Cadence Cooper has the freaking guts to ignore me.
Me.
As if she didn’t see me beckoning her from across the courtyard. As if those pretty brown eyes of hers didn’t recognize what the gesture meant.
“Ooh.” Zane taunts me under his breath. “It looks like you haven’t broken your toy hard enough, bro.”
Finn arches an eyebrow at me. “Maybe you’re losing your touch.”
“It may take some time, but she’s going to learn,” I say darkly.
Zane chuckles.
I slide away from the table when a pair of manicured hands latch around my bicep.
Christa looks up at me with her bright blue eyes and the bee-stung lips she got for her sixteenth birthday. Over the summer, she did even more to them. If she keeps going like this, she’ll look like an inflatable doll by the time she’s thirty.
I shake her off. “Don’t touch me.”
“Let me handle her.” Christa bats thick eyelashes. With a strong gust of wind, those things are going to rip off and go sailing into a tree. “Did you see the little message I left on her locker?”
I wondered who kept painting ‘slut’ on Cadence’s locker with lipstick. It wasn’t any of us.
“I’ll handle her myself,” I growl, not sure why I’m annoyed by Christa’s intervention.
The needy little prick pouts and edges up against me. Her hands sliding down the front of my khakis, she whispers hotly, “Forget the trash. She doesn’t matter anyway.”
My body responds to her not-so-subtle invitation. How could it not? Christa’s grabbing a handful. More than a handful.
She laughs deeply in my ear. “Let’s do something fun instead.”
I’m interested.
But not right now.
Even if I were to drag Christa to the parking lot, yank her on top of me and screw her senseless, it wouldn’t wash the taste of Brahm’s insolence from my mouth.
She ignored me. Made me look like a fool in front of my brothers. And it deserves a punishment.
Is it my fault she’s still got so much of a fighting spirit?
Maybe.
There’s a fine art to breaking someone. The best route is to wear them down over time. Grind them into the dust so finely, so completely that there’s no hope of rising again.
But Sol’s still MIA.
And I need her out of school as fast as possible.
Without an alternative, I ditched the smaller grenades for an explosion that was sure to wrench that unfounded pride from her. And it took Mulliez along with it, which was a bonus.
But this beautiful pain-in-the-butt still has no fear.
It’s about time I put the fear of The Kings into her.
“Dutch,” Christa whines. Her voice has a hint of desperation in it, as if she can sense that she’s losing me, but she doesn’t know what else she can do to keep me on her hook.
“Later.” It’s not a promise so much as it is a way to appease her.
She folds her arms over her chest and stares grumpily at me.
I barely make note of her expression because I’m already stomping away from our table. Serena, one of the many scholarship kids in our class, lifts her sandwich in a toast and dips her head.
I stride right past her, unconcerned by her connection with Brahms. When it comes to allies, Serena was the most likely to chum it up with Cadence.
She’s got her own checkered past. Her affinity for flames caused more than a few fire alarms blaring in Redwood. No one’s found the evidence to pin the crimes on her yet, which is why her tenure at Redwood hasn’t been revoked. Yet everyone seems to know it was her doing. It’s caused most to steer clear.
Serena calls at my back, “Nice to see you too, Dutch!”
I smirk.
Two outcasts sticking together.
What a pair.
Brahms is reaching for the door to the cafeteria now, her skirt flirting at a generous rear-end. Unlike the other girls at Redwood Prep who change, customize and re-design their uniforms to within an inch of the dress code, she’s wearing the same uniform as yesterday—a too-short plaid skirt that shows off her long legs and a too-tight shirt that looks like it’s begging me to unbutton it and put it out of its misery.
That’s not a joke. Yesterday, her button popped right off. But that wasn’t the most ridiculous part. Seeing that tiny bit of skin made some part of me go haywire.
It was a reaction that I don’t understand or particularly care for. The last thing I want to be is attracted to the girl I’m trying to run out of Redwood.
My hand falls around Brahm’s wrist and I tug her around so she’s facing me. Her long brown braid nearly slaps me in the face and I jump back on reflex to avoid getting whipped.
