Chapter 3
It’s a standoff.
We stand frozen in place like the party around us doesn’t exist. His gaze is a weight, sharp and unreadable, and I can’t decipher it.
Could be hate. Could be hunger.
Either way, I’ll take it. Both will suffice.
I’ll say this much: if it weren’t for my jockstrap suppressing the reaction I’m having to him, this look alone would be enough to make them a very public problem.
Knox drags in a slow inhale, so deep I swear it rattles through me even from across the room. His stare locks on, and suddenly my legs are concrete rooted to the floor. It dares me to move first, to crack under the weight of it.
But he cuts the thread. Rolls his eyes, yanks his hockey mask down like a curtain closing on our little scene, and turns away.
“I don’t think he’s into it,” Joey yells, leaning close so I can hear him over some EDM remix.
I shrug, eyes still scanning. “That’s what he wants you to think.”
Joey scoffs, “You’re obsessed.”
“Maybe, but I’m not wrong.”
He snatches a jello shot and shoves it into my hand. “You need a distraction. Find someone else to make out with. Loosen up. Touch grass. Touch ass. Something.”
I knock the shot back, feeling the lime and vodka burn sharper than it should. He’s joking, but he’s not wrong. Maybe if Knox won’t come to me, I can drag him in another way.
I swipe my mouth with the back of my hand, toss the cup into a nearby trashcan.
“You’re right,” I say, scanning the room again, but this time hunting for someone else. “Let him see what he’s missing.”
The crowd swallows me before Joey can respond. I push through the sea of bodies, catching eyes as I go, smiling at some, ignoring most. Until I spot her.
Emily.
Kappa Nu pledge. Platinum blonde, blue eyes, legs for days.
She exudes the kind of slutty mouse energy that makes every joke made in Mean Girls feel carved in stone. Black lace lingerie, Party City ears, perfume like sugar and gasoline.
We’d been paired for some mixer during her philanthropy week, clicked in the shallow way Greek life friends do. Not Sunday-afternoon-hangout close, but safe.
She sees me and squeals like we’re soulmates and launches herself into my arms. She’s featherlight, saccharine, and entirely overwhelming.
“I’ve been looking for you!” she shouts, clinging tight.
“You have?!”
Emily knows I’m gay. Everyone does. But the way she drapes herself over me says she’s either drunk or desperate for an escape from a houseful of guys who’d sell a kidney to get her number.
I get it. I’m a good excuse. Everything she needs to survive a party like this. Harmless, familiar, and hot in a way that doesn’t threaten her.
“You have to dance with me!” Emily tugs me into the circle of her sisters like I’m her prize for the night.
When she spins, pressing her body into mine, I finally see him.
The lights stutter and flash, but in one sharp blink, I find him. He stands with a half-circle of brothers, nodding along like he’s listening, but he’s not.
Not with the way his eyes won’t leave me.
It’s not just heat. It’s hunger.
Emily grinds back against me, hair whipping, hips rolling. I skim my hands along her waist, playing along, and she presses them harder against her curves.
“You’re the only one I’d let touch me like this,” she purrs.
“I’m honored!” I yell, loud enough to carry.
She giggles, calling back. “Don’t be. You’re gay and not a total weirdo.”
I laugh, sharp and barking, but my eyes never leave him.
He takes a slow swig from his drink, gaze locked so tight on me it feels like the beer is secondary. He swallows, tilts his head like he’s cataloging every move, then lets the faintest ghost of amusement play at his mouth before it dies in his eyes.
My chest tightens, heat flooding my face.
He knows this whole thing is for him. He dragged it out of me by existing.
“Hey,” I murmur into Emily’s ear, my eyes still locked on Knox across the crowd. “Can you do me a favor?”
She leans in, all fake lashes and tequila breath. “Anything for you.”
“Wanna help me make a boy jealous?”
Her eyes sparkle immediately. “That’s literally all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
I laugh, heart thudding loud in my ears as I tip my head toward hers. “Okay then… kiss me.”
“Kiss you?” She laughs, tossing her head back like it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever said, hips never missing a beat. “You’re the only gay guy on the row I haven’t made out with yet! I thought you’d never ask.”
Before I can second-guess it, her lips are on mine.
It’s messy, all teeth and lip gloss and giggles, the kind of kiss girls give their gay friends at parties when they’re three shots deep and feeling bold.
Her eyes stay closed as she gives me even more, pouring herself into the kiss as mine flutter open and find him. Jaw tight, shoulders squared, solo cup crushed in his hand like it’s the only thing keeping him from crossing the room.
That fury and her lips on mine snap me straight back into the memories of him.
I’ve been around. I’ve had sex that was good, bad, and downright mediocre. But Knox wasn’t a hookup. He was a category.
“You don’t have to be gentle,” I’d whispered, already straining for whatever he’d give.
He laughed low. “I really do.”
“Why?”
“Because if I let go, there’ll be nothing left of you.”
He kissed me like he knew the sound of my begging, touched me like memory, fucked me hard enough that I broke and somehow stayed whole under him. Then he left. Cold sheets and silence where he should’ve been, and a heat that only grew.
One night and I was ruined for everyone else.
The duality of him is what keeps the fire alive. The soft and the savage. The dream and the danger. He made me feel like the only thing that mattered, then vanished as if it was nothing.
