Call You Mine (Servite Academy)

Chapter Two

DAMON

O f all the things I thought I would do today, standing in the middle of my apartment with none other than Wynter Fucking Servite, AKA The Stone-Cold Bitch of Servite Academy and all of fucking Hillcrest Hills—not that I’d ever say that to her face—was the last thing I’d have ever guessed.

Yet here I am, staring at a woman who looks nothing like the uptight yet incredibly sexy chick I used to see around campus and at Servite parties. This isn’t the same girl who was one of the Queens of Servite Academy , a quartet of condescending rich girls who fought tooth and nail with every student who didn't meet their elitist expectations, especially my sister Ruby and my best friend's Scarlett and Jade.

This version of Wynter is also different from the girl I formed a secret friendship with after a drunken night full of mistakes and regrets.

Over three years ago, shortly after we’d arrived at the academy, I’d gotten into a huge fight with my ex-girlfriend, Scarlett. Not only were we arguing constantly since coming to the school but she’d been acting differently, claiming our relationship was doomed from the start or what not. Coming to Servite Academy felt like the worst thing that could have happened to our new relationship.

After years of friendship, we’d given ourselves the chance to see if we could become more than just friends, but once we were forced to leave the foster home we’d grown up in, it felt like she became a completely different person. I no longer recognized my best friend.

Scar began acting secretive when that asshole Ace Servite, who I didn’t like since the first time I saw him, was constantly on her ass with the excuse of wanting us gone, but there was something else in the way he looked at her. He wanted her, and she was mine, so I became this psychotic, possessive asshole who ended up driving her away.

I felt a strong need to keep her safe despite everything, especially when Ace and his family continued to be a threat to her. We were family, and I’d do anything to keep my family safe, but I confused the need to protect her as something entirely different. I confused it for love, having never experienced it before in any form. I wasn't sure what I was feeling.

After a fight we’d had, the one that in reality ended it all, I went out to a Servite party and got shit-fucking-faced. I felt betrayed but worst of all angry with myself for becoming such a fucking asshole and treating Scar that way, pushing her to betray me—something she would have never done if she had her mind clear. She owed me nothing, but I was a volatile, short-tempered, fucked up son of a bitch who couldn’t see it. Hence my nickname, Dragon. I’ve always been temperamental—a vicious, fire-breathing monster was exactly what I’d become.

Wynter was there that night—she was the first thing I saw when I walked through the door—standing across the room dressed in the most fuckable dress I’d ever laid eyes on. And trust me, these Servite Academy girls wore nothing but the sexiest clothes they could find, making sure every single good they offered was on full display. It was hot, but sometimes I craved a little mystery.

Though with Wynter, I wanted to unravel her the moment I saw her. I still remember every detail about Wynter’s dress. Yup, it made that big of an impression. Similar to the one she’s wearing now, devoid of the dried blood stain covering the entire front.

White, glimmering, and dipped so low on the front and back, every inch of her smooth alabaster skin was on display. Her long, almost white hair hung in a sleek, straight blanket over one shoulder while a thick strand of real fucking diamonds cuffed her neck like the perfect noose, which made me want to wrap my hands around the precious jewels while she looked up at me between thick lashes as I fucked the life out of her.

Though it was the dress which had me completely mesmerized. The shimmery, jeweled fabric left nothing to the imagination, and I suddenly felt the urge to peel back the remaining layer just to see what she was keeping hidden underneath from me.

Just to see if it was worth losing myself in.

Though just when I thought I couldn’t get any more intrigued, she bent over. Bent the fuck over to pick something up off the floor when she thought no one was watching. But I was definitely watching. By this point I was fucking drooling, salivating at the sight of two round and perky cheeks appearing under the fabric of her dress, which barely covered them when she was standing.

The woman was pure fucking sex standing there like she owned the room and everyone in attendance was unworthy of her recognition. I became a madman, diligently watching her like no one else existed in the room. Wynter’s confidence was contagious, and the elegance that exuded off her, despite her provocative outfit, was enticing as fuck. I’d never owned anything so luxurious and expensive. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to own her and watch her come apart beneath my touch.

