Dirty Little Secret: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Reighton Preparatory Academy Book 3) Read online

  Him pressing into me feels so right, yet so wrong at the same time.

  “B-Back off.” I gasp, barely catching enough air to finish my sentence. It takes everything to push past the lump of unease in my throat.

  My heart literally bangs against my ribs when that heart-stopping, gut-wrenching, soul crushing grin tugs at the corner of his delicious lips. With his sharp jawline and princely good looks, Dorran is every woman’s wet dream.

  And right now, he’s looking at me like I’m his breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  “Where would the fun in that be?” He pushes a little closer. “You want me, right?”

  Oh, how I would love to tell him no. Say that I’d rather eat manure than accept, even an iota, of affection from him. But the fact of the matter is, I’m addicted. Affection of any kind, no matter who it’s from or in what form. I need it like I need oxygen.

  He leans forward, brushing his lips across my cheek in a sensual caress. His scent teases my senses—a hint of sandalwood, warm apple pie fresh out of the oven, and a little something that seems so familiar to me, yet so hard to place.

  “You want my cock, don’t you, sweetheart?” His tongue darts out to lick the shell of my ear, garnering a full body shiver. I am nothing but a jittery mess, and this man is the cause for it.

  I don’t care if I hate this guy. I also don’t care that I want to kill him. Fucking and liking someone are two very different things. I can ride his dick and throat punch him in the same moment and never feel a bit of remorse. I’m that desperate.

  I blame all of this on what happened to me when I was fifteen. The fact my choice was taken away from me, then I had to go through the aftermath of pain and turmoil. Never a word was uttered in explanation. Never an apology was uttered in my presence.

  At least with this, I can make the choice to touch and be touched by whomever I want.

  And I really, really want to be touched by Dorran.

  I’ve been turned in one lust filled haze since the party, before our unknown guest decided to join in, and I’m legitimately at the end of my rope. Sex, or a form of the act, is pretty much all I can think about. I blame my teenage hormones the most, because if I had the ability to listen to my mind and not my body, I’d be as innocent as a nun. A reformed one, but you get the drift.

  What makes matters worse … and pathetic …

  I don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent so long with them or what, but … Gosh, it’s embarrassing just thinking about it.

  But I can’t even get off without the guys touching me in some form or fashion. It’s like my mind is hardwired different or something; as if the stint in the cage broke me without even knowing I was broken to begin with.

  My cheeks tinge red, horror clouding over my vision. I clam up in his arms thinking about my misfortune—about what they would think if they were to know. They’d probably taunt me with the knowledge. Act all smug in my presence, while they gossiped to each other behind closed doors.

  “Hey, what’s happening?” he asks, confusion riddling his voice.

  I feel the steady pressure of his thumb and forefinger under my chin, angling my head backward. My eyes meet his, seeing his still swirling with desire and lust, but also a bit of curiosity now, too. I take my lip between my teeth, debating on what to say.

  If I tell him, will it be all over? Surely, they couldn’t possibly hold it over my head. Right?

  Before I can talk myself out of it, I decide to throw caution to the wind and go for it, which is something I don’t do with information as personal as this.

  “Um, I …” I need to be strong here. Brett’s already made me succumb to my baser instincts one. I don’t need to do the same thing with Dorran. Maybe if I just tell him what’s going on, he’ll step off and allow me to get my bearings.

  “You wha—” A subtle blush steals across my cheek. I break eye contact with him, dropping my gaze to his chest. The moment it dawns on him, I don’t get any of the teasing or taunting I expect. In fact, I get the opposite. Understanding. “You need us, don’t you?”

  I nod, giving myself over completely. Settling my chin in the crook between his thumb and forefinger, he angles my face toward his. We move closer and closer, each other’s humid exhales ghosting across our faces like a lover’s gentle caress. It causes tingles of awareness to slither up my spine, like zips of static electricity running along the contours of your body. I loathe the fact they feel so goddamn good.

  “I wonder … is that little pussy wet and ready for me?” My core contracts at his deep, gravelly voice.

  Swallowing hard, I whisper my reply, “Yes.”

  It’s crazy that all of them, with their attitudes and asshole demeanors, can still make me feel so desirable.

  But then, with only the heat of our exhales warming the surface of our skin in sinful euphoria, he opens his mouth and ruins everything.

  He nips my jawline, whispering, “Desperation doesn’t really do it for me, sweetheart.” My heart plummets int my stomach. “Also, you don’t want to go poking around inside my head, because I guarantee you won’t like what you find.”

  I will the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Horror leaks out of my pores, and leaves me as a frozen, speechless block of ice. Even his touch can’t force away the shame his words cause me to feel.

  The one time I expect someone to be different, because I know they can be—they show me that a tiger can’t change their stripes. I should have gone with my gut feeling. Even though there’s something weighing heavy on their soul, they’d much rather keep up the façade they’ve built up over the years.

  “You’re repulsive,” I finally manage to choke out, but it’s better to appear disgusting when all you really want to do is cry.

  He rounds out a laugh, and I can tell is forced. “Ditto. You’re just as pathetic, too.”

