five
2 YEARS AGO
Colt Darling
“We treat you like shit, and you had a chance to take it out on me,” Gloria pointed out. “Why didn’t you?”
“I told you I’d stop any time you wanted,” I reminded her. “I wanted to fuck you, not hurt you.”
“I just thought you’d be… More brutal.”
“That’s an odd word to describe sex,” I said, frowning down at her.
Her nail circled my bellybutton, gently scratching the hairs that grew there. “I mean… I’m friends with Royal. I’m not his girlfriend. I don’t get protection from his brothers. He’s not possessive of me.”
“And… That’s a word you’d use to describe them?”
She shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “I mean, the twins get bored easy, so they don’t call me much anymore. Once in a while they’ll punish me if I do something wrong, and that’s pretty… Intense. You know how Baron is. But otherwise, I don’t have much experience, so… Today was just not what I was expecting, that’s all.”
“You’re surprised I didn’t rape you?”
“Well, I agreed so… It wouldn’t have been that.”
It was hard not to judge someone for staying after being treated that way the first time, but I didn’t know shit about her or her life. I just knew she’d endured the Dolces for over a year now.
“That’s how you justify what they do to you?” I asked. “Because you agree to it?”
“I mean, they’d do it either way,” she said. “I might as well agree to it and ask something in return. I’m not a victim, Colt. I’m a victor. I can’t change the framework, but I can operate within it to survive, and if I’m smart and resilient enough, maybe thrive. So that’s what I’ve done.”
“I guess if you’re getting something out of it…” I said doubtfully.
“You do the same thing,” she said. “We all work with whatever commodities we’re given. If you’re clever enough to convince them what you have is worth something, you get to stay.”
“True,” I said, thinking of the Slaughterpen. I knew everyone in town and had a few connections from the boxing gym my uncle owned, so when Royal started looking for an underground fight scene, I created one. His family might have bought the warehouse that housed the fights, but I had the contacts to fill it.
“We should probably get up,” Gloria said, obviously done with that conversation. She shifted, her blonde hair falling over her perfect tits, and smiled at me in a way that had my cock stirring again.
“It’s still Bye Week,” I reminded her, reaching up to thumb one of her spectacular nipples. “We have the rest of today.”
“If we’re going to do this all day, we’re going to need sustenance,” Gloria said, tapping her nail on the metal ring on my pubic bone. “I could run home and get something. I’d just have to be careful sneaking in and out.”
It was the first time I’d ever wanted Bye Week to last, and even as I said it, reality—and guilt—set in. Normally I didn’t give two shits about any of it except the street race, which brought me a decent chunk of cash, and even better, leverage, power, and respect. The only reason I was even awake right now was that Dixie had wanted to stay after the race, and I couldn’t deny her. For 363 days a year, our relationship was an open secret, but it was one that existed in the shadows—the opposite of the spotlight she craved.
So on this one weekend, when I was allowed to mingle with kings, the least I could do was indulge her desires to be in the middle of everything, even a game of hide and seek. That was why I’d played the game, so she could show off that she had a boyfriend. For one weekend, she didn’t have to hide me, and I didn’t have to fuck her like a dirty little secret.
I sure as fuck didn’t mean for it to end with me in bed with someone else.
I lifted to draw out of Gloria at last, then rolled onto my back and threw an arm over my eyes. Dixie would never suspect a thing. She’d think I’d gotten disgusted with the Bye Week charade and left her there like an asshole. I’d done way shittier things than that, and she had lots of friends who could give her a ride home.
And hell, I couldn’t have predicted this, either. If someone had told me I’d end up balls deep in the demon queen of Willow Heights, I would have bet my left testicle against it. I’d go home after this, and it would be like nothing happened. Gloria would go back to chasing Royal, back to being a bitch. I’d go back to the monotony of Dixie, who would never guess what happened because I didn’t make it a habit of defying the Dolces. No one would ever know.
But I’d know.
I was shit, and I knew I was shit because I didn’t feel this way about Dixie, and I never had. I loved her, but our connection had never been explosive like this. Even in the beginning, when I threw her a pity fuck because she put up with being called our dog, I didn’t pick her. I wanted to fuck Crystal, but Devlin got her. Dixie was the consolation prize. The next year, the Dolces let me have her, and I was a selfish prick, so I took her. And then she just… Stuck.
The worst part was, somewhere in my fucked up guilty conscience, I knew that if I had the choice, I still wouldn’t pick her. It would kill her to know I was with Gloria. She’d think it was because Lo was everything she thought guys wanted—hot, blonde, skinny. But it wasn’t that. The thing that turned me on wasn’t the way she looked, it was the way she saw herself.
Dixie deserved someone who looked at her and thought what I did when I looked at Gloria—that she was flawless, a fucking goddess and queen. I didn’t, and the fucked up part was, she knew it and she still stayed. That was what killed my attraction to her.
