Page 34 of Corrupt Me

His aqua eyes were wild as they clashed with mine. I’d never seen him like this, seen him so violently angry he nearly beat someone to a bloody pulp. Those glacial eyes stared at me, and his bloody hand halted midair. He blinked, and slowly the haze cleared from his features.

He released his fingers from the splattered, stained shirt and forked a hand through his hair before he stood, glaring down at what he’d done.

Tristan spit blood onto the concrete, the drops staining the ground red. “Go home, Ever.”

I opened my mouth to ask what he planned to do with the two dickheads on the grass, but Tristan cut me a sharp look that had me snapping my mouth closed.

My internal struggle continued to wage as I stared at Tristan. Uncertainty coursed through me. If I left, could Tristan be trusted not to finish what he started? I wasn’t eager to stand around or help, but leaving him seemed…wrong.

Would I even be in this position if it wasn’t for Tristan? I didn’t want to be swept up in his dangerous world or the problems he’d created. He’d always been trouble, but this was something more entirely.

But still…I didn’t want to leave him.

Explain that shit?

I shook my head at him. “If you get suspended, this isn’t my fault.”

“Go!” he barked, the hardness returning to his cold eyes.

Sam grabbed my hand.

Tonight ended up being memorable after all.

Just not in the way I hoped.

thirteen

“What the fuck was that?” The door to Thorn Hall hadn’t even closed behind us, and Sam was fuming, her adrenaline still pumping. It wasn’t me she wanted to unleash her temper on, but since Tristan wasn’t around, I was the next best thing. And really, I couldn’t blame her.

In a roundabout way, it was my association with Tristan that put us in a fucked-up situation. I was so going to kill him.

Sam paced the main floor, moving into the sitting room, wearing out the floor in front of the fireplace. My eyes went to the couch, and my thoughts immediately turned to Tristan and the girl who’d been straddling him yesterday.

Had it really only been yesterday?

I went to the couch and sank in because I was pretty sure my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore. “Before or after I kissed Tristan,” I retorted.

Her head turned so fast I swore she’d have a serious case of whiplash. “Say again?”

I wanted to defuse the situation, and my mind somehow thought mentioning my kiss with Tristan would shift away fromthe trauma. My brain didn’t want to go back to what happened tonight. I wanted to forget it all. If we kept talking about it, my mind would relive the fear I’d felt, and it would be bad enough when I went to sleep tonight. “I kissed Tristan tonight.”

Sam’s frowning lips stiffened. “Ever. Tell me you didn’t.”

“Sleep with him?” I retorted, being over-the-top purposely as I filled in the blank. When shit got too serious, my default was to exaggerate. I shook my head. “God, no. Just a dumb kiss.” When the fuck would I have had time to sleep with him? Or where? Did she think we snuck off into a back alley and I let him ram me up against a brick wall for my first time? Although truthfully, that didn’t sound too bad. Not with Tristan. Somehow dark alleys fit perfectly with someone like him, making the image sexy and a bit dangerous—like Tristan.

Sam ran a hand through her dark aqua-tinted hair. “This doesn’t feel like a dumb kiss. This is Preston’s brother,” she pointed out as if I’d forgotten.

I most definitely hadn’t.

“I know,” I said, burying my face into my hands. “It just happened. I didn’t plan it.”

“Well, let’s not pretend you haven’t fantasized about kissing him since you were like five.” She sighed and dropped onto the couch beside me, her energy slowly calming. Kissing was a topic Sam loved to talk about, among other more detailed things. “So? How was it?”

My hands fell from my face, color moving into my cheeks as I glanced at her. “I want to tell you it was the worst kiss of my life. That I hated every second. That he tasted like a soggy fish.”

She shook her head. “You literally orgasmed on the spot. Am I right?”

“Practically,” I sighed, wondering how I got myself into this mess. Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be him? “It doesn’t matter though. It never should have happened.My curiosity has been satisfied. I got Tristan Malone out of my system.”

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