Manic: A Dark Bully Romance Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  VILE INTENTIONS TEASER

  More Bully Romances

  STAY CONNECTED

  1

  I couldn’t believe I was sneaking out so late. The minute I set one foot out the door, I was in direct defiance of my parents’ orders to get back on my school schedule before winter break ended. But damn it, I didn’t get a lot of chances to blow off steam, and I wasn’t going to waste any opportunities. Besides, I was eighteen. Legally, I had no guardian but myself. Socially, my guardian was Blayze.

  He was waiting for me in the alley behind the crappy row house I’d been forced to move into. His car coughed and sputtered as it idled. I wanted to get the stupid thing fixed for him, but even offering to pay for so much as a soda would blow my cover in a big way. As far as he knew—as far as anyone knew—I was just as broke as any of them. Well, almost. My BMW sort of gave me away already, but I’d passed it off as a birthday gift from a wealthy, but disinterested, relative.

  I liked to think that my father would have been amused to be described in such a way, but I knew it was far more likely that he would be heartbroken. Maybe even angry. He’d tried to convince me that his name would protect me from bullies at my new school. I’d smiled and nodded, then immediately lied my ass off in every class. Even Blayze didn’t know where I came from, but it didn’t really matter. I didn’t know much about his past, either. The general vibe around Burnaby High was that the past was in the past, and too many questions would lead to an ass kicking. I liked that approach because it meant I could keep my secrets to myself and not worry about anyone going digging.

  “Hey, princess,” Blayze said, flashing his dimple at me. His wavy brown hair fell in a shaggy mane down his neck, and—as always—his deep brown eyes swirled with forbidden knowledge and mysteries I could only guess at.

  “Hi,” I said, bouncing over and turning my mouth up for a kiss.

  The peck I was hoping for quickly deepened, churning my belly into a hot mess. My fingers curled into fists, wrapping themselves up in his glossy, silver button-down shirt, which had been left unbuttoned over his black undershirt. I loved the way the guys dressed around here. There wasn’t a tie or sport coat to be seen anywhere. Sneakers and jeans…well, those might as well have been formal attire. It was so much earthier than I was used to, so much more worldly. So much more comfortable and honest and human.

  When Blayze pulled back, releasing my lips from his, I took him in from head to toe.

  “You’re wearing your good chain today,” I said appreciatively, catching my bottom lip between my teeth. Leaning forward, I ran a finger over the cold metal links and wondered how much the dull silver thing was worth, both in dollars and in sentiment.

  Blayze caught my hand and pulled it away from the jewelry, giving me a flirty smile that had a hint of warning in it. “Don’t touch the jewelry. Got it?” I nodded in agreement.

  “You ready for this?” he asked as he moved the car out of the alley.

  I nodded and quirked a brow at him. “I was born ready,” I said. It was a lie, of course. When it came to this place, to Blayze, to this new world, I was anything but ready. A non-swimmer in an endless ocean. A fish out of water. A skeleton without bones.

  “Yeah, whatever, uptown-girl. What’s the wildest party you’ve ever been to?”

  I grinned, ready to tell him my crazy party story, but stopped myself. The live band’s singer had gotten too high in the bathroom, the drummer got too drunk, and the stage was set on a floating island in the middle of my friend’s Olympic-sized swimming pool. Tempers flared when the drummer hit too soon. The two of them fought and managed to upend the whole band, instruments and all, into the waters below.

  Then there was the time that my other friend OD’d on designer pills in the bathroom and had to be taken to the hospital, but that wasn’t nearly as much fun. The housekeeper found her and smuggled her out discreetly, only calling her parents when she was well out of danger. They didn’t even stop the party, they just had the butler run the whole thing until it was time to go home. My grin faded quickly as I tried to think of a story, any story, I could tell Blayze that didn’t stink of money.

  “That’s what I thought,” Blayze said with a laugh. “Look, Arlena, you’re gonna see some stuff at Eddie’s tonight. Stuff you’ve probably never seen before. I’ve vouched for you, but since you’ve never been to one of his parties before, he’s going to be watching you and gauging your reactions.”

  A nervous little worm started wriggling just under my heart. “How should I react? Or—should I just not react? What sorts of things should I not react to?”

  Blayze smiled up at me the way he always did and my stomach stirred a little more. There was a part of me that knew this party was a terrible idea, and not only because my dad would chain me to the radiator if he ever found out.

  “Calm down,” Blayze said, pulling my hand into his and bringing it to his lips. He kissed it gently before placing it back in my lap. “Just stick with me and follow my lead, all right?”

  Neither his words nor his actions helped to calm me down at all. I wiped my sweaty hands on my little skirt and kicked my heels together. Questions tumbled around in my head, interrupting each other, and before I could decide on what to ask first, we were there.

