Page 9 of The Tenth Circle (Vicious Saint: Prelude)

Saint grips Annalie by the back of her arm and pushes her out of the elevator, leaving her rolling onto the floor in a horrendous pink skirt.

Gotta love a good karmatic effect.

I’m about to make my exit when he shoots an arm out to stop me—then he presses the close button.

Oh, this boy better not test me while I still got an axe left.

I reach for the open button, but Saint snakes a hand around my wrist freezing me midair.

“Get off me. Now,” I order as the doors slide closed, and this time when the emergency button gets pushed, the entire situation feels much less enticing.

Saint spins me around to face him, eyes darkening without changing their shade of bright blue.

“I gave you an order,” he grits out. “You ignored it.”

There’s a familiar chill running through me, along with an overwhelming sense of Déjà vu.

Saint’s gaze on me is cold, but nowhere as cold as his .

Then again, temps do change gradually.

“There a reason for that?”

“Besides not giving a fuck enough to listen?”

His hold on me tightens. “Bad idea.”

“What? Getting on your bad side? ” I mock Annalie’s comment from earlier.

“You’re right, it’s a great one.” I rip myself from his grasp, and given the length of Saint’s strength, it’s probably because he allows it.

“You and your degenerate friends may scare everyone else, but not me. I won’t be an Annalie , or a Preston, worshipping at your altar. ”

Saint’s brows furrow with the mention of Preston, but he’s otherwise unresponsive as I continue.

“You won’t catch me hanging off your every word, jumping, or kneeling at every demand. So if this is the goal for what’s behind that filthy jockstrap…quit before I leave you with no dick left to fill it.” After a meaningful pause, I add, “This goes for you and your friends.”

Thanks to the stupid pool party…I’m now able to add names to the faces sitting at Saint’s table during lunch.

Riggs and Leviathan—the younger rich pricks but still pricks nonetheless.

The entire school body is delusional enough to look at these boys and see royalty, but all I see are poor little rich boys hiding insecurities.

Somewhere during my outburst Saint found the time to lean his shoulder against the wall. “You done?”

I let out a deep breath. “I think I hit all the high notes, yeah.”

A wry grin curves his lips, then those eyes dip to my chest. “Get into it with your sweet tooth or somethin’?”

Another clever fat joke.

“Yeah, but I won the fight.”

“Bet it’s not your first fight,” he muses, and this time the fat girl dig stings too much to hold back.

“Only an immature little boy would be intimidated by some extra pounds.”

This garners an incredulous huff. “And only an insecure little girl would assume I was talking about her weight.” Saint pulls out his phone, reading something on the screen before sliding it, along with his hands, into the pockets of his Letterman.

“I get the feeling you don’t like me.”

This guy speaks as though I’m the one needing clarification.

“So the other head does work.”

Saint studies me closely, like there’s a puzzle on my face he’s trying to piece together—which has the pieces on his face moving too.

If Saint is somehow my Crazyman from the closet, then maybe he’s unaware I’m the Crazy woman from it too. It was really dark after all, and I took advantage of it. I’m probably wrong, because Saint doesn’t seem like the type of guy who is clueless to anything.

The pieces go poof when I hear him ask, “Have you been thinking about my dick, Jimi?”

Oh, he did not just give me a pet name.

Fists ball at my sides. “First of all, I don’t like you enough to allow pet names, and second, no I was not thinking about your dick.”

“So you do like me a little bit .”

“Are you not paying attention?”

Saint flashes me a smile, and motherfudgingfudger he looks so damn good doing it. “I’m paying perfectly good attention…you’re trying to get to know me.”

His denseness is physically hurting mine.

“You’re delusional…because there’s absolutely nothing I want to know about you.”

You sit on a throne of lies.

“I bet there’s something very specific you want to know about me,” he states matter-of-factly.

Too matter-of-factly.

As if we both know exactly what the fact is, and how it’s been licking away at my thoughts for way longer than he licked at anything else.