Even more fucked up was thinking maybe I did that to her. I’d called her a dog, made her crawl. I’d done the same to Gloria, but it was different. She had power. She’d chosen to give that up tonight, give me her submission, and it was hot as fuck. She let me humiliate her by calling her names. She didn’t actually believe them.
“How does this open relationship thing work with Royal?” I asked Gloria, pushing her leg off me. “I know it doesn’t include me. Is that why you asked me to bruise you? So you can show him, and he can castrate me for touching you?”
“What?” Gloria asked, giving me a baleful look.
“I mean, it would do the trick,” I said, sitting and swinging my legs off the bed. I was being a dick, but at least she deserved it. Dixie didn’t deserve any of it—not what I’d just done, and not anything I’d done before. She was just a sweet girl who fell for an asshole. Gloria had been a bitch since the day Royal put a crown on her head.
“I told you, I’m not going to tell Royal,” she said, climbing off the bed and snatching up her own clothes. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I have a conscience, that’s what,” I snapped, jerking on my jeans. “Poor Dixie.”
Gloria snorted incredulously. “She gets you, and I get the sadistic Dolce boys. Forgive me if I’m a little short on pity right now.”
“Your bad taste in men has nothing to do with her,” I said. “Until today.”
“So it’s my fault you cheated on your girlfriend?” she demanded, turning to me as she zipped her jeans. “What, I just pointed my magnetic pussy in your direction, and your pierced dick dragged you right in?”
I would’ve laughed, but I was too pissed at myself, and besides, her tits were still out. Her gorgeous, rosebud-pink nipples made my mouth water like a fucking slobbering dog.
“Well, we know one thing for sure,” she said, yanking on her bra. “Fluke or not, this was a huge mistake, and we’d have been better off never knowing who it was that night.”
“Agreed,” I gritted out.
“Good,” she said. “So… Pretend it never happened?”
I scoffed and shook my head. “Of course. You’re Gloria Walton, the fakest bitch at Willow Heights. And that’s saying something.”
“Yeah, it’s saying that I’m smart and resilient, and I know how to play the game to my advantage,” she said. “Too bad you couldn’t figure that out. Maybe you wouldn’t be a leper if you had.”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug, pulling on my shirt. “Guess we’ll never know, Butterfly.”
“You better not call me that at school.”
I smirked at her. “I’ll do my best. Butterfly.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t forget your phone.”
I put up the bed, and we made sure everything was just the way we found it. We paused at the door, a moment of awkwardness passing between us despite the fact that my cum was leaking out of her right now and the taste of her cunt was still on my tongue.
“Just so you know,” she said, her voice softer now. “I wanted you to bruise me so I could remember this every time I see the marks, so I could make it last somehow. Not because of Royal. We’re friends with benefits, yeah, but we haven’t been together in months.”
“Good to know.”
She shrugged. “Well, I guess thanks. For the mind-blowing orgasms, and for making sure I know it was a mistake and not something to get all stupid over. You’re just as bad as the rest of them.”
“Trust me, Butterfly,” I said, smirking down at her. “I’m worse. I just wanted to know what it felt like to fuck Royal’s bitch. I’ll enjoy seeing you around school, knowing I could destroy you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It would destroy you too.”
I shrugged. “I’m already destroyed. They can’t do much more to me.”
She swallowed, crossing her arms and twisting her pretty lips to one side. “Are you going to tell them?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll sit on the information for a while. I’ve got you pinned, Butterfly. I like watching you squirm, and it’ll be fun being the only one who knows the untouchable queen fucked the school leper.”
I expected her to blow up or break down, but she lifted her chin and stared me down. I respected the hell out of her for it. She had self-respect, and more than that, a whole lot of balls.
“What do you want?” she asked calmly.
“Oh, I’ve already gotten everything I want from you, princess.”
She nodded. “Okay. Have fun walking home.”
She turned and walked out, leaving me standing in Cotton Montgomery’s pool house alone. I watched her go, the defiant little sway of her narrow hips, the toss of her hair as she reached the far end of the pool, like she knew that despite my harsh words, I couldn’t keep myself from watching her walk away. She didn’t look back, and even though I was the one who rejected her, I found myself feeling like the fool when she disappeared around the corner of the house.
It was the furthest thing from the way we came in, laughing and holding hands, doing something reckless and daring together.
I snuck out minutes later, feeling as small and low as it was possible to feel after the best fuck of my entire fucking life. I had no one to blame but myself. I could have left it as a sweet memory, another jerk-off fantasy to last me for the next year, but I went and ruined it. Now the memory was tainted by the bitter aftertaste of leaving angry.
But somehow, even that felt right for my life now. Even the good parts were shit.
I’d done the right thing. I knew that, even if it left me bitter and angry. It was too dangerous to leave this door open. Ripping off the band-aid, getting it over with, was better for both of us. It wasn’t hard to be an asshole and make her hate me. I’d been that guy for years, and she’d already hated me until that morning. Going back to our natural state as enemies was the easiest thing in the world.