Esme
What the fuck was I doing?
Why was I back at Ignite?
Fucking why?
It had been two weeks since I’d been to the club with my sister. Two full weeks. Fourteen days. And during that time, I’d done nothing but obsess over Eloise with the three daddies. It was the thought that kept me up every night. Dreams of all four of them together had continuously awoken me, covered in sweat…and a few tears.
So why, when the first chance arose, did I come back?
Because I was apparently a masochist.
As soon as I got my acceptance letter full of all the details for my enrollment for my number one choice of universities, I called Amelia. This was something worth celebrating. At the end of the summer, I would be states away. No more seeing Eloise unless I absolutely had to. No more petty bitchiness. No more thinking of the daddies who had invaded my fantasies—and induced a few nightmares.
Amelia was the only person I was going to miss, but my best friend had her own education goals. She was off to Harvard premed, which was a huge fuck-you to her family because there wasn’t a single Durst who hadn’t attended Yale. Her grandmother was a goddamn broken record with all the “Yale this” and “Durst legacy that.”
Tradition. Tradition. Tradition.
Puke.
I hated Clarissa Durst almost as much as I hated Elsa Pearson. Amelia’s family didn’t deserve her. No one would ever be good enough for my sweet bestie. She was my safe place, where I could take a deep breath and be myself. My parents adored Amelia and considered her one of our family. Even Eloise was good to her, which was smart because if she ever mistreated my Lia, I really would slit my sister’s throat.
Not that Eloise was necessarily a genius. When it came to her need to strike at me, she’d found my weak spot. She texted me every other day to gloat about her night at Inferno with the sexy daddies. Three strangers, just random men I’d spotted across a crowded club, turned out to be my downfall in my sister’s eyes. And she took great joy in spilling all the details of her amazing nights with them. Plural, because it hadn’t been her first time with them and apparently wasn’t her last either.
Supposedly, Eloise had come back the previous weekend just for them. Our parents hadn’t even rated a visit because Parker, Benson, and Malcolm had insisted she give them all her free time.
Which made me wonder if maybe they had a few screws loose too. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to more time with Eloise?
But maybe I was being a little salty where they were concerned. My heart was doing weird shit, feeling things it had no business feeling for men I’d never even spoken to. Insta-love was not a thing, and I definitely had not fallen for three assholes without even knowing their freaking names.
Insta-lust, however?
Absolutely.
If my heart was doing crazy shit, that was nothing compared to what my body was putting me through. I didn’t believe those smutty romance novels that detailed how wet a vagina could get during sex. A little tingle, sure. A nice buzz after a mostly boring little pop that every author I ever read said should have been an explosion, okay.
But one sneak peek of those three beast-like daddies had given my body a jolt that I couldn’t recover from. I woke up dripping in places I’d never dripped before after dreaming about them. A freaking dream. What the actual fuck?
But it was time to put those three out of my mind. Eloise had them first, and unlike my deranged sister, I wasn’t in competition with anyone. Especially over a group of guys.
That age-old advice that the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else was firmly in my mind when I told Amelia where I wanted to go. If we happened to venture over to the Inferno side of Ignite, that would be solely up to my friend. And if by some chance she did want to explore that part of the club… Well, leaving for college minus my virginity seemed like a good idea overall. It was a bonus if it got the beast-daddies out of my head.
That I’d hacked Eloise’s email and found the code word to get us easily into Inferno for that night had been a just-in-case. My bestie needed a night out to forget her shitty family.
After yet again treating Amelia like she didn’t exist, her dad, stepmother, and stepsister had flown to Paris for the weekend. To cheer up Elsa because her stupid ass hadn’t gotten accepted into any of the colleges she applied to. Considering she was at the bottom of our class, I wasn’t exactly surprised that she had failed to get into even the most mediocre of higher-education establishments.
As rich as her dad was, he still couldn’t buy her a brain. Pathetic.
Double-checking with Astro and Otto that they knew the rules and then assuring them I would press my smartwatch if we needed anything, I turned to face my bestie once we were inside the club. “What do you know about Ignite?”
Okay, maybe I wanted to influence my bestie’s choice.
Just a little bit.
But I really, really needed to get those three out of my head before I lost my fucking mind. And Amelia deserved a night with someone who could and would give her the affection she craved.