br /> “I fucking do,” I growled. “It’s the beauty queen. She has it out for me.”
“Yeah?” More chuckles, his tongue sticking out. He shook his head. “Poor Queen B.”
Poor indeed, as I clicked to my college email for a quick draft. After plugging Professor Douglas’s name and the subject line in, I got right to work. I typed a while before Niko angled his gaze over to me again.
“You emailing your professor?” he asked me.
“Yep.” My grin was strong, thinking it was funny she thought she could fuck me over. Professor Douglas got weed… amongst other things from people who worked for and paid me. The whole thing was laughable really. I had him and several other educators and professionals literally by their junk. A few of the deans of Woodcreek University included. I was the first they came to for “entertainment” for their parties.
I’d even been invited to brunch at more than one of their houses.
Saying I held an iron fist on this campus was an understatement, and the people I didn’t have influence over were smart enough to stay the hell away. Apparently, not the beauty queen and her lip, and after hitting send, I relaxed back. I took the other game controller, playing with Niko one on one. After a few moments of me kicking his ass, he made up some sorry excuse about needing sustenance. I joined him in the kitchen for some Doritos and pizza bagels, lounging a hip against the kitchen island as I dumped the chips out into a bowl.
“Really funny about the beauty queen, though,” he said, sliding the pizza bagels into the oven.
I growled again. “Yeah, she thinks she’s fucking God’s gift. Little miss perfect.”
I saw how she carried herself around in lecture and recitation when I actually went. She had an air of uppityness I’d seen more than once before in my life, and it never ceased to grate me. She definitely thought herself better, but we all had skeletons. We all had demons, and maybe it was time to look into hers a little bit more. She’d already made the mistake of giving me a little something when she most certainly kissed me back that night at the house. I had the beauty queen quivering under my mouth that night, and she’d done that despite having a boyfriend. She couldn’t get enough of me that night, and when I mentioned that, Niko chuckled by the oven.
“Did I mention I saw Mr. Sinclair Huntington the third at the strip club the other night?” he asked, and I popped up.
“Hell no. Really?”
“Mmmhmm.” So much satisfaction in my buddy’s voice as he pulled the pizza bagels out the oven. “Little Miss Perfect nowhere in sight. Wonder if she ain’t doing it for him?”
To which I say, the guy was either batting for another team or crazy, Billie with fucking curves for days and a mouth on her that would look real good around my cock. The fact her mother was a straight MILF was only a bonus, a snapshot of what the beauty queen would look like when she was older. Despite her sweater sets and Sperry loafers, Billie Coventry had the most supple and suckable looking tits I’d ever seen, had seen through that see-through-ass top she’d worn that night to our party. Niko later told me a couple of my friends had spilled alcohol all over her, accidentally but it happened, and I’d have to thank my friends. She’d stood out to me that night, made me want to kiss her despite wanting to strangle her for giving me lip.
My cock clearly thinking about that now, I adjusted myself before lacing my fingers on the counter. I jerked my chin at Niko. “Invite her guy to one of our parties. Let him have his good time here.”
If he was looking for a visual feast outside the beauty queen we could definitely help him out. Celebrities came to my parties, video girls and the like despite us being in the Midwest. People heard about my and Niko’s parties all over this country, obviously needing to see what the fuss was about, and we always delivered. Every time.
Niko’s gleam in his eyes so obviously matched mine, his brow jumping as he got a spatula and plates for the pizza bagels. “I swear, you are a new kind of evil.”
“Eh,” I told him, then grinned. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”
Niko smirked. “And only too proud too. You sick fuck.”
Grabbing a handful of chips, I threw them at him, and the dude lost his fucking mind by tossing a pizza bagel at me. I dodged it, launching off the barstool like a samurai. And with our height difference, I easily got him under my arm. “Take that shit back.”
“Okay. Okay. Shit!” He raised hands in surrender, the guy messing with his hair like he wasn’t already a sweaty fucking mess from his workout, and I chuckled, tossing him a wink before propping up on a barstool at the island.
“And what you doing at the strip club anyway?” I asked him, curious now when I got serious. I crunched a chip. “You know all the strip clubs in town are Marvelli territory.”
Aka the mafia, the real live mafia like something out of The Sopranos. Niko and I dealt with the Marvellis. Obviously the drugs supplied to the hungry market at Woodcreek University had to come from somewhere. The Marvellis took care of that, and after they got their cut, they were out of the picture as far as Niko and I were concerned. Neither of us were dumb enough to get any deeper than that, an understanding between us. All this shit, drugs, parties, and women, were a means to an end for us both. I didn’t intend to be doing this shit forever, and Niko didn’t either. Both of us came to Woodcreek-U for actual educations, ones we intended to use upon getting out of here.
Niko’s shrug was casual when he came around the island. He set the pizza bagels between us. “Just doing a cash drop. You know, for our stuff.”
He popped a pizza bagel in his mouth, like the whole fucking thing, which showed how big this guy’s mouth actually was.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to do it there.” Usually, the Marvellis came to us, part of our deal. We didn’t cross their territory unless we had to, smarter and easier that way when it was on our turf. I frowned. “That’s all you were doing?”
“That’s all I was doing, Jay. Jesus.” His statement made it seem like what I said was obvious, but it never was. A guy could be real fucking tempted sometimes. Especially when other men in positions of power dangled all kinds of shit in front of him. It’d been done to both Niko and me, a life even finer than the ones we already lived presented to us on a silver platter. The Marvellis had a lot of power in this town. Fuck, this whole region. But anything that tended to come from them usually turned out to be rotten fruit and wound a guy even tighter to them than he wanted to be. That was a big reason why I personally was getting out of the game as soon as I felt secure enough to let go. Niko shrugged. “I’m not stupid.”
He wasn’t, but the best of us could be tempted, easily him. I jerked my chin. “How’s your mom doing?”
A sensitive topic, and though he passed it off with humor most days, the stress in the guy’s eyes couldn’t be ignored. His mom was sick, breast cancer, and where I sent money back home for my sisters and an easier life for my mom, his went toward his mother’s medical bills. He took up a barstool. “Latest clinical trial is doing well for her. She seems stronger.”
In the short time I’d known the guy, I knew the woman had been through the ringer. When we were originally assigned as roommates our freshman year, he’d had to miss a lot of school to go back home just to take care of her. He had a younger sister too, just the three of them, and because Kate was older now, she was able to step in while he was here. The guy barely made up what he missed over the summer just to be a junior now like me.