Hate Me Like You Do, page 3
The smooth pads of his fingers slide over sensitive skin.
Okay, this is nice. A little slow and a little sloppy. Not what I'm used to seeing, but it's actually really nice.
Shit, that's how someone describes a new fast food joint, not sex.
It doesn't matter.
His hands are so very soft. See, this is what a rich boy’s hands should feel like. Not like the rough hands of Reed.
Reed would feel good. His touch always feels good. Or Landon. He'd take care of me just like he always does.
A breathy sigh shakes from my lungs with that thought and Damon hums an arrogant laugh as if he's responsible for my quiet moans rather than my overactive imagination.
I squeeze my eyes shut trying not to think of anyone at all. Trying not to let my mind wander to Knox, or Landon, or Reed and all the ways I’ve wanted them to touch me. I just want to be here. I want to be in the now.
Damon is nice! He is! This is what I want.
A small moan escapes my lips as he tugs gently then drops his face down to trail some more drenching wet kisses even lower. Just before he tries to let his tongue lap out against my stomach one more time my ears perk to the sound of footsteps and chatter.
Oh no.
There isn’t time for me to cover up or time to push Damon off of me, no time to play it off as if he really was here to help me with something.
There. Is. No. Time.
The door bursts open, and the laughter that had begun abruptly stops. Reed, Landon, and Knox stand staring with various looks of shock. Knox is the first to pull himself back together and his jaw clenches tightly.
“Fuck.” Damon rolls off of me and stands up ready to make a run for it, bulge on full display beneath his jogger pants.
It’s smaller than Reed’s, I think with a sigh.
I can’t meet their gazes as I frantically pull my bra back over my chest and lunge for my shirt. Though I can’t tell if any of them are actually looking at me now or if they’re still staring a hole right through Damon’s head.
With the single ounce of courage I have I look up at them. Knox is red in the face, Landon looks utterly appalled, and Reed’s eyes are locked on mine.
“Damon fucking Sienna,” Reed growls. “What the fuck are you doing in this room?”
Damon holds up his hands in defense. “She was begging for it. She told me you were all gone and so much shit about wanting her bed rocked.”
“Practice ended early today,” Knox says in a hushed, eerily calm tone. A tone that sends a shiver down my spine with cold fear.
I pull my shirt over my head with shaky hands. I sure as hell won't have time to lose my virginity before school starts now.
The V-card mission has been sadly postponed and I'm not sure if it'll ever happen now.
“Get out of my house.” Knox lifts his violent attention to his neighbor but his words are spoken so rationally, so controlled.
Damon doesn’t fight it, doesn't care to argue or give me another glance. He quickly slides past the three guys, trying to keep as much distance as he can as he goes, not that Landon lets him, jarring his shoulder into him as he maintains raging eye contact the entire time.
Then they turn on me. And I feel like a child being scolded by her parents.
That hasn’t happened to me before. My mother was always too high to care what I actually did.
Is this what someone’s disappointment feels like? I've never been on the receiving end before.
“Damon fucking Sienna. That's what gets you off?” Reed spits, his voice exasperated.
“Were you going to have sex? In Knox’s bed?” Landon's lip has been curled back, his dark eyes narrowed behind his sleek glasses since the very moment he made the unfortunate mistake of stepping foot in this room.
I swallow. Technically it’s my bed too. “What does it matter what I planned on doing? It couldn’t be any worse than what I’ve seen of the three of you this summer. Don’t think I forgot about the twin redheads who didn’t even speak English. You literally couldn’t even talk to them and you still had sex with them, Reed.”
Reed runs his hands through his hair, still watching me with complete outrage. In a whisper he says, “You were going to lose your virginity to Damon fucking Sienna.”
“Why do you keep saying his name like that?” I drag my hands down my face. This is bad. This is so unbelievably bad.
“Answer the question.” Knox glares, cold cutting tone still slicing through his rasping words.
Even with his calm aggression his voice still makes me shiver.
“That’s none of your business.”
“It’s my bed. It’s my house. It’s my business. You are my business, Vi.”
“We’re friends. You don’t own me.” I try and fail to keep the wave of emotion out of my voice but it tremors hard.
I glare and as I try to claim my ground, something in the way Knox looks at me changes.
I can’t explain it at all. It’s the deadliest gleam of demented control in his dark depthless eyes.
“Yeah, well, we don’t owe you either. Your days of handouts are over, Venereal Violet.” Knox practically growls at me.
My heart and stomach free fall all at once at the cruelty in his eyes, his stance, his pointed words.
That name. That God awful name that I confided in them with, stings now more than it ever did when my ex used it. Never did I think that those words could cut me deeper than they do now.
“What does that even mean?” My voice raises.
“Good luck on your first day tomorrow,” Reed says with the sharp blade of anger behind his words.
Knox’s smirk is the last thing I see before the group disappears down the hall to leave my confused, still a virgin ass, alone to wallow in anger and confusion.
Maybe I’m just now seeing the real them.
Maybe I never knew them at all.
It was all a fake.
