Bad Boy Blues (St. Mary’s Rebels, #0)

by Saffron A. Kent

I grit my teeth. I know all about his fingers. I know how warm they are, how rough, how the pads are callused and scraped. I know what they feel like when they’re on my thighs, in my hair, on my pulse. I know. As they talk and talk like they know him, I admit that I’m kind of jealous. It’s been a week since he rescued Art and I haven’t had a chance to talk to him. Not even once.

Since Art’s accident, I’ve apologized to Doris a thousand times. She’s pretty chill about it but I can’t get rid of the guilt. I’ve said sorry to Art too but again, he doesn’t mind. These days, he’s pretty happy actually. Courtesy of Zach. I’ve seen them together numerous times. Mostly, they’re by the pool and I see them while going back from my shift. I deliberately walk slowly just to watch them together. Sometimes Zach works out – he works out twice a day; it’s crazy – and he lets Art be his spotter. Art counts his reps and claps when he’s done and tries to imitate him. One time I saw Zach lying on the ground with Art in his arms, straight up. Grunting, he lowered Art, who laughed like he’d never seen anything funnier. Then, Zach raised him in the air again, like he was doing bench presses. Only instead of weights, he had Art. I think my knees trembled at the sight. I never knew Zach could be so… sweet and sexy at the same time.

But Zach and I, we don’t talk. He doesn’t even look at me. Sometimes it feels like he can’t stand the sight of me. And I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why it bugs me. The only person who isn’t a fan of Zach’s is Tina. She hates him, and that’s saying something.

Zach looks away from me and toward the sky. A few seconds pass in silence and I stare at him like a lovesick fool. I am a fool, in any case. Because I was going to break the law just so I could talk to him. The guy who’s made me cry countless times. The guy who’s repeatedly insulted me, hurt me and tormented me.

He goes back to staring at the sky. His breaths are unhurried, lazy almost, like he’s soaking up the night one puff of air at a time. Even sprawled like this, he looks powerful. As if he’s the only guy in this whole wide world. The rest of us are inconsequential. Or maybe it’s not power. It’s the loneliness. Has he always been lonely? I can’t remember. My hatred for him was so strong that I never paid attention to anything below the surface.

“You never look at me anymore,” I blurt out. “Because it hurts.” His words make me flinch, even though there wasn’t any meanness in them. They held a kind of emotion I’ve never gotten from him before. It resembles a weird mixture of torture and desperation. It makes me breathless and shivery for some reason. A little sad for him, too. “Why does it hurt?” I ask. His arms wind around my waist and his legs go on either side of me, sort of cradling me into his body. My knees are digging into the grass and so are my elbows but that barely registers, seeing how I’m flung over him. “Because you look at me like…” “Like what?” “Like you don’t hate me anymore.” My heart’s banging in my chest. He must feel it. He must feel my heart knocking on his chest through mine. “I do,” I’m compelled to whisper. And for some reason, I don’t want to even think about how I’m lying right now. “Good.”

“Did you find someone else?” I jump topics and ask. He frowns. “Find someone else where?” “In New York?” His frown deepens and I explain, “You shouldn’t have blurted out your secret to a room full of maids if you didn’t want it to travel everywhere. Besides, I already knew you weren’t at Oxford. Such a stupid lie. Like you’d ever go to Oxford. To study, no less.” Something about that melts his body and makes him smile. His palms creep up my back. He pulls back my hood, freeing my hair, and his fingers curl around the strands, playing with them. The gesture is so cozy that something squeezes in my chest.

“To do what?” I almost rip out the grass in embarrassment but somehow, it’s imperative for me to know this. “To mess with? Like you messed with me?” Maybe it’s crazy but I have to know. In reply, Zach’s hand spreads over the line of my neck. Gently. Only he knows how to be tender with fingers as rough as his. “No,” he rasps as he sifts his other hand along the strands of my hair. “There’s only one shade of blue unlucky enough to catch my eye.”

