Page 17 of The Villain's Beast

“You know the rules,” I said.

It was a warning meant for his ears alone. Anyone who tried to fuck their way into my good graces was out.

Stupider men had tried that before and, once, I’d almost fallen for it.

Never again.

“I do,” Daren said with a laugh. Sweat beaded on his forehead and fell down onto the younger man’s back. “He doesn’t.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going for a walk,” I said, “leaving my phone.”

It was a warm night, still too much like summer for my liking, but the air in the house was thick with the smell of sex and I needed a break from it. I needed a break from my life and what was about to become of it. Even though I was more than ready for the freedom, the path to get there was beyond daunting.

The man with a cock up his ass whimpered, his dick leaking cum against his belly, and Daren gave me a mock salute before wiping the mess onto his fingers and smearing it onto his dick like it was lube before sinking back in. I closed the door behind me on the way out, wishing I could be like Daren, wishing I could be like anyone who was able to separate their heart from their cock long enough to just get off.

Not to imply I was a virgin, because I definitely wasn’t. I’d lost the right to call myself that my freshman year in high school when I’d walked Sarah Reynolds back to her room after watching her fail her math final. She was distraught, beyond consolation, and I’d never admit it to another soul, but so was I. I took advantage of her that day. Or maybe she’d taken advantage of me and she just didn’t know it. We were both not the bestversions of ourselves back then, only one of us hiding that truth from the other.

With trembling fingers and lips that tasted like cherries, she asked for a distraction and I gave her one.

It was over quickly, and I called my father on the way back to my room to tell him about it. He wasn’t even impressed. He acted like I’d called to tell him I cleaned my room or showed up on time for a tutoring session. I supposed that, to him, it was the same thing.

A command being given and an order being followed.

Without another word to anyone in the house, I made my way down the winding old staircase and out the front door. Black Thorn house was a monstrosity of a building, with black siding, four gables, and a wraparound porch offering immaculate views of the valley below. From my bedroom on the third floor of the house, I could even see Rose Hall, all the way on the other edge of the acreage owned by the college. That was a view—and a reminder—I could live without, but my father told me once the placement of the president’s private room had been on purpose.

“So you never wake up without remembering who you’re fighting,” he’d said.

My first morning as president, I’d stared across the property at Rose Hall, wondering if Gideon was there. If he was awake. If he was staring back at me.

My ribs burned and twisted at the thought of him, contorting like a gnarled oak tree in the middle of my chest. Shortly thereafter I’d ordered Daren to hang blackout curtains and I’d never opened them since.

Avoiding Gideon North at Rose Hill University had proved to be far easier than it had at Rose Hill Prep…namely because he’d fallen behind after taking an F in our first year English class. One term later, his father pulled him out of the school entirely, and I’d never known such relief. It was impossible to look at himwithout hating myself, without hating my father. It took months after his departure for my anxiety to settle, and months after that for my routine to reassert itself. The years passed, and that sixteen year-old boy I’d been—along with all of his dreams—was long gone. I moved on to college unscathed, made it through three years without so much as a hint of Gideon North, and then the summer before my last year started, he showed up on campus looking nothing like the boy I remembered him to be.

At some point, Gideon had finally hit a growth spurt, shooting up well past my six-foot-one frame. I hadn’t seen him up close—or in person—but I’d heard enough rumors about the return of the prodigal North son, ready to take his seat of power opposite mine. There was some part of me that had tried to convince myself he’d be out of my life forever. After his disappearance from school and his lack of enrollment at the college level, I thought I’d be free of him for good. But as I often did when it came to Gideon North, I’d let my guard down.

A mistake.

Rumors began to swirl about his arrival for our last year of college, ready to take his rightful spot as the head of the Crimson Roses, but they’d been just that.

Rumors.

Until Daren showed up at dinner in the middle of summer with a streak of pictures on his cell phone that proved Gideon had, in fact, arrived on campus. His hair was longer than before, but just as golden and beautiful. He was taller, more muscular, but still fitted with that lean swimmer’s build I remembered him having when we were younger.

“They call him The Beast,” Daren had said, not even blinking an eye when I snatched the phone out of his hand to zoom in on the photos of Gideon at the pool. Wearing nothing more than a small and tight Speedo, he cut a sharp line through the water, leaving four other swimmers in his wake.

“Why?”

“Because he is.” Daren snorted, like it was some kind of joke I wasn’t getting. “He’s been here two weeks and he’s already obliterated every swim record the college has ever had. He’s less than one second off the world record for the hundred meter freestyle.”

I tried to give Daren back his phone with as much casual indifference as I could muster. “That’s a stupid nickname.”

“You should watch him swim.”

“I don’t want to watch him do anything,” I’d snapped. “And neither should you. You may not be a Sinclair, but don’t forget whose side you stand at.”