“Are you worried?” he asks quietly, drawing a lazy, ghostly circle around my peaked nipple.
“No.”I am a liar now, too.
He smiles, as if he knows, but he continues the same path. The same motion. Yet he’s looking at his other hand now, firmly over my pelvis.
“I could watch you change, couldn’t I?” He lifts dark violet-tinted eyes to me, and I swallow thickly.
I’m not sure how I know what he means, but I do. “To do that, you’d have to actually fuck me first.”
His index finger pauses, poised over a shard of glass glittering by my nipple. His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t speak, either.
“What are you waiting for, Sullen?” I take a deep inhale. Exhale slowly. I can taste his blood on my tongue. “You know I’m yours.”
“You’re filthy,” he says, glancing at the pool of glass I’m covered in.
I flinch with his words, thinking of my dirty clothes. How I knelt in his room. “You made me that way.” It’s partly true.
He doesn’t meet my eye. “I will make you so much worse.”
“You bore me,” I tell him, injecting haughtiness into my tone. But my voice shakes, and even so, he doesn’t look up. “All these pretty threats but you are still too scared to give up your virginity to me. Areyouthe one who is worried, Sullen Bram Rule?”
When I say his full name, his eyes finally collide with mine. He slides his hand to my collarbone, but doesn’t go any further,no matter how much I want him to wrap his fingers around my throat, then kiss me.
“I am,” he says quietly, his expression placid. If it wasn’t for the way his chest heaves between us, I would say he truly was bored himself, not about to catch fire the way I am with sparks beneath my skin. “I fear that what little sanity you held onto, you’ve let slip. Maybe too many sedatives and too much alcohol too close together, hmm, Karia?” He sighs, shaking his head in feigned disappointment. Then, all at once, he pulls away and swiftly stands to his feet, staring down at me as he does, his head tilted to the side as I try to make sense of feeling so empty before him. “Oh dear,” he says softly. “You really are a mess.” He glances at the glass on my bare flesh.
The urge to cover myself is strong. I’m splayed out, half-naked for him, and yet he doesn’t want me. Maybe he’s right. Perhaps I’ve deluded myself this entire time. What’s broken inside him is something I could never curl around, not to heal or to save him but to simplybe there.I have been throwing myself at him for days in the most dire of circumstances, but what I haven’t wanted to consider is the fact he doesn’t desire me at all. Not like this.
Yet when I drop my gaze lower, unable to hold his, I see his erection, bulging in his pants.
Maybe he doesn’t love me. Maybe he never will. But I do affect him, at least a little.
I smile softly, refusing to get up as I lazily trail my eyes over his body, finally landing on his face once more. I stretch my arms, keeping them above my head, and pretend my heart isn’t about to beat its way out of my chest. “Oh dear,” I mimic him. “It seems I’m not the only one.”
Stein Rule’s legacy preceded him.
His father owned a grand hotel, was well-connected to the governor of Alexandria, enjoyed an ample amount of leisurely time while living in a home on Ritual Drive, the second-wealthiest street in the city. But no one was quite sure what, exactly, he did.
I expected to see the same sort of oozing arrogance in Stein that his father, Sanford, was rumored to have. A widower with no shortage of female companionship, his trysts were sometimes fodder for the society pages but oftentimes, Alexandria journalists never dug as deep on Sanford Rule as they did on other minor celebrities and millionaires within the city. It enraged my mother, herself a successful lawyer with no time for her only child and even less for feeling slighted in any way. Sanford had once taken her on a date; she came home with her eyeliner smudged and hair a mess, but when she saw me waiting up for her in the hallway of the foyer, she screamed at me to get to bed.
It’s how she usually spoke to me, in screeches and belittlement. She had named me something else once, but I was happy to shed it in place of being closer to the boy I idolized.
By the time I met Stein, the date was years prior, and I didn’t begrudge him nor his father the incident. I loved my mother fiercely—more than she seemed able to see—but even I, as her son, knew she deserved a little heartbreak. A conniving, cheating, disgusting woman—I would later come to find when she cut me off for becoming Stein’s disciple—it was a good thing Sanford Rule only saw her fitto bed one night, or else he would’ve found many reasons to crush her beneath his privilege.
When Stein Rule walked into Tomb Island Prep, his blue eyes flicking around the pristine lecture hall as if in annoyance, I was prepared to never speak to him. People like him, like Sanford, they were above me, with my miniscule connection to the prestige of Alexandria in the form of a parasitic lawyer for a mother, and lawyers were always on the outside, anyway. No one liked them, they were only necessary. People like Sanford Rule had real power, even if no one understood how.
But surprising me, Stein Rule’s dismissive eyes settled on me, at the furthest row back in the stadium-style seating, and he adjusted his messenger bag across his chest, briefly brushing against the crest of a shark’s darkened silhouette among a stormy background of the ocean—Tomb Island Prep’s logo—before he started to head toward me.
He looked like an athlete. A future politician. A model for Burberry or Ralph Lauren. He looked like a man who would mock me, make my life a living hell, maybe use me to sleep with my mother—it had happened before—but what could I do? The lecture hall wasn’t yet crowded. I always arrived early, if only to avoid my mother, but getting upand moving seats as Stein continued to stare at me while he ascended the stairs would only make me look weak, and I already knew I was that.
My mother reminded me often enough, belittling my aspirations to become a doctor by suggesting I should plan for a future catering to her, as she was the only one who would ever be able to tolerate me.
So I didn’t move, and instead my hand grew clammy around my pen, a notebook in front of me turned to a fresh, crisp sheet.
I dropped my gaze there, afraid to hold this staring contest with Stein Rule any longer, knowing as soon as he arrived in my aisle, he would do something vicious and cruel.
When he finally sat down beside me, the crisp, clean scent of his cologne filled my nose and I turned my head slightly, annoyance warming inside of me, taking the place of fear.
I knew the mockery would come and I had a sudden, strangled desire to slice his teeth from his mouth.
