Ruin Me (34 page)

Kai chuckles. “But Penny was so
cool
before…”

“Well, as
cool
as she is,” I say, “I don’t think she’s keen on my boyfriend sneaking into my bed in the middle of the night. She’s still a mom, after all.”

“Holy shit…”
He stares at me with wide eyes.

“What?” I ask.

“You just said boyfriend and you didn’t even
flinch
.”

My eyes fall to the floor. “Did I?”

He leans in closer and blocks my reach for the door handle. “Hey…” he says as he wraps his arms around me. “Kiss me.”

“Why?” I tease.

“Because I’m about to enter a
hands-off
zone…” His lips graze mine, pulling me in until I’m forced to kiss him myself.

“There,” I say, leaning away.

“Wait, wait…” He kisses me again, his lips tasting sweet and perfect.

“Kai…” I whisper. “There will be plenty of time for this later once we get back to your dorm…”

He raises his head. “I wasn’t aware we had plans later…”

“We
always
have plans later,” I tease with a smirk. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?” he asks.

“I promise.” I slide the key into the lock. “Kai, there is nothing in this world that can tear us apart now.”

He smiles at me as I push the door open.

Movement catches my eyes and I freeze in the open doorway.

My mother moves quickly to cover her naked skin with a thick blanket on the living room sofa. Two sets of clothing lie tossed about the room. A man sits beside my mother on the sofa with his groin obscured by nothing but a throw pillow. I scan his body, enticed at the familiar shape of his muscles. My eyes move to his face and my jaw drops to the floor.

Brown hair. Brown eyes. A stunningly perfect jawline. Just like Kai’s…

“Mr. Casablancas?”

Kai steps forward.
“Dad?”

The two of them stare up at us with awkward smiles. I stumble back and pull Kai out of the room before slamming the door closed. We stare at each other and let the shock sink in.

“That was your dad…” I say.

“With your mom…” he continues.

I bite my inner cheek and wait for Kai’s reaction before committing to my own. As his lips start to curl, just like mine, we both split the silence with laughter. It grows louder and louder until we have to lean on each other to stay upright.

“Want to get out of here?” I ask as I try to catch my breath.

“Desperately,” he replies.

“Thank god.”

He grips my hand and entwines his fingers with my own as we bolt down the hallway together. We board the elevator and I cup his face to plant a firm kiss on his warm lips.

Kai, there is nothing in this world that can tear us apart now.

I’ve never been one for optimism. I could be very wrong about that, but… not right now.

In this moment, it feels so very right.

Kai kisses me back as the elevator doors slide closed.

Part 3

Ruin Me

Chapter 33

Piper

I stare across the table at him and he stares back at me.

Kai Casablancas.

When my mother told me we were having the Casablancas family over for dinner tonight, I didn’t expect anything like this. We’ve had them over hundreds of times before. My mother and Ava Casablancas are best friends. My father and Hawthorne Casablancas were colleagues before my father got his dream job as Headmaster of Belle Academy. Kai and I have been in every class together since we were five years old, but we’ve never been friends. He’s an acquaintance. That’s all I ever want him to be. He’s an ass, to put it mildly.

The last thing I want is to be related to him.

“Piper?” I hear my father’s voice from the head of the table. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Yes, Piper,” Ava adds. I look over at her and bile tempts my throat. “I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but that’s why we’re all here — together. We want you to say what you need to say—”

“Don’t patronize my daughter, please,” my mother interrupts. She grabs the bottle of wine in front of her and starts to pour a healthy amount into her glass. “She’s not a toddler—”

“Penny…” my father warns.

“Oh—” my mother laughs. “I’m sorry, everybody. My bad, Philip.” She turns to me. “Yes, Piper, please tell us your opinion on your father dumping me for my best friend after sixteen years of marriage.”

“Penny—”

She lets out a cackle before downing a large sip. The table falls into an awkward silence. I lock eyes with Kai once again. He shrugs his shoulders and I want to slap him in the face. Now isn’t the time for his laid-back, give-no-fucks attitude.

Hawthorne slides his glass closer to my mother. “I’ll take some of that, Penny,” he says.

“Hawthorne,” Ava says his name with long, drawn-out syllables, “maybe you should slow down.”

“This
is
slow, Ava dear,” he mutters.

“Careful, Hawthorne,” my mother smirks. “You’re hitting on another man’s woman.”

He chuckles loudly and brings the full glass to his lips.

“I don’t think that’s funny, Penny,” my father says.

“Well, you’ve never had much of a sense of humor, Philip.”