  Dozens of cars crowded a cul-de-sac at the end of an alley which was lined with the backs of businesses—all but the lot at the end. Eddie’s house sat there, a shabby two-and-a-half story house with two decks which looked inches away from falling off. Half of the windows were broken and covered in transparent plastic, and the lot itself was surrounded on three sides by tall, graffitied, cinderblock walls.

  Music with a deep, throbbing bass rattled the windows as Blayze parked against the gutter. I watched the faces of the people who were going into the house and shivered in spite of the heater blasting in my face. These were the same people who, up until recently, had shunned and borderline bullied me all year. Blayze looked over at me and chuckled, wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

  “Calm down, princess. You’re with me, remember? Nobody’s gonna hassle you. Just let them do their thing and stay with me. Okay?”

  “What exactly is their thing?” I countered.

  He grinned and I wasn’t sure I liked it. “Whatever they want it to be,” he said. “This is an Eddie party. He’s the hookup man. Come on, you’ll see.”

  Don’t react, don’t react. I repeated the words in my head like a mantra as I held tight to Blayze’s arm and let him lead me into the house. It wasn’t easy. I knew what it was like to not be liked in this town. To be tormented, picked on. One thing was true, th
ough, it never got as bad as it could have, thanks to Blayze. Without his protection, though, I would have been as fucked as a bird flying toward a slingshot.

  Outside, we stepped past a couple vigorously making out on the hood of a car just outside Eddie’s door. His friends were cheering him on from their spots on the lawn, and a girl was throwing up into the gutter grate just feet away.

  Don’t react, I reminded myself, trying to get the message through to my staring eyes and gaping mouth.

  If I’d have gone far enough to imagine up what the inside of Eddie’s house looked like, I can’t promise this is the image I’d come up with. Every inch was crammed, not with furniture, but with people. People against the walls, on the sofa, blocking walkways, laughing, dancing, talking.

  Blayze dropped a kiss on my cheek to get my attention and winked at me. “An Eddie party,” he repeated.

  Like that was supposed to mean something to me. All I really knew about Eddie was that, at 22, he was the oldest senior at the school and that everybody seemed to know him. He was also tall, golden, and had the sharp bones and tight curly hair of a Greek god. Blayze was obviously hotter in my mind, but Eddie had no problem getting girls, and the girls had no problem owning up to it. I’d even witnessed a scorned boyfriend forgive his girlfriend for cheating, just because she’d cheated with Eddie. The man was untouchable.

  He was also Blayze’s best friend, so I tried very hard to put my nerves aside. I’d been in the presence of powerful men before and maintained my dignity, but they had held a different kind of power. The kind that sneered at 22-year-old high school students and bought them a spot at Harvard. Eddie had turned his apparent failings into a booming business, and had become the big fish in a crowded pond.

  The party just got wilder as we stepped through the scuffed threshold. Smoke whirled through the air in at least three different colors and consistencies, and a circle of people crowded around the end of one coffee table, passing a dollar bill from nose to nose. Music shook the house, and between beats came the sounds of people puking and fucking.

  Blayze led me through that room into the one beyond, where lights flashed and most of the smoke came from a machine as opposed to pursed lips. The music was so loud in this room I couldn’t even hear myself think, let alone police my reactions. The crushing crowd danced, drank, and stripped out in the open, proud of their bodies, of their sexualities and old enough to do what the hell they pleased, cementing the fact that I didn’t belong here.

  Blayze parted the crowd effortlessly. Drunk and high as they were, nobody wanted to cross him. I squeezed his hand, feeling safe even in the midst of all that crime. If my father had any idea where I was, he would absolutely murder me. And no matter how protected Blayze made me feel here, there was no way he could save me from my father’s wrath. I swallowed that thought and focused on not looking like a deer staring into blaring headlights.

  Blayze and I made it to the back room, which turned out to be the kitchen. Eddie was there, mixing drinks and flirting heavily with the four women surrounding him. There was only one of them I recognized as someone from our school. The others were older, more mature and looked like they spelled trouble with two capital, stuttering Ts. Upon noticing us, Eddie turned so that his body was facing Blayze and lit up like the fourth of July.

  “Hey, you made it! Thought you were gonna blow me off again. You get a drink yet? Here, hulk out.” His speech was quick, but his hands even quicker as he slid a pair of tall glasses across the counter at us, each full of some thick pea-green liquid. “Arlena, baby, welcome to mi casa! Like it? Bought it myself. Cash money, baby.” He leaned in so that his breath tickled the outer and inner parts of my ear. “You ever feel like dumping this poser, you could hook up with some real money.”

  “Stick a fork up your ass and die,” Blayze shot back, grinning. “Don’t pay attention to him, princess. He won’t be happy till he’s knocked up every girl in the tri-state area. Soon enough he’ll be throwing all that money at child support instead of liquor.”

  “Bastard,” Eddie laughed, shaking his head at Blayze. They were always like this, shooting the shit, throwing the kind of insults at each other that seemed harsh, but felt nothing like it.

