Page 27 of The Honor Society

Liar.

Liar.

Liar.

I hold her close, and then my hands move to her sweatpants and I’m done talking. I kiss her with all the truth I have in my body because I know speaking only brings on more deception. I kick her pants to the floor and tug off her bra, she’s wearing no underwear and I’m lost.

I toss her onto the bed and hover over her, my hands on either side of her messy bun. She’s beautiful. Mine. And now, safe. She has no idea the monsters she’s working for are protecting her from the very one she’s kissing—or so they think.

“Axel,” her hands find my hair twisting it tugging me closer.

I wince. “Gentle.”

She smiles against my mouth. “Sorry, I’m not used to you being in sports, you’re more of a chess guy.”

She’s half right. “Nerd through and through.” I agree. And deepen the kiss. My hands find every familiar spot in her body, I find the spot between her legs that makes her scream.

I kiss the place on her collarbone that has her jumping out of her skin.

And when I enter her and feel her walls closing in around me already like her body’s welcoming home.

I ignore the guilt as my hips start a slow fluid pace, partially because of my injuries, partially because I don’t know when the house will fall around me, when the truth will come out, because it will, I know it has to.

“Axel, right there, God I missed you, I—” I silence her words with my tongue and move over her sinking so deep that she cries my name over and over again.

She finds her release, good because I can’t hold on any longer. I collapse against her and roll over to my back with her on top of me.

Her hair came out of her bun, splayed across my chest. With tears in her eyes she stares down at my wounds and quickly scrambles off of me. “Sorry I keep forgetting about your aggressive arts and crafts…what did,” she exhales. “I mean, did they ever find out what happened to you?”

I smile. “I was shot.”

“No shit.”

“They’re looking, but I’m not pressing charges, apparently it was one of the last things I said before passing out, don’t press charges.” I shrug. “Maybe I was delirious or maybe whoever did it to me mattered more.” I glance at her. “Maybe I loved them. Maybe I’m a dumbass who cared.”

“Right.” Her voice is small. “Right.”

Slowly she turns on her side away from me and within minutes she’s asleep, I lean up on my elbow and look down at her right hand.

The same tattoo I have on mine.

My mark

The Proctor. One she still has no idea the power or meaning behind.

And the one, the small brownish birth mark that looks like a half a heart, the one she’s always explained away.

Sterling…fucking Famine. In the page she never saw from The Dean’s List, it said the heir would have this birthmark in the exact place and it would be the daughter of Famine, the next in line.

Shit. It’s too much. I knew it the minute I slept with her, I had my suspicions but didn’t want to ruin a relationship that had nothing to do with The Horsemen, then one drunken night I got curious, read the page, and the next time she was sleeping, I’d checked. We got our tattoos the next day. On purpose. So the world would know, The Proctor had her under his protection.

And now.

Now Famine is doing God knows what, maybe sending her hints? Maybe they’re behind everything and just waiting to pull her into the fold? Meanwhile everything else is shit.

War is contested.

Conquest is ready for Jude as heir.