As if she felt someone was watching her, she straightened her back and looked over her shoulder right in my direction. Two icy blue eyes gleamed as they caught mine, drawing in as they looked me up and down. She was checking me out, her eyes instantly filling with desire as she took her bottom lip between her teeth. Her tongue peaked out to wet her already glossy and plump lips, her whole body shifting toward me like it was being tugged by a magnetic force she couldn’t resist.

I was taken aback by how much I wanted her. It might have been the alcohol coursing through my veins—I’m pretty sure it was given the almost entire bottle of whiskey I’d consumed—but it felt like if I didn’t have her, I’d fucking explode.

I remember thinking how was it possible I had never realized how incredibly sexy she was?

But I knew the reason the morning after when I woke up with her naked body twisted underneath mine. My cock, once again hard and throbbing at the mere sight of her, pressed against her bare pussy while her arms wrapped lazily around my neck. The hazy memories of what we’d done played over in my mind like an old film. The way her exquisite body fit perfectly beneath me, her taut nipples which ached to be sucked, and the taste of her arousal still lingered on my tongue.

Though the clearest image was that of my hands wrapped around her neck as I vigorously thrusted into her, demanding her to lose control. Her screams begged me for more, all while her tight cunt clenched around my cock as she came for me. I found my release almost instantly with her and it felt so fucking perfect to lose control for just a moment.

The way her body vibrated against mine, our chests heaving up and down in sync, breathless and on the verge of collapsing. It was the most beautiful sight. Intoxicating and mesmerizing, forever ingrained in my memory.

Although it was the best night of my fucking life, the alcohol which clouded my memory had worn off and in its place was a raging headache and the burning feeling of regret. It was her last name that made me immune to her good looks when I was in control of my own senses. Now it had all become so fucking clear.

Luckily, she felt the same way.

There was still something about her I couldn’t stay away from. Even though we swore no one would ever find out and we’d never repeat it, something about her spoke deeply to something inside me. We were complete opposites—two beings born on different planets, living two distinct realities—yet our bodies and minds spoke the same language.

A language only the two of us understood.

When I was with Scar, I fell for how easily we could talk to each other, how much we had in common, but that was the problem, the root of our incompatibility. We were the same. Our temperaments were too similar, our need to be in control, making us fight each other consistently for it.

It wasn’t until we broke things off for good that I realized she was right. I behaved like a selfish, scorned lover, making things awkward as fuck for the rest of our group of friends, but in reality, it was the fact I was too damn proud to admit she wasn’t for me.

However, when Wynter woke up naked in bed beside me—her flushed skin still heated by the fire she’d ignited inside me—I wanted nothing more than to extinguish it before it consumed me. History would have repeated itself because the reason Wynter and Scarlett never got along was because they were too similar.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I couldn’t.

Like I said, luckily Wynter Servite felt the same. The Stone-Cold Ice Princess was back once the lustful fog that surrounded us cleared and she no longer had a problem admitting how much of a fuckup sleeping with me was. We were from two different worlds and I was beneath her. I belonged on my knees at her feet, and I was too fucking proud to go there again.

However, the version of Wynter currently standing in front of me not only looks fucking breathtaking in the silver minidress, which also leaves nothing to the imagination, despite the large blood stain covering the entirety of her stomach. Her white hair now slightly longer, is a tattered mess on her head, and despite the purple bruise appearing under her eye, and cut on her lip, it’s the worried expression she’s worn since the moment I caught sight of her that has me on edge.

Fear looks terrifying on a beautiful face.

This version of her is the one I became friends with.

After that night, we realized there was something that kept bringing us together. An outside force beyond our control that kept pulling us in the same direction and putting us in each other's paths. We couldn’t stay away despite how hard we tried. It was then we agreed we’d never fall victim to repeating the mistake of that night, but we’d keep in contact. We’d text, she’d come over and we’d sit together, neither one of us really talking, just needing each other's company.

