Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,94

red and puffy, and his hair an absolute mess. He’s lucky I didn’t just slam this pen into his eye. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” he drawls, looking unamused. “It’s just the agonizing pain I’m currently feeling. And you look…” his cold blue eyes sweep over me, “pretty hot, actually. That’s annoying.”

“Is there a reason you’re mouth-raping me suddenly?” We’ve been avoiding each other for days now, locked in a standoff over the tattoo, but he’s been downright chilly for all of it. “What’s your fucking deal?”

He answers by ducking his head and pressing his mouth to my neck, fingers ghosting over my hip. “I drank too much last night. Now I sort of want to die, but I figured I’d do this first.”

I swallow at the feel of his lips parting, his hot, wet tongue licking into the spot of skin below my ear. “So you’re drunk?” I ask, voice weaker than it has any right to be.

“More like hungover.” He hums when I tilt my head, giving him more access. He uses it to gently suck at the tendon below my jaw. “Ran into your boys at the club. Emory and Carlton.”

“My what?” I’d like to say it’s a convincing show of coyness, but the truth is that his fingers find their way to my lower back, sliding down over the curve of my ass, and my brain stops functioning. I only have access to a scant amount of brain cells, and I use them to remember the pen, stabbing it into my thigh.

Focus!

“Your boys.” In a lower voice—almost a purr—he breathes into my ear, “Your Devils.” He gathers the back of my skirt up, hand ducking beneath to grip an ass cheek in his palm. He makes a gruff sound into my throat, asking, “Why didn’t you just tell me the mark wasn’t from a guy?”

I try to blink through the sudden haze of sex wet ripe want need, but it’s getting difficult. “Because it wasn’t any of your goddamn business.” My breath hitches when his fingers yank my panties aside, the increasingly warm air of the closet hitting the bare skin of my ass. I can tell from the way his fingers brush the skin that he’s searching, but I take a longer moment to realize what he’s searching for.

He’s wondering if his handprints are still bruised into the flesh.

They’re not—the marks faded a couple days ago—but I still make a sound. My gasp is small and pained and completely fucking fake.

It has the desired effect. He bucks into me, hardness pushing obscenely into my hip, fingers tangling into the hair at the base of my neck. “God, you’re a mouthy bitch.” He punctuates this with a hard, aggressive kiss, tongue digging forcibly between my parted lips.

I’m hit with a sharp burst of resentment. It’s not fair, how easy I am. The way I want so badly to open to him, to let him in, to give him a part of me. He doesn’t deserve it, not after rejecting me for days.

He grunts into the kiss, knocking me back against the wall, hand dropping to meet his other, still gripping a tight handful of my ass. But he bumps into my wrist before he gets there—the one jamming the pen into the soft flesh of my thigh. I hadn’t realized it before, too distracted by how electrified my nerves feel when he kisses me like this, but suddenly the pain hits me. The sting is too distinct, far beyond the dull background ache I’m used to.

Something trickles down my leg.

Blood.

He goes eerily still, breaking away from the kiss. It all happens so fast, the flick of his eyes to my hand, the way he grabs my wrist, yanking it away, prying the pen from my white-knuckled grip. His face is so still and blank that it could have been carved from marble, except for the heat of his eyes when he pins me under his glare. He shows me the pen before he chucks it aside. I watch it bounce off the wall, but his hand captures my chin, fingers digging into my jaw as he wrenches my face up. “Look at me!” His voice grinds harshly through clenched teeth as he hems me in, “This shit stops now.”

I shove him back. “Fuck you! You don’t get to ignore me for days and just—”

He comes right back, towering over me. “You could have come to me any time, but you—”

“I’m not your fucking doormat, you arrogant—”

“You want