Playboy Princes: A Dark College Romance(4)

“Enough!” he roared. “Both of you, just fucking enough.” He shot Rafe a scathing glare, then flickered a sheepish look at me. “Violet, do you need something to wear? I can’t concentrate when you’re all…” He waved a hand at my stark naked, post-fuck-session state, and I couldn’t hide a grin. His sharp gaze seemed to run over not just my nudity but also every cut, scrape, and bruise like he was mentally cataloguing them all and storing the information for later. He didn’t baby me or ask if I was okay, and I loved that.

When I was really exhausted, I lost control over my emotions and they all just played out on my face. All of them. And right now I feared he could see exactly how confused and turned on I’d been by his kiss.

“Seriously, the way you’re looking at me makes it really, really hard—”

Rafe snorted.

“—to concentrate.” Jordan finished, shooting his friend another glare.

As funny as I found the current dynamic, Jordan had never done anything to deserve my malicious anger, so I dragged a sheet over my body and gave him a small smile. “Better?”

“Marginally,” he muttered, his heated gaze staring at the thin material like he wanted to make it disappear. With a sigh, he sat on the side of the bed and ran his hands through his hair several times while Rafe and I just waited to see what he needed to say.

“What the hell did I walk in on here?” Jordan finally demanded, encompassing us both in this line of questioning.

I just shrugged and deferred to Rafe. Let him sort this out; I’d just wanted hot, meaningless sex to wash Alex out of my brain. Ugh. Fucking Alex.

An arrogant sneer curled Rafe’s lip, and he scoffed back at Jordan. “Shouldn’t I be asking the same thing? Since when did you and Cinderella start swapping saliva?”

I spluttered. “Uh, since never. That was a first, and I’d also really like to know where that came from.”

The small, apologetic frown that touched Jordan’s brow when he looked over at me struck a nerve. Had that been something more than just adrenaline at play?

He let out a small sigh, turning away from me again and giving Rafe a small headshake. “You knew I liked her. If you felt the same, you should have fucking said something sooner.”

“That’s not even remotely what this was about,” Rafe replied, his jaw clenched with frustration.

I was officially lost. There was more going on in the subtext than I was picking up on, and it was making me twitchy.

Clearing my throat, I folded my arms—holding the sheet in place to retain what little shreds of dignity I had left. “This was about my need to erase my ex-boyfriend from my mind for five fucking minutes.” Rafe quirked a brow at me, and my cheeks heated. “Or longer. But it doesn’t change anything. Prince Prickly and I still hate each other just as much as yesterday.” I paused, frowning as I remembered everything I’d learned before the fight. “Maybe more than ever. Did you know that the Princess Ballot was rigged?” I speared Rafe with my stare. For some reason, some stupid, hopeless reason, I wanted him not to be the epic, unredeemable asshole I suspected he was. I wanted him—and all my friends for that matter—to be ignorant of the secrets Alex had so carelessly spilled.

His long hesitation filled me with dread.

“What? No, we don’t know anything about that,” Jordan responded, his confusion clear in his voice. But my gaze never moved from Rafe’s. He fucking knew something. “Rafe? Bro? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

I genuinely believed I didn’t care what Rafe thought of me. We weren’t friends, and despite all the sex we’d just had, we certainly weren’t lovers. But somehow as I stared into his angry, unsurprised eyes, my heart broke a little bit more.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I whispered. “You knew that I was chosen because of my DNA. That Alex was planning on making me fall in love and sign some archaic marriage contract. Is that what happened to all the ballot winners? Did they all get tricked into getting pregnant, too? ’Cause that’s what Alex had planned for me.”

At this, I finally got a reaction out of him. “What?” he spat, his face twisted in disgust. “No! I didn’t know anything about that. That’s…” He trailed off, shaking his head with disbelief. “No.” His gaze returned to mine, and this time there was no pretense. His eyes were full of what appeared to be a sincere apology. “I swear, Vi, I had no clue that’s what they were up to. But… yeah, I have suspected since the last ballot that something weird was going on.”

