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When I don’t answer, he huffs, snatching his hand back.

“Tell me you want my baby inside you.”

His request–the deep timbre of it–still throbs in my temples like a drum.

Three minutes later, we pull up to a house just on the border where East meets North, the tires squealing as Pace slams the brakes. It sends me jolting toward the dash and I catch myself with a grunt, knees snapping closed.

He throws the car into park, turning to me with a stony expression. “You don’t talk to anyone in there. You go where Lex tells you and wait for Wick.” When all I do is stare out at the yard, filled with drunk co-eds and discarded hockey gear, he grabs my chin, yanking my gaze to his. “Tell me you understand.”

Fifteen minutes ago, I was sound asleep, and now I’m at some hockey player’s kegger with my underwear hanging off an ankle and a throbbing pussy. I don’t understandanything. “I understand,” I say, eager to climb out of the car.

When I do, flinging my panties onto the floorboard, I slam the door and start for the steps, unsurprised to see Lex’s imposing figure on the porch, a bottle of cheap beer hanging from his fingers. His hair is pulled back into that same knot, and the line of his shoulders is tense, eyes two vacant blots of shadow from the dim cast of string lights above him.

The moment I reach the top steps, he’s pushing a palm into my lower back, sweeping me through the doorway. “We’ll make it quick,” he says, voice quiet but razor-sharp. “Empty his balls long enough for me and Pace to get him out of here.”

The house is packed. Despite the chill I’d come in from, the air inside is hot and stifling. A group of sweaty PNZ members have commandeered the dining room table, and they’re using it for some bastardized version of beer pong that involves a hockey puck and a cluster of pots and pans. Grimacing, I cover my nose at the smell of beer and armpit, and tug down my skirt as Lex leads me past them, into a living room that’s lit only with colorful beams of skittering globe lights.

It doesn’t take me long to find Wicker in the writhing mass of bodies. Naturally, he’s the star of the show, holding a beer aloft with one hand while the other clasps a dark-skinned girl around the shoulders. He’s shirtless, jeans slung so low around his hips that I can see the dimples above his ass cheeks. The knife sheath affixed to his belt loop droops precariously low as he grinds into his partner’s ass. When he turns, another girl tugging him by the neck, I see the pair of sunglasses perched askew on his nose. He grabs onto her hips as she spins to nestle up against his chest, her ass bumping against his crotch. His lips are parted, chest jerking with shallow pants of breath, and he’s staring right down her chest, mouth moving against her ear.

All she’s wearing is a thin, sheer bra and cut-off shorts.

The whole room reeks of lust, because her and Wicker aren’t the only half-naked people here. There are about seven other guys, a couple of them down to their boxer briefs, and one of them is on a couch that’s been pushed into the corner. He’s openly, blatantly being fucked by a brunette who’s bouncing in his lap.

Over by the sound system, a group of similarly bra-clad girls is laughing, watching their friend as she rolls her hips into Wicker’s pelvis. It’s clear they’re waiting for a turn, sharing eager whispers with each other as they watch.

And I hate them.

God, I hate them.

I hate them so fiercely that my fingernails dig painful crescents into my palms, becausethey know. They know Wicker Ashby is off limits to any other woman in Forsyth, and they see it as a challenge. A game. Not only that, but it’s a game they’ve already lost, because at least three of the girls are immediately recognizable.

Lakshmi, Gina, and Heather.

I’m here because ofthem. Because the only way they can get back at me is through seeing Wicker fail, and he looks right on the edge of not caring.

“Fuck,” Lex mutters as he watches the girl–Lakshmi–move against his brother. One glance into Lex’s amber eyes tells me Wicker isn’t the only man in this room she’s got by the balls. He gestures limply to her. “Well, that’s just fucking great. He’s getting dry humped by the walking epitome of a come shot. I don’t suppose you learned anything about seducing a man while being West End’s little pet virgin, did you?” He glances at me, the sarcasm visible in his flat stare. “Of course not.” Mouth pressed into a thin line, he rolls his eyes. “Wait here. I’ll go–”

His words clip off when I spin on my heel, marching back the way we came. I feel him reaching for me belatedly, his fingers barely catching on my sweater as I fling him off.

The PNZ members at the dining room table all freeze when I approach it, but I’m gone as fast as I arrived, swiping the handle of a frying pan, and stride back toward the living room. Lex lets out a harsh, “What–” as I pass him, but I ignore it. I see Wicker notice me in my periphery, his head rising to track my approach.

But I walk right past him.

I walk past Lakshmi.

I walk past Gina.

I walk past the guy getting ridden on the couch.

I’ve been around the cutsluts long enough to know how to spot a leader of a pack. I felt it that first afternoon when all of us were preparing for the ball, and I see it in her now. I make a beeline to the corner by the sound system, Heather’s smoky-eyed gaze locking onto mine from across the room. Her lips spread into a slow, knowing grin and she tips her chin up, her eyes sparking in bright satisfaction. When I’m close enough to hear her laugh, she parts her lips to speak.

She never gets the chance.

I swing the frying pan with all my strength, whacking it right into her jaw. The girls around her all jolt with gasps, scattering like roaches as Heather hurtles back into the electronics, hands flailing wildly. The knock rattles the bones in my arm, and I grip the handle with both hands, swinging out again. This one slams right into her nose, acrunchaudible through the sudden crackle of the speakers dying.

Heather cries out wetly in the abrupt silence, and it’s strange. Back in West End, I never felt compelled to fight with the other girls. The idea of burying my knuckles into flesh and bone was always vaguely sickening to me.

Now, I just can’t seem to stop myself.