Three
Dee
Getting going this morning is tough to say the least. Warm sunshine enters through the small slit in between the ivory curtains. Rays of the brilliant light give Reed’s six pack abs their own spotlight like God is blessing each and every muscle. It’s more like an eight pack.
Not like I’ve counted each perfect square or anything….
I don’t stare at him though. I glare.
Beside him the wailing alarm on his phone continues to go off. Football practice before school. It sounds like hell but he seems to love it.
It’s his future.
Slowly he turns to me, his face solemn and expressionless. An odd look on his normally cheerful features.
“Turn that off,” I mumble from my spot underneath my thick tangle of blankets. My eyes are probably the only thing he can see from the cocoon I’ve made for myself.
Knox never came to bed last night. Well, he never came to our bed. I wandered the house when I couldn’t sleep only to find him snoring on the couch. His bed never felt so cold and so ridiculously big before. I haven't slept without him since the first week I stayed here.
My stomach drops with the reminder of what happened yesterday.
Right. The monumental mess I made. How could I forget.
Reed’s alarm keeps blaring. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing for one more minute of sleep. Then the noise gets louder, approaching with quiet footsteps. With a crack of an eye, I watch Reed set his phone on the nightstand beside my bed.
Completely. Naked.
I hate him.
“Rise and shine,” he whispers, brushing my hair off my forehead, his dick ridiculously hard in the space between us. Why is every part of him big? And why am I still looking?
“I don’t have football practice. I don’t need to be awake yet.” I roll, flopping a puffy pillow over my face.
A shuttering cold covers my body as he rips the thick blankets off of me and wraps them around his lean waist. I curl into myself watching him walk right out of the room, the obnoxious alarm sounding in his obnoxious wake.
“It’s nothing I haven't seen before,” I yell after him.
Reed pokes his head back into the room, eyes wild. “And nothing you’ll ever get to touch after that stunt you pulled yesterday, Dee.”
Stunt. Is that what we are calling it now? How about my utter humiliation and disappointment?
The tone of how he says Dee still gets me. That long drawn out sound of the vowels is so different than the first time he called me that.
“Violet sounds too sweet. Too innocent. I can’t even say it without happiness infecting me. I’ll call you Dee.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, dumbass.” I tossed the pillow at him. He easily batted it away.
Asshole and his athletic abilities.
“Sure it does. Demure. Dee.”
Dee. It’s definitely better than a lot of names I’ve been called.
A harsh pain twists my stomach with the cruel words they said yesterday still stumbling through my thoughts.
“Also if you want a ride to school this morning, get fucking moving.”
Shit. A real threat.
Eventually I work up the strength to get out of bed. Steam rolls out from under the door of the bathroom Reed is likely taking a shower in, so I continue to the next down the hall. This house is so big it has seven bathrooms. My old house didn’t even have seven rooms in general.
Who the hell needs seven bathrooms? I don't even pee seven times in a day, what could Knox's father possibly need with this many toilets?
A door opens just as I’m about to walk past it and Landon bumps into me. His dark eyes behind his black glasses narrow on me. My face hovers near his hard chest but he nudges me away. “Come to check me out like you did Reed this morning?”
They are such gossips. And I wasn’t ‘checking him out’, Reed was practically throwing it in my face. Seems someone's been whispering about me when I'm not around though.
The idea of what else they must have said stabs insecurities through my stomach.
“Did everyone wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” I smirk at him but it dissolves away so fast the happiness never even registers in my mind.
No response. He walks away. Pure steel tenses his smooth bare back as he walks down the quiet white hall without a glance my way.
Silence clouds the rest of my morning. Bitter stares, a soundless breakfast. Since this summer, I’ve never had a single quiet moment, I always thought getting some shade of the silent treatment would be peaceful.
I was incredibly wrong.
But I find myself talking to three stone walls, who, at best, respond with a grunt. Clearly, the least they have spoken since I arrived.
Reed for one doesn't know how to shut up most days. This...all of this feels wrong. The atmosphere of this morning lays sickly at the bottom of my stomach, but I know it’ll pass.
The grunts are better than the disgusted stares though. I almost wish they wouldn't look at me at all. Seeing your best friends look so appalled by your mere existence causes a type of suffocating anxiety to strangle through every part of your chest.
Sadly, my morning doesn't get better when I arrive at school.
I thought since this school has uniforms, that since I’m wearing the same navy skirt and white shirt as all the other girls here, I might blend in. Yet, I don’t. Pursing my lips I ignore all the piercing glances, both good and bad.
For fuck’s sake, you’d think I have a dick drawn across my forehead to get this kind of attention.
Nothing feels like summer anymore. The smell of sunscreen and swimming pools is replaced by chemical cleaners and books. Chatter fills the halls painted in monotone colors, the students showing off their tans and catching up with one another.
I pass and they take turns gawking. They either don’t get new students often or my messy blonde hair screams middle class.
Or both.
Paper crinkles in my hand as I glance at my schedule and personal information to double check my locker number. Two Thirteen. I glance over at the lockers near me, narrowing my eyes in an attempt to hunt down my number.
