Kingmakers, Year One

17. Dean

17

DEAN

A nna is proving hard to crack.

After my early success in throwing a roofie grenade between Leo and Anna, blasting their friendship apart, then capitalizing on Anna’s moment of weakness to kiss her, I thought it would be cake. But her attachment to Leo is deeper-rooted than I realized.

She tries to hide how much she’s hurting, but it’s obvious. It drives me insane how she still looks for him in every room, how her head lifts every time he speaks.

I need to seal the deal with our date.

I’ll go all-out. Orchestrate a fucking symphony of romance.

It won’t take long for Leo to realize what a fool he’s been to let her go. I have to act fast, before he worms his way back into her good graces.

I spend a week planning it. I study everything I can about Anna, quizzing her roommate and her classmates, racking my brain for every last bit of information she’s ever let slip, trying to figure out what would be the perfect date.

Her roommate Chay isn’t helpful. She already doesn’t like me, so she flatly refuses to talk about Anna behind her back. Our classmates are even more useless. They don’t know Anna any better than I do.

The only people at Kingmakers who could have give me tips are Leo Gallo, who’d rather cut my throat than help me, or maybe Miles Griffin, whose cousins are the only thing he won’t sell for cold, hard cash.

In the end, I do something kind of fucked up.

I break into her room again and read all her letters from her sister.

I skip Combat class to do it, knowing that Anna will be occupied. I sneak into her room and read all fourteen letters, one for each week we’ve been at school.

The letters are a treasure trove of information. I only wish I could see the ones Anna wrote back.

She told me that she’s closer to her little sister than to almost anyone, and that her sister likes to write. That much is obvious from the letters—they’re half-essay, half-diary, long and full of ruminations, descriptions, and reminiscences.

The latter is the most useful part—Cara recalling shared experiences with Anna that I can use to my advantage.

I devour the letters. It’s like watching scenes from Anna’s childhood through her sister’s eyes.

Do you remember when we floated through those caves in Belize? I was claustrophobic and it scared me, floating on the water in the dark. You told me to close my eyes. You said I’d see better that way, using my ears instead. You said we were in the heart of the earth, and there was no safer place to be . . .

I’m scared of everything, and you never seem afraid of anything. Heights, dogs, cemeteries, blood . . .

Watching you be brave makes me feel more brave.

I miss you. Mama and Papa miss you. Even Whelan, though he wouldn’t admit it.

Did I tell you he’s been sneaking into your room just to sit in there? Not even to fuck up your stuff. I guess he does have a heart after all, under all that demon-energy.

Don’t worry, he hasn’t been touching your birds. I’ve been taking care of them, and I don’t let him in the aviary.

Too bad Mama’s allergic so we could never have a dog or cat. I’ll get a puppy someday. I’ll bet you’d rather have a cat. Haha no that’s too tame—maybe a snow leopard.

I think Papa had trouble at work this week. He was out all night on Thursday and Friday. Mama waited up for him, and you know she only does that when there’s a problem.

How are your classes? Are you still learning to scuba dive?

Two hours go by in the blink of an eye. I totally lose track of time, only realizing when I hear girls’ voices right outside the door.

I freeze, knowing I’m completely and totally fucked.

Thank god it’s only the Galician Heir talking to Pippa Portnoy. I wait until they passed the door, then hurry out before Anna comes back for real.

It’s addictive, learning things about Anna that she had never told me. Things that might take months or years for her to say.

I use the information to plan our date. It can’t be anything as prosaic as a walk around the island or going to the cafe in the village.

I have to impress her. I have to make her feel something—something that will cut through the morass of her attachment to Leo Gallo.

I wait for her outside her dorm. She comes down a few minutes late, looking hesitant, like she considered not coming down at all. I can tell she took care getting ready though, and that’s all the encouragement I need.

I no longer dislike Anna’s odd way of dressing. Instead, it’s having a Pavlovian effect on me. The moment I see her torn tights or her thick black eyeliner, my cock stiffens and my heart races. I want to tear those tights right off of her. I want to see her makeup run down her face with those full, pouting lips wrapped around my cock.

But not yet . . .

I have to be patient.

I take her off campus, because I know she’ll never be comfortable inside the walls of Kingmakers where Leo might see us together.

“Where are we going?” Anna asks me.

“You’ll see.”

We head down the winding main road of the island that leads from the school down to the harbor. I walk slow, wanting to have plenty of time to loosen Anna up with conversation about her favorite books. I already know from one of her sister’s letters that Anna loves Jane Austen novels, and I read one on purpose earlier in the week, sitting in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the library.

I mention it casually, and watch Anna’s face light up as she says, “I love Persuasion ! Everybody thinks Pride and Prejudice is her best one, but Persuasion has such a beautiful arc from melancholy to happy . . .”

I don’t see it as deceiving her. I see it as evidence of what I’ll do to make her happy. What I’ll do to give her the conversation she deserves—centered around her likes and interests, instead of around whatever bullshit Leo Gallo would have talked to her about. He wouldn’t have read a book just to discuss it with her. He wouldn’t have spent all week planning a date.

