Brutal Heir (Court University 1)

My look curious on him, I let him teach me, his hands falling to rest on my hips while he lounged back and let me play. I had to be putting his lap to sleep at this point but he didn’t complain.

“Your friends seem nice,” I said, passive about it but it was true. They did seem nice and not crazy like I believed they might be. I mean, they came to his rescue after what happened with Bryce. No questions asked.

“They’re all right.” He said this, but I definitely heard the smile to his voice. He played with the hem of my shirt, which happened to be his. “Royal asked about how you were doing. And he did remember you from when we were kids once I reminded him.”

And how could I forget him? I nodded, the one who held down that dog while Knight crushed its head in. That little blond boy back then seemed like a far cry different from the guy here today. He completely doted over December. But then again, Knight was acting different too.

His hands at my hips while he helped teach me his game, he truly was hot and cold. To the point where it was scary sometimes even. My little man died on the screen,

and Knight thought it best we not play anymore since the crew was coming. He put my controller down, but didn’t let me go, his hand still full of my thigh. He tapped his ring against my skin, a gorilla’s mouth on it.

“I noticed December wore one of these around her neck,” I said. He lifted his hand and let me observe it, the thing really scary and so angry. “What is it?”

“Doesn’t mean much around here, but it does,” he stated, watching me study it. “Half the guys in this frat wear them. It’s called a King ring and represents a brotherhood from my hometown. December wears Royal’s. He gave it to her when they started dating. As kids, us guys got them in high school, like a fraternity thing but not in college. Doesn’t mean as much as it used to. At least to me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Because this little ring has made some of the men in my town do some horrible things, power related.” He shook his head. “It even got one of my friends killed.”

“Jesus.” Chills down my arms, Knight’s expression terse. He lowered his hand, making a fist with the ring.

“Some dark things have been done due to this ring in the past, but Royal’s trying to correct some of them. He’s president now, but still, cancer can’t always been killed. The Court, that’s what we call the society, has bred some truly awful monsters. I come from several generations of the Court. But even our noses aren’t clean.”

It made me think about that night with Bryce again, so easy the world had been able to move on from that, and I wondered if his boys’ club was a part of the reason. The Reeds were very powerful.

I wet my lips. “But you don’t have to be like that.”

His fingers unfurled, his jaw moving. “I’m hoping to be more like my dad. He was Court too before he died, but so not Court. At least, how I remembered him. He was a good man. Didn’t get caught up in all the shit.”

Smiling, I lay against him. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah. Gramps is a good man too. All this shit’s just real hard, you know? Being legacy, a lot of eyes fall on you.”

I didn’t know, but I did sympathize.

And suddenly the big brute with his privileged past didn’t seem so simple. I touched his chest, and Knight pulled back the collar of my shirt, his fingers drifting beneath. “Knight—”

“Stop shaking, dove.”

I shuddered instead, his fingers unfastening the shirt’s top button before exposing my shoulder.

He tasted with small bites, my skin flushing beneath his teeth. “No one’s here. We got a little bit.”

He squeezed my breasts through the shirt, and I realized he’d lied to his friends, the cleaning crew coming but obviously not right now.

“No fucking bra,” he growled, lowering his head of dark hair. He eased his teeth across my hard nipples, biting and sucking and making the material dark through the shirt.

I moaned, cradling the back of his head as he shifted me off his lap, then on my back. Reaching behind, he tugged his T-shirt off, exposing his hard flesh before balling it up and tossing it on the floor. With a harsh jerk, he pulled at the boxers I wore, sliding both them and my underwear off. Suddenly bare, I forced my thighs together, wriggling. “What if someone comes?”

“No one’s coming. I swear to God.” He unbuttoned my shirt until I was fully naked, his eyes liquid heat. Touching his mouth down, he dipped his tongue into my belly button. “No one’s fucking seeing you but me.”

The claim he staked burned my core, that I actually wanted him to exclaim such a thing. That I wanted to be his, completely owned by him as he spread my legs apart.

His eyes darkened at the sight of my already dripping sex, his coal-black locks hanging over his eyes and making him look like a madman. He pulled his thick digits through it, then gripped my thigh, locking it over his bicep. He disappeared between my legs and immediately sucked my lower lips into his mouth.

“Christ. Fuck. Knight.”

A chuckle, gravelly and sex-crazed drummed below me, Knight’s ridiculously talented mouth doing that again. The third time, his tongue dipped in, the length swiping along my buzzing clit, and my thighs squeezed his head. He forced them apart until I stopped, and I shook, gripping the couch cushions on either side.