I elbow him again and jerk up from his body and he’s loose enough to not be able to stop me. But apparently, he still goes after me. Even drunk, his reflexes are better than my clumsy retreat and he winds his arm around my waist and rolls us on the ground, until he’s hovering over me and his body is settled between my spread thighs. “Told you I’d snatch you up and get you on your back,” he muses, slurs actually, the syllables thick and bleeding together, and I shudder under him. “What? We had a deal.” I fist the grass. “I didn’t throw myself on you. You pulled me down.” “Eh. Whatever.”

“Zach, I’m serious. Let me go. What if someone sees us?” “Everyone’s sleeping.” “What if they wake up?” “What then?” I frown at him. “They’ll see us. Mrs. S has very strict rules about that, okay?” “What rules?” “The staff can’t… fraternize with the family or their guests.” Zach shifts in between my legs and settles his lower body over mine, his pelvis locking where the juncture of my thighs is. His hard stomach is pushing into my soft belly. “And this looks like fraternizing?” “Yes.” I’m breathing hard. “I can’t lose my job. I need this job. I need my house back.” He studies me. Studies my panted breaths, my flushed face. The sweat on my upper lip, my frown. I’m freaking out right now, I know. If I lose my house, I’ll lose everything. But at the same time, I don’t want this to end. Whatever this is. It’s so fucking confusing.

His eyes go down to my parted lips, and I do the same. I watch as he licks his own lips. God, they are so soft looking, so dusky and thick. Without a thought, I stretch under him, rubbing our torsos together, and his eyes jerk up to mine. “You’re not, are you?” I ask. “I’m not what?” “A-a virgin, I mean.” He shoots me a scorching look at that and my back arches skyward. Toward him. “What do you think?” I guess that’s his reply to my question. “When?” I whisper, squeezing his sides with my thighs. Zach sneaks a finger under my hoodie and touches the bare skin of my waist. He flicks it, like strumming my nerves, stirring them. “Fourteen.”

My thighs won’t stop their rhythmic squeezing and my back won’t go down. My pussy is aching, aching, hurting so badly. And I realize that his dick is right there, right against my clit and maybe, if I get to move a little, I can relieve some of this pressure.

Something about that and his finger on my waist that has escalated from strumming my skin to almost scratching and digging into my flesh, makes me undulate against him and realize what he’s talking about. I gasp at that realization and he smirks slightly. His dick. That’s what he meant, didn’t he? He shut her up with his dick. And I feel it pressed against me so tightly, that big, heated thing. Before I can say anything to that, Zach lowers his chest onto me. My eyes flutter closed before opening and focusing on his. “What’s the blue in your eyes?” he asks, shutting up all my questions. His fingers curl up in my strands. “It’s different than your hair.” My entire scalp tingles. “T-turquoise.” “Like the ocean.” “Yes.” “That was the first thing I saw. After I got out of here. The ocean,” he tells me, sounding almost wistful. “Reminded me of your eyes. Reminded me I was free for the first time ever.”

“You’re a lot of things, Zach, but you’re not an afterthought. You can never be an afterthought,” I tell him fiercely, honestly. He’s always been my nucleus of everything. I look at him, his face, the sky at his back. Yeah, he’s a lot of things but he’s not an afterthought.

If drinking makes me dream of her and these nice, warm things, then I’m quitting tomorrow. Fuck. I need a cigarette. Why am I not smoking? Why am I suffering through headaches and intense cravings when I can take the easy way out? Oh, right. Because of her. She wants me to suffer. She wants me to not sleep, to go through withdrawals. Of all the people on this planet, I had to be an asshole to one girl who wouldn’t take my shit lying down. Who wouldn’t leave me alone. Fucking excellent, Zach.

