Playboy Princes: A Dark College Romance(7)

"No shit!" I shrieked. "You just threatened to kill me if I don't become your fucking puppet!"

Alex rolled his eyes, like I was being painfully dense. "No, I didn't. I told you you'd be killed."

"Semantics!"

He sighed. "Just go and get yourself cleaned up. I’ll be back in the morning."

Numb and in shock, I stumbled past him toward my bathroom. This... was so far removed from how I’d thought this conversation would go.

I paused in the ensuite doorway, turning my face just enough that I could see Alex still standing at my bedroom door.

"I fucked Rafe," I announced. What the hell I was hoping to achieve with that, I had no idea. Maybe I wanted to hurt Alex in some small way—hurt him just a fraction of how he'd hurt me. But the reaction I was looking for never came. When he turned around, his face was a cool, unaffected mask. Like stone.

"Good thing your IUD is still effective then. The last thing I need to deal with is another bastard pregnancy in my fiancée." His voice was pure frost.

I snarled. "I'm not your fiancée, Alex."

"Not yet," he replied with a shrug. "Go and shower. You've got a show to put on tomorrow at breakfast. Can't go letting that Swiss dickhead think he's won this round."

My stomach churned and dread rolled through me, but I’d been out-played. For now, I'd bide my time... but if Alex really thought I'd roll over and take a life of servitude as his walking womb? Oh yeah. He had another fucking think coming.

He had no idea who he was truly dealing with, but I intended to show him really soon.





Chapter 5





Anxiety clawed at my belly the whole way down to the dining room for breakfast. My palms were sweating, and I had to keep wiping them off on my uniform skirt. Not that I gave two shits what Alex thought of my clammy hands, but the idea of facing my friends...

"If you could look a little less like you're about to vomit, that would be amazing," Alex snarled at me under his breath, all the while smiling like he didn't have a care in the world. It was terrifying.

"I am about to vomit," I hissed back. "Just being near you makes me want to throw up everywhere."

While that wasn't totally untrue, my anxiety was mostly fueled by another source. Another two sources. Rafe... and Jordan.

Fuck.

I knew I should have dealt with that situation when it happened on Friday night, but I hadn't. I'd fucking panicked.



"You're joking." I said to Nolan and Jordan, the shower splashing as Rafe washed the evidence of our hate fuck off his hard, inked-up body.

Nolan laughed. "Okay fine, I'm joking. You're like a second sister to me, and I don't get down on the twincest thing. Also, I'm likely to try and turn Rafe on to dick and then get punched in the nuts for it." He shivered dramatically. "No thanks. I just came to tell you the coast is clear, then caught the end of that convo and couldn't help myself."

My attention then drifted to Jordan, but he didn't look amused. He looked... hurt.

"I wasn't joking," he said. "I like you, Violet..." Shooting an unreadable glance to the bathroom where his best friend showered, he frowned.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, double fuck.

I couldn't do this. Not when my heart was still a bleeding, shredded mess from Alex's betrayal.

I yanked Rafe’s shirt on and ran.



My back slamming into the wall jerked me out of that unpleasantly guilty memory, and I gasped.

"If you have any desire to see another sunrise, I suggest you improve your acting skills," Alex growled with menace, his face just inches from mine. "Fast."

That was the only warning I had before his lips crashed into mine. The shock of it made me gasp, and Alex pushed his advantage, slipping his tongue into my mouth and stroking along mine.

This... this wasn't Alex. Not the Alex I knew and had been kissing for months. This person was harsh and demanding. Dominant. If I wasn't already a hollow, heartbroken mess, the way he kissed me now would have almost convinced me he actually cared. That somehow he regretted deceiving me.

But I knew better.

This was about power and control. He was showing me who held both.

"Kiss me back, or kiss your life and freedom goodbye." He'd released my mouth just long enough to whisper that threat, and his blue eyes were close enough that I imagined he was peering into my soul. Weighing my desire to live, I found the scales tipped in his favor.

He was right, too.

Swallowing back my pride, my hurt, my guilt, I closed my eyes, draped my arms around his neck and acted my fucking ass off. If anyone had walked past us then, they'd have seen exactly what they needed to see, the shining, golden, crown prince of Australasia and his princess-ballot girlfriend. In love.

