I miss a note for the seventeenth time. The same fucking note.
I slam my hands on the keys, and the sound is harsh. Loud in the small practice room. I do it again, trying not to flinch this time. It doesn’t work, so I let the sound fade into silence. The room is still, everything paused, except for my ragged breathing.
Steele has me rattled.
I check my phone and scan the email I received this morning from his father, asking for an update. He hasn’t received a reply back from his last two emails—because I’d been too busy avoiding any mention of Steele O’Brien without actually knowing who he was. But now, if I don’t give him something, then he’ll have no choice but to stop payments next semester.
I’m an investment, and those often get cut if they’re not turning a profit.
The threat isn’t even fucking veiled.
But I can’t tell him something about Steele that I don’t know, so I type a quick reply to give him the basics. He goes to hockey practice, he goes to classes. He doesn’t flirt with any girls or go to any parties.
It’s not going to be enough.
I toss my phone on top of my bag, out of my reach on the floor, and take a deep breath. And then I run through the piece again, from the top.
And I miss the note again.
I rise suddenly, the bench tipping over. I grab the sheet music and rip the pages from the stand. They flutter to the floor around me. Tears burn my eyes, and a lump forms in my throat. Before I know it, the sob wrenches out of me.
“Aspen?”
I whirl around.
Chase stands on the other side of the door, visible through the glass.
I wipe hurriedly at the tears on my cheeks, but it’s too late. I open the door for him—you have to fill out a form for access to the music practice rooms, and I wouldn’t suppose he has that. He frowns and enters the room, kneeling and righting the bench.
“Sit down,” he murmurs.
I follow his directions. My eyes still feel wet. I pull up one of my legs and wrap my arms around it. He picks up the papers, stacking them and setting them on top of the piano. He stays on his knees, his brow furrowed.
The longer I look at him, the more I realize something is wrong with him, too.
“What happened?” My voice comes out hoarse and scratchy. I’ve always had a deeper, raspier voice, but this just makes it worse.
“Your knight in shining armor.”
I flinch.
He scoffs, rising and brushing invisible dust off his jeans. “O’Brien is tactical. He’s just implemented another move in his war, and the same probably goes for whatever he’s done to make you cry.”
Breaking into my room and fucking me is tactical? I open and close my mouth, then shake my head. It would be insane if I blurted that out—and it would lead to questions about the party. Drawing the joker was stupid, I thought it then and I know for certain now.
Why did I do that?
When Chase showed me his card, the black nine, my gut reaction was that it was boring. That nine is middle of the road. Not high, not low, just… there. Not kinky, not vanilla. And I really didn’t want that.
I still don’t.
But when Chase sits beside me and wraps his arm around my shoulder… I don’t mind it so much. I don’t mind that he’s safe—even if he doesn’t feel safe.
I let out a shuddering breath, and my tears stop, and finally, Chase releases me.
“Dinner?” He stands and waits for a moment, then holds out his hand.
I hesitate. I can’t even look him in the eye, focusing on his white shoes. They’re really white. Impressively so. Like he’s never accidentally stepped in a puddle, or cut across the quad after it’s been freshly mowed, or stepped off the sidewalk. Ever.
So maybe that’s why, ultimately, I lie. “My roommate and I are going off campus, otherwise I would.”
He nods and moves backward. “No problem, Aspen. I’ll let you get back to practice.”
The door clicks shut in his wake. I take a deep breath. I stare at the keys, the music, for another minute. Completely still. It’s like I’m locked into place, my muscles turned to stone.
Music has always been my source of comfort. My safe place. When I’m sad, when I’m lonely, when I’m scared. If I can play, if I can listen to it, then everything else fades away. It’s been my retreat for so long.
But it’s not working today.
Playing anyway.
I collect my things and shove them back in my bag. I have rather excellent headphones at home. The kind that go over your whole ear and block out the rest of the world. I’ll put on my playlist of instrumental music that doesn’t drive me crazy, I’ll lie on my bed… and I’ll try to forget.
I’m halfway home when my spine tingles.
I glance over my shoulder, my gaze sweeping the street. It’s getting dark—the sun is setting earlier now, and even though it’s only six o’clock, the sky’s light is fading fast. The streetlight over my head flickers on, and I check behind me again.
A car pulls out of its spot on the curb, and fear sweeps through me. It doubles when the car rolls to a stop parallel to me, and the passenger window lowers.
My uncle sits at the wheel. He leans onto the console to meet my gaze, and his eyebrow lifts.
