Page 11 of The Queen's Knights

The third guy snickers and mutters something I don’t quite hear. His friend shoots him a warning look. “Dude, you can’t fucking say shit like that.”

“What? You know I’m right. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t hit an ass that fine.” He makes a lewd motion with his hands in front of his hips, pivoting his pelvis.

Rage colors my vision. I drop my bag and grab the back of his collar, slamming him face-first into the wall.

ChapterEight

Lance

Dudebro grunts and cranes his neck, giving me a wild look out of one eye. “What the fuck?” he yells in a shrill, terrified voice.

I stick my nose against his ear. “You’d better watch your fucking mouth about Dr. Brennan, asshole, or I’ll break all your goddamn teeth.” I haul him back and slam him against the wall again, gratified by the smear of blood that colors the beige paint from his busted lip.

His friends catch up to us, and one yells, “Get the fuck off him!”

The other guy grabs my shoulder and I spin, fist swinging. I’m ready to lay them all out if I have to, but this one is a hefty guy, so my punch hits his fleshy gut without doing much to stop him. He grapples me and shoves. I shove back and he twists one hand into the back of my collared shirt, swinging a meaty fist into my kidney. The pain throws me off-balance and he pushes me the rest of the way over, the soft fabric of my shirt tearing from the collar down as I drop. I fall under his weight with a pained grunt as his knee lands against my groin. Not a direct hit to my balls, but close enough to hurt like a motherfucker.

The other two are above me then. The one I bloodied lands a kick to my side while the other bends over and swings at my face. I don’t dodge fast enough and his knuckles glance off my mouth, pain slicing through my lip.

I kick and squirm, but the big guy has me pinned to the floor by the shoulders while the others wail on me. Another kick, another fist to the face. My rage is the only thing keeping me numb to the pain.

“What’re you, a fucking pussy-licking teacher’s pet?” the bloody one sneers.

I grin through body-wracking agony and blood, ready with a retort that would’ve probably made me just as bad as them. Before I can get it out, a big hand grabs the upper arm of the guy pinning me and throws him off me.

Percy appears in his place, his sheer size enough to make the other two guys scramble back in fear.

“Get the fuck out of here before I call campus security,” he snaps without even raising his voice. All three of them grab their forgotten backpacks and sprint away.

Percy reaches a hand out to me, and I grip it and let him haul me up. A bizarre sense of déjà vu hits at the parallel to the other night, when he helped me up after I’d had my tongue buried in Dr. Brennan’s pussy for half an hour or more. My dick stirs, and I’m grateful for the throb of pain that settles it down.

I lift the hem of my shirt to dab at my bloody lip, find even more blood gushing from my nose, and wince. Percy reaches into his lefthand pocket and hands me a pristine powder-blue hanky that inspires yet another flashback to Saturday night. Light blue worn on the left means you’re into giving oral sex. It didn’t hit me until now that I could’ve been offering myself to men as well as women.

I stare at it for a beat as that sinks in before he lifts it up. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I finally take the hanky and press it to my mouth, then hold it against my nose with a muffled, “Thanks.”

Percy nods and tilts his head. “Come on. I think there’s some ice and a First Aid kit in the lounge. I’ll get you cleaned up, though I don’t think there’s any helping that shirt.”

I crane my head to look over my shoulder. This was a new shirt, one of few button-downs I own. A draft wafts across my upper back where the seam has torn. “As long as the fashion police don’t see me, I’ll survive.”

“I might have a spare I can loan you,” he says. He turns to head down the hall and I follow, too dazed by the turn of events to do anything else.

“Do I even want to know what that was about?” he asks in the same soft-spoken tone he used at the club.

“Just defending Dr. Brennan’s honor is all. They said some things that I hope aren’t true about her.”

His jaw spasms and he glances at me warily. “Tell me.”

I get the sense this guy is ex-military, which should have been evident all along, if I’d paid any attention to him until now. His watchful posture and how he plants himself in a corner of the lecture hall with a view of all the doors should be a dead giveaway.

I grunt and shake my head. “Let me stop bleeding first, if that’s okay.”

He directs me into a staff lounge and pulls a chair out from one of the tables, then goes rifling through the cabinets. He returns a minute later with a First Aid kit and starts by unceremoniously tilting my head back and shoving cotton balls up my nostrils.

“Jeez, I’m not just a piece of meat here,” I protest.

“Tell me what they said.” He pauses long enough to look into my eyes, and I know he’s going to keep at me until I give in.

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