I place the grape on his tongue. As I pull my hand back, my fingers graze his lower lip. A shiver runs down my spine.
I’m certain Dean sees me twitch. He doesn’t miss a thing.
He bites down hard on the grape, crushing it in his mouth.
“Very good,” he says, in that deathly low voice.
Every boy at the table is staring like they’re watching a peep show.
“What else can you make her do?” Pasha whispers.
I’m sure Dean’s friends aren’t the only ones watching this mortifying display. I don’t dare look over at Anna’s table. She must think I’ve morphed into a masochist in the few short weeks since Chicago.
The problem is that if I can’t look at Anna, and I can’t look at Dean’s leering friends, the only place left to fix my eyes is on Dean himself.
Strangely, his injuries, the marks of his mortality, only make Dean seem all the more inhuman because he refuses to acknowledge them. Refuses to be cowed or humbled.
I watched Dean win that boxing tournament almost unscathed. I’d hate to meet the man who actually landed a blow on him.
“Another,” he says, his eyes drilling into mine.
I pluck another grape off the stem, lifting it to his lips.
This time, his tongue slides against the ball of my thumb as he takes it from my fingers. That instant of wet, hot friction sends a flushing warmth through my whole body. I know my face is bright red, I know I’m squirming in my seat. I don’t understand how my body can betray me like this when I fucking hate Dean!
How can I loathe someone so much, and yet I can’t take my eyes off him? I’ve never been so present. I see the tiny golden hairs on Dean’s skin, the minute lines on his perfectly-shaped lips, the edges of his strong, white teeth. I feel his breath on my fingertips, warm from his lungs and faintly scented grape.
“That’s enough,” Dean says softly. “Clear my dishes away.”
I’m happy to clear his dishes, just to get away from him and the encircling mass of the other four boys, who have leaned over the table so they can watch our every movement. Bram Van Der Berg frowns suspiciously, his vertical scar and narrowed eye forming a shape like the crosshairs of a trigger pointed directly at me.
Why does Dean have to be so public about this? People are going to ask questions.
He doesn’t give a fuck. It’s the brazenness that excites him.
I drop the dishes off with the kitchen staff, not having eaten a single bite of food. Dammit, now I really am starving.
Too late. Dean appears at my side, already carrying my bookbag. He thrusts it into my hands, and then as soon as I sling it over my shoulder, he dumps his own armful of books on me.
“Carry those,” he orders, tossing back his shock of white-blond hair.
“Fine,” I mutter, staggering under the weight of the books.
I’m seething with fury, and it’s only the first day of this treatment.
I’m not going to make it through the school year. I’m just not.
I’m going to snap and strangle Dean, and then he’s going to rat me out to the Chancellor, and they’ll reopen the investigation into Rocco’s death, and they’ll find evidence that it was me, because I wasn’t that fucking sneaky. I know there’s some mistake, some piece of evidence I missed that will tie me to his death as soon as Luther Hugo knows where to look.
I stalk alongside Dean, arms burning under the combined weight of his books and mine.
Once again I’m a little shadow, stuck to the side of a smarter, stronger person.
Only this time, it’s not my lovely sister I’m trailing.
I’m bound to the devil instead.
5
Dean
My control over Cat Romero is an aphrodisiac to which I am quickly becoming addicted. Every morning my heart rate quickens as I descend the stairs of the Octagon Tower, knowing she’ll be waiting there for me, her big dark eyes taking up half the space of her face, and her arms wrapped tight around her petite frame.
I’ve spent all night long imagining how I’m going to order her around. Picturing that indignant pink flush that suffuses her cheeks, drowning out her freckles, and the way her body trembles with barely-contained fury as she’s forced to stuff down the retorts she’d so sorely love to return, in favor of simply obeying.
She hates it, yet she has to do it.
And that is indescribably delicious to me.
All my life I’ve been fucked over. My father bitter and maimed, spiraling into claustrophobic rages until he drove my mother away. My mother fleeing when I was only ten years old, abandoning me to my father’s madness. The remnant of our once-proud family sidelined by the Bratva, while those who betrayed us flourished in Chicago.
Then I came to Kingmakers, only to watch the one girl I’d ever desired reject me for my worst enemy, my own fucking golden-boy cousin who lives the life I should have had.
Nothing has ever gone right for me.
Until now.
Cat is a gift that fell into my lap.
And nothing and no one can take her from me—because I know her secret. I hold her life in my hands. As long as she and I are the only two people who know what she did to Rocco Prince, I’m free to torment her to my heart’s content.
God, how I love it.
I love the way she serves me, resentful but submissive. I love the way Bram and the others are racking their brains, dying to know why this girl follows after me like an obedient puppy. And most of all I love the way it’s driving Anna Wilk and Leo Gallo crazy, because they can’t comprehend why Cat leaves the shelter of their protection to return to me again and again.
Miles Griffin would have figured it out. But he’s six thousand miles away in Los Angeles, along with Cat’s sister. Cat is all alone, completely at my mercy.
I’m slowly expanding my control over her.
Testing her.
I tell her what to wear each day, and how to wear it. I like her green skirts the best, and her thick black knee socks that highlight her innocence. Her hair has grown longer since last year, the wild curls down below her shoulders. I tell her when to put it up in a ponytail, and when to hold it back from her face with a band.
She’s my own personal doll that I can dress to my tastes.
I know it infuriates her. My demands are arbitrary and capricious. And that’s exactly what I enjoy—never letting her get comfortable. Never letting her know what’s coming next.
I spend a lot of time watching my little pet. I’ve come to know every freckle on those delicate cheeks. Every thick, black lash on those wide-set eyes.
Cat Romero is pretty.
Her beauty isn’t as obvious as her sister’s.
But the more I see of Cat, the more I begin to fixate on the details of her person. Her smooth, tan skin and her perfectly-shaped hands, like a suit of armor made in miniature to show the craftsmanship. Her pale pink lips, as heart-shaped as her face. Her sharp white teeth that flash into view when she dares to snarl at me.
I wondered if I would get tired of this game, but the more I play with her, the more I want.
My classes seem interminable, because I’d much rather be greeting her outside the door, her face flushed and sweating because she had to run across campus from her class to mine.
It amuses me to see her struggle to carry my books. She’s so small that she can hardly bear a burden that I could lift with two fingers. I could hoist up all of Cat with one hand. My arm itches to do it. I remember the times I’ve picked her up right off her feet, the sense of complete control it gave me to lift her and hold her like she really were just a tiny kitten dangling from my jaws.