Chapter 5

ZADIE COLKIN

He left me there and I hid in the library for hours because my breathing space had been set on fire along with all the years of freedom I had.

This psychopath was brutal. The type that got knocked in the head as a baby and embraced his insanity a long time ago.

And most importantly this psycho put an X mark on me. I can’t run away this time.

I learn that lesson the hard way when I get to the dorm, straight away to my room with anxiety biting my nails.

In the dark, I spot the large box on my bed.

Switching on the lights makes this nightmare a lot more gruesome.

A huge black velvety box that definitely looks like it cost an arm and a leg sits on my bed.

I move towards it, letting my books fall to the ground.

A few seconds later, my shaking hands rip the red satin bow and I remove the lid on the box.

Fluffy and designer leg warmers as well as scarves rest inside and something stirs in me. Something that feels illegal on my part.

He threatened me!

He wants me to work for him as a maid!

These scarves, these leg warmers, they are all a reality meant to remind me that I have to be all the way in South U tomorrow.

To clean. To be… humiliated by a bunch of guys who leak testosterone like broken faucets and have peanuts for brains.

As if I haven’t had enough for the night, my phone pings on my back and I take it out of my backpack in duress.

The second my phone lights up with a notification from another ‘Unknown number’, my stomach forms in knots and I drop my backpack to the floor as well.

No.

It’s not a text.

Even worse.

It’s a video.

And I know it’s from him.

I press the video.

‘Know the first thing my father taught me? We respect our women. I know, I was just as surprised as you are considering my father calls my Aunt Athena a meddling bitch behind her back.

To be fair though, my aunt calls my dad a bastard. Behind his back too. But if I call my aunt a bitch? My father would kill me and dig my grave himself.

Tell me Seth dear pal, old pal, have you called anyone a bitch lately?’

‘I… I didn’t… know… she was… you liked her. It was a joke… you get it right?’

‘A joke? Is calling her a fat bitch after she rejected you a joke?’

‘Why do you care, man? She… she’s not… your usual type. She’s not from your side of the pond.’

‘I gotta hand it to you, Seth. You know me so well. And if you do you should also know you made Violet uncomfortable, poor girl was so distraught she almost wept had I not intercepted her little sob party.

Know what I hate, Seth? I hate an uncomfortable Violet. A sad Violet equals an unhappy employee. An unhappy employee equals bad business equals her cooking me bad food tomorrow. Hell, she might even poison my food because of what you did. You catching what I’m laying down?”

‘Sorry… sorry man. Won’t happen… won’t happen again.’

‘You damn right it won’t.’

The next minute I hear Seth’s voice, he’s screaming.

The next time I see Seth, there’s a knife lodged in his foot and him on the ground.

The minute I see the blood, I’m out.

I throw my phone somewhere in the room, running to the bathroom and hurling the little amount of salad I ate in the morning inside the toilet bowl.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

“I take it you saw the video?” the deep bass of the voice inside my small bathroom has my face almost slapping the white edge of the toilet bowl.

I flush the toilet. I wipe my mouth.

My throat burning and still managing to stand up, my horrified eyes land on the guy sitting outside the very edge of my bathtub.

Oh. My. God.

Dark eyes on me, an unbelievable landscape of rippling muscles on his half naked body, Ethan fucking Sinnett smirks at me.

“Get out! Get out, get out you asshole! You… you…”

“You are shocked, Violet. It’s natural.”

“You stabbed him! You… there was… blood! So much blood!”

“You are squeamish about blood?”

“Get out! Get out now! I’m not working for you. Not after that! I quit. I’m not working for a…”

I’m about to say monster but my words die down when he breaches the distance between us in seconds.

“You quit, when I tell you to quit Violet”, he grits, the veins in his neck almost popping before he winces.

Shifting my eyes from his face, I move them to the source of why he’s wincing.

“Your shoulder is bleeding”, I gasp and it looks like that nasty cut right above the left side of his chest on his shoulder isn’t healing anytime soon.

“Stitch me.”

What?