  Palming his glass in his hand, Blayze clinked his glass against mine and drank deeply. Not wanting to raise any red flags, I followed suit and nearly choked. Sweet and cold, the drink burned my throat and warmed me clear down to my belly button. I probably should have stopped drinking then. This wasn’t my first time throwing a couple rounds back, but whatever Eddie was serving, well…let’s just say, they didn’t serve it where I was from.

  The second drink spread the heat to my thighs, making me almost uncomfortably aroused. Blayze’s arms were looped over my shoulders, his breath tickling my neck as he leaned in every so often, dotting kisses at the exposed skin.

  By the third drink, I was leaning heavily against him, unable to trust my own legs to hold me high. Blayze, wrapped his arms even tighter around me and pressed me flush against his chest. The effects of the drink were clear in the bulge in his pants and my heart fluttered wildly in my chest and even wilder as he spun me around and kissed me deeply. His tongue dancing against mine felt like downright ecstasy. Inhaling smoke and sex until my head spun, I kissed him back with an abandon I had never known before, grinding against him, letting my hips move to the music. Tasting him. Taunting him. Teasing him. Begging him for things without using my words to drive the pleads home. Before I knew it, he had me pressed up against the kitchen counter, his hand steadily creeping up my thigh.

  “Hey now, not in the kitchen,” Eddie said good-naturedly. In the heat of what was happening and the alcohol spinning in my head, I couldn’t remember whether or not Eddie had left or if he’d been standing there the entire time. “Take it to the dance floor with the rest of the pervs.”

  I opened my eyes and couldn’t help but laugh. A woman sat on the counter, naked except for her lacy underwear, and Eddie had his head buried in her breasts while admonishing us for our comparatively innocent make-out session.

  Blayze laughed along with me. “Man, shut the hell up. Whose leg do I gotta hump to get a refill around here?”

  “You got two hands,” Eddie said, his voice muffled by the soft flesh of his current conquest.

  Blayze shrugged and mixed two more for us. There were bottles everywhere, all kinds of alcohol, things I’d never even heard of before—but then, none of my old friends ever bought bottom-shelf liquor, and god forbid they buy anything in cans. More culture shock. Would it ever end? I sort of hoped not. It was new and different and dangerous. I never knew how utterly bored I was before moving here, and now I was feeling like I had a whole hell of a lot of life to catch up on.

  Like that, I thought with wide eyes as Blayze and I meandered back onto the dance floor. At least half the people out there were naked now, some of them contorted into positions I had never even dreamed of. Blayze glanced down at me, grinned, and turned me back around. “We’ll dance downstairs,” he said.

  He grabbed us a pair of cans from the pool of ice in the kitchen. Eddie paid no attention, as he was deeply preoccupied with his friend, who was now fully naked and gyrating against him. Sex in the air, in the music, in the drink—it was overpowering. Every step I took felt like foreplay, every touch of Blayze’s skin burned like irresistible fire. Downstairs, fully-clothed people were shooting pool and throwing darts and drinking, while naked people lay in sleepy tangles on the couches and floor.

  “Now, how bout that dance?” Blayze asked, his voice husky.

  Nobody else was dancing, but that didn’t seem to bother Blayze. He never did care about what everybody else was doing, which was the only reason we were even together. The least I could do was trust him to know the rules around here. Which, honestly, there didn’t seem to be many of. So we danced to song after song, each one driving me closer to a decision I’d been leaving up to fate for a very long time.

  I was going to lose my virginity
, and I was going to do it that night. Blayze kissed my mouth and neck, ran his hands over my body, and pressed his raging hardness against me while we danced, stirring me up into a quivering disaster. The liquor kept flowing and I kept drinking it up. We were at the point now, that no matter how strong the rum, or how stiff the whisky, I couldn’t even taste it anymore, but I wanted more and more, and Blayze was more than happy to oblige me.

  I couldn’t tell you how long we danced, or how many dirty looks we got from women who wanted him, but my body was aching with need by the time my legs gave out. I slumped against him and he lifted me into his arms, kissing me harder than he’d been kissing me before.

  “I can’t do this here,” I murmured in his ear, writhing with the intensity of my arousal. “But I want you.”

  He growled softly into my neck and nibbled just enough to hurt before gently setting me on my feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He shouted a goodbye up the stairs to Eddie. Eddie shouted back something I couldn’t understand, and Blayze laughed. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk with a cookie in your mouth?”

  “Man, my mother didn’t tell me shit,” Eddie yelled back, laughing. “Now get lost, I’ve got me a snack to eat.”

  Eddie’s companion giggled. The whole conversation didn’t make much sense to me, but I was distracted by the fact that the whole world seemed to be slanting to the left, making all the colors stream into each other. I closed one eye and the whole world jerked dizzyingly to the right. Needing stability, like a cat needs a tail, I clung tightly to Blayze’s arm as the room spun around me. It took me way too long to realize that we’d started moving. I’d only just caught on to that fact when a car door opened in front of me.