30. Vani
30
VANI
A few days go by, and I start to settle into the routine of Verona Falls.
I haven’t seen much of the Vipers, except for at a distance. I wonder if their interest in me has waned. I’m not sure how I feel about that. While it gives me space to breathe and get my thoughts together, I’ll also admit I’m a little disappointed. Had I been hoping Lex would keep his word on me owing him again? Or had the moment I’d had with Zane in the field been a part of that?
I’m also at a complete dead end with finding anything more about Reagan, and it’s incredibly frustrating. The college isn’t huge—at least when it comes to the student body number—and I don’t understand why I haven’t at least heard her name somewhere.
Right now, the only link I have is with the Vipers, and that makes me feel strange for all different kinds of reasons. It should put me off having anything more to do with them. Firstly, because maybe my sister did—and maybe even still does—and that’s just weird, and secondly, because they might have been nasty to her and made her move houses.
The trouble is this place is so big and sprawling and the houses so defined that people don’t seem to mingle much between them. In most colleges, the year you are in is the defining factor of the social hierarchies and groups. Here, it seems to be the houses.
It’s been a lonely couple of days. Lonely and frustrating.
I’m still a little homesick as well. I’ve never been away from the club for any length of time, and I miss it. I miss my dad, and the other guys, and the easy camaraderie. There was no second guessing everything and everyone there. I knew who I was, with no doubt, and everyone else knew who I was. I’d hated my dad’s overprotectiveness, and the way guys hadn’t even dared to look directly at me, but I’d been respected. I had belonged, even if it had been a strange sort of belonging.
I decide to call my dad on a whim. I don’t want to feel like a failure by calling, but, somehow, I do. It’s as though I’m admitting that I can’t cope without him.
I want to hear the familiar hubbub of the bar and imagine inhaling the scent of beer and motor oil. I want to be home.
As soon as the phone rings, I realize it’s a mistake because tears clog my throat, but he answers before I can hang up.
“Vani!” He sounds so pleased to hear from me, and my father isn’t normally one to show emotions, which only makes my own stronger.
“Hey, Daddy.” I realize my mistake right away. I never call him Daddy these days.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I lie. “I’m just a little homesick. I’m sure it’s normal, but I wanted to hear a friendly voice.”
“They’re not being friendly to you there,” he growls.
“No, they are,” I assure him. “I just suddenly missed home.”
I hear another voice in the background, and my father grunts then says, “Big Mike says hello, and he wants to know if you need anything. Says he can do a run with some of the guys if you do.”
I smile through the tears that are now threatening to spill out. “No, thanks, Dad. I’m okay. Are you all good?”
He tells me they are all fine and talks a little about a new ride they’ve found, and then I make my excuses because I really am going to cry if I don’t hang up.
Mike offering to come all this way just to bring me anything I might need is a sign of respect for his leader’s daughter.
The Vipers don’t know the meaning of the word respect .
I still don’t want to be anywhere near Saint after the way he treated me, but I have to admit I’m warming to Lex, and Zane is something else altogether. He’s an enigma, and maybe I should be angry at him for not stopping when I’d told him to, but I discover I’m not. It was too hot to be angry at him, and there seemed to be a strange connection between us in that moment. One I can’t bring myself to regret.
Later that day, as I leave one of my classes, a shout chases me up the corridor.
“Vani, hey, wait up.”
I pause and glance over my shoulder.
It’s one of the twins. I assess which one. He’s dressed more casually, and I search for the mole for confirmation. I relax a fraction. Yes, it’s Lex. While we might not have gotten off to such a great start, the time I’ve spent with him has shown me that he’s the far more balanced twin.
I slow my walk, allowing him to catch up. A singular thought echoes around my head. Does he know my sister?
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey, yourself. How have you found your first week?”
I shrug. “It’s been okay. I think I know my way around a bit better now.”
He grins. “It’ll feel like home in no time.”
I arch an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I’d go that far. Does it feel like home to you? Don’t you miss France?”
He thinks for a moment. “Some things, oui . The food, mostly.”
“What about your family?”
His expression darkens. “My family are all here.”
There’s a story behind his reaction, but I don’t want to push him. I get the feeling none of the Vipers react well to being quizzed on anything personal.
