Let’s admit it, the fucker gave the Grim Reaper a run for his money in the menacing department. And he looked extra dead in those paintings.

Extra pale. Extra cruel. Extra Vaughn.

Since the girls couldn’t explicitly proposition us without staining their precious reputations—I’d always hated the double standard of guys are players, girls are sluts—they pretended to talk to each other, sipping their drinks.

We stopped to examine the line. The rest of the football and polo squad were behind us, loyal and on guard, like the good puppies they were.

I was captain of the All Saints’ football team, so I had that shiny quarterback title and shotgun rights. But Vaughn had the street cred of Dracula, and Hunter’s family was the fourth richest in North America, so suffice it to say, all our dicks were fool’s gold and had pussies in their cards tonight.

Hunter stroked his chin, making a whole show of it. Sometimes I truly hated him, but most of the time I was indifferent to his theatrics.

“You.” He pointed at a girl named Alice, with pixie blonde hair and huge hazel eyes. He curled his index, indicating for her to come closer. She exchanged looks with her friends, breathless giggles bubbling from her ample chest.

One of the girls pushed her toward us, whisper-shouting, “Oh my God, Al. Just go!”

“Take pictures,” a brunette coughed into her fist.

Hunter jerked his chin to Vaughn. The latter ran his arctic pupils along the line, careful and methodic. He looked like he was searching for someone specific. Someone who obviously wasn’t there.

“You’re choosing a fuck buddy, not a mortgage. Hurry up.” Hunter rolled his eyes, throwing an arm over Alice’s shoulder. She bathed in the attention, smiling up at him with stars in her eyes.

Vaughn ignored Hunter, as he did ninety percent of the people who talked to him.

I examined the line, my eyes settling on a girl named Arabella. She had huge blue eyes and tan skin. A senior, too. She reminded me a bit of Luna—when she wasn’t talking. But that was the thing about high school girls, wasn’t it? They always fucking talked…other than the one whose words I wanted desperately.

No. That one never spoke a word to me.

“Arabella, baby.” I opened my arms in her direction.

She unglued herself from the wall to strut toward me in her high, hot pink heels and black mini dress.

Vaughn finally picked a girl, though he was grunting like a caveman about it. I’d have made a mental note to ask him why, but Vaughn never talked about girls.

Or feelings.

Or, you know, life in general.

I wanted to tell him if he didn’t feel like dipping his dick in someone tonight, no one was forcing him. But clearly, that would have been hypocritical. Not to mention false.

We confiscated the girls’ phones before they walked into the room and dumped them into a fruit bowl outside the door, to be guarded by a designated freshman who wanted to fit in with the cool crowd.

What happened in Vaughn’s entertainment room stayed there, too. We weren’t bad guys, despite what people might have thought. We never spoke about the ladies who entered here—not between ourselves, and definitely not to other people. If the girls wanted to brag, that was their prerogative. But there were never any pictures, any vicious rumors, any drama. The rules were simple: you got in, you had your fun, and on Monday morning, you acted like nothing happened.

Because nothing really had happened, as far as we were concerned.

In the entertainment room, Hunter was full-blown fucking Alice against a pool table from behind while having a civilized, flat-toned conversation with her about her summer. He’d tugged her mini dress up and gone at it, barely even bothering to slide her panties aside.

Turned out she’d lost her virginity a few weeks earlier to some tool at Christian camp and needed a redo.

“I just want to come,” she whined.

“Then you’re not getting out of here until you do.”

Her fingers were buried in the holes of the pool table, her half-bare tits dragging along the green, fuzzy surface. Hunter smoked a cigarette, his eyes drifting to Spaced, a British comedy, on the huge, flat-screen TV in front of us while fucking her.

And they say guys are not good at multitasking.

Vaughn, who was obsessed with Spaced, stood against the wall, letting some chick I didn’t know suck his dick. Arabella stood next to me, waiting for some action, but I just propped my shoulder against the wall, angled in front of Vaughn, ignoring the girl on her knees between us.

“Hope she’ll go out-of-state,” Vaughn said, verbose, one hand holding the ashy hair of the girl beneath him, the other scrolling through his phone.

He didn’t have any social media profiles and was soundly against trying to impress anyone on purpose, just like me. I’d once caught him checking some chick’s Instagram, though he’d locked his phone as soon as I noticed. I never got her name, and it was pointless to ask.

Anyway, Vaughn was talking about Luna now, so that was my cue to check out. I hated talking to him about her.

“Haven’t you wasted enough years on this shit?” he probed, tucking his phone into his back pocket.

This shit? Oh, screw you, Spencer.

“Haven’t you?” I clipped through a locked jaw. “You hate girls so much you won’t even fuck them. Blowies are as far as you can manage without being repulsed by human touch. At least I’m capable of feeling.”

“I’m capable of feeling.” He lifted a cocky eyebrow, yawning. “Hate. Jealousy. Disdain.” He looked down at the girl bobbing her head up and down, the apathy in his icicle eyes confirming no one was home behind them. “Besides, unreciprocated love is like a nice Jag—one you have to carry on your fucking back instead of driving. Nice and shiny on the outside, but such a drag to manage by yourself.”

“Drop dead.” I smiled cheerfully.

“Eventually, and at least I won’t die a virgin,” he said blandly, running his paint-smeared, rough hands through the girl’s silky, clean hair just to taint it.

I was about to knock his lights out mid-blowjob when Arabella dug her fingernails into my neck.

“You look a little tense. Let me help,” she purred. “I heard you were a kinky bastard, Knight Cole. Care to compromise me?”

I’d yet to pay her any attention, let alone touch her. I wasn’t stupid—she wasn’t here for me. They all came here for the story. For the glory. It didn’t matter who got them in the door as long as they were chosen.

“Not in the mood. But…”

I grabbed her jaw and yanked her into my embrace. She moaned as I crashed our lips together, her grunt of pleasure swallowed in my mouth. Her tongue tried to pry my lips open, but I slammed them together, ignoring the wrongness of it all. I never, ever, ever kissed girls like this, but I was too stoned to care, and besides, my resolve was thinning after years of getting slammed down by Luna.

I smeared her lipstick like it was war paint, burying my fingers in her hair and messing it so it looked like she’d gotten fucked into the next decade. Then I pulled away, smirking down at her. Lipstick had smeared all over her chin, nose, and cheeks. I could only guess I looked just as wild.

“Maybe some other time?” Hope flared in her eyes, her smile drunk with newfound power.