“Well, good luck with that,” Zach replies to Art’s earlier cutesy statement that melted my heart. “Blue’s pretty hard to catch.” Not if I don’t run. I wish I hadn’t run that night – the night I went up to his room to confront him about the date. I wish I’d stayed and… kissed him. I wish I’d touched him some more. I stare at his eyes, his dark hair, the cut of his face, his lips. The way he’s kneeling down on the floor, being all tender with Art, and yet he looks so powerful, the tallest guy I’ve ever met.

Zach is dyslexic. And from what I saw, he also suffers from dysgraphia. Meaning he has difficulty reading and writing. It’s pretty common for people with dyslexia to struggle with their writing as well. I know very little about it but my mom used to tutor a few kids who suffered from it. She’d say that suffering from a learning disability almost always comes with a certain type of stigma. A certain type of shame. She’d say that such kids are always more sensitive than the rest. Even if they do work hard and learn how to read and write, they always have this little part in them that makes them doubt themselves. They might not always show it but every little failure cuts them deep.

It’s true. I have dyscalculia and you do feel shame.

Maybe there’s a nerve going from behind my navel down to my pussy and he’s found it without even looking.

Fuckers. Every single one of them. I can bet anything that Zach’s father wasn’t supportive of his dyslexia. Which is so unfair and archaic. It’s not Zach’s fault that he has a learning disability. Not to mention, it’s easily treatable. This is the twenty-first century, people. Zach was right. He’s expendable. An afterthought. To his dad, at least. Because according to his dad, he isn’t a Prince. He’s defective. He’s a reject. Isn’t that what bullies say to you? You’re too fat. You’re too short. You’re a nerd. You’re a loser. You eat too much. You eat too little. It’s not Zach. It’s his dad. He’s the bully. I can almost see him bullying Zach into believing that he doesn’t belong in this family. The family of perfectionists and architects who build estates and palace-like mansions and are town-founders in their spare time.

“Remember the line, Blue. You’re very close to being on the side of stupid,” he warns. The strands of his hair graze my forehead and my nose bumps against his. Even that slightest touch is enough to make my back arch and dig my nails in the nape of his neck. “You’re stupid too,” I whisper, thinking about the tattoo on his wrist. “Look what you’re doing. Jumping across canyons. Even though, it was… a teeny, tiny bit magnificent.” It was. Now that I’m not scared out of my mind, I can admit that he looked really, really sexy and invincible. A daredevil. Zach’s eyes rove over my face. “You are obsessed with me.” “No.” I flinch, then, “Kinda.”

God, he’s so close. And hard, and I’m wrapped around him so shamelessly. But I won’t let him distract me. He needs to know that his dad is an asshole. That he doesn’t deserve to be treated like this because of something that’s not his fault.

His eyes are intense. They glow in the dark. Like beacons. Except, a beacon is supposed to be safe, but his eyes come with a danger of drowning. “I-I want you to kiss me.” Gosh, did I really say that? The sharp inhale of his breath says yes. I did say that and he’s surprised. Well, why wouldn’t he be? I ran away from him last time when he made me feel something. But I guess I was lying then. To myself and to him. I think I’ve wanted him to kiss me for years. Even when he was just my bully. Maybe it’s pathetic and I’m the girl in horror movies who dies right in the beginning because she just can’t stop herself from checking out the basement. So be it. I’m that girl. I’ll go down in history as the girl who courts heartbreak and hence, deserves tragedy. “I make you bleed,” Zach murmurs in a low tone, rubbing his thumb over the seam of my lips. A tone laced with regret. “Yeah.” His thumb traces the torn skin of my lip in the middle. “I make you cry too.” I blink and a tear slips out; I didn’t even know it was hovering at the edge. “Yes.” Wiping off my tear, he whispers, “I won’t stop. I don’t know how.” He will stop. I’ll make him stop. This cycle of bullying that started with his dad. It ends with us.

I’ll change our story. If he’s a false prince, then I’m his street Cinderella. I don’t need glass slippers or a pretty gown to change our stars. I can do it in my quiet leather boots and my gray uniform.

