Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Briar
Indi slips past me, heading for the corner of the bathroom where I tossed her underwear. “Leave it,” I snap. She flinches, turning wide eyes to me, and then comes past on her way to the door. I grab a handful of her hair and haul her back. She protests when I kiss her, but I couldn’t give a fuck if she’s ever tasted herself or not.
I did.
I almost came undone how sweet she was. How wet. How her body shuddered when she came in my mouth.
My dick’s already painfully hard—kissing her like this is only making matters worse. I catch a glimpse of tears caught in her lashes before I shove her out the door and slam it behind her. Then I lock it, just in case.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck just happened? One minute I’m furious enough to break everything in this house. The next I’m eating Indi out in a goddamn bathroom. There’s a tentative knock on the bathroom door, but I ignore it.
I will my cock to soften, but it refuses. It doesn’t help that I keep hearing Indi saying my name, hoarse and desperate, echoing in my mind.
Slamming my hand into the mirror, I yank out my cock and stroke it hard enough to make myself grimace in pain.
Punishment for losing control again.
But like so many things in life, that pain only makes the pleasure that much sweeter. That much more taboo.
“Fuck.” I stroke my cock again, then again. Harder, until my face twists in pain.
But when I close my eyes, all I can see is Indi’s rapturous face. Light gleaming from her lush mouth as it forms a perfect ‘o’.
She’s mine. I will be her first.
I speed up, grunting in the urgency to relieve myself of this deviant train of thought.
But I lied when I said I’d wait.
If life’s taught me anything, it’s that nothing is forever. People come and go like dandelion seeds. Drifting aimlessly for the longest time until a wind sweeps them away forever. I replay every second of what just happened, from Indi’s glare when I yanked off her panties, to the way she fisted her hand in my hair. How she rode my face, and how deep my tongue sank inside her.
As she comes, so do I.
Marcus is waiting for me in the foyer, Dylan and Zak nearby like sharks who’ve smelled blood in the water. The party’s still in full force, but the number of kids passed out on couches - or the floor—has increased since I last noticed.
“Where is she?” I ask, scanning the crowd in case she’s still nearby.
“Left with Addison,” Dylan says. “Dude, what happened?”
“She was crying,” Zak adds, giving me a frowning once over from beside Dylan.
They were at the party that night with Jess, but both of them were trashed out of their minds. I doubt they remember much more than I do. But now? There’s uncertainty in their eyes, faint disgust touching their mouths as they look first at each other and then at me.
“Nothing,” I snap. “Did they leave in the same car?”
Everyone but Marcus shrugs at me. When I glare at him, he nods. “Addy drove.”
“Fuck.” She was way too trashed to be driving, even if it was just the mile back to her house. “I have to make sure they’re okay.”
I head for the door, but Dylan puts out his hand to stop me. “I think you’ve done enough.”
Letting out a disbelieving, “What did you just say?” I step back and scan him with utter contempt.
“Just…go home, Briar.” Dylan drops his gaze, but he doesn’t step aside. His shoulders don’t sag.
“I didn’t do anything!” I yell, shoving him aside so hard he stumbles.
“But you wanted to, didn’t you?” Zak says as he steadies Dylan.
“What are you saying?” I storm forward, and suddenly both of them are upright, standing shoulder to shoulder, eyes narrowed and hands fisted. If the two of them decided to gang up on me then yeah, I don’t think I could take them both.
“Cool it, guys,” Marcus says. “We’re leaving, okay?” He steps in front of me, for all the world like he’s gonna protect me.
I glare at Dylan and Zak over his shoulder. “Chicken shit pussies,” I hiss.
“Come on, man, let’s get out of here.” Marcus turns, scanning me as if he’s checking for some last vestige of calm in my face.
I doubt he’ll find it. I’m about ready to rip through skin and claw apart flesh.
How fucking dare they?—?
—think I was gonna rape her?
I sneer at them, take a slow step back, and then another. That’s when I notice everyone in the immediate vicinity is watching, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
There are phones out, too.
People have been recording this shit.
I storm out of Dylan’s house with blood singing in my fucking ears like a Valkyrie’s Aria. Obviously, Addy’s long gone by now—I just hope to all hell they made it back to her place without hitting anything on the way. She never seems to realize how much she’s had to drink, Addy. And Jess was always too pissed to care how she got home—or if she even got home at all.
“Wanna go check on them?” Marcus asks.
I turn to him. I don’t have a fucking clue if he’s talking about Jess or Indi, but then I come back to the present with bitter finality.
“Yeah.” I climb in behind my Mustang’s steering wheel, and Marcus hesitates before getting into the passenger seat.
As I turn the ignition, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I take it out and hurriedly unlock the screen.
She’s safe.
It came from the same number Addy’s been using to blackmail me with. There’s another message—one from my dad—but I’m too furious to read it.
“Fucking asshole,” I mutter. I throw my Mustang into reverse, grabbing Marcus’s headrest as I check behind me to make sure I’m not about to drive over some drunk kids.
“Who?”
“Addy. Bitch thinks she can get away with this shit, she’s got another thing coming.”
“What are you?—?”
I make eye contact with Marcus as I turn forward, and he cuts off. “This bitch is done ruining my fucking life. You hear me?”
When Marcus leans away from me, I realize I’m yelling. I blink a few times and desperately try to compose myself before I slam my foot down on the gas.
It doesn’t work.
If anything, it pisses me off even more.
She’s safe.