“What are you doing here?” I shift my weight, deciding how best to play this.
Best way to describe my uncle? He’s from the bowels of Chicago. As the stories go, he grew up fighting on the streets, running drugs, making friends with gangs. He’s a mobster’s worst nightmare and best friend, because he can do things that ordinary people can’t.
When I think of monsters, I think of my father first, and my uncle second.
There’s a clunk of the car’s locks opening, and he shoves open the passenger door. “Get in, babydoll.”
“I…”
“Don’t make me force you, Aspen.” His voice has gone cold.
I obey, sliding into the car. The seats are black leather, the windows tinted. As soon as I’m in, the locks reengage and the window climbs upward. It darkens the already dark interior.
“Your daddy wanted me to deliver this to you. Said he owed it to you.” He reaches in the back and withdraws a brown paper sack, setting it on my lap. It’s heavy, but the edges are rounded. Whatever it is, he must’ve wrapped it in something to protect it.
“I don’t talk to him, Uncle,” I say in a low voice.
He huffs. “You’re older. You’re as safe as can be from him. Now that you’re at a fancy college and being bankrolled by a corporation.”
I grimace.
The car is moving. I barely grip the package in my lap, just enough to keep it from sliding off. After a moment, he stops at the curb in front of my brownstone.
“Get going,” he grunts. “I’ll be in Boston until the end of the week, then the city after that. You need anything, you call me.”
“Got it.” I reach for the door handle.
His hand comes down on my forearm, and I automatically freeze in place. But then the overhead light floods on, and he grips my chin with his other hand. Pulling my face around, staring into my eyes. His are a deep blue, his hair dark brown like mine. He looks like my father, so I guess in turn he looks like me.
“People giving you trouble?”
“No,” I lie.
He narrows his eyes, and he waits a moment. Under his rough exterior, I think maybe he did care. Or does care. It’s hard to tell—it seems to come in waves.
My father only pretended to care about my mother. He married her because he knocked her up, and then he showed his true colors.
I yank free from his grasp and step out onto the sidewalk, closing the door quickly behind me. I spare only a moment of worry that he knows exactly where I live. The car idles, and I dig through my bag for my keys.
Keys that are most certainly not there.
“Problem, Asp?” My uncle is out of the car, leaving it idling. He bounds up the steps to stop just below me.
Out of the car, he might be even more intimidating. Tall, covered in tattoos, with a hard set of his brow. The kind of guy who doesn’t take shit from anyone.
I shift my weight. “I don’t know where my keys are. But it’s okay, I’ll just call my roommate—”
He waves me off and nudges me aside. He has something in his hands, two slim silver tools, and a moment later, the door swings inward.
“Your apartment door, too?”
I eye him. His tattoos crawl up his neck, framing his jaw. He looks like he could be in the mob. He disappears inside my building, and I have no choice but to follow him. Definitely not if I want to get in without calling Thalia. We stride past the rows of mailboxes, the stairs to the upper levels, to my apartment door.
“Why are you helping me?” I blurt out. I’ve seen him more recently than Dad. He’s kept tabs on us over the years, finding us when even Dad couldn’t. I suspect it’s because Mom wanted to keep one of the Monroe brothers close. Better him than Dad, that’s for sure.
He glances at me, then at the package in my hand.
My fingers tighten on it.
“You may think you’re like your mother,” he says carefully, not meeting my eyes. “But some would say you’re more like your daddy’s side of the family.”
I grimace. “I’m not.”
“Your sisters are not,” he retorts. “Your sisters are soft. You…”
I’m the softest of them all.
He gets the door unlocked and holds it open, his arm high enough that I can duck under it. “First-floor apartments are dangerous,” he says. “You should secure your windows.”
Yeah, right.
“Did you leave your keys in here?”
“I’m sure I did.” I spent about as long as I could waste this morning searching for them, but that didn’t mean much. I have a habit of misplacing them. “Thanks for the ride.”
He nods, still eyeing me funny, and releases his hold on the door. “Remember to call if you need—”
“I will,” I assure him.
The door shuts between us, and I let out a breath. I lock it again, even though he just proved that’s a useless endeavor to keep him out. Then I get to work turning on all the lights in the apartment. I set the package down on the counter, my bag beside it, and keep moving toward my bedroom. I’m tired enough to go right to bed, anything to do with my dad be damned—and dinner, too.
“Who was that?”
