Page 110 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JOLIE

I vaguely registered the sound of Kara unlocking the door before Zach’s amused voice said, “Oh, what’s going on in here?”

He slipped quietly into the room with Bennett right behind him.

I’d left them both out in the lobby earlier to take care of their assigned tasks while I went to Noah: Zach had been on the phone with Marcus, and Bennett had tracked down Noah’s doctor like a bloodhound to get the latest on Noah’s condition.

By the time they joined us, I was snuggled up under the covers with Noah, tucked solidly into the little spoon position while he moved his dick leisurely inside of me, a gentle but firm hand wrapped around my throat.

Zach flopped into one of the cushy chairs near the bed, his dark eyes pinned on my face. “Princess, did you let the invalid sweet-talk you into putting out? Did Hargraves charm his way right into those sexy shorts you had on?”

“Mmm,” I hummed, closing my eyes and biting my lip as Noah slipped his free hand between my legs. “He’s hurt, Zach. And his fucking mom was just in here. I’m taking care of him.”

“She is,” Noah rumbled, his hot breath right next to my ear.

Bennett loomed at the end of the bed, arms crossed, disapproving look on his face, but those mossy eyes were heated as he watched Noah slowly wind me tighter and tighter. After a second, my words registered, and he barked, “Celine was here?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Noah huffed, his long fingers strumming my clit as he ground into me. “She came to whine, and Jojo and Kara tossed her out.”

“Good,” Bennett rasped. “Hurry up and make Jolie come. We have shit to discuss.”

“Fuck,” I whimpered. Noah had already brought me so close, and now that Bennett and Zach were here watching me with those eager, almost desperate eyes, I was about to implode in Noah’s arms.

Noah groaned. “You feel so fucking good, sweetheart. So good for me.”

“Goddamn, Princess, you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Zach purred.

“Give it to us, Angel. Now,” Bennett demanded.

Pleasure pulled me under, and I screamed into the pillow as Noah found his own release behind me with a long, satisfied groan into my shoulder.

Five minutes later, I was cleaned up, fully dressed, and curled up next to Noah as I ran my hands through his wavy golden hair.

Bennett had given me a stern look while adjusting himself in his pants, then took a seat next to Zach.

With all three of them here, I felt centered for the first time since the start of the paintball fiasco.

“Noah’s doctor will release him tonight around dinnertime,” Bennett told us. “We’ll go to class tomorrow morning as usual, and then we’ll move to Knight Tower for the weekend. I took the liberty of cancelling your office hours tomorrow afternoon,” he added, glancing at Noah.

“Much appreciated,” he murmured as he lazed in my lap, enjoying his head rub.

I looked at Zach. “And Marcus thinks we’ll be able to just waltz into Ferrero Tower on Saturday night?”

“Well, I don’t know about waltz ,” he replied with an amused grin, “but a Ferrero gala with about half the security usually required for that type of event is as good a time as any to pay my mom a visit.”

I sighed. Frankie’s sessions with Anderson had proved invaluable to our efforts in constructing our final move against Andrea, but I hated that Noah had to take a bullet for us to get there .

“You guys should go back to class,” Noah said halfheartedly. “I know you have crew practice today, sweetheart.”

I laughed. “Bennett and I are barely even on the team right now. We’re not going to regattas while people are trying to kill me, and I no longer need the scholarship. My coach knows she’ll see me when she sees me.”

“My coach knows not to say a goddamn thing to me about anything,” Bennett added like the entitled ass he was.

Zach shot me a cocky grin. “The TA of my bio lab has a major crush on me, so I can get away with skipping this afternoon.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course she does. Make sure she knows I’ll break her fingers if she touches you.”

“Who said my TA was a chick?” Zach countered, wagging his eyebrows at me.

“And stop talking like that unless you want to be bent over the bed, Angel,” Bennett added gruffly.

And the afternoon passed just like that.

We all stayed with Noah, planning, laughing, and eating the snacks that Zach had delivered to the room.

Every hour or so, one of my boyfriends threatened to fuck me on Noah’s bed regardless of who could walk in at any given moment.

Dom dropped by to check on his favorite shooting buddy, and Silver called with her report right before the doctor arrived to discharge Noah.

By the time we arrived back at the Academy, I could tell everyone was looking forward to one day of normalcy before it was ripped away from us once again. As I clung to Noah in my bed that night, my thoughts were a confusing whirl of righteous anger and unrelenting dread.

The Families were never going to touch anyone I loved ever again. I’d make sure of it.

“So,” Mari said as the four of us slipped into our seats at breakfast. “I presume you all have a solid story concocted for what happened on Wednesday?” She eyed the crutch Noah was using to take some weight off his injured leg. “Because the rumor mill is working at top speed.”

Since I had actually learned my lesson, I’d updated Mari as soon as I’d had a moment to breathe at the hospital Wednesday night, including gently reminding her that her new best friend Frankie was likely removing a man’s appendages in the name of Knight at that very moment.

She’d just hummed like that was mildly interesting before scolding me for thinking it was a good idea to be creeping around the woods alone for any goddamned reason.

I shrugged. “Kara and Julie cleared the farm by telling everyone there was a gas leak. Noah heroically ran out into the forest to find me and… pulled his hamstring?”

Hannah Langford eyed us all dubiously. “Sure thing,” she said after a second, taking a dainty sip of her chai and tossing her dark red hair over her shoulder. “I presume the real story is not something I need to be aware of as a Knight Tech board member?”

“Definitely not,” Noah replied.

