s puppy eyes, could still taste apple pie on my tongue, could still hear her whimpering like an injured animal.
Because that’s what she was, after what I’d done.
Now I’m recovering in the only quiet, dimly lit place on this campus—the library—while I wait for today’s second round of painkillers to kick in. Most students not in class are outside, soaking up whatever heat from the sun struggles through the thin clouds. There’s a handful of nerds inside with me, but most only stay long enough to find and check out whatever book they’d been after before leaving.
I’m in one of the little alcoves dotted about the place. Most are beside windows, but some have only a moody painting for decoration, a green study lamp embedded on the table for light. I’m in one of those, but I turned my light off, because I’m as photosensitive as a fucking vampire. I’d even be wearing my shades inside like a douchebag…but I forgot them in the lecture hall.
I groan at the thought of having to walk back to the frat house without my sunglasses. Maybe there will be denser cloud coverage by then. Looks like the rains are coming early this year.
“…let me see…yeah, right over there. Should be a charging station just under that desk.”
Jesus Christ, who the fuck is disturbing my peace?
I’m lying down on the curved, cushioned bench, so all it takes is rolling my head to the side to glimpse a pair of legs walking past nearby. A floral-print dress, so must be the librarian. Someone follows close behind in faded jeans. All I can see is a section of their thighs and ass, and despite how I’m feeling, I purse my lips with appreciation.
That’s a good looking ass, even in a pair of shapeless jeans.
“That’ll be great, thanks.”
I sit up so fast I get a dizzy spell, but the pair has already disappeared behind one of the stacks.
No fucking way.
This hangover is making me hallucinate or some shit, because I swear to God that girl sounded just like Heavenly.
I take a sip of my water and carefully slide out of the bench, heading in the same direction. There’s just a flutter of a printed skirt as the librarian rounds the corner of another stack, so I stalk after them and pause at the end to peek around the shelf of books.
“Here you go. And don’t forget your book.” There’s a soft thump, and I have to hurriedly retreat before the librarian can spot me. I wait to hear the rustle of her clothing pass, count a few breaths, and then stride down the stack again.
I stop when I see Haven.
She has her back to me, bending over as she plugs her phone into the charging station beneath the bench of the alcove the librarian led her to. This one has a window overlooking the garden, but there isn’t much light coming through. Guess it’s getting cloudier out there.
I lean against the shelf of books beside me, hooking my thumb into the pocket of my Brunello sweats as I watch her. The library is cool enough that I haven’t had to take off my Gucci hoodie, but Haven is zipped up like we’re in the Antarctic.
She slides into the booth and lets out a sigh as she shifts around to get comfortable.
With her sunglasses still on, the cap and zipped up hoody, she looks like she’s in fucking witness protection, but they haven’t moved her to a safe house yet.
That was me.
I did that to her.
Should I be impressed at how brave she is, or pissed that I didn’t do enough to keep her away?
It’s because I keep picturing us when we were kids. That cute, cheeky little girl who’d go trundling through the woods with me on a merry adventure, not this grown up, fucked up fraud in front of me. I’m going at this half-throttle, when it should be pedal to the metal.
Haven grabs the brim of her AHC cap and starts to pull it off, then quickly looks around like she first wants to make sure she’s alone.
But she’s not. And when she spots me leaning against the stack just a few feet away, she scrambles to the center of the bench, right by the window, like that’s her escape route.
Guess she realizes I’m too close. If she tried to run, I’d snag her like a rabbit in a snare.
Her legs are up, knees by her chest. She’s gripping the bench beneath her like she needs the support.
Those blue eyes are wide, fearful, but determined.
“I’ll scream,” she says bluntly.
I thought about a lot of things last night when I was slamming back shots of whiskey and working my way through a six-pack of beer. Like what if she came back to school? I laughed it off, had another shot, and then remembered the feeling I had when I saw her yesterday, after warning her off the first time.
That initial shock, then the anger, then the cold, boiling hatred.
As much as it hurt, I forced myself to dig into the past, sifting through the sun-soaked, shade-dappled memories of our childhood together.
We’d known each other for years before I moved out of that trailer park in Riverside.
I understood Haven. And she understood me.
We gave each other what we wanted, until what we wanted became too big an ask.
