Page 1 of Crave You

Prologue

Leona

I can do this…

I square my shoulders, but a shiver follows me through the arches of Warwick University. An entrance worth remembering – not necessarily in a good way. A unicorn, on one knee before a lion whose paw is raised and dripping… with what looks to be blood…?

Ugh. No, hopefully not. After all, unicorns symbolize freedom, purity, innocence, healing – everything I’m hoping for here.

A new university. A fresh start.

A place where no one knows me or what I’ve done.

Not that there is anything much to know. I have been careful. Outside of my head, I’m an ordinary girl; a rather quiet person who loves sports and who has excelled in them. Someone who is not exactly a loner, but who has few friends. That description suits me fine. I have occasionally heard people say “good at sports and pretty, but a bit weird” when they think I’m not listening. That is also true, I suppose. Depends on what you mean by weird, of course. I know I am different to other girls. I feel things differently and I don’t always react as expected. But I learned to accept that a long time ago, and as I grew, I learned to keep my thoughts to myself.

Now, I put those thoughts aside. It’s time; time to take up my new life and the first step is to meet my new housemates at Emily Dickinson Women’s House. I push the door open and then take a seat on the divan sofa that sits by a sunny window in a wide hallway. I suddenly feel nervous as I wait for my housemates to show up. I thought I was fine with being a late starter — I came through the clearance process, so I am starting university in January instead of September — but now it’s hit me that everyone will have already formed their cliques and I am going to be friendless. It’s not a new experience, but not one I am looking to repeat. Maybe I should just go. Start next year or something so I can begin classes with everyone else. But do I really want to waste a year of my life just because I think this might be socially awkward?

I think about how hard it was to get the money that enabled me to come here. I know that if I walk away now, I will be walking away for good. It’s not that my parents are poor — I was always well-fed, well clothed and warm as a kid — but they aren’t tuition-fee-rich like a lot of the other students’ parents are. I’ve already worked out that I’ll need to get a job next year to afford to come back. I bet not many other students will need to do that. But that’s OK. My parents love me and they are so proud of me for being accepted here.

I’m still debating the merits of just saying fuck it and walking away when I hear laughter and chatting coming from the room off of the hallway. The door opens and a girl with long brown hair, who looks to be about my age, comes into the hall. She’s wearing jeans, a white shirt and flat shoes. She beams when she sees me.

“You must be Leona,” she says excitedly. “Welcome to Warwick.”

Chapter One

Zander

I reach out and strike Geoffrey Barber across the face with the flat of my hand. His head flies to the side and a spray of bloody droplets cascades from his mouth.

“Welcome to Valens House at Warwick, arsehole,” I say with no hint of welcome in my voice. In fact, there is no emotion in my voice at all. It is flat and colorless. I have to force myself to keep it that way, so as not to betray any hint of the pleasure that I get from disciplining this piece-of-shit freshman. I feel heat swelling in my stomach though, and — I admit it — I feel my cock starting to harden.

“Oh, did that hurt, Geoffrey?” I ask in a mock-concerned drawl. “Perhaps you would like something for the pain. What do you recommend, my man? I mean you’re the expert on drugs, or rather your brother is.”

Geoffrey’s older brother is in his last year of studying pharmacology at the University of California. Another student there has already snitched on him, and has told us all about Marlon Barber. I now know that Geoffrey’s brother gave up his table-waiting job at Ruby Tuesday’s to concentrate on selling roofies and party drugs to college freshers, but it is only an educated guess that he passed some of those roofies to his little brother. That is why we are here, giving Geoffrey the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity to put his side of the story.

Yeah, right. I smile inwardly.

“Do you know what makes you so stupid, Geoffrey? You’re already in Alpha Tau AND you have a sister sorority of over one hundred gorgeous young women. What’s more, they are having their Derby Days this week, aren’t they? All those parties and challenges and women literally ripping their clothes off to be noticed, and then some. They’re giving it away Geoffrey! What on earth made you think spiking girls’ drinks at a party on campus was cool?”

“You have the wrong guy,” Geoffrey says wildly. “It wasn’t me!”

“Oh Geoffrey”, I say. “The it-wasn’t-me excuse lost its value just after you left kindergarten. Be a man for God’s sake and own up to your mistakes.”

He more than deserves what he’s getting. He is a new pledge at Alpha Tau, a frat that already has a bad enough reputation to taint all of the new pledges, by association, for the next fifty years. And Geoffrey chose this frat. His dad went there and had the time of his life. Seems the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. All of the warning signs are there. Boisterous behavior? Check. Huge ego? Check (His Twitter page is a love poem to toxic masculinity). Trust fund to clean up after him? Check. You get the idea.

“Well, I mean it wasn’t my idea.” Geoffrey scrambles for an explanation. “Part of my final Alpha Tau challenge is to get picture proof of me in a threesome with a couple of gorgeous girls. This, this seemed like the easiest way to—”

I cut him off whatever he was going to say with a punch to the stomach, and all that comes out of his mouth is air ending in a terrified squeak.

“Hazing, Geoffrey?” I challenge. “You’re gonna blame hazing? Everyone knows there is no hazing at Warwick. I mean it’s illegal in 44 states!”

This statement is greeted with hilarious laughter from my companions; Shawn, Damien and Lucien. We all know that hazing is alive and well in most frats and societies. In fact, it is one of the reasons people join frats. I know this from personal experience. My own society, Valens, is the top frat — or we prefer to use the words “house” or “society” these days — at Warwick. We haze, we just don’t go around making it so obvious. Yes, we are known for getting what we want however we have to do that. Yes, we break the law and sometimes hurt people. Yes, to it all. But this moment isn’t just about showing the world that no one gets to fuck with us and get away with it. This one is personal. We make it damned clear to our pledges that snitches get stitches. No one breaks the code of silence, no matter the society.

But Geoffrey went too far, too fast. He cut corners and his fellow frat brothers let him. Hell, they even encouraged him. Since last Saturday, 26 women have complained of being drugged at a house party in the south end of the campus and two other complaints came in after a small on-campus gathering on Sunday. Worst of all, one young woman collapsed unconscious, and an off-duty security guard had to intervene. He got her to the hospital before she could die of roofie-poisoning, but doctors had to put her on a respirator to save her. Then, some bright spark at the local paper discovered that the fraternity’s head brother had put the hospital charges on his personal credit card — so that no one else would know — hoping that the frat would reimburse him afterward.

It was too much of a drama by then, and the police were called. Now the dean and the college justice system have gotten involved and are launching an investigation. So, what we need is a handy and culpable scapegoat, to hand over to the dean to shut the investigation down. Once Geoffrey does the ‘mea culpa’ speech, accepts his punishment, and the case is closed, the rest of us can go back to normal.

Geoffrey’s eyes dart around us frantically as he begins to pant in fear. I nod to Lucien who steps forward and punches Geoffrey hard. Geoffrey’s arms try to go to his middle, but they are tied to the arms of the wooden chair we have him sitting on. He tries to curl up on himself, but his ankles are tied to the chair’s legs. Even his chest is restrained and, in the end, he settles for a grimace. That’s about all he can do in his position.

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