Chapter 7 The Deal
The Deal
Harper
The cafeteria. I’ve spent three years avoiding this room. Yesterday I was tossed over Luke Foster’s knees and spanked while everyone watched and counted along like some alternative demented Sesame Street timeline.
Now I have to present myself to the assholes so I won’t be punished again. Coming into this cafeteria is punishment enough to be honest.
An arm slides around my shoulders from behind, and I tense.
“Easy, girl.” Jack chuckles and tugs me into his firm side. “No one but us will touch you. Or Caden will break them into pieces.”
“How touching.” I roll my eyes as Jack directs me to a table off to the side. The other three are all there already. The tables surrounding it are vacant. It’s time to put all the knowledge of these guys I gathered over the years to good use and help me out of this situation.
Caden is the largest of the group and the meanest. He’s a fucking beast. He sits at the end of the table with his green eyes tracking me.
He makes me feel like prey. Jack is right.
Caden would decimate anyone who got in his way, just like on the football field.
While the other guys are definitely not poor, Caden’s family is wealthy and both his parents are too busy to ever show up for a game.
Even I show up for games. Game time always seemed like a safe space for me to be an actual high schooler, as all the horsemen are occupied on the field. So I’ve seen them all in action. I’ve even gotten caught up in the game and cheered for them a time or two.
Jack is a flirt. He guides me to the table and pulls out the chair next to Eli for me. I know it isn’t optional, so I sit. Just being in this room makes me fearful of what punishment they might decide on next or if they’ll just stick to spankings.
The girls at the next table call out to Jack, and he swaggers over to them. As he talks to them, he brings himself down on their level, leaning in and touching them occasionally. By the time he swaggers back to our table—fuck, their table—the girls are all giggling and gossiping behind their hands.
I get out my lunch bag and remove my sandwich. Caden reaches over and snags it out of my hand. I open my mouth, but what the hell can I do about it? Fight him? I need to choose my battles carefully or I’ll give too much of myself away.
“Thanks, untouched.” He winks and devours my sandwich in three bites.
It’s not like I have much of an appetite with my stomach churning with worry anyway.
Eli pulls out an apple and offers it to me. Fuck if I don’t feel like Snow White as I slowly reach for it. Poison wouldn’t be a stretch for Pestilence, right?
“Thank you,” I say softly.
“You’re welcome, kitten.” He spreads his legs and his thigh rests against mine under the table.
My stomach flutters. I don’t pull away even though I really want to.
Pick my battles. I play those words on repeat in my head. They’re used to getting what they want.
They could be a powder keg ready to blow, and my resistance could be the match. They aren’t exactly known for their even temperaments.
Eli is a little bit of an enigma. He doesn’t talk much, letting Luke run the show, but he’s fucking brilliant. He’s got a full ride waiting for him already at pretty much any university he wants to go to.
Luke clears his throat, and my eyes lift to him.
Seriously, he’s too pretty to be real. If he wasn’t such a dick to everyone, he would still be just as popular and get just as much pussy.
He’s a little cold and calculating. His mother died when he was young, and his father raised him on his own.
Maybe the lack of a woman’s touch left out something fundamental in Luke’s personality.
Like humanity.
“We need to discuss your schedule.” Luke pins me with his cool blue eyes and steeples his fingers against his lips like the evil genius he is.
“My schedule?” I bristle.
This guy spanked me in front of everyone and then made me show him my bare, red ass in the bathroom. I have no doubt I will hate everything he tries to make me do.
Liar, that little voice that doesn’t mind any of this whispers.
“We can’t be with you every minute of the day.”
Thank heaven for that. I bite my lip to hold in that response.
Luke tips his head as he notices my lip. I release it and lift the apple to take a bite. Please be poisoned. At least my death will be quick.
Instead, the apple is sweet and light, unlike my current lunch companions.
“You’ll ride to school with one of us. Stay in the library and study while we have football practice. Be driven home or to wherever we require you to be after that.”
“Wherever you require me to be?” The words taste bitter on my tongue.
Luke’s smile is just a hint cruel as he leans on his elbows across the table toward me. “We own you, unicorn. You go where we want, when we want. You wear what we say and you do what we tell you to.”
