“I own this,” he growled, squeezing and making me pulse. “Mine and you wanted me to have it. You understand?”
He let go, his chair snapping up when he stood.
That instantly broke the calm in the room, and everyone looked back. LJ didn’t seem to care as he grabbed his stuff, then crossed over me. The door on my other side, he shot right through it, everyone looking at each other while I adjusted my skirt. He was right, of course. I did want him to have it.
I let him do whatever he wanted.
Chapter Ten
LJ
My right hook sent one of my best friends flying, Jax hitting the canvas of the boxing ring like a box of rocks.
Eyes wide, my other best friends, Knight and Royal immediately crawled into the ring, and I rushed too to see if the dude was still alive. We got by his side, and with a grunt, Jax was up on his elbows. He frowned, rubbing his reddened cheek with his boxing glove. “What the fuck, bro?”
Cringing, I immediately took my glove off, offering a hand. “Guess I got a little too into it.”
“Ya think?” The chide came from Royal who was helping Jax up to his feet too, Knight on the other side. Between the three of us, we got our buddy steady, but he looked dazed to hell and definitely not ready for another round in the ring with me. We’d been sparing for only a few seconds, and I’d already clocked him cold.
Jax rubbed his cheek again, pulling off his glove. “What did I do to you?”
Absolutely nothing, all this in my head. I apologized again, and he worked himself out of the ring, getting his bottle of water off to the side.
The four of us tried to hit up the local boxing gym in our hometown, Maywood Heights, at least once a term. We’d met up over the holidays, of course, but today’s date stayed. Working out and hitting each other was generally a way to bond since the majority of us went to different colleges after high school. The exception was Knight and Royal, and this was actually probably the last time we’d all get to meet up like this during the academic year. Jax was planning on transferring to a school down in Florida soon. His dad was down there, a dad he rarely saw, and the move was supposed to be a way for them to connect again, his dad’s idea. Jax had wanted anything but, but he’d decided to go. This, of course, was to much disappointment of his moms. His mom remarried after his parents’ divorce when Jax had been a kid, and the woman she married pretty much raised him as if he were her own. As far as Jax would tell anyone, he had a bio dad and two moms and he wouldn’t let anyone tell him otherwise.
Feeling terrible, I apologized to him again, and cracking his fist, Knight told me to take on someone his own size before putting on his own set of boxing gloves. Tapping them together, he hunkered low, and I smirked at the size comment. I may have been taller but this dude was a big-ass motherfucker, bigger than all of this.
“Oh, I gotta see this.” Royal grinned, quickly getting out of the ring to join Jax. The traitorous fuckers pounded fists before hanging on the ropes like they were waiting for a prize fight. Boxing used to be pretty big in Maywood Heights, and as kids, we used to go to all the matches. We hung out outside the ring, peering on while idiots clocked each other.
It was the time of our lives.
My spar with Knight was reminiscent of that, and he did let me get a few good hits in before turning on his strength and tacking my ass. I didn’t make the fight easy, blocking every shot when he climbed on top of me with pummeling hits, and after punching the shit out of each other for a while, we took a break a bit and let some more of the locals take the ring. We wouldn’t be able to stay real long today. Jax and I had to travel across states just to get back to our campuses. We all went to school in the Midwest but varying parts.
“So was there a reason you were kicking my ass?” Jax asked me, his eyebrows bouncing. He smiled. “We should do that to you for what you keep doing to your hair.”
The three ragged on me good when I decided to lob it off my freshman year at Woodcreek. I’d had hair down past my shoulders for as long as I could remember, but once in college, I hadn’t had the time. Such a shame since it got me laid even more than my cut now. Don’t get me wrong. I was still getting it in, but the girls went fucking apeshit whenever they got a hand of the gold. I grinned. “Nothing. Just had a weird week.”
Billie Coventry weird, and since I had the boys with me today, I actually had some questions. I tipped my chin. “Any of y’all know anything about the name Coventry?”
My friends all were, and still are, in that high society shit, something I’d distanced myself from since going away to college. Those circles had never been mine, felt foreign since I’d been dirt poor growing up, so where I’d put space, they might be able to fill in some blanks. My buddy Niko had found out some stuff about Billie since she’d been local back in Indiana, but these guys may know even more. Surprisingly enough, the name actually got a reaction out of my buddy Knight. He threw his fingers through his dark hair, looking a little unsettled.
“Why you asking about Coventrys?” he asked, squirting water into his mouth, and Royal tapped his arm.
Royal frowned his way. “Isn’t that the guy that like offed himself in front of you?”
My eyes twitched wide, recalling the story Knight had told us all last term. Some guy had actually killed himself in front of him, and Knight had told us the whole thing over the holidays. It’d been a fucking long-ass story too, all of us drinking into the night about the evening Knight ended up finding his girlfriend Greer. The pair of them already had a history, but she was reintroduced into his life again upon the incident of that guy’s suicide.
Knight rubbed his head. “Yeah, man,” he said to Royal. “Fucking crazy.” Then Knight looked at me. “Why you asking about him?”
“Not him, the name Coventry. There’s this girl on campus, has the same surname.”
“What’s her first name?”
“Billie,” I said, my dick actually hardening. The stupid fuck kept imagining her little mouth as I drove my fingers inside her, a mouth perfect for my cock itself. The only thing keeping me from doing anything about it that day in class was the fact there’d been others around. I wouldn’t have been able to hold back with her mouth around me, making her gag and enjoying the sounds.
It was some kind of sick shit, the joy I got in breaking her. I’d made her admit the truth, that she wanted me, and that made me so damn hard that day my cock could have cut glass. It was some new kind of evil like Niko said, but I couldn’t even feel bad. It just felt too good.
Knight considered the name I said, and it kind of worried me there may be a connection there between Billie and that guy Bryce who killed himself. From what I understood, that dude and the situation hadn’t been a good one for Knight, and I wasn’t trying to work up shit that didn’t need to be worked up. He eyed me. “Her mom Genevieve?”