It’s already evening, and I’ve barely done any schoolwork at all, let alone eaten dinner. I’ve been attempting to send something back all day, but a part of me wonders if I’m prepared to open Pandora’s box. I stare at the text, reading the words over and over until I almost want to throw the phone out the window.
Fuck it.
Me: Who is this? How did you get my number?
I hit send before I can stop myself again.
Fuck. No going back now.
I lie back on my pillow and wait and wait, my heart going a million miles an hour.
My phone buzzes, and I anxiously check it, only to see Jason’s face.
Jason: Wanna hang out tonight?
Sighing, I text back.
Me: No, thanks. Got some things to take care of first.
Jason: Like what? Getting hungover?
Me: Ha. Ha. Not after last time.
Jason: What? We only cuddled.
Me: Right …
Jason: What did I do wrong this time?
Me: Nothing…
I roll my eyes. Of course, he thinks we only cuddled.
Suddenly, my phone buzzes again.
Unknown: Someone with hands you want around your throat.
Wow.
Why did that make my pussy thump?
Fuck.
I hastily type back.
Me: So it is you. I fucking knew it.
Unknown: Who? Can you even say my name without getting drenched, kitty?
I sit up straight, all the hairs on my arms and legs standing up.
Kitty.
It definitely is him. And now that he’s called me that twice, it’s no longer a coincidence, either.
Me: Do you take pleasure in pretending to be someone’s boyfriend?
Unknown: You don’t have a boyfriend.
Me: How would you know?
Unknown: Because if you did, he’d no longer be alive.
Goose bumps cover my whole body.
Me: If you touch Jason, you’re going to pay.
Unknown: Why do you even care? Does he care about you?
I grind my teeth, angered he’d involve Jason in this.
Unknown: Does he even know how to make you scream with his tongue alone?
Me: Stop. Which one of those Phantom fuckers are you? Tell me now, and we’ll settle this today.
Unknown: I’ll give you what you want … if you dare to come and get it. You know where to find me.
I stare at the texts for a few more seconds before I tuck my phone back into my pocket and get up from my bed, storming straight out the door. I don’t fucking care that I still have one more class today. I’ll catch up later. I need to deal with this … problem first.
One of those Phantom guys has been stalking me, using me, playing with me, making me do things I never thought I would … and I need to know who and why.
Kai
BANG!
I hear the ruckus beyond the door before it slams open. A guard’s body is flung inside and slides across the door, and the clicking of a gun follows.
“Move, and I put a bullet through your brain.”
Her voice …
God, her fucking voice alone awakens my cock.
I get up from my seat in the game room and march out the door to lean over the banister and witness her destruction. A big vase flies through the hallway, crashing into the wall, the shards almost like a swath of glitter to announce her entry.
“Where are you? I know it’s one of you Phantom fuckers,” she yells. “Show yourself!”
My God, does she look appetizing in that dark red woolen turtleneck dress and thigh-high black boots. Her black hair, tucked in by a cute white hairband, sways from left to right as she walks in like a goddess set on destruction.
I have been waiting for this moment for so long my dick is already hard just from the thought of getting my hands on her again.
“What the fuck do you want?” the guard on the floor yelps as she points her gun at him. “Get the fuck out of here!”
“Tell me where he is,” she grits.
“Who?” He raises his hands when she approaches. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do.”
I turn my head as Milo stands beside me.
I thought he was busy jerking off in his room. Guess not.
“You’ve been stoking the fire,” he muses as another guard runs in from the side entrance, attacking her with a knife, but I’m not worried. I know she’s capable and able to defend herself.
“What do you want?” I ask Milo, ignoring the obvious fight going on downstairs.
“You’ve been toying with her, and she doesn’t know it’s you,” he says. “She came to me the other day and accused me of sending her texts.”
I smirk right through the gunfire. “Did she now …”
“You like this, don’t you?” he asks, peering at her while she throws the knife the guard threw right back at him. “I have to say … she has moves.” He licks his lips, biting the bottom one, and I narrow my eyes. “I get why you didn’t kill her and made her come hard instead.”
I pull my gun and point it right at Milo’s face. “You’ve been watching me?”
He merely smiles into the barrel. “You should be glad I didn’t tell her you hung a camera in her room.”
“You broke into my laptop,” I say.
CLICK.
The safety is off now, along with my sanity.
“Did you tell Nathan?”
Milo tilts his head at me. “I haven’t told him. He found out by himself.”
My nostrils flare.
“Relax. He doesn’t know she’s the killer kitty,” he muses, walking closer and closer until his cheek rests on the barrel. “That’s our little secret.”