I walk closer, and she opens her mouth, but there must be something on my face she doesn’t like because she hesitates, remains silent, watching and waiting even as I lean forward and rest my palms on the table.
“You like this, don’t you?” I murmur. “That’s why you keep coming back for more.”
A crease appears between her dark eyebrows, her lips slowly sealing.
I slide my hands over the polished wood as I take a seat on the edge of the bench. She leans away, but her ass stays right where it is as she watches me uneasily.
“I’m the only Hillsider who’ll dare sit this close to you.”
Haven’s eyelashes flutter, then a touch of color bleeds into her cheeks. “You fucking arrogant pri?—”
I make a grab for her, and it must take her by surprise, because she barely moves before I’ve got my hand latched to the back of her neck. She gasps, her eyes squeezing shut at my touch only to fly open a second later so she can glare at me.
She hunches her shoulders, drawing her legs even closer to her body.
“That’s why you don’t want to leave, isn’t it?” I purr, using my other hand to brush a strand of hair out of her face. “You must have thought you hit the fucking jackpot when they gave you that grant. You’re nothing but a sad charity case.”
Pride floods her eyes, making them sparkle. “I got that grant on merit, not because of pity.”
My laugh makes her cheeks grow even redder. “Please, Heavenly. They took one look at your sorry ass and saw the perfect poster child. The tragedy of such a pretty girl trapped in the slums of Riverside. Every time she tries to crawl her way out, she just keeps falling back in the shit.”
Her slap catches me off guard.
Then she’s dragging my fingers off her neck and scrambling to get out of the bench. I grab her arm, she tears it free. But she’s caught when I snag the back of her shirt and twist the fabric, dragging it tight against her body.
She twists and starts slapping at my hand, but I pull at her shirt, dragging the two of us together over the leather bench. Her body goes stiff when our thighs crash into each other.
As soon as she opens her mouth, I know she’s going to scream.
I recognize that sudden shift from angry to terrified. But my hand muffles the sound, just as I resist her struggles with an arm slung around her waist.
We’re facing each other like lovers, and if it wasn’t for the hand on her mouth, it might have looked to any bystanders that we were about to kiss.
I came so close to it last night.
What the fuck possessed me to lick apple pie off her face, I don’t know, but Christ, it was a struggle not to turn that weird act into something else. Her skin felt so soft under my tongue, and even now, I can feel those pillowy lips pressed to my palm.
“Listen real hard, Miss H,” I whisper, pressing the tip of my nose against hers for a moment before pressing our cheeks together as I move my mouth to her ear. “It’s time you stopped pretending I don’t know you. The real you.”
There’s a muffled sound, maybe a protest, maybe something else. I’m enjoying the feel of her body pressed to mine too much to draw away so I can look into her eyes.
“I know what makes you tick. I know what makes you break.”
I can feel her heartbeat.
A steady, soft knocking against my pec.
What would it take to make it skip a beat?
“You’re gonna get in your car, and you’re gonna drive out of here, and you won’t dare look in your fucking rear-view mirror.”
Another sound, this one definitely a protest because it’s accompanied by a furious wriggle of her hips, like she’s trying to break out of my grip.
“Shh, shh,” I whisper, coiling my arm tighter around her middle like a python. “You’re not listening, Heavenly.”
She goes still. The breath puffing against my fingers from her nose comes in short, hard huffs.
I brush my lips against the shell of her ear, and I swear she still smells like apple pie. A touch of cinnamon, apple, sweet caramel, and for some fucking reason, that makes my cock stir behind my sweat’s soft cashmere. Or maybe it’s just her proximity.
It’s been years since I’ve been this close to a girl.
“You stay the fuck away from this place, or I’ll get the admin office to set up a meeting with your dad and the dean.”
She gives one savage jerk in my grip and sinks her nails into my arm.
“You don’t want that, do you? Your daddy walking in here… waltzing in here, demanding to know what the fuck is so important he had to stop hitting that pipe?”
The fight leaves her body. Like I’d been holding a marionette doll and someone cut the strings. She slumps forward, her weight falling against me.
My cock hardens even more in my lap, pressure building.
