Chapter 8
Ididn’t get this last time.
Not the warmth, or the slow, drowsy blink of morning when everything feels a little too loud and a little too close. Definitely didn’t get the body beside me with his wrapped arms around my waist, despite how hard he fought to keep me out of this bed.
The sun’s barely up, casting hazy streaks of gold across Knox’s room. The sheets are a mess. Damp in places, bunched in others, stained with a mix of fake blood and glow-in-the dark paint. I’m tangled in them, half-naked and fully undone.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
There’s a shift beside me, then a low, gravelly voice, “You’re staring.”
I glance over to find Knox watching me through half-lidded eyes, one arm tucked under his head. He grins, sleep-warm. “Don’t tell me you fell in love.”
“I was gonna wake you up with my mouth, but since you’re already up…”
He sighs. “Cool. I’ll go ahead and pretend I’m still asleep then.”
I lift the sheet and find him already hard, thick and waiting. I wrap my hand around the base and give him a few light slaps against his stomach. He hisses, one arm tossed lazily over his eyes.
“Eyes on me, Knox.”
He shifts, dragging his arm away, and meets my gaze still a little bleary, but locked in.
“We’ve got a few things to discuss,” I say before I swallow him whole.
I pull off with a wet pop and rest my cheek against his thigh like I’m settling in for a long talk. He groans.
“I’ve given it some thought,” I say, casually stroking him, “and if we’re gonna keep doing this, I have a few demands.”
“Tyler—”
“One… I’d like to go on a real date. Like, with food. Outside. Two… I want to be able to tell people. Not everyone, but some people.”
He shifts like he’s going to sit up, but I push him back down with a hand to his stomach.
“Three… don’t interrupt me when I’m brainstorming.”
“You can’t make relationship demands mid-blowjob. This is emotional warfare.” He stares at me, slack-jawed. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“Negotiation implies you have a choice” I say sweetly, and then take him all the way back in.
He lets out a strangled sound that might be a curse.
“Okay, okay…” he pants, voice catching as I twist my hand and rock up and down his length. “I’ll take you to lunch.”
I pop off and stare at him.
“Dinner,” he corrects quickly.
Satisfied, I drop back down and pick up the pace.
“But you cannot tell anyone we’re doing this.”
I immediately pull back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand as I move to climb off the bed until he grabs my wrist.
“Let me finish,” he says.
I pause, one brow raised, fingertips dragging along the underside of his cock as I wait for the rest.
“Until after initiation.”
He’s laid out and trembling, hard and hopeful, on full display in front of me. It’s almost funny how easily he gives in when I push.
How badly he wants to be good for me.
Big, powerful Knox Everett is a lot of things.
Rough and brutal. Stoic to a fault. The kind of man who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t falter, doesn’t ask for help.
But he’s also a man who can hand over control.
Not because he’s weak. Not because he’s lost. But because, with me, he finally doesn’t have to perform.
Maybe that’s what makes it real. Not the surrender, but who he’s surrendering to.
Leaning in I let my lips brush the head of his cock, and watch his eyes flutter. “You’re lucky I’m patient.”
He exhales, “You’ve got your dad’s spine, Pledge.”
I pull off, eyes narrowing as I glare up at him. “Don’t talk about my dad while your dick’s in my mouth.”
He laughs and the vibrations of it that rock through me only make me hungrier.
“If I’m giving you time…” I flick my tongue slowly along his slit, “I want what’s mine when the waiting’s over.”
“Yeah?” he whispers.
“Yeah,” I say. “You’re planning the date. I’m picking the place. And I’m posting the first thirst trap of us together.”
His laugh bounces around the room.
“So we have a deal?” I ask.
“I can’t promise beyond that, but yes… we have a deal.”
That’s all I need. I sink back down, swallowing him whole until my nose brushes the soft hair at his base. All of him overtakes my senses. It’s all musk and sweat and something unmistakably his. The taste of him is thick as pre-cum leaks from his slit and dances across my taste buds.
He twitches on my tongue, breath catching as I draw back and flick my tongue along the underside of his shaft before taking him in again.
He fists the sheets, knuckles white, hips twitching like he’s trying not to move.
Not to take over. Not to ruin the rhythm I’m setting.
But he won’t. Not this time. This is mine to give.
