Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Laurel
“A party?” Cicley gasps, jumping up to stand. She’s already bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Oh, my gosh! Yay! We haven’t had one in forever.”
Within seconds, chaos breaks out. Books slam shut.
Bags are zipped. Laptops click closed. Girls flood out of the library like a dam just burst, laughing, squealing, giddy.
They grab each other’s hands as they spill into the halls.
Their energy is electric and contagious, like the whole house is waking up from a long nap and remembering how to have fun again.
I stand frozen, watching the exodus with wide eyes. “A party?” I repeat, turning to Cicley. “Like, right now?”
She nods eagerly. “Come on, Laurel! Ashford House throws the best parties.”
Before I can answer, she grabs my hand and hauls me toward the door. I barely manage to snatch up my backpack and books as we go.
Abbie and Cicley flank me, gossiping, trading stories about all the parties they’ve been to. They laugh as they reminisce.
“Remember the one where the fountain was full of champagne?” Cicley says. “I swear it was drugged. I got drunk off one sip.”
Abbie snorts. “Please, that’s nothing.” She turns to me, grinning. “At the Winter Solstice party last year, they brought in actual wolves. Like, with handlers and everything. One of them bit a guy’s arm.”
Cicley giggles. “He totally deserved it, though.” She adds, “Oh! What about that Halloween party where they blindfolded everyone and led us down to the tunnels?” Her eyes sparkle, wide with excitement.
“I thought it was some kind of initiation, like one of the rituals the Sons have, but turns out it was just a rave. With glowing masks and a live DJ.”
They both dissolve into laughter, like none of this is strange, like wolves and secret tunnels and blood on the floor are just part of the Ashford experience.
Somehow, impossibly, I find myself grinning and laughing too.
Nodding along, I let their energy, their enthusiasm, pull me in.
Back before prom night, before everything got ruined, this was what I used to picture when I thought about college.
Me and my friends, laughing too loud, going to wild parties, being fearless and carefree and alive.
I thought Preston stole that from me. That I’d never get to have that version of the college experience, but right now, walking beside Abbie and Cicley, it feels like maybe I still can.
“Oh!” Cicley says, her voice high with excitement. “Maybe we’ll find our Bonded at the party. Wouldn’t that be amazing, Abbie?”
Abbie nods, her expression soft and wistful. “You’re so lucky, Laurel. That Carrson chose you.”
Lucky.
I think back to what Carrson said when he bonded me.
I can fuck you, beat you, betray you.
To the bruises on Staci’s skin. The way she flinched when I asked about them.
A chill runs down my spine.
I want to tell my new friends that this isn’t a fairytale and we’re not princesses waiting for our princes.
We’re girls dressed in white, standing at the edge of a volcano, waiting to be sacrificed.
We’re walking into a lion’s den, hoping the beast decides to play nice.
I open my mouth to warn them, but they’re smiling, laughing. Filled with hope.
I shut up. Who am I to ruin the night?
We reach Ashford House, less a mansion and more a monument.
From the outside and in most rooms, it reminds me of the grandest estates in the Garden District of New Orleans, of the elegant plantations in the Deep South.
It’s all wrought-iron balconies and graceful columns, its windows flickering with candlelight like watching eyes.
The dining hall, where the party is held, is the one exception.
There, the aesthetic shifts from Southern Gothic to medieval fever dream.
Vaulted ceilings arch high above us, impossibly tall.
Stone walls shimmer with glowing sconces and stained-glass windows.
Wooden banquet tables, massive, carved, and ancient, have been shoved aside for dancing.
It’s like a place where knights feast and kings watch jesters perform, only tonight, the court is young and wild and half-naked.
Music blasts from speakers, something laden with bass and hypnotic.
The crowd dances with it. Bodies press close, movements sensual, college students lost to the beat.
Red solo cups carelessly spill beer and scarlet-hued wine.
It vanishes as the ancient stone drinks it down, like the floor is alive.
Like it’s thirsty. Someone’s passing around a bottle of dark liquor.
I watch as a tray of glittery jello shots floats by, the contents sparkling like fairy dust.