It wasn’t until she left right after graduation that things changed yet again. When she went radio silent for so long, I thought it was the end of our alliance. Sometime after she finally texted me and it was like we picked up right where we left off. Though I always felt like she was hiding something, only coming back to Hillcrest a few times over the last three years, but when she did, she’d come and see me and it was like she never left.

Of course, no one ever knew about our friendship. They wouldn’t understand it. Sometimes I didn't have a clue what we were doing.

We take twenty minutes to arrive at the hotel she’s staying at, which doesn't even come close to what the name The Royal Inn suggests. No, this piece of shit motel, hidden in the furthest corner of the Hillcrest Hills city limits, is a rundown, dirty, and vermin infested building surely creeping with prostitutes, addicts, and gang members. I should know, I’ve stayed here a time or ten.

“This is where you’re staying?” I ask, bewildered by the sights before me. This isn’t a hotel, it’s a cheap rundown motel crawling with cockroaches.

“What’s wrong with it?” she mutters defensively, even though I glimpse fear in her eyes as she looks out the window. “It’s only a temporary fix until I find a more permanent place to live. I can’t exactly go back home.”

“Why the hell not?” She had a mansion, for God’s sake—a whole fucking estate. Why would she stay here?

“You’re kidding right? I know I’ve been gone for a while, but even I know my brother’s planning to sell it if he hasn’t already.” Something about the sharp bite in her tone tells me she’s not entirely happy about that.

“What about your parents?” I ask, immediately regretting it when her scowl deepens. I should have known that was a sore subject since, like me, it wasn’t something she ever talked about.

“My mother is somewhere off the Amalfi Coast, living out the life she gave up when she married Warren and had Ace and I.” She shifts to unbuckle her seat belt. “As for dear old dad, I imagine he’s hiding somewhere trying to stay out of the prison cell with his name on it and avoid becoming someone’s bitch.”

Without thinking, I reach over her and grab hold of her seatbelt, crossing it back over her chest, and quickly locking it back in place. She gasps when my cold knuckles touch the exposed skin of her chest, her mouth dropping open and eyes bugging wide as she watches me intently, trying to figure out my next move.

Her eyes flick back and forth from mine, to my hand, and back up to my lips as my tongue sweeps across them. A darkness clouds her clear blue eyes, while she watches me, licking her lips in response to our closeness.

What the fuck am I doing? This wasn’t part of the plan. But things have never gone as planned with her.

“You’re not staying here,” I bark out, almost laughing. There’s no way in hell I’d leave her, or any girl for that matter, in this fucking shit hole. Her eyes widen as she watches me in disbelief. “You’re coming with me.” It’s not a question, nor a suggestion. It’s a fucking demand not leaving any space for arguing.

Yet of course the stubborn woman that she is, Wynter takes the bait, meeting me with a challenge in her eyes. “Damon,” she hisses, making the muscles in my jaw and cock tense. “You said it yourself. You’re not staying at your apartment anymore.”

Ignoring her, and frankly not interested in explaining the decision I’ll surely regret, I take the roundabout at the end of the street, burning rubber as I swerve in the opposite direction. She squeals, gripping onto the grab bar on the top of the car ceiling, gasping as I step on the gas.

A few cars blare their horns at us in anger, but I’ve simply got no fucks to give. My only goal is to get this woman as far away from here as possible, even if it means putting her in the path of danger—with me.

Fifteen minutes later, down winding streets, past the rows of white oak trees intricately placed along the sidewalks, and white picket fences fading by as we pass, we’re arriving at my house right smack dab in the middle of fucking suburbia.

A home I purchased six months ago with money I never expected to come to because, ladies and gentlemen, I was now a fucking billionaire.

Yup, you heard it right. Me, the fatherless punk, son of a crack-whore and troublesome delinquent, now had more money than I even knew what to do with.

It was right after I’d been mugged outside my apartment about a year ago, by a trio of gangster looking assholes who tried and failed to beat the shit out of me. I handed them their asses, putting to use the years I spent cage fighting back in Pleasant Hills as a teenager. That was until one fucker shot me and I realized I’d been outgunned. They left me there for dead, only I wasn’t.