My heart is pounding. I can almost feel the rest of the horsemen leaning in to hear my response. They take up all the air around me, sucking it from my lungs. I feel like a gazelle surrounded by wolves and I can’t see a way out of this.
“No.” The word bursts out of me. I can’t hold it in anymore. I set the apple down on the table and go to push myself back, but Eli’s hand goes to the back of my chair, holding me in place.
I swivel to glare at him, but he just calmly moves my apple in front of him.
Luke’s smile grows broader. Like he likes it when I’m defiant, like it gets him off. Noted. “What do you mean, no?”
Jack moves to the chair on my other side, sitting facing me and blocking me in at the same time. He might as well say checkmate.
“You can’t just own me.” There’s more to it, but I’m trapped and I really don’t want to put on a repeat performance for the students watching us.
I’m pretty sure jeans wouldn’t cut it for Luke’s sadistic spankings.
If he spanks me again, people will expect a spanking show every day.
I’m not willing to provide our school with that much entertainment.
I want to run. I want to get as far away from these guys as I can before they take anything more from me. So far, they haven’t taken much. Nothing I can’t handle, but if they control where I can go…
My mind stutters to a halt.
Fuck, they could take me anywhere, and I’m supposed to shut up and go with four guys who have told me they want to fuck me. Yeah, I’m not that stupid. They’ll claim I didn’t try to get away. I chose to go with them. I’ll be trapped. They’ll keep taking from me until there’s nothing left.
“What are you scared of, kitten?” Eli’s almost gentle voice pulls me from the stare down with Luke.
I turn to face him. His brown eyes seem soft, but I’m not fooled by any of these guys. Their only loyalty is to each other. “I’m one girl against four guys. I’m guessing you can imagine what I’m afraid of.”
It’s not like they’re subtle about what they want from me. I just don’t know what all they want from me. How far are they willing to take this?
Eli captures a lock of my hair, and I wince, expecting a pull, but his fingers just drift softly down to the end. “Do you think we’ll force you?”
His brown eyes focus on mine. He’s not saying they won’t.
He’s asking if I think they will. I glance around the table at these four guys.
Again, no one has ever come out and called them rapists before.
No gossip has ever been spread saying they forced someone.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of it or they haven’t made the victim terrified of coming forward.
Their fathers have deep pockets when it comes to keeping their sons out of trouble.
I return my gaze to Eli. Currently, he seems like the lesser evil of the group. “You guys aren’t exactly known for being nice guys.”
Jack trails his fingers up my arm, leaving sparks under my skin in his wake.
I jerk my gaze to him. His blue eyes capture me as he trails his fingers back down to my hand. This is a major problem. Their touch doesn’t repulse me. Not at all.
“Nothing will happen without your say-so.” Jack speaks the words with such conviction, but can I trust what he says? Can I trust what any of them say? Do I dare to?
Just yesterday, Luke swore not to touch me and then caressed my ass with his hand. So yeah, I’m not exactly going to trust what these boys are trying to sell me. They seem to want me submissive and willing.
“I don’t understand what you want from me.” That’s what frightens me the most. I don’t know the rules of the game they’re playing. How can I beat the game if I don’t know what to do to win? Do I win if I keep my virginity?
“We want to own you.” Luke’s strong voice pulls my attention back to him. “In return, we’ll protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” I raise an eyebrow. I’ll come back around to the owning part, but seriously? “The only people I’ve ever needed protecting from are you four.”
Caden sits next to Luke, drawing my eyes. He’s a beast of a man. No one in their right mind would call him a boy. His expression is blank, like we could be talking about the weather.
“As long as you do what we say, all of us will keep you safe and take care of you,” Caden says.
“Do as you say?” My brain can’t help turning to some pretty fucked up things they could make me do. “I’m still not seeing how this arrangement is beneficial to me. You want to take my virginity.”
“We want you to give your virginity to us,” Luke clarifies. His eyebrows lower. “We won’t take anything you don’t want to give us.”
“You think I want to give you control over me?” I laugh, but it’s a tight, high laugh, almost hysterical. Fuck these guys. “You know I only have one virginity to give, right?”
They all give hungry smiles at my words. Fuck if that horny little bitch inside me volunteers as fucking tribute. I’m going to need to bind and gag her, but I’m afraid she’d like that.