Page 97 of Vile Boys

When I slowly open my eyes again, he’s right in front of me. He grabs my hand and peels it away from my face. How did he move so quickly? I was blindsided so swiftly I didn’t realize he’d already made his way over to me.

And now he’s holding my hand, and I’m too mesmerized by how he looks at me to even pull away.

His free hand rises to meet my face, but I flinch the second he tries to touch me. He pauses, studies me, before his knuckles softly caress my cheek, dulling my senses and lulling me into submission.

“Are you all right, darling?”

He talks so … affected.

Yet it doesn’t feel at all unnatural with him.

I don’t even know how to respond because he’s looking at me so intently, so up close, it almost feels like he’s peering straight into my soul.

He smiles. “You can speak.”

My face heats. “Oh, right, yeah … I guess.”

He pulls his hand away and looks at it, the back of his hand covered in saliva and … cum.

Oh God.

For a second, I almost forgot what Ares and Caleb did and that I was still drenched with all the evidence.

I try to run off, but he grips my wrist. “Don’t go. Please.”

The softness in his voice makes me stop in my tracks, and I let him step closer.

“You look like you could use some help with cleaning up,” he says, smiling gently before he tugs me along. “Come.”

Before I know it, I’m dragged away, barely able to hold my ragged clothes together as well as the knife in my hand while we zigzag through the maze. I can’t keep track of our route, but within a minute, we end up right at the same spot I first saw the Tartarus boys at during the party they threw.

The paved area in front of their backyard door along with that same balcony they once stood at.

It all seems like such a distant memory.

“C’mon.” Blaine drags me forward.

“Wait, isn’t that the Tartarus House?” I yelp.

“Yes, it’s fine,” he replies, opening the door and pulling me in.

“What do you mean fine? That’s enemy territory.”

“Enemy?” he parrots, pausing as the door closes behind me.

Shit.

I’m already inside.

My hand tightens around the knife as I hold it out in front of me, ready to strike whoever tries to come at me.

Blaine turns around, his chiseled face so strikingly different from the gloominess of this building’s interior that it catches me off guard when he looks me dead in the eyes. “Is that how you see me?” he asks, his hair cascading down his shoulder as he tilts his head.

“I …”

I don’t even know what to say.

Is he my enemy? Or is it just because he’s friends with them?

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