I lower my gun. “I get how you’re able to spin Nathan around your finger now.”
He grins. “I just want what you want.”
“And what’s that?”
He turns to look over the wooden banister at Lana bashing the guard’s head in with her heels. He’s lost quite a lot of blood, but it seems he’s still breathing and groaning.
“Her. But you knew that already.”
“Two guys using one girl?” I scoff. I thought he was joking before, but I guess I was wrong.
“She can take it,” he muses, gripping the banister like watching her fight gives him life.
Suddenly, her eyes jerk up to meet mine, and I know she’s spotted us.
Her face is an eclectic combination of rage and passion, the kind I’d kill for.
BANG!
I lean away, and Milo and I look at the bullet that just penetrated the wall behind us.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
“Wow …” he murmurs. “I love her already.”
Her gun goes off but misses, and the bullet fires into the pillar beside us.
I lick my top lip. “You’ll love her even more after you’ve had a taste.”
She aims again, so we both sidestep and hide behind the pillar until she finishes shooting her rounds. When it’s gone quiet, Milo pulls out his knife and jumps down the banister, sticking the knife into the thick curtains to the side to slide down, cutting through the fabric when he gets to the floor.
“Well, hello there, Lana …” Milo muses.
I watch from above, curious about what he’s going to do.
“Was it you after all?” she asks, pointing her gun at him like it will do anything. “Did you give me a fake phone number?”
He tilts his head. “Does it matter what I say?”
“You know my fucking name,” she growls. “So no.”
She pulls the trigger, but the bullets are all gone.
Guess she forgot to keep count.
Lucky for her, we didn’t.
She throws the gun aside and approaches him. “Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Lana
I spin around and kick him in the face, but he narrowly avoids my kick. I’m lightning quick, with barely split seconds between Milo and me moving away from each other. But I just can’t seem to fucking hit him, and fuck me, it’s annoying the hell out of me.
“Stand. Still. Worm,” I growl.
He suddenly grips my ankle, twisting me midair.
I drop to the floor with a thud, groaning from the air leaving my lungs.
“I love it when you call me names,” he says, leaning over me. “Really gets me going.”
That fucker … even now, he’s turned on?
I flip over and punch him in the face, and he takes it with a smile. “Fuck, you hit so good.”
“What is wrong with you?”
I try to kick him, but he sits on top of me and plants both hands on my wrists. “What can I say?” His upside-down cross earring dangles, catching my attention. “I’m a sucker for pain.”
I look down at his pants, which definitely have a bulge. Right on top of me.
Fuck.
He’s getting hard?
“Admit you sent the text!” I growl at him.
“How would you know it was me? It could be anyone here,” he replies, leaning in too close for comfort.
“You’re the only one stalking my friends,” I retort.
“The only one?” His brow rises. “You sound so sure, yet …”
My eyes widen.
Someone else from the Phantom Society has been chatting with Irina and Brooke?
Fuck. They’ve been working together. Of course they have.
“Who is it, then?” I growl. “Tell me!”
I fight against his grip, but even with his lanky frame, he’s too strong for me.
His length hides more power than I imagined. I guess I really misjudged his physique.
“Hmm … I could tell you … or you could figure it out by yourself,” he muses.
He flips me over with ease.
He’s on top of me now, my arms pinned to my back, and for the life of me, I can’t fight him off.
“Is it that fucker up there?” I ask, lifting my head so I can look at the guy with the one green eye. The gnarly scar running from his eyebrow to the bottom of his cheek makes all the hairs on my neck stand up. He has those same eyes that I saw before at the party, one white underneath his scar, the other sparkling green as they bore a hole into my chest.
Is that him?
Or is it one of the guards I just pummeled to the floor?
Fuck, it could be anyone here. Felix warned me all of these Phantoms are evil.
“Pull her up,” the guy at the top of the stairs says as he waltzes down the steps.
Milo rips off his tie and makes a knot with his teeth, then wraps it around my wrists, sealing them tightly.
“That won’t stop me,” I growl.
“No …” He inches down, sliding across my body with his hard-on as he rips out his belt, and I turn my head to watch while he loops it through the holes slowly, eyes on mine like he enjoys it when I watch. For a second, I almost think he’s going to pull down his zipper, but then he turns around and tightly wraps the belt around my ankles, preventing me from using them.
“But this will.”
“Get off me,” I growl.
“Of course, my queen,” he muses as he gets up, only to hoist me up too, holding my arms so I can’t go anywhere.
I struggle against him and spin around, but then I come face-to-face with the guy with the scar.
