Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Yet again, I’m the talk of the academy. With each step I take further into the cafeteria, the more I become aware of the lingering gazes, hushed whispers, and even pointed fingers. The subtlety doesn’t seem to be anyone’s stronger suit within these walls.
Grace spots me from her seat at the table, and she waves me over. Relief floods me when I approach them, taking a seat next to Avalon, across from Grace and Lila. The staring doesn’t stop, but at least it’s no longer bothering me as much.
“God, I want to break their necks,” Grace mumbles, picking up a slice of apple and chomping on it. My tray is in front of me, and suddenly, I feel no appetite whatsoever. No matter how appealing it looks, and how delicious it might be, I can’t force myself to eat.
“What did I do now?” I sigh. “Is it the Christmas ball debacle?”
Avalon nods. “Yeah, apparently, someone still has the photo. We just don’t know who it is.”
Instantly, I tense up, slowly turning my head to the side, looking at Avalon. Her expression mirrors mine, and she’s worried beyond words. This isn’t what I needed today, especially not when I’m supposed to be celebrating the fact that I aced all of the re-taken exams.
“How do you know about that?”
“I overheard one of Cassia’s friends talking about it.”
“Oh, great,” my shoulders slump. “Do you think Cassia’s the one who has it?”
Avalon shakes her head. “No. If she had it, she would’ve sent it to everyone by now. And I don’t like this one bit.”
I groan. “You’re telling me? How do you think I’m feeling?”
“No, no,” Avalon shakes her head. “It’s not just the photo. Sinners and Saints has never, ever been this quiet, and I don’t like it.”
“Well, maybe they took time off, y’know, one of them did get married,” Lila chimes in, sarcasm lacing her tongue. Her pink hair is tied up in a messy bun, her eyeliner on the thicker side, in the most beautiful shade of white, which brings out the pale color in her eyes.
I loosen the tie around my neck, take off the maroon blazer, and hang it over the chair. “Astrid still hasn’t come back, it seems.”
“She’s probably on her honeymoon,” Grace rolls her eyes. “Or trying to heal all the injuries you inflicted.”
“It’s useless. She’ll only get them again.”
“What? No, no, no,” Avalon starts panicking. “You’re not beating her up again.”
“Well, I was only half-joking. But I do have big plans for her.”
“Care to share with the class?” Lila asks, taking a sip of Grace’s juice box. Grace, absolutely livid, snatches it away from Lila, then drinks it down in one big gulp.
“Would you two knock it off?” I snap, and their silent eye contest breaks off, both of them giving me a sheepish smile. “The first thing is to do something… well, unethical.”
“What now?” Avalon groans, covering her eyes with her palm, shaking her head.
“I want to break into her dorm.”
“Have you completely lost it?” Avalon hisses.
“Yes, a long, long time ago. Anyway, Grace, are you in?”
“Always,” she grins. “Why do you want to break into Astrid’s dorm, though?”
“Not immediately. After she comes back to the academy. She’s a part of Sinners and Saints; there has to be something about the people working behind the damned thing.”
“I find it odd that she won’t out the rest, now that she’s known to be a part of the group.”
“If she doesn’t know who they are, she’s fucking stupid to even start doing it,” Lila shrugs. “I’d never work with someone whose face and name I don’t know. If they have all the dirty gossip on every student in the school, they’re bound to have something dirty on Astrid, too.”
“And I want to know what it is,” I nod. “Because no matter how big a cunt Astrid is, I highly doubt she’d leak Soren’s sex tape, and the scene from the elevator just to spite him.”
“You think there’s more to the story?”
“Eh, maybe not. But if I can be certain there isn’t, and she did it because she’s a fucking bitch, I can make sure my last semester here will be spent turning her life upside down.”
“What are you planning, exactly?” Grace asks, opening another juice box and sipping on it, leaning forward a little. Lila and Avalon follow suit, making the distance between us fall shorter, with less possibility of being overheard.