“I don’t know how. You should… should go to the hospital or something.”

“You work for me, this is working.”

“You didn’t mention anything about blood and stitching. I have absolutely no clue how to-.”

His right hand, the one that’s working properly finds its way up to my clavicle and he rubs my pulse point tenderly.

But there’s nothing tender about it.

He’s just smeared his blood on my neck.

He’s just told me there’s no way I’m escaping this.

“You have a first aid kit around here?”

“Yes.”

“Then best we get to work before I bleed to death in your pink little bathroom, Zadie.”

The lance of anger that strikes my body is replaced by concern as I watch him take off his boots and sit inside my tub.

A tub that’s too small for him.

I guzzle the mouthwash on my counter rinsing my mouth with water before I stand on tip toes grabbing the first aid kit on top of my medicine cabinet.

Thank you, Tristan for giving me an unnecessary first aid kit with everything a first-time doctor could need.

I take out a few needles, a few cotton swabs, antiseptic and move to the six feet two patient who’s too calm for someone with a knife cut.

“I can’t stitch you if you are seated. Get out of the tub.”

His eyes, which are filled with intrigue and so much dark in them I’m surprised he isn’t blind, drawl to me and my breathing hitches.

“I like the tub.”

Bastard.

“You are going to bleed to death in my tub.”

I’ll disinfect that tub as soon as he leaves.

“Get in the tub, violet.”

I blink. Then I blink again.

“No, there’s no room for me.”

I’d have to sit on him to stitch that cut.

“Take the skirt off and jump in the tub, Zadie. Now.”

“But…”

“You want me to come get you? Busted shoulder or not, I can and will carry you in here.”

No, you can’t.

Not when I weigh like a whale. Guys can’t carry me, I learnt that a long time ago.

Cornered, knowing the same way he knows that my skirt will get in the way if I enter that tub, my right hand reaches for the hem of the skirt and I bark, “At least close your eyes.”

He chuckles.

A deep rich sardonic laughter that filters to my toes.

Seconds later, he moves out of the tub with another groan leaving his lips and a sigh of relief washes over me like a cooling balm.

My seconds of relief are eaten away when Ethan Volkov stands before me.

His huge hands land on my waist, right where the hem of my skirt starts and I warn him with a pant, “Ethan.”

“Sinnett”, he corrects.

Point blank and caring less, the zip to my skirt is pulled down and my skirt is tugged down my hips, down my legs and pools to the floor.

I don’t even get to gasp when his hands land on the back of my thighs and he lifts me off the ground like a Viking lifting a pebble.

“Sinnett… put me down.”

James from middle school told me I weighed like a whale and that was disgusting for a girl.

Eight years later and James’ voice still flogs my brain sometimes.

Except now.

When this messed up guy is carrying me while he’s wounded and he doesn’t say a word.

He enters the tub with me in his arms, my hands struggling to hold the things we'll need to stitch between us, my legs tangled around his waist while I’m in nothing but black panties and a white tee.

He sits down and I straddle him.

“Stitch. Now. I’ll tell you what to do.”

“Okay”, I barely whisper.

He carried me. He doesn’t know what that means to my younger self but… it means a lot.

“Disinfect it, first.”

I disinfect the wound by taking the cotton swabs sitting between us and the antiseptic.

I wipe the blood and the cut doesn’t seem as big as it did when I first saw it.

“Good girl. You’ve stitched clothes before, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then start stitching.”

I start stitching and I have to hold his muscled chest while I’m doing so.

“You liked your presents?”

“You didn’t have to do that to Seth.”

“He made you unhappy. An unhappy cook makes crappy food.”

Heat flames up my thighs and I try to focus.

“A lot of people make me unhappy; I can’t go stabbing them whenever I feel like it.”

“What people?” he asks with an arched brow and I fight the urge for an eye roll.

“You stabbed Seth because you thought I would poison your food? I’m telling you now that I won’t poison your food. Like ever.”

Finishing the last stitch, my mind goes to the wound, then the blood, then the box sitting on my bed.