“Great,” she replied with a bright smile. “So, is everyone caught up on our Finance homework then? If you guys aren’t because of…” She waved her hand in Noah’s general direction. “… all of that, I’m sure I could help smooth things over with Professor Roberts. She’s in my mom’s book club.”

Zach grinned. “Yeah, that would be great, actually. This week has been… busier than we’d have liked.”

Mari gave Hannah an approving nod, and I agreed. Influence was influence, no matter how small, and we’d use whatever we could to stay ahead.

After breakfast, Bennett left the group for his Lit Seminar, but only after he’d cupped my chin in his rough grasp and laid a possessive kiss on me in the middle of Holywell Hall.

Mari snickered at my flushed face—sometimes I hated being pale—before the rest of us made our way up to the third floor for Finance class.

By the time we’d made it to our usual seats in the back of the auditorium-style lecture hall, Noah’s happy smile was nowhere to be found as he griped endlessly over my babying him all the way up the stairs.

“Dude, just let it happen,” Zach told him from his spot on my other side.

“We’re lucky that’s all she’s doing in response to you getting shot .

Do you remember what happened when Alastia’s goons gave Bennett a booboo on his face?

Would you prefer she march into Ferrero Tower alone so she can claw my mom’s eyes out?

Because I had to talk her out of that about five times after we left your hospital room the first night. ”

I crossed my arms and sank lower in my seat, pouting. “I’m still mad about that.”

“I know you are, Princess,” Zach cooed at me like I was a fussy child. “But you feel better now that we have a solid plan, yes?”

I huffed. “Maybe. A little.”

Noah threaded his fingers through mine as Professor Roberts entered the hall and began writing on the whiteboard. “I’m sorry for being a butthead, sweetheart. I just don’t like being the weak link. We all have to be at our best to keep you safe.”

“We’re keeping each other safe, Noah,” I reminded him.

Mari, who’d been engrossed in her phone even more than normal this morning, chimed in.

“Sí, this is a group effort, and I have been working for the last two days on assisting in this little endeavor— not that any of you have asked.” She sniffed primly, but the devious smile that just graced her blood-red lips said she wasn’t actually angry with us.

Zach raised an inquisitive brow. “Oh? Whatcha got for us, Miss Mari?”

She hummed, that smile growing. “We will see.”

It was hard to focus on the lecture after that—though I’d had the same problem when Noah made us go to class yesterday—but when the professor finally dismissed us, I felt like I’d retained at least enough to pull a B on the upcoming test.

The cluster of Family loyalists rose in front of us, and Chad sneered in my direction as usual.

“Nice face, Hendrickson,” I called down to him, giving him my middle finger just like old times.

He’d had to convalesce for a week after Bennett beat the shit out of him, but he was back in class now and pissier than ever.

The swelling in his broken nose was only just starting to go down, and his black-and-blue face had turned a putrid shade of yellow green.

“Fuck you, bitch,” he said through gritted teeth.

Zach snapped his head in Chad’s direction like a demonic Doberman. “What was that, Hendrickson?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, turning to hurry down the stairs with his groupies in tow.

Before any of the students had made it to the door, it was thrown open, and Dean Jansen marched in with two uniformed campus security officers following close behind her .

“Bettina Gomez?” the dean called, her shrewd, pinched gaze scanning the classroom.

A squeak came from the gaggle of girls surrounding Chad. “What?”

“You’ll need to come with us.”

She cast a harried, confused glance around at her friends, but, fair-weather as they were, they all looked away, some of them even taking a physical step to separate themselves from her.

I loved to see it. Bettina was on my crew team, and she happened to be one of the bitches who’d helped Harper dump me in the river last semester.

As I watched her gallows march to the door, her shoulders slumped in her tight suit dress, a realization hit me, and I felt my eyes narrow in suspicion.

Bettina’s family was in the bar and strip club business, and they were one of the few families still clinging to Andrea’s skirts as they tried to weather the storm Knight had brought onto the City.

Mari sidled up next to me, watching with an extremely smug smile as the door shut behind Bettina and the dean.

“Bettina has been a naughty girl,” she said in a low voice.

“It didn’t take much asking around for me to ferret out who’d decided to pass the information along to Andrea Ferrero that Jolie Knight would be at a paintball park on Wednesday night.

I called Marcus, and he helped me set up a nice little present for her. ”

All three of us gaped wordlessly at her.

She stuck her nose in the air with a little huff. “Honestly, your astonishment wounds me.”

Zach shook it off first. “Did you get her expelled?”

She grinned, and it was evil enough to give me a little shiver. “Her family is no longer able to pay her Academy tuition, so she will be packing her dorm before being escorted from campus, I presume.”

“Girl,” I said, blowing out a breath. “What did you do to the Gomezes?”

She examined her fingernails casually. “Really, they should have known better than to put so much of their worth—and their investors’ money—in cryptocurrency. Marcus and I just nudged their crypto exchange of choice off the ledge it was already teetering on anyway.”

Noah barked out a very loud laugh. “You two crashed CryptoCity? And you didn’t tell us? Unreal . Oh, Silver is going to be so pissed Marcus hid this from her.”

Zach snorted. “Those two need to just fuck and get it over with. I’ll make sure Marcus gets a raise for this, because damn .”

“You know, Spencer actually had a pretty sizable stake in CryptoCity too,” Noah added.

“Did they?” Mari asked, still with the tone of complete nonchalance. “How unfortunate for them.”

I smiled so wide my cheeks hurt. “I bow down to you, girl. Fuck me, this is amazing.”

“Yes, I am amazing,” she replied. “Obviously. Now, I’m off to my next class, but if all of you would please try to refrain from making any more messes I’ll need to clean up, that would be great.”