Tiny Dark Deeds: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Court Legacy Book 3)

Dorian

I snuck into her bed around 2 AM, more than a little pissed she hadn’t woken my ass up. I’d texted Sloane I’d come over after pizza night to see her. I’d ended up falling asleep on Wolf’s floor it got so late, a video game controller in my hand and my phone permanently attached to my hand like a needy little bitch. I was a needy little bitch. I hadn’t heard from my girl all night, and I needed to know how things had gone.

She’d pay for that now, and I worked my way under her sheets. I got a hold of her calves first, flicking my tongue across the skin.

Sloane sucked in a breath. “Dorian?”

Who else would it fucking be in her bed, my growl gravelly. Sloane attempted to toe me away, but my hands slid into the underside of her shorts. My rough palms were greeted with supple skin, and when I moved kisses to her inner thighs, those gasps became moans.

“No, Dorian.” She said this, but she had her hand in my hair, her knees up and making room for my assault against her thighs. I bit her flesh, and she trembled. “No.”

“Fuck, yes,” I gritted, sucking in her soft flesh. I slammed her knees to the bed. “You should have fucking woke me up.”

To show her that, I dragged her pussy to my mouth, her feminine scent assaulting me. It made me rock hard in my goddamn boxers and made the anticipation of tasting her insane. Before Noa Sloane, I’d never bothered eating pussy, preferring the view of a readied mouth on my cock.

All that was obviously different now, my hand in my boxers as I hooked Sloane’s shorts and panties over. I blew heat on her sex while I pumped myself, and Sloane’s thighs hugged my head.

“No,” she ground out, something between a groan and a sigh falling from her lips. She pushed at my shoulders. “Dorian, stop. Please stop.”

This only egged me on. No was my favorite word, and resistance my favorite goddamn thing. It always meant yes with us, yes to push harder, and fuck her faster. I flicked her clit with my tongue, but barely got a taste before she was easing away from my mouth.

“I’m fucking serious,” she said, working her way out of her sheets. She turned the light on, and when I finally got out from all that fucking bed she had, I found her sitting on the side of her bed. She had her head lowered, her hands gripping the mattress. What the fuck? Her head tilted back. “I don’t want to.”

She didn’t… want to? I pulled my hair out of my face. “Okay.”

I said this, but I was confused as fucking hell. The way this girl got at my dick was the way I came for her pussy most days. Things had gotten complicated since I couldn’t really stay over here anymore, so needless to say, we pretty much jumped at any opportunity we could find to be together.

The only reason I was over here tonight was because I’d snuck in through Wolf’s window. I hadn’t wanted to use my house key and alert Ramses since I technically wasn’t supposed to be doing overnights right now.

But that fact wasn’t enough to keep me away from her.

I did want to know how she was. Tonight was her big night to spend with her dad. She’d been so excited about hanging out with Ramses and had been talking about it forever.

I edged closer to her, noticing when she grabbed one of her fluffy pillows. She forced it onto her lap, and it wouldn’t let me get too close to her, which kind of annoyed me, but I let it go since something seemed wrong.

“What happened?” I asked, not trying to sound like an asshole because I wasn’t getting to eat pussy right now, but I did have an edge to my voice. I rubbed my arm. “Did I do something?”

We’d been cool at school today, the last time I’d seen her.

Over her pillow, her slender fingers slid through all her dark hair. It hit her tan shoulders, wavy and brown-black like a midnight sky or a detailed oil painting. I noticed things like that about her now, the subtleties about her that made her unique. I used to just find her beautiful. Now, I worshiped this girl and gave no fucks about it. Noa Sloane did make me weak, but if weakness was what being with her was, I’d fucking take it. I’d level the earth for this girl.

I’d start wars.

Noticing I was in her space, she glanced back at me. Her fingers threaded behind her neck. “I don’t know what to say to you right now.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but it was enough to rock my insides. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I found something out, and I don’t know what to feel about it. It freaks me out, and I kind of wish you’d been the one to tell me about it, so I wasn’t so fucking blindsided.” She studied me. “You said this wasn’t about me, but I think it kind of was. Maybe you didn’t want to lose me or something.”

I didn’t want to lose her?

She was scaring me now, and frankly, freaking me the hell out too. I touched her shoulders. “Little fighter…”

“No.” With the word, her body eased away from hands and what the fuck? She braced her pillow. “You need to tell me why you did what you did that summer with your grandpa.”

