“Take a seat, Rivers,” Monroe commanded as she continued to linger. The only empty seats in the room lay to either side of our lineup and even without someone telling her the rules, Barbie was bright enough to guess that they weren’t up for grabs. “NOW!” Monroe barked, making her flinch. I liked that. That little flash of fear followed by even more outrage.
I licked my lips as Monroe pointed her toward the desk beside Kyan, and Barbie raised that chin higher as she actually dared to walk towards it. She wasn’t even going slow, stalking towards the desk with every intention to claim the damn thing. My dick twitched and I ran my tongue over my teeth as I watched her coming for us.
Blake was glaring at her like he’d set her alight with his gaze alone if he could.
My face was a mask like always, but my heart was thrashing harder with every step she took. I devoured that wild look in her eyes, that freedom which promised to never be tamed. And I wanted to tame her more than I’d wanted anything in a long time. I wanted to bind her and chain her and bring her to heel and stamp out that determined glint in her eye, replacing it with nothing but devotion. If I hadn’t been sold on my plan before that moment, I was now. Tatum Rivers was the breath of fresh air I’d been craving, the challenge I’d been needing and the bet I was going to win with myself.
Monroe called his victory too soon, leaving the room with a sharp look at us before she made it to the desk. The door snapped closed behind him and Miss Pontus eyed us warily as she smelled trouble brewing.
“I’ve got it,” Kyan murmured before either Blake or I could claim responsibility for this issue.
And in all honesty, right now, he was the best man for the job. We wanted her scared and Kyan tended to achieve that with the least effort.
He let Tatum walk all the way to the desk before standing suddenly, blocking her way into the chair behind it.
“You lost, baby?” he purred as he towered over her and her jaw ticked as her gaze dragged over him.
“I was told to take a seat beside the biggest asshole in the room so I’m pretty sure I found the right place,” she replied coolly.
A lot of the sheep in the class sucked in a breath like they thought Kyan might rip her damn head off. But despite popular belief, that wasn’t how he hunted. Especially when his prey looked like her.
“Naw,” he replied casually. “You’d wanna sit next to Saint in that case.”
I would have bristled at the insult if it hadn’t been the truth.
Tatum’s eyes skipped to me and I cocked my head as I regarded her with interest, waiting for her next move.
“You look like shit, Saint,” she purred. “What happened, did your house elf forget to iron your uniform today?”
My jaw locked tight as her insult hit the mark and I fought the urge to look down at the roughened state of my uniform following Blake’s attack. It needed fixing and she’d already figured out how much that must have bugged me. But I wasn’t going to let it show. I might have had a low level obsessive compulsive disorder, but that only made it easier for me to spot the weaknesses in others too.
“Actually, I set that fucker free a long time ago. The little asshole kept walking in on me when I was jerking off,” I replied coldly.
Her eyebrows arched but before she could come back at me with some pretty insult, Kyan lifted the desk in question off of the floor and heaved it over his shoulder. He snagged the chair in his other hand and Tatum’s full lips popped open as he carried the whole lot straight towards the front of the class at a casual pace.
“Please be careful with the furniture, Mr Roscoe,” Miss Pontus warned in a high pitched voice which the entire class ignored.
“The Unspeakables sit in the front row,” Kyan said casually as he walked past the very row he was talking about. “But, you-” He slammed the desk down on its feet so close to Pontus’s desk that it must have been touching it. “Can sit in front of them.”
I allowed myself a smile at that. Sometimes I wanted to kill Kyan for his lamentable choice of clothes and lack of decorum. I mean, honestly, what was with the fucking boots? But when he did shit like this, it was easy to remember I loved that fucker like he was my own brother. This was perfection and he knew it. I could tell by that smirk he hid beneath his thumb as he rubbed at the corner of his mouth.
My Barbie doll was still standing beside me, lips pursed with rage as she glared at Kyan.
I couldn’t wait to earn some more of those hate filled looks for myself soon. And if I got my way, it really would be soon. Who was I kidding? I always got my way.
She tossed her long hair and stalked away, acting like social ostracism meant less than fuck all to her. And maybe it did. If her daddy was fucked up enough to release that virus into the world then who knew how depraved his golden girl was? And if I was honest, I was hoping she was pretty damn depraved.
She fell into the seat at the front of the class, refusing to look at Kyan as he leaned over her desk, dominating it until she was forced to acknowledge him.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” he asked her, his voice dangerously low.
“Thank you?” she asked, her upper lip peeling back. “Well I suppose that from here I have a good chance of hearing everything the teacher has to say…and as a bonus, I don’t have to suffer through the choking stench of your aftershave.”
“Do I look like I wear aftershave, baby?” Kyan teased. “This godly smell is all natural.”
“Perhaps you should take a bath then?” she hissed.
Kyan’s hands landed flat on her desk and he leaned right forward into her personal space.
“Wrong answer, baby,” he growled, the threat in his tone enough to make several of the other class members cower down in their seats.
Not Tatum though. As Kyan stalked back towards us, she only straightened her spine further, refusing to bow to the pressure of our gazes on her back.
“She needs to feel the pain her father has given me,” Blake growled, speaking the first words he’d uttered since she’d walked into the room.
“She will,” I promised, my gaze fixed on her unruly blonde hair as I pictured fisting it in my fingers, knotting it up and making her scream for me.
“How?” he demanded as Miss Pontus finally started the class and the other students began to murmur about Macbeth as she set today’s work.
“Is she going to become one of the Unspeakables?” he asked, pressing for answers as Kyan leaned closer to listen in too.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,” I said, deciding to reveal my plan to them. Every moment I spent in her company only confirmed that my infatuation with her still wasn’t waning. I needed an outlet for that desire. One that I could use again and again and again until I’d gotten her out of my system.
“I say we fall back on the legends that gave us our name,” I said, eyeing the assholes in the row before us to make sure they weren’t prying.
“The Night People?” Kyan asked, raising an eyebrow as that idea intrigued him.
“Yeah,” I said. “One legend in particular, the one that includes the sacred stone.”
Kyan blew out a breath of surprise and Blake turned to me fully with pure hunger in his eyes. Hell, he might have needed this more than I did. We used that legend as a threat all the damn time, but we’d never gone so far as to implement it before.