Brown eyes widening, she gapes at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Let me make it clear to you since it doesn’t seem to be clear enough, Brahms.” I step closer to her, trying my best to ignore the scent of her skin. It’s not perfume. Nothing that fancy. It’s pure soap, sunshine and something that’s unique to her. “When I call you, you run yourself right over to me.”
She closes her eyes and lets out a sigh. Without her pretty doe eyes shooting daggers at me, I get a moment to scan her face. Her skin is lily-white, more pale than Snow White. Her nose is long and slender. And her lips…
I keep seeing that redhead when I look at this girl and it’s infuriating.
My fingers tighten on her.
She opens her eyes again and lightning flashes at me.
“Are you really that stupid?” Brahms hisses.
My eyes widen. I didn’t expect her to say that and it takes me a second to coach my expression back into a bored look.
“Seriously. Is there something wrong with your head?” She pokes her finger in my chest. “Because you have to be absolutely insane to think what you’re doing is okay.”
My eyebrow arches.
She steps into me, fearless and sexy as hell. “You listen up, Dutch. I am not your property. I do not belong to you. And as long as there is breath in my body, I will never give you the privilege of telling me what I can and cannot do.”
“I see,” I muse, nodding once. “And I totally respect that.”
Her jaw drops.
I don’t waste a second. Flattening my hand against her torso, I push her off balance and throw her over my shoulder.
The kids in the cafeteria run to the windows to stare at us.
“Put me down!” Cadence shrieks, kicking her legs.
“Keep doing that and you’re going to flash every junior in the lunch room,” I warn her. For some reason, the thought of them staring at her pert little backside is not sitting well.
Thankfully, Cadence is on the same page because she stops struggling. At least with her legs. But her slender fingers form fists and start pounding on my abs like Zane when he plays drums after a drunken binge.
“Let go,” she shrieks. “Get your filthy hands off me!”
“I don’t think so,” I growl.
“I swear I’m going to slap you so hard that your head spins a full 360.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Brahms.” I keep moving toward the tree line. “I wouldn’t let you close enough to spin my head in a one-eighty.”
“Dutch! Dutch, you better… you better stop. A teacher’s going to see you. You think you can get away with this?”
I ignore her. Even if teachers were around, which none of them are, they wouldn’t intervene. Not unless they wanted to get sacked like Mulliez.
I can’t see Cadence’s face, but I can feel the frosty stare she’s aiming at my stomach as if she wishes she could drill through flesh and bone and drain my blood until I turned blue.
By the time I get deep enough into the tree line that I’m sure no one in the cafeteria or even the mysterious Jinx can see us, Cadence has accepted her upside-down status and isn’t struggling or screaming anymore.
Good girl.
I don’t want to take my hands off her, which makes me fling her to the ground a little more roughly than is necessary. She wobbles on her feet, but doesn’t fall and slants me a murderous look.
“What the hell do you want from me?”
I turn away from her, wrestling my lust back under control.
Her eyes blaze with fury. “You’re seriously doing all this because I didn’t run straight to you when you called me? Are you that insecure? Or was I right earlier? Are you really off in the head?”
New Girl’s got a lot of fire for someone who has no idea she’s poking at a bear. I watch her slam her hands on her hips and wait, angrily, for a response.
When none is forthcoming, she huffs and moves as if she’ll walk back to campus.
I grab her by the hips and pull her against me. I thought my body was wound up from Christa, but I’m not prepared for the way every nerve in my body snaps to attention when her hips connect with mine.
My fingers dig harder into her hip as I hiss.
She whimpers, easing back. Finally. The fear that belongs in her eyes is there.
If only her presence wasn’t affecting me as much as mine is frightening her.
I clench my jaw, struggling to make sense of the way she’s making my body respond.
“Look, I don’t want you around about as much as you don’t want me around you. So let’s end this quickly, hm?” I can’t help the desperation that’s leaking out. I don’t know if I need her gone for Sol or for myself right now. All I know is that she’s messing with my head in ways I don’t like.