I passed out from the pain only to awaken the following morning in an expansive, dimly lit bedroom I didn’t recognize. Three-hundred thread count sheets sat beneath me atop the king size bed that wasn’t mine. The rest of the room was pretty vacant, with only an armoire on one side and a large couch on the other. Upon it sat a shadowed figure, frighteningly still and staring directly at me.

For a split second, panic buzzed within me at the thought that my assailants had gotten their hands on me—after all, this wasn’t the first time I’d been captured, bonded and beaten—but it made no sense. Looking down at my shoulder that was throbbing in pain, my gunshot wound had been cleaned and bandaged.

Confused and frankly a bit irritated from not knowing where the fuck I was, my gaze shifted back to the man watching me from the couch. He stood and walked toward me, and when the sliver of light coming in from the window to our right lit up his face when he came into view, I realized the stranger looked disturbingly like me.

To say the next twenty-four hours was a shit show is putting it lightly. I’d never seen the man before and despite everything he was telling me, I wasn’t sure he was real. I’d been shot, maybe even had a concussion from the beating I’d endured. Yet this man who’d not only saved me, but nursed me back to health, was claiming to be my uncle.

My father’s older brother. A father I knew nothing about nor cared to find. Nikolas Draconis, a multi-billionaire entrepreneur who had no next of kin, no heirs to continue the legacy he’d built on his own. Shortly after my mother died, Nico had discovered his younger brother had two children but could never track us down. Because of our mother’s death and the fact no one knew who or where our father was, Ruby and I were put into foster care. We’d arrived at the Grayson’s Foster home just days after our sixth birthday.

Since then, our records were sealed. Once we were transferred to Servite Academy, they practically disappeared. Until I applied for a business license two months before the incident and Nico received an alert from the private investigator he’d kept on retainer. Nico hadn’t heard from my father either since before Ruby and I were born.

It was all too surreal. Nothing about what he’d told me made any sense, but there he was, standing before me with the same green eyes and jet-black hair, only his was speckled with more white than black, and his face was ghostly thin.

Nico died three months later. Terminal cancer he’d been fighting for over three years. In the hours before his death, Ruby and I sat at his bedside, my sister only coming around to the idea of having a family on our father’s side when I’d told her how sick he really was. He confessed finding us was a Godsend. For twenty years he prayed to one day find us, and it wasn’t until it was too late he finally did.

Much to our dismay, Nico left Ruby and I his estate, his company, his entire fucking fortune worth nearly six billion dollars.

At first we refused it. We didn’t need anyone's money to survive. Sure, we led a shit life up to this point, but it was our own life. I’d been making my living now, and although it wasn’t something that would make a parent proud—maybe mine given the life they led—I was perfectly content with the way it turned out.

But we realized how fucking stupid we’d be if we looked this incredible blessing in the eye and just walked away. We owed it to Nico. He’d come into our life for three months and in those three months, he did more for us than anyone ever had. Nico became family, and that was something we were lacking in.

A few years ago, when I was trying to dig up dirt on Ace to prove to Scarlett he wasn’t who she thought he was, I wandered into a bar back in Providence, the town she was originally from. It was a piece of shit place, worse than where we’d originally grown up in Pleasant Hills. Something about the bar called out to me as I drove by.

It was a biker bar—thugs on motorcycles, lined up outside in the parking lot, a bonfire of sorts happening out back in front of an abandoned-looking church. But as I exited my car and headed into the front door of Purgatory —aptly named—I saw a woman behind the bar who immediately caught my attention. Her bright green eyes were warm as she watched me approach her, her features so familiar. She looked like my sister, only her blonde hair a complete contrast to Ruby’s raven locks. Then it hit me. She was the spitting image of my dead mother.

One thing led to another and soon enough, I found the connection I wasn’t even searching for but desperately needed. Haley Lockwood had a sister, Hannah, whom she’d lost contact with just around the time Ruby and I were born. Hannah was older than Haley, so she says she vaguely remembers much about how it all happened, only that Hannah left her family after falling in love with some con man and getting pregnant.