Wrapping my hands around him, I whisper, “What are you doing?” He lifts his head and stares into my eyes. I notice all the dirt smudges on my white shirt, how twisted up and stretched out my buttons are, straining against my heaving breasts. Zach doesn’t answer me. Not until he sits back on his haunches and lifts my right leg, draping it over his shoulder. “Kissing you,” he says simply. “What?” “You heard me,” he says, dragging the hem of my skirt up. I stop him and try to push it down. “Zach.”

He glances at my simple cotton boy shorts and fingers the seam of them, making me shudder. “You know, I thought I was dreaming the other night. When you were sprawled all over me. You wanted me to kiss you that night too, didn’t you?” “I was sprawled because you pulled me down, and yes. But.” I exhale out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how this is kissing.” He smiles, and then his thumb gets inside my panties and makes contact with the outer edge of my core, making me jerk. I gasp out his name when the blunt pad of his thumb flicks it. So casually, like it’s mundane, him touching the edge of my pussy.

“It’s kissing because I’m gonna put my lips on your lips.” At this, his thumb gets further inside my panties and rubs along the center of my core. Finally, I get what he means and it makes me blush like I’ve absorbed all the heat from the air around us. “I didn’t mean that kind of kissing.” Zach’s smile is still in place, a lopsided, horny smile. “Not my problem. This is how I kiss, Blue, when…” He trails off and leans in, like he just can’t help himself. He can’t help himself from taking a sniff of my covered core. It makes him groan and my head falls back on another whimper. “When what?” I manage to ask anyhow. His lips are right there, right on my clit, separated by just cotton underwear. “When my dick’s pissed off.” I look down, grabbing the side of his face. “Your dick?” “Uh-huh.” He nods, dragging his nose up and down my pussy.

His stubble feels even scratchier under my fingers right now. In fact, everything feels scratchier when it touches my body. His soft t-shirt, his velvet hair, the air around me. “Why?” I breathe out, shifting restlessly on one foot. He’s still rubbing the center of my core with his thumb, sniffing my scent. “Because of you.” “Me?” “Yeah. You’re pissing off my cock, Blue. You’ve been pissing it off for days now. The way you move in that tight little uniform ...

“No? Your tits bounce when you walk, baby.” I shudder at his casually thrown endearment, like he was waiting to say it all his life. “Did you know that?” “I don’t.” I arch my hips, trying to get closer to his mouth. “I don’t do it on purpose.” He chuckles and somehow, it hits me right in the clit. In my slippery, slippery clit. God, I think I’m creaming my panties in front of him. I think he can see it. He can see how my pussy is salivating for him. “You don’t, huh?” “No.” His ...

Zach drags his lips along my lower belly and the ache I always feel for him flares up. It punches me on the inside like it knows him. Knows the source of its existence is near, right there, talking to it, talking to my skin. “It’s just that they are so big, aren’t they? Your tits. They’re so fucking big that you can’t help being a good little maid for me,” he rasps, painting his crude words on my flesh. “Y-yeah.” My tits are heaving now. The nipples feel like bullets. They need him. They need his hands and Zach brings out his thumb from the inside of my panties, reaches up with both hands and cups them. Giving me his eyes, he kneads the flesh. “Are you being a good little maid for...

I nod again, this time with a moan. “Yeah? You gonna let me French kiss your virgin pussy, even though anyone might walk up to us and see you riding my mouth?” My breaths are turning into hiccups, into sobs, and my nails are raking down the side of his neck. “Yes.” He pins me with his gaze, his thick lashes giving it a mysterious look. “It’s okay. I won’t let them see anything. I’ll hide y...

I haven’t even gotten over the current those words of his sent through my system when he pinches my nipples hard before letting my leg go. He makes quick work of my panties, dragging them down with needy, stabbing fingers and pocketi...

