Chapter 28
Scarlett
I catch up to Widow around the corner, grabbing onto his shoulder and throwing him back into a bank of lockers. I cage him in with a palm on either side, my own breath ragged and uneven.
That’s the hardest, most real fuck I’ve ever had in my life. Bohnes, admitting that he’s bad news while pretending to assault me for both his pleasure and mine? We got off on that together. He got me off by admitting that he’s been stalking me for years.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, finding this crack of horror in Widow’s eyes, a flash of lightning in a stormy sky.
He’s breaking apart, panicking over something.
My body shifts a little closer to his and he recoils.
I drop my gaze down to see that the front of his jeans are wet.
There’s just enough light from outside for me to see that. “Did you jizz in your pants?”
I’m so confused.
“Let me go.” Widow’s voice is quavering, unstable. I smell trauma, frowning as I return my gaze to his.
“Remember what you said? I wear my trauma, but you bury yours. What’s the matter, baby? You’ve got to tell me.”
Widow grits his teeth, angry and wild, desperate to run away but unwilling to touch me. My body is an electric fence, holding him in place.
“Bohnes…it looked like Bohnes was assaulting you.” He’s struggling to string words together, rage and disgust thick in his voice.
“Yeah, but he wasn’t. You know that.” I’m mildly embarrassed, shifting from foot to foot, looking away for a minute. “It was obvious, wasn’t it? You guys are tight now. He’d never hurt me. I thought we were past—”
“It’s not about him, Scarlett.” Widow closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the lockers.
Closing his eyes. There’s a dick sharpie drawn just right, so that it’s pointing at his mouth.
It’s almost funny. I’d laugh if the situation weren’t so fraught.
“It’s about me. I saw a man holding you down, pretending to take you against your will, and I didn’t just like it, I fucking blew my load.
Didn’t touch myself. Just from looking.”
My entire body—used and tired and sated and sensitive—begins to burn.
Wanting someone and them wanting you back, it’s the best feeling in the world. I lean forward and press a kiss to the side of Widow’s sweaty neck, the muscular column of his throat working before he surprises me by fighting back. He knocks my arms aside and takes off down the hallway.
He’s running and I’m giving chase, playing hide-and-seek in the dark with more than one dangerous, horny fuckboy.
I tackle him before he can get much of a lead, my arms locking around his waist as he slows and then stops, unwilling to drag his wife down the hallway.
He’s more of a gentleman that he knows. He wouldn’t hurt Maryanne or Trish, even though they had it coming.
And he’s so afraid of being a monster that he’s afraid of being a man, too.
“Widow, you saw me having three orgasms in a row and you had one, too. What part of that is a problem? You have my consent. For anything. I trust you.” I swallow and close my eyes, listening to his pulse, feeling Bohnes drip hot and sticky down my thighs.
Widow’s hand comes down and presses against mine, pushing my palms into his flat, hard tummy.
“I have the urge to chase you,” he says, his voice a low, distant whisper, a boom of thunder at the edge of the world. “To catch you. To have my way with you. Do I have your consent for that?”
“No safe words, Adrian.” I release him and turn, sprinting down the hall as fast as I can, hoping to trigger him.
Dark goddess, please.
I want Widow to break and show me everything.
“This is messed up!” he calls out, voice echoing down the empty halls.
It’s a dying tradition here at Prescott High for seniors to teach the underclassmen how to take care of their cars. Yet another piece of culture that I don’t see surviving more than a year or two. As the neighborhood crumbles, so does the fragile fabric of our community.
Anyway, I wore heels for that when I should’ve worn boots. Not that I can’t run in heels—who the fuck do you think I am?—but I could’ve gone faster if I had less deadly (uglier) footwear.
I swing around a corner and duck into an open classroom door, breathing hard. Sticky and sweaty. I just came three fucking times and now I’m asking for more? Yeah, I’m a nympho. I slow to a creep, ducking down and then crawling between the rows of desks toward the front of the room.
There’s a slow, steady set of footfalls outside the door.
Widow is coming after me, but he isn’t chasing me.
“Some king you are!” I shout out, shoving aside a poster that blocks a literal hole in the wall. I crawl through to another classroom, one with a door that faces a hallway opposite to the one where Widow is standing. He’s shouting back at me, but it’s hard to hear what he’s saying.
Share your trauma with me, Widow. Fall apart in my hands.
