1. Roman #2
I step into the crowd as I descend the staircase into the dimly lit hallway. The kitchen countertop is loaded with bottles of alcohol and students surrounding it like vultures. Purple and red strobing lights pulse across the two main, large rooms at the front of the first floor.
People are dancing.
Shouting over the music.
Leaning up against the wood-paneled walls to make eyes at each other or stick their tongues down each other’s throats.
I notice a couple of guys lighting cigars by an open window, and one girl is dancing on a table wearing a sheer black bra that leaves zero to the imagination.
You’d think it was a depraved, sin-soaked place like any other fraternity, but it’s not.
Every corner of this household is safe, because I am in it.
After the ugly shit that went down last year with some of my Onyx Society brothers, we turned this place into a fucking fortress.
The house is old, but the locks are all newly installed and can’t be breached with standard lockpicking tools.
We installed multiple cameras around the perimeter months ago.
And between me, Hunter, Niko, Torin, and Sevan nearby at Daggers House, this place may as well be as guarded as my father’s is.
The music thrums through my body and the smell of sweet liquor fills the air.
I turn to enter the front room, and a sudden slam hits the side of my body.
I brace against a redheaded girl who is now smushed up against my arm, gripping me so she doesn’t fall.
“Holy shit, that’s a lot of tattoos,” she says, slurring some of the words as she gawks at me. “You’re tall.”
She’s a freshman, I think.
Not ready for whatever amount of liquor she’s had tonight, clearly.
She squeezes my bicep tight, running her fingertips over the black lines of ink on my skin, her eyes dancing up toward my eyes, then my lips.
Very cute, but I don’t make a habit of putting my cock inside people who are blackout drunk.
“You need water,” I tell her.
“Dude,” she whispers. “Do you have an accent? That’s like, fucking hot.”
My Russian accent isn’t strong, but other people hear traces of it sometimes.
I lift an eyebrow, leaning close to her ear. “Vypeyte vody,” I tell her, and her eyelids drop as she grins. Speaking Russian seems to catch her attention.
“What’s that mean?” she asks.
“It means I need you to drink some water,” I tell her, saying the last three words slowly.
She pouts a little, clearly wishing that I had been saying something closer to let’s go fuck.
I guide her through the party, taking her toward the kitchen.
I find my friend Oliver tucked behind the long kitchen counter, mixing up one of the cocktails he’s been into making lately.
I mouth the word “water” to him and introduce him to the redhead. He gives me a salute, and I know she’ll be safe with him.
I pour a short glass of Cognac.
The front room of the house is even more crowded when I return, and I slide out my phone, tapping out a message with one hand.
Roman
Update on Tate Landrey?
Yegor Petrov
He’ll be on campus soon.
More info. Now.
You’ll have it when I have it.
I look up and see a glimpse of blond, though, and I realize I don’t need any further info.
Client located.
Tate Landrey is here.
He’s in the front room with a beautiful brunette girl at his side, and currently, he’s staring daggers at another guy.
Look at you, pretty thing.
Tate’s features are only more stunning in person.
High cheekbones, deep eyes, and a nice mouth.
The rest of the world falls away as I zero in on him.
“Show me the fucking screen,” Tate is saying, taking his hand out of the brunette’s back pocket and taking a step closer toward the other guy.
He’s fucking mouthy.
“I wasn’t taking your picture.”
“You’re a bad liar,” Tate replies, holding out his hand. “Show me your photo app.”
“What are you going to do, punch me? Want to get expelled from Crimson before the semester even begins, Landrey?”
A sudden flash of movement takes me by surprise.
Tate’s fist comes down hard on the wall beside him. His knuckles connect with a framed photo, sending it shattering into pieces.
A few people nearby gasp and move away, and Tate dips to pick up a large shard of glass, brandishing it against the guy’s neck.
I’m left with only one option.
This mess isn’t going to happen.
Not in my fucking house.
I spring into action, cutting across the room. Tate’s fingers drip with blood from the shard of glass clutched tightly in his hand, so graceless and barbaric. The boy has no clue how to fight cleanly.
Slow, crimson rivulets of his blood fall down the stranger’s baby-blue shirt.
“Step back,” I bark at Tate.
“Show me the photos,” he’s saying to the stranger.
“I was just taking shots of the party,” the guy says, tossing his phone out onto a nearby armchair. Tate keeps one hand on him as he reaches for the phone, looking down at it.