That was the closest Ruby, and I had ever come to having any familial connection, yet neither of us ever went back to Purgatory after hearing that our aunt Haley had been the casualty of a turf war between her club the Disciples and a rival gang.

Now the only other family we’d found was also gone.

Wynter remained dead-silent the entire drive to the new house I purchased six months ago with some of the money Nico had left me. The five-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bathroom mansion on the town border of Hillcrest Hills and Galen Grove was definitely not something I fucking needed or would have ever thought to purchase before meeting Nico.

But in those three months, he’d shown me the importance of family. The man had lived his entire life alone, searching for the one thing he never had—a family of his own. I had no intention of ever having one of my own—a wife and kids—but there was something appealing about having a house this large. I could let myself fantasize I’d fill it in another lifetime.

After pulling into the driveway and putting my car into park, we sat in silence, nothing but the soft hum of the engine powering down heard in the car. I lift my gaze to look at Wynter and find her gazing directly at the house in front of us, her lips pursed in a tight line that gives nothing away.

If only I could get a glimpse of whatever’s going through her mind. I can’t garner her reaction as I watch her chest heaving softly, a million different questions crossing her mind all at once.

Where did I bring her? Why did I bring her here?

Well, Princess, I’m asking myself the same damn thing.

Saying nothing, I open the door and step out of the car, surprised when she follows. She closes the door slowly while I grab the duffle bag she had with her from the back seat. It hardly weighs anything, another red flag that she’s not telling me the truth.

In the time I’ve known Wynter, she’s never traveled light. The woman takes her entire wardrobe and makeup counter with her everywhere she goes.

I watch her as she carefully struts over to the edge of the circular driveway wrapping around the front and takes in the grandness of the house. Something inside of my chest tightens when I step up to join her, her eyes lighting up when she notices.

White bricks cover the exterior of the Craftsman architecture, black shutters framing the twenty or so windows along the front painted to match the shingles along the roof. Sandstone pillars hold up the second story and match the railing of the wrap-around porch.

Along the edge of the porch, there are fifteen rows of red rose bushes that wrap around the entire house, adding a bright contrast to the otherwise black and white color palette of the exterior. I had the landscaping redone specifically to include those roses after purchasing the house and as I watch the way she blinks away the tears pooling in her eyes, I’ve never been so sure of my decision.

It was the last time we’d spoken. She'd come from New York for just a day and a half, but we spent most of it together, binge watching Game of Thrones and eating junk food in my apartment. Red roses were her favorite flower, and she spoke about how she dreamed of having them all around her house when she was a little girl.

After a trip to Disneyland when she was six years old, where she fell in love with the roses aligned in a Mickey Mouse shape in the front entrance of the park, she’d convinced her gardener to let her plant some in the manor’s gardens, but the next day, her mother had ordered him to cut them down. Apparently, the red didn’t match the earth tone aesthetic of the rest of the manor.

There was something strange about her as she spoke that day. Her smile wasn’t as bright, her eyes full of doubt, and she was saying things that made little sense. Wynter was never one to reminisce or speak about her childhood, but that night she was dreaming about what her life could have been if she wasn’t born a Servite.

For so long, I used to hold her upbringing against her, never allowing myself to get too close because betrayal was in her blood. Her family was pure poison. Though looking at her now as she fights to keep herself together, I realize it was a curse she had to bear. She had no choice but to do what she had to in order to survive.

Wynter discreetly wipes a tear away, putting her dark sunglasses back over her eyes to keep her mask of confidence in place. I know Wyn better than I know anyone, and she’s not ready to talk about whatever darkness is threatening to consume her. There's definitely something she’s keeping from me, has been since the moment she left after graduation, but it never bothered me the way it’s starting to now.

And that’s a feeling I can’t give into. We’re both better off acting like those damn roses mean nothing.

Without acknowledging her, I lead her toward the two black double doors, letting her follow behind me at her own pace. Yet the moment we step into the foyer, I hear a subtle gasp leave her lips as she takes in the interior design.

A smile tugs at my lips and I have to fist my hands at my side to hold in the chuckle that tries to escape. “Welcome home, Princess.”