Brothers lounge bare-chested, with their shirts tucked lazily into waistbands, muscles flexed and gleaming under the lights. Sisters whirl in short skirts and bare shoulders, giggling, flushed, twirling into hands that grip their waists too tightly. They’re spun, dipped, kissed.
Cicley’s already barefoot. Abbie’s taking shots, halfway through a game of flip cup on a table that looks like it belonged to a sixteenth-century war council.
I don’t know how everyone got here so fast, but the cavernous dining hall is packed, loud, sweaty, and chaotic.
Like the rules have all been stripped away, and something older, more primal, has taken their place.
I feel it.
A prickling awareness across my skin, as if someone lit a match and held it an inch from my back. Rough hands slide around my ribcage, skimming lower until they find the sliver of bare skin where my shirt doesn’t quite meet my pants.
A voice, low and dark, curls in my ear like smoke. “Play along, Kitten. Everyone’s watching.” Lips brush my neck, an almost-kiss, and my breath stutters, traitorous.
“The brothers have been restless,” Carrson murmurs against my skin, every syllable a slow release of hot breath.
“Asking questions. Wondering why they haven’t seen me with my Bonded.
” From the outside, I’m sure it looks like he’s whispering sexy, filthy promises in my ear, not veiled warnings and conspiracy theories.
“Time to give the masses what they’ve been waiting for,” he says, and his body starts to move. Slow. Sinuous. Deliberate. He rolls his hips against mine in time with the music, each movement a threat, a seduction, a command. “Dance with me, Laurel.”
His hands tighten on my hips, pulling me to him, my back pressed to his chest. His grip isn’t rough, but it isn’t gentle either. It’s possessive, like he knows I won’t stop him.
“I don’t dance,” I manage, though my voice comes out breathy, uncertain.
“You do now,” he says as the music pulses around us.
I feel every beat in my chest, in the hollow beneath my ribs, in the place low in my belly that shouldn’t ache for him but does.
He moves against me, guiding me, and my body follows.
Heat floods my cheeks. I’m hyperaware of his touch, of the way our bodies fit together too easily, too perfectly.
His chest brushes my back, solid and warm.
When the bass drops, he moves faster, brushing his hips against me from behind, each motion drawing mine with it, like we’re tied together, his body coaxing mine to follow, to surrender.
I feel every shift of muscle, every inch of heat between us, the friction unbearable.
My back arches slightly, instinctively, and he’s right there to fill the space.
One hand drifts up, skimming my waist, my ribs, stopping just beneath the curve of my breast. Close enough to burn.
One song in and already our bodies have fallen into a rhythm so fluid it’s as if we’ve done this a thousand times before.
My breath falters as his lips graze the shell of my ear. “Good girl,” he murmurs, his voice thick with dark praise. “That’s it. Follow the music.”
He grinds against me, slow and sinful, and I feel him everywhere.
I follow his instructions and give myself up to the song and the sensation of our bodies moving in synchronicity.
Slowly, I raise my hands over my head, let my arms sway, and push back against him so that we contact, connect, in as many places as possible.
I dance faster now, losing myself, and he holds me steady.
The room vanishes.
It’s just us.
Touching. Finally.
It feels too good. Better than I ever imagined. I try to remind myself this is an act. Just for show. When I glance up, I see us reflected in the stained-glass windows, my head tilted back, his mouth on my neck, our bodies locked together, and it doesn’t look like dancing.
It looks like seduction.
It looks like foreplay.
He must feel it too, that pull between us, tightening, sharpening, snapping, because the control Carrson clings to so tightly slips.
Not all the way.
Just enough.
His lips go to my shoulder, to the bare skin next to the strap of my tank top. He kisses me there. Lightly. Softly, but definitely a kiss. There’s no mistaking it.
I inhale sharply, my pulse jumping, and tilt my head to the side. I don’t have to say a word.
It’s an invitation.
From me to him.
He accepts instantly.
The next kiss is firmer, a deliberate press of his mouth on my shoulder. His tongue follows, slow and sure, stroking against my skin like he’s savoring it. My knees nearly give out.
My hands float up over my head, fingertips seeking him blindly. I bury them in his hair, not to pull him closer, though God, I want to, but to steady myself. To keep from falling.
