Chapter 19 Angel
Helping Glenn took most of the afternoon.
His contract with the potential client was difficult because the athlete was partly managed by their father and wouldn’t agree to anything unless their father agreed first. Their father was also a fan of social media and made bold but vague tweets a lot.
I would avoid this client like the plague, but Glenn was a more patient person than I was.
When we were finally finished, he had taken my mind off my own problems, but as I sat in my office, my attention was on my top drawer.
It was so tempting to stand up and walk out of the office, locking the offensive paper and pics behind.
But even if I locked the physical words away, they were still present in my thoughts.
With my elbows on my desk, I rubbed my temples as I thought about my options.
The police, obviously. But then I would need to tell them that I hadn’t given them the sheets when the asshole had left . . . fluids. My stomach roiled, and I swallowed hard.
Fuck my life, I needed to tell him. He needed to know this. Or Cooper. Ugh, the thought of engaging in conversation with Cooper, willingly, was even worse. Onyx and I were tense; Cooper Carter was more heinous than even Onyx. Potentially.
It was a tough call.
But Onyx, even on his worst day, I would still pick him over Cooper. Which was Cooper’s problem with me.
The morning after I had the most out-of-body-experience orgasm of my life, I woke up alone.
I hadn’t expected romance from Onyx, but I had expected him to stay the night.
Feeling slightly vulnerable, I peeled myself out of the bed, and as I looked down at my body, I had blanched at the signs of our night together.
My wrists had slight bruising from the belt, and the inside of my legs had hickeys where he had worked magic with his mouth and tongue.
Fingerprints were on my hips from the force of his grip as he had fucked me.
My pussy was satisfied but ached. And who could blame it?
The guy was hung and knew how to use his cock very well.
I saw small bite marks on my breasts, and I had a dim recollection of him biting me as he slammed into me time and again.
Pulling on a shirt and shorts, I opened the door of my bedroom to dash to the bathroom to check myself out before Chrissy saw me first. I needed to know what I was dealing with to be able to defend my night of passion with a stranger.
I hadn’t been expecting the guy on my couch.
He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, dark jeans, dark hoodie, and a scarf around his neck.
The scarf held my attention until I realized it wasn’t a scarf.
Realizing it was one of the Devils from the night of Dave’s incident, I took a step back and banged into the wall.
His head snapped to attention, and he pinned me with an icy glare. Thick dark hair that was too long hung over his eyes, which met mine and held. He ran his cold stare over me, his lips twisting in a cold smile as he looked at me again.
“He fucked you good, vampire.”
“Who the hell are you?” I asked him as I heard the toilet flush, and for a fleeting moment, I thought Chrissy had finally gone insane with her adoration of the elusive Devils.
“You don’t need to know,” he said as he stood with a stretch. He took a step toward me, and his hand shot out and wrapped around my throat. His head tilted as he checked his hold. “Yeah, he fucked you hard,” he noted softly. “Did you like it? Being choked as he fucked you?”
Wrenching my head away from him, I slapped him. “Get your hands off me and get out.”
The guy stepped forward but stopped himself when the bathroom door opened, and when Onyx stepped out, I felt a wave of relief. “Onyx,” I breathed, happy to see him. He looked as gorgeous as he had the night before, if not more, now that I’d been intimate with him.
He was wearing the same as he had the night before, his T-shirt and jeans dark as they had been. It took my brain too long to notice how similar his clothing was to the bastard in front of me.
“Mm-hmm,” Onyx greeted me as he raked my body with his hot gaze, his eyes lingering on my neck.
“You bit her?” Asshole asked him with a laugh as his fingers trailed over my shoulder.
Jerking away from him, I looked at my shoulder, seeing the deep purple bruise for the first time.
“A bite for a bite,” Onyx told him with a laugh. He rolled his head on his shoulders. “I’m hungry,” he declared.
“Work up an appetite?” the guy asked as he threw something black to him.
“You know it, brother,” he said with a wicked smile.
Brother?
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized they knew each other.
That if the asshole with the boundary issues was a Devil .
. . so was Onyx. I watched, stunned, as Onyx shook out the black cloth, and I realized it was a bandana.
The same bandana that they had worn to cover their faces when they did Mayhem.
My head was spinning. What had I done?
Too late, I realized that Onyx was in front of me, his head dipped into the crook of my neck, and he spoke in my ear, loud enough for his friend to hear. “Thanks for the ride, vampire,” he said with a quick kiss on my neck.
