Page 15 of Riot House
I can smell the alcohol on his breath.
I can hear the madness in his voice.
Through the tiny oxygen holes in front of my face, I can see what he’s doing. I can see how he’s touching himself.
When he comes, spraying my prison with his semen, then I can smell that, too.
6
WREN
“There have to be consequences,man. Without consequences, how will any of them know their place?” Dashiell hits the pipe I just passed him, holding the smoke in his lungs, lips pressing together as he frowns at the naked chick gyrating on his computer screen. Other guys might save their private sex cam sessions until they had a moment alone, but Dash has no qualms about enjoying the services he pays for in front of others. Dash has very few qualms in general.
His dick is hard, which isn’t out of the ordinary. He gets hard whenever he smokes pot. Some weird, fucked up wiring issue in his brain. The girl touching her pussy on the screen’s purely coincidental.
Exhaling, he lets out an insubstantial puff of smoke, most of it having already absorbed into his lungs. His preppy chinos and his grey sweater make him look like he’s about to head off to church. His blood shot eyes make him look like he just arrived, fresh off the boat from hell. “I don’t think Carina likes me.” He points the end of the pipe at me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever I enter a room, she always seems to be leaving it. If I were a suspicious guy, I’d think I might have upset her.”
Hah. Sick bastard. Yeah, Dash definitely upset Carina and he knows it. These mind games he likes to play are so deeply engrained in his very id that he sometimes forgets that he doesn’t need to play them within the walls of our home, though. I grab the pipe from him, angrily packing the weed down into the bowl. When I touch the flame of the lighter to it, I pull too harshly, sending a jet of scalding hot, thick and highly potent smoke scorching down the back of my throat.
I need to cough, but I won’t. I refuse to let myself. I force myself to ride out the maddening, desperate need with a sour-feeling grin plastered on my face. My eyes sting when I eventually breathe out. “Think you’d better give that one a wide berth before you decide to fuck with her again,” I advise. “Carina’s fiery. She’ll clip your balls for you if you’re not careful.”
“Aww. You worried about my balls, Jacobi?” Dash ruffles my hair, fucking up the hap-hazard, behind-the-ear tuck I had going on. I growl half-heartedly. There are certain things Pax can get away with, like eating on my fucking bed and getting food everywhere. He wouldn’t live to tell the tale if he tried to fucking ruffle my hair, though. I have very specific dynamics with both of my friends, and I don’t like one to bleed through into the other. That’s how shit gets confusing.
“Your balls are of no concern to me, jackass. They’re probably gonna rot and fall off of their own accord any day now. I’m more concerned about keeping a low profile. Last thing we need is Harcourt siccing her minions on to us again.”
Dashiell throws himself back against the couch, absently grabbing the end of his dick through his pants and giving it a squeeze. He frowns at the girl on his laptop, who’s now fully fingering herself, trying to incite some sort of a reaction out of him. He scowls, irritated. Snapping the laptop closed, he slides the MacBook across the coffee table, nearly knocking over a fake potted plant he bought last week in an attempt to ‘brighten up the place.’
“Fine. I’m bored of women, anyway,” he announces. “You ever fucked a guy, Jacobi?”
That’s none of his damn business. However, I have no reason to hide anything from anyone. I’ve been calculating and careful about every single move I’ve made since I was nine years old. It’s exhausting, having to plot and plan absolutely everything you ever do, but it also means I have very few regrets. How can I regret something if I’ve weighed all of the consequences and deemed them acceptable before taking action? “Tried everything at least once, Lord Lovett. No sense in leaving any stone unturned, right?”
If he asks me if I liked having a dick thrust up my ass, I’m prepared to break my ‘no need to lie to the friends’ rule, just this once. Or at least bend it a little. He doesn’t ask that, though. He nods, the corners of his mouth pulled down in a look of surprise as he arranges himself against the couch cushions. “I might give it a shot,” he says. “Might liven up the rest of the year. My mother would have a heart attack if I brought home aboyfriend.” He laughs maniacally, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat as he closes his eyes, throwing his arm over his face. “Don’t take this personally, but I can’t see that fuckingyouwould be any fun, Jacobi. You’re too moody. You look like you bite.”
I huff out a sharp bark of laughter. “You bet your fucking ass I do.”
Dash raises his arm, opening one eye so he can peek at me through the crack. “You fuck angry, too, don’t you? Must be terrifying to have you looming over a person, all fire and brimstone and death, knowing you’re about to be destroyed from the inside out.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a very tender lover.”
Dash nearly chokes to death on a scathing fit of laughter. “Bullshit.You wouldn’t know tender if it leapt up and knocked your front fucking teeth out.”
“That’sexactly the kind of tender I’m talking about.”
He smiles, flashing two rows of very white, very straight teeth. If Lord Lovett Snr and Lady Lovett had cared for their son even the littlest bit, they would have spared him the torture of braces when he was a kid and left his teeth a little crooked. With the set of perfect pearly whites on him now, he’s completely flawless. Makes for a classically handsome profile, but it’s also stripped his face of anything really interesting to look at. “Whatever you say, Dark Lord. Is that how it’s gonna be with your little French girl, then? Caresses that bruise? Kisses that bleed?”
Kisses that bleed?
I nearly drop the pipe I was about to use but manage to close my hand around it just before it crashes down onto the glass coffee table. The image that phrase just brought to mind has me practically panting, my lips burning, the roof of my mouth tingling like crazy. I don’t enjoy the taste of blood, but the thought of biting Elodie hard enough to break the skin…
Fuck.
“No. I’m not interested in that with her.” I say it like I mean it. I sound convincing as hell. So then why does it feel like I just dumped a shit load of good MDMA down my throat, and the anticipation is building inside of me as I wait to start rolling? Makes no fucking sense.
Just like always, Dash grunts, making it clear that he knows me better and he doesn’t believe me for one hot second.
“Her father’s top brass. I’d be careful ifIwereyou,” he says, firing the warning I just gave him right back at me. “You know what’ll happen if your father finds out you’ve soiled one of his colleague’s precious daughters. There’ll be hell to pay and then some.”
Since I think through all of my actions so thoroughly, I’ve obviously thought about this. I’ve done plenty of research on Colonel Jason Andrew Stillwater, and I’ve gotten a decent lay of the land. Luckily for me, Elodie’s father is not a well-liked man. My own father, when I briefly mentioned Colonel Stillwater during a phone call last week, called him a self-righteous, overbearing cunt. And my father likes everyone. Apart from me, that is.