“Leave Redwood and you won’t have to see my,” my words falter when she breathes out and her glistening lips part like a temptress on the stormy seas, “my face again,” I bite out.
Her chest rises and falls almost violently. “Why do you want me out of Redwood Prep so badly?”
I glare down at her.
Her breathing is still ragged, but she still tilts her chin up bravely. Her voice is soft but firm. “What have I done to deserve this?”
A twinge of guilt eases through my stomach at her question, but I don’t let it take root. The only option is for her to go. No other route is acceptable.
She glares at me for a full thirty seconds. “I’m waiting.”
“The only thing you need to know is that we don’t want you here,” I growl, staring hard at her.
She doesn’t have the presence of mind to quiver or beg for mercy. No, she tips her chin up in challenge. “Yes, but why?”
“Do you really want to know?” I drop my gaze over her chest, up her delicate throat and finally linger on her lips. Damn. It’s shining and pink, like a rose bud just begging to be plucked from its stem.
As I caress her with my gaze, her eyes flash with a mixture of desire and disgust, an intoxicating blend that I feel mirroring in my own chest.
I lift my eyes to hers and let my expression harden again, hiding my attraction to her behind a wall of steel. Her nostrils flare and the little pulse at her neck becomes more apparent.
I’m tired of her back-chatting. Tired of her sass.
“Don’t push me any harder, Brahms. Or I’m going to make your wish come true.”
“What wish?”
“The one where you leave Redwood Prep in a body bag.”
Her eyes narrow and then flare in indignation. “Did you just threaten to kill me?” She’s almost foaming at the mouth. “Is that what you’re insinuating?”
I flash her a smug look.
She’s practically vibrating at this point and I realize that she’d managed to cast a spell on all of Redwood. Because this fiery, beguiling creature in front of me certainly isn’t ordinary. And she certainly shouldn’t have been able to slide into the background as easily as she had.
A smile edges across my face. She’s going to make this a challenge and I really do love a good fight.
“Don’t ignore me the next time I call you,” I warn. Then I whirl around and stomp through the trees.
I crossed a line.
I shouldn’t have threatened her, but it’s not like I plan to do her any real terminal harm. As long as it gets her out of Redwood Prep, I’m willing to do almost anything. Even let her believe the worst of me.
She trudges out of the tree line a few minutes later and I see her fling herself through the cafeteria doors like it’s a rooftop and she’s got an appointment with the street.
Zane, Finn and the cheerleaders have cleared out from the table. I don’t need to call my brothers to know where they’ve ended up.
I stride to our private room, slip my ID card against the door and step in. The moment I do, I hear Zane pounding the hell out of his electric drums. He’s got headphones on, so it sounds like pathetic smacks of rubber tips against rubber pads. But the fact that he’s managing to make such a racket without percussions is a telling sign.
I saunter to Finn and accept the water he tosses at me. “What’s up with him?”
“What else?”
“Miss Jamieson?” I guess.
Finn shrugs. “He won’t tell me what happened, but I’m assuming he tried to get under her skin and she got under his first.”
His words send a tightness through my chest. Is that what Brahms is doing to me?
I shake my head quickly.
Nah. What I feel for her is just the thrill of the hunt. What I feel for the redhead, now that’s something more akin to what my twin is going through. And it’s exactly why I don’t want anything to do with the mystery girl.
The farther I stay away from the debilitating effects of love, the less havoc it can wreak on me.
Zane glances up, sees me, and drags the headphones so it’s resting around his neck.
I do a chin-up gesture.
He rises abruptly from the stool and saunters over to us. Sprawling in the sectional, he lifts an arm. Finn throws him a water bottle and he catches it out of the air.
“You want to explain what’s going on?” I ask.
“Nope?” Zane tips his drink back and guzzles it. When he’s done, he peers at me. “Any progress with CC?”
“CC?” My hackles rise immediately. “You’re giving her nicknames?”
“You started it. You called her ‘Brahms’ in the hallway,” Zane points out.