“Breakfast?” the other one drawled, obviously bored now. “Hey.” He looked excited. “My treat for your win.”
“Win?” It was the first thing I said since I realized something was horribly wrong.
“Our win,” Onyx corrected his friend as he walked past me.
“Knew you wouldn’t lose and let me down,” Asshole said with glee.
Onyx glanced back at me. “It was easy,” he told him, and his tone, the words, the look, all of it made me see red.
Their words had penetrated. I was a bet.
Lurching forward, I grabbed Onyx’s arm and hauled him backward into my dorm room. He stumbled and, as he turned to look at me in surprise, I sent a right hook flying toward him, connecting right on his jaw, knocking him back into his dickhead friend, who laughed loudly at the fact I’d hit him.
My fist came up for a follow-through punch, but suddenly, Onyx was in front of me and furious as he caught my fist. “Nuh-uh, bitch,” he growled.
“Don’t be a cunt,” he said as he twisted my arm and spun me, so my back was to his chest. “We fucked, it was good, don’t deny it.
I was there as you creamed all over my cock.
Your entire dorm heard you screaming for more.
” His hold tightened as I squirmed to get out of it.
“You got a night you won’t forget, and Coop and I got a win.
We all win. Now calm down. It’s over.” His hold tightened, making me whimper.
“Get your hands off me,” I bit out, and I could feel the tears building.
“I won’t ever touch you again,” he whispered in my ear as he bit my lobe painfully before letting me go. “Unless you ask me.”
“See you around,” Cooper called as they left, and I could hear their laughter as they walked down my dorm corridor.
Closing the door and locking it, I walked over to the couch and started to cry. It had been nothing but a bet, and I’d fallen for it. I had let him into my room, my bed, my body, believing that there was a connection, and all there had been was his desire to prove a point.
I felt like a fool, and it hurt. It hurt so bad because I had genuinely thought he was a decent guy. I had no expectations of him this morning. I was twenty-two years old. I knew how one-night stands worked, but I hadn’t thought he would be so callous.
So cold.
And I hadn’t expected it to hurt this much.
Wiping my eyes, I went to the bathroom and saw the marks on my neck, the evidence of his bite on my shoulder. I looked like I’d had a great kinky night. And I had. This morning when I woke up, I had felt no shame. It had been good, hot, consensual sex. Now I felt cheap and used.
Which pissed me off.
He had no right to make me feel like this. I’d done nothing wrong. I enjoyed sex; I’d enjoyed his kind of sex. Fuck him. I was a bet? Well, he was the only loser this morning, him and his twisted friend.
Stripping, I took a long shower, and when Chrissy came home later that morning, I told her everything. I wasn’t ashamed, I just knew I had to explain the marks.
Chrissy had been volcanic in her anger, and I actually feared for some of the Devils. The knock on the door halted us both as we argued over whether she could beat them up with their own baseball bats.
Sharing a look, we both went to the door and opened it.
Jeremy Pittman stood in the hallway, and he immediately raised his hands in defense. “I come in peace,” he said quickly.
Chrissy stepped in front of me, her tiny body dwarfed by the football player in front of her. “Leave now before you leave in pieces.”
I snort-laughed at the preposterousness of her statement. The guy was big enough to step on her and not notice. Jeremy grinned but tried to hide it when she growled at him. She legit growled at him. I fucking loved this girl.
“Fuck off,” she snapped.
“Angel?” Jeremy asked as he looked over her head at me.
“Two minutes,” I told him, and I pulled my tiny friend into the dorm with me.
Jeremy swallowed the whole room, but he didn’t look around, he didn’t judge, and he kept eye contact with me. “It’s my fault,” he told me. “I’m really sorry, Angel.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“How? And why are they calling me vampire?”
His dark skin flushed as he broke eye contact for the first time. “Shit, that’s me too. You’re white—”
“You have a problem with skin color?” Chrissy demanded.
“No,” he said with exasperation. “Of course not, but Angel’s white, white. Like never been outside white,” he said and looked between us as if we were too slow to get there. “Like never been in the sun white,” he explained. “Like vampire white,” he tacked on uselessly.
“You complete dick,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Yeah, and you know, you’re Transylvanian or something.”
“I’m American,” I deadpanned.
“Your grandparents or something were, you know . . .”
“Romanian.” I was pissed off again, and, shoving my hoodie down, I pointed at my shoulder. “And I’m not the one with the biting fetish,” I snapped.