  With those parting words, he moves away from me, as if he can’t physically stand to touch me anymore. I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes, probably won’t be able to within the nearest future. He’s humiliated me. If he didn’t want me, he shouldn’t be teasing.

  What he did blew every bad thing that ever happened to me out of the water. The branding. Being forced against my will. Losing my mother, father. Having to watch my father get remarried to a practical stranger. That stranger being enough for him to clean up his act and pretend he’s a real father—at least until he sold me. What happened with Brett, Chaz, and Dorran when we were back at Reighton.

  His actions are so much worse, because at least in all of those scenarios, I felt wanted and revered. Loathed and desired. May not have been the best of situations, but they are that just the same. I was wanted, needed.

  I’ve never felt as worthless or as disgusting as I do right now. Not even on the night Joaquin took everything from me.

  Feeling about two inches tall, I cower in on myself out of habit. I may be strong, but even some people have a breaking point. I’m nearing mine at rapid speed.

  “Can you please leave?” I force out, hollow and emotionless.

  All demented humor squeezes out of the room like a deflated balloon.

  I feel his frown burning against the side of my face, like he can’t possibly believe what he said hurt. I may be their plaything, but I’m still goddamn human. I have feelings. I have a heart that needs tending and a soul that needs gluing.

  He sighs, beginning, “Ari, I—fuck …”

  Being a dick is his kill switch when things don’t go according to plan. I see that now. But while that may be the case, I don’t deserve any of this. I’m not the person that sold myself to slavery. From the get-go, they knew what I thought about this arrangement. My feelings aren’t new—I loathe everything about this.

  But to have my arousal thrown back in my face, when for so long that’s what they wanted in the first place, is like being KO’d in a street fight.

  “Just go.” Tears burn at the back of my eyes as I tighten my arms around my mid-section. That familiar burn spreads
through my throat and nose, and I know any moment the waterworks are going to come. I don’t want, nor need, him here for that. “Please. I’d like to be alone right now.”

  I can’t be worried about anything bothering him at this point. Not with the way his words just shredded me open. Knowing my luck, I didn’t give him the correct reaction he was looking for. It could be a whole mess of things. However, right now, the only thing I know for a fact is that Dorran is turning out to be so much crueler than I could have possibly imagined.

  I need him away from me; his toxicity and nastiness.

  He didn’t hit me physically, where I could potentially heal from the injury. He hit me within—a place I’m still just as fucked up over as I was on the day my mother left and I lost a piece of myself forever.

  CHAPTER 3

  Three Years Earlier …

  The wind bites through my thin, black suede parka, as I numbly watch my mother’s casket lower into the ground. I am nothing more than a whirlwind of emotions, feelings I can’t seem to ascertain.

  My body burns with anger. Yet, to the touch, it’s as cold as ice. I can even feel little pinpricks dot along the surface of my exposed skin when I remember to blow into my hands and warm them up.

  My heart feels numb and frozen, and has since the moment I discovered she’d passed away. But I’m still here. Alive. Blood still runs through my veins, and the traitorous organ in my chest thuds on autopilot.

  Frozen—what a perfect analogy. Ever since my mother took her last breath, I’ve been stuck, frozen, never to thaw again.

  A sense of despair culminates in my bones. I wonder what I’ll do now … hell, do I even care? Now that my mother won’t be with me, watching as I grow and thrive, I can’t bring myself to ponder over the many possibilities of a future I may have.

  Arabella Rachel Nikohls is—was—the only person on this planet that truly cared for me. Not like my father, who pretends just to save face with all his creepy friends.

  Fuck him. He’s not even here. Just the thought of that man pisses me off more than anything. The only time he tries to … Ugh, just forget it. He only does that when he wants something.

  This is the one moment in my life that I need him the most and he’s not even here. Figures. Not that it should surprise me, because this isn’t the first time, Xavier Shawn Nikohls, stepped out and forgot he had a daughter to take care of.

  Hell, this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten he has an entire family that requires his protection period. I can’t even count on my hands how many times he’s deserted us.

  No, he remembers quite perfectly that he has a family, but getting him to care is a whole other story.

  The wind burns my cheeks after each thick, salty tear runs down my face. A hiccupping sob sticks in my throat as I watch her casket jolt, knocking against the dirt underneath. “Fucking be careful, dipshit, that’s my mother,” I chastise the two men. Both of which look ashamed to have allowed that to happen.

  “Our apologies, ma’am,” one says, while the other glares daggers in my direction. I’d really like to know what his fucking problem is. He’s been staring at me ever since I got here, scanning me up and down like I’m some weird science project.

  I stare at him for a few moments, putting on my best resting bitch face. Soon, he gets the drift and goes back to work, this time a little more carefully.

  “Who’s gonna mean mug those sissy ass-kissers that walk around town? Who’s gonna take up for me when Dad’s had too much to drink? Who’s gonna be … here?” I say out loud, not even caring there’s ears within hearing distance. My life is my life, and I’m not about to make excuses for it now.