I’m feeling cocky as I stroll out the classroom door—only to run right into him.
“You’re not the only one who knows this school’s secrets,” he challenges, his golden eyes on fire.
I dart off, but he still doesn’t chase me. I turn around at the end of the hall, walking backwards as he strolls forward, hands casually tucked into the pockets of his dirty jeans.
Widow was out there tonight, teaching girls how to change their oil. Showing boys how to fix a flat. How to replace a battery. All of that generational wealth shit that comes in the form of knowledge passed from one human being to another. Adrian was there by my side. My husband. My king.
“You warned me about all the things you were going to do to me. You said you were a monster.” I shrug my shoulders, a cruel but flirtatious smile edging my lips. They’re swollen, bitten by Bohnes. “Prove it.”
There’s this frozen slice of time where Widow stops walking. His face shuts down. His eyes go dark. His pupils have leached black into the gold of his eyes, the glow of Bohnes’ string lights turning him into something feral.
My hackles go up.
“Prove it?” he repeats, his voice edgy and untamed.
He starts running and he is fast.
“Fuck.” The word slips from my mouth as I spin around, my heels pounding on the floor in time with his. No, not in time with his, Widow is faster. He’s been saying for a while now that his job in our little ragtag team of psychos is sheer, brute force.
Apparently, it’s also speed.
He’s faster than me, so I decide to play dirty, dropping to the ground just as he’s about to grab me. Widow knocks into me, but instead of flying over my crouched form and hitting the floor, he falls on top of me.
Not an accident, I’m sure.
“You’re fighting off urges that I like!” I yell back, taunting him, elbowing him in the stomach so that he’s growling and manhandling me just to keep me from hurting him. “Play with me, Widow!”
His teeth are gritted as he slams my wrists and back into the floor hard enough to hurt.
There’s a knee between my legs, grinding my crotch into the ground.
A bit of blood dripping from his brow from where I must’ve hit him by accident during the struggle.
He’s breathing hard as he pins me underneath him, his eyes staring down into mine.
Hot anger is written into every line of his face as he grinds his knee against me, making me writhe.
“You’re not going to get me—” he begins as I buck my body up, swinging a leg around and nailing him in the chest with my heel.
The damn thing flies off and he catches it, slipping the shoe back on like a prince.
It’s not enough to get him to let go. It is enough to force Widow to expend energy and willpower, wrangling me into compulsory submission.
“Don’t you ever get tired of holding it all in?
Let it go, Adrian.” I lift my head up and bite his lower lip, tasting the blood that drips from his forehead down the side of his face.
Licking it. He’s trembling now, so desperate to keep his pain and his trauma underground that his bones are starting to rot.
“I don’t want to rape you,” he repeats, annoyed, gaze sliding to the shadows around us.
Where is Alexei? Where is Ash for that matter?
I feel confident with the five of us here, like we’re invincible together.
We can do anything. I’m relaxed at Prescott High.
Why wouldn’t I be? This is my territory after all.
Only for tonight, and then it’s over.
Prescott High will belong to some other unlucky bitch.
“Can’t rape the willing.” I twist violently, taking advantage of his relaxed grip to break free. I’m up and running, shouting taunts over my shoulder as I go. “Catch me if you can, you cuck!”
Widow barrels into me as I’m rounding the corner, knocking me into a bank of lockers.
“You know what I should do,” he growls into my ear, that cheap stupid crown still somehow stuck to his hair. “I should tie you to the bed, tape your eyelids open, and make you look at me while we make love. Want to push some boundaries together, Scar? That’s me pushing yours.”
I rub my ass against the wet spot on the front of his jeans, riling him up. Widow’s hands tighten on my wrists, his breath stirring my hair. He presses harder against me, trapping my body against the cool metal.
“I don’t have any boundaries left with you, Adrian.” It’s an admittance as much as it’s a retort.
I exhale and my breath frosts against the dirty locker as he curls our fingers together on either side of me.
Widow rests his face against the side of my neck, breathing hard. He squeezes my hands with his, veins and tendons showing in his knuckles and his forearms as he struggles with his emotions and keeps them in check at the same time. He doesn’t hurt me even though he so easily could.
“You can’t get away from me, can you?” he asks softly, and I feel myself smiling, cheek still pressed to the metal.
“I could if I wanted to play dirty and risk killing you—”