Page 39 of The Darkest Note

Were rich people always so messed up?

Either way, Blondie has nothing to worry about. There is no way I’meverjoining their Kings cult. In fact, I find the way they worship and fawn over Dutch absolutely disgusting. Do they realize who they’re rushing to please? Do they know how black his heart is?

Ridiculous.

But if they want him, then they deserve him.

Dutch lifts a hand and crooks his finger at me.

My eyebrow arches.

He nods and then lounges back, like a king on his throne, waiting patiently for me to obey his command.

I scowl, flip him off, and turn around. My steps sink into the grass as I march toward the cafeteria.

I’ll spend the rest of lunch practicing piano and trying to forget that Dutch Cross exists. That’s the only way I’ll survive the rest of this crap-tastic day.

CHAPTERNINE

DUTCH

Cadence Cooper has the freakinggutsto ignore me.

Me.

As if she didn’t see me beckoning her from across the courtyard. As if those pretty brown eyes of hers didn’t recognize what the gesture meant.

“Ooh.” Zane taunts me under his breath. “It looks like you haven’t broken your toy hard enough, bro.”

Finn arches an eyebrow at me. “Maybe you’re losing your touch.”

“It may take some time, but she’s going to learn,” I say darkly.

Zane chuckles.

I slide away from the table when a pair of manicured hands latch around my bicep.

Christa looks up at me with her bright blue eyes and the bee-stung lips she got for her sixteenth birthday. Over the summer, she did even more to them. If she keeps going like this, she’ll look like an inflatable doll by the time she’s thirty.

I shake her off. “Don’t touch me.”

“Let me handle her.” Christa bats thick eyelashes. With a strong gust of wind, those things are going to rip off and go sailing into a tree. “Did you see the little message I left on her locker?”

I wondered who kept painting ‘slut’ on Cadence’s locker with lipstick. It wasn’t any of us.

“I’ll handle her myself,” I growl, not sure why I’m annoyed by Christa’s intervention.

The needy little prick pouts and edges up against me. Her hands sliding down the front of my khakis, she whispers hotly, “Forget the trash. She doesn’t matter anyway.”

My body responds to her not-so-subtle invitation. How could it not? Christa’s grabbing a handful. More than a handful.

She laughs deeply in my ear. “Let’s do something fun instead.”

I’m interested.

But not right now.

Even if I were to drag Christa to the parking lot, yank her on top of me and screw her senseless, it wouldn’t wash the taste of Brahm’s insolence from my mouth.