“Did you bring in the box yourself?”

“Had to climb the window carrying that fucking thing.”

“B- But there was no blood on the box or in my bedroom. The blood is only here in the… did you cut yourself on purpose? In my freaking bathroom?”

He did.

He absolutely did.

I make a move to stand up but both his hands grab my butt cheeks pinning me down to his scent, to his eyes, to the body that looks like it was sculptured and imprinted with an infinity tattoo near his ribs, to the—is that?

I’ve never felt that before.

And it straight away rubs against my core that’s hidden by the fabric of my panties.

“Easy there, tiger.”

“You cut yourself! Then made me stitch you.”

“Had to make you touch me”, he growls and I take my hands away from his chest in disgust.

That earns me punishment in the form of him gripping my butt cheeks harder which in turn has me rubbing my core against his jean clad erection and I arch back with a need I’ve never felt before in all twenty years of my life.

“You like that, violet?”

“You disgust me.”

Whatever was going on seconds ago, melts away like the earth being scorched by lava.

His anger is palpable in the air, in his touch that turns icy cold and in his eyes that spit out venom.

“Say that again. I fucking dare you, Zadie.”

“I’m disgusted by you and by this”, I repeat the words but they sound like lies and they shouldn’t.

A normal girl should…

Sinnett pushes me to the other end of the tub in one go.

My ass hits the tub underneath.

Hard enough to feel pain zing up my spine for a few minutes.

Hard enough to feel something in my chest slightly collapse when he gets out of my tub, picks his belongings off the floor and walks out of my bathroom door.

All I have to say to that?

Good riddance.

Yet, why do I have a pulse between my legs?

XxxxX

“You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s like one in the morning, dude. I don’t give a shit whether other girls give you access to their dorms. In this dorm? There’s a ‘no asshole allowed’ policy and if you don’t leave in the next few minutes, your teeth are going to be kissing my bat, dude. Hard. Very hard.”

Hailey’s voice is hard to ignore especially when she’s shouting loud enough to wake the entire block.

My ass still sore, I push my bed covers away swiftly and in three minutes max I turn my door knob, the lights from our main living room making me hiss.

Once my vision clears, I see Theo first.

Then Hailey with her baseball bat.

Then Ria who has a face mask on and her eyes locked in on me.

“Peaches”, Theo exhales and I practically run to him touching his cheek.

Oh God.

Sinnett beat him up so roughly that Theo’s right eye is closed, there’s some bruises on his face, red, purple and ugly.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

“Yes”, I murmur and at the same time Hailey coughs out a ‘Hell no.’

I look at Ria and at Hailey and her bat.

“I’m going to speak him. In my room. Privately.”

My small hand circling his waist, I lead Theo to my room.

He’s limping too and the grotesque image of how he got that limp makes me nauseous.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to-.”

“Come here, peaches.”

And I walk to him. I take his hand and I sink into his chest sobbing for how he feels and looks at the moment.

He caresses my hair, planting a kiss on top of my head.

“None of this is your fault. I should have planned things better and now… God, Tristan’s gonna kill me if he finds out I gave you to that bastard. You are not his? You hear me, peaches?”

“He’ll do worse if I don’t work for him. He’ll hurt Tris again, he’ll hurt you.”

Theo pulls my chin so that I can stare at his amber green eyes, “I’ll bring the bastard down, peaches. Trust me. I’d hate to ask you this but… work for Sin, get me every tidbit of information you can on him and I’ll do the rest. I’ll finish this.”

I look at him, confused at best and he reads my confusion and assures me with words I’ve always wanted to hear from him.

“You’ve always been my girl, Zadie and I won’t sit around and watch him change that. Being here was a risk but you are a risk I’m willing to take for.”

Doing what no one had done to me in twenty years, Theodore Archibald seals his lips with mine.

Only problem is?

I don’t feel any throbbing between my legs.

I don’t feel frustration and anger and something clandestine pounding my chest.

My skin doesn’t tingle.

Are all first kisses supposed to feel like this then?