Home > Riot Act (Crooked Sinners #3)(2)

Riot Act (Crooked Sinners #3)(2)
Author: Callie Hart

He's silent as the grave.

“I—I don’t—I can’t—” The stammering isn’t new. I’ve never been able to get a sentence out around this guy, but tonight I’m desperate to communicate. Pax is a lot of things and kind is not one of them. If I don’t find a way to play this off, I’ll be paying for this moment of weakness for the rest of our senior class. He’ll never let me live it down, and neither will his friends. I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire academy by tomorrow morning.

I didn’t even want to come to this stupid party in the first place, but the prospect of seeing Pax, being inside Riot House, walking around and witnessing where he lives… I was weak. I couldn’t resist, and now look at the mess I’ve gotten myself into.

“I’m sorry. I—”

Suddenly the very short black dress Pax peeled off me is back in his hands; he holds it out to me. “No stress. No biggg deal.” His voice is rough, his words slurred. He comes closer, and the casual tilt to his mouth is roguish—half a smile that looks very real and very unbothered by what’s just happened. He blinks; his pupils are so dilated that the silver of his irises is barely visible anymore. It’s as if he’s looking right through me. Like he’s hardly seeing me at all.

A jarring, awful understanding takes root. Unlike the last party that was held at Riot House, there were no giant bowls of ambiguous narcotics being passed around like candy tonight. There was plenty of hard liquor, though. I watched Pax shoot a whole bunch of it. I did the same, for fuck’s sake. He gave me two shots of whiskey himself. I’m definitely far drunker than I should be, but Pax is absolutely annihilated. Bending down, he tries to pick up his shirt and loses his balance. He nearly topples over into the leaf litter at our feet, and I see my opportunity.

I take it.

I run.

Tree branches whip at my bare skin. My heels are long gone. The rough ground bites into the soles of my feet. I can barely see six feet in front of my face, but I don’t stop. I charge blindly into the night, panting hard, fists pumping, whimpering every time I roll my ankle, knowing that I’m bleeding. Eventually, I stumble, sliding down an eight-foot-long slope, landing on my ass in a deep ditch, and I’m so tired and sore that I lie still for a second, blowing hard, staring up at a small panel of the night sky that’s visible through a window in the forest’s canopy overhead.

“Presley Maria Witton Chase,” I whisper out loud. “You are so fucking fucked.”

It takes time to get my breath back. More time still to wriggle into the dress I somehow had the sense to keep hold of when I bolted, the fabric fisted tightly in my hand. Longer still to climb out of the ditch, which turns out to be a culvert beside the road that leads up to the academy. It’s four in the morning when I finally stagger up Wolf Hall’s front steps and into the main building.

My room is exactly how I left it—a bombsite, clothes everywhere, makeup everywhere. Evidence of just how nervous I was, getting ready for the party earlier, trying to make myself look good—but the mess is going to have to wait. I’m too exhausted to deal with any of it, so I kick a pathway to my bed and sweep the mounds of dresses and short skirts to the floor, not caring that my feet are caked with dirt and blood as I climb beneath my sheets.

He’s still there when I close my eyes.

Kissing me.

Touching me.

Stripping me down.

His rigid cock between my legs.

Almost inside me.

Rubbing against my clit.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

Fuck.

I slide my hand between my legs and find my clit, mirroring the small circles Pax rubbed against it earlier. Damn, I am still so wet. I slow down the motion, drawing it out, shivering against the rising, hot, tight sensation that builds low in my stomach and between my thighs. I’ve made myself come thinking about Pax Davis countless times, but tonight it’s different. It’s not a dream. Not a fantasy. The images and the sensations that play out in my head aren’t make believe. They’re memories, and that makes them far more potent.

The climax hits me so hard that I cry out.

There’s no one at the academy to hear my release. The other girls from my floor are all still at the party. My friends, Carrie and Elodie, will be wondering where I am.

I should text one of them and let them know that I’m safe.

Should…

I fall asleep with the electric buzz of my orgasm prickling over my skin, and once again, Pax Davis invades my unconscious mind—the boy a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. It isn’t until the morning that I find out that Mara Bancroft is dead.

 

 

1

 

 

PAX

 

 

* * *

 

Tall.

Legs up to her armpits.

Sun-kissed, golden skin.

Perfect in every way.

That’s how she was this morning. Now, sobbing on the dock with rivers of black mascara running down her cheeks, she’s not quite the radiant summer goddess she was before I got my hands on her. Her name is Margarite, like the flower. And much like the flower, she has a fancy name, but at the end of the day she’s nothing but a daisy. “You are fucking insane!” Her thick French accent colors the accusation. “What kind of person are you, anyway? Dive in and get it!”

I huff out a laugh, distracted by the rock and pitch of the wooden planks beneath my feet as the dock bobs on the water.

During the day, the Adriatic Sea is a dazzling aquamarine, so crystal-clear and beautiful that you can’t help but stare at it. At night, the vast expanse of water is black as jet and looks like an oil slick. The lights from the tiny fishing village where I chose to moor the yacht spill together as the surface of the water shifts. Crowds of locals cheers each other, laughing and talking boisterously over their platters of calamari and bruschetta, ignoring the arrogant American arguing with the French girl fifty feet away.

I stare at Margarite, regretting how hard I flirted with her back in Calvi. She’d made me work for her attention; usually, I would have walked away from a girl who expected me to earn her time, but she’d seemed sweet and coquettish back at that café. Oh, how things have changed in the last twelve hours.

“I’m not jumping into the fucking harbor, in the dark, to retrieve a phone that you threw in there. It’s fucked now, anyway. I think our evening’s over, Maggie.”

She turns a violent shade of purple. “I want my phone, asshole!”

There are a thousand ways to handle this situation. If Dashiell were here, he’d be able to reel off at least five different approaches that would diffuse this mess quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately for Margarite, I only know of one way to tackle this, and I’ve learned from past experience that it’s not a very popular strategy.

I drive my hands into my pockets, setting my jaw. “Back on the boat, Maggie. Be a good girl and I’ll have you back with your friends inside an hour.”

“I swear to god.” Fuck, her accent’s even sexier when she’s angry. “If you don’t get my phone back for me, I will call the police.”

Yeahhhh, that’s an empty threat. She’s not calling the police. That ridiculous little red purse hanging off her gorgeously tanned shoulder is full of blow. Earlier this afternoon, when we were three miles off the coast in open water and I’d just got done fucking her brains out, Margarite popped its little golden clasp open and racked up a line on my stomach, for fuck’s sake. She hasn’t stopped funneling that shit up her nose ever since. I’m no innocent little choir boy; I’ve had a few bumps myself, but Margarite is so high, she’s probably still floating around the outer stratosphere. If she calls the cops, it’ll take them five seconds to realize that she’s taken something, and the gendarmes do not tolerate tourists abusing drugs on their beautiful island. Even French tourists. Her ass will be thrown into jail so quick she won’t even have time to whip out that bedazzled phone of hers to call her da—Well. She won’t be able to whip her phone out at all. It’s currently seven feet below water, but you get the idea.

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