My heart hammered against my chest as I clamped my lips shut in a potentially foolish act of rebellion. His gaze trailed to my neck where Kyan had given me a hicky and my heart leapt in fright at the fury in his eyes. Saint needed everything to be perfect at all times and it was pretty obvious that finding me in Kyan’s bed, wearing his shirt with marks on my skin proving he’d had his mouth on me was pretty far beyond his tolerance zone.
He shoved me along the corridor and I stumbled away, turning back to face him with my hands raised. He strode toward me with intention in his posture and I retreated in alarm, unsure what he was going to do in that moment. Kyan’s arm suddenly locked around his shoulders, yanking him back a step.
“It’s just a joke, man. Chill out,” Kyan laughed.
Saint threw him off with a fierce strength, rounding on his friend as my breaths came frantically.
Blake stepped out of the door to my left, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and frowning in confusion.
“This is not a fucking joke.” Saint shoved his palms into Kyan’s chest and all of the light extinguished from Kyan’s eyes. “You took her outside the school. She could have escaped!” he bellowed, sending a tremor right down to my toes.
Kyan squared up to him, a flare of danger in his eyes which equalled Saint’s. “You wanna fight me, asshole? She’s mine as much as she is yours. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with her.”
I ground my jaw, glaring between the two of them as Blake moved forward to try and break up their fight.
“There are rules!” Saint snarled and I started backing away again, not wanting to be involved in this crazy bullshit. They were completely insane. The whole fucking lot of them.
“Dude, calm down,” Blake stepped in. “Kyan’s sorry, aren’t you bro?”
“Sorry?” Kyan barked a hollow laugh. “Fuck no.”
“Fine,” Saint said in an icily quiet tone that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “It’s not you who’ll pay the price anyway.” He turned his gaze my way and my heart froze to a solid lump of ice as he stalked forward.
The psycho look in his eyes told me one thing and one thing only: I did not want him getting his hands on me. The split second I hesitated lost me valuable time before I twisted around and ran for my life.
His footsteps pounded after me and fear ate me alive as I made it across the lounge and darted up the staircase towards his room. “Leave me alone you crazy asshole!”
I raced up the stairs but a hand locked around my ankle and I cried out as I fell down, rolling over and kicking out with my free foot. I missed. Saint dragged me toward him, rearing over me and locking his knees around my hips.
“Get off of me!” I yelled, terror making my throat tighten.
The ferocious look on his face was nothing but satanic. I wasn’t gonna get a spanking for this. I was gonna get something so much more terrifying and I feared how far Saint would go to see me punished.
He grabbed one of my wrists in an iron grip and I knew the second he got hold of the other one, I was done for. Rage gathered inside me, straining against the dam I’d built against it. Days and days of this shit was driving me to insanity. And I was done.
The dam burst and I snapped in time with it.
I threw a punch with my free hand, my fist cracking into Saint’s nose so hard that pain splintered through my knuckles. He released me with a roar of fury and blood spilled down over his mouth. I gazed at him with my veins singing my victory and my heart not beating for a full second. Then I realised with a horrifying clarity that I was now totally fucked.
As fast as I could, I scrambled backwards and hurried upstairs before he could recover.
“Blake, get her,” Saint growled and I gripped the railing of the balcony, watching as he stalked off in the direction of the other guys’ rooms, wiping his bloody nose on his hand. The tension in his shoulders was enough to send a lick of terror up my spine.
Kyan smirked up at me from below like he was happy I’d punched Saint and my mouth twitched at the corner, my breathing coming quicker as adrenaline sank into my veins. I’d hit that fucker. And it had felt so damn good.
Blake rushed up the stairs, grabbing my arm and I glared at him as he yanked me back towards the steps.
“You’ve really done it now, Cinders,” he said in a low tone and the victory flooding my limbs quickly gave way to fear once more.
“What’s he gonna do?” I breathed, looking up at him and seeing no fire in his eyes today. Only a blankness that scared me to my core. “Blake?” I pressed.
Kyan folded his arms, glancing between us as Blake guided me to the couch and shoved me onto it before dropping down beside me. I folded my legs up beneath me, flexing my hand as I relived the punch I’d landed on Saint. My knuckles were already bruised up from yesterday’s fight, but this was a bruise I wanted to tattoo onto my flesh forever. I might have been about to face my maker, but I couldn’t say I regretted it. Not for a second.
Saint eventually reappeared with the blood washed from his face and my backpack in his grip. My heart slowed to a halt as he tipped it up over the coffee table and all of my stuff fell out of it. I clenched my jaw, glowering at him as he gazed around at the mess of clothes and school books. Then he stuffed his hand in the bag and ripped out the wad of letters I kept in the secret pocket and tossed them down on the table for me to see.
Dread gripped my soul and made every part of my body scream.
“No!” I gasped, leaping out of my seat, intending to get them back no matter what I had to do. Blake snatched me around the waist, dragging me down into his lap and locking his arms around me so that I was forced to remain in place.
“Let me go!” I demanded, wriggling wildly as Kyan watched us all with mild intrigue on his face. My heart thrashed in my chest, my mouth was overly dry and the part of me they’d broken before was already coming unstitched.
Saint cocked his head to one side, surveying me with nothing but evil in his eyes. I’d made the devil bleed and he intended to repay the favour.
“Do you think we didn’t go through your whole bag when we first brought you here?” he asked, stepping toward me and leaning down into my face. The scent of sin washed from his skin, pure and clean and deadly. “Because that would have been a really fucking stupid thing to think, Plague.”
I bared my teeth, fighting viciously against Blake’s hold, but I couldn’t get free. Every part of my body was begging me to claw and tear my way to Saint. I couldn’t bear the look on his face, couldn’t stand the cruelty in his eyes.
He fished through the pile as if looking for a particular letter then smiled satisfactory as he lifted one up and read from it. “I miss you, Jess. Sometimes it hurts so much I can’t breathe. Knowing you’re gone, knowing you left me.”
His words cut into me and I roared my rage at him as he tossed the letter onto the fire burning in the grate behind him.
“No!” I screamed, my throat rubbing raw as I watched the page curl and turn to ash. It was a piece of my soul, lost, gone, destroyed.
Saint casually picked up another letter, reading another snippet just to make me bleed on the inside. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re still out there somewhere. I hope you’re somewhere happy, somewhere safe.” He sneered at me, enjoying my pain, his eyes electrified with it like it was the only thing that made his heart beat.