He stares me down, tongue dipping out to wet his lips while his eyes sweep over my body, lingering on my peaked nipples before his gaze settles back on my eyes again.
“Bring her to the chapter room.”
That voice…
Milo drags me away before I can even react, and I can’t fight him off, despite trying my best to get rid of these binds. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, you know that, right?”
He groans as he pulls me into a room underneath the stairs. “Oh, please, do try. I’m begging you.”
My brows furrow. “What the …?”
Why does he sound like he’s begging me to do it?
“Try it. Go on.” The new voice makes me turn my head. Milo stops in his tracks too and swishes me around so we both face him.
A lean guy wearing a pair of beige khakis and a black shirt with light blond hair casually styled to the side, radiant blue eyes, and thick lashes stands before me, his naturally pointy lips drawing attention as he rubs them together when he spots me.
He’s the kind of beautiful that would make people turn after walking past him.
Even the guy with the scar turns his head when he spots him, his wavy hair casually falling over his face. “Nathan. I thought you were with—”
“That got cut short by an alert on my phone,” Nathan replies, taking off his sunglasses as he stands in the door opening to the chapter room. “Someone broke into the building.” He folds his arms and leans against the doorjamb as he eyes me up and down. “And that someone was wrecking everything in sight. A certain … Rivera girl.”
So he knows who I am.
“Darryl!” the guy with the scar calls through the building, and a guy rushes into the room.
“Someone got shot in the hallway, and there’s another guy on the floor with a knife wound in his stomach,” Darryl says.
A proud smile forms on my lips. I fucking did that, and I’m not fucking sorry.
The scarred guy narrows his eyes at Darryl. “Get Tom and Waylon. Bring the wounded to the school clinic. The nurse will know how to handle this. It’s not like she hasn’t seen worse.”
“Yes, sir,” he replies, and Darryl bolts right past Nathan again.
Sir … The scarred guy is in charge?
Nathan walks toward me. “And now I wanna know why you’re here.”
“Like you don’t fucking know exactly why,” I say, spitting on the floor in front of his feet.
“Enlighten me,” he muses.
“Because one of you fuckers came into my room and—” Milo smacks his hand in front of my mouth before I can finish.
“She claims one of us has been sending her dubious texts,” the scarred guy behind me says.
He casually sits down on the couch behind me, legs spread open as he gawks at my ass which is barely covered by my dress. Fucker.
“One of us? Dubious?” Nathan snorts. “Interesting. And now you want to know who? Why does it matter?”
I bite Milo’s hand until his skin bleeds.
He pulls away his hand. “Fuck.”
“I warned you,” I hiss, but he’s already licking the blood off his hand when I look at him over my shoulder.
Fuck.
“One of you fucking came into my room and kissed me,” I say, swallowing my pride.
Nathan’s eyes narrow even further, and a twinge of hate settles on his face.
He turns and glares at the guy behind me and then Milo. Without words, the looks they exchange speak volumes.
One of them did this.
But do the other two even know?
Nathan’s head slowly turns to me again, the intrigued look on his face anything but soothing. “Interesting … Do you even know what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
“I don’t fucking care. One of you did it, and I want to know why,” I bark.
There’s a long pause as he looks me up and down, his eyes slowly swooping over my body like he’s taking it all in and then some.
“All right then, I’ll play along.” Nathan flicks his fingers.
Milo moves away from me and sits on the table to the side, legs crossed.
Nathan approaches me, circling me like a hawk, but when he steps close enough, I’ll bite his fucking head off.
“So how do you want to go about proving it was one of us?”
My nostrils flare as I look around at each one of them, my hands twitching against the tie cutting into my flesh. I have to get out of here. After I’ve figured out who to kill, of course.
I’m acutely aware of the knife in my boot, but how do I reach it when I can’t even bend over without falling?
Fuck. Think, Lana, think.
“Ticktock, Lana,” Nathan says, tapping his watch in front of me before sitting in a thick leather chair next to the dude with the scar. “You want to punish us? Tell us who kissed you, then, and maybe we’ll let you.” He leans forward with his elbow on his knee. “But if you guess wrong … you’ll be the one punished.”
A terrifyingly wicked smile forms on his lips.
Fuck.
I glance at the scarred guy and then Milo, who seem to be exchanging looks.
Are these actually the three guys who have been getting in the way of my kills?
I swallow away the lump in my throat. If I ask now, they might kill me on the spot. Maybe they don’t know that I know. Yet.
Are they all in on this scheme?
None of them will tell me the truth, even if I force them.
There’s only one way I’ll find out who entered my room and toyed with me.
“Fine, then. Kiss me, and I’ll tell you.”