“What are you doing now?” he asks, the darkness fading and replaced with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
I play it coy. “Nothing much. What about you?”
“Nothing much,” he echoes back. “Maybe you should show me your room.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because it’ll feel more like home to have someone else in it.”
Ouch, that hurts. Has he somehow sensed that I’m homesick? Or is it just obvious, with me being the new girl at school? I am lonely, there’s no doubt about it, though there’s nothing new in that. I feel like I’ve been lonely for most of my life. That’s why I’d craved having a sister so badly. If only I had known for all those years that what I’d wanted so badly had actually been living in this world all along. Then the reason behind her existence hits me. How’s it going to feel to Reagan to learn about the violence behind her life? It had been like a gut punch to learn what my mom had gone through, and it had all taken place before I’d been born. Reagan had been an innocent victim.
“Okay,” I relent, deciding I’d like some company to push away these gloomy thoughts. “I’ll show you my room. It’s this way.”
We walk side by side. I find myself glancing up at him, admiring his features—the square jaw, the straight nose, the generous lips. He really is gorgeous. Shame he has a habit of acting like an ass.
“I saw Zane the other day,” I say. I don’t admit what Zane did to me when I saw him. “He seemed upset.”
Lex nods. “He was. He found out that the surgeons are calling it quits on the reconstructive surgery he’s been having to try to give him his voice back. Doesn’t look like Zane will ever be able to speak.”
I stop short at the news. “Oh, my God. Poor Zane.”
Emotion swells up inside me, clogging my throat, and I blink back tears on behalf of a man I barely know.
“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Lex says. “He hates that. He’s tough. He’ll be okay.”
I sniff and nod and keep walking. “Of course. Sorry. It’s just hard not to, you know?”
His voice softens. “Yeah, I know.”
I wonder at what point I’ll get away with bringing up Reagan. I’ve gone over this conversation in my head a million times, and I just can’t figure out a way to bring up her name without it getting back to her that I’m asking about her. My biggest fear is that it’ll then find its way back to her dad. I promised Mom on her deathbed that I wouldn’t let Reagan’s dad find out that I was trying to find her, and I don’t plan on breaking that promise.
We reach my room, and I stop outside the door and locate my keys. Lex stops just behind me, and I glance over my shoulder and smile at him. My gaze falls to the mole on his neck once more.
I’m not an idiot. I know what’s going to happen in my room. While I’ve got no intention of going all the way with him, it was definitely fun to fool around with him before and might be again.
I open the door and step through. Lex follows me. He kicks the door shut and grabs my arm and yanks me back into him. I let out a little ‘oh’ of surprise, but he swallows it with his lips crushed to mine.
He’s feasting on me with bruising kisses, nipping at the skin of my neck and jaw. He grabs both my hands in one of his and pins them above my head, and then he uses his other hand to yank down my top.
I’m taken aback by the intensity in him today. The raw energy he is exuding is certainly way different than how he was in the shower with me. Still, he was different again in class. Then, I’d thought he was the asshole and Saint was the nice one. Oh, how wrong I was.
“Fuck, these tits. I’ll never get enough of them.” He stares at them with a ravenous expression.
He ducks his head to lick my nipples, drawing them one by one into his mouth, and sucking on them hard. They have a direct line to my pussy, tightening that need inside me. I let out a groan.
“Bed,” he growls.
He sweeps me up, carries me over to my bed, and throws me onto it. He’s on top of me in an instant, shoving my legs apart with his knees so he can settle between them.
He pauses above me, staring down into my eyes.
“Why is it that I’m in a college of maybe a hundred different girls, but when I walk into a room, the only person I’m looking for is you? The rest of them might as well be ghosts for how real they seem to me.”
His words make me catch my breath. Does he really mean that?
He kisses me again and grinds himself against me. God, I want him, but I promised myself I wouldn’t let this go too far.
Beside my head, his hand slips under my pillow.
“What’s this?”
He pulls out the file I’d stolen from the dean’s office. The one about my sister.
Instantly, I flush red. “Umm…it’s nothing.”
I try to snatch it back from him. Doesn’t he recognize it from when he caught me taking it? But then I guess I shoved it in my bag the moment he caught me. It’s closed, and he’ll only see the name if he opens it, but I can’t let that happen. I use the only thing I have—my body.
