Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
“Uh … hi?” he says.
I clear my throat. “Sorry, I have an … appointment with Silas.” I rub my lips together. “I’m Ivy. I don’t know if he told you?”
He just looks amused. “Another one, huh?”
“Another what?”
He grips my arm and pulls me inside, closing the door before I can even say a word.
“He really doesn’t know how to quit,” the guy says, snorting. “It’s like he can go on for days.”
I’m still confused what this is about. I hope it’s not what I think it is.
The guy sticks out his hand. “Elliot Fletcher.”
I frown. “Fletcher? You’re Max’s brother?
He pushes up his glasses. “Oh, you know Max?”
“We’re friends,” I lie. I’m not sure exactly what we are, but that’s the least of my concerns right now.
“Interesting.” He crosses his arms, looking at me like he’s onto something. “You’re that new girl, right? Max talked about you, but I didn’t think Silas would steal you from under his nose.”
“Max told you about me?”
He takes my coat and hangs it. “Max talks. And talks. And talks.”
I snort. “Sounds like him.”
“It is what it is.” He winks. “So … two boys wrapped around your finger, huh? I won’t tell, but I do love the drama.”
“Oh, I’m not into them,” I say, trying to shake off the rumors before they start.
His brows furrow. “Really? Because you said you were here for Silas.”
“So?”
“He only invites girls over he intends to fuck.”
My pupils dilate.
He walks off through the hallway while it feels like someone just knocked the air out of my lungs. “He’s upstairs, toward—”
“I know where his room is,” I interject.
“Good luck.”
He heads into the kitchen while I walk up the creaking steps of the Skull and Serpent Society, the dark walls feeling like they’re slowly entrapping me the closer I get to his room, where music is being blasted. I can smell the weed from the other end of the hallway, and it makes me cough.
Before I knock on the door, I take a deep breath.
This is it. No way back now. But I’m here, as told.
My nostrils flare and twitch as I force my hand up and knock.
The music in the room stops abruptly, and it makes my heart rate shoot through the roof.
“Come in.”
Silas’s unhinged voice makes goose bumps spread on my skin.
I step inside and search until I find him in a black pair of cargo pants and a white shirt sprawled on the black velvety couch, smoking pot.
A smile spreads from ear to ear on his face, causing the heart tattoo underneath his eye to wrinkle, but it abruptly disappears within seconds. “Good. Now close the door.”
I’m already irritated as hell as I kick it closed with my foot under his watchful gaze.
“Come here,” he says.
I walk closer to the table in front of the couch and stop, folding my arms.
“I was wondering if you’d show up.” He tilts his head, his short hair falling over his sunken-in eyes. “It would’ve been so fucking fun to drag you out of your hiding place myself.”
More goose bumps erupt on my skin at the reminder of what he and Heath did the other night in Priory Forest. “Too bad for you.”
He narrows his eyes, and his lip quirks up. “I would’ve made you enjoy it.”
Made me.
That’s what he likes. Control.
Fucking psycho.
He holds out the marijuana. “Want a drag?”
“No thanks.”
“You obviously need it.”
“I’m fine,” I grit.
His eyes narrow, and he looks amused by my effort to keep my shit together. “Are you?”
I swallow back the lump in my throat. “What do you want from me?”
His brow rises, and he puts down the blunt. “Did you forget your fucking debt to me?”
He fishes a knife from his pocket, while his eyes nearly bore a hole into my head.
“I didn’t,” I say. “But you never told me why I had to be here at eight o’clock.”
THWACK!
The pointy end of the knife lands right between my feet.
He eyes something lying on the table in front of him—a black-and-white outfit with ruffled shoulders and a skirt that’s way too short for anyone, let alone me.
“Put that on.”
“What? That thing is way too short for me. No.”
He narrows his eyes. “You think that knife is the only one I have?” He flashes three more just from one of the other pockets in his cargo pants. “Put. It. On.”
Fuck him. He only wants to degrade me. What’s he going to do? Put me in ridiculous outfits and parade me around in front of his friends like some sort of toy he won?
But if I don’t agree … he’ll definitely make me.
Your debt isn’t nearly paid …
I can still hear the words singed into my head.
He won’t stop until he’s satisfied, and I’ve agreed.
Fuck.
I snatch the outfit off the table, judging it, and slowly but surely, my jaw drops. It’s a goddamn maid outfit you’d find at a kink shop.