It occurs to me then that I should be embarrassed by the fact that I haven’t shaved down there in ages. Back when I was still a normal, albeit irresponsible and rebellious teenager, I used to shave it regularly. But after my parents’ death, it never even occurred to me to do anything about the downstairs business. Zach doesn’t mind, though. If his groan is anything to go by, he likes it. He takes a quick whiff of my untamed curls before covering me with his mouth. He was right; I was worrying for nothing. Anything worth seeing is going to be in his wicked, sucking mouth. Draping my thigh over his shoulder, he gets in there. He...

The pebbles hurt me but his mouth is giving me enough pleasure to suffer walking through shards of glass. He curses at my pussy and I feel his fuck in my chest, making my heart go haywire. Don’t even talk about the butterflies. They are everywhere. Even in my calf that dangles from his wide shoulder, making it buzz. I thought him licking up the juices of my core, circling my tight, untouched hole, would finish me off. I thought if he did that...

But then, I didn’t know that his lips would close over my little clit at the top. And if the electricity that shoots through my body is any indication, she was horny for him. For the long sucks of his mouth, the scrape of his teeth and his grunts. Jesus. His grunts. They are taking up all the empty spaces of my soul. I’ll hear them until the day I die. I’ll sleep to them. I’ll wake up t...

I had my eyes closed up until now; don’t know when I shut them. I open them and look down. I look at the obscene picture we make. My fingers buried in his hair and his mouth buried in my cunt, moving this way or that, up and down. My thighs are open and his shoulders are jammed in between them. My skirt is somewhere around my waist and my blouse is all wrinkled and bent out of shape. But that’s not the most shocking thing. The shocking thing is that Zach...

He’s tugging it with one hand while his other hand holds my pussy open. It’s all happening inside his pants. He hasn’t even taken it out, and yet he’s abusing it. The taste of my pussy is making him abuse it. “Z-Zach… I…” I trail off when he grunts the loudest at the sound of his name on my lips and his hand moves. It trails away from my pussy and kneads my bare ass that was s...

“God…” I moan and claw at his neck and chant out his name over and over. My entire body clenching and releasing until there’s nothing left. In the background, I’m aware that he’s shuddering too. That Zach’s moving, shifting, and his grunts crescendo to a long, masculine moan. It makes me want to smile.

“You came too, didn’t you?” At this, he looks away from me. He straightens my clothes with no help from me whatsoever. I just keep staring at his face, his beautiful sharp face. “What? Are you embarrassed that you came? It’s okay. I came too. Like a fucking train.” When he’s done he lifts his eyes to me. “I know. You flooded my mouth.” I bite my lip, smiling like a lunatic. “You always get drunk after an orgasm?”

Without acknowledging my thanks, Zach bends down and heaves me up in his arms for the second time tonight. Although, this one’s bridal style. “Oh, you don’t have to carry me.” He’s silent as he begins walking. I nuzzle against his collar bone. “I’m heavy.” “If you say that one more time, I’ll drop you right here and leave. You can find your own way back home.” I don’t know why but I can’t stop my smiles tonight. Maybe orgasms do make me drunk. Or maybe it’s orgasms given by him. “You wouldn’t,” I mumble.

As we take off into the night and I breathe in the air of freedom, I decide that no matter what he thinks or says, I’m saving him. I’m going to save him from his glass tower and I’m going to save him from all the cruel people in his life. And while I’m saving him, I’m also going to kiss him. On his mouth.

He’s in the bathroom, taking a shower, and I’m out here, making his bed. Over the gentle hum of the water and trying not to imagine him naked, I straighten out his pillows, tuck his bedding the right way and pick up his strewn-about clothes. Even with that, I think his is the cleanest room I’ve cleaned.

