Playboy Princes (Royals of Arbon Academy, #2)(62)

"Uh," I started, licking my lips again. Why were they so fucking dry? Was it a side effect of whatever drug that crazy bitch had stuck me with? "I... she... Um..." My thoughts were so scrambled, and it was hard to grab hold of just one. To just explain the line of events as they’d happened. Logically, I knew that also had to be a lingering effect of the drug, but it didn't make things easier to deal with in the heat of the moment.

A sharp knock on the door saw me damn near jumping out of my skin, but when Jordan entered the room and wrapped me in a tight hug, well, everything seemed calm again.

"Violet," he breathed, stroking my hair while I clung to him like a life raft. "Baby, what happened here? We need to know before we can do anything."

I nodded into his chest, understanding what he was saying but not wanting to leave the warm comfort of his embrace. I allowed myself just a few more moments, then took a deep breath to reactivate my tough-girl exterior and stepped away from him.

"Okay," I said softly. "This is... this is all I know."

I told the two of them everything I could remember, from getting jabbed in the neck with a needle, to waking up strapped to the medical bed, to Alex walking away and washing his hands of whatever Nurse Reller wanted to do to me... and finally, to how I'd freed myself.

"It's okay," Jordan assured me, closing me into another warm hug and melting my hardened walls once more. "Sweetheart, it's okay. We'll take care of this, I promise you."

While Jordan whispered sweet nothings in my ear, my eyelids flicked open just in time to see Rafe pull an eight-inch dagger from his belt and slice it across Nurse Reller's throat.

I didn't react. I didn't even flinch. Blood sprayed out in an arc, coating the sterile whiteness of the infirmary. Just like that, the resident rape-y nurse died with barely a gurgle and I just relaxed further into Jordan's embrace.

What the fuck did that say about me now?





Chapter 26





Blood mixed with water and stained the tiles of my shower red. It pooled and swirled, disappearing down the drain. It seemed so easy to wash away the blood. Just a bit of water and it was gone. Like tonight had never happened.

"I should have finished her myself," I finally said, tearing my eyes away from the blood running down my drain. It wasn't my blood—for once—but that simple fact seemed to be tripping me up more than normal. Nurse Reller wouldn't have stood a fucking chance against me in a fair fight, but then, it hadn’t been a fair fight, had it? She’d drugged me, strapped me to a table, planned to violate me against my will...

"Too bad," Rafe replied, his tone holding no sympathy. "If you wanted to kill her, you should have done it before you called me."

Anger crackled through me, and I pumped soap a bit too aggressively into my hand, almost knocking the bottle off the shelf. "I didn't call you," I snarled. "And I didn't want to kill her."

Rafe snorted a laugh, meeting my gaze over the frosted shower glass. "Sure you didn't, Vi."

I swallowed a growl of anger as I spread the soap all over me and scrubbed with a rough loofah. Like scrubbing four layers of my skin off would help to remove the feeling of being violated.

"Look," Jordan said, ever the peacemaker. "The fact remains that she couldn't be left alive. It was too risky. Not only could she have reported Violet for physical violence, she could have tried the same bullshit again. Who knows what might have happened if that sedative had lasted longer."

I huffed, dousing my hair in water. The fact that they were both lurking in the bathroom hadn't escaped my notice, no matter how shaken up I was about what had happened with the creepy nurse. The glass door of my shower was frosted enough from knee to neck that they couldn't actually see anything... but still.

"What happens now?" I asked, when my hair was wet enough to shampoo. I wasn't taking any chances on finding a stray droplet of blood later. Every freaking inch of me needed to be spotless. "It wasn't exactly the cleanest of deaths."

Yeah, I was throwing stones inside my glass house. I'd already splattered the infirmary with blood before the guys had even shown up. But Rafe slitting her throat like that sure as fuck hadn't helped matters.

"I've called some of my people in," Rafe said, drumming his fingertips on the marble vanity top beside him. He was sitting beside my en-suite sink, his dark head against the mirror but his gaze locked on me. No matter how much he tried to pretend it wasn’t.

I bit my lip, not replying as I carefully massaged shampoo through my hair, rinsed it out, then squirted conditioner into my palm.

"You guys don't have to babysit me," I finally said, smearing the cream between my palms, then rubbing it through my hair, starting at the ends, then working my way to the midsections. "I'm fine."

"No one said you weren't," Jordan replied. He was sitting on my closed toilet seat, flipping through screens on his palm reader at an impressive speed. Every now and then, though, I could feel his eyes on me. Worried. Caring. Hungry.

"Can we speed things up on the virus?" Rafe asked his friend. "I'd feel better if he was in a holding cell before the Spring Ball." By "he" he clearly meant Alex. When I'd told them about his part in Nurse Reller's plans, they'd both looked worse than murderous.