Defy (Sinners of Saint, #0.5)

by L.J. Shen

“You feel pretty manly to me,” I breathed out, all jelly-legged with half-mast eyes. “And you feel like a woman worthy of a fight, Ms. Greene.”

If there was a potential husband waiting for me in the dingy complex I was moving into, he was going to think that I was hot. And possibly homeless.

Just until school ends, remember?

There was pain in his voice. I not only heard it, I felt it.

Jaime grabbed my stiff shoulder, studying me. “You think that’s why I came here? To fuck you?” His raw gaze alone stripped off a layer of my shitty attitude, but I still needed him to leave. This had to stop. We had to stop.

“I’ll help,” Jaime announced, grabbing the biggest, heaviest box and throwing it up on one of his shoulders.

His feet were on the table, while I curled up on the sofa. We looked like a couple. What’s more—we acted like one. It felt natural. And scary. For a moment, just a brief, crazy, I-obviously-need-help moment, I imagined that we were moving into this apartment together, me and him.

“I blackmailed you into it. That’s how.” His sarcasm held a lie I wanted to believe. We both knew he hadn’t forced me. I fucked him by choice.

“Let’s play Truth or Dare.”

“Are you going to milk my secrets out of me?” “Might as well since you aren’t going to milk the jizz out of me tonight.”

“This conversation needs booze, so a shot for every time we choose a truth over a dare.”

“We’re not in Europe,” I deadpanned. “We will be, one day. Together,”

“I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have feelings for me.”

He reached for me, brushing his thumb over my cheek. “Tell me what you feel.” His tone had changed to cushion-soft. “Why?” I whispered,

Jaime thumbed my chin, tilting my face to meet his gaze. Slowly, he brought his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, releasing a defeated breath. “Because I feel it, too.”

That I was in love with my student. I’d tried to convince myself that it was just sex. It wasn’t. It was pizza nights and laughing under my cheap, itchy blanket and nicknaming each other stupid names. I was Little Ballerina, while he was Giraffe Tongue, for reasons that gave me countless orgasms. It was watching Tarantino movies and stealing breathless kisses at school, two thieves of pleasure, begging to confess their crime. I was spellbound, desperate, and possessed. And I knew with certainty that once he graduated and moved away for college, the blow would be just as hard as my subway accident. Dancing was my life. But Jaime? Jaime is my life, I realized.

me into him, holding the back of my neck to bring my lips to his. “Ask me.” His alcohol-fumed breath oozed into my mouth. “Truth or dare?” “Truth. And it’s gonna be ugly. Buckle up.” He let me go, pushing away, his eyes fluttering shut.

“The first time I saw you,” he began, “I wanted to slap my name on your ass, let everyone know that I was going to be the only guy to tap that shit. You looked like a princess, Mel. An insanely hot princess with a perfect posture and unruly curls.” He smirked. “’Course, acting on it was out of the question. A fantasy. Then I came home that first day of my senior year, and Mom wouldn’t shut up about you. Melody this and Melody that. How bad you were at your job, how you were gonna ruin Mr. Pitterman’s legacy, blah blah, bullshit blah. She hated your guts. Gave you the job only because he croaked so suddenly.”

“You became a favorite topic at our dinner table. She loathed your ass.”

“You were pretty and young and completely unimpressed by her power and the status and stinking money that runs our fucked-up little town.”

“You were a good teacher. That’s why I never gave you shit. It wasn’t your fault we were a bu...

I placed my hand on his arm. He drank some more. Your pain is mine, and I want to shoulder it, because I can. Because that’s what I do. I carry my pain all the time....

because gossiping about you was feeding a monster inside me. Talking about you only made it harder for me to ignore you. So fucking hot…” He nodded his head and bit his full lip, eyes still closed. “When I heard how you had to drop out of Julliard, I wanted to die for you. I had a feeling teaching wasn’t your calling. I kept thinking about eighteen-year-old you. My age. Your heart broken by bad luck, shattered by an accident that’d left more than a physical scar.”

“You were thinking about me for the whole year?” He snorted a sad laugh. “More than thinking.

I just wanted to take the edge off.”