Humming around him, I let the low thrum ripple through his cock, sending the sensation spiraling up into his body.
His thighs tense. His abs flex. His hand reaches for my hair but hovers, unsure.
I glance up at him without lifting my mouth. Eyes locked, lips stretched around him. When he sees the look I give him, so full of control and intent, he drops his hand back to the bed and lets me finish what I started.
The pace I set is merciless, riding his cock with purpose, letting the tip batter the back of my throat over and over. I don’t stop until the first spurt hits my tongue. By the time he floods my mouth, I’m already drunk on him. I swallow it all, chasing every last drop as I work his softening cock.
“Don’t spit on me again,” he says, voice hoarse above me.
I glance up, tongue out, clean.
“No need to worry.”
He glances down at my cock, still straining in the pouch of my jock.
“Do you need me to…?”
“No,” I say, cutting him off with a smirk. “I got what I needed.”
I give him one last slow once-over before sliding out of bed. He sinks deeper into the pillows, chest rising and falling like he’s been gutted.
I wipe my mouth, rake my fingers through my hair, and scan the floor. I find one of his shirts. Wrinkled and reeking. I pull it on before grabbing a pair of his gym shorts to step into them, the elastic snapping against my hips.
“I’ll need those back,” he mutters.
“Should’ve thought of that before you tore up the ones I came in.”
Knox lets out a low laugh, one part exasperation, one part disbelief. He drags a hand over his face like he’s not sure if he wants to kiss me or kill me.
That’s how I leave him.
Naked. Spent. Mine.
“You look freshly fucked.”
Joey’s sprawled across the velvet chaise in the front foyer, sipping something neon from a solo cup, eyes glued to me as I descend the spiral stairs.
“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” I tell him.
The room’s a disaster. Solo cups everywhere. An empty pizza box flung across the piano like it lost a bet. Someone dragged out folding chairs… like, a lot of folding chairs. They’ve lined them up in weird half-circles, like this turned into a TED Talk while I was upstairs getting railed.
I blink at the scene, confused. Joey must catch the look on my face because he chuckles and takes a sip of whatever’s still in his cup.
“Shit got wild,” he says. “You were getting fucked for over an hour.”
I blink again. “No I wasn’t.”
He arches a brow. “You sure about that?”
“That obvious?” I mutter.
He doesn't answer as he drags his gaze down my body and back up again, expression somewhere between seriously? and damn, dude.
Most of my makeup’s been rubbed halfway to hell, I’m swimming in Knox’s oversized shorts, and my hair looks like it lost a fight with a weed whacker.
“Successful night then?” Joey asks.
I smack my lips, “Definitely tastes that way.”
He grimaces. “You know what? I actually don’t need any of this. I take it back.”
“Smart.” I press two fingers to my lips, sealing them with a kiss.
He gags. “You’re disgusting.”
“You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
The door to the courtyard bursts open, and for a second I catch glimpses of the remnants of the party.
The courtyard’s a war zone.
Muddy footprints tracked across the cracked patio, crushed beer cans floating in the melted remains of the baby pool, someone’s bra hanging off a tiki torch like a forgotten battle flag.
A folding table’s split down the middle, red solo cups scattered like shrapnel across the concrete, and one poor lawn chair has been melted halfway through from a bonfire that clearly got out of hand.
Condoms. Pizza crusts. A pair of boxers pinned under an empty handle of Fireball. The inflatable ghost someone blew up for Halloween is face-down in a puddle of jungle juice, eerily deflated like even he gave up on the night.
A handful of my pledge brothers clamor into the front room like they’re reenacting the last twenty minutes of The Blair Witch Project. Sweaty, dazed, twitchy.
Then Tripp steps in behind them.
His shirt’s wrinkled, clinging to him in all the wrong places. His hair’s matted from sweat and shame. He looks like someone who got in a fight with a frat house and lost and is somehow still cocky enough to think he won.
Sober Tripp is worse than drunk Tripp. At least when he’s hammered, he slurs. Now he sharpens letting his eyes sweep the foyer and zero in on me like a heat-seeking missile.
“Of course,” Tripp sneers. “You’re here.”
“The front room of the fraternity I’m pledging…” I glance around. “Yeah, seems like a likely place for me to be.”
