3. Juliet
JULIET
R ich people are obsessed with dead things. Famous people. Exotic animals. Languages.
I always thought it was strange that Silverwood Prep offered classes like Latin. After all, it’s a dead language. There are no native speakers. Who’s to say that the modern interpretation of it is even correct? There’s no one to tell us otherwise.
Still, as stupid as I thought the class was—enough that I refused to take it even when Avery begged and pleaded with me because she didn’t want to be alone—there is a beauty about something that’s clinging to its own existence.
It refuses to die even knowing its end is inevitable.
I think my relationship with Lex is like that now.
We’re already dead and gone, but… after the initial shock of finding out that he’s been stalking me for thirteen years, I don’t want to let it go.
I’m angry and sore and tired, but I don’t want to fight with him anymore. I don’t want to fight any of them.
If I’m honest, what I want is… to be with them. To be one of them.
Foolish? Maybe.
I’m not like him. I’m not like any of them, but if I pretend that I am long enough, perhaps it’ll come true.
I grew up surrounded by obsession—money, materials, image, reputation—and yet, I never understood any of it until this moment.
Lex’s gaze is poetry and dark yearning. I picture him looking at someone else like this and my hands curl sharply against him, my nails digging in.
He sucks in a breath but doesn’t shove me away.
Mine . The word screams through my head. He’s fucking mine and no one else can have this part of him. If anyone else tries, I’ll kill them.
“What are you thinking, baby?” Lex’s low, gravelly tone shoots shivers down my spine. Loosening my fingers so that I don’t hurt him further, I turn in his arms, swinging my leg around the other side of him until I’m straddling him and we’re facing each other.
It takes me a long time to find the words to answer him. These feelings are a disease. Even acknowledging their existence will mean it’s too late for me.
I was done for before I even walked into Lex’s office.
“What would you do for me?”
Beneath me, Lex’s body goes rock still. “ Anything .” The word is a harsh rasp.
I grip his hair and tilt his head back. My brow arches sardonically. “Anything?” I repeat.
He stares back at me, unblinking. “I would die for you.”
Sweet words, but it’s not what I want to hear. My grasp tightens and he sucks in a breath, his lids lowering until he peers at me through the thinnest slits of his eyes.
“What else?”
The cock beneath me rubs insistently against the crotch of my borrowed boxers. My lips twitch, but I lift up, not letting him keep up the distracting motions. He grits his teeth.
“Lie. Cheat. Steal. You name it and I will do it. I am your fucking dog, Juliet. Whatever you want, it’s already yours—all you have to do is tell me to get it for you.”
“If I want blood?”
“You’ll have it.”
“Revenge?”
“Done.”
“What if I want to hurt you?”
He moans as if the mere idea of me taking a blade to his skin is enough to bring him to the edge of pleasure. I never realized how heady this kind of power over a person could feel. It’s the type of drug no amount of money could buy.
Bending towards him, I part my lips and lick over the seam of his mouth. His chest rumbles and he tries to lean up to kiss me again, but I back away. The sound he makes is desperate and needy.
“Tell me the rest,” I whisper as I move to his jaw and press a little kiss there.
“The rest?”
I want to know what Nolan was talking about, but more than that, Lex promised me answers and we haven’t gotten to those yet.
“You’ve met with my father,” I remind him. Another kiss to his throat, right over his pulse, has him swallowing sharply.
“Like this?”
I drop down into his lap and he hisses out a curse. His hands find my hips, dig in, and he rolls his own body into my own.
“Consider it part of your punishment,” I say.
“Does that mean you’ll forgive me?”
I cease kissing him and pull away. “Do you want to ask me questions, or do you want me to keep going?”
“Your father contacted me a few months ago, not long after you came to Public.” The words shoot out of his mouth in a rush. I dip my head again and smile. He’s getting it now. The more he talks, the further I’ll go.
“He swears up and down that he’s not responsible for the embezzlement. He sent me information, contacts, and I started looking into all of the evidence the courts seem to have.”
I lick a path from the throbbing muscle in his jaw to his collarbone. His breathing picks up speed.
“It was pretty easy to determine that everything he said was bullshit.”
If Lex is surprised by my lack of a flinch at his words, he doesn’t show it. I am, however. My entire focus is on him and how his body is reacting to every little thing I do. When I nip at his skin, sinking my teeth into his flesh, his hips jolt upward and his cock grinds against my core.