Jeremy immediately covered his eyes. “Girl, I do not need to see this,” he declared.
“It’s her shoulder, doofus,” Chrissy muttered as she sat down. “So she needs a tan; no need to be mean and call her a dead bloodsucker.”
That earned her a look from me. “Wow, thanks.” Turning back to Jeremy, I waited. “And the rest?”
“It’s stupid,” he said as he looked at me guiltily. “We knew you from . . .” He looked at Chrissy. “Before. We kept an eye on you to ensure you kept it to yourself. You did. We were all at the party and you came in and you looked hot.”
“I was hot?” I blurted in surprise.
“Yeah, you were.”
“Don’t flirt with my friend, asshole,” Chrissy snarled at him.
“I wasn’t,” he said as he looked at her in bewilderment. “Anyway, I said — and I apologize so much, Angel — I said it was obvious in that dress what Dave had seen in you, because we hadn’t seen it before, you know, because you cover up.”
“And the insults just keep rolling in,” I muttered as I looked down at my hoodie self-consciously.
“No, it’s fine, but you know, that night you looked . . . um,” he faltered.
“Hot.” Chrissy rolled her eyes, and I saw Jeremy shift on his feet. Was my tiny roommate getting to him? Making him feel uncomfortable? Good.
“Hurry up,” I demanded. “Your time ran out a few minutes ago.”
“I brought attention to you at the party, I said I wouldn’t mind catching you during Mayhem.” He had the decency to look embarrassed. “One of the guys bet Onyx he couldn’t catch you.”
“Why him? Why not you?” I asked.
“I have a girl,” he said as he scratched the back of his neck. “It was Onyx who said you weren’t the type to, you know.” He glanced at my open bedroom door.
“Sleep with a guy on the first night?” I guessed. Bastard knew me well, and he didn’t even know me.
“Yeah.”
“So you bet him he couldn’t?”
“Not me exactly, but when the others said it, I didn’t not bet against him.”
It was nice to see someone of Jeremy’s size and stature squirm. It felt right as I made him feel as uncomfortable as I had earlier.
“And the dickhead, Cooper? He bet on his boy?” My sarcasm was dripping.
“He did.”
“And you’re here because?”
“I didn’t think he would go through with it, and I didn’t know you would find out and especially not with Coop here.” Jeremy sighed. “It was shitty what we did, it was a shitty way to find out. They’re . . .” He took a breath. “They’re good guys, they’re just a bit—”
“They’re not good guys, Jeremy,” I snapped angrily. “They’re bastards, and I know they’re your friends, which can only make you a bastard too. But unless there’s another punchline coming my way today, finish this and get out.”
Jeremy nodded as he dropped his head, and then he looked back at me. “I’m really sorry, Angel. You won’t have to deal with any of us again.”
He left my dorm room, and I turned to look at Chrissy. “Well?” I asked.
“I don’t think he needed to come here,” she said slowly. “I think he genuinely may be, could be, sorry.”
“Genuinely may be, could be?” I snorted as I flopped onto the couch. “He can rot in hell, along with his Devils.”
“You okay?” Chrissy asked me quietly.
“Three hundred bucks,” I snapped.
“Better than twenty,” she consoled me. “I once bet my neighbor that he wouldn’t steal his sister’s panties,” she told me, and I looked at her in surprise. “He did that for twenty bucks.”
“Why?” I asked her, perplexed. “What did you want them for?”
“Ew. I didn’t want them, I just wanted to see what he was willing to do to impress me.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Bet him fifty he wouldn’t wear them,” she said with a sly smile.
“Who won?”
She gave a delighted laugh. “We both did. He wore his sister’s lacy panties, and I got to see his sausage.”
I started to laugh, and when she waggled her brows at me, I laughed harder. So, I’d been fucked over by a Devil; I wasn’t the first, and I wouldn’t be the last. But I’d be damned if I let the fucker play me again.
As I sat there wondering what to do, I decided not to tell Onyx. It would be okay. The pictures were from the house. I wasn’t in the house. The solution was simple. I’d need to sell my house.
My groan at my own silly thoughts made me grin.
Standing up, I shoved the stuff away and got ready to go back to the hotel.
I’d tell him later. Things were weird between us, old tension, and whatever the hell that was this morning at coffee.
I couldn’t deal with him again today and remain professional.
I’d tell him tomorrow and then avoid him and Cooper both. Sounded like a good plan, and locking my office door, I headed back to my hotel. To where it felt safe.