Chapter 27 #3
“I’m a stupid fuckboy and I was wrong,” I whisper into Scarlett’s ear, my voice much softer than I mean it to be.
This is a side of me that I don’t need anyone outside our marriage bearing witness to.
I just can’t seem to help myself, knowing the music will cover it up.
“About Ash. About Widow. I was never wrong about Alexei.”
“You’re a stupid husband/Nightmare and you were wrong,” she purrs, getting on her tiptoes to lick my ear and then biting down so hard that it bleeds.
My breath hisses out, pleased. Rock-hard.
My fucking dick has been leaking all night.
A steady stream of pre-cum meant solely for lubing and breaching Scarlett’s tight hole. “I love you, Kellin.”
My arms wrap around Scarlett, holding her close in the dark. The white lights strung around the room shimmer off the sharp edges of her cheekbones and paint her bronze skin with silver. I press a kiss to her temple, our dance movements slowing as everyone else spins and cheers.
Bastian offers to swap partners with me on the next go-around, and I accept.
Scarlett with him. Alexei with me (though he accepts my hand in a way he didn’t accept Bastian’s).
I’m having trouble getting myself together. Heart pounding. Stomach twisting. Can’t breathe.
Scarlett makes it so hard to breathe.
“A man just crawled into the vents,” I tell Alexei, holding his gloved hands as we enter into some sort of a waltz. The song has just changed to “Marionette” by the Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra. Mmm. This would be my song then.
Sweet, sweet Scarlett.
“That’s quite inconvenient, isn’t it?” Alexei sighs and offers a princely roll of his eyes in the half-dark. “It’ll be a professional, someone looking to take care of us as easily and quietly as possible. Another expensive assassin.”
I feel myself smiling at Alexei. It’s surprising how close I’ve gotten to my client.
This has never happened before, me making a male friend like this.
We would’ve been close even without Scarlett, I think.
No, absolutely. Trustworthy individuals are the rarest types.
There aren’t many Alexei Groves out there.
“We could pop out of here real quick, let the guy follow us to a secluded location. Or…” My eyes shift over to the set of double doors at the end of the gym.
They lead directly into the shadowy morass of Prescott High.
All these halls. Dead-ends and secret doors and vent covers that can easily be removed.
A veritable maze. Where I’ve always done my best work.
“Are we talkin’ about the guy in the vents?” Scarlett whispers, dancing close to us in Widow’s arms this time.
“Let’s hunt him in the halls,” I hiss back, eying the doors that lead from this room into the shadows of the school. Murder and then sex? What a fun way to celebrate such an important day.
“Ash could start running. Whoever finds the assassin first gets to kill him?” Scarlett turns to Ash, nodding her chin as he raises a brow, awaiting her slightest order with an irrepressible eagerness.
“And whoever catches you, fucks you.” Her eyes slide to mine and I shrug.
I’d do it if she wanted me to, but she doesn’t.
She’s far too jealous for that sort of thing.
My smile hitches even higher.
“You know I’m in,” I reply easily, slashing a sharp look in Ash’s direction. He has the queen’s crown askew on his head, reaching up with delicate fingers to lift it off.
“Here.” He hands it out to Scarlett with earnestness burning in his eyes.
Widow and I catch one another’s gazes over his shoulder, waiting for it.
Something desperately romantic from someone who’s wanted dead by a large number of powerful people.
Ash is a talented killer, but he’s sticky sweet on the inside. “Take this for Lucy. For…Alexis.”
Ash chokes up a little as Scarlett retrieves the crown, letting it hang by her side.
“Nice distraction technique, Mr. Force. Start running. Now.” Scarlett gestures with a nod of her head as Ash scowls and stalks off, pushing his way through the crowd.
“Do you really think it’s okay for him to be alone with an assassin in the building?” Widow asks, taking off after his friend with Scarlett’s wrist trapped in one of his hands, dragging her with him.
“He’ll probably end up finding the guy and murdering him before we ever show up,” Scarlett says as soon as we’ve stepped out of the noisy gym and into the silence of the hallway. The doors swing shut behind us, sealing us off from the commotion.
We spread the gossip around early: nobody is allowed in the hallways tonight, and the penalty is blood.
“I’ll be damned if I let Ash kill this guy before I do,” I grumble, thinking of the way he leapt on the last assassin, slitting the man’s carotid vertically with the tip of his sword at the same moment I plunged my blade into the man’s spine.
