6. River
RIVER
The last thing I’d expected from Pandora Pavone was a kiss, but here we are with her lips on mine even as I hold a knife to her throat.
I’ve always known she’s crazy — though I’d learned my lesson in calling her that to her face last year.
My left hand throbs in phantom pain where my left pinky finger had been, and I yank away. I realize the knife has left a thin trail of blood along her throat, and I have the strangest urge to lick it away.
But no.
I’m not here to kiss her or indulge in my darker fantasies.
I’m not here to watch her with another man — with two other men — and do nothing.
I’m here for revenge.
Her knife is warm in my hand, urging me to use it.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Pandora says, setting her hands on my sides. One of them goes under my shirt to press against my stomach. “Yeah, those abs are exactly like I remember. Maybe even better.”
I laugh, and it’s an ugly sound. “Yeah, well, I haven’t had much else to do but train. It’s not like you left me with anything else last year. ”
She’d taken everything away from me. Everything .
I’ll never forgive her for it.
She might pretend she missed me, but we both know how we parted ways. There’s no coming back from what she had her family do to me, all because of a few ill-advised words spoken on a day when we should’ve leaned on each other.
Pandora reaches for my hand, and her thumb rubs against the nub that was once my pinky.
I jerk back like it’s still an open wound. “Don’t touch that,” I hiss. “Don’t touch me .”
I don’t know what I want her to do, though. I don’t know what I expected to do when I finally caught up with her. I had been fine with watching her, planning, but seeing her with those two frat assholes trying to manhandle her had been more than I could handle.
If anyone’s going to fuck with her, to hurt her, it’s going to be me.
“Why not?” Pandora asks, still smiling. “This is mine. You gave it up for me.”
“Gave it—” I start, only to shake my head. “I didn’t give up anything for you. Your family took it away from me.”
I’m still bitter, and familiar anger rises up within me at the knowledge that she doesn’t get it. She either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to. Knowing Pandora as well as I once did, I’m willing to bet on the latter.
She’s always been self-centered, and if she thinks I willingly gave up my finger to atone for uttering a few words, she’s every bit as crazy as I’d said she was.
Pandora wraps her arms around my chest and mouths along my jaw. “Did you get taller? You’re so hot, River. I think about you when I’m masturbating.”
My mouth drops open, and I pull away from her again. I hold up her knife again. “Stop it,” I tell her in a low growl. “Stop trying to come on to me like you think I’d want your sloppy cunt ever again.”
Pandora purses her lips, and it’s a familiar expression, one that almost makes me soften .
“Don’t be like that, River. You want revenge, right? You might as well get laid before you get to the murder bits.”
“I don’t have any problems getting laid,” I say, my voice harsh.
Not since I’d stopped idolizing her.
It had taken time for me to get up the nerve to try again after my disastrous first time with Pandora — and hell, it had taken time for me to recover both from losing my finger and from beating beaten to a pulp by my fucking father — but I’m more than confident in my ability to get laid many, many times before I destroy her.
Pandora gets her thigh between my legs and lifts it high enough to press against my cock. “If you don’t want to get laid, and you aren’t murdering me, why are you here, then?” she asks, an amused smile on her face. “You just wanted to see me?”
I can’t even answer that question, not honestly.
She’d only gloat if I told her the truth, that seeing her with them not once, but twice, had been more than I could handle.
I’d had to concede defeat and stop following them once they’d disappeared into the tunnels, and I hadn’t been able to follow her again after that point.
The fact that I don’t know what had happened when she’d been out of my sight drives me crazy.
All of this does.
Yeah, I want payback from everything I went through, but that doesn’t explain why I have a knife in my hand and I’m not using it on her. I’m not even forcing her to back off.
Why?
Maybe it’s because I’m not ready to be arrested and sent to jail. Maybe I want to live a little longer on the outside before I give in to the inevitable.
Well. It’s not like I’d live for long on the inside.
The Pavone Family may seem legitimate now, but everyone in the underworld in New Bristol knows what they used to be—and what they still are, underneath that veneer of legitimacy.
