SWNOVELS Devious Vow: Chapter 11
Ten years ago:
If my life were a movie, this would be the part where I’d ruefully reflect on how my father would never approve of such childish pranks in the name of rivalry.
But this is real life. And my father fucking loves pranks.
We’re talking the full range here: fake snakes or bugs in the cereal box, olive oil in the soap dispenser, plastic wrap over the toilet bowl. It’s one of the things I love about him.
Ironically, it’s one of the things about Vaughn Black that can also drag a blade across my heart. Not because of anything he does. But because his childish sense of glee in just about everything in life is a sobering reminder for me that I am not of his blood.
I’m not able to find genuine joy in things with a snap of my fingers the way he is. Maybe I never was, or maybe that ability was ripped from me by fire and broken glass.
I was six when my world turned upside down. Oddly, but perhaps mercifully, I don’t remember much of life with my birth parents before the car crash. Most of what I do know comes from my father, and even then, it’s mostly lacking in detail.
I don’t have names—first, or last. My father told me when I was young, though, that they were using fake IDs, as they were in the US illegally. I know they were unmarried, but madly in love. They were clients of a friend of Vaughan’s. And he always told me that when they heard about the accident that rainy night that killed them and spared me, he and my mother knew instantly that they would take care of me—that I was meant to be a part of their family.
And I am, in every conceivable way. I’ve spent a lifetime re-wiring myself as a Black, rather than…whatever name I had before. Which is why I get fucking enraged whenever someone tries to attack me with the “A” word.
Adopted.
I fucking hate that word.
I hate how it acts as an asterisk after my last name with a disclaimer. As if my name isn’t Alistair Black, but rather “Alistair Black…sort of.”
It feels dehumanizing. I also consider it an affront and an insult to Vaughn and Marilyn Black—two strangers who saw a shell-shocked, scared little boy in a hospital room who’d just lost everything, and selflessly decided to give him a new life.
That’s part of the reason I’m here tonight. Because a few weeks ago, when she barged in on me—after Michael Machiani and his buddies had jumped me because my father was a prosecuting attorney in a racketeering case against his uncle—Eloise LeBlanc called me the “A” word. And I still need to get that out of my system.
The other reason, though, is rivalry.
Historically, there’s all manner of pissing contests between the four student clubs at Knightsblood. These days, Para Bellum and The Reckless are on fairly friendly terms—what with Gabriel being the head of the former and me of the latter.
This school year, the biggest contentiousness seems to be between The Reckless and The Order. I think it initially started with the football team’s quarterback, a guy who happens to be a member of The Order, being replaced by Paolo Cortillo, a Brazilian cartel heir who’s a member of The Reckless. It doesn’t help that I think Ansel Albrecht is a raging douchebag and a fucking predator.
Back to Eloise. By now, it’s a number of things: the fact that she pissed me the fuck off with that “adoption” slap, the fact that she is now a pledge member of The Order, and don’t get me started on the water bottle incident the other day.
I was in the gym, shadowboxing with a practice bag until my arms felt like they were going to fall off. There were a number of The Order members in the gym at the time, including Eloise.
I didn’t think anything of it until I was done with my workout and grabbed my water bottle—the kind that football players or boxers use, where you squeeze the bottle to squirt a stream of water into your mouth.
Which is what I did, eagerly gulping it down and letting it trickle down my chin and neck.
Until the whole gym erupted in laughter.
That’s when I turned to glance in the mirror and realized my entire mouth, all of my teeth, my chin, neck, and front of my workout shirt were now dyed bright blue.
Honestly, if she’d just kept her mouth shut, there’s a chance I’d never have known it was her. But it was the eager way Eloise stepped forward and gleefully crowed “You look like you went down on a Smurf!” in that musical French accent of hers before looking hopefully at Ansel, as if searching for validation, that gave her away.
That’s actually what pissed me off the most. I could give a fuck about a blue chin for a day or two. I simply don’t care. It was a club-related rivalry prank.
What I do care about is the craven, pathetic search for validation I saw in Eloise’s eyes when she looked at that fuckhead. What makes it worse is that I don’t even get why that part pissed me off the most.
Anyway, that’s how I guessed it was her who put dye in my water bottle. The half empty package of “anime blue” hair color that I found later that night after breaking into her gym locker confirmed it.
Which brings us to now.
Eloise might be a new pledge of The Order, but she won’t move into the club mansion until next year. Until then, I’m sure she considers herself lucky to have been placed in Wellington House, the dorm known for each two-person room having its own ensuite bathroom. Maybe her French Mafia king of a father paid extra to make sure his princess ended up here, I don’t know.