Here I get my own locker unlike public school where I would share with someone. They’re all perfect and painted without scribbles across them.
Damn. I feel rich. Or more like a poor kid playing rich but I’ll take it. Even if I only have twenty dollars to my name. Well, did have twenty dollars. Currently my wallet sits at a whopping zero dollars and zero cents.
One glance back down at my paper and I let out a small yelp as my shoulder collides with someone else. An apology already forms on my lips as I look up. But I don’t let it out. Not when I see the three tall girls snickering at me as they pass.
Cool. Totally fine. Every school has their own set of bitchy girls. Apparently, I just met them.
With my chin held high I continue to my locker. I pretend I don’t notice Knox, Landon, and Reed across the hall gathered together. Watching me.
They are still mad at me after all. They made that incredibly clear this morning when I had gotten myself ready just for them to peel out of the driveway without me.
Jokes on their pretentious asses because I’m no stranger to public transport. I needed to break in these ugly white loafers anyway. And it was nice weather. And stuff...
Today can only get better from here right?
Wrong. I’m so wrong.
The hinges whine as I open the locker door and slip off my backpack. I wish I could slip off this school’s hideous thick blazer too. Who wants to wear a jacket in the middle of the summer? No one. This school though has us in these awful navy pleated skirts and blazers all year round apparently.
Before I can settle my books into my space I notice a piece of paper, likely left behind by the previous owner, I guess. The paper is soft, as if it was fiddled with for a long time, folded over and over and over again. Gently, I open it up.
Try not to join your rotten mother in prison.
The words are written over what looks like many attempts at an insult that have been erased, written, then erased again. As if they couldn’t decide between the many bad things they wanted to say about my mother of the year.
I chuckle to myself because I’m nothing like my mom. I’m everything my mom isn’t. It’s a promise I made to myself long ago and I made sure that I never broke it. I get good grades, I’m still a virgin (not for lack of trying), I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs… you get the point.
Violet Demure is a good girl. I've put my every effort into making sure of that.
I want to crumple the note up and throw it down the hall but I find myself instead twisting to look around. To scan the room until my eyes lock on Knox, Landon, and Reed.
I swallow because my three roommates are so goddamn beautiful. How can I hate and love them so much?
They make it easy though. They make it easy to hate them. And they make it just as easy to fall in love with them.
Landon keeps piercing me with his amber eyes as he stares over his shoulder at me while the other two chat up a couple girls with their backs facing my way.
Reed is all cocky confidence. Captain of the football team will do that. He runs a hand through his short blonde hair, sporting an effortless smile. Knox looks bored next to him. Knox doesn’t need to do any of the talking when Reed always has something to say. And he always has something to say.
On my right, a blonde, all boobs and big hair, opens up the locker next to mine. She seems familiar and I pause when I meet her gaze. She gives me a polite smile then begins applying some chapstick in the mirror just inside the door.
I smile back.
See, Violet? It’s not that bad, you could make a friend yet.
In my peripheral I watch Knox glance my way and then laugh that low humming sound of amusement. I love his laughter. It's the one carefree thing about him. But not now. This laughter is a cruel, petty laugh that rumbles straight down to my anxiety filled stomach.
Knox leans down to whisper in one of the girl's ears, lips brushing close enough to make her shiver. Her long neck throws back when she giggles.
And then she heads my way.
Shit.
I pretend not to notice and quietly pull my new books from my bag and put them away.
The girl stops to whisper to the blonde next to me. My ears strain but I can’t catch what’s so funny.
“Wow,” the girl next to me says slowly, dragging out the word like it’s inflated with too many vowels. She closes her locker with a clank and turns toward me. She waves off the girl Knox sent over and extends her hand to me. This time her smile isn’t so polite. It's a sneer really. “I’m Kylie Barth.”
Shit.
Kylie Barth. Knox’s most recent play thing. I’ve never seen her face fully. Not when she isn't in the middle of an orgasm anyway. Now, here she is. She’s beautiful: smooth features, white teeth, perfect body. I can see why Knox is attracted to her.
“I’m Violet.” I take her hand gently and give it a cautious shake.
Hastily, she takes my hand and pulls me closer to her, making my feet stumble against the shining tiles. Something angry flashes in her pure green eyes.
“I know who you are. I hear you’re this year’s trash trophy.” Her words are quiet but harsh in my ears. “Just because you’re sleeping in Knox’s bed doesn’t mean he’s with you. No one’s ever with him. Know your place, Venereal Violet.”
That nasty feeling in my abdomen is starting to be a permanent pain.
He told her that name? He told her my biggest insecurity?
And suddenly my stomach feels like it’s dropping completely out of my body. Some form of adrenaline pulses through me as my thoughts race.
I pull away from Kylie, my cheeks stinging red, somewhere between anger and embarrassment. “It’s not like that. I’m not with him. I’m– I’m not even friends with him. His dad was friends–” actually more likely fuck buddies, “with my mom. He’s been nice enough to let me stay for the year.”
“Neither Knox nor his father knows how to be nice unless they're getting something in return.” She pauses, then hisses, “Know. Your. Place.”
