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I’m wearing one of my favorite soft yellow blouses and a pair of jeans. Nothing special, though my jeans highlight the curve of my ass—and they’reAdrian’s favorites. Mainly because he’s such a goddamn pro when it comes to flicking the button open, pulling on my zipper, and getting his fingers inside of my panties without any resistance.

Not from the jeans, and not from me.

He does so now, running two fingers on his left hand through my damp curls while keeping hold of my hair. His mouth drops to the side of my throat, sucking on it, tonguing it, all while his middle finger searches for the entrance to my pussy.

He finds it, and I groan even as I manage to grit out, “We can’t keep doing this.”

He chuckles against my neck. “Says fucking who?”

The entire Order of the Owed might have something to say about one of the golden boys of the next generation defiling an Offering ever since the beginning of senior year…

A year. A whole fucking year. Whenever we can sneak away, whenever I can convince myself that—like he’s eight instead of eighteen—he only picks on me because he likes me, I’m helpless to surrender to Adrian Heller.

I can’t let Desmond fuck me, not when I allowed Adrian to do it first. And he didn’t even have to start with any of that ‘just the tip’ shit. He wanted me to let him in, and I… I did.

Two months left, I think, as he fingerfucks me now, getting me ready for what I know is going to happen next. Just two moremonths to pretend that I own a tiny sliver of the riddle that is Adrian.

Because in two months? He’ll Claim his Offering, and it won’t be me.

The rank-and-file society members have their choice of the available Offerings. But the inner circle, Jack and his lackeys… Adrian, Dallas, and theirs… have to have the best. The pick of the litter, basically, and though these are all arranged marriages to keep the Order in power, Adrian’s Offering was told at the beginning of the year that he would be Claiming her at the end of it.

And since Adrian’s Offering is my best friend, Haven, of course I know. Just like how I know that she’d rather cut out her own tongue than ever use it to say ‘I do’ to a man who spent our entire teenage years fucking with me.

Before he started justfuckingme.

She wouldn’t care that I stupidly, ridiculously fell for my bully. Haven would be happy, and then maybe she could find an Owed that would suit her better. But Adrian… he’s the kingmaker, remember? Without a position close to the king, what is he? I know him. He’ll never go against the Order.

He’ll marry Haven. If not this year, then sometime in the next few. These trysts will be nothing but a memory… which is why I give myself over to him now as he takes his hand out of my pants long enough to start working my jeans down past my ass.

I can’t help it, though. As if I need to hear the truth more than he does, I tell Adrian, “Haven is your Offering.”

Especially when he’s touching me, when he’s inside of me, I know we can’t escape our fates. That doesn’t stop me from letting him do whatever he wants to me.

I’m still putty in his hands even as I remind him, “My best friend will be your wife. And I’ll belong to?—”

He tilts my head further back, nipping my bottom lip. “You belong to me, Loni.”

I don’t. Ican’t.

That’s not how our world works. I’ve accepted that for all of my seventeen years. One day, I’ll be a powerful man’s wife whether I love him or not. I’ll watch as Adrian’s cruelty only deepens without our secret trysts to tie us together. He’ll marry Haven.FuckHaven. It won’t matter that he was mine first, or that—deep down—I have to admit that I’ve been fooling myself all of senior year.

He’sneverbeen mine.

A leopard can’t change its spots. An asshole is an asshole, and his irrational desire to consider me his possession doesn’t change the fact that he’s bullied me since grade school. He’s made my life hell since middle school. In high school, only my future as an Offering keeps me from being a complete outcast… no thanks to Adrian Heller.

The same Adrian Heller who goes back to sucking on my neck, leaving another hickey I’ll have to hurry to hide…

And yet, I don’t tell him to stop. In fact, I arch my neck, giving him better access to my throat.

He rumbles in approval, his fingers sliding up my shirt, under my bra, kneading my boob now that he has my pants down. It’s a possessive gesture, one of undeniable ownership, and I try to forget the latest rumor I heard this afternoon before I arrived at the party.

The rumor that Desmond plans on Claiming me.

He didn’t tell me so. Part of me wonders if earlier was just a test. A way for Desmond to see if I was worthy of being his Offering.

Maybe I passed, but as Adrian switches his focus from my neck to my mouth, kissing me as if he can swallow any of mydenials, I have to admit that there’s only one boy that I’d Offer myself to.

But why do that when he already has me?