Blood pumped in my ears, my body heavy, weighted. She shouldn’t know shit about that summer with my grandfather.

I blinked once. “How do you know about that?” I tried to keep my voice level, even, but I was freaking the fuck out.

How did she know?

She shouldn’t know about this at all, and I’d told her I would tell her about it. I just hadn’t been fucking ready and…

I wasn’t ready for this look she was giving me, and the distance, space. The pillow she’d forced between us was definitely explained now, and the realization forced a slight paralysis in my body that was enough to freeze my lungs along with the rest of my body.

Her eyes closed. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“Well, that’s what I’m asking you.” I forced my hair out of my face, feeling my blood pressure literally spike next to her. “I didn’t tell you, so who fucking told you about that?”

“Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” She shot, pushing at me, and I got her arms. She shook her head. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? Were you scared? Scared I’d run? Did you not trust me? Because this shit is fucked, but I never would have run from you, Dorian. Not anymore. I’m done running.”

She trembled in my hands, gasping.

“I love you,” she said, but even with that admittance, her eyes veered away. They fell on my hands holding her, her fists braced into tight knuckles. It was like she didn’t know what to do with my hands on her. If she should pull away, stay… She was straddling a line here, and whatever it was had her pulling away from me in more than one way.

But even with the hurt of that, the reality of it, nothing hurt worse than when she finally did look into my eyes again. I saw what ran deep in her dark irises just as easily as I could see myself reflected back to me. There was fear there at the surface, at the present, but what was surface level could eventually be gotten over. It was what would remain over time that struck a heavy fear in me.

It was what couldn’t be forgotten.

I glanced away from it all. “Who told you what I did?”

“No. You need to answer me right now.”

“Who told you, Sloane?” I brought her closer, her face screwing up. “Please. Who told you?”

“Your grandfather,” she admitted, my blood pressure spiking again. She looked away. “I ran into him when I went to the house today. The house Bru and I had been staying at when we got to Maywood Heights.”

“The fuck?”

“No, you don’t get to do that.” She pushed my hands off her, getting up. Her pillow fell to the floor as she stalked her over to a window that gave views of rich gardens bathed in moonlight. My god dad and Brielle had a state park basically out there and was almost as big as my own backyard and what my grandmother had planted. Sloane hugged her arms. “You don’t get to get mad at me. Not when you were keeping something so big from me.” She raised her hands. “He said he helped you find Mayberry?”

So, my grandfather had been running his mouth and starting shit. I rubbed my mouth. “Why were you at that house today?”

“Why the fuck can’t you answer a single question?” She got in my face, my little fighter here and ready to play. This was the shit that made me bleed for her, how she stood up to me and didn’t give a fuck, but right now, I was being tested. She’d had contact with my grandfather, and that pissed me the hell off. Her arms still crossed, she scanned my eyes. “Why did you do what you did? He told me he tried to blackmail you, and you tried to kill him. Poisoned him.”

Hearing the words from her didn’t feel good, nor how my stomach felt to see the reality of them still in her fucking eyes.

It won’t go away.

How could it? This shit was too big to forget. It was forever.

She ran her fingers through her hair, her sigh heavy. I didn’t say anything, and eventually, she looked at me again. “Tell me what was going through your mind back then. I want to listen. I want to hear you. Understand it.”

I swallowed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, I do.” Her voice broke as she got close to me, daring to. She might not be comfortable in this situation, comfortable with me and what we were talking about but she closed the distance between us anyway. She put her hands on my face. “I am here. I am, and I’m not going anywhere, and you should have trusted me to handle this.” She shook her head. “I mean, aren’t we done with these secrets? These lies? You told me in your email you were trying to understand me. Well, I’m trying to understand you now. You said you trust me, but I don’t think you do.”

I did trust her. I trusted her with everything. My attention veered to the space behind her, the floor, and anywhere I could look but her.

This made her laugh in response, dry, throaty. Her jaw shifted. “You really can’t answer anything.”

“I want to know why you were at that house and talking to that son of a bitch. How he got in your head and how, for some reason, you can’t fucking see that he was manipulating you.”

“Manipulating me?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “He is manipulative. He’s a son of a bitch, and clearly, he’s worked his magic on you.” I gripped my hair. “Did he tell you exactly how he tried to blackmail me?”

“He said he threatened you.”

“He threatened my mother,” I said, causing her to blink. I smiled, tight, but found nothing at all nice about this moment, nothing good about being right and her being wrong. “He threatened her life, then tried to go back on it. Said he didn’t mean it and was just desperate to have a relationship with me.”