I slide my hand off her mouth. I lean back, grabbing her shoulders, holding her up for inspection to see how deep the knife slid in.
Yeah. I hit a nerve. Judging from how pale her face is, maybe even a fucking artery.
I give her a soft shake, and her head just flops, like she doesn’t have the strength to keep her neck stiff.
“That’s it,” I murmur, a smile tugging at my lips as I study her ashen face, the smudges under her eyes, the dark mark on her jaw where she must have hit the car last night when I?—
Fuck.
I didn’t realize I’d been that rough with her.
Didn’t know it would leave a bruise.
But I don’t know what’s fucking me up more…that I hurt her, or that it left a mark for everyone to see.
The whiplash from that thought is swift and brutal.
It doesn’t fucking matter.
She’s got it now.
It worked. All of it. Especially this last, fatal blow.
She’s putty in my hands, limp and docile and…so fucking broken looking.
I grab her chin, and she winces at the pressure I apply on that bruise. Her eyelashes flutter, but she keeps her eyes averted. Doesn’t want me to see her pain, or can’t stand looking at the man who’d dare turn against her like this?
As if she couldn’t see this coming.
I thought I used to live in the clouds, but this girl is fucking delusional. Did she miss that class back in high school, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction?
Someone should remind her how physics works.
Right here.
Right fucking now.
“I want to believe you’ll never come back,” I say, my voice as thick as my cock. “But lying is as easy as breathing for you.”
She seems to come awake, body flinching. But her eyelids are half-mast, her head lowered, as she says, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Those words send a jolt of deja-vu through me.
Please, Kai. I need this. I’ll do whatever you want.
And it gets me hard. So fucking hard.
Christ, how fucked up am I?
I force her head up, trying to get her to look me in the eye so I can lord this moment over her, but her eyes just shift to the window.
Looking for an escape.
“Yeah, we both wish you’d made different life choices, Heavenly. But here we are.”
Her throat moves. “Please let me go,” she murmurs without a trace of emotion.
I pinch harder.
Her eyes squeeze shut. “Please.”
All she wanted to do was get away from me. But then she came back…except, it wasn’t for me.
That fucking pisses me off.
I might have left Riverside when we were kids, but I was always there for her. Right up to the point where she made it clear she’d been using me, that she had no problem crumpling me up and tossing me like a paper napkin.
Being with Haven is like pouring water down a drain. You just keep giving more and more of yourself…but it never fills up. You’re left with nothing to show for your effort.
It’s time she paid me back.
She flinches when I knock off her cap, but her eyes stay shut until I grab her small ponytail and start pushing her head down.
Startled blue eyes pop open.
I press my thumb against her bottom lip, tugging down hard, pulling her jaw open.
“See that cock down there?” I grate out, glancing down at the bulge beneath my sweat pants. “Suck it until I’m convinced you’re not lying.”
Anger fills her eyes. “Fuck you, Kai!”
I grab her and shove her under the table. She cries out when something—an arm, a leg— hits the edge of the wood, and immediately tries to scramble out from under it.
I slam my sneaker into the central table leg, and she runs into it. She turns and tries to go the other way, but I stick my leg out on that side too. When she ducks to go under, I grab her hair and wrench her back.
There’s just enough space between the bench and the table for a small sliver of light to hit her face as I arch her neck back so she’ll look at me.
Both her hands go to her hair, Haven wincing as she tries to untangle my fingers. She stops when I shove my hand down the front of my sweatpants and drag out my cock.
Shock, then awed horror crawls onto her face.
“No,” she whispers.
Her eyes fly up to mine like she’s trying to find evidence that this is just some silly joke, that I’m going to laugh and push her away and tell her to ‘shove off’ like I did when I was a kid.
I couldn’t, even if I tried.
As soon as she looked at my cock, I wanted her lips wrapped around it. There’s confusion on her face, like she’s trying to convince me she doesn’t know how sucking dick works.
“It’s easy, Heavenly. Open your mouth and swallow me down your throat. You’ll like it, I promise.”
She resists when I push her head closer to my lap, her eyes darting from my face to my cock like she can’t decide which is more fear-inspiring.
“Don’t do this,” she says.
“You did this to yourself.” I stroke my cock with one hand, doing it slow and hard because just the thought of what’s about to happen has already got me ready to fucking blow.
