“Or did you knock her out?”
I turned my head to see Isaiah—in all his righteous glory, might I add—glaring directly at a guy I’d never seen before.
Isaiah’s scowl was deep and furrowed; angry lines sliced over every angle of his face. He looked…intense. Two of his friends—one of them being Cade—stood in front of him, almost like they were a barrier between him and the other guy, who was looking pretty damn smug.
“I didn’t knock her out, Rebel. Calm the fuck down.” His laugh was a haughty one. It reminded me of Richard’s. “She passed out or something. One second, she was standing in front of me, and the next, she was down. She slumped in my arms.” He shrugged like it was nothing.
“And so you fucking dropped her?” Mercedes was standing off to the side of a room that I didn’t recognize with her hands on her hips. How did I even get in here? Sloane was still checking me out, feeling my forehead again and frowning. Then, her hand went behind my head, and she gasped.
“You’re bleeding.”
Isaiah flung his attention to me so fast I jumped, causing my knees to buckle together as I sat on the floor. The glacial color of his eyes grew even colder as he zeroed in on me and then to Sloane’s bloody fingers.
“Think first, act second,” Cade said to Isaiah under his breath, not loud enough for everyone to hear, but I definitely picked it up, thanks to my well-honed listening skills. The other friend of Isaiah—who I now recognized as Brantley—had stepped toward Bain. Bain looked completely bored with the entire situation and not at all intimidated by Isaiah’s murderous glare.
I knew right then that I didn’t trust Bain. Just looking at him from down below made my stomach twist in knots, and that wasn’t just because he’d been the one to send me into a full-on panic blackout. I just didn’t get a good feeling from him. His dark eyes were hungry for something as he flicked his attention down to me, and after being around evil my entire life, I could tell, without a doubt, that he was corrupted in some way or another.
A light touch on my chin startled me as I continued staring at Bain. My head pounded violently as I flinched, but then my attention was gently snagged away with the turn of my face. Isaiah was crouched down to me, his brows lowered, his icy eyes filled with worry. “Did he do something to you, Gemma?”
Gemma.
He called me Gemma instead of Good Girl.
Why did that bother me?
“Not intentionally.” But was he planning to? I was suddenly aware that I was the center of attention in a very small room with way too many eyes. I cast my gaze downward, but Isaiah was quick to raise my chin again, his thumb brushing ever so lightly over my skin. “I blacked out,” I admitted, blinking rapidly as he ping-ponged his attention between my eyes. I knew there were other people in the room. Too many people. But something about breathing the same air as Isaiah made me feel safe yet vulnerable at the same exact time. It was like I wanted to tell him all my secrets—even the scary ones that I preferred to
hide from. “It’s not the first time. I’m fine.”
My lips parted as his hand came up and cupped the side of my face, weaving his fingers into my hair. My body was instantly awake, my head no longer pounding with pain but swimming with something else. It felt like I was floating. My body flushed; my skin prickled. His lips fell open slightly, and I glanced down to his mouth at the sound.
“For fuck’s sake. You think I’m bad? You’re about to make the new girl orgasm on the spot with that lustful look you’re giving her, and she’s fucking bleeding. You’re a kinky fuck, Underwood. All I did was whisper in her ear, and yet I’m the one to blame?”
Isaiah’s jaw hardened at the same time his nostrils flared. His hand dropped from my face, taking away the small escape of the situation with him. Then, he popped back up to a standing position.
He barked an order out to Sloane. “Take Gemma back to her room, and make sure to clean up her gash. Keep an eye out for a concussion.”
“And you’ll deal with Bain?” she asked with disgust as her hand wrapped around my arm. Mercedes came over and helped me up, too. The room spun a little, but I wasn’t sure if that was from falling or from the up-close-and-personal encounter I’d just had with Isaiah.
Isaiah said nothing as I glanced back at Bain. He was staring at me intently, his eyes narrowing and his head slanting ever so slightly. Something flashed across his face, but before I could focus on it too much, I was pulled out of the room and enveloped in the dark hallway yet again.
Chapter Twenty
Gemma
Sloane and Mercedes were both sound asleep on Sloane’s bed, both of them snuggled underneath the lush lavender comforter. I nibbled on my lip as I reached back behind my head, my fingers diving underneath my thick hair, to make sure it was still okay. After we’d made it back up to our room from the party, Sloane went to work on cleaning the cut, inspecting it thoroughly with the flashlight on her phone, all while cursing out Bain—the guy who had tried to claim me—under her breath.
I stayed silent as she and Mercedes listed all of Bain’s bad qualities, the two of them rambling on for what felt like hours. Apparently, he was the black sheep of St. Mary’s, and he wasn’t someone you wanted to be claimed by. Sloane could attest to that firsthand, although she didn’t go into details.
After finally gaining the courage to speak again and agreeing that I would stay away from Bain, I very reluctantly asked what “claiming” was. Mercedes shot Sloane a worrisome look, as if they didn’t want to tell me. I think they thought I was going to judge them, but I was the last person who ever would.
“Being at a boarding school doesn’t give us a lot of free time to date or anything. We have curfews and can’t really leave the premises, except for special occasions, and even then, it has to get approved by the SMC. But the rumor states that the Rebels, long ago, started something called Claiming Night. It’s where the boys claim a girl for the night, and they fuck or do whatever, and come morning, everyone goes back to their normal boarding-school life filled with nothing but academics and shitty memories of their families who shipped them away in the first place.”
I stayed silent as she and Mercedes gauged my response. A dreadful feeling of disgust and embarrassment slithered through me over the fact that this Bain guy thought I wanted him to claim me, and even hours later, it was still sitting nice and heavy in the pit of my belly like a bucket full of stones.
If I hadn’t passed out in my fit of panic, what would have happened? And what about Isaiah? Didn’t he say he was claiming me before Bain snatched me away?
A rush of heat swept over me. I clenched my legs tighter, ignoring how I kind of liked the idea of Isaiah wanting to claim me, and stared down at the laptop the headmaster had gifted me a few days ago.