“Come on,” I say, dragging her inside. “You can sleep in here.”
Brianna rolls onto the couch, and I try to pull down her skirt. It’s pointless—it’s too short and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t care. Exhausted, drunk, and worn out, I slump next to her, letting my eyelids droop closed. Darkness engulfs me like I’m being pulled under. Brianna shifts next to me and a moment later her breath is on my cheek. “Thank you.” Her voice slurs. “For being so sweet.”
Her soft lips press into my cheek, then pepper along my jaw. “Your skin is so soft.”
“Brianna.” I try to move, to tell her that she doesn’t want to kiss me, that I’m not sweet, I’m just not who she thinks I am, but the words are heavy on my tongue. I face her and our noses bump into one another. Her mouth is on mine, tongue slipping through my lips.
It’s not until her hand, warm and gentle, rests on my thigh, fingers inching toward the fly of my jeans, that I drag myself out of the abyss. “No!” My hand covers her. “No. No, I can’t.”
“Oh.” She sighs, puffing her bangs out of her eyes, then sinks back into the couch. “You’re one of those.”
“What?”
“A nice guy.”
That’s not the reputation I want to convey during this experiment, but there’s no other choice. “I guess I am.”
A moment later, she’s slumped into the corner, curled into a tight ball, asleep. Again, I let my eyes flutter shut. I don’t know how long I’m out, if it’s a few minutes or hours, but I awaken to the feel of a thumb running over my bottom lip. “Brianna,” I mumble. “I told you, I can’t.”
Blindly, I reach out for her hand. I come in contact with flesh, but it’s warm. And big. And a little hairy. My eyes pop open.
Miller stands over me, a bottle of beer loose in his fingers.
“Wake up, Prince Theo.” His eyebrow lifts and his upper lip curls. “Or, should I say, Princess Reagan?”
Fuck.
SEVEN
Miller
I’d been watching him since he walked in the door. It wasn’t anything in particular that gave him away. Knox didn’t notice. Royer was too busy getting his cock sucked in another room. To the rest of the party, Theo Hart looked like any other skinny freshman pledge. There was just something familiar about him that kept nagging at me all through our meeting.
That mouth.
My fraternity brothers think I’m just a player. A joke. They think I got into Whittmore on my family name and the fact the gym is named after my grandfather. It’s fair. I’m lazy. I didn’t do much work during high school, but my test scores are off the charts. Colleges care about numbers. Tests, GPAs, bank accounts. Two of the three is enough.
And if I’ve learned anything in my twenty-one years, it’s that sometimes it’s better if people don’t realize you’re the smartest person in the room.
If Royer hadn’t been so focused on initiation (and his cock) he would have been more suspicious of the letter we got, suggesting we give a pass to this kid, Theo Hart. I suppose he figured that if we agreed to take him, maybe the council would stop nosing around so much. It didn’t hurt that this guy, Theodore, is all about tradition. Just like Royer. I love my best friend, but he’s obsessed with the new members of Zeta Sig being forged by fire and committed by pain. We all went through it, the gauntlet, when we rushed, and I’m not ready to give it up either. I’m just not fixated on it like he is.
When Theo walked through the door, Royer was still high from that stunt he pulled with Andrea. They destroyed little Reagan Lake. If I’d known that blow job would be the last time I saw her, I’d have raised the stakes.
Knox walks up. “You look like you need another drink. Hey, Parker—” he shouts to a sophomore, chatting up a freshman on the couch, “get your VP a drink.”
“Yes, sir,” the kid says, untangling from the girl. She pouts as he runs toward the kitchen, but Knox gives her a wink and her face lights up.
“Why are you lurking over here alone?”
“I’m not lurking,” I reply. “I’m observing. Getting a feel for the vibe of this new group.”
“They seem solid enough.” A kid across the room bumps into a girl, spilling her drink down her white lace top. Knox snorts. “Well, most of them, at least.”
I spot Theo Hart clinging to the wall across from us. “What about him?”
“The late entry?” Knox shrugs. “I dunno. He was checking out Brianna earlier. I told him to go for it.”
“How generous of you.”