When we get to the sheep farm, I take Anna right into the little stable I staked out earlier in the week.

“What are we—” she asks again. Then she breaks off, seeing what I brought her to see.

Three little lambs curl in a pile, two white and one black.

Their mother stands nearby, looking exhausted.

“What are they doing here?” Anna asks in amazement.

“Sometimes they come early in the winter,” I say. “This ewe had three, so the farmer’s been bottle-feeding them. He said we could help if we wanted.”

Actually, I bribed him with a substantial wad of cash so I could bring Anna here on this little excursion. I figured from her sister’s letter that she must love animals.

Sure enough, she gladly takes the bottle of warm milk I fetch from the farmhouse and kneels down in the straw so she can give it to the greedy lambs. The ewe doesn’t care—she seems relieved that we’re here to share the workload.

The lambs are only three days old. Their knees are still knobby and uncertain, their coats puffy and clean. They tumble over each other fighting for the bottle. Anna laughs with delight, pulling them onto her lap and feeding them in turn.

The little black lamb nibbles at her fingers and one of the white lambs tries to sample her hair. Anna pressedsher nose between their ears and inhales the clean scent of their wool.

I don’t give a fuck about the lambs, I’m watching Anna—watching her face soften, her lips part, her defenses drop.

At Kingmakers she’s always so intent on showing that she’s tough and emotionless. Here, just a couple of miles away, just us and the animals with no one else to see, I catch a glimpse of the real Anna. The same one I saw the night of the party. The one with a vulnerable heart.

“Do you want to feed them?” Anna asks, looking up at me.

“Sure,” I say, just for an excuse to sit down beside her in the hay.

I grab one of the white lambs and stuff the bottle in its mouth. It snuggles up against me, its rapid little heart beating against my hand. I’m surprised how soft its wool feels, and how comforting its warmth and weight seems, despite its tiny size.

“I’m not a vegetarian,” Anna says. “But I could never stand to eat lamb. They should have some time to live, even if they’re slaughtered in the end.”

“I think they just use these sheep for wool.”

“Have you ever seen pictures of that sheep that ran away and hid in a cave for six years?” Anna laughs. “When they finally caught him his coat had grown so big that they shaved sixty pounds of wool off him.”

“Sixty pounds?” I wrinkle my nose in disbelief.

“Yeah! He became a celebrity in New Zealand.”

“You’re making this up.”

“No I’m not! He was on TV. They wrote children’s books about him. He visited the Prime Minister.”

I want to kiss her again right there, with her defenses low and her oxytocin high from contact with the lambs.

But I wait. Patiently and strategically.

We walk down to the beach next. Not Moon Beach, because I don’t want her thinking about Leo when I need all her attention focused on me.

Instead I take her down to the east side of the island where the waves have hollowed-out caverns in the limestone. We walk through the caves, stalactites hanging down like pale stone icicles and seawater seeping into pale green pools in the rock.

I brought a backpack full of food stolen from the kitchen: oranges, bread, cheese, and two bottles of the local beer. I knock the caps off the beer, handing one to Anna.

She takes it from me. I peel an orange and hand that to her as well.

“Dean,” she says, and I know immediately from the tone of her voice that she’s going to say something about Leo. “This has been really nice, but I?—”

I interrupt her. “I know you like spending time with me.”

“I do,” she admits.

“And I know you have feelings for Leo.”

She doesn’t reply to that but sits quietly in the dim green light of the cave that makes her eyes look blue-green too, like arctic seawater.

“He had his whole life to love you, Anna,” I say fiercely. “He never did anything about it. I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you.”

Anna is silent, biting the corner of her lip. She holds the peeled orange in her hand, untouched.

“I can’t stop how I feel about him,” she says quietly. “I’ve tried.”

“I’m not trying to stop you.”

That’s a lie. I plan to slice through every tie that binds her and Leo together, one by one. But I have time to do it. For now, all I need is for Anna to let me in, just a little.

“All I want is a chance. To see if you could maybe feel something for me, too.”

She presses her lips together, and I think she might be about to shake her head. So I grab her by the hand and pull her up from where she’s sitting on the soft, chalky limestone.

“Here,” I say. “Come look at this.”

I pull her deeper into the cavern, to the place where the seawater pours in from the ocean as the tide comes in. It’s dark here, almost fully dark. Unconsciously, Anna’s fingers interlock with mine.

“What are you showing me?”

“Just wait . . .”

The water pours in with each set of waves, cold and dark.

And then, as the incoming waves churn against each other in the dark recesses of the cavern, the pools begin to glow. The light is faint at first, just threads of turquoise in the black water. Then the color spreads, until the entire pool is illuminated with vibrant, shifting, moving light. Organic and surreal. The light reflects off the cavern walls and glimmers on Anna’s smooth skin.

She stares at me wide-eyed. “What is that?”

“Dinoflagellates. They’re bioluminescent.”

It’s like a million tiny fireflies underwater. Each fresh wave from the ocean increases their supply and their agitation. Soon the whole cavern is glowing, and Anna’s mouth is open in awe.