He scoffs and collapses into a folding chair. Legs spread wide, arms flung lazily over the backrest. A picture of overcompensated masculinity.
“You think because Knox is fighting your fights now, you’ve earned a little attitude?”
I blink slowly. Not in confusion. In disbelief. At how boring he is. At how small he feels now.
“Knox doesn’t fight my fights,” I say, stepping forward. “He taught me I was worth the fight.”
That wipes the smug off his face. I step closer and crouch to his eye level, close enough to watch his jaw twitch.
“You know, Tripp… Power doesn’t have to be loud to be felt. That control can look like a whisper or a smile or a boy on his knees deciding that even if he likes the view from down there he can still walk away with your pride between his teeth.”
Tripp shifts, his shoulders going rigid.
“I’m not scared of you,” I continue. “I’m not scared of your rules. I’m not scared of what it says about me that I let the president of this frat breed me and then I walked down here wearing his clothes with his load dripping down my thighs.”
Before he can even shift in that flimsy little chair, I hook my foot underneath it and kick. The metal legs screech, then buckle. Tripp hits the floor with a thud that echoes across the foyer.
The silence afterward is thick. A beat of stunned stillness.
Joey spits his drink across the room. Someone else whistles. I don’t look down. I don’t offer a hand. I straighten, towering over him, and I offer only a smile. A small, dangerous thing.
“I’m every bit the fucking Finley you think I am.”
I step over him.
“Stay out of my fucking way.”
Tripp scrambles upright, a mess of limbs and ego, dignity slipping through his fingers like beer-soaked confetti. Again.
A throat clears behind me.I turn already knowing who it is because the air shifts before he speaks. That’s what Knox Everett does. He fills a room simply by existing in it.
He’s halfway down the stairs, sweatpants slung criminally low on his hips, hair damp and messy from a quick rinse that’s scrubbed away any trace of my filth.
He towels the back of his neck as he levels me with a look. “Is there a problem here, Finley?”
I don’t hesitate. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
His gaze flicks to Tripp. Half a glare, half a dismissal. Then right back to me. He crosses the room, eyes never leaving mine, something like shock giving way to pride.
Every pledge brother in the room is watching, but I don’t care. I hold my head high as Knox stops in front of me.
“Telling the entire room I bred you wasn’t in our contract,” he says, low and measured.
“You gave me power so I’m using it.”
He studies me again, like he’s seeing something he didn’t realize he wanted until it stood up and made demands.
“If you want me, then act like it,” I add, “You don’t get to own me in private and leave me exposed in public. That’s not how this works.”
Past him, Joey and every single one of my pledge brothers are frozen in place. Wide eyes, open mouths, half-finished drinks hovering mid-air like they forgot how to swallow.
I don’t look at them, but I don’t need to because I already know what they’re seeing. Not a Finley or the guy who took a wooden paddle to the ass and came back for seconds. They’re seeing what Knox already saw. What I’d buried under charm and smirks and careful, palatable versions of myself.
I step forward until I can feel his minty breath on my face. My voice drops to a whisper.
“You’re the president of this house,” I murmur. “And I’m me. Figure it out.”
He exhales once and his eyes darken in real time, pupils dilating into something possessive and starved.
“You’re mine now,” I add and for good measure, I reach down, curl my fingers in the waistband of his sweats, and tug once pulling him against me. “But more importantly... I’m yours. So act like it.”
The shake of his head feigns disappointment, but I know better. I see the twitch of his lip as he fights a smile, the tension in his forearms as if he’s holding back from grabbing me right here in front of everyone.
He’s not disappointed. He’s doomed. Doomed in the way a man is when he knows he’s about to let a Finley ruin him while he’s forced to enjoy every second of it.
The smile that spreads across his handsome face is the kind that promises more trouble than I’ve ever known and the kind I’m ready to meet head-on.
The room’s still watching, but I don’t care. I turn my back on him and make my way toward the stairs, not sparing Tripp or my pledge brothers a second glance.
They can talk. They will. But I’ve already made peace with it.
I never needed to ask. I never needed to beg. Knox came willingly, and if he hadn’t I’d have taken him anyway. I won’t shrink to make space for others.
I’m done folding myself into boxes that can’t hold me.
Let them wonder why I shine. I stopped asking for permission to glow.