“You can’t exactly create a wedge between Sawyer and Astrid, and I’m scared of his reaction if you go way over the top, which, knowing you, you’ll definitely do,” Avalon mutters.
“Sawyer won’t do shit if he wants back in our parents’ good graces. Besides, he doesn’t matter to me anymore,” I lie through gritted teeth, and all of them can see right through the mask I’ve been putting on.
I miss Sawyer.
Fucking hell, losing a sibling while they’re still alive is one of the worst feelings in the world.
He’s there, but this isn’t the person I grew up with.
It’s not the boy who tried teaching me self-defense when I was in middle school, it’s not the same man who held my hair back after I was throwing up from my first time drinking.
All of the memories, all of our childhood seems to flash behind my eyes. And it fucking hurts. It hurts knowing he chose Astrid, and it hurts knowing he doesn’t care about what she did. I never thought we’d be here, like two complete strangers.
Which is why I’ll no longer associate myself with him above anything mandatory. He’s dead to me, and since it’s already been quite some time since it all went down, no apologies will ever salvage the relationship between us.
“Riiight…” Grace drawls out, her voice laced with skepticism. “Anyway, how can we help?”
“You want to help?”
Lila and Grace nod immediately, and even Avalon, after a sigh of annoyance, nods. A small smile breaks onto my face, and I’ll always cherish my girls, and forever be grateful for being the village I need.
“This isn’t some sort of teenage TV drama, though,” Lila says. “You can’t knock the books out of her hands and such.”
I roll my eyes. “Do I really look like someone who’d do something as petty as that?”
“Yes,” Lila says, without missing a beat.
“Anyway,” I scoff. “I could do plenty of things to make her next, and final year of the academy as miserable as possible, but that’s not how I want to do this.”
“Tell us already,” Grace mutters. “Stop stalling.”
“Fine, fine,” I chuckle. “Okay, so she’s always been the quiet and reserved type. Nothing much about her is mentioned in any news reports about her family. But then she goes and sends that picture of her and Sawyer to Sinners and Saints, gaining a lot of attention. Why?”
“Because she’s an attention-seeking whore, and she only now showed it?” Lila offers.
“Exactly, so if she likes attention so much nowadays, why not give it to her?”
“What?” Avalon frowns.
“I mean, we’ll break into her dorm, and instead of going the petty route and sending everything to Sinners and Saints, where she could easily delete it, we send it to the press.”
“My God,” Avalon gasps. “You want her reputation completely ruined?”
“What if there’s nothing in her dorm, though?” Grace asks.
“Luckily, I can come up with a lie. Ridiculous enough to be spread like wildfire, but not too insane to be seen as a lie.”
“You’ll take Soren down with that, too. He is still her brother.”
That makes me pause. Then, with a deep breath, I ignore the sudden ache in my chest at the thought of hurting Soren, and swallow down any emotions that threaten to slip.
“So be it.”
◆◆◆
The economics amphitheater is big enough for me to be able to take a seat at the back, yet still be visible to the professor.
There are another twenty-ish students in the class with me, and for some reason, it’s like everyone’s still using every opportunity to give me dirty looks.
The gossip is yet to die down, though now, everyone’s talking about Damien’s state, too.
No one is pointing fingers at me for this one, thankfully.
His face is almost healed entirely, but I had to do something to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I met up with him at the café close by, and I’m praying to every single deity that Soren doesn’t get the wind of it, because if he does, I don’t even want to think about how he’ll react. No doubt, it’ll be as severe and as dramatic as always.
My thoughts drift off when Soren enters the amphitheater, and my heart skips a beat.
I know, deep down, that I shouldn’t feel like this, not after the complicated history between us, not after everything we’ve done to spite each other.
It wasn’t mild teasing or even some silly pranks.
No, it’s been a full-fledged war between us.
He tried drowning me, and I broke his knee with a sledgehammer.
He broke my nose, too, and more recently, we had the sex tape ordeal, him using my biggest fear of snakes to fuck me while I’m terrified, and of course, the tattoo on his chest.
