Page 27 of Mason
Mason subtly readjusts himself before shrugging. “She’s like riding a roller coaster without being belted in. Terrifying in an exhilarating fuckin’ way.”
I grit my teeth, refusing to respond as I inhale sharply through my nose.Rein. It. In.
“Fucking hell. You all have her covered today, right?” Bear groans as he rubs a hand over his face.
I nod. Fuck, that messed with my head. “Yeah. Mason’s got her after this class, I’ll get her after the next two and take her home.”
“Thank fuck.” Bear shakes his head and storms off.
Mason eyes me, then snorts with laughter. “He totally wants her to call him Daddy, and it’s making him crazy.” He throws his head back, laughing, and walks off, leaving me to wonder if he’s right, but also why it makes me feel unhinged.
* * *
Pushing aside thoughts of Lennon,I part ways with Mason at the front of the humanities building and head for my own class in the math department building, Harrington Hall. I’m gonna be late, but I don’t give a fuck. Professors know better than to say a damn word. They don’t want to cross me and definitely not my father.
Sure enough, Professor Kimble is already droning on about the syllabus for the semester when I enter my stats course a while later. I slip into a seat beside a guy I’m fairly certain I recognize as one of the Hawthorne Hall brothers and give him a brisk nod as I pull my iPad out and locate the stylus pen so I can take notes if I need to.
I draw in a breath about twenty minutes in, realizing this guy is literally just reading the syllabus to us. No notes need to be taken, no attention needs to be paid. A waste of a class period in my book, but what do I know?
May as well make it worth my while. I edge closer to this guy, hoping like hell he’s not one of Kingston’s lapdogs who’ll rat me out. Keeping my voice low, I whisper, “Hey. Didn’t I see you at the Zeta party Saturday night?”
He nods, and his head of dark curly hair moves with the motion. “Yeah. I was there for a bit. Why?”
I twist my lips, trying to decide the best way to approach this. “I went to high school with Kingston. I thought I saw him with some girl. Totally hot. Know anything about her?”
“Yeah.” His beady eyes flick toward me. “She’s at Hawthorne Hall.”
“Uh.” I tilt my head, trying to hide my curiosity. “Do you mean she’s living there? Like a girlfriend?”
“No way, man.” He leans a little closer to me. “Get this. She’s initiating.”
“You’re shitting me.” This dude has loose lips. Fortunately for me, it’s helpful. Too bad for Kingston, though, that he has this creep living under his roof to deal with.
“Nope. There was some sort of fuckup.” This guy seems oddly excited by this, almost like he’s giddy that Kingston fucked up. That means he could totally be useful to me, leading up to the auction event. The trick will be getting him to feed me information when I need it, without him realizing what I’m doing.
“Sounds like it. I can’t imagine having to deal with that. Kingston must be furious.”
“Eh.” He shrugs. “I imagine he’ll have her sucking his cock in no time flat if it hasn’t happened already. Hell, she’d probably do all three of them. She stripped half-naked for us and danced, night one. It was an epic start to the semester.”
My brows raise. Or maybe it won’t be so difficult at all to get the info I need because this guy has a serious case of verbal diarrhea. He’s making it obvious that Kingston’s boys need a firm lesson on how to keep their fucking mouths shut. But that’s not my problem. For my intents and purposes, this guy could be a font of useful information, a way to figure out how to continue to make Kingston pay for what he let happen to my girlfriend.
“What’s your name again?”
“Alec.” He says with an obnoxious wink.
“Well, thanks for the intel, Alec.” And before I’m forced to share my name, Professor Kimble does me a solid and actually starts teaching.
FIFTEEN
LENNON
I’mdead tired after two full days of classes. Living in this house is tricky as hell, too. I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the place—and more importantly, its occupants. I glance into the kitchen as I walk around looking for a good spot to sit down and get a little work done. Arik and Quincy have settled in together at the small table where we eat our meals, shooting the shit. Those grunts are the ones I have the most contact with, and they are an unfortunate pair. My gaze wanders over them, noting their polar-opposite looks—Quincy, light, and Arik, dark—and realize their personalities duel as well. I don’t know whether I prefer the ass kisser or the mouthy asshole.Neither has quite picked up on how things work around here, and they seem to piss off Duke, Bear, and Mason on the regular.
I let my gaze scan over to the living room where all three of the sophomores are causing a ruckus playing some video game on the gigantic TV. That noise is definitely not going to be conducive to the calculus I’ll be struggling through in a few minutes. Kai flips his hair out of his eyes. He sticks out like a sore thumb in this house, very skater boy. He’s now officially worn the same shirt three days in a row. Seeing as how it’s the beginning of the semester, I have to assume he simply prefers to wear things over and over for the sake of comfort since we haven’t been here long enough to have to do laundry.
I huff out a laugh, eyeing Pierre as he jumps up, arms in a V for victory. Yesterday, I learned a hard lesson when I went out to the pool patio to look over my notes from the first day of classes and found him there. If that dude’s in the pool, I’m turning around and leaving because he’d popped out of there naked as the day he was born. And the thing is, he’s got a tiny dick, so I don’t know why he was so eager to run around and show it off.
Brendan tosses his controller onto the couch, clearly irritated at having lost. He leans back on the couch, a Twizzler hanging from his mouth. I overheard him tell Arik and Quincy that no one is allowed to eat from the huge candy container in the cabinet. There’s a Post-it stuck on it withProperty of Brendanscrawled across it as a warning to everyone. Little does Brendan know I’m a sugar fiend; it’s my only real vice. His Twizzlers aren’t my absolute favorite, but they aren’t safe from me by a long shot. I ate three just to spite him, and then watched him shout because someone had been into them.