That’s when I kiss her again. Her lips are already parted, and I slip my tongue into her mouth, tasting the warm remnants of the beer and the sweetness of Anna herself.

I pull her hard against me. I was trying to restrain myself, but it’s impossible when the taste of her makes me starve for more, and the feel of her lean, tight body against mine makes me want to rip every scrap of clothing off her so I can see that naked flesh I’ve been obsessing over since the very first day of school.

My hand cradles the side of her throat. I let my fingers slide down to her collarbone, and then the top of her breast. I dip my fingers under the tight material of her top, down the warm swell of her breast, my ring finger just grazing her stiff nipple before Anna puts her own hand over mine to stop me.

“Wait,” she says.

I stay still, though I don’t want to. I still have one hand gripping her hip and the other resting on that perfect breast. I want to pull her back into me, yank her top down entirely, and take that hard nipple in my mouth.

“I’m not . . . very experienced,” Anna stammers. “You’ll have to go slow.”

It’s in that moment that I realize that Anna is a virgin. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought a girl that gorgeous could come to college still a virgin. Bare minimum, I’d assumed that she and Leo must have fooled around at some point in their past. I can’t imagine how he had that cherry in the palm of his hand without popping it.

If I thought I was infatuated with Anna before, it’s nothing compared to the obsession that seizes me now.

I silently swear that I’ll take Anna’s virginity or die trying. I’ll be her first lover. And that’s what will bind her to me, no matter what Leo tried to do after.

I literally salivate at the thought. I have to swallow hard before I can reply, “That’s alright. I understand.”

If Anna says I have to “go slow,” that means she’s going to let me try. She’s going to keep seeing me. Which means I have to be careful not to fuck it up, not to scare her off. Even if it seems impossible. Even if it’s torture trying to keep my hands off her.

So that’s what I do. I kiss her again, slowly and gently. And then I take her back up to Kingmakers, back to her dorms. I don’t try to push it any further, so she’ll believe I’m respectful. So she’ll come out with me again.

And all the while I’m plotting how I’ll be the first person on this planet to fuck Anna Wilk, so I’ll have that piece of her always. So she’ll belong to me.

In the weeks that follow I pursue Anna relentlessly. I take every possible opportunity to keep her away from Leo, inviting her to sit with me in our shared classes and during meals, constantly trying to tie up her time with dates and activities that don’t involve him.

The first challenge of the Quartum Bellum is the best part of all, because Leo himself is forced to pair Anna and me together so I’ll have a babysitter. Granted, it does prevent me from sabotaging, but it also gives me plenty of opportunities to remind Anna what a great team we make together, and to dramatically rescue her from jail.

I’m irritated when Kasper Markaj gets himself kicked out of the competition so easily, but at least the Freshmen place last of the three winning teams. Best of all, Leo loses his stupid bet with Calvin Caccia.

He has to come down to breakfast the next morning stark naked.

I expect him to back out of the bet, or at bare minimum to slink through the dining hall with an appropriate level of embarrassment.

Everyone in school has heard about the terms of the bet, and every single seat is packed with students waiting to laugh and jeer at the sight of the cocky Freshman literally stripped bare.

Instead, Leo strolls into the dining hall at the stroke of eight, naked as the day he was born. He’s grinning and waving at his friends, freshly showered and wearing only a pair of flip-flops.

He takes his time selecting his bacon and eggs from the chafing dishes, then chooses a seat right in the middle of the hall, attacking his breakfast with apparent enjoyment.

While some of the Juniors and Seniors continue shouting and jeering at him, it’s impossible to come up with much in the way of insults when Leo is such an undeniable physical specimen.

I fucking hate his guts, and even I have to admit that his height, his tan, and his physique leave little to scoff at. In fact, I think it’s making him more popular than ever, especially when the girls get a good look at the package swinging between his legs.

Gemma Rossi leans forward in her seat, openly staring at his cock, practically salivating—something that doesn’t go unnoticed by Anna.

I expected to enjoy Leo’s humiliation, and instead I’m seething with irritation long before he even sits down.

It doesn’t help that I can see Anna’s eyes irresistibly drawn toward Leo again and again while she tries to ignore him, eating her breakfast next to Chay.

Before Leo even finishes his food, the jeers turn into a chant, led by the Freshmen and a substantial number of Sophomores who don’t seem to give a fuck that they lost their place in the competition.

“LEO! LEO! LEO! LEO!”

Their voices echo around the dining hall and the plates rattle as they pound the tables with their fists.

I’m gripping my fork so hard that I’ve almost bent it in half.

How in the FUCK does everything Leo touches turn from shit into gold?

“LEO! LEO! LEO!”

He stands up from his seat, giving the crowd a little salute. Then he sinks into a deep bow with his naked ass pointed in the direction of Calvin Caccia’s table. The dining hall erupts in howls of laughter, while Calvin’s face turns an ugly shade of puce.

I shove my plate away from me, furious and disgusted.

I can’t help looking over at Anna again. She’s watching Leo, the tiniest hint of a smile tugging up the corner of her mouth.

Somehow I’m burning with envy. Leo is naked, disgraced, and publicly shamed. And I’m sitting here jealous of him yet again.