If anything, I should stay away from him, especially since he beat the crap out of one of my closest friends simply because he could.
It’s scary, it’s almost downright terrifying how insane he can get, and I know that all of this is very wrong.
Yet, when he slides into the seat next to me, without so much as paying attention to the professor who starts the lesson, I can’t help the way my heart races at the proximity.
I can’t help the feelings that are slowly bursting to the surface, despite my best attempts to keep them hidden.
“Sloane,” Soren greets, his voice low. His eyes trail over me, the way the uniform hugs my curves perfectly, the way the shirt rises up to my mid-thighs when I cross my legs, the appreciative gaze in his eyes making me clench my legs together.
“Ford,” I respond, keeping my voice equally as low. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “We share the class, Princess.”
“The amphitheater is nearly empty. Go sit elsewhere.”
“And interrupt the lesson? No, thank you. Besides,” he pauses, glancing to the front of the room, making sure the professor’s busy teaching to pay us any attention. “I have better things to do right now.”
“Such as?”
A gasp slips my lips when his big hand palms my inner thigh, squeezing the soft flesh. My eyes widen, and I glance between the front of the room and Soren, watching as his brow lifts, a wicked smirk tugging on the corners of his lips.
“To teach you a lesson, Princess,” he inches closer to me, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper. My breath catches in my throat when Soren forces my legs apart, his fingers drumming against the inside of my thigh, going up the skirt. “You saw Damien again. What did I tell you about that?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I whisper, but the protest falls flat, his fingers digging into my skin.
“Oh, I assure you, I do not care,” he murmurs, and I close my eyes when his fingers graze against my pussy over the underwear, my body trembling slightly.
The reaction to his touch is immediate, the cotton fabric getting soaked within minutes.
“But you’ll learn not to disobey me, Sophia.
You’ll learn that my word is the fucking law for you. ”
“Please,” I whisper, “just listen to me–”
I’m shut up when he pushes my underwear to the side, plunging two of his fingers inside of me. A loud gasp comes from me, and that gains the attention of a handful of students. Soren acts unbothered, nonchalant as always, while I’m trying my best not to lose my shit.
Slowly, Soren starts pumping his fingers in and out of me, my eyes closing for a couple of seconds. Soren’s getting closer and closer, his words a mere whisper in my ear.
“Such a good slut for me,” he murmurs. “Taking my fingers so well.”
“We’ll get caught,” I swallow, opening my eyes, frantically looking around.
“So be it,” he chuckles. “Fuck, your cunt is so greedy for my fingers, Princess. You’ll break them at this rate.”
My heart flutters in my chest, the words going straight to my core. I bite down on my lip harshly, suppressing moans that threaten to slip. The orgasm is slowly approaching, and I can’t control the trembling of my body.
Soren curls his fingers inside of me, and this pace is driving me mad. It’s slow, deep, and sensual in a way that I never experienced before. He hits my G-spot with each thrust of his fingers, causing me to see stars.
“Fuck, Soren,” I breathe out, keeping my voice low.
“That’s it,” he hums. “Milk my fingers, like a good little whore. Go on, cum all over my fingers in a classroom, Sophia. Show me just how much I own this body of yours, how big a slut you are for the pleasure only I can bring.”
His words are enough to trigger my orgasm, and I lower my head on the desk, biting on my forearm while I come all over his fingers, my body trembling from the shock. The wave of my climax is big, and it’s only because it’s in such a public place.
“That’s my good girl,” he says, kissing the top of my head.
He pulls his fingers out of me, and I lift my head just in time to see him sucking the juices off his fingers, my cheeks growing redder at the sight.
“Soren,” I whisper-yell. “That was insane.”
“And?” He drawls out, then quickly readjusts my underwear and skirt, making sure no one’s seeing what we’ve been up to. “Insanity is a good look on me, wouldn’t you agree?”
I roll my eyes. “And for the record?”
“Yes, Sophia?”
“I was meeting with Damien to tell him we should put some distance between us.”