I nodded slowly, releasing the heavy breath I’d been holding. Suspecting wasn’t knowing, and that made all the difference to me. He’d also tried multiple times to warn me away from Alex, in his own fucked-up way, and I’d chosen to ignore him. I had no one to blame but myself for this mess.

“Well,” I muttered, feeling my shoulders sag under the weight of all my issues. “Maybe you can understand why I needed to forget all of that for a while.”

A fake cough near the door alerted us to another participant in the conversation, and Nolan grinned a sly, sexy grin. He held my missing blade, which he must have rescued from the tournament. Relief flooded through me that it hadn’t been lost or stolen. I’d worked too damn hard to earn that blade.

“Well, New Girl. If that’s how you forget your problems, I, for one, would like to be involved.”

He was joking. Wasn’t he?

“Me too,” Jordan added, and he definitely wasn’t joking.

What. The. Fuck?

Rafe just snorted and shook his head. “I’m finishing my shower, since I got interrupted. Figure this out yourself, Cinderella.”

The bathroom door slammed behind him, leaving me naked, bruised, bleeding, and squirming under two sets of all-too-interested eyes.

Oh shit. I was so fucked.





Chapter 3





I managed to avoid seeing anyone for the rest of the weekend. Mattie blew up my palm reader, requesting me for movies, parties, and just general chick time. But I couldn’t. I literally couldn’t deal with what had happened.

I’d imagined killing Alex, that lying piece of shit, more times than was probably healthy. In fact, nothing I’d done since finding out had been healthy, including fucking someone who could barely stand me at the best of times. It didn’t matter though, I couldn’t get Rafe out of my head. My body, still bruised and battered from more than the fight, ached to be touched like that again, but I was not giving in. Rafe was a weakness I would exorcise from my being.

“Violet Rose Spencer, open this fucking door before I smash it down!”

Mattie followed her words with some loud banging on said door, and I wondered if she was really going to attempt to break it down. The solid timber doors here were designed to protect each room’s rich, famous, and royal inhabitants, and there was no way my slender best friend had a hope in hell.

But she’d give it a try because that’s who she was.

“Vi, seriously,” she huffed, and I leaned my head against the door for a moment before I yanked it open. Mattie almost toppled in, just catching herself on the ridiculous six inch heels she sported.

“You’re dressed to kill,” I said, stepping back to see her better. She had on a royal blue minidress with lace cutout panels in the front and, from what I could see, the back as well. Her boobs were pushed to their limits, her legs long in those heels, and her hair straight and shimmery in the two low lights illuminating my room.

“You’re dressed like death,” she shot back, eyes wide as she ran her green-eyed gaze over me. “My god, Violet, what in the heck are you wearing?”

I looked down. Holey shirt, tracksuit pants, chocolate stain near my right thigh, wine stain on the center of the shirt.

“And you smell like death too,” she added, pushing inside. “To finish off”—she waved her hand at my slovenly appearance—“this package.”

Laughter burst from me before I could stop it. I hadn’t expected that.

“Please come in, insult me some more while you’re at it,” I said, sweeping my hand to the side.

Mattie ignored me, striding through my mess and kicking clothes to the side like she gave no fucks. When she reached my bed, she spun around and glared. “Why are you ignoring me? And why in the hell are you all bruised up again? Did someone hurt you? So help me, I will fucking bring this school down on them.”

My heart ached, and this weird sensation started to fill my throat and eyes. Like… there was so much love in my body that it was overflowing and the only place it could exit was from my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said huskily. “I’m really fucking sorry for being a shit friend. I tend to shut down when my life screws up. It’s easy to forget that I have someone in my corner now.”

Mattie took two steps forward, and I was hauled into a fierce hug. “You’ve got me in every fucking corner and at your back and front. You don’t have to face them alone, girl.”

Jesus. Make her stop; I really didn’t have time to be a bawling mess.

Not that I’d change Mattie for anything in the world.

When she let me go, our eyes met, and she shook her head. “You’re scaring me,” she whispered.