“You were the perfect sin to commit, Melody. Begging to be taken. Untouched by the rest of Todos Santos’s posing and entitlement. I got hooked. From that day on, I followed you everywhere like an eager puppy. To the supermarket, the gas station…the fucking park every morning before practice, where I watched you doing yoga positions and tried not to rub a quick one out behind a tree. I followed you on blind dates, and when I realized you’d never met the idiots before, I also found your dating account and opened a profile under a fake name just so I could stalk you better.”

“Three months ago, I caught my mother cheating on my father with Coach Rowland. In my bed.”

“I don’t know which part was worse. That she let Coach emotionally abuse Trent for years or that she was fucking the bastard in my bed. I’d like to believe the location was just convenient. My bed always smelled like sex anyway and was never made.” His eyes glistened with pain.

“Somewhere between the quest of wanting to fuck you and secretly rebelling against my mom, I fell in love with you. It wasn’t a beautiful process. Hell…” He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “It wasn’t even romantic. But it happened. Because you’re strong but vulnerable. Witty as fuck but not bitter or deliberately mean. Because I had to chase your ass to nail you down, and you still keep me on my toes. But if we’re going to keep going on like this, where I have to convince you to give me the time of the day while you look over your shoulder, constantly trying to shake me off, I need to bail out of this before I get hurt.”

“Men with big cocks have fragile hearts. You know the saying: big cock, big heart. Well, I’m proof it’s true.”

“So…are you mine, Melody?” Was I? Yeah. Without a shadow of a doubt, I was.

I nodded, sniffing my runny nose. “No one else’s.”

Our lips crushed together, needy and demanding. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t freaked out. For the first time in ages I was just…content.

I’m staying where the only people I care about are. You. Vicious. Trent. Dean might even be staying if Vicious doesn’t kill him…”

“Can’t.” He brought my hands to his lips, kissing my knuckles one by one. “I’m not leaving you here or anywhere else.

“He’ll never stay away from her.” Jaime’s expression grew tight. “For one, he wants to ruin her. And two? She lives too close. Her parents work for the Spencers.”

Jaime was too drunk. Too emotional to think clearly. We both were. But deep down, my truths were already starting to dig their way out of my layers of indifference. And they told me it wasn’t about the alcohol, or the late hour, or the inconvenient talks about the future. It was about us. It was us.

But the next morning, when I woke up in the arms of my student, he didn’t feel like my student. He felt like my mentor. Like a man who knows the way to that slippery, elusive thing called happiness.

“This is the part where you run away from this, Mel,” he whispered into my ear,

“Run, Ms. Greene. As fast as you’d like. I’m going to catch you, and I’m going to have fun showing you that there’s no escape from this.”

“We’re playing a dangerous game here, Jaime,” I warned. “I don’t know any other way to play it.”

it was becoming evident that we were starting to raise people’s eyebrows.

Vicious caught us red-handed, making out while hidden behind Jaime’s SUV at Liberty Park after a midnight walk. (We only went out together when everyone else was fast asleep). Vicious didn’t look surprised. Just offered us his usual scowl, growling about how we grossed him out and moved on, probably looking for a victim to murder that night. He kept his mouth shut.

But it was all too good to be true. The last week of school, I found that out.

“Nothing’s up. Last time I checked, it’s not against the law to go hang out with your friends.” He had yet to look at me.

“Don’t worry.” Like hell. “I’m nothing but worried,” I gritted. Petrified would be a better word to describe my feelings in that moment.

It wasn’t a Defy fight. It was retaliation. It was cooking up revenge and making bad people pay. Rowland.

Crazy was a language we were both fluent in.)

And Vicious took his revenge very. Fucking. Seriously.

I knew why they were doing it. Jaime hated Coach Rowland for fucking his mom. Trent hated Coach Rowland for laughing when he broke his ankle during football season and his son for breaking it a second time. Vicious…he just hated everyone in general. And Dean? Dean looked like he loved everything and everyone in life, the player with the big, genuine smile, but I saw him. Saw below the perfect, shiny exterior. And what I saw wasn’t pretty. Not by a long shot.