I shriek as Steele comes out of the shadows of my room. He smirks, stepping up and helping me remove my jacket the rest of the way. He pushes it off my shoulders and lets it drop off my arms. It hits the floor with a muted thump.
My heart is going a million times a minute.
And then he’s moving away, flicking on the overhead light. When he closes the door and leans against it, my stomach knots.
“What do you want?”
His eyebrow lifts. “I want to know who that was.”
I shrug.
“Aspen.”
“Steele.”
His eyes narrow.
“Why are you in my room?” It occurs to me that this sort of behavior is what his dad might be interested in. What if Steele has a history of stalking? And that’s why his dad was worried? “Are you stalking me?”
He laughs. “Yeah, Aspen, I’m stalking you. And doing a pretty poor fucking job of it, since you’ve ‘caught’ me twice.” He pushes off the wall and steps into my space, his fingers curling in the front of my t-shirt. “Have you talked to my father?”
My hesitation gives me away.
His hold only tightens. “Who’s the stalker now?”
“I didn’t tell him anything good,” I retort. “I didn’t tell him that you snuck into my room and fucked me against my will—”
“You’re into that, remember?” He runs his nose up the side of my face, into my hair. The action is so sudden, so surprising, that I let it happen. “You have a safe word, little viper.”
“Why do you call me that?”
He chuckles. “Because you’re going to be the death of me.”
My eyes shut of their own accord—until he releases my shirt and grips my chin instead. It’s too similar to my uncle, and I shove against him.
His expression lights up.
I tear my face away and stumble back, holding my hand up. “Can you not be psycho?”
“You fight me and I like it,” he answers. “It makes me want to hurt you.”
Fear and a sudden burst of desire wind through me. The combination urges me to do something. To run, to flee. There’s nowhere to go. Not here anyway, with Steele between me and the door.
“Why do you want to hurt me?”
He eyes me. “This isn’t normal. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
He hums. And then he opens his phone and shows me the photo he took. Of my exposed breasts, the cum across my skin. “I thought of sharing this around, but I’m too selfish for it. I don’t want anyone else to see your breasts. I don’t want them to see any of your skin, because they’ll think of your hard little nipples. They’ll think about palming your tits, pinching those nipples they can’t stop staring at, rolling them between their fingers and tugging until you scream.”
“No one’s thinking about my breasts.” I cross my arms and narrow my eyes, trying desperately to hide my body’s reaction to his words. “It’s not like I can control what other people think anyway. People should just mind their own business.”
His eyes are dark. He’s brimming with energy, and my gaze roves over him. Dark jeans, socks. He must’ve kicked off his shoes somewhere, made himself right at home. White t-shirt that fits his chiseled body to perfection. The tattoos on his arm stand out, a flower on his biceps, a wolf on his upper forearm, a pine tree forest that finishes near his wrist. That’s not to mention the linework that peeks out from the collar of his shirt. The ones on his chest that I haven’t seen yet.
My mouth waters.
“Punishment,” Steele suddenly says.
I snap to attention, my lips parting. “What? Why?”
He shakes his head. “Not now. If I catch someone looking at you like they want to fuck you—”
“No one is going to look at me like that,” I snap. “Because I’m invisible. Because I’m not as pretty—”
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Steele answers.
The volume shocks me into silence.
He shakes his head, muttering something. About a bad idea, maybe, I don’t know. But then he lunges for me.
I squeal and try to dodge him, but it does nothing. He drives me into the floor like he’s a freaking linebacker and pins me down. He straddles my hips and sits up, staring down at me with an intense expression.
He grips the front of my shirt, at the collar. His knuckles brush my throat. He winks—and then the rip sound fills the room.
My shirt tears in half, and I stare up at him in shock. His fingers go to my bra, to the front hook—small prayers for a front-closing bra—and undoes it like he’s undone a million of them.
My breasts spill out.
He immediately cups them. My nipples are already hard, and he pinches them just like he described. The pain is nothing compared to the ache between my legs. If anything, it enhances it.
“Why?” I grit out, squirming under him.
“Because you’re beautiful. Because you’re sin. Because you’re a distraction. And I’ve never hated anyone more than you,” he confesses. He leans forward and presses his lips to my chest.
I suck in a breath. And I think of him. I think of my past. My parents—my mother. His father’s threats. It’s all confessions caught in my throat, but I don’t want to tell him any of it. So instead, I unbuckle his pants. I push them down just enough to free his cock and wrap my fingers around it, tugging sharply.
