Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,54

It’s fucking awful. You’ve got the girls, who hate me for being a slut, and then the boys, who like me for being a slut. It’s totally lose-lose. ”

Her forehead puckers. “Then why do you keep doing it?”

Why?

I give a dark laugh, knowing that what I like doesn’t matter. It’s about the need. The itch. The compulsion. The all-consuming, ravenous drive.

I’m not ready to admit that to Caroline, though. Especially not in the middle of the library. “I don’t want people to think I’m a whore. It’s just not fair. Guys can fuck around all they want, with whoever they want, and no one bats an eye. The patriarchy sucks.”

“Doesn’t it?”

We spend the rest of lunch talking, but even though my mouth moves, my brain is moving faster. It’s thinking about all the reasons I have to abstain this year. The soiled reputation. The health risks. The emotional risks. The rumors, the gossip. The way guys treat me. The way girls treat me. Every single negative consequence of giving into my urges races through my head.

Maybe I’m lying to myself, but I wonder if it’d all be solved by keeping it to one person. That was my whole goal, wasn’t it? One dick every three months? Not one encounter, or one orgasm. Just one dick. When I think of it like that, it’s like I never failed to begin with. It’s hard to stop the snowball of thought after that.

The thought I can still have sex and keep to my rules.

But only if it’s with Heston.

10

Heston

* * *

I stand inside the open equipment closet and stare at the chaos within, tipping my bottle of Mylanta back. It makes no goddamn sense. I straighten up in here every day. I supervise the idiot little middle-schoolers when I make them put their shit away. I watch from the deck as the high schoolers do the same, and they might be a little careless, but nothing that explains how, every morning, I come in here to complete destruction.

Absolutely ratfucked.

To make matters worse, Coach James has informed me that competitive swim is starting up, which means that I can kiss that sweet private office goodbye. It also means that my ‘independent study’ class will have to start taking place in the evenings.

I have important shit to do on Monday evenings. Well, obviously I have important shit to do every evening, but Monday evenings are mine, and now I have to spend it teaching grown ass people how to kick their legs usefully.

As the shit-cherry on my shitty day, Georgia doesn’t show up for class. Micha does. He stands there on the deck, arms folded, looking bored and annoyed with everything.

I stare back, equally bored and annoyed. “Any clue where your classmate is?” I ask.

He inspects his nails—a glittery purple—and doesn’t even bother to look me in the eye. “I’m not her keeper. Maybe she didn’t want to put up with your crap today.”

I take a deep breath and count to ten. “Adams. You’re a student. You can’t talk to me like that.”

He gives me a tight smile. “Maybe she didn’t want to put up with your crap today, sir.”

I have two students. One is mouthy, the other is absent.

Mouthy I can deal with. “I want fifty walking laps in the shallow end, followed by ten breathing drills.”

“Fifty?!” he cries, and then, “Ten?!”

“I can make it seventy-five and fifteen,” I offer, knowing that it’s probably not possible. He’d be here all afternoon.

Micha’s face screws up, like maybe he’s doing the math on that. If he realizes it’s not exactly tenable, he does us both the favor of not arguing. Smart kid. He snatches his Devil-branded swim cap and tugs it over his head, jumping into the pool.

Yeah, the mouthy student is fine. It’s the other that’s a problem.

It’s possible that I may have pushed things a little too far in Collins’ office. Sure, she’d said no and pretended like she wasn’t into it. That’s Georgia’s new shtick, I’m realizing. She wants it, but she won’t cop to it—not until she’s right on the razor’s edge. That’s why I have to keep bringing her to it.

If Big Gene were here, he’d tell me to change tacks. To be nice. To send her flowers, jewelry, Hallmark cards. He’d tell me to woo her.

But Gene’s wrong. Georgia doesn’t want romance. She wants a nice, hard, reliable dicking-down on the reg. She’s so fucking transparent, she might as well be walking around this campus with a sign attached to