  The sound of frost covered grass crunching alerts me to someone’s presence. I was wondering how long it would take him to show up. This is his wife, after all. There may not be the coupling scent of whiskey in the air, but it has to be my father coming to pay his last respects.

  Just then my hope rises.

  I force a small smile, then turn around. About time you show up and say goodbye to your wife, asshole. That’s what I really want to say, because he freaking deserves it. However, I know that right now is not the time for petty arguments. Not when I’m laying my mother to rest, never to see her again.

  The moment I catch a glimpse at who it is, all that false hope sinks to the pit of my stomach. Until this instant, I didn’t even know how high that sense of hope had climbed. But now, with a new, hollow wound piercing the dead organ in my chest, I know, deep down, that I was searching for him to care … even if it was a little.

  Except, the person standing in front of me is not my father. It’s Trevor.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice catches at the end, swirling with tumultuous emotions.

  “I can’t let you go through this alone,” he says, closing the distance between us and stopping by my side.

  With a sigh, I turn back toward my mother’s grave, spiffed. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Cali or something?”

  From the corner of my eye, I see him grimace. But instead of making it a big deal, he doesn’t even touch that question, instead, asking one of his own.

  “A guy can’t be here for his girlfriend?” I can’t help it, I scoff. It’d be the first time in a while.

  Trevor and I haven’t seen each other in weeks. Seriously. We went from being together every single day, sometimes spending the night together, to him leaving and staying gone. He never said goodbye—at least not properly. All he said was that he had business in California that he couldn’t miss.

  I know he’s still working for that asshole. You can’t get away from someone like that, unless you have a very good reason. Me losing a piece of myself isn’t a good reason, I suppose, even if that bastard he works for is the reason for all my pain.

  If Trevor had tried anything, his boss would have gutted him. There’s not much the old bag can do to me that he hasn’t already done. He could probably kill me, but then again, that would be a blessing in my fucked up life.

  The only way Trevor will ever get away from that devil is if he ghosts everyone. Not just the guys connected to that man, but I mean everyone. And there’s no way he can do that to me. He’d essentially be leaving me to clean up a mess I don’t even know how to navigate.

  Even still, he went for business he still won’t tell me about. No matter how many times he texted me, letting me know how his day went (all of his messages went unanswered), he never told me what he was doing. When I tried to ask what this trip consisted of, before he left, all he did was kiss my temple and told me not to worry about it. That he was ‘handling it’ or whatever the fuck that means.

  Handling what? What the fuck could that old sack want from him now?

  The point is, when I needed him most, he wasn’t here. Just like my father. He may not have been out drinking, doing drugs, and having orgies (yes, that’s happened quite a bit with my father), it doesn’t mean Trevor’s any less off the hook when it comes to me.

  I still had to go through the pain and horror of waking up to my mother cold, blue, and not breathing. I was the one that had to give her CPR until the paramedics arrived, because I am the only person who signed her out of the hospital, making me medically responsible for her. I had to go through my own body-crippling pain, as what felt like knife wounds attacked my mid-section, standing by as the paramedics carted her away.

  Imagine it. I’m sure you can’t, but just humor me for a second.

  Just picture having to pry your mother’s freezing hard lips apart, so you could ‘breathe’ air into a body that’s no longer breathing.

  Or how about pumping a chest with the palms of your hands and it not moving because rigor mortis had already set in.

  Can you—seriously, can you imagine it?

  That’s what I thought.

  You can’t.

  And I hope to God, you never have to. It steals a piece of your soul, knowing the person you’re closest to in this world is no longer here with you. The soul my mo
ther carefully stitched back together when that monster branded me, fractured even worse than before. At least, when he burned my body, I was still alive. My mother isn’t. I’ll never see her again.

  I don’t care that at the end she was different—her voice, face, and the feel of her. I didn’t care, because it was my mother lying in that bed, unable to talk and communicate. I could till feel her love, but it was muted and kept growing fainter and fainter the longer she laid in that bed.

  Now, I don’t fee it at all. I’m alone, once more, with the knowledge that I will have no one else to lean on. Sooner or later, everyone will be gone, and I’ll be left by myself.

  The shitty thing is … all it took was four hours. Four. At least, that’s what the coroner stated in the examination he did on her.

  I went to sleep in the chair next to her bed, only to wake up in time for her medication at five in the morning. In between the time I closed my eyes and the time I reopened them, she had passed away.

  Right. Next. To. Me.

  I was supposed to be the person to protect her and care for her.

  It was my job, and I screwed it up.

  “Now really isn’t the time, Trevor,” I grit out, staring unseeingly into the six-foot deep cavern of dirt and muck. The only thing I see when I look at that hole is love and failure.

  Love being the endless supply I had for my mother, and failure because I let her die on my watch.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?” Trevor, ever the optimistic one, states.

  Trevor, the know-it-all.

  Trevor, the asshole that believes the trash spewing from his mouth.

  Such a goddamn child.

  “You don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him peering down at me with a pensive look on his face. There’s so much pain and suffering in his gaze it nearly steals my breath. He doesn’t know what it feels like to lose a parent, because both of his are at home, enjoying the air that still fills their lungs.