“You’re a bad liar. Need these for your personal collection, or were you going to sell them?”
“Hands off,” I say as I reach their side.
I yank Landrey’s arm away from the guy in in an instant.
I pull him back, both of us stumbling a few steps as his momentum lands against me, and the side of my body hits a table behind me, making a lamp fall to the floor.
I keep my fist locked around Tate’s wrist.
The back of his body connects with the front of mine, like I’m a human strait jacket wrapping around him from behind.
I get his arm fully immobilized, holding it firmly in a bar against my chest. If I try to grab the shard of glass out of Tate’s hand it’ll destroy his palm, so I let him keep gripping it like a fucking animal.
“Who the fuck are you?” Tate says, craning his head back to look up at me for the first time.
His eyes flick low then up again, sizing me up.
Yes.
Take me in.
I’m nearly a head taller than you, and you can feel the strength of my grip.
If he’s afraid, he doesn’t show it. He has no clue about me, or my family, or the type of people that I come from. He doesn’t know he should be afraid.
I lean over close to the side of his face and speak in a deep, steady tone.
“Roman Petrov,” I growl right against his earlobe, so close my lips brush along his skin. “Nice to fucking meet you. You are in my house, sumasshedshiy durak.”
In Russian or any other language, he is a fucking crazy fool.
“Fuck,” he whispers as he writhes in my grasp.
My body fits around his smaller frame like a snug glove, and when he moves he shoves his ass backwards into my upper thighs, connecting with my cock.
I keep him fully restrained, and when his ass moves again, my cock twitches from the friction against the area.
I jam my foot forward, locking against his leg.
“Quit that,” I tell him.
I glance down and see a small constellation of freckles along his neck, leading down toward his collarbone. He’s in a black tank top with its arm holes cut low, and I can see the defined ridges of his muscle.
Lord.
I glance to my side, checking to see if anyone else is still watching us.
The others have long since disappeared into the crowd, though, and beside us, people are too busy dancing to look our way.
It’s been too long since I’ve been physical with another human.
Fighting… or fucking.
I want a woman up against me like this, not a feral jock. But his eyes are too pretty when he glances up at me, with natural thick, dark lashes and a deep-set, fuck-me kind of look.
I despise seeing something that beautiful wasted on him.
And he’s still clutching that glass. Bleeding, yet he won’t relax and let me win. He has to be screaming with pain, but he tolerates it like it’s nothing.
So distracting.
Everything I want, just not on the right person.
I feel my cock growing harder, smashed up against my denim and pushed against the spot where his back dips into the cleft of his ass.
And in a burst of raw instinct, I shove my hips forward, making sure he feels the length of me, hard against him.
“Damn. Does it turn you on to hurt guys who are smaller than you?” he utters.
“You don’t fucking turn me on,” I breathe near his ear. “You feel my cock? Every fucking inch of this was supposed to be inside someone beautiful right now, and instead it’s here. You are wasting my night.”
I push harder against him, and I swear I feel the vibration of him moaning against me, lost in the music.
A wave of pure, aching need rolls through my body.
The need to punish.
The need to come.
I glance around the room, as the strobing lights go from deep purple to dark red, then flash with occasional bright white.
Everything in the room looks like it’s moving through snapshots of light as the bass drops on a loud electronic song, and it’s as if our bodies is just two in the sea of bodies, dancing and grinding and lost in intoxication.
I dig my fingers into his arm, and he leans his head back against me.
“Barely hurts. Do it harder,” he tells me, defiant.
“Is that what you want?” I finally reply to him. “To get hurt?”
He glares at me. “If you’re going to put your nose in my business, then at least make it fun for me.”
My cock aches, and it makes my blood run even hotter with anger.
Does he like pain?
“I could break your wrist in a snap,” I tell him. “Are you aware of that?”
“I am.”
Hazel, I think finally, when the flashing light briefly holds bright enough for me to get a better look at his eyes.
That’s what his eye color is.
Green, flecked with gold.
And I’m momentarily distracted, enough that I don’t notice when Tate reaches back with his other arm.
His fist hits the side of my head in a cheap shot.
Searing pain blooms outward from my temple, radiating through my skull.
Fuck.
You got me, goddamnit.
My vision goes red, then white, then dims to the light of the party again. When my grip on Tate falters, just for a moment, he slips from my grasp.
He drops the shard of bloody glass to the floor before he turns and runs off through the crowd.