Page 22 of The Villain's Beast

Chapter 15

Daren

Bellamy was pretty.

Clark was pretty.

Jack was pretty.

The guy before Jack was pretty.

Everyone I’d fucked since coming back to campus for my senior year was pretty, but they were nowhere near as beautiful and perfect andmineas Luca Mandeville. They were playthings and distractions, a useless balm to soothe the ache of being torn away from the one person I wanted most in the world.

We’d agreed, and he knew I wasn’t a saint. Neither was he.

We both had marching orders from our parents. Mine, to hold steady at the right hand of Fletcher Sinclair. His, to fuck Gideon North into submission. I imagined only one of us was going to have a successful year, but not for lack of trying on Luca’s part. Gideon North hadn’t earned his nickname out of nowhere. He was a beast of a competitor, a beast of a man.

He looked like he would tear you apart with his dick. Fuck you against a wall so hard the plaster would shatter. He looked like all of the things Luca wanted most in a man. All of the things I had spent the past year being for him.

We’d met in the way of most at RHU, sitting a little too close together in class thanks to a teacher who didn’t care—or didn’t know—about the hierarchy of the Thorns and the Roses. That didn’t matter because he and I knew who the other was. We knew what we were walking into, but some things were stronger than the wills of our fathers. Luca and I were young and hopeful, knowing better while not caring. We were careful; we were skilled at keeping secrets, at lurking in the shadows. But as the summer before our last year wound down, and the rules and expectations that came with our roles ramped up…

We had one last chance to be together.

Luca smelled like sugar when he cried, and I had a sweet tooth that would never be satisfied. I’d dug my nails into his hips so hard he bled, our own kind of ritual meant to hold us together even though we had to remain apart. Things would be different once we were out of the constraints of RHU because, even though the Thorns and the Roses were a lifetime commitment, being past initiation came with enough freedom for us to return to the dark corners and the quiet spaces we’d found each other in to begin with.

I distracted myself with being the perfect deputy to Fletcher and a willing cock to anyone who wanted it. If the other initiates thought they could fuck their way to the top, I wasn’t going to stop them from trying. They’d learn the hard way that what mattered wasn’t whose bed you warmed, but whose table you occupied, whose whiskey you drank, whose secrets you kept.

Luca.

Luca and I kept the biggest secret of all.

It was his body in my mind when I ushered Bellamy up the stairs to my bedroom, Luca’s hands and his mouth I thought of when I pushed the door closed and backed Bellamy against it. It was Luca’s cries I remembered when Bellamy whimpered.

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be,” I whispered, burying my face into the crook of his neck and licking the salt from his skin. “I won’t hurt you unless you want me to.”

“I don’t, but…”

Bellamy settled his hands on my waist, head thumping softly against the door as he arched to make more room for me. I reached between us and undid his fly, shoved his pants down to his ankles.

“But what?” I asked, nipping and kissing my way up to his ear.

I teased my hand behind the waistband of his boxers and felt the hard heat of his cock against my fingers.

“I need to get over it,” he said.

He moaned, thrusting toward my hand.

“If I wanted it to hurt…” Bellamy trailed off, and I wrapped my fingers around the base of his shaft.

“I don’t think you do.” Using his cock as a leash, I walked him across the room toward the bed, easing him down onto his back. “Take your boxers off and spread your legs.”

He scrambled out of his plaid underwear, leaving his faded gray t-shirt on.

At least he was a good listener.

Bellamy flattened his feet against my blankets and bent his knees, taking his cock and balls into his hand and lifting them to show me his hairless, pink asshole.