RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,23
you ever do, but it also means I have very few regrets. How can I regret something if I’ve weighed all of the consequences and deemed them acceptable before taking action? “Tried everything at least once, Lord Lovett. No sense in leaving any stone unturned, right?”
If he asks me if I liked having a dick thrust up my ass, I’m prepared to break my ‘no need to lie to the friends’ rule, just this once. Or at least bend it a little. He doesn’t ask that, though. He nods, the corners of his mouth pulled down in a look of surprise as he arranges himself against the couch cushions. “I might give it a shot,” he says. “Might liven up the rest of the year. My mother would have a heart attack if I brought home a boyfriend.” He laughs maniacally, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat as he closes his eyes, throwing his arm over his face. “Don’t take this personally, but I can’t see that fucking you would be any fun, Jacobi. You’re too moody. You look like you bite.”
I huff out a sharp bark of laughter. “You bet your fucking ass I do.”
Dash raises his arm, opening one eye so he can peek at me through the crack. “You fuck angry, too, don’t you? Must be terrifying to have you looming over a person, all fire and brimstone and death, knowing you’re about to be destroyed from the inside out.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a very tender lover.”
Dash nearly chokes to death on a scathing fit of laughter. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t know tender if it leapt up and knocked your front fucking teeth out.”
“That’s exactly the kind of tender I’m talking about.”
He smiles, flashing two rows of very white, very straight teeth. If Lord Lovett Snr and Lady Lovett had cared for their son even the littlest bit, they would have spared him the torture of braces when he was a kid and left his teeth a little crooked. With the set of perfect pearly whites on him now, he’s completely flawless. Makes for a classically handsome profile, but it’s also stripped his face of anything really interesting to look at. “Whatever you say, Dark Lord. Is that how it’s gonna be with your little French girl, then? Caresses that bruise? Kisses that bleed?”
Kisses that bleed?
I nearly drop the pipe I was about to use but manage to close my hand around it just before it crashes down onto the glass coffee table. The image that phrase just brought to mind has me practically panting, my lips burning, the roof of my mouth tingling like crazy. I don’t enjoy the taste of blood, but the thought of biting Elodie hard enough to break the skin…
Fuck.
“No. I’m not interested in that with her.” I say it like I mean it. I sound convincing as hell. So then why does it feel like I just dumped a shit load of good MDMA down my throat, and the anticipation is building inside of me as I wait to start rolling? Makes no fucking sense.
Just like always, Dash grunts, making it clear that he knows me better and he doesn’t believe me for one hot second.
“Her father’s top brass. I’d be careful if I were you,” he says, firing the warning I just gave him right back at me. “You know what’ll happen if your father finds out you’ve soiled one of his colleague’s precious daughters. There’ll be hell to pay and then some.”
Since I think through all of my actions so thoroughly, I’ve obviously thought about this. I’ve done plenty of research on Colonel Jason Andrew Stillwater, and I’ve gotten a decent lay of the land. Luckily for me, Elodie’s father is not a well-liked man. My own father, when I briefly mentioned Colonel Stillwater during a phone call last week, called him a self-righteous, overbearing cunt. And my father likes everyone. Apart from me, that is.
“Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours, Lovett. Everything’s under control. I know when to say when. I’ll have my fun and then I’ll call it a day. Got college on the horizon, anyway. We’re all better off saving our energy for when the real adventures begin next year.”
“Wren. Be realistic,” Dash chides. “You’re already in it up to your neck with this girl. The way you’re brooding around her is classic Jacobi obsession material. And she didn’t open the desk, which I know is just driving you insane.”