Chapter 11
ACHILLES
“Yo, what are the chances of you putting your fucking dick away?”
I chuckle as I run a towel over my sweat-slicked chest, my muscle still aching from the punishing workout.
I glance over to where Ronan is scowling at Drago as the latter leans his huge and currently very nude frame back on the locker room bench.
His legs are casually spread wide, and his cock, complete with the five barbells of his Jacob’s Ladder piercing going through it, is fully on display.
“Low,” Drago grunts with a grin, grabbing a towel out of the air as Lochlan tosses it to him. He pushes it over his glistening face and dark hair before he chucks it at Ronan. “Sorry, am I inspiring feelings of inadequacy?”
Lochlan and I laugh. But my younger cousin rolls his eyes, batting the thrown towel away before he peels his practice jersey off and tosses it aside. “Not even a little bit,” Ronan grins, cupping himself between the legs. “It’s just that seeing your mangled dick is traumatizing to mine.”
Drago chuckles, glancing down his tattooed chest and abdomen, over the big crown tattoo on his lower abs right above his crotch to the dick in question.
“Now, if it’s so mangled, why is it that Chelsea Cafaro was bouncing and coming all over it and not your plain, boring, un-ornamented dick the other night at the party? ”
Ronan glares at Drago. “Because you fucking cock-blocked me.”
Lochlan frowns. “Bro, you cock-blocked yourself when you hit that giant fucking joint that Asher rolled in with.”
I was…preoccupied during the Para Bellum party the other night. And by “preoccupied”, I do of course mean “chasing Yelena around a dark bedroom before making her pussy cream all over my knife”.
But I’ve heard the story recounted about a dozen times now about Drago and Ronan both trying to get with Chelsea, before Asher Volkov arrived and produced a massive, Bob Marley sized joint.
He, Ronan, and Akira spent the second half of the party eating ice cream in the kitchen and giggling like cartoon characters, while Drago apparently spent that time introducing his dick and all five of the accompanying piercings to Chelsea Cafaro’s various orifices.
Ronan makes a face. “I just don’t understand how it is a man can look at metal barbells and think yes, those belongs shoved through my penis. That’s a good idea.”
Drago lifts a shoulder and grins. “You could always ask Chelsea to explain why it’s a good idea.”
“Cool, fuck you.”
The rest of us crack up as Ronan pouts.
We fuck with each other like this, but the four of us are close as brothers.
Obviously, Loch, Ronan, and I have known each other our whole lives.
But Drago, who’s a junior along with Ronan, got added to the mix early on.
His mother, Taylor Crown, is the “Crown” in Crown and Black, the preeminent legal firm in New York who caters to several powerful mafia families, including mine as well as Lochlan and Ronan’s.
And his father, Drazen Krylov, is the head of the Krylov Bratva.
So even though he’s not technically blood, Drago’s been part of our crew since we were kids, and when I say he might as well be a brother, I really do mean it. The four of us our thick as thieves, and for all their shit-talking to each other, he and Ronan are best friends.
Today wasn’t an official Privateers practice. But the four of us like to operate almost like our own unit within the full team on the field, since we’ve been playing football together for over a decade. So I had us out all morning running drills until even I was ready to pass out.
“Fuckin’ Asher with whatever the fuck was in that joint,” Ronan mutters, peeling off the rest of his sweaty clothes and padding over to the wall of shower heads.
Lochlan snorts. “Weed, idiot. There was weed in that joint. Don’t try to blame Asher for you getting high as a giraffe’s balls.” He shrugs. “And anyway, you didn’t have a shot with Chelsea.”
Ronan turns to us as the shower heats up behind him. “Oh you don’t think all this had a shot with her?” He grins, gesturing to his muscled physique.
His brother rolls his eyes. “Nope. You’re too much of a jock for a girl like Chelsea.”
Ronan shakes his head as he steps under the shower spray. “I’m too much of a jock? This motherfucker—” he gestures with a dripping hand at Drago, “is on the football and hockey teams!”
Lochlan grins. “Yeah but he doesn’t look like a jock, Ro.”
Drago is arguably one of the most athletic motherfuckers on campus. He’s huge, first of all—like almost as big as my uncle Kratos. Also, not only is he the ass-stomping safety defense on the Privateers’ football field, he’s also a brick-wall of a defensemen for the hockey team.