He groans, his lips still on my skin. Lips, teeth, tongue.
I stroke him faster, letting my nails dig into his skin. Hoping it hurts him just a little.
Or a lot.
“I hate you, too,” I breathe.
“No, you don’t,” he accuses. “You don’t hate me nearly enough yet.”
He shifts lower, and his dick slips out of my hold. He kisses his way between my breasts, down my sternum. When he reaches my stomach, I suck in my breath. My stomach is soft, round. There are stretch marks that stand out silvery against my pale skin.
“Breathe,” he orders, glancing up to look me in the eye. “There will be a time when you won’t be able to, little viper. Like when I force my cock down your throat. So take what oxygen you can now.”
I don’t want to breathe.
I don’t want him to see me naked—all the way naked.
Somehow, that night at the party felt like a cheat code had been entered into my brain. And last night, I didn’t think about how he may have been judging my body. But right now it’s all I can think about.
He drags my leggings off my hips. I lift a little, helping him move the material past my bruised ass. He pulls them all the way off, my panties with them, and spreads my legs.
“What are you doing?” I sit up and push his face away. “Stop.”
He growls. “What?”
“Stop, I said.” I press my thighs together.
His face was right there.
My face is too hot.
“You’re okay with me fucking you, but not going down on you?” He shakes his head. “Fine.”
He shifts to his knees and grabs his cock, stroking it. He moves to the edge of the bed and parts his legs. Giving me an even better view of him. “Come here.”
I start to rise.
“No,” he interrupts. “No, Aspen. Crawl to me.”
My face burns.
I watch him, waiting for the punchline. Or the smile. But it doesn’t come. He just jerks himself off maddeningly slow.
“Crawl. To. Me.”
Fuck.
There’s no blackmail here. There’s no physical force. But I feel the weight of his order sitting on my chest as clearly as his hand around my throat.
This is punishment. For not giving him what he wanted. For not lying there and letting him lick—
My heart hammers, and I drop to my hands and knees. My head stays down, my gaze locked on the floor, as I crawl across my room to him. I ignore that my panties are still caught around my ankles, that my shirt and bra are loose on either side of my body. My breasts hang down. It’s embarrassing.
Shameful.
I don’t stop until I see his socked feet, and his hand curls under my chin. He guides my face up, and I glare up at him from my position on the floor.
Then my lips part, and the head of his cock is slipping between my teeth.
I swirl my tongue around him, furious at myself for getting into this position. Furious for letting him humiliate me like this.
His hand leaves my chin and moves to the side of my head. His fingers slide into my hair, and he grunts when I take more of him in my mouth. I let my teeth trail along his shaft for a moment, and his grip on my hair tightens almost painfully.
I don’t bite him, though. I suck, and my cheeks hollow out. He moves my head back and forth, fucking my mouth but forcing me to do the work. I choke and gag when he hits the back of my throat. Spit drips out of my open mouth, trailing down his shaft. He rocks his hips forward and goes farther into my throat. Then again, and deeper.
I squeeze his thighs. Dig my nails into his jeans.
His assault goes on and on, until my jaw aches and my mind stops working. Until I think he may keep me here forever.
But then he tugs on my hair—and that’s the only warning I get.
He comes, lodging himself so deep in my throat that I have to swallow around him or choke. I hate every second of it—but I don’t taste it until he pulls out and rubs the tip against my tongue.
As soon as he’s free of me, I fall away and barely manage to snag the trash can by my desk. Before he can stop me, I stick my fingers down my throat. My stomach contracts, and I puke into the can. All his cum mixed with bile. I’d have more if I had eaten, but I feel strangely proud that I was able to eradicate him so quickly. I gag again and spit.
I set it aside and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand.
“Fuck,” he groans. “You’re so fucking stubborn.”
He stands and adjusts himself, dropping something that was in his fist. With a start, I realize it was a pair of panties from my hamper that he used to clean his cock off.
“I came here to return these, since you lost them.” He reveals my keys that were in his pocket and tosses them onto my bed, then heads for the door. “But that was so much better. Except, you’re not angry enough, Aspen. You think you hate me, but you don’t know the meaning of the word. If you did… you wouldn’t have let me fuck you without a fight.”
He’s right. I gave up the fight when I knew it was him. Pretending just isn’t the same, and it isn’t like we can recreate the summer.
I wet my lips. “What are you going to do?”
He smirks. “I’m going to make you believe that I’m the Devil reincarnated. And I’m out for your soul.”