Yeah, just like how Jess was safe all those times they went out to party without me. Those times my girlfriend called me from a strange bar to come get her because Addy was ‘on something’ and acting weird.
And she had the fucking nerve to demand Jess go home with her the night of Marcus’s party. That between me and Addy, I was one who’d let Jess come to harm?
“Dude, slow down,” Marcus says quietly.
I glance at him, and then do a double take. He has one hand on the dash, the other on the chicken bar above the car door. His face is a shade paler than usual, his lips a barely visible line.
I take my foot off the gas, inhale deep, and grip the steering wheel hard enough for my knuckles to go white.
“What happened?” Marcus asks.
“Thanks to you, nothing.” I shake my head, taking turns glancing at the road and back at Marcus. “The fuck was wrong with you tonight? I thought you had my back?”
“She’s trouble.”
“Christ, you say that about every fucking chick, bro.”
At this, Marcus shuts up. But now that he’s got me riled up, I don’t want to back down.
“What’s with you and Indi, anyway?” He was like this with Jess, too, but it’s worse with Indi. It’s like he’s taken her presence personally, as if every second I’m with her is an insult to our friendship.
“Nothing, man. Just drop it.”
“You coming unhinged or something because of all that shit with your dad? Now you have to make my life worse than what it already is? It’s not my fucking fault your life sucks.”
Marcus twists in his seat, mouth wide as he lets out a disbelieving huff. “You think that’s what I’m doing? You think I’m trying to ruin your fucking life?”
“Well, you haven’t exactly been cheering for me to be happy anytime in the last two years.”
Marcus gives a bitter laugh and thumps his hand on the dashboard. “I’ve been protecting you, bro. These whores all just wanna use you.”
“And you know this because you’re some kind of an expert? When last did you even try dating someone, not just fucking them?”
Marcus lets out a low growl. “Stop the car.”
“Not a fucking chance. You’re coming in there with me, and you’re sorting this shit out. With me .”
“Fuck you, Prince.” Marcus grabs the door handle as if he’s ready to leap out of the car.
I slam my foot down on the gas.
Addy’s house streams past—I barely catch sight of her racer before it’s dwindling away to nothing in my rearview mirror.
“You know her from somewhere?”
Marcus grabs hold of the chicken bar again, gritting his teeth as if he’s ready for me to crash us into a brick wall. “What?”
“Indi. Do you know her?”
“No! I’ve never seen her before in my fucking life.”
“So what is it, Marcus? What is it about her that makes you fucking pissed off every time we’re together?”
“She’s not good enough for you! No one is!” Marcus throws me such a fierce glare, my foot slips off the gas. The Mustang slows, slows, almost stops.
I jerk up the emergency brake, and we stare at each other over the center console. Marcus’s chest is heaving as if he’s run a marathon, and my heart’s pounding like I was beside him every step of the way.
“What…?” I manage.
Marcus waves his hand as if to dismiss what he just yelled at me. Instead of explaining himself, he fucks off on a different tangent. “You think you have it so bad, Briar?” He runs his hands down his face. “You don’t. You’ve got everything you could ever want, you just can’t see it.”
“If this is about your dad?—”
“Shut up about my fucking dad!” Marcus thumps the dash again. Veins protrude from his neck, and the way he’s staring through the windshield—as if at something only he can see—is freaking me the fuck out.
I turn off the Mustang’s ignition before the tick-tick-tick of its cooling engine can drive me mental.
“Marcus—”
“You snap your fingers, and girls fall at your feet. Always have, always will.”
I let out a bitter chuckle. “You know that’s not?—”
“Yeah? Not anymore?” Marcus turns in his seat, one hand on the dash, the other on his knee. It might just be this confined space, but I’ve never realized how lanky he was. I definitely have more bulk than him, but where I knew Dylan and Zak could take me if they teamed up, I have no idea who would win in a fistfight between me and Marcus.
And I’ve never thought that. Not once.
Until now. Until I see some dark glimmer in his eyes that I can’t identify.
Frustration? Regret? Anger?
“You get all A’s. A mansion of a fucking house. The best family?—”
“Woah, yeah, really?” I cut in with a laugh. “A dad who’s never home, a dead mother? How the hell can that be?—?”
“It beats a criminal for a father and a whore of a mother.” Marcus scowls at me, and then rips his packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. He expels a fierce stream of smoke, raking his eyes over me as if daring me to argue. “Fuck knows how many men she was screwing before she met my Dad. Then six years after I arrive—” He puts his fingers to his lips, blowing air over them. “Poof. Gone.”
I have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to say to that. I keep quiet, watching Marcus’s face to gauge where he’s going with all of this. He takes a hit of his cigarette, and smoke fills the Mustang’s cabin.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I lean a little closer, dropping my head. “I mean, I knew about your dad, some about your mom, but?—”
“You ask your dad about me staying for a while?” Marcus asks quietly. He’s staring through the windshield again, oblivious to my attempts at making eye contact.
“Wh—yes.” I nod. “I did.”
“What did he say?” Marcus’s voice is cool and smooth as silk now as if we weren’t just yelling at each other.
I’m tempted to tell him I didn’t get around to it, but I’d just be delaying the inevitable. Best to get everything out in the open.
I shake my head. “I don’t get it. He made it sound like you were…”
“What?” Marcus cocks his head and slowly turns to face me. “I was what?”
“A delinquent.”
Marcus shrugs. “Aren’t I?” He flicks his fingers in the space between us. “Aren’t we ?”
And then he laughs, and I swear to fucking God—I’ll die a happy man if I never hear that sound again.