“Because it was the song playing on her phone,” I snarl.
Brahms’ Wiegenlied.
She didn’t strike me as a fan of classical music. Maybe it was the tight shirt that her breasts were practically bursting out of or the short skirt or the lightning in her eyes, but she seemed more like a rocker chick to me.
Not that I care what she listens to.
“Brahms,” Finn grips the neck of his bass guitar and plucks a melody on the high strings. “The greatest representative of the musical Romantic movement. Fitting.”
“Why the hell is it fitting?”
Finn does that annoying thing where he smirks like he knows something I don’t.
I glare at him. “Have you been texting Jinx?”
“This guy.” Zane hooks a finger at Finn. “He treats her like she’s his girlfriend.”
“Information is powerful. And it’s through Jinx that I got a lead on Sol,” Finn says.
That makes both Zane and I shut up.
I peer at my brother’s dark eyes. “What did she say?”
“That the school had his transcripts sent out of the country. Wherever he is, it’s not here.” Finn frowns.
Zane curses and flops back. “How much did you pay Jinx for that? That’s not much of a lead.”
“It tells us that going to his house and trying to convince his mother to let us into his room isn’t going to solve anything,” I say calmly. Folding my hands together, I set it between my thighs and stare at the ground. “It means we have to broaden our net.”
“It would be so much easier if he just picked up a damn phone and let us know,” Zane huffs. “Damn.”
“That can help to narrow the search,” Finn suggests. “Wherever he is, he doesn’t have his phone.”
“You don’t think he’s, like, dead, do you?” Zane sits up, his eyes wide.
I scowl at him. “Stop talking crap.”
“I’m just saying. No matter where he is, Sol would have snuck out or stolen a phone or found some way to contact us.”
My knee bounces on the chair. “It feels like we’re missing something.”
“I can try to talk to Sol’s mom again.” Zane wiggles his eyebrows. “Try the old Cross charm. It might be too powerful a weapon though. She might fall for me.”
“She’s more likely to smack your head with a frying pan,” Finn says.
Zane scowls at him.
I turn my leather band around and around as I think. It was a gift from Sol. He handcrafted it himself and gave it to each of us. We were around thirteen at the time. He said it was a symbol of brotherhood. From that day on, we made a pact to always have each other’s backs.
“We can at least tell her that the school isn’t going to hold what happened this summer against him. We got Mulliez out of the way,” I say. “And he was the only one protesting it. Once we find Sol, there shouldn’t be anyone in our way.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Finn says, his lips curling up.
I frown. “She’s not a problem.”
“She’s still here.” Zane points out. “Even after your brilliant idea.”
Finn does another riff on his guitar. I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as him. It’s like his fingers aren’t bound by time or physics.
My brother bounces a string. “It not like we can bring Sol back where he belongs even if we find him now.”
“Are you doubting me?”
“I’m pointing out the obvious.”
“You were the one who insisted on giving her a chance to bow out on her own,” I growl. “If we’d broken her without an explanation, it would have been better. But she knows what we want now. She’s going to be stubborn.”
“All hope isn’t lost. Christa’s already putting a target on her back,” Zane muses. “She wasn’t too happy about you brushing her off today.”
Both my brothers give me inquiring looks.
I clench my teeth. “I had a mission.”
“You had Christa willing to do the freakiest things to you and you turned her down to run after CC.”
I glower at Zane for the nickname.
He gives me a smug smile in return. “No mission is that important. Imagine how much Christa’s game improved now that her lips are bigger.”
“You’re not going soft, are you, Dutch?” Finn asks.
“You’ll see.” I reach for my guitar and play a melody to match Finn’s bass line. “Cadence has no idea what she’s in for. I’m going to ruin her so badly she never forgets my name.”
That’s not a threat.
It’s a promise.
Jinx: Trade a secret for a secret, Dutch. I’m getting all kinds of inquiries about your relationship with New Girl. Access to your private play room. Steamy showdowns in the hallway. Tarzan-style kidnappings. Is there something I should know?
