Pretty Dirty (Dirty Bad Things Book 2)(65)

She’s off to Harvard this fall, but until then, over the summer, she and her track record are my problem. My very big, very tempting, very off-limits problem.

I don’t realize I’m gripping my hand in a fist until I feel the pencil in my fingers snap in two places. I blink out of my filthy daydreams, dropping the pencil into the trash by my desk and turning to watch her walk off behind the gym with those two shit-heads.

I feel my blood burn to a boil.

I could be reading the situation wrong, but I don’t care. And I’m probably not. Teenage guys are pieces of shit, and pieces of shit smell trouble like Tempest Kensington a mile away. A million scenarios run through my head, all of them involving those assholes putting their hands on her — on what's mine.

Because she is mine. She just doesn’t know it yet. She will bend to my authority. And I will taste that sweet fucking candy pussy of hers.

Barely legal. Entirely inappropriate. My temptation, my addiction, my need. My ruin, in a plaid skirt and knee-high socks.

I whirl on my heel, slamming her file shut on my desk and storming for the door. Time to start this summer semester off right.

I’m claiming what’s mine.





2





Tempest




God these two are dorks.

I mean, summer school — ugh. I could roll my eyes. Or puke. Trust me when I say spending more time at freaking Thornbull — after I should’ve graduated and been done with this place — is the very last thing I’d like to be spending my summer doing. But obviously, it’s not my idea to be here. It’s the fact that actually graduating from this snob-factory of a school and going off to college at Harvard is contingent on passing two stupid classes this summer.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong on a few levels.

No, I’m not off to Harvard — insert effected accent here — because of who my parents are. My parents are pretty normal, actually, and in this town, that’s saying something. No, they aren’t hedge fund managers, or trust-fund investors or whatever. We moved here when I was eleven, after a distant uncle of my mom left us his house. We don’t live in a huge mansion like most people, and we don’t have any European sports-cars in the garage, but that works out okay with me.

Mom and dad never wanted kids. I mean, no parent will ever say that, and it’s not say they haven’t done a pretty admirable job with me. They’ve been great, really. Just, you know, not “parent-like” most of the time. If anything, they’ve always acted as more like a cool aunt and uncle, or worse, like we’re peers. But “cool aunts and uncles” give you fun birthday presents and maybe your first beer. They don’t raise you.

Call us the exception I guess.

So, no, it’s not because of who my parents are, though they do have some money. I’m going to Harvard in the fall because I’m smart. Yes, I have a rep here at dorky Thornbull, and in this town. And it’s a reputation that I like, a lot. I’m the instigator. The outsider. I don’t really belong here, and this town has enjoyed reminding me of that for seven freaking years. But whatever, I know it, they know it, so why pretend otherwise? I made the decision years ago that instead of trying and failing to fit in with all of these phonies and snobs, I’d just fuck with them instead. Them and their sensibilities.

I like sticking out. I like being the bad influence they don’t want their little Stepford children hanging out with. And I’m fine with that. Which is why I’ve bullied, coerced, and basically shamed these two poor dorks into ditching first period to drink peppermint schnapps behind the gym with me.

The two of them look like they’re about to commit a felony. I watch as Jon, and then Mike — sorry, Jonathan Fillmore Price the third, and Michael Charles Lewis Sterling — wait for it — the fifth, fumble with the bottle. Mike finally awkwardly twists the cap off the gross, sugary drink, and brings it to his lips. He takes a pull, and immediately spits it out, coughing and wheezing like I’ve just fed him poison instead of shitty booze.

“No, like this.”

I snatch the bottle from him and shake my head. God these two are lame, and these are like the two most popular guys in this school.

I know, it’s insane.

In a normal high school, go-getter nerds like this would be, well, nerds. Not at Thornbull — an “institution of academic and personal excellence.” And the people who go here really take it to heart. There are sports teams, but no jock culture. The real rockstars of this school are the math-team wizards and the model United Nations masters who’re going off to whatever token Ivy League school next year before coming back to West Haven to run their fathers’ mutual funds or whatever.

“Here, like this,” I mutter as I show both of them how to take a real sip. I’ll admit, I almost wheeze and cough too, but I force myself not to - determined to show them how it’s done.

So, here’s the thing: I don’t actually drink. I mean, I did that once, but today I’m just bored. Bored enough to finally do something about “my problem,” which, as I start in on another whole semester here, is only going to get worse. My problem who I know watched me come back here with these two. My problem that the dirty, excited, nervous, and toe-curlingly wanting part of me just has to do something about.

My problem wasn’t ever going to be my problem, until the day I was waiting in his office and felt my whole body turn to mush when he stepped in. I’d been expecting old Dr. Lindon.