Page 16 of The Villain's Beast

“What did you think, Gideon?”

“I…” Tears welled up in my throat, and I snapped my mouth closed before I did something I’d regret more than the things I’d already done.

“I,” he repeated, mocking me.

I screwed my eyes closed, taking a step away from him.

Fletcher laughed at the way I recoiled from him, a sharp-edged noise that had us both reeling away from each other at the sound of it.

“Did you think that because you got off in front of me that there was something special between us?”

“We kissed,” I whispered. “I thought?—”

“Whatever you thought, you thought wrong.” Fletcher bent over and picked up his backpack, blinking hard and shifting his stare to a point on the wall behind me.

“I thought we were at least…friends.”

“We’re not friends,” he sneered. “We’re Fletcher Sinclair and Gideon North. That’s all we’ll ever be.”

He was right, and I hated him for it. But nowhere near as much as I hated myself.

Fletcher gave me a fleeting look, his nose scrunched up at me in disgust. I blinked, hating the way a tear escaped from the corner of my eye, but there was no way he was telling me the truth. With my eyes closed, I could recall the touch of him against my fingers, the way he’d smile at me when he didn’t think I was looking. I could remember the way his fingers felt in my hair, his tongue in my mouth.

He was right that we weren’t friends, but for two weeks…we hadn’t been enemies.

Or so I’d thought.

Before I could arrange the words to tell him that, he gave me one last look with those tired blue eyes of his, then he walked away from me without so much as a single glance back.

And I didn’t see him again for six and a half years.

Part Two

The Initiation

Chapter 11

Fletcher

The Black Thorn house at Rose Hill University sat on the top of a hill at the boundary of the school’s property line. The Sinclair family—myfamily—owned the neighboring plot, which caused more problems for the school and less problems for me. It was difficult for the administration to dictate what we could and couldn’t do when the lines about where we did those things weren’t always clear. Besides, families like mine only got as powerful as we were by spending generations blurring those lines anyway.

Rose Hill University schooled the cream of the crop as far as power went. Personalities were often lacking, but that was to be expected when you were the kind of people who’d never been told no. I’d been told no quite often in my life, though, a bitter fact I carried very close to my chest and never spoke about. That was how I often found myself on the weekends at the house, surrounded by people who had never been told no and would rarely tellmeno.

They were entertainment.

But I was still bored.

“Can you fuck a little quieter?” I asked, stepping over the tangled mess of sweaty bodies on the floor.

It was the fall of my senior year at Rose Hill, and everything was about to change. I’d spent the last three years like any other student, attending parties and classes, counting down the days until I flipped a tassel from one side of the mortarboard to the other. Except where other students would walk away from the rivalries and pettiness of college life, I’d only dip deeper into those trenches. The start of my final year in college meant I was finally ready to assume my role as president of The Black Thorn Society, an underhanded group of men with too much money and not enough boundaries.

The fraternity itself was a ruse. A complicated masquerade of men who knew better and men who didn’t. I found myself envious of those who didn’t because they were the ones fucking and sweating and hoping to get closer to those who did. They all believed these were childish games and hazing meant to build character, but only a handful knew the truth. The upcoming initiation was a test of loyalty, nothing more.

It was my welcome to a world that I would have rather burned to the ground.

Summer was on the way out and initiation weekend was coming. Everyone who wanted to pretend to be anyone was trying their hardest to impress us on the off-chance they could earn a spot in our house and among our ranks. Initiation weekend meant it was time for the Black Thorns to have a president on campus again because the spot could only be held by a Sinclair, and up until now, it had been my father. Even though I’d spent my whole life being trained for this moment, being so close to opportunity and control was an aphrodisiac…even for me. It was hard to not be drunk with power after a lifetime of having decisions made for me. RHU was my first tease of freedom. A trial run for one year before being released into the proper ranks of my family and the men my family controlled.

“Sorry, Fletcher,” my second, Daren, said with a grunt, his back arching up like a cat as he came inside whatever little freshman had been stupid enough to get under him.