Bully King - J.A. Huss Page 0,36
it’s a real smile. And it reminds me of what we had together once upon a time.
She was… what was she to me? To us? I don’t think there’s a word for it. But this girl is a witch. A very talented genius of a witch who can weave a spell over me like no other girl in the world ever could.
And that, Cooper, is why she’s so dangerous.
Among other things, of course.
I drag her through the door, kick it closed with my foot, and then push her away from me. “Please put on a pair of real shorts.”
“Just leave.”
“I can’t just leave, Cadee. My father sent me to find you. It took me three hours. He’s waiting up. Don’t you get it? You’re fucking everything up for me right now.”
“Me?” She laughs and points to her chest. “I’m the one fucking things up for you? You have some nerve, Cooper Valcourt.”
“Put on. Some real shorts. Right. Now.” I clench my jaw as these words come out, totally at the end of my patience with her.
She frowns at me, then walks to the closet. She’s in there for a long time. Like several minutes go by.
“Hurry up!”
“There’s nothing here. This is not my closet. It belonged to one of your stepmothers.”
“What?” I walk into the closet and start pushing things on the rack. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck was my father thinking?” Then I spy the shelves of neatly stacked shorts. I grab a pair and throw them at her. “Just put these on.”
She holds them up, crooked smile on her face. “These?”
I run my hand over my jaw. They are like… short. Very. Short. My third stepmother was a legit whore. A high-end call girl my father frequented for a while. I’m pretty sure she had dirt on him and that’s why he had to marry her. But then one day—poof. She was gone.
I try not to think about that too much. Stella might’ve been a working girl, but she was nice to me. A lot nicer than my father ever was. Not too smart though. You don’t threaten a man like him. You don’t want his secrets. Because no one, and I do mean no one, is safe from his wrath if you make him feel threatened.
“Cadee,” I say, so tired of this day. “Can you please, please just help me out here?”
She huffs. “I can’t magically conjure up a pair of shorts suitable to wear for a meeting with your father, Cooper.” She turns back to the clothes, shuffles through them for what feels like a very long time, and then finds a pair of white leggings and drags them up her legs. “How’s this?”
I look down her legs. They are long. And shapely. And these skin-tight leggings show every muscle of her calves and thighs.
Snap out of it, dickhead. Didn’t you learn your lesson with this girl three years ago?
“They’ll do. Come on.”
I drag her out of the room and down the hallway, stopping at an intersection to listen. Making sure Dane and Jack aren’t still here with their wives. That’s the last thing I need right now.
Clear. So I drag her through a few more hallways and then pause when the door of my father’s study comes in to view. “Listen to me,” I say.
She looks up at me. She looks like a goddamned princess. Her dirty blonde hair looks like Isabelle’s when she comes back from getting expensive highlights. But Cadee’s is natural. It’s long and straight. She doesn’t curl it, or style it, or do anything to it except tuck it behind her ear every once in a while, when she’s trying to concentrate on something.
Her face is a perfect heart shape. Her eyes are wide and a very light brown color that sometimes looks green in the sun. Her lips are lush and plump. And right now, she’s pressing them together as she waits for me to continue.
“I know you’re probably thinking, ‘Hey, if his father is so concerned about me that he sent Cooper out to find me in the middle of the night and produce me as proof that I am safe, he must certainly care about me.’ But I’m going to tell you something right now, Cadee. He doesn’t give a fuck about you.”
She recoils a little.
“If you say one word about what happened today, he won’t feel sorry for you. Understand me? He will learn—” Jesus Christ. Why am I telling her this? I want her to tell