The Envy of Idols (Rich Boys of Burberry Prep #3)(88)

She’s going to make a move soon, I can feel it.

But am I ready for it?



Creed does slip into my room at night, and we spend hours worshipping each other’s bodies. When I get up in the morning, he’s still asleep, so I sneak out and down the stairs to find the kitchen.

True to form, I get lost for about twenty minutes before I find my way into the breakfast room. Tristan’s the only one in there, eating a plate of eggs, bacon, and pancakes, and sipping a cup of coffee. He doesn’t look seventeen-nearly-eighteen right then, more like he’s in his late twenties or early thirties. There’s so much darkness inside of him.

My hands clench in my robe, and I make my way into the room to sit beside him. He looks up briefly, and then reaches over and pulls me into his lap.

“Are you okay?” I ask, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he tries to feed me a piece of bacon, which I, of course, accept. His fingers end up brushing my lips, and I shiver as I swallow.

“Fine,” he says, but he sounds anything but.

We sit there for a while in silence, and I just enjoy the feel of him behind me. When I wiggle on his lap a bit, he goes completely still, one arm banding around my waist.

“Don’t test me, Charity,” he whispers against my ear. “I’m not a very nice man.”

“Maybe I’d like to personally test you and see if that’s true?” I whisper back, shifting again. Tristan stands up suddenly, sending the chair scraping back, and then shoves his plate onto the floor. I’m pushed over the table with his hips aligned behind me, his hardness teasing my core.

“Like this?” he asks, and I feel this ache inside of me that says yes, exactly like that. But then Tristan’s pulling away with a growl and raking his fingers through his dark hair. “You’re too good for me, Charity. You should run while you still can.”

“Stop that,” I murmur, pushing up into a standing position and turning to face him. “You’ve come a long way in the past year.”

“I’m a poison, Marnye. I kill everything I touch.” He lifts his fingers and stares at his hand for a moment before glancing over at me. “Pick someone else, anyone else. They’re all better choices than I am.”

“I don’t know that that’s true,” I say, panting, feeling this desperate need to take Tristan into my arms and comfort him. When the hell did that happen?! He was always the worst bully of them all, the most closed-off, and now … I love this vulnerability. I’m craving it.

“It’s true. Stay the fuck away from me, and save yourself the heartache.”

Tristan storms off, and the house is so big and convoluted that even with the map, I don’t find him the rest of the day.



Four days into my stay—and one night visit from Zack—I find an old game room with boardgames like Connect-Four, Scrabble, Monopoly, Clue, and so on. There must be hundreds of them. I select Twister from the shelves and head upstairs to see if I can find Tristan. He’s been elusive and weird, and I’ve caught him three times hanging out with just Lizzie.

This time, when I step into his room, he’s alone.

He looks up at me, and his face is twisted into an expression of sheer frustration.

“There’s an Infinity Club meeting being held here,” he says, and I pause, setting the game of Twister on a side table. “In three days.”

I move over and sit on the bed next to Tristan, our legs so close that I can feel his body heat through the black fabric of his pajama pants. They’re all that he’s wearing. Otherwise, he’s shirtless and beautiful, a modern day Adonis begging for my touch.

Ahh, Marnye, stop! But I can’t help it. I want to put my hands on, so … I do. Pulling up every ounce of courage I have inside of me, I stand up, face Tristan, and then straddle him so that my knees are on the bed on either side of his body.

“What does that mean, exactly?” I ask as I take his face in my hands and he closes his beautiful gray eyes.

“It means you and Miranda have to leave. It means my father’s coming home. It means …” He stops talking and just rests his forehead against mine. After a moment, he lifts his thumb to my lips, and I take it into my mouth, sucking lightly.

Tristan’s breath hitches, and he drops his hand, curling his arms around my waist instead and rolling us over so that he’s on top. We start to kiss, and I find that he’s every bit as calculating and cruel in his ministrations as he is in his day to day to life.

We’ve kissed many times before, but not like this, alone in a quiet bedroom in a house with no academy faculty, no parents. It’s uninhibited, and deliciously wrong.

Tristan pins my arms above my head and kisses his way down my face toward my breasts, putting the hot heat of his mouth above the thin, silken fabric of my shirt. He licks the fabric, slow and languorous, like he has all the time in the world, and then, when I’m about to buck him off and beg him to stop teasing, he takes my left nipple into his mouth and sucks on it.

It’s like there’s a string connected from my nipple to my core, pulling and tugging, begging for more.

Tristan ends up with his mouth crashing into mine, hands frenzied as he tears at my clothes, ripping my shirt in his haste to feel a bare breast cupped in his palm. I’m groaning and thrashing beneath him, my arms still pinned, want still coursing through me.