40. Daren
Chapter 40
Daren
I was one to talk, considering my cum was still deposited in two of the four men sitting across the table from me, but walking in on Fletcher taking Gideon North’s cock up his ass was the last thing I expected to happen that day.
Sitting a bottle of red wine in the middle of the table and collapsing into a chair beside Luca, I scrubbed a hand down my face and waited for either Gideon or Fletcher to explain themselves. After the three of us walked in on them, Fletcher had told us all to fuck off, then had taken Gideon to his room. They’d emerged half an hour later, both freshly showered and both in Fletcher’s clothes.
“Isn’t it early for wine?” Fletcher asked, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankle. He was still barefoot, a sharp contrast from the way he normally carried himself around the house, the way he held himself when he talked about Gideon.
“Isn’t it early to get bent over a couch and fucked by your sworn enemy?” I shot back.
“He was hardly bent over,” Luca said, reaching for the wine and pouring himself and Bellamy a glass. He raised it toward me, and I slid my glass in his direction. After he’d poured, he set the bottle on the center of the table again, and the three of us turned our attention to our leaders.
“Let’s talk about the two of you first,” Fletcher said, brow raised.
“All our secrets are already on the table, it seems,” I said.
“How can I trust you knowing you’re involved with him?”
“I could ask you the same, President,” I shot back, words quiet and calculated. “But let me remind you that I’m not a Sinclair and I’m not a North. I’m here because it’s what’s expected of me until I graduate.”
“This isn’t something you just walk away from after school is finished.” Gideon grazed his fingers across the center of his chest and, beside me, Luca winced. I’d known, but somehow I hadn’t realized there was no way that brand had made it to the center of Gideon’s chest without Luca’s assistance.
“No,” I agreed, “but the oversight drops dramatically once that diploma is handed over.”
“That’s when the work begins,” Luca whispered, bottom lip pushed into a frown that I wanted to kiss right off his face.
“And what’s your work?” Fletcher asked.
“Proving to my father that I’m trustworthy.”
“Are you?”
“You said you can only trust yourself,” Bellamy said from his seat between me and Fletcher. He was so quiet and so small, I almost forgot he was there, except I could never really forget him…not with a mouth like that.
“I trust Fletcher a lot more now than I did an hour ago,” I said, which earned me an eye roll from the man in question. But it was the truth. We all had leverage over the other now, and it was leverage that made alliances. Leverage was what made people dangerous to each other.
“We’re all at an impasse,” Luca said, sipping carefully at his wine. “I’m of the impression that neither of us will move against the other now.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Gideon murmured, not quite under his breath.
“That was almost a decade ago,” Fletcher protested.
“And I’m just supposed to believe you’ve somehow gotten better and not worse?”
“You’re both insufferable,” I said, drawing sharp and scathing looks from across the table. “It’s tentative enough that we can make it out of this weekend alive, but we do need to address the elephant in the room.”
Fletcher raised a brow again, and I threw a sidelong glance at Bellamy.
Fletcher and Gideon were in their positions because of their names, much the way Luca and I had drawn short straws and landed in our deputy roles. Our families had grasped at power and money for generations, cementing our places in the upper echelons of not just society and politics, but also the Thorns and the Roses.
Bellamy was a Marchant and the Marchant family didn’t matter. Marchant was a name I didn’t even remember hearing before he’d shown up at school, before he’d landed in my bed. I’d fucked him anyway because I was far from discerning and sex to me was the same as power. But then he’d shown up as the offering and everything had changed. Unfortunately, I was a sucker for a pretty man with a nice whimper, and Bellamy, much like Luca, ticked all of my boxes.
Fucking Luca alongside Fletcher the night before was a complication because I knew Luca’s responses and noises well enough to know just how much Fletcher did it for him. How much both our cocks up his ass got him off. And then there was this morning, watching Luca with Bellamy had only given me permission to lean into my attraction to the newcomer…and for the first time I worried I’d fucked my way into a corner I couldn’t get out of.
The five of us were playing a complicated game of chess, moving pieces around to keep the game running long enough to get the upper hand over the other, but the appearance of Bellamy Marchant on our doorsteps and in our beds gave me the terrifying feeling there were more hands in the game than any of us had realized.
Maybe we weren’t as untouchable as we’d always imagined.
Maybe our secrets weren’t ours to keep anymore.
Four sets of eyes settled on Bellamy, with his golden hair and innocent eyes, the hickeys peppered across the back of his neck and the cum of three men mixed inside of him.
“Who the fuck is he and why is he here?”