Inside, I was screaming. Sobbing. Dying a little. But nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming desperation that washed over me when our kiss ended and I opened my eyes.

Rafe's furious, sapphire gaze locked with mine from across the hall, and the expression on his face was nothing short of murderous.

Now, normally I’d react, shoot back something as pissed off as Rafe was sending my way. But I couldn’t.

Alex had taken something from me. I was that stupid fucking little girl again, trapped, locked away and sitting in my own piss. Helpless.

No!

Fuck.

Alex’s lips twisted as he stared down at me. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, princess,” he said softly, pressing his lips to mine one more time before he took off down the hall. “One last chance, Violet,” he called over his shoulder. There was no one but Rafe nearby now, and he clearly wasn’t worried about being overheard by the Swiss prince.

I slammed myself back against the wall, pressing my palms especially hard against the brick, trying to find my balance. I was better than this. I’d spent too many years learning how to destroy the weakness inside of me, and all it had taken was some smooth words from a prince to break everything down.

Sharp, painful sensations ran down my spine and across my arms until they tingled in my fingertips. I didn’t realize until blood followed that feeling that I’d slammed my back and shoulders so hard into the rough stone walls that I’d actually cut myself.

The blood was warm, ruining another uniform as it traced across my skin. That warmth was chased by another scent moving closer, one that smelled darkly enticing, turning my thoughts immediately erotic. Rafe had fucked me the same way he did everything else. Hard, intense, and on the edge of cruelty. My body responded to his scent now almost on instinct.

“Come with me,” he said. No, commanded. Everything that fucker did was a command, and fuck if my body wasn’t ready and willing.

I didn’t know where he was leading me, but I needed to clear my head, so I was following.

For now.

Rafe led me away from the dining room and main part of Arbon, taking me on a twisting path that was almost as hard to follow as the secret passages that led to the fights. Part of me wanted to ask where we were going, but another, larger part, really didn’t care.

Trapped. I was fucking trapped again.

How had this happened? How could this happen?

“Stop thinking,” Rafe said harshly. “Let it go for five minutes.”

I wanted to. I wanted to let everything go, including this fucking school, but I was afraid it was way too late for that. According to Alex, I was in a life and death situation, and if I didn’t choose him, I chose death.

Rafe snarled again, and his lips slammed into mine. My cut-up back crashed into the nearby wall. I didn’t care. I welcomed the pain because for the first time since I’d found out—outside of the last time Rafe had touched me—I was finally in blissful mental silence.

He did something to my body. He shut my senses down. And he erased Alex.

When he pulled back, he shook his head at me. “Keep the fuck up.”

He turned, moving fast, and I was blinking, not sure what the hell had just happened. Rafe was going to be the death of me.

If Alex didn’t get there first.

Eventually, when we must have been miles from the main part of the school, Rafe opened a door. It was partially hidden, completely nondescript, and I wouldn’t have noticed it at all before Rafe opened it and stepped through. I followed him to a single set of rickety stairs made of wood, ancient-looking wood that I was afraid would cave in under his mammoth weight. But they didn’t, apparently sturdier than they looked.

My gaze was all but glued to his ass as he ascended ahead of me, and I had to swallow a few times to keep the moisture in my mouth. I mean, I’d always been attracted to the prickly fuck, but now it was an almost tangible thing I could taste in the air.

And feel in my vag. That bitch knew him intimately now and she wanted more.

“You taking me up here to throw me off?” I half-joked when the stairs went on and on. I hadn’t been to a second floor anywhere here yet, so this was clearly one of the towers I’d seen when I’d first been driven up to the school.

“Don’t tempt me,” he muttered.

I shut up after that, enjoying the burn of my thighs as we continued to climb. I’d been neglecting my training way too much since coming here, and my fitness was suffering. I needed to get back into it—at least start jogging again.

The stairs leveled out and we stepped into a room. Though a single room, it was large and sparse. There were two couches, a small fridge, a stylish, eggshell colored rug, an unlit fireplace, and the most incredible view I had ever seen. In my life.