I close my eyes, eager to disappear into thin air, as their voices continue tossing back and forth across the table. This is all a dream. It has to be. Some fever-fueled nightmare. Soon, I’ll wake up in my bedroom upstairs and life will return to normal. My father won’t be engaged to Ava Casablancas, my mother won’t be moving out, and Kai
fucking
Casablancas won’t be my goddamn stepbrother-to-be.

I open my eyes to find that he’s still staring at me.

Nope. This is no nightmare.

This is my life now.

***

“Harder.”

The change hits before the word even leaves my tongue. He thrusts me with even greater intensity as his fingers wrap a little tighter around my hair. His cock charges in and out of me, knowing exactly where to touch and how deep to go to get me off fast.

I whip my head around and moan his name.

“Kai…”

Kai Casablancas.

My oldest acquaintance. My idiot stepbrother. My perfect boyfriend. My greatest annoyance. My favorite lover. I’ve lost track of how many labels he’s earned.

He leans forward and smothers my lips with kisses as he sends his rod just a few inches deeper inside. I dig my nails into the wooden table that holds us up. Kai keeps his grip on my hair, tugging at just the right moments to mix the pleasure building inside of me with just a little bit of pain. We’ve barely been at it for two minutes and I’m already close to coming.

To say it’s been a stressful week would be an understatement. The threat of finals week is always enough to make me feel a little jittery, but this week is special. It’s not just finals week — it’s our
final
finals week at USC.

I started university a year later than my peers, but I was determined to catch up. Once again, I found myself with my face in a book — a rather familiar pose to anyone that’s ever met Piper Lynch, the princess of Belle Academy — and when I finally glanced up, I was a week away from being a college graduate. Oh, and not just
any
college graduate. I was Valedictorian. Again.

The irony is not lost on me.

I didn’t want this for myself. This was the life my father wanted for me and I hated it. I went to Europe three years ago, determined to reunite with my jilted mother and never come back. It was a good plan. It was working. Until Kai convinced me otherwise.

After taking six months to travel Europe with my mother, we came back home and decided to settle down. It was far from an easy decision. I spent years planning how to escape from home, after all. To come back here so quickly and succumb to the life I despised was… well…

Unexpected.

You know the story by now. Girl meets boy. Boy is a fucking idiot, but charming in various ways. Girl hates boy. Boy makes a bet with his best friend to fuck girl. Girl rejects boy outright, but boy manages to pull it off. Girl and boy fuck like bunnies until girl breaks boy’s heart. Boy and girl live in gloom for half a year. Girl returns home. Boy and girl fall back in love.
And they lived happily ever after.

Sort of.

Kai nibbles against my shoulder and I shudder beneath his passionate thrusts. My body melts for him, along with the stress of the last three years.

It wasn’t easy to transition back into the student lifestyle, but I had a rather decent support system holding me up. My father found it in his heart to forgive me for running off and since then, we’ve actually managed to develop a rather normal father/daughter relationship. Of course, he couldn’t be prouder of me making Valedictorian again, even though I didn’t even fucking mean to.

My mother abandoned her nomadic lifestyle in favor of coming back to Los Angeles with me. I could tell it was a rough decision for her. She’d been traveling the world for years, going nowhere and everywhere at the same time, looking to find herself after my father destroyed her life. I wasn’t sure if coming home was the right choice for her. That is, until the day Kai and I walked in on her having sex with Hawthorne Casablancas.

Our family tree could not be more tangled. My father and his mother. My mother and his father. And us, Piper and Kai, the kids.

Really, it’s best not to think about it.

Moans spill off my lips as climax takes hold of me. Kai wraps his strong arms around my body and grips me still while I ride the wave back and forth on his thick cock. “Oh…
fuck
!” I shout.

“Shh…” he chuckles in my ear, nervous about our location. This is a library, after all. The private study rooms aren’t meant for quickie fucks, but that never stopped us once in the last three years. He lets out one final grunt before spending himself inside of me.

Thankfully, the library is more or less deserted. Classes are over. The only students left on campus are here for graduation and they’ve all started lining up to take that long walk across the stage to claim their degrees. I’ve been combating nervous shakes all morning and after the three-hundredth time I practiced my speech, Kai led me in here to take the edge off with a morning bang.

“Ohh, Kai…” I coo. I push my arms beneath me to hold myself up. “God, I needed that…”

He laughs in my ear and leaves kisses along my neck. “I know,” he says. I feel his cock slide out of me as he takes a step back to lean against the wall.

I stand up and turn around. “What time is it?” I ask.

“No idea,” he says as he zips his trousers up and starts tucking his once-ironed shirt back inside. Little creases leave wrinkles around his abdomen now, but it won’t be noticeable behind the black graduation robe he has draped over a nearby chair.

I push my skirt down and reach for my purse to fetch my phone. “Ahh, shit,” I say. “It’s almost time.”