I have every reason to think that a missing finger will be the least of my problems when everything goes down.
Or maybe you’re scared , a voice taunts in the back of my mind.
Maybe I fucking am.
“I deserve more than what you did to me,” I say, keeping my voice as steady as possible even as my cock starts to respond to the stimulation of her leg rubbing against it.
“I deserved better that day too,” Pandora whispers. She runs her thumb along my lip. “I was devastated, and…” she trails off. “Oh. Wait, you can’t murder me yet. I still have to avenge Rachel.”
“You think I wasn’t devastated, too?” I ask hotly, resisting the urge to lick her thumb.
“Rachel was my friend, too. Then yeah, I fucked up, but I lost my finger .” I’m getting frustrated with her inability to comprehend how serious it is, but then, I guess for a family that wiped another off the map shortly after she was born, it isn’t much.
“Well, it’s as much your fault as mine,” Pandora answers glibly. She presses her thumb harder against my lip. “Help me get revenge for Rachel. I know her killers are connected to the university.”
“You aren’t a private eye, Pandora,” I tell her, pulling back.
She persists, and my lips part despite my best efforts not to do it.
I suck lightly on her thumb before I come back to my senses and take a step away from her.
I should be menacing her, not the other way around, but this is familiar in a way I don’t like. “And you aren’t a vigilante.”
But if anyone can find Rachel’s killer and avenge her death, it’s Pandora’s stubborn ass.
My jaw clenches, and I stare at her. Rachel, her best friend and one of mine, shouldn’t have been cut up and thrown into the trash like she had been. She hadn’t deserved to be tortured before that, either.
If her killer — or killers — have connections to Dyschord, and it’s a solid lead, Pandora Pavone is crazy enough to find them and make them pay.
“I’m definitely a vigilante,” Pandora says, her smile widening. “But I’m not a man, and whoever did her in has ties to that Kappa Omega Buttsex frat. I can’t easily infiltrate them.”
Kappa Omega Buttsex ?
I almost ask about that, then I realize it’s Pandora doing what she always does—turning things into jokes, making me laugh, making me forget who she really is.
“I have zero desire to join a fraternity,” I tell her flatly. I have zero desire to do her bidding.
I have zero desire to see frat guys paw all over her while I’m helpless to do anything but watch.
Pandora presses even closer to me. “Think about it! Brotherhood, companionship, all the roofied girls you could ever want…” She laughs bitterly. “Though if you sleep with a roofied girl, I’m going to remove more than just your finger.”
Anger flares within me. “I’ve changed, Pandora, but I haven’t changed that much,” I snap. “You, though? You haven’t changed one bit.”
“I haven’t,” Pandora agrees. She leans up and brushes her lips against mine. “I’m going to destroy the world, River. Wouldn’t you rather be on my side when that happens?”
I grip her shoulder with the hand not holding the knife, trying to keep her at a distance even as I want to pull her closer and kiss her for real, to see if her lips are as soft as I remember.
The truth is that the best way to destroy her is to get close to her, and the only way to get closer to her is to play along. “Fine,” I tell her. “I’ll help you, but it’s only because it was Rachel.”
But once her killers have been dealt with, all bets are off.
Maybe by then, I’ll be ready to call my own life quits.
I lower the knife, placing it against her breast, and bend in to kiss her.
She moans and pulls me closer. I open my mouth for her, and she tastes like I remember from that year ago. I can’t place what it reminds me of, except crazy .
Pandora’s thigh rubs more insistently against my cock while she runs her tongue against mine.
I didn’t lock the door.
But somehow, I can’t bring myself to care right now .
I want to prove to her that I can last more than three seconds now, that I know how to satisfy a woman, that I’m not going to get scared and bail.
I close the knife, shoving it into my own pocket.
If I’m going to stab her, it’s going to be intentionally.
Not if.
When .
I groan against her mouth, then grab the hem of her skirt to raise it up. I can’t tell what kind of underwear she’s wearing, but I don’t particularly care. I just know they’re in the way.
Pandora goes for my belt—but she also gets her hand into my pocket. I pull back and scowl when she retrieves her knife. She smiles at me.