She swallowed. “He mentioned being desperate.”

“Well, he was, so yeah, I felt threatened. I was trying to protect my mother and my family.”

She cuffed her arms, and I laughed, dry as hers had been.

“And did he tell you about what he did after? How after I did try to poison him, he had me arrested to teach me a lesson? By the way, that was what happened that day at the cabin. He fed intel to the cops to come pick me up after I kidnapped Mayberry.”

Her head shot my way, and I nodded.

I got close. “Did he tell you how it felt that day I did poison him?” My throat flicked, nostrils flaring. “How before the nerves got to me so bad I hurled my fucking brains out just in anticipation of knowing what I had to do? Who I had to be to protect my mother and my family?”

She fanned lashes over glassy eyes, her own throat shifting. She took a step forward, but I eased back.

“How about how it felt like I died a little bit after? How I had died and could never get back who I used to be?”

“Dorian…”

I locked up when she touched me, attention veering, averting. I couldn’t have her looking at me in any way that would make my stomach twist even more.

I couldn’t handle it.

“Why were you at that house with him?” I asked again. “Tell me before I lose my mind.”

I dared to look at her then and saw exactly what I didn’t want to see. I saw sympathy, yes, but also that same thing from before running in her irises’ depths. She’d looked at me in many ways in the past, the best when she was hot for me, ready. Later, that erratic burn only ignited when something else deeper developed beneath it. It was what made her bleed for me and that love she always said she had for me. It was still there, but something else was too. It was something that killed me and something I always knew about myself, but I hadn’t wanted her to see. I’d never wanted that for her and us, but it was there now.

It’d be there forever.

“I literally ran into him. Just by chance…” She shook her head before touching my face again. “I told you I wanted to get a gift for Ramses. I had my paintings still at the house and wanted to give him one of those. Your grandpa happened to be packing up the house, and he didn’t want to tell me about anything that happened between you to. I pushed him…”

My gaze clashed with hers. It borderline sounded like she was defending the older fucker.

“He actually told me to talk to you about all this, and that it wasn’t his place.”

“Yeah, cuz he’s just so perfect,” I said, pulling away from her. “Your savior, and your friend.”

Her head shot back. “No.”

“Your provider.” I swallowed hard before squeezing the bridge of my nose. “Want to know why I didn’t tell you about that summer? Why I wasn’t ready to?”

“It’s obvious why you didn’t. You didn’t trust me.”

“No, that’s the thing, I do. I trust you with everything.” I grabbed her, bracing her. “I love you with everything in me, but I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for this and what I know you’ll always see when you look at me.”

She scanned my eyes, her lips turned down, sad. “What’s that, Dorian?”

That was what I felt was obvious. I touched her cheek, following a line up to her eye. “I knew what you’d always see, and I wasn’t ready for that.” I outlined each eye, both of them closing. I snapped mine shut. “You’ll always see a monster in me, and I can’t look at that. I couldn’t see that shit every fucking day, and you will because you won’t forget this. You won’t forget what I’ve done and…”

I mean, how could she? It’d always be there between us, lingering like a silent beast.

She opened her eyes after what I said, and I noticed she averted her gaze. She was right. We probably would get past this. She loved me, and I loved her, but that wasn’t the point. This would always be there.

She’d never forget.

That was what I’d wanted to avoid, and pardon me, for not wanting to jump in and see that between us every day. We were good. We were finally fucking happy, and I didn’t want to let go of any of that.

Of course, these were things I couldn’t make myself say and my own insecurities I was still fucking working on. I would have told her; when I was ready, I would have. I’d just needed time, but it seemed I didn’t have any more of that.

“Well, it’s nice you know me so well,” she said, sarcasm lacing her voice. She eased her arms away. “And you could have given me a chance to hear me out before just jumping to what you think you’ll always see in me.” Her head shook. “You should go.”

I didn’t want to, leave her like this, us like this, but fear was a son of a bitch. Maybe part of me did think I’d lose her, and that would have been so much worse than the beast underlying between us.

That fear did make me leave in the end. I wanted to respect her, but that didn’t stop me from staying by the doorway longer than I probably should have. She cried after she closed it, cried a long time before I finally did leave. Not so long ago, I used to believe her tears gave me power. It meant I’d broken her, and that flawed logic felt like another lifetime away now. Even then, it hadn’t given me power.

It had only deprived me of my strength.