I trailed my palm down the hard muscles of his chest in a slow descent and felt him beginning to stir more as I reached his underwear. I sat back on his thighs, tugging his waistband wide to give me room then tipped the entire jug of ice into his boxers.
“Motherfucker!” he roared, shooting upright and I slammed a hand to his shoulder to stop him from accidentally headbutting me, a laugh tumbling from the depths of my body.
I dropped the jug and released his waistband so it snapped back against his skin, his boxers bulging with ice cubes.
“Tatum!” he roared in my face, grabbing hold of my hips about to throw me off as his dark green eyes flared with fury.
“Take your punishment,” I demanded, my heartbeat thumping in my ears with excitement. “You break the rules, then you pay for it, Bowman. Just like I have to.”
His eyes widened as his hand landed on the ice packing out his underwear between us and his face pinched in pain.
“You iced my balls,” he rasped. “And my fucking morning glory.”
“Not so glorious now, I bet,” I purred, drinking in my victory and gripping his waistband in the hopes of getting a look at his chilled junk for more laughs.
He slapped my hand away with a snarl and I smiled darkly at him, leaning in close to his face. “Lie down and stay here until it melts.”
His jaw pulsed with anger and his lips tightened into a thin line. “You’re asking for trouble, Cinders,” he said in a deadly tone, his body rigid with tension like he was about to refuse me.
I pushed his shoulders and he resisted a second longer before falling down beneath me, giving in with a growl of anger. I smirked as I enjoyed the view for a moment then swung my leg over him, slipping out of bed and heading into the bathroom. “You’d better be here when I come back.”
I glanced over my shoulder, finding him watching me with narrowed eyes and a heaving chest as he fought to keep his hands away from his crotch, his fists balled up at his sides. It gave me a thrill to see him complying, suffering, and another laugh escaped me as I nudged the door shut and headed to the shower.
When I returned to the room wrapped in a towel, he was lying in a wet patch that spread around him on the mattress. He was pissed as hell. Legit fuming. But he hadn’t moved. He’d taken his punishment like a good boy and that made me feel all kinds of things. Mostly excited at knowing they really were going to abide by my rules, punishments and all. And that was just the ice-ing on this deliciously vengeful cake.
“Happy now?” he hissed.
“Ecstatic.” I beamed and he got out of bed, stalking towards me like a raging tiger and my back hit the wall in alarm. Blake was the most unpredictable of the Night Keepers. And since he’d dragged me into the woods, I couldn’t forget just how far he was willing to go. His hate for me was almost understandable. But it made him even more dangerous than Saint. How close had he really come to pulling that trigger?
He pressed a hand to the bricks above my head, leaning down with his upper lip peeling back. “Be afraid, Cinderella, be very fucking afraid.”
A shiver ran through me as he leaned in close to my face and my toes curled against the carpet, my breathing becoming ragged.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered, though that wasn’t entirely true. When I recalled standing in that grave beneath him, I knew how capable he was of terrifying me. And I wasn’t going to underestimate him ever again.
“You are, actually,” his voice dropped an octave and I clamped my thighs together as his dominating aura wrapped around me.
It was obvious why Blake Bowman was a king at this school. It wasn’t even his unjustly beautiful looks, his steel clad muscles or the way his tongue could make a girl come apart with words alone. It was an innate quality. Something I couldn’t put my finger on exactly, yet could feel in every pulsing inch of my flesh. He was a god capable of creation or destruction, it just depended what he turned his mind to.
He pushed away from me, marching into the bathroom and slamming the door so hard that the whole Temple rattled and my heart rattled along with it.
I knew I was playing a deadly game, but I’d come out of this one victorious. I’d poked a beast. And I planned on poking a few more.
Don’t blink, Tatum.
While he was showering, I grabbed my satchel from the side of the bed and hooked out my school diary, flipping it open on the blank back page. I grabbed a pen and pulled the cap off with my teeth, my heart pounding out a powerful beat as I wrote the list of the Night Keepers’ crimes against me which had been swirling in my head for the last day.
The sex tape
The fish stew
The Unspeakables
The storm
The font
The bathtub
The ice
The gun
The clothes
The humiliation
The shower
The letters
THE VOW
I’d paid Blake back for the ice he’d shoved into my panties so I took my pen and struck out that crime. But I had a long way to go in getting revenge for all of their cruelty. I would though. I swore it on everything I was. The Night Keepers were going to suffer.
***
I walked back from the library in a leggings and white sweater combo Saint had picked out for me, glad of the two hours I’d bargained for in the evenings for my studies. It gave me
