Angry God

I wanted him to feel like someone had clawed his soul out and dumped it onto the floor, left for the throng to step on with each laugh, taunt, and hoot.

I turned my face to my enemy, businesslike.

“Told you there would be consequences. You let Arabella give you head in front of everyone the last day of school. You flew to Indiana for your neighbor’s proposal, taking her with you, knowing word would spread and get to me, that I would know you took my bully, my tormentor, with you. Then you brought her here. And now she is having an affair with my father—my only family, aside from Poppy and Harry. That really did it, Vaughn. You play with fire, you get burned.”

God or not.

I wanted to awaken something in him, something human and feral and shameful. Need. Carnal lust.

He was a virgin, even if he wouldn’t explicitly admit it. And I didn’t know why, but sex disgusted him. Intimacy frightened him. Yet for some insane, screwed-up reason, I wanted him to be my first. I knew Vaughn was incapable of falling in love, but I wanted to steal pieces of him. His time. His talent. His words. His smiles. And yes, his virginity, too. I was a thief of everything Vaughn Spencer.

He was stunningly untouchable. A demi-god. Unreal.

“You were weak,” Vaughn sneered, his voice dry and calm, his biceps bulging beside his head, highlighting his proud posture, even in this position. “I made you strong. I made you resilient. I made you one of us. Now you take no one’s bullshit—not even mine. All in the span of one year. By the time I was done, you no longer needed the black hair and Goth bullshit. Everyone feared and respected you. I took away from my power and gave it to you, because every time you disrespected me, challenged me, it weakened me. I worked hard so you’d stand up for yourself. I saved you, Astalis, and not for the first time.”

There was a beat of silence.

What did he mean? When else had he saved me?

I knew he actually believed his backward logic, that every time he was cruel or offhand with me, he excused it by thinking he was toughening me up.

I smiled. “Well, Master, I think you did too good a job. Turns out I, too, am partial to public sex displays.”

“We weren’t together then,” he snapped before I’d managed to pronounce the last vowel.

He was right. We weren’t. But I’d still felt like he belonged to me no less than he’d claimed I belonged to him.

“We aren’t together now,” I retorted.

He laughed, like this was all a big joke. “Get real.”

“Now’s not the time to get real. Now’s the time to get even.”

With that, I grabbed Pope’s face and brought it to mine. Our breaths mingled, sweet and warm. His arm circled my waist, his fingers fanning in mock possessiveness over my lower back. His other arm snaked between us, cupping my face.

“No,” Vaughn growled from the bed, his pitch feral.

Pope put his lips to mine, kissing me softly, slipping his tongue into my mouth at an angle Vaughn could see.

Truly, the hottest thing about our kiss was knowing he was watching—not that Pope wasn’t a good kisser, but I barely felt his presence in the room. Revenge was sweet and pungent, and it made me throb between my legs.

I’d nearly died watching Arabella service Vaughn. But I couldn’t deny, a part of it had turned me on, too.

“Don’t you dare fucking take this where I think you’re about to, Good Girl. I will kill your little prodigy friend and won’t even bother to leave ashes for his family to scatter around his hometown of Cuntville.”

It broke my heart that until this day, Vaughn hadn’t experienced true, raw jealousy. He thought he hated me, but he couldn’t let me go. He always sought me out. It drove him crazy when I was away, and annoyed the hell out of him when I was too close. His feelings toward me had a word, and I was going to teach him. Even if it was the last thing I did.

Even if I could never love him back.

My kiss with Raff deepened, and as it did, I rolled my black nightgown up so my matching lacy knickers were exposed. I normally went for the elastic, cotton ones—the comfy option—but I wanted to taunt Vaughn. I heard the handcuffs clinking against the metal bars, the scrape of the bed moving an inch toward us, then another inch. I smiled into my kiss with Raff.

“I’m going to smoke this bitch to the goddamn ground. You know I will,” Vaughn hissed, his eyes two slits of ice. “Take a step back right now, and I’ll end this with two shiners and a warning. Let me save you from yourself, Pope, because right now? You’re fucking yourself more than you’re about to do her.”