Chapter 13 NIGHTOWL/LUNCH DATE.
LUCIEN'S POINT OF VIEW.
The glow of my phone screen is the only light in my car. I sit parked in front of Sloane's house with a smirk on my face as I scroll through her Instagram page.
Her little profile picture stares back at me. It's a picture of her face; she smiles at the camera with that smug, bookish grin like she doesn’t know how much it ruins me every time I see her cherry red lips around me. It's been 731 days, 17,544 hours, 1,052,640 minutes, 63,158,400 seconds. Since I've forced the urge to kiss her the way I want to. Since I've restrained my need to claim her and finally make her mine for real
That fucker named Matt might deserve a thank you, since his screw up gave me an opening to take her for myself.
Not that I'd needed one earlier, this just speeds up the process for me. But one truth is inevitable;
She's mine.
I lean back in the driver’s seat with the engine off while I'm parked in the shadow of the maple tree across from her house. It’s quiet here. Her suburban neighborhood made me feel a kind of way.
It was too clean, too quiet, too simple for someone like me. And yet, she’s right there, behind those drawn curtains, scrolling in bed, pretending she isn’t thinking about me. So I wouldn't give a fuck if this place were another type of way, I'd stay for a long time.
With a smirk on my face at her reaction to my text at this time of night, I shoot her a text on Instagram.
Lucien: Still awake, scholarship girl?
The three dots appear almost instantly, earning a wider smirk from me.
Sloane: You’re awake too? How come? I thought bad boys slept in silk sheets till noon.
I smirk, my thumb hovering over the screen. If you only knew.
Lucien: What makes you think I’m in bed? Sunshine.
There was a pause. Then, the three dots appear again.
Sloane: Don't call me that. What else would you be doing at—
I smirk at her reaction to my text. I imagined her face as it scrunched up at the nickname I'd given her while she typed furiously. Before I took a glance at the clock on my dash. 12:37 a.m.
Sloane: —midnight?
I lift my gaze to her dark window and say it out loud, just for myself. “Watching you.”
The curtain shifts. Slightly in that moment, and I see her face behind the window as she looks around the street with her eyes darting back and forth.
And as I'd imagined, she looked ravishing, even in the night before bed.
She doesn’t notice me, so she closes the curtains. I could imagine her sitting cross-legged in that oversized T-shirt she sleeps in, her thick thighs on display as she sits in bed. My cock tensed at the memory of her on my thighs at the cafeteria the other day.
I'd walked right into that one the moment I forced her to sit on my thighs, and her ass plummeted on my cock immediately.
Every second after that had been torture; since I'd given myself a taste, my primal urge was to devour her. Her Hair was a mess of beautiful curls.
I sent her another text.
Lucien: Maybe I’m exactly where I want to be.
Her typing bubble flickers, and then, it stops. She’s thinking.
Sloane: That sounds a bit stalkerish.
I smile at that.
Lucien: Maybe I’m exactly what you think I am.
Sloane: What are you even doing right now?
My lips twitch.
Me: Watching you.
She sends back the rolling eyes emoji. Cute. She thinks I’m speaking metaphorically.
I let her chew on that, and we go back and forth for a few more minutes, before I decide she should go to sleep. I sit watching until the light in her room clicks off, but I don’t leave. I just sit there, in the silence, memorizing the shape of her house against the dark.
THE NEXT MORNING.
I ring her doorbell for a few minutes, leaning on the doorframe till she opens the door. She stands dressed in the same t-shirt from last night, her toothbrush still in her mouth, and her eyes wide like she’s seen a ghost as she stares at me in shock.
“What are you—” she mumbles around toothpaste.
“Get dressed,” I cut in. “We’re going out.”
"What the fuck?" She whispers, before her hand darts out and pulls me inside the house.
She leans over and looks around her street after she has pulled me in. The action has her small shirt riding up behind her, giving me a view of her pink thong, which barely covers her plump, sexy ass.
