Tame Him: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Rebels at Sterling Prep Book 2)

As I say those words, it’s like an actual weight is being lifted from my shoulders. I’ve been carrying those secrets around for too long.

“So who is?” Remi asks the exact same question I’ve been asking myself for weeks.

I shrug. “I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth. It could be a lie to add to all the others.”

“Ace,” Remi sighs, wrapping her arms tighter around my shoulders.

As good as it feels having her comforting me, that wasn’t the reason I came here.

“Remi.”

“Shhh,” she says, placing her fingers over my lips. “No more talking.” My heart damn near pounds out of my chest as she licks her lips.

Her eyes bounce between mine as she hovers dangerously close to my mouth. I can only assume she’s trying to talk herself out of it, but I’m not about to help her out with that. I need her lips on mine more than I need my next breath.

I hold her tighter, hoping it’ll help her make a decision.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she mutters a beat before her lips press to mine.

Every single muscle in my body relaxes. I part my lips, desperate to deepen the kiss. She follows my lead, but the second our tongues collide she jumps off me like she’s just been burned.

“Remi, Princess. Come on, you’re not playing fair,” I groan, making a show of rearranging myself in my pants so she knows exactly what she does to me with just a simple kiss.

“Fair?” she asks incredulously. “Let’s talk about fair, shall we?”

Her eyes are still red from the tears she shed for me earlier, but as she remembers, more fill her eyes. “You played a sex tape of me losing my virginity at my own birthday party, Ace. How is that fair? I was already the school outcast. What were you even thinking?”

I sink back in the chair. “I wanted to hurt James,” I say honestly, and she gasps.

She said she wanted the truth, so she’s going to get it. “It was obvious the first day we moved in that you were important to him. The way he looked at you that night. It was with so much love and adoration. The exact look the three of us should have had from our parents but never did.

“I hated you in that moment. I’d been dragged into this life. A life I didn’t want. Forced to live with a lying cunt of an uncle who may or may not have killed my dad.” My chest heaves with the admission. “I was a fucking mess. I’m still a fucking mess. But something changed.”

“What?” she asks, a little hope seeping into her voice.

“You. You happened, Remi. I was meant to mess with you, hurt you, break you and send you back on your knees crying to him.” Her eyebrows almost hit her hairline, but I won’t stop now that I’ve started. “I wanted to show him that he’s not the only one who can manipulate other people’s lives. I wanted to prove to him that I had power. That I could get what I wanted and ruin who I wanted.

“I just didn’t anticipate one thing.”

She juts her hip out and places her hand on her waist. She’s so fucking sexy when she’s feisty. Her tank is thin enough to give me a hint of her nipples hiding behind, and her boy shorts ride high on her thighs. Fuck, how I’d love to rip them off her and feast on what’s beneath until she cries my name.

My cock swells once again. “I fell for you, Princess. Hook, line, and fucking sinker.”

“But you still went through with it.” My heart sinks.

“If James hadn’t pulled that stunt for your birthday, I probably wouldn’t have. But that just tipped me over the edge and I saw red. All I could focus on was revenge.”

“So you filmed me and played it for everyone to see? I can’t believe that even after… that, that you could be so cold, so cruel.”

“I had no intention of playing that video. I took the memory card from the camera and was going to destroy it. I couldn’t do it. You meant too much to me. I’d fallen too hard by that point.”

I stand, pushing the chair out behind me and stalking toward her.

“B-But it played. E-Everyone saw it, Ace. Everyone saw me naked as you…”

“Fuck,” I roar, anger like I’ve never known before swelling in my gut. “I know, Princess. I fucking know, and trust me when I say that I want to kill every motherfucker who so much as glanced at that screen. What they saw… I’ll regret it every day for the rest of my life.” The words vibrate in my chest, a firestorm coursing through me.

I run my hand over my face and scrub at my rough jaw. “That should have been for my eyes only. That’s why I knew I couldn’t do it. You’d given me something precious, and I couldn’t ruin that any more than I already had.”

“S-So how, Ace? You say you’d changed your mind but that tape was still played. How?” she seethes.

“I don’t know, baby.”

She stops pacing when I get to her, and she allows me to back her up against the wall. “But it played.” She loses the fight with her tears and one drops from her eye.

Reaching up, I swipe it away with my thumb. “I know, but it shouldn’t have.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” I’ve played the lead-up to that fateful event over and over in my mind. But with the alcohol I’d drunk, the coke I’d snorted, and the beating I’d taken, I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

“After we… slept together, I freaked out and left for the Heights. I went back to where I grew up and hung out with my old friends. I thought it would help me clear my head. Help me feel like I… belonged. I thought it would feel like home.”

“Did it?”

“Nope. I realized the only place that feels like home now is when I’m with you.”

“Ace.”

I press my body against hers, ensuring she can feel what her close proximity does to me, and rest my hand on her waist. It barely scratches the surface of what I need from her, but I’ve got to get all of this out first. It’s the least she deserves.

“I drank a shit load of liquor and snorted fuck knows how much coke.” She gasps at my admission but doesn’t stop me. “Then one of Donny’s guys showed up to hand deliver a message.”

“Your face,” she says softly, as if she’s only just now remembering how I looked that night.

“I don’t remember how the night ended. One minute, I’m getting my ass handed to me and the next thing I knew, I woke up in fucking agony in my bed in the pool house.”

“How?”

“Cole,” is all I say, because I’m convinced there’s more to his story about that night than he’s letting on. “But along with the pain, all I felt was regret. Regret for how I treated you, for what I’d taken from you, for what I had planned next.