With a wrinkle of my nose, I reply, “Still coming up pretty empty…”

“So we’re singing this song again?” He raises an eyebrow. “Wasn’t it you who said music doesn’t lie?”

Oh my God. Really? I can see why this guy’s labeled a star quarterback. He’s a fucking pro at tossing around lame puns. It’s why I won’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging this one.

But…I will acknowledge my need to get away from Saint before my IQ starts dropping. The quicker we get this over with, the quicker I shower and am back in my dorm doing more drawing and stabbing.

“Elaborate, annoying human.”

“The back and forth until I prove you wrong.”

Since I can count on two fingers the amount of times I’ve interacted with the douche, and on thirty-seven the amount of times I obsessed over both, it doesn’t take much thought to know which he’s referring to.

I still let him sweat…because I would rather punch myself repeatedly than give him another reason to boast.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.”

“Oh, c’mon Jimi. We both know you’re smarter than this.”

I cup a hand by my ear. “Sorry, what was that? Couldn’t hear you above all the egotism and bad taste in women.”

Saint pushes off the wall, slowly padding over to the corner I lodged myself in. “I said…we both know you’re smarter than to pretend you haven’t been thinking about me for weeks.”

Weeks. Plural.

Fucking-fuck, it really is him.

And he had the nerve to pretend I’m nobody this whole time.

I keep my cool as well as any girl could when swallowing anger down like acid and refusing to boost an already boosted ego.

“You know, if there was a medal earned for lack of originality, I bet you’d be first place winner.”

Saint is a tower standing over me, his pores emanating a mix of orange, salt, and lingering sex that’s intoxicating. “You’re good with the one-liners, Jimi. I’ll give you that.”

I squeeze past the aroma, mostly because he’s not a sticker, therefore some may deem it inappropriate to scratch and sniff.

Saint’s right on my tail as I pass the emergency button for the second time, squeezing myself into another corner and whipping out the pencil I have in my jeans pocket.

You sure got him now, Montgomery.

“Keep testing my patience,” I hold the pencil against the breast of his jacket, “and I’ll give a whole new meaning to the term Letterman.”

He chuckles low, stepping into both me and the sharp object stabbing his chest. “What am I doing that’s testing your patience?”

The look on Saint’s face tells me he not only knows exactly what he’s doing, but he’s enjoying every minute of it.

The name. The looks. The implications.

Same package, different delivery.

And his plan is to torture me until I admit I know who he is.

“Besides breathing?”

Saint leans down, ignoring the sharp object piercing a hole in his jacket. “All that sass makes for a terrible poker face.”

I stick him harder. “Yeah, well, I never liked the game anyway.”

Saint snatches the pencil, then breaks it in half with his teeth, tossing the pieces across the elevator. “But you sure do like this one, huh?”

“And which one is ‘this’ exactly? Where you talk to me for two minutes then forget I exist?”

He pouts. “Aw, does Jimi need some attention?”

I give him my best scowl. “No, I couldn’t care less. Just stating facts.”

“That is quite the angry fact.”

With a deep growl I shove Saint, and it’s only for my sake that he moves back. “God, you are insufferable!” I stomp over to the emergency button and finally do what I should’ve done from the beginning. Use it.

Saint approaches my side, looking straight ahead at the door as he says, “You should consider it a mercy that I don’t give you my attention.”

I slam my thumb repeatedly against the open button. “You think so highly of yourself for literally no reason.”

“Oh, I have some pretty good reasons.”

After one final attempt with the elevator, I let out an exacerbated breath. “Yeah, well, I don’t want your mercy or your attention.”

The doors finally slide open, revealing freedom in the form of mascara stained tissues on fancy white flooring.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

“Trust me. You’ll want my mercy,” Saint quips behind me as I march out of the elevator.

With a roll of my eyes, I turn around to find him reaching for the buttons, then shoving both hands inside his jacket pockets.

“Oh, yeah, Letterman? And why is that?”

Right as the doors slide closed, Saint fixes me a grin holding volumes of sexual experience. “Because, Jimi, once you have my attention…you’ll do anything to try and keep it.”