Page 98 of Cruel Prep (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 1)

I’m so stunned by the sight of his smile that it actually knocks the air out of me. I only turn towards the camera because my mom clears her throat at the same time Finn nudges me in the side.

“Adorable,” my mom says, clapping as she tucks her camera away in her purse. “Now, you two have fun. I won’t bother you the rest of the night.” She gives me a kiss on the cheek and scurries away.

When she’s gone, I turn on Finn, eyes narrowed. “What was that?”

“What?” he asks, straightening his suit jacket.

“That,” I say, gesturing to his whole person. “The smiling and the hugging and the flattery. Where did that come from? That isn’t like you.”

“But it is.”

“No,” I insist. “It isn’t. Believe me, I know.”

Then, Finn is in my airspace. His face is just in front of mine, the soft light of the dance doing nothing to soften the hard edges of his cheekbones.

“I’m that guy with your mom, so I can be this guy,” he says, grabbing my waist and pulling me against him, our bodies flush, “with you.”

My heart is pounding in my chest and something else is pounding between my legs. I grab the front of his suit jacket and tug him towards me.

“Be that guy with me now,” I beg. “Please.”

He smiles, but it is nothing like the grin he gave to the camera. This one creeps slowly across his face, twisting his handsome features into something dark and dangerous. This smile is panty-melting and soul-crushing and destroying me in too many ways to count.

I’d be willing to jump on the table and spread my legs here and now if he said the word.

“Later,” he whispers, reaching out to run his thumb over my lower lip. “What I have planned for you can’t be done in a bathroom stall.”

“We don’t know that until we try,” I counter, reaching up for his jawline.

He chuckles and shoves my fingers away, his dark eyebrow arched. “Soon, Lily. It’ll all happen soon.”

36

Finn

Lily has been killing me all night.

When she straddled me in my room before the dance, her bare skin burning against mine, her hips rolling the length of me—God. We barely made it to the dance. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to flip her over and ruin the hair and makeup she’d just spent an hour on.

I should have.

I should have ravaged her and then forced her to walk into the dance with sex hair and smeared lipstick. That would have accomplished my goal.

Humiliation.

But I didn’t. I put it off. Didn’t do what I should’ve done.

Which begs the question… why?

There have been rumors for weeks that Lily is a fuck buddy of mine, and I don’t know what she is, but I wanted to show people that they don’t know a damn thing about her or me … us.

So, I kept my hands off. I put on a nice suit, escorted her into the dance, and then kept my hands to myself.

Let those fuckers parse that one out.

Still, it seems like a bad decision when a small crew rolls back to my house for an afterparty. We’ve been drinking aggressively all night long, so everyone is getting rowdy.

“The party has arrived!” I look up just as Cora and her Hell Prince walk in. She has a bottle of vodka in one hand and a soda in the other.

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