The Wicked Trilogy by S. Massery
Margo
My head is spinningwhen I walk out of the greenhouse. Caleb follows close behind me, like a menacing shadow. He said he doesn’t lose—but my heartbeat is stuttering and the fear is crawling up and down my throat.
I couldn’t speak if I wanted to.
He stole my first kiss. And then to feel his erection against my belly…
You’re not supposed to show fear to the enemy. Yet underneath it all, Caleb wasn’t always the enemy. He was a boy who I liked. A friend. We were closer than even Savannah and I, running wild together as kids.
Somehow, we both changed.
For the worse?
“Come with me.” He’s gruff, but he doesn’t touch me.
I follow him without a word, down the hallway to the nurse’s station.
“Ms. Peters.” He smiles at the nurse. “Margo isn’t feeling well. Mr. Jenkins said it would be all right if I brought her home, but I just wanted to check in with you.” His voice lowers. “I’m afraid she threw up a few minutes ago.”
The nurse tuts at me. She doesn’t do more than glance, because apparently Caleb’s word is law around here—even for the staff. “I’ll let him know, thank you.”
I have no choice but to go where he leads.
“You aren’t serious.”
“Can’t a guy bring a girl home?”
I roll my eyes. “Not when the girl is me, and the guy is you.”
He snorts, unlocking his car as we approach it. I’m not surprised that it’s a fast, expensive Audi. Matte black. The leather interior is black with lime-green accents.
He waits for me to get in and closes my door, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Well?”
I glance at him. “What?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Back to school.” I glance back toward the doors we just came out of.
He snorts. “You’re a shit liar, Sheep. We’re skipping out on the last twenty minutes of the day. Don’t blow it.” His gaze turns contemplative. “Or do. After all, it’ll just make things more… interesting.”
I’m not afraid of him. Even with the posturing and the games. My head is spinning with everything that’s happened in the last week—at least that much is true—but suddenly, I don’t feel like he’s going to kill me.
And he knows it, judging from the expression on his face.
“Tell me,” he says. Dark and deadly. He’s back to how he acts in front of a crowd.
“Take me to your house.”
His face closes off. It’s the last thing he expected.
I feel like I’m the one disappointed. It rings through me like a bell in a minor key, too much dissonance to handle. How does he manage to make me feel so much with just a change of his mood?
“Now you’re playing the game,” he murmurs.
He guns it out of the parking lot, flying down streets that we used to run through. It’s surreal. It’s a dream-turned-nightmare.
“What if I don’t want to play?” I ask.
He turns onto a familiar road, easing into his driveway. He parks in front of the empty house and grins at me. It’s the smile that belongs to a madman, leaking darkness like an oil spill. “Sorry, love. You don’t get a choice.”
Caleb climbs out of the car. I take a deep breath and mirror his movements, following him up the front walkway. He unlocks the door and pushes it open, gesturing for me to go in front of him.
This place…
Memories sucker punch me. Chasing him around, eating dinner. My mother brushing my hair off of my forehead and kissing my temple.
“I changed my mind.” I back away, right into him.
He grips my arms and propels me forward, deeper into the house.
“Caleb, stop.”
“Who said we could stop?”
I dig my heels into the ground, but my upper body keeps moving forward. I take a step, then another, farther into the house that feels more like a ghost town than a home.
Room after room, furniture is covered in white sheets and dust.
“What happened?”
He laughs, squeezing my arms.
“Caleb.”
“I’m not sure a sheep should be so direct.” He talks above my head to the empty house.
We stop in the kitchen, and he shoves me forward.
The kitchen.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I say, turning back.
I try to slip past him, but he grabs me. Hauls me in. He lifts me and sets me on the counter, holding my hips.
I stare down at him. His eyes are level with my throat at this angle. “Caleb, please.”
“Please?” He watches me. “Since when does please work?”
Please don’t tell them, Margo.
His voice echoes out of the recesses of my mind, so loud that I flinch.
“One day I’m going to fuck you on this counter.” His voice is low.
My body is a live wire. One spark, and I’ll set this whole house on fire. One touch, and Caleb and I will go up in flames.
“You’re going to enjoy it,” he continues. “Even knowing what happened here. Because all you’ll be able to think about is my dick in your pussy, spreading you wide. Hitting every. Fucking. Nerve.”
One of his hands comes up and palms my breast.
I’m wet. It’s a new sensation, but Caleb is right between my legs, and I can’t move if I don’t want him to know.
He pinches my nipple, and I automatically try to lean away from him.
“Stop.” I hate how it shoots straight to my center. How everything inside me is alive in a way that it hasn’t been in a really fucking long time.
“You give in?” His eyes light up. “You like this, Sheep. Admit it and I’ll stop.”
He opens my shirt, inch by inch.
I bite my lip, refusing to play his game. It’s dumb, really. A tiny, terrified part of me is screaming to say whatever I need to in order to escape. To claim my sanity back, because he’s slowly walking us to the cliff’s edge.
Once we fall, there’s no going back.
“Admit you like it, and I’ll stop,” he repeats. He looks at my bra, tugging my shirt open wider. He pulls down the top edge of the bra cup. It exposes my breast, nipple hard under his attention.
Shame floods through me, but I press my lips together.
I can make this stop.
He leans down and touches his lips to the flesh just above my nipple. And then he bites, sucking hard, and my whole body stiffens. It’s pleasure and pain wrapped together, confusing my mind. Building until I can’t take it anymore.
“S-stop.” I push at his head, and my skin pulls before he releases his teeth’s hold.
He steps away, grinning at me. “Are you afraid?”
“Of you?”
His eyes gleam, and he looks down. “I know you’re afraid of me. I don’t need to ask. Are you wet?”
I suck in a breath.
“Yes or no, love,” he says. “If you don’t answer, I can easily find out.”
“You wouldn’t—”
His eyebrow rises. I lift my hands to push him away, but he grabs my wrists and pins them against my chest. His grip is bruising. One of his hands slides up the inside of my thigh, under the edge of my panties. His finger strokes me, sudden and vicious.
I arch away from him, glaring holes in his head. It’s foreign and painful, but also… not. He thrusts his finger into me again, his thumb on my clit.
“Soaked.”
He pulls back, and I choke on a gasp. Tears prick my eyes at the violence of it. At the audacity.
“You won’t—”
“Get away with this?” He rolls his eyes, raising his finger to his lips. It glistens in the light streaming in through the window. “I almost wish you were right. But here’s a fact, love: everyone adores me. No one will believe you. Especially with the rumors circulating about your parents.”
I swipe at my eyes, desperate to not cry in front of him.
“Suck,” he orders, shoving his finger at me. “And I’ll take you home. Promise.”
The tears fall, and I try to blink them away. “Fuck you.”
He shrugs, sticking his finger in his mouth. He does a thorough job cleaning me off him, withdrawing his finger out with a pop. When he’s done, he walks out of the kitchen.
I follow him on shaky legs out the front door. We didn’t get to the best part, I almost say, but honestly—I’m done for today. Exhaustion settles over me, cold and thick.
He climbs in his car. Again, I follow.
Except, the passenger door is locked.
He rolls down the window, shooting me a wink. “Shouldn’t have tested me, Sheep. See you tomorrow.”
And then he leaves me. Rolls up the window and drives away, not even casting me another glance.
I sink to my knees, my little tears evolving into huge, hiccupping sobs.
From a first kiss to… this.
I regret ever being excited about coming back to Rose Hill. Not with a monster as the school’s leader.
