The Devils and Their Doll: A Dark College Bully Romance (Verona Falls University Book 2)

1. Mackenzie

I lie back,the soft, cool grass crushing beneath my bare skin. A clear blue sky is overhead, and I squint against the bright rays of sunlight. I’m in the meadow of Verona Falls University grounds, the same spot among the flowers where I was first with Kirill. Only now, it’s not only Kirill who is with me.

Dom and Tino are here, too.

Their heated stares warm my naked body as much as the summer sun. Part lust, part adoration, rains down on me.

Valentino is on my right, Dom to my left, while Kirill is positioned between my thighs. They’re all naked, too, though there’s no sign of our clothes. They haven’t been tossed hastily to the ground, or carefully folded anywhere. Confusion ripples through me. Surely, we wouldn’t have walked here in the nude.

Kirill catches my attention, and my worries about our clothes vanish. He strokes his cock, up and down, mesmerizing me.

Tino brushes my cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Our beautiful, Duchess,” he murmurs. “Now, open up for me.”

I turn my head and part my lips willingly, his pierced cock sliding between them and across my tongue, filling my mouth and the back of my throat. He tastes incredible, salty and musky. I swirl my tongue around the smooth head, and he lets out a growl and thrusts deeper.

Dom cups one of my breasts in his hand, rolling the hardened nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

I feel worshiped and admired. I’m safe with them. They’ll take care of me. Being with them makes me feel special. I know no one else at Verona Falls will fuck with me if I’m under their protection.

Between my thighs, Kirill pushes his fingers inside me. He’s rough, thrusting two in deep. My eyes slip shut in pleasure as he lowers his mouth to my pussy and covers my clit. I arch my back and try to focus on sucking Tino, but it’s not easy, and I lose my rhythm. Tino doesn’t seem to care, but just uses my mouth like any other hole, fucking into my throat.

They’re using me, consuming me, and I’m all theirs.

Kirill lifts his head and presses his thumb to my swollen clit, and I gasp around Tino’s cock.

“I want to see this pussy full of our cum,” Kirill tells me. “I want to see it dripping out of you.”

Tino pulls away from me, my mouth suddenly bereft. “Just when I was about to come down her throat. Guess I’d better save it.”

“She needs to be full of us,” Dom says. “Have us all inside her, so that we’ll always be together. The four of us, as one.”

I’m happy, so happy. This is all I want. Where I’m supposed to be.

Dom ducks his head to my breast, and Tino goes to the other. They suckle on my nipples, grating their teeth and biting softly, while Kirill continues to finger me. My climax builds, and I lift my back from the soft meadow, pressing into them, chasing my orgasm.

But then a hand wraps around my throat, and my eyes spring open. I expect to find Dom staring down at me, but it isn’t him.

It’s the professor.

The three Devils have vanished, and so has any sign of my orgasm. Paxton glares down at me, the pen still protruding from the side of his neck. Dark blood, which appears almost black against his skin, is crusted around the point where it pierces his throat. His eyes are pale white, and so is his skin, and I realize he’s dead.

“No, please!” I cry.

This can’t be happening.

“You’re mine, Mackenzie,” he snarls. “Never forget that.”

With a gasp, I wake to a room of beeping machines.

The back of my hand hurts where a drip has been fed into the veins there, a piece of tape holding it in place. I can’t quite tear myself from the horror of my dream. I’m disoriented and confused. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I know I’m not alone in the room, and I’m sure I’ve dragged Paxton out of my nightmare and into reality with me.

I let out a cry of horror, and immediately someone is standing beside me.

“Mackenzie, darling, you’re awake. Thank God.”

It’s Mom.

It all comes tumbling back to me—the church, the screen, the revelation of what she did.

No, no, no. I can’t bear to see her. I don’t want her anywhere near me. She’d arranged to have my father murdered. The mother I’d thought I’d known and loved my entire life didn’t even exist. That mom would never have even considered such a thing. My whole relationship with her is a lie.

I realize something else, and my horror multiplies. I’m in a hospital, and if I’ve been admitted, it means my details have been filled in on a form and then uploaded to a computer somewhere. The police will probably get some kind of notification of where I am. They’ll come to arrest me for what I did to the professor.

Maybe I shouldn’t even care. Would it be easier in prison? Just to accept that my life is fucked, that my parents were never who I’d thought they were, that the three men I’d started to wonder if I could love had betrayed me, that I am a killer, and I will never come back from that. A part of me just wants to have someone slam a door on a cell, so I can curl up on a cot and pull a blanket over my head, and never have to deal with anyone ever again.

My heart aches.

How will I ever get past this? I can’t see a way. Everything has changed now.