“Until it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t?” I reward his continued good behavior with a delicate kiss to the opposite side of his neck. Then I open my mouth and suck, pulling on his skin and then releasing it with an audible pop . The light red circle of a hickey is reflected back at me. A marking of my own.
“It’s clear someone spent a lot of time and money to make it look like Allen Donovan embezzled millions of dollars in funds from Donovan-Calloway.” Lex practically pants through the words. I work my way higher, to just beneath his ear.
“It was too good, though,” he continues.
I lift up and gaze down at the man slowly rocking and grinding into me. His eyes are glossy with desire, his lips parted and shining as he swipes his tongue over the fuller lower half.
“No one who actually embezzled that much money would be so obvious about it,” Lex says. “I think he was set up.”
My desire ebbs at this news. “Is there proof?”
Lex winces and then sighs. “There’s nothing definitive, but I’m looking into finding your mother.
I find it odd that she left so quickly and even her family on the West Coast hasn’t seen her since.
She came from money and even if she couldn’t live in Silverwood, it would make sense that she’d go back to her family for support. Then, there’s you…”
“What about me?”
His hands move, dragging me forward over the hard length of him. Sparks of fire swell in my belly, burning through me. My hands land on his shoulders and latch on.
“Everything revolves around you,” Lex says.
A frown takes over as his words bat away the sensations rising in my body. “What do you mean?”
Back I go, his hands pushing me down his thighs and then lifting me and dragging me forward again. Right. Over. His. Dick.
“Fuck!” My nails sink into his shoulders, digging in until I’m sure I might cut through the fabric of his shirt entirely to enter his flesh.
“Think about it,” he whispers, drawing my head forward as he brushes my mouth with his lightly. Side to side, not quite making it a kiss. The tables have turned on me, but oh, what sweet trickery. “You are the center of everything that’s happened. Who is affected by it all?”
“My family—” I start, but Lex merely shakes his head.
“Your family wasn’t around when your apartment burned down,” he reminds me. “And Gio—those men that attacked him mentioned you. Then, tonight…”
My spine goes stiff and his hands shift, sliding towards it and smoothing upward. His lashes flutter as he stares at my mouth. Hunger is reflected in the dark pools of his gaze. I focus on that, on him.
I find now that I’ve made the decision, trusting him becomes easier with each passing breath between us. Slowly, but surely, I fall into him, letting him take on the weight of my body, hold it against his. It isn’t until he speaks again that I realize he’d done it all for a reason.
“Nolan has a name.”
The soothing sensations evaporate and I sit up straight. “Who?”
“Baby…”
With a snarl, I wrap my hand around his throat. It’s far too thick for me to completely surround, but I grip and squeeze with all of my strength. Red-hot, pulsing fury rages through my system.
“ Who? ” I repeat the word, a demand.
Lex gazes back at me, unyielding. He doesn’t hide from my anger. He accepts it, even going so far as to lean into my hold. It has to be hard for him to breathe, but he doesn’t even flinch.
The skin over my knuckles is bone white and ice filters through my veins. His silence stretches for longer and longer. A cramp seizes my wrist, but I don’t let go.
Sweat beads pop up on the back of my neck. His continued lack of an answer has my heart beating faster. The tension between us is palpable. His pupils are blown wide until there’s nothing but a thin ring of gray encircling the black.
The sound of a door opening is what has me releasing him. I practically leap off Lex’s lap as I turn towards the open door of the bedroom.
“Jules! Lex!” Gio’s voice echoes back to us.
I don’t look at Lex as I move towards the hallway. I’m stopped by a hand on my wrist just like before. “Whatever happens,” Lex whispers. “Remember what I told you—anything, baby. Fucking anything. ”
There’s a reason I asked what he would do for me and even if that wasn’t the answer I wanted, it’s an answer I will accept. Because, before this is all over, I know I’m going to take him up on it. Lex’s ‘anything’ isn’t a promise; it’s an oath.
Six months ago, I wouldn’t have even considered keeping him after finding out the truth. The old Juliet would have walked away and never looked back, but that Juliet was surviving in a different world. She didn’t have the strength to keep him. I will never be that girl again.
When the time comes to kill whoever is responsible for all that’s happened to me, one of us will pull the trigger and I won’t be sorry.