Page 8 of The Villain's Beast

Beyond horny.

As soon as I closed the door behind me and locked it, I had my hand down my pants, my fingers curled around my always hard cock. Screwing my eyes closed so tight I saw stars, I imagined Fletcher’s mouth, his elegant fingers, and I came all over my hand in less than thirty seconds. My knees trembled, gave out, and I slid to the floor with a sigh. I pulled my hand out of my pants and rested my wrist on my knee, strings of sticky cum spread between my knuckles, warm and wet.

I needed to shower, needed to wash my hands, but I’d used up all my fight earlier, reminding myself of the repercussions that would befall everyone if either my father or Fletcher’s found out what we were doing. The phone calls were risky enough. If my father checked the bill and realized who the late night calls were with. I crawled to my bed, rewinding my memories back to the beginning of the school year. I’d started off with so much hope, thinking there was a way for Fletcher and me to just…

Be.

He’d rebuffed me with practiced skill, which had made it easy for me to keep my thoughts to myself for the duration of the year. But I’d spent the past seven nights sharing the same space, the same pens, the same air as Fletcher Sinclair, and I didn’t want to ignore him anymore. I didn’t want to be better than him or ruin his life or anything like that.

I wanted to curl my fingers around his wrist and kiss his knuckles, and kiss his jaw, and his mouth. I wanted him to breathe on me, wanted to feel his chest heave against mine when our bodies got too close.

I wanted.

And I wanted, and Iwanted.

And I had one week left on this assignment and then everything would go back to how it was before. More cold shoulders from a boy I knew burned hot, and I didn’t think I could bear it. Not afterknowingwhat it felt like to be close to him.

“It’s a mistake,” I said to myself, pushing to my feet.

It was the same thing my mother had said to my father when he pressed the issue about sending me to Rose Hill. I don’t know what she knew about me that I didn’t know about myself, but with every passing day, I started to wonder if she’d been right. My father assured her I’d be fine, that I’d get to campus and remember who I was—a North, that I’d make him proud. She hadn’t wanted me to leave for school. She wanted me to continue with my tutors at home where she could keep an eye on me, but Father had said no. He’d raised his hand at her, and that had been that.

I didn’t know much about Fletcher’s father, not as much as I knew about mine, and I wondered about him. Often. Stripping out of my pajamas and stepping into the shower, I wondered if Fletcher’s father was smart enough to only leave bruises and scars where they couldn’t be seen if someone was dressed. Iwondered if he even cared. Men like our fathers were beyond reproach and above punishment. Boys like Sin and me…not so much.

Closing my eyes, I let the water wash away any evidence of my own transgressions. I washed my body, washed my hair, touched my dripping wet fingers between my ass cheeks, then turned the water off. Trying to walk this fine line of whatever this temporary truce with Fletcher was exhausted me. One more week for it to go either way.

Did I really have a chance at making a better life for myself?

I couldn’t do it alone, but I’d spent my whole life doing things alone, being alone. Being the North heir was an isolating thing, and with Fletcher I felt less alone. Even just being in proximity to the way he hated me was somehow comforting, and I was drawn to him because of it.

Seven days left in this project.

Seven days left to feel alive.

Out of the shower, I put my dirty pajamas back on because they smelled like his room, and I climbed into bed. Burying my face in the pillow, I screamed at the top of my lungs. Why was life so hard? So unfair? Why couldn’t I just be normal and have the things I wanted? In another life, I could sit beside Fletcher in the library and tell him I thought he had pretty eyes. I could watch him blush from the compliment and I could ask him if he ever jerked off thinking about me.

Maybe not the last part.

I rolled onto my back and exhaled, letting out a breath so thoroughly the bed threatened to swallow me whole.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

I was anything but tired, so when my phone vibrated with an incoming call, I was quick to grab it. Quick to curse under my breath when Fletcher’s name flashed across the screen.

“Hello?” I answered, rubbing an invisible ache in the middle of my chest.

“I don’t think we should text,” he said. “Someone could read them.”

“We don’t text.”

But he was right.

There was silence on the other end of the line, and I closed my eyes, trying to imagine where in his room he sat. Was he still at the desk, notebook open in front of him or was he in bed, under the sheets with a half-hard erection like me?

“Thank you for the curry,” he said. “It was really good.”