Chapter 1 #2
I reached the edge of the lot, away from the prying eyes of the party, near where my beat-up Ford truck was parked. It was dark here, the only light coming from a flickering streetlamp.
I stopped.
"Put. Me. Down." She punctuated every word with a kick.
"You want down?" I grunted.
I swung her off my shoulder, but I didn't set her on her feet. I let her slide down the front of my body until her toes brushed the snow, but I kept my hands clamped on her waist.
She was breathless, her face flushed pink from the cold and the alcohol. Up close, she was devastating. That was the only word for it. Huge, pale blue eyes framed by lashes that looked too long to be real. A mouth that was currently twisted in a snarl but looked like it was made for sin.
She smelled like vanilla and trouble.
She shoved at my chest. It was like she was trying to push a mountain. I didn't budge.
"You have no right to touch me," she hissed, trembling.
"You were about to paint the pavement with your brains, St. James," I said, my voice low. "I saved the janitorial staff the cleanup."
"I was in perfect control!"
"You're drunk," I observed, noting the glaze in her eyes. "And you're acting like a brat."
The word hit her like a slap. Her eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. "Excuse me?"
"A brat," I repeated, leaning down until my face was inches from hers. I saw her pupils dilate. Fear? Arousal? I didn't care. I just wanted to intimidate her into silence. "A spoiled, attention-seeking brat who thinks the world exists just to catch her when she falls."
She swung.
It was a clumsy, open-handed slap aimed at my face.
I caught her wrist in mid-air. My hand engulfed hers completely. Her skin was soft, impossibly smooth, contrasting with the rough callouses of my palm.
"Let go!" she cried, trying to yank her hand back. She swatted at me with the other hand.
I caught that one too.
Now I had both her wrists pinned in one of my hands, holding them against my chest. She was trapped. She squirmed, arching her back, pressing her pelvis against my thigh in her struggle.
A bolt of lightning shot straight to my groin.
Fuck.
I shouldn't have felt it. I despised girls like her. Girls who wore the tuition of a semester on their feet. Girls who treated people like accessories. But my body didn't care about my morals. My body recognized the friction, the heat, the defiance.
"Stop fighting," I ordered.
"Make me!" she yelled, frantic now. She kicked my shin.
Pain flared up my leg. It wasn't unbearable, but it snapped the tenuous leash I had on my temper.
I spun her around.
It was a reflex. One fluid motion. I twisted her so she was facing the truck, pressed her hips against the cold metal of the door, and pinned her there with my body.
"I said," I growled, "behave."
She tried to push back, arching her ass out.
My hand lifted. I didn't think. I didn't plan it. It was pure instinct—the Alpha needing to correct the behavior.
My palm connected with her ass. Hard.
Thwack.
The sound cracked through the silent, snowy air like a gunshot.
Aurelia froze.
She didn't scream. She didn't fight. Her entire body went rigid against the truck.
I froze too. My hand tingled from the impact. The denim of her jeans was tight, but I knew she felt it. I had put legitimate force behind it.
Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. The snow fell softly around us, indifferent to the violation of social protocol that had just occurred.
I should apologize. I should step back. Touching the owner’s daughter like that was grounds for immediate expulsion, lawsuit, and probably death.
But I didn't move. I kept my hand pressed flat against her ass, feeling the heat radiate through the fabric.
I leaned in close to her ear, my breath fogging in the space between us.
"You act like a child," I whispered, my voice rough with a darkness I usually kept locked in the basement of my mind, "you get treated like one."
I felt a tremor run through her.
She wasn't shaking from the cold anymore.
She turned her head slightly, trying to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were wide, blown black. Her lips were parted.
She wasn't angry.
She was wrecked.
And beneath the shock... she was wet. I could smell the shift in her pheromones, a sweet, heavy scent that flooded my senses.
The realization hit me harder than a puck to the throat.
She liked it.
The Princess of Sterling University, the untouchable porcelain doll... she didn't want to be saved. She wanted to be handled.
"Atlas?"
Jax’s voice cut through the tension like a knife.
I snatched my hand back as if I’d been burned. I stepped away from her, putting three feet of cold air between us.
Aurelia slumped against the truck, looking dazed. She reached back, her hand hovering over the spot I had struck, her fingers trembling.
Jax came jogging up, breathless, holding two heavy parkas. He stopped when he saw us, his eyes darting between Aurelia’s flushed face and my clenched fists.
"Everything good here, Cap?" Jax asked, his voice dropping the playful tone. He sensed the energy. It was crackling in the air, volatile and dangerous.
I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets to hide the fact that they were shaking. I needed to get away from her. I needed to go hit something inanimate. I needed to run until my lungs burned enough to cauterize this memory.
"Get her a cab," I commanded, my voice sounding like gravel. "Make sure she gets back to her dorm. Alone."
"You're leaving?" Aurelia whispered. Her voice was small now. Broken.
I looked at her one last time. She looked stripped bare, standing there in the snow, staring at me like I was the monster she had been waiting for her whole life.
"Yeah," I said, turning my back on her. "I'm leaving. Before I do something that ruins both of us."
I walked away into the dark, but I could still feel the phantom sensation of her curves against my palm.
The game had changed.
I thought she was just a brat. I thought she was just an annoyance.
But as I marched back toward the frat house, avoiding the main road, I realized the truth.
Aurelia St. James was the most dangerous thing I had ever touched. And the terrifying part wasn't that she could destroy my career.
It was that I wanted to do it again.
Aurelia
I watched him walk away.
The snow swirled in the space he had left behind, filling the void where his massive body had been.
My skin was burning.
Not from the cold. From the imprint of his hand. It throbbed. A dull, heavy ache that radiated from my ass straight to the core of me, pooling low in my belly.
No one had ever hit me.
My father ignored me. My mother criticized me. My boyfriends worshiped me or used me.
But Atlas Thorne... he had corrected me.
He had looked at my tantrums, my money, my armor, and he had swatted it all away like it was nothing. He hadn't been afraid of me. He hadn't been impressed by me.
For the first time in my life, someone had stopped me.
Jax was saying something. He was opening the door to a sleek Uber that had just pulled up. He was asking if I was okay.
"I'm fine," I whispered, climbing into the backseat.
I wasn't fine.
I sat in the dark of the car as it pulled away, sliding my hand beneath my thigh, pressing down on the spot where he had touched me. The sting was fading, but the shock wasn't.
My heart was racing, beating a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It sounded like applause.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. I should be furious. I should be calling my father. I should be planning Atlas Thorne’s funeral.
But all I could think about was the look in his pitch-black eyes when he told me to behave.
And the terrifying, undeniable fact that I wanted to know what he would do if I didn't.