Kings of Anarchy (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #3) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,108

waiting in the wings.

I took the freshly protected rules and pushed them beneath my pillow before turning and storming downstairs.

I was breathing so hard that the pain in my ribs was reawakened and I welcomed it, needing something to draw my gaze from the girl who was the sole focus of all of my problems recently.

She'd clearly decided against getting any of her own clothes from my closet to replace the ones I'd torn off of her and I was further infuriated to see her wearing one of Kyan's fucking hoodies. It hung down to her mid-thigh and made it impossible for me to tell if she had her skirt still on beneath it or not.

"Saint," she began, moving off of the couch and raising her chin in defiance as she crossed the room to intercept me.

"What?" I snarled at her, the roar in my head almost drowning out the sound of her voice.

"We need to talk about this."

"About the way you seem determined to fuck with everything in my life that keeps me sane?" I demanded as I advanced on her, unable to stop myself from getting close to her again even though I knew she was a poison designed specially to incapacitate me.

"That's not what this is," she replied in a hard tone. "This is you using a few words scrawled on a piece of paper as an excuse to keep away from me. To punish yourself. I just don't understand why."

"You think this is me punishing myself?" I laughed darkly as I came to stand so close to her that I could smell the honey blossom scent of her shampoo. "Do you seriously not realise that in all the times I've punished you, I've never even come close to subjecting you to the things that I've been through? You don't know the meaning of punishment. I'm soft on you and you don't even realise it."

"What happened to make you like this, Saint?" she breathed, reaching out for me like she wanted to comfort me, understand me.

I barked a humourless laugh as I let her hand fall on my cheek and I closed my eyes for a moment as I remembered being torn from everything I knew with no notice at all, time and again. Of having all of my possessions removed and replaced, my routine interrupted. Let alone the real punishments. Days in the dark, muscles cramping, white noise blaring, time slipping away from me without me having any way to know how much of it had passed.

"I was raised in a certain way," I said in a low voice as I moved closer to her, dominating her personal space and inhaling the scent of her mixed with Kyan's vile stench of leather and gasoline from his hoodie which made my jaw grind even harder. "A way that perfect little girls like you could never even comprehend."

"I think we both know by now that I'm not perfect, Saint. The difference between you and me is that I don't flinch away from the stains on my soul."

My hand closed around her throat before I'd even made the full decision to move and I squeezed hard as I walked her back across the room until I'd driven her up against the stained glass window at the front of the church. Rain hammered against the other side of it and a shiver raced along Tatum's skin at the contact with the cold glass, but she made no move to try and remove my grip on her.

There was no denying the hard press of my cock against her thigh as I panted heavily and I felt like I was even closer to breaking than I had been earlier.

"You clearly want me, Saint," she hissed, though my grip on her made it hard for her to get the words out. "So why not just get it over with?"

"Because if I were to fuck you right now, I can assure you that nothing about it would be soft or gentle or make you feel like you knew any more about me. It would only confirm in your mind what your instincts have been warning you about from the very first moment we met. There is no good in me, Tatum Rivers. And I'll ruin you in every way that I can if you give me half the chance. If you make me break the rules for you, you'll regret it more keenly than anything else that's ever happened to you in your miserable