Page 21 of River of Deceit

“Nice job,” Zayden says. “I think you could have gotten your point across with less choking, but not bad.”

I roll my eyes. “The choking’s the fun part. And these guys wouldn’t have taken a few words seriously.”

“Grayson and Jordan are downstairs, if you want to discuss howwe’ll deal with the chick. And there’s a whole rush week thing we have to prep for.”

I groan, because the last thing I want to do is go to a frat leaders’ meeting. All I want to do is drop into bed. I didn’t even get to enjoy my post orgasm high because of stupid Declan.

“Blaze?”

I hear footsteps behind me, and Asch approaches us. I drop my arm around his shoulders.

“Later,” I say to Zayden, waving him off. “I don’t care about rush week. You can figure it all out without me. Asch and I have a few things to talk about anyway.”

Zayden rolls his eyes, but he heads down without me. I breathe a sigh of relief and press my head against Asch’s.

“Thanks for saving me,” I say.

“From big bad Zayden?” Asch asks, sounding skeptical. “I’ll believe you need saving from him the day he’s the one to do the dirty work.”

“You saved me from paperwork,” I say, letting go of him.

I head upstairs, Asch behind me. He immediately sits down on the bed like he owns the place. With how much time he spends in my room instead of his, he might as well.

I don’t mind though. It’s just Asch, after all.

I sit in the desk chair, take off my shoes, then prop my feet up on the bed.

“Still can’t believe what a dumbass he was,” I say, shaking my head. “When you left Carly last night, did she seem like she actually remembered anything?”

Asch’s lips purse into a thin line as he thinks. Finally, he shakes his head. “No. Honestly, I would’ve thought she’d be more freaked out by Pandora pulling a fucking knife on me.” He huffs out a dark laugh. “Maybe Pandora talked her into reporting it.”

I groan in annoyance. “Seriously? What’s up with her? She really doesn’t know who I am?”

“Worse,” Asch says. “I don’t think she cares.”

I’m about to say more, but Asch’s phone dings with the sound that means his mother texted him. I watch as Asch immediately pulls his phone out to respond to her.

There’s a twinge of annoyance inside of me at being ignored in favor of the phone, but I push it down.

While Asch is typing, I move from the desk chair to the bed and attempt to read over his shoulder. He blocks the phone with his body and only relents once he sends his response.

There’s nothing left to see, of course, just the usual scratches on the screen and the scuffed corners. The damn thing must be a few years old by now, and it wasn’t a new model even when he first got it.

“Just let me buy you a new phone already, Asch.” I say, reaching over to draw a finger over the deepest scratch. “You don’t need to use this old thing anymore.”

Asch stares unflinchingly at me. “Not everyone needs a brand-new phone every time a new model drops,” he tells me, his voice edged. If he wasn’t ridiculously proud, I’d buy him one and be done with it, but he already gets prickly enough about me buying him anything — not to mention paying his dues for Kappa Alpha.

Sometimes I think that’s the real reason he almost dropped out last year. He’d tried to claim it was because the pledging process had gotten to be too much, but I’d known it was bullshit the second he’d tried to throw that excuse my way. I’ve known him too long for him to easily fool me, and while he can occasionally mask his feelings from me, that wasn’t something he could lie about.

For a few seconds, we stare at each other, the phone between us. My eyes linger on his lips, and the stubble on his chin. After only one day of not shaving, Asch already has substantial stubble, where it would take me a lot longer to grow a beard.

“So,” I say with a grin. “Today was hot, right? She looked great on her knees.”

“She would’ve looked better between us,” he says. Before I can argue that he could’ve had her too, he adds, “I wasn’t in the mood.”

That’s bullshit, too.

He’d been so pissed off at her that he should’ve jumped at the chance to fuck her mouth.