Normally I’d expect him to avert his gaze and ignore me, but as his relentless gaze settles over me like a mark, I take it as proof he burns the way I do.
I am catastrophically obsessed with Knox Everett.
Not sorry about it either.
Emily’s hands slip lower, my tongue flicks against hers, and then I see the crack in his perfect control. A twitch in his jaw, sharp and involuntary.
A step forward, small but seismic.
In that instant I know he’s one heartbeat away from snapping, from crossing the floor, from doing something that will ruin us both.
God, let him.
Let him shatter.
I don’t want the perfect, polished fraternity President. I want the pieces.
I want his fury and his jealousy and his hands on me now.
Emily peels back, eyes wide with giddy adrenaline. “Did it work?”
My smile falters. I glance toward where Knox had been standing, but the space is empty.
My stomach drops.
Bodies surge and sway around me, but every face I scan blurs together, faceless, useless. My pulse spikes, frantic, because I know better.
“He’s gone,” I mutter, eyes raking over the crowd like I expect him to lunge out of the shadows, some nightmare made flesh.
When I turn, he’s there. Right behind me. Close enough that I feel the heat of him before my eyes even catch up, close enough that my whole body jolts like I’ve been caught in a trap I should’ve seen coming.
I jolt hard enough to choke on my own breath. “Jesus.”
Emily laughs, oblivious, but even she feels the shift in the air. “Hey, Knox.”
He tips his head in a curt nod before locking on me. No mask now. Just a stare that strips me bare where I stand.
“Emily,” he says evenly, “Can I borrow him? Pledges are needed for shift change.”
“Oh! Of course.” She pats my shoulder, kisses my cheek. Knox goes rigid at the touch. “Come find me after,” she chirps, vanishing back into the crowd.
Before I can breathe, his hand clamps around my forearm. He yanks me off the dance floor with enough force that my feet can barely keep up. We barrel through bodies too fast, too rough, shoulders slamming against us, curses following in our wake. My skin burns under his grip.
I wrench free, stumbling back into the sea of heaving bodies.
The staircase to the brothers’ rooms blocks one side, the crowd the other. I’m trapped, boxed in on every angle, but it isn’t the mob that steals my air.
Up close, there’s no escaping the details of him.
The faint sting of alcohol clinging to his breath.
The clean bite of shaving cream mixed with something darker, something earthy, all of it wrapping around me until I can’t tell if I’m suffocating or inhaling him on purpose.
Heat radiates off his skin so much that every inhale feels stolen.
He spins on me, ready to tear me apart. “What were you doing?”
My lips curl, the brat in me refusing to back down. “Dancing.” I nod toward Emily, still swaying in the pit, hair wild, lipstick smeared. “Keeping the girls happy. Isn’t that the point tonight?”
He steps closer, “Like the one you were throwing yourself all over for my benefit?”
He doesn’t even seem to realize how close we’ve drifted. His breath fans across my cheek, every exhale a steady reminder that he’s right here. From a distance, it probably looks like he’s chewing me out. Maybe he is, but not for the reasons anyone else would imagine.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
“That was the point,” I say as I hold his stare.
The crowd surges around us, bodies colliding, and somehow we’re swaying in time with it. Tethered and moving together like there’s a line pulled tight between us.
“It can’t happen again.”
My fingers drift up his arm, settling against the thick muscle of his shoulder. The excuse is the music so loud that I have to lean in, but when my lips graze his ear, my voice comes out as a low purr against his skin.
“Can’t… or won’t?”
His body betrays him before his mouth might. A shudder runs through him and I feel it travel straight into me.
“Both,” he breathes.
I blink. “Why?”
His eyes flick up to meet mine. “You know why.”
“Because I’m a pledge,” I scoff.
He shrugs, and the movement is infuriatingly casual. “That’s part of it.”
“Say it then” I press, taking a step closer. “Say you don’t want me.”
I’m shoved from behind, bodies surging tighter, and my hands shoot out instinctively. They land on his chest and I feel my own hot skin smeared with the sticky fake blood splattered across his body. Before I can pull away, his grip locks on my hips, steadying me, caging me in.
The crowd swallows us, hides us. No one can see. Which is why I let my hand drift lower, sliding until my palm cups the thick, unforgiving length straining behind his zipper.
A tremor runs through him, quick and violent, as if I’ve hit a live wire.
“Yeah,” I murmur against his ear, lips brushing the shell. “That’s what I thought.”
“What’s your problem?” His voice is tight, teeth gritted, jaw stone.
“You, Sir.” I drag my teeth across my bottom lip. His eyes drop, hungry, unguarded, then snap back up to meet mine. “And it’s getting harder to ignore.”
What comes out of him isn’t a laugh so much as a release like pressure hissing from a valve. It scorches down my spine, proof I’ve pushed him too far.
Exactly where I want him.
“You don’t have to perform for me.”
“What if I want to?”
His eyes betray him as I watch his own desire strain against everything he’s trying not to say.
“Then you’ll deal with the consequences.”
My body moves before my brain argues. I pluck the solo cup from his hand, tip it back, drain it in one swallow. His gaze tracks my throat as I gulp, the lukewarm beer sliding past my lips. A single trickle escapes, running down my chin, catching at my jaw.
I don’t wipe it away. I let it linger.
The cup crumples in my fist. I drop it to the floor.
“I’m counting on it.”