“Ignore that. It’s nothing.” I draw his face down to mine. “Kiss me. I need you.”
His gaze flicks to the folder again, but when I pinch my own nipples and moan, he clearly decides I’m more interesting. He shoves the file back where he found it and kisses me again, running his hands all over my body. He slides one palm across my stomach and then down inside my panties. I’m already wet for him, and he pushes a finger inside me. I cry out and yank at his shirt, wanting to get my hands on his beautiful body. He’s all rock-hard muscles, and I grip the other hard part of him over the top of his jeans, squeezing him.
“You’re so hard,” I groan.
“Fuck, yes, Venom. You feel so good. I want to be inside you.”
“Not yet,” I gasp.
“I bet your pussy is so tight. You’re my good little whore. My dirty slut. I want to shove my cock inside you so bad.” He’s breathing hard and saying the words like a prayer. Like a mantra.
These aren’t words Lex would use. He’s not the one who likes this. Holy fuck.
I freeze beneath him.
“You’re going to take Daddy’s cock like a good little slut.” He bites my ear, hard.
My blood runs cold. No, surely not. I suck my thumb into my mouth then lift my hand to his neck and wipe my thumb over the brown mark I’d taken to be a mole. The color smears across his skin, the dark brown, almost black, fading to light.
“You motherfucker!”
Using both hands, I shove against his chest. I catch him by surprise, and he topples off the bed, landing heavily on the floor.
“What the fuck, Venom?” he says, lying on his back on the carpet.
I sit up and lean over the side of the bed, directly above him. “That’s not my name. It’s Vani. Just like yours is Saint. ”
I glare at him, rage boiling through me. That absolute lying piece of shit. What if I’d gone the whole way with him, thinking he was Lex? I could have lost my virginity to someone while believing he was someone else.
He lets out an infuriating chuckle but doesn’t get up. “You figured it out, then.”
“Yeah, the moment you started calling me names.”
He shrugs. “Sorry. Can’t seem to help myself around you.”
“I thought you were someone else. That’s assault!” I spit at him. “Don’t you Vipers know anything about consent?”
He smirks at me. “Seems you were consenting just fine when you were groaning and telling me how hard my cock was.”
I grab my pillow, forgetting that the file is under there, and launch it at him. “Get the fuck out of my room, Saint. You got in here on false pretenses.”
He bats the pillow away. “Why, because you thought I was my brother?”
“Of course I did. You deliberately deceived me! You drew a fucking mole on your neck, and look at how you’re dressed. You’re wearing his clothes.” He’s even wearing Lex’s watch. Another thought occurs to me. “Does Lex know about this? Is he in on it?”
Saint snorts. “Of course he doesn’t know, but don’t believe for one second that Lex is some good guy.”
Saint is right. Lex was the one who blackmailed me into going to their mansion in the first place. He could have just let me go, but instead he created a situation where he and his friends all got off. Okay, maybe I got off too…more than once…a lot more, but that’s not the point. Just because he made me orgasm and said pretty words in my ear doesn’t make him the nice one.
None of them is nice. Zane is dangerous and quiet. Unpredictable. And Saint and Lex are two of the most screwed up individuals I’ve ever met.
Do you know my sister? I want to scream. Have you played these twisted games with her too?
“Get out,” I yell. “I mean it. Get the fuck out of my room.”
He sits up and hooks his arms around his shins. “But we were getting on so well. Why spoil it just ’cause of a little mix-up. I mean, I never actually said I was Lex. You just assumed it.”
“You drew a mole on your neck.” I’m still furious.
“No, I didn’t. Must have been a speck of chocolate or something.”
Does he actually expect me to believe that?
He rubs his crotch and grins at me. “Bet you’re still wet, you little cock hungry slut.”
Fury boils inside me and spills out like corrosive lava. I scream at him, my voice loud enough to travel to the other dorms. “Get out, you piece of shit. I mean it.”
He sighs and stands as if this is just a casual conversation we’re having. He cracks his neck, one way and then the other. “Fine, I’m leaving, but this isn’t the end, Venom. I’ve decided I want you, and I always get what I want.”
With that, he throws me a wink, strolls casually across the room, and lets himself out.
I throw myself back onto my bed and let out a scream of frustration.