“I took the card from the camera I had set up.” I lean into Remi’s ear. “I didn’t even watch it,” I breathe, making her shudder. “I don’t remember what I did with it after that, but the next thing I know it was playing on the fucking screen for everyone to see.”

“Just like you planned.” Disappointment swirls in her eyes.

“Yes but… I swear to you, Princess. I wasn’t going through with it. I’d changed my mind.”

“Really?” she says coolly. “It all sounds a little too coincidental.”

“I swear on my brothers’ lives I did not set that video up. I did not want anyone to see it.” Staring into her eyes, I silently beg her to believe me.

“Ace, I don’t—”

I don’t allow her any more words. I slam my lips down on hers and make the most of her open mouth. My tongue dives in, in search of her own, and, after a second, she concedes.

“I swear to you, Princess,” I whisper against her lips. “Let me prove it. Please.”

“Ace,” she moans, sagging back against the wall.

I kiss her so deeply, deeper than I have before. I want to give her everything. I need to.

My hand runs up the inside of her tank until I take the weight of her breast. Her head drops back and hits the wall behind her. As she does, a flashback of her falling into that pool slams into me.

“Fuck,” I bark. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I shouldn’t be letting you, more like,” she counters.

“No, you should be resting.”

Reaching behind me, I pull my hoodie from my body and drop it to her bedroom floor, quickly followed by my boots, socks, and sweatpants. Once I’m standing in just my boxers, I reach for her.

The second her feet leave the floor, she wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. I hold her tight to me and breathe her in. I don’t deserve this, but fuck if I’m going to point that out right now.

With her still clinging to me, I pull the sheets back and slide us both into her bed. I settle us so we’re laying on our sides, our bodies pressed together and our noses only a breath apart.

“Ace, what are you—”

“Sssh, Princess. For once, I’m doing the right thing. Please don’t fight me.”

I pull her into me tighter, and, after only a few minutes, her breathing evens out, telling me that I did indeed do the right thing.

I lie there awake almost all night, holding her and thanking whoever the fuck will listen, for her allowing me this time.

She might wake up in the morning and regret every second of it or remember all the things I confessed and want nothing more to do with me. Either is a real possibility. But for now, I’ll just enjoy having her here, holding me as if she needs me as much as I need her.

The sun appears through the curtains all too soon, and it’s not long later that an alarm starts up and Remi stirs in my arms. She stills the moment realization dawns on her that she’s not in bed alone. After a few seconds she risks a look up at me.

“Morning, Princess.”

Remi blinks at me a few times. “I thought it was a dream.”

I can’t help but smile at the fact that she didn’t call it a nightmare. “I guess that all depends on what the dream was about.”

“Just that you were here, holding me.”

“Then I can confirm that it’s reality.”

She falls silent for a moment as she thinks. “All those things you said last night… were they…”

“True?” I finish for her. “Every single one.”

“Jesus. So you really have no idea if your dad is your dad?”

As relieved as I am that that’s the first thing she chooses to focus on after all the other confessions I gave her, I kinda hoped she might focus on another. Like me admitting how I really feel for her. I may not have given her those three little words, but I got damn close.

“Nope. I have no idea who to believe at his point.”

“Maybe you should speak to James about it. He might—”

“No.”

“Ace,” she says softly, placing her hot palm on my chest. “I heard everything you said last night, and I understand your issue with him. But aside from your dad, he might be the only one who knows the truth.”

“Maybe, but I’m not ready to go there yet. Please promise me you won’t either.”

“Of course I won’t. Everything you told me last night, it’s between us.”

I stare down at her, the connection that’s always between us crackling away.

“What?” she asks, her already rosy cheeks darkening under my gaze.

“I really want to fuck you.”

She bites down on her bottom lip, and it doesn’t make my situation any more comfortable. “Well, I’m right here.”

Fuck, it’s so fucking tempting to just roll her over, rip those shorts from her body and slide right into her. But I can’t.

Not yet.

“No.”

“N-No?” she stutters in disbelief.

I roll us over, but that’s the only part of that previous fantasy I allow to happen. “The next time I’m inside you, it’ll be because I deserve it. Because I’ve proved to you that I can be what you need. Not because you feel bad about my fucked-up past.”

“Ace, no. That’s not what—”

“I know, but it’s off the back of all of that, and I want it to be about us.” Lowering my mouth to hers, I cut off any argument she might have. “Get dressed. I’m taking you for breakfast before school.”

“Oh yeah?” She beams.

“Yeah, if I can’t have sex then I, at least need decent food to make up for it.”

“Okay,” she agrees, jumping from the bed. “But I need to shower first.” She drops her hands to the hem of her tank and pulls it up over her head. “Join me?” she asks before throwing the fabric at my head.

I catch it, but at no point do I take my eyes off her back. “Turn around, Princess,” I demand.

But the little minx pushes her thumbs into the waistband of her shorts and pushes them down her legs, giving me the most perfect view of her ass.

“Fucking hell,” I groan, my already hard cock pulsing in frustration.

“Wanna see the front? Then I suggest you follow me.” She’s gone before I blink. It’s the sound of the shower running that gets me moving.

She’s already under the spray by the time I step into the bathroom. “Hey,” she says shyly. Her hands lift to her hair and the water streams down between and over her breasts, her pink and pert nipples just begging to be sucked on.

How the fuck am I meant to resist?

Fuck breakfast. I’ve just found something much more fulfilling.