“It’s sentimental. I can’t let you keep it,” she says, stuffing the knife into her skirt pocket. “Don’t worry, no cutting. It’d be hell to clean up here.”
Yeah, because that’s what she’s worried about.
I grab at the waistband of her panties, pulling them down even as she goes back to working at my belt and fly. We’ve gotten several steps away from it, but I push her against the wall again.
“Fuck you, Pandora,” I whisper, my voice ragged.
I won’t ever tell her what I went through because it would be whiny and stupid — not to mention, she wouldn’t fucking care — but the hatred I feel for her is no small thing. It’s with that brimming to the surface that I get my cock out of my boxers and push her leg up so I can get to her cunt.
Pandora moans and hooks her thigh around my waist. The angle must be awkward, but she rubs her pussy against my cock.
“Haven’t gotten properly laid in weeks,” Pandora murmurs. “Stuff me full, River. Show me how much you’ve learned since then.”
I’m torn between wanting to use her and throw her away and wanting to prove to her that I know what I’m doing now. If I’m going to get close to her, though, the latter is the only real option.
I thrust up, my cock finding her cunt and pushing inside, and I groan at the feeling of her tight heat around me. She’s wet, too, which somehow doesn’t surprise me.
When I’m as close to her as I can possibly get, I lean down to run my tongue along the small cut I left on her neck. Pandora moans loudly and tightens her cunt.
She also pulls my hand closer to her mouth and begins kissing it, right where the pinky stub is.
I want to pull away, but for some reason I don’t understand, I don’t.
Instead, I let her kiss and lick at that spot as I start to fuck her right there against the wall.
The position isn’t the most comfortable, especially with my pants down halfway and Pandora balancing on one leg, but it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that I’m inside of her and going strong, proving that the first and only time we ever fucked had been a fluke, not a trend.
“Keep going, keep going,” Pandora moans, clenching around me.
She’s so hot inside, drawing me in, and I lose myself to the raw sensations.
How dare she destroy me.
How dare she manipulate me.
How dare she flirt with those other men.
I fuck her harder, faster, pounding into her as hard as I can. I hate her for enjoying this as much as she is, but no matter how rough I am, it only seems to spur her on. I’d say that maybe next time, I should go slow and easy on her, but I know better.
In the end, she comes first, clenching around me and letting out a cry she doesn’t even bother to try to stifle. I bite her neck, sucking hard on the skin, drinking her blood, as I keep fucking her, and I’m sure I’ve left a mark by the time I come deep inside of her.
I’m breathing hard, and I lean heavily against her until my cock starts to soften, then slips out of her along with some of my cum.
Pandora blinks at me slowly.
Then she says, “I’m not on birth control.”
I freeze. “What? ”
After three seconds, she bursts out laughing. “Oh my god. The look on your face.”
I grit my teeth, slamming one of my hands against the wall right beside her head. “Fuck you, Pandora,” I snarl. “Don’t even joke about that shit!”
“Okay, but you didn’t stop to wrap it up either.” Pandora slowly lowers her leg and pulls her panties up, apparently unbothered by the cum.
“I wasn’t exactly planning on fucking you,” I mutter.
She ignores me. “Come by my dorm tomorrow so we can talk about Rachel. You know where it is, right? Since you were eavesdropping earlier.”
“How—” I begin, admitting my guilt without meaning to. “No, never fucking mind. Fine. I’ll be there around twelve, after class.”
Pandora grins slyly. “You know my class schedule, too? You are a stalker.”
“I meant after my class,” I tell her, but she’s not wrong. I did know that she’s done by noon, too.
I step back and tuck my cock away before pulling up my boxers and pants.
Pandora gets up on her toes to kiss my cheek. “I’m so happy you’re here, River. Revenge is so much better shared.”
I shake my head, but there’s nothing to say to that. “See you tomorrow, Pandora,” I say, turning my back on her. I half-expect to feel a knife between my shoulders, but she simply lets me go.
Good.
I need time to recalibrate, to think.
I need time away from her.