1. Ivy #3
Roman leans against the gate like he's been there all night. Arms crossed over his chest. The pathway lights cast shadows across his face, but I can still see the curve of his smile. That infuriating, knowing smile.
"No." The word tears out of my throat, strangled and raw. "No, you've got to be kidding me."
"Predictable." His tone carries the weight of someone who's already three steps ahead, bored with how easy this was.
Panic sparks bright and hot. I spin on my heel?—
And nearly collide face-first with Knox's chest.
He's right there. Right behind me. So close the heat radiating off his body hits me like a wall. The scent of clean soap and something darker, woodsy, fills my lungs. There was no footstep. No warning. Nothing.
"Jesus Christ." My voice cracks, trembles despite my best efforts to hold it steady. "Do you people wear bells or?—"
"Where do you think you're going?"
West's voice cuts through the darkness from my right.
My head snaps toward him. He stands several feet away, hands tucked casually into his pockets, but there's nothing casual about the way he's watching me.
The shadows make it impossible to read his expression, but I feel the weight of his stare like a physical thing.
They've boxed me in. Surrounded me. The realization crashes over me, makes my pulse thunder in my ears so loud I can barely think. My hands won't stop shaking.
"I need to be on that trip." The words tumble out too fast, too desperate. Exactly what I didn't want.
Knox tilts his head, studying me like I'm a puzzle he's solving. "Why?"
"Because I just want to."
"That's not a reason."
"It's my reason." My chin lifts despite everything.
Roman pushes off the gate with deliberate slowness. Each step closer feels calculated. Predatory. "Afraid your weak, pathetic boyfriend will be angry?"
A laugh bursts out of me—sharp, bitter. I roll my eyes so hard the motion actually hurts. "It's an all-girls trip, and no guy at campus would touch me with a ten-foot pole."
The words land like stones in water.
Silence rushes in to fill the space. Thick. Heavy. Suffocating.
Then West speaks, his voice flat and certain as steel: "Why."
Not a question. A demand. An order wrapped in a single syllable.
Heat crawls up my neck, floods my face until my skin feels like it's on fire. My chest constricts, ribs suddenly too tight around my lungs.
Every survival instinct screams at me to lie. Make up something about being too busy, too focused on school, completely uninterested in dating?—
Instead, my mouth opens and the truth spills out before I can stop it.
"Because they don't like virgins, okay? They want the experienced ones. I'm apparently frigid and boring."
The words hang suspended between us like smoke.
Oh god.
Oh my god, I did not just say that.
The silence crashes down—suffocating, absolute. Even the cicadas have stopped their droning chorus. My own breathing fills my ears, ragged and too fast, each inhale catching on the humiliation lodged in my throat like broken glass.
My gaze drops to the cobblestones, studying the grooves between the stones like they hold answers. Anywhere but their faces. Anywhere but the three sets of eyes that are probably filled with disgust or pity or worse—amusement.
But the air itself betrays what I'm trying not to see. It shifts around me, thickens with something electric and dangerous. The temperature seems to rise despite the evening breeze.
Finally, some masochistic part of me forces my chin up.
All three of them are staring at me. Not with disgust. Not with pity.
Their expressions have transformed into something else entirely. Something that makes my stomach drop and flip simultaneously. Hunger—that's the only word that fits. Sharp and focused and utterly predatory.
Roman closes the distance between us with deliberate slowness. When he speaks, his voice has dropped an octave, gone rough and textured in a way that scrapes against my nerves.
"You're a virgin."
I manage a jerky nod, my vocal cords apparently on strike.
West shifts forward. Just one step, but suddenly he's too close, invading the bubble of space I'd been clinging to for sanity.
"That changes things." Each word emerges precise and measured, like he's barely keeping control. "Get back inside."
There's command threaded through his tone—something that bypasses my brain entirely and goes straight to my body. Everything inside me clenches in response, heat pooling low in my belly.
I swallow hard enough that I hear it. Another nod, because speech seems impossible.
Turning takes effort, like moving through honey. My first step toward the house feels uncoordinated, my legs trembling beneath me. Each subsequent step stretches longer than it should, distance warping strangely.
My pulse throbs everywhere—throat, wrists, the sensitive hollow behind my knees. Between my thighs.
I don't dare look back.
But their presence presses against my shoulder blades like heat from a fire. Watching. Tracking every movement as I disappear into the safety of the house.
Or what used to feel like safety, anyway.