…The same hockey team that he’s also the captain of, despite only being a junior.
Yet, if you didn’t know all of that and you met Drago for the first time, you’d assume he was the enforcer for a motorcycle gang, or the weight-lifting frontman of a death-metal band before you’d ever guess college athlete.
Ronan does look like a total jock. He’s got the fresh-cut hair, only a few tattoos, and the charming, square jawed all-American look that he and Lochie’s dad has.
Drago, on the other hand, has two full sleeves of tattoos, ink across his chest, abdomen, and back, shaggier dark hair, and a darkly brooding look perpetually plastered onto his chiseled face.
Believe me: girls who are into fucking a guy who looks like Drago have little to no interest in fucking a guy who looks like Ronan. But on the same token, the girls who Ronan pulls—and there are plenty—are the kind of girls who run screaming from a guy like Drago.
“Hey, speaking of the other night…” Drago glances at me as he steps under the shower head next to the one I turn on. “You still haven’t told me where the hell you disappeared to during the party.”
My brow furrows as I shove water out of my face. “Do yourself a favor and don’t tell Chelsea that you were thinking of me while railing her.”
He rolls his eyes and chuckles.
“That’s okay,” Ronan grins as he turns off his shower. “Chelsea was also probably thinking of Achilles while you were fucking her.”
I laugh as Drago shoots Ronan a look. “Okay, now you’re just trying to be hurtful.”
“It comes from a place of love, mi amigo,” Ro sighs with a shit-eating grin.
Drago shuts off his shower, grabs a towel from the wall hook next to him, and wraps it around his hips. “Hey, you guys been hearing about this Velvet Villain shit?”
“Villainess,” I mutter, turning my own shower head off and reaching for a towel.
I’m, unsurprisingly, not on BookTok—unless, of course, it’s to stalk Yelena and her MaskTok interests. But Iris very much is, and she actually texted me the clip I’m sure Drago is talking about earlier today.
Apparently, there’s already been speculation that this masked TikTok girl, who makes spicy romance book content, is a Knightsblood student. But the other night, after our party, she posted a video she made from inside Kingsward Hall—specifically, from inside the second floor library.
Ronan shakes his head as he starts getting dressed.
“How are you just now hearing about that?” He frowns, nodding his chin at Drago.
“Dude it’s all anyone is talking about on campus right now.
” He scowls. “And for what it’s worth, I’m not okay with her filming content at Kingsward wherever she wants.
I think we need to figure out who the fuck she is and have a nice little chat—”
“I’ve got it handled,” Lochlan growls thickly.
Drago nods. “Cool. I’ll give you a hand tracking her—”
“I said I fucking got it.”
Ro, Drago and I all pause and then glance over to where Lochlan is pulling on his school uniform, his back to us.
Curious.
Fifteen minutes later, Ronan and Drago are off in one direction, heading to class, while Loch and I head off in another.
“So…” I cock a brow at him. “Little touchy about your favorite BookTokker, huh?”
Lochlan doesn't even look at me. “Nope. We're not doing that."
“Doing what?”
He adjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder, his jaw tight. “I’m not discussing her.”
Her. Not ”Velvet Villainess.”
Huh.
I file that away for later and let the silence stretch between us as we cross the quad.
“Unless…” Lochlan clears his throat and glances at me. He smirks. “Unless you want to tell me where you actually were the second half of that party. Or, I don’t know, why you went fucking apeshit on that guy at the cabin over those random pictures of girls from the party on his phone?”
I say nothing. Loch glances over at me, but I keep my eyes forward.
“Right,” he says flatly. “So we're both not doing that.”
He peels off toward the humanities building, and I let him go.
I turn toward Blackwood Hall, where I have a lecture in twenty minutes that I will absolutely be present for and absolutely not paying attention to, because I already know where Yelena is at the same time, and Blackwood Hall has a very convenient second floor window that looks directly onto the path she takes between her lit seminar and the library.
Is this normal behavior? Probably not.
Do I care?
Same answer.
The thing about obsession is that it doesn't really ask your permission.
It just moves right in, rearranges the furniture, and declares itself a permanent resident.
And at some point—somewhere between memorizing her schedule and her habits, knowing which hand she uses to masturbate with, and stealing pairs of her panties from her laundry basket—I stopped having any interest in evicting it.