“You’re wounded,” Alexei replies, laughing.
I lift my hood up to cover my hair. I’ve worn enough suits lately to last me a lifetime. This is my preferred uniform for a hunt.
“So?” is my arrogant reply. Stupid as it is, Scarlett blushes so it’s a win in my book.
“Ah, fuck.” I plug a cigarette between my lips and survey the dead man sprawled in the shower stall of the girls’ locker room.
He’s been virtually decapitated with a sword, blood running down the drain in the floor.
Ash is taking this challenge with all due seriousness: even a murder hasn’t stopped him from following Scarlett’s orders and running away from us through the school.
“We’ll come back and deal with this later.” Scarlett throws the curtain to cover up the dead guy. She turns and walks away, heels loud on the cement floors. None of us follow as she exits the room, leaving us behind. I know Widow and Alexei can feel it, too, the weight of her distance.
“These sorts of games are liable to rile me up,” I murmur, giving Widow and Alexei a look of mock apology.
“Pardon me if I redirect the subject of my haunt. You can have Ash, take turns on him for all I care.” I hop up onto the lockers with a grunt of pain and then shove one of the drop ceiling tiles out of the way.
I’ve spent years mapping every inch of this hellish place. Manipulating it. Pulling the strings for nearly two hundred students over four years. I’m owed a lot of favors, and I have a lot of tricks.
Scarlett is directly underneath me in a matter of minutes. I kick in one of the tiles, slide through, and catch the edge of the roof with my fingers, lightheadedness slamming into my injured body before I finally let go.
“Boo.” I drop down hard behind Scarlett as she whirls on me, taking a single step back before I have her by the wrist. I toss Scarlett face-first into a locker, knowing that she’ll catch herself.
She’s already panting, on full-alert and fighting back with everything she has.
I’ve got her by the back of the neck now, grunting as I feel a blade slide against my rib cage.
The tip stabs into my skin, enough to bleed.
“Boo,” she whispers back as I knock her knife hand aside and she gasps in pain, trying to kick back at me as I grab her right wrist. I keep hold of her neck with my left hand, forcing her to be still as I press myself against the back of her. Scarlett shudders. “You’re supposed to be chasing Ash.”
“You never explicitly said that I couldn’t chase you first.” I pause, giving it some consideration. “Or instead of. Don’t you dare come at me for your lack of clarification.”
“Kellin!” she hisses at me, like she thinks I hate her using my name like that. “You got shot two days ago!”
Satisfied that I’m no longer in danger of being disemboweled, I reach down for the straps of her dirty overalls. High heels and overalls. Fuck, I’m dead.
It’s quiet in here, the throb of music from the gym a distant concern. The windows shake with the bass, rain pouring just beyond the glass. The water turns the pavement a sickly orange color under the reflection of the useless, lousy streetlights. Some dead. Some flickering.
“I have to be able to one-up you sometimes. If I couldn’t, then I’d be useless in a fight. I’m here to keep you challenged. Accept it.” I yank her overalls down and she gasps, exposed in the hallway where the only thing preventing others from peeping on us is reputation.
“You think you one-upped me? Dude, please. I knew you were in the fucking ceiling.” Scarlett pauses, mulling over something. “Fuck me…sir.” She smirks at me because she’s given a command and I am absolutely going to obey it. We both know that.
“As if there was any other choice.” I grab her by the back of the hair, digging my fingers in and knocking the red bandanna that was tied around it loose. It flutters to the floor, looking like a puddle of blood in the strange half-gloom.
Slick. The sound of me sliding into her.
She’s so goddamn wet. It’s soaked my thighs already, this warmth that clings to the muscles of my quivering legs.
I’m tight all over, jaw clenched, fighting past a wave of pure pleasure mixed with nausea from my wounds and pain meds.
I’ve got to stay aware enough of our surroundings to stay alive, so I can’t relax out here the way I do at home.
At home.
The thought spurs me into a frenzy, my fingers sliding over Scarlett’s hair and down the back of her neck, bracing myself against her shoulder as my hips go wild. I’m as hard and rough as I want to be, reading that same pleasure in every line of Scarlett’s body.
We like to get a little mean with each other, and it’s glorious.
Widow stumbles into the hallway down the way from us, an entire two minutes too late. He stays where he is, buried under a mountain of shadow and standing surprisingly still for someone as gruff as he is.