“Fuck,” he hisses, his voice unsteady, fraying at the edges.
His lips are on the move now, ghosting over my skin, trailing higher. Gliding up my neck to my ear as a moan escapes me, soft, helpless, wanting.
“You taste so fucking sweet, Laurel,” he groans. “I knew it. I knew it’d be like this.”
I press back into him, needing more, and I feel the way his breath stutters, the way his body tenses like he’s holding back something dangerous.
“We should stop,” he says, but his hands are on my waist as he turns me in his arms and lifts me like I weigh nothing.
He sets me on the edge of a nearby table, the old wood creaking beneath me as we come face to face.
My legs wrap around his hips, my arms around his neck.
I draw him closer, pulling him into me. It’s instinctive.
Desperate. His hands roam along my waist, my thighs, the curve of my hip, like he’s trying to learn me, memorize me, through touch alone.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper, tilting my head back as his lips find my jaw. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Careful, Kitten,” he says as his mouth trails down to my collarbone, which he bites gently. “Don’t give me permission. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do,” I argue back. I’d do anything, give anything, to get his lips on mine.
His control unravels like a string pulled tight too long. One hand fists in my hair, tilting my head back so his mouth can trace a line up my throat. The other grips my thigh, holding me to him like I’m the only solid thing left in a world that’s spinning out.
Just before his lips reach mine, I make the mistake of opening my eyes.
They’re watching. Brothers. Sisters. Some of them are subtle. They pretend not to look, casting sidelong glances beneath lowered lashes. Others are more open about it. Blatantly staring. Like we’re a show on a stage. A performance.
He used to bring town girls to parties. Do them in front of everyone. We all saw it.
The spell breaks.
Both hands on his chest, I push Carrson away and blurt, “You never told me you could bond more than one woman.”
His eyes meet mine, lust-dazed, heavy-lidded. One slow blink. Two. “What did you just say?”
“Three women,” I rush on, my heart pounding, hoping I got it right, otherwise, this is going to be so embarrassing. “That’s how many you can have, right?”
That clears the fog from his expression real fast. “Who told you that?” Carrson demands.
Not liking the angry edge to his voice, I fire back, “The sisters and don’t get mad at them. They had to tell me since you obviously weren’t going to do it.” I layer the accusation on thick and let it hang there between us.
“Why would I?” He takes a big step back and scowls.
For a minute, I miss the pressure, the warmth, of his body on mine.
“I wasn’t planning on bonding any women, let alone three.” His voice rises, harsh with anger and frustration. “That is, until you came along and I had to save your ass.”
“Yeah, right.” My anger spikes, rising to meet his. “You mean until Daddy forces you. Then you’ll bond as many as you’re told, like a good little boy.”
Carrson rears back like I just slapped him.
“Why do you even care, Laurel?” he hisses, his eyes narrowing into slits. “You won’t be around to see how many I do or don’t bond. You’re counting down the days until you can get out of here. Can’t wait to leave me.”
A trickle of blood slides down his cheek and soaks the collar of his white shirt, staining it pink.
“What the hell?” I hop off the table and step closer. “Carrson, what happened?”
I grab his arm and tug him toward the light streaming from a sconce high on the wall.
In the shadows, I hadn’t seen it. But now?
His left eye is bruised and swollen, a black eye in the making.
There’s a fresh gash across his cheekbone, curved like a blade.
It’s bleeding, fast and messy. The scab must have broken when he was kissing my neck.
“What happened to you?” I whisper, my fingers brushing over the cut.
He winces, his lips pushing into a pout. “Like you care.”
I roll my eyes. “Really? What are you—five?”
Without letting go of his shirt, I drag him down the hallway to the kitchen.
The bright overhead lights hum as I rummage through drawers until I find a clean towel.
Carrson leans against the counter, still sulking like an overgrown child, while I run the cloth under cold water, wring it out, and return to him.
“This’ll probably hurt,” I warn and press the towel against his cheek, firm and steady.
He hisses at the contact.
A minute passes in silence. I ask, quieter this time, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No,” he mutters, and I start to turn away, already resigning myself to another secret he won’t share. Another wall he won’t let me break through.
Instead, he stands and says, “I’ll show you.”