Despite the hot shower, I feel a chilling cold in my guts.
“You like the idea of taking Zoe from me because you like flouting authority. The school, her parents, my parents, our marriage contract. You like thumbing your nose at all of it. And deep down, you have a little of that hero complex that afflicts your cousin Leo so heavily. You want to save Zoe because you pity her.”
“I don’t pity her,” I growl. “I respect her.”
“Respect?” Rocco says mockingly.
That’s a foreign concept to him. I doubt he respects his own friends or even his family. He admires only himself.
“Yes. I respect her,” I say. “You have no idea. You’re like a toddler wiping your shit on the Mona Lisa. You couldn’t be more ignorant to what she’s worth.”
“You’re wrong there,” Rocco says quietly, his gleaming eyes fixed on me. “I see Zoe’s qualities. If she was weak, if she was willing, then there wouldn’t be any fun in it. It’s the challenge of breaking her. The joy of deconstructing her, piece by piece, then rebuilding her the way I want her to be. Reforming her like melted glass. Of course there’s always a chance the glass will shatter . . . but if not, I’ll make her exactly the way I want her.”
My guts are churning. I want to rip his fucking throat out, show him how it feels to be torn to pieces like he imagines doing to Zoe. I’ve met men who were greedy, violent, callous. But I’ve never met someone this destructive. Rocco has the soul of an arsonist. If he has any soul at all.
In that moment, I make a decision.
I’m going to save Zoe from Rocco. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do it. Not to be a hero. I’m gonna do it because this is fucking wrong, and it can’t happen. She can never belong to him.
Rocco sees the spark of decision in my face. He’s perceptive, I’ll give him that.
It angers him.
“I’ve never failed to get what I want, Miles,” he hisses. “I’m not like the other men you’ve faced. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I don’t give up. I can’t be threatened. I can’t be bargained with. None of your tricks will work on me.”
I turn the water off with a sharp twist, shaking the droplets out of my hair. I pick up my towel and wrap it around my waist, slowly and deliberately, refusing to break Rocco’s laser stare.
“You talk a lot,” I say to him. “You think you’re smart, or convincing. I think you’re limited. Stunted. Pathetic, quite honestly. You don’t even know what you don’t know.”
Patches of color come into his face, splotchy and random.
Rocco can read people, but so can I.
I know that what he wants more than anything is to be feared. He wants to seem formidable. He thinks he’s smarter and stronger than everybody else, purely because he isn’t bound by the usual rules of fairness or compassion.
Well, I don’t give a fuck about rules, either.
If Rocco thinks I won’t play dirty, he’s got another thing coming.
I face him without a trace of fear, cutting off that unholy energy on which he feeds.
“You think you figured me out, because what? I like to make deals to get what I want?” I walk toward him with rapid strides, closing the gap between us in steps. “You think I’m playing around, because that’s what I allow you to think. What you need to understand is that if I decide that you’re going to lose, you might as well write it on the fuckin’ stone tablets. If I turn my wrath toward you, I will not stop raining down hellfire until you and everyone who knows you is done. I will make deals that will ruin your life and any potential life you could have had. Do you think you’re the only one here who will do something psychopathic? I’ll rip your throat out with my teeth, and I won’t lose a single night of sleep over it. You have no idea the lengths to which I’ll go.”
Rocco takes one startled step back. It’s instinctive, compulsive. He means to stand his ground, but he can’t.
I laugh right in his face. Because I know that’s the thing that will torment him the most.
“You’re a fucking ant to me,” I say.
I turn around and walk away, leaving him in the echoing silence of his own helpless rage.
Back in my room I pull on my clothes, charged with a kind of energy I’ve never felt before.
I was ready to strangle Rocco right then and there. God, I wanted to do it. If he’d said one word to me, I might not have been able to hold back.
And now I have this fire in me, this unresolved aggression.
I have to do something with it, before I explode.
There’s still an hour before class starts.
I could go to the dining hall. But I have the strangest sense that what I’m looking for isn’t there. In fact, I think I know exactly where to find it.
I run down the stairs of the Octagon Tower, taking them two at a time. I’m sprinting across campus, certain that this compulsion is based on something real. I run all the way to the northwest corner of the grounds and rip open the library door.
A bizarre sense of destiny grips me. Nothing and nobody can stand in my way. Glancing toward Miss Robin’s desk, I already know it will be empty, that she’ll be down in the archives rummaging through maps.
I search for what I’m really here to find. I hunt through the library, pupils dilated in the dim lamplight, blood thundering in my veins, even my sense of smell heightened so that I catch a whiff of that sweet amber perfume before I even see her.
Zoe is halfway up the spiral ramp, her book bag and a hefty stack of textbooks spread out on an open table. She’s standing at the shelves, up on tiptoe, trying to reach a leather-bound tome just out of reach.
It must be laundry day, because she’s back in a plaid skirt after a week of trousers. As she stretches up as high as she can to hook the book with her index finger, her skirt pulls up, revealing a long expanse of bare thigh.
It’s blood in the water.
The effect on me is all out of proportion.
Fueled by pent-up aggression and a newfound insanity, I grab Zoe from behind, one arm around her waist and one hand clamped over her mouth so her shriek doesn’t bring Miss Robin running back upstairs.
I seize her and throw her in the crevice between two bookshelves, pinning her in place with my body wedged in the opening. I kiss her with a ferocity I’ve never known. All the fury I promised Rocco pours out on Zoe instead.
I ravage her mouth, I wrap my hands up in her silky black hair, I inhale that scent off her neck, which reeled me up here like a bright, shining lure. My hands are all over her face, her body, even reaching up under her skirt to grasp the firm globes of her ass.
When I pull back for a second, I see her wide, startled eyes, and her swollen lips open in confusion.
“Miles, what the hell?” she gasps.
I dive in again, kissing her even harder. After the first shock, I feel Zoe give in. Her arms encircle my neck, her body grinds against mine. Now she’s on tiptoe for a different reason: to press every inch of her body against me with all her strength. It’s like she’s drowning and the only air she can breathe is the air in my lungs.
She’s just as wild as I am, maybe even more so. She’s letting go, fully and completely, maybe for the first time in her life. She bites the side of my neck with her sharp little teeth, digging her fingernails into my back through the thin material of my shirt.