“I warned you, and you wouldn’t listen.”
Her mouth opens for another pointless protest, and I use that wet hole to my advantage.
I hiss when her warm lips touch my cock and then flash a smile when she makes a face at the taste of the precum coating my crown.
“Not as sweet as poison pie, is it?” I murmur. “But it gets better, I promise.”
She tries to turn her head, but all it takes is a twist of the hand in her hair before she whimpers and opens her mouth for me.
“No biting. If I feel teeth, I’m dragging you onto this table and fucking your ass until it bleeds.”
Haven shuts her eyes as if to block out the sight of my cock, and again, that resistance melts away. But she can’t possibly know how I like it, so I keep a hand in her hair and I guide her head into my lap so my cock slides all the way to the back of her throat.
The last thing I want is to end up with puke on me, so I only keep my cock there for a second before dragging it out. She still gags, but I only chuckle at her theatrics before forcing myself down her throat again.
“That’s good, Miss H. All that practice has really paid off.”
She makes an angry sound, glancing up at me with a harsh frown. Light slices over her face, catching just one iris in a blaze of blue and navy.
“Don’t make that face. You love this, you fucking slut.”
I’m still guiding her mouth, but I guess she thinks the faster she can make me come, the sooner I’ll let her leave, because she bobs her head faster, swirling her tongue, sucking at my cock so hard it hurts.
Fuck, it hurts so fucking good.
I bite my bottom lip so I won’t start groaning, but I can’t help the small sounds that slip out as her mouth fills up with warm saliva and my cock becomes more and more sensitive to her touch.
“Fuck,” I grate. “That’s it. Suck it like you need the money, my pretty whore.”
My eyes squeeze shut as I fight back the urge to empty into her mouth, holding off to enjoy this fucking ecstasy just a little longer. When she grabs the base of my cock and squeezes, I’m forced to look down.
Light glitters in the tears trapped in her lashes.
“Fuck.” It’s the only word I can manage. My chest is too tight, my legs shaking. “Fuck.”
Her other hand comes up to cup my balls. She massages them, and despite the diamonds in her eyes, there’s a palpable wrath to the way she bobs her head, the way she glares up at me.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My head falls back, but I’m fighting my orgasm as much as I’m fighting to stay lucid.
It’s abandoned in this section of the library, but someone could walk past any second. I don’t know what the punishment for sucking dick in the open would be, but I’m pretty sure it won’t just be a suspension for Haven.
This went way further than I thought I did, but it’s way too late to reel it in.
My hips pump up, Haven making the most exquisite wet, gagging sound every time my cock hits the back of her throat. I’m winning against my climax, drawing it out, lavishing this moment I know I’ll regret, but one I’m already looking forward to letting live rent free in my head for the rest of my life.
And then she slides her thumb down and presses it against it my fucking asshole.
This time I’m the one caught between shock and horror, my breath hitching in my throat.
Is she…smiling?
I jerk my hips back, pulling my cock out of her mouth. “What the fuck?”
She grabs my cock, sticks her thumb in her mouth, and then darts forward, swallowing me so hard and fast that I moan in sheer hedonistic bliss, like some chick in an amateur porn video.
Her thumb goes straight for my hole, but before she can sodomize me, I slam my cock down the back of her throat and offload.
Her eyes widen in panic as she pushes my thighs, trying to get air down her throat.
But I just keep emptying my cum inside her, grinding against her mouth so every inch of my cock is filling her.
I’m sure if I hadn’t pulled out at that second, she’d have tried to bite my dick off, because teeth scrape me as I retreat.
My last spurt of cum hits her lips as she falls back to gasp for air. I shove her away from me with my foot, but even if I wanted to hurt her, my legs are too weak.
She hits the floor and is up a second later, snatching her phone and book off the table as she prepares to run, her face blotchy with tears, shame, and cum.
I let her take her phone. But I slam my hand down on The Lucifer Effect and she throws me a quick, furious glare before deciding it’s not worth it and hightailing it out of the library.
Shoving my dick back in my pants, I slump on the bench as I try to catch my breath.
Either the painkillers finally kicked in, or Haven gives magical head, because my hangover is gone.