The sight of it has blood rushing straight to my cock, and instantly, I grow hard in my pants. Immediately, she pulls back, and I avert my gaze elsewhere, acting like I wasn't just staring at her ass. A few seconds after she's satisfied, she pulls back and closes the door. She turns to me and blinks. “It’s Saturday.” Her brows furrow in confusion as she stares at me.
“Good job. You passed kindergarten.”
Her glare is sharp enough to cut glass, but she disappears into her room anyway. Less than thirty minutes later, she’s back in blue ripped jeans and a loose black hoodie.
“You’re not wearing that.” I narrow my eyes at her clothes like they would rip themselves under the force of my glare.
“What’s wrong with this?” She looks down at her clothes with a confused stare.
“It says ‘I want to blend into the wallpaper.’” I let my gaze drag over her deliberately. “And you’re not wallpaper.”
Her cheeks heat. She mutters something under her breath but grabs her bag and follows me out. "I don't have anything else that isn't like this."
"Do you have anything...remotely sexy?" I ask, my interest more in my curiosity, and I need to see her in something that would have every man flipping as she passed by.
She shakes her head in the negative and mumbles. "No/."
"We seriously have to go shopping. You need a full wardrobe invasion."
"It's just not my style. Roxanne says I'm too fat, so I just wear what'll hide that." She says, and my blood pulses with the need to get back at Roxanne even more.
I turn to her immediately, and she stops with me as we stop right in front of my car. "The last person that should get to you is Roxanne. She's had more work done on her body than anyone else has in that school."
She nods at me, but then, she says something that has me regretting my silence for the past year. "But you joined her so..."
"Did I ever say anything to you personally?" I asked.
"No."
"Exactly, Roxanne fed off the power she thought she had because we screwed too many than I should have."
She nods, walking beside me till she's seated, and I zoom off to a restaurant on the part of town that she'd be comfortable in.
We get a corner booth. I ordered without asking her, because I already know what she likes. Or more accurately, what she pretends to like when she thinks no one's watching.
When the food comes, she picks at it and moves the food around her plate like it bothers her. She takes two bites of her pasta before setting her fork down and looking away.
“Not hungry?” I ask, focusing my energy on keeping my tone casual.
“I’m fine.” She says, her tone curt as she purses her lips.
Fine, my ass. I’ve watched her long enough to know this isn’t about the food. It’s about the way her jaw tightens, the way she pushes her plate further away like the sight of it is a problem she doesn’t want to solve.
Like the thought of eating is a bother to her.
I lean back in my seat, pretending I’m not cataloguing and analyzing every detail. “You eat like a bird.”
Her head snaps up. “And you eat like a—”
“Predator?”
She rolls her eyes. “I was going to say ‘a vacuum cleaner.’”
“That's cute. But you’re deflecting.”
“Maybe I’m just not hungry.” She shrugs her shoulders.
I hum, letting it drop for now. But the truth sticks to me like smoke, as I realise something; I’ve seen this before at school.
The way she's skipped lunches, her full trays were dumped in the cafeteria, and the way she drowns herself in the water she drinks, like it’s enough to keep her running.
When the bill comes, I pay without looking at it. On the way back to the car, she walks a step ahead of me, like she’s putting distance between us, or she's running from me, but her hand is still in mine.
Even though there are no cameras around at this time, I make sure we keep our hands intertwined. The feel of her skin on mine is more addictive than the weed Cassian smokes every day.
“You didn’t have to bring me here,” she says finally.
“I did.”
“Why?”
I glance at her, letting my mouth curl into that grin I know she hates. “Because you’re mine for now, and what's mine doesn’t hide in her room on weekends.”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m not yours.”
“Keep telling yourself that, scholarship girl.”
And I think about last night, the glow of her phone through the curtain, the way her body curved under that old t-shirt, and I know she’s wrong. She’s already halfway gone.
She's already crossing blurred lines.