Whatever. She’s not going to think of it as lucky after tonight. Not after I’m done with my plan.
You look like you went down on a Smurf.
I pause at the half-open third-floor window of Wellington House. My head slips under and then through, my eyes and ears scanning the quiet bathroom attached to Eloise’s room that she shares with Demi Romano.
I’ve got their schedules and I know neither of them is home. Demi’s at soccer practice for another two hours, and Eloise is in a calculus study group at the library for another forty-five minutes.
After that, she’ll come back here for her usual cup of decaf tea, shower, and hour of studying in bed before she turns out the light.
It’s that second step of her routine that’s going to bite her in the ass tonight.
Slipping into the bathroom, I momentarily frown at the light on inside the dorm room itself, past the slightly open bathroom door, but I shrug it off. They must have left a light on. Again, I have their schedules down to a tee.
I move to the shower, opening the glass door and slipping into the stall before reaching up to the showerhead. It unscrews easily, and I grin as I pull the big packet of hair dye—anime blue, because irony is hilarious—out of my back pocket. The contents get dumped in before I screw it back in place.
I look like I went down on a Smurf, huh? Well, Eloise, after your shower, you’re going to look like you got bukkaked by about thirty of them.
I can shrug off the water bottle thing, because I don’t give a shit. But Eloise LeBlanc very much does give a shit. She already walks around campus like a spoiled, bratty little princess. Add in being a new pledge to one of the coveted and exclusive student clubs? And being a clear favorite of Ansel Albrecht?
Yeah, that’s got her sitting tall on that high horse of hers. And what I’m about to do will humiliate her.
I grin darkly.
It will also almost definitely mean she cancels on Ansel, who, I have it on good authority, has invited Eloise to “study with him” tomorrow night. The predatory little fuck.
I’m about to head back to the window and make my exit when I hear it and freeze.
A sound, from inside the dorm room.
Not just any sound.
A fucking moan.
I tense, my eyes stabbing through the darkness at the dim light coming from the crack of the slightly open bathroom door. I crane my neck until I can peer through the gap.
Instantly, I go still.
And hard.
Eloise is alone, lying on her bed with headphones in, her eyes closed, her head turned to the side, and her hand buried between her legs.
She’s naked.
I groan inwardly as she moans again and arches her back. Her pale, bare tits thrust up toward the ceiling, giving me a clear view of the creamy mounds capped with hard, dusky pink nipples. My gaze teases down over her flat stomach and rolling hips, to where her hand is rubbing between her thighs.
Pale, creamy skin. Pink, slick lips. Trimmed blonde hair. Plunging, wet, eager fingers.
I’m cupping my cock through my pants before I can stop myself. My eyes glue to Eloise as she touches herself, and I start to stroke in time with her fingers.
I shove aside the inconvenient truth that there’s a strong chance it’s fucking Ansel she’s thinking about.
Ansel isn’t here right now. I am.
Ignoring the words running through my head like “creep”, “stalker”, or “predator”, I pull my thick cock out of my jeans and wrap my hand around it. Eloise starts to finger herself faster, rubbing her clit with the other hand. I start to stroke myself harder, keeping pace with her.
She moans again, her face crumpling as she thrashes her head back and forth. Her back arches, her taut pink nipples begging for my mouth. The wet, squelching sounds of her fingers in her sweet little cunt fill the room, until both of us are past the point of no return.
“Alistair…”
It’s the shock that sends me over the edge. Even though I can clearly see that her eyes are closed and that she’s wearing headphones, a part of my brain still dumps adrenaline into my system, thinking I’ve just been caught. And it only makes the climax that detonates through my entire body a thousand times more intense than anything I’ve ever felt before.
The rush. The thrill. The danger. The dark, depraved, secret knowledge that I shouldn’t have.
She’s fantasizing about me.
Eloise gasps and arches her back again, her thighs clamping down on her hands as she comes hard. With a grunt, my eyes still locked on her, I twist my torso just as the cum erupts from my swollen head. I blast rope after thick rope into the shower stall, letting it splatter onto the drain.
Clarity hits me hard. Not shame. Not any sort of post-orgasmic reality check. Just the realization that any second now, I really will be caught in Eloise’s bathroom with my dick out.
It’s time to go.
For a second, I glance at the showerhead and contemplate removing the dye.
Yeah, no.
I smile maliciously.
Even if I’m the star of her fantasies, the dye stays.
I am exactly the devious fuck most people at this school think I am.
But Eloise?
The wheels in my head turn slowly as I slip out of the window and climb back down the ivy-covered latticework outside.
Eloise, it would seem, is much, much more interesting than I would have ever imagined.