You’ve already seen him naked and know what he’s packing. 😏🍆

Then the shower’s turned off and a shadow falls across the room – as crazy as that sounds – and I know he’s out. He stands at the threshold of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his slim but muscular hips, and he’s drying his wet, extremely wet, hair with another one. His eyes are trained on me but he doesn’t look surprised to see me. I might be losing my touch there. I might also be losing my mind and all my senses because all I can do right now is stare at him. Stare at his gorgeous cut body. I’m not one of those girls who go all crazy over a good physique. Nope. I mean, I enjoy it but I don’t make it my wallpaper. But I’d make him my wallpaper and I wouldn’t even be ashamed of it. Take his neck, for example. It’s something so innocent and mundane, but not on him. On him, neck takes on another meaning. Long, graceful, tendons rippling, veins standing taut. There are drops sliding down and I’d lick all of them, snaking down his prominent, beautifully sculpted collarbones, his chest. Oh God, one goes to his tight, dark nipple. And the ridges of his abs. Six. I count like an idiot. He has a six pack and that V. Now I know why everyone’s so crazy about the V. I get it. It’s all about where that V leads to. It’s about… “My face is up here.”

He goes to his dresser, his back rippling, and I swear I hear him smile. “I take it you’re here for something,” he says as he fishes a pair of jeans out and then casually drops the towel from his waist. I slap a hand over my mouth to stop the squeak. His ass. Jesus Christ. I’m not an expert but holy shit, I think that’s how all asses should be. Tight and hard and firm and round and oh my God, I don’t know how he got that part as bronzed as the rest of him but yup. It’s bronzed and tempting and corded with muscles. I watch him put his jeans on with an open mouth and a thundering heart that’s on the verge of giving out.

As soon as he turns around though, I force it to close. Quickly, I look away from him too. Can’t give him too much indication that I’m perving over his body. Though I do notice that he hasn’t buttoned up his jeans. They’re just hanging around his hips with… nothing.

His eyes are all intense and burning up as he murmurs, “A good little maid, huh?” My thighs clench. They literally spasm at his low tone. The place between them throbs and pulses like a wound. A wound that needs his tongue and his teeth and his long rough sucks.

There’s a hint of a twitch on Zach’s mouth and I get hit by the fact again that he’s the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen. Like, ever.

I’ve upset him. I’ve made him agitated. But I want to smooth out his rough edges now. Under his burning gaze, I drop the towels I’ve been clutching onto the bed by my side and step closer to him so I can touch him. With my chest. My breasts press into his ribs and a sigh of relief goes through me. Even though the front of my uniform is kind of damp from holding on to the towels, the wetness of his chest still seeps into the fabric, beading my nipples. It’s remnants of his shower and the heat of this town. Heat of us being together. His pecs move with a long breath and I breathe with him.

I push to my tippy-toes, my nipples scraping against his chest and get close to his lips. “Tough luck, Zach. Because right now, I want to kiss you on the mouth.” And then, I do it. I kiss him.

I pucker my lips and start with a dry one. One smack dab in the middle of his mouth. The second one on one corner and the third on the other. Slowly, my hands creep up to his wet hair and I fist the strands as I keep kissing him, giving him little pecks. Just when I gather enough courage to taste his skin with my tongue, his hands grip the uniform at my waist. He hauls me toward him, clashing our fronts together, and forces my mouth open with his. He isn’t like me. He isn’t shy. He doesn’t start me off with dry pecks. Nope. He simply invades my mouth with his tongue like it’s his God-given right. Like my mouth was made for him. For his tongue to invade and abuse and make love to. And my lower lip was made for him to suck on.

“Now, you’re fucked, baby.” His scans my face. He looks like he’s memorizing it. He’s committing me to memory. “Why?” His eyes, black and threatening and so beautiful, come up to mine. “Do you have any idea how long, how fucking long I’ve wanted to kiss that mouth?” I shake my head. “A thousand years.” He studies my parted, blue-painted lips. “Or at least, it feels like it. I’ve wanted to kiss it ever since you first put on your lipstick in eighth grade.” Oh, I remember that.