Perhaps it would have been better if I’d died?

Mom must see the alarm on my face, as she covers my hand with her own. She knows me too well.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. This isn’t a regular hospital. It’s a private clinic, one Nathaniele owns.”

I practically roll my eyes. Of course he does. He would need somewhere to bring the students who’ve been badly beaten in their goddamn sick fights. He wouldn’t be able to easily explain away those injuries to a normal hospital.

I yank my hand away, though it takes all my effort. “Leave me alone.”

My voice is croaky.

The sheets are starched white and scratchy on my skin. There’s a faint chemical tang to the air.

I want to be back in my own bed, except it’s not the bed back in Verona Falls that I long for, or even the one in the cheap rental apartment that Mom and I abandoned when we ran. It’s the bed that was in my room back in the house where we’d lived back when Dad was alive, when I’d believed we were a normal family. My chest aches with a need to go back in time and undo everything that’s happened, but I know such a thing is impossible.

Despite myself, I can’t help wondering where the guys are. I don’t need to question why they did it. It isn’t as though Domenic has made any attempt to hide the fact he wanted to stop the wedding. I guess he found a way to do it. With a little help from his friends, of course. From past experience, I’m already sure that Valentino was the one who shot the footage of Mom and Nataniele talking, of her confessing to arranging my father’s murder.

Pain spears my heart. It’s such a powerful emotion, I struggle to breathe against it. Tino and Kirill must have known what it would mean, showing that footage at the wedding. They must have known how badly it would affect me, and yet they did it anyway. I’d been so fucking stupid to start to believe I actually meant something to them. They’d been using me; that was all. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been warned. But I’d somehow thought I was different, that the four of us together were different.

“We need to talk,” Mom says. “It’s important.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” I raise my voice, a part of me hoping someone will overhear me. “You arranged to have Dad killed!”

Her eyes glisten with tears and she blinks fast. There’s tension around her mouth, and I notice lines on her skin that I’m sure weren’t there before.

“I would do anything to protect you. I want you to remember that. Anything at all. Even sacrificing your father. Bad men were making threats against us, against you. I wish you could see how you looked to them—young, pretty, female.” She swallows hard and a tear spills from the corner of her right eye, sliding down her cheek. She doesn’t even seem to notice. “They made threats against you, terrible threats. Your father owed money, and if he couldn’t pay it, you would be their payment. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Mackenzie? We needed the money from his life insurance, and we needed those men gone. It was him or you.”

A painful lump clogs my throat. “We could have just run. Like we have now.”

She turns her head, unable to look at me. “That option wasn’t open to us then.”

I understand why not. “Because Dad was still alive, you mean? Fucking Nataniele wouldn’t welcome us here while you were still married to him? Getting Dad out of the way helped Nataniele get you into his bed, too. You fucking sicken me. You all do.”

“I did it for you,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

I turn onto my side, so my back is facing her. My head is still pounding, and my stomach churns. My limbs feel as though I’ve got weights attached to them. Part of me knows what she is saying must be true because she has always protected me and loved me. She’s risked everything to do this, but I can’t get over her doing such a terrible thing, even if it was out of love for me.

I want to ask how long I need to stay in the hospital, but even if the doctors say I can leave, where will I go? Back to Verona Falls, where nobody wants me? I cringe at the thought. Will word of my epilepsy have spread around campus? I think of all the people who’d been in the church. It had only been a small service, but there had been enough for word to have spread. I bet the Devils have laughed about it all over campus. Dom is probably only upset that I didn’t die.

I want to scrunch myself into a tiny ball and vanish.

Mom touches my shoulder. “There are some people here to see you.”

“I don’t want to see anyone.”

“It’s Valentino and Kirill.”

My traitorous little heart lifts. “Where’s Dom?”

“Nataniele wouldn’t let him come. He’s not exactly happy with him for ruining the wedding. They had some things they needed to do.”

I hadn’t even considered the fallout for Dom about what he did. I bet Nataniele is furious. Good. I hope Nataniele is pissed, and Dom is on the receiving end of his fury. He deserves it.

I expect they are busy making sure everyone keeps quiet about the revelation that was made at the wedding. Nataniele won’t want that information spreading around campus.

“I don’t want to see anyone,” I say.

She keeps pressing me. “I think it would be good for you to see your friends.”

Doesn’t she know what part Valentino played in all this? Doesn’t she realize he was the one who took the footage, and most likely arranged for it to play onscreen like that? Or has Dom taken the fall for all of it?

Why are they even here? To make sure that I’m going to leave? To report back to Dom?

My lower lip trembles. “Just tell them to go.”

Mom lets out a sigh. “It’s not as easy as that. They’re refusing to leave.”