We step inside the cavernous building where a group of basketball girls are practicing, the squeaks of their shoes and the sound of the ball hitting the floor and bouncing off the rims echoing off the high ceilings.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, jerking my wrist free of Royal’s grasp. Without answering, he strides across the room, right through the middle of the court where they’re playing. He knows they’ll drop everything for him. Of course they do. They all gape at him with expressions ranging from exultant to wary. But they’re all watching. He’s Royal fucking Dolce. I wonder if he ever gets sick of it.
With a sigh, I follow him. He unlocks a wooden door at the side of the gym, and I can’t help but wonder how he has keys to everything. But I don’t bother asking. At this point, I’m not surprised by much that they have access to.
He steps into what looks like a storage room and opens a few boxes, rooting through what must be gym uniforms. “Are you wearing a bra?” he asks without looking up from his search, like he has every right to know that.
“Are you wearing boxers or briefs?” I shoot back.
He glances up, frowning. The asshole doesn’t even know he’s being invasive. He sizes up my chest. “It’s hard to tell,” he says, scrutinizing me. “Your tits are so small you probably don’t need one.”
“My tits are not that small,” I protest before catching myself buying into his bullshit. “Not that it matters. Last time I looked, I was a lot more than my chest size.”
“You’d better be,” he says, flashing me a smile. “Otherwise you’d fit in the palm of one hand.”
“Jerk.”
“Thumbelina.”
We stare at each other for a second, and then we both laugh. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him laugh, and even though it’s barely more than a chuckle, it makes my chest fill up like a fucking helium balloon.
“Just tell me if you’re wearing a bra,” he says, turning back to the boxes. “Because if you’re not, I’m not giving you a white t-shirt. I don’t need every guy in this school popping a semi because they can see your nipples through it.”
“I’m wearing a bra,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And it’s funny that you care about them seeing my nipples, but you don’t care about them seeing your creepy porn video of me giving head.”
He throws me a white T-shirt with the WHPA crest on the front. “Do you want them seeing your nipples, too?”
“No,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and scowling.
He pulls out a pair of grey sweatpants and holds them up to my hips before going back to the boxes. Finding another size, he hands them to me and leans his elbow on the top box in the stack. I can’t help but marvel at the extravagance of every single thing in his world. There must be twenty boxes of brand-new clothes here, just waiting to be handed out as PE uniforms next semester. I can’t remember the last time I wore something that wasn’t owned by at least one person before me.
“Look, Harper,” he says, then licks his lips and glances at the door behind me. “I…” He shakes his head, like he’s decided against whatever he was going to say.
“What?”
“Go change your clothes,” he says. “The girls locker room is the next door on your right.”
“You’re not going to watch me change like a pervert?”
“Do you want me to watch you change?”
I’m taken back to that day in Mabel’s room, which feels like weeks ago even though it was only days. How it felt to have Colt watching me, to tease him a little and know he liked it. But Royal is not Colt. Just thinking about his eyes on me makes me have to swallow past the butterflies in my chest.
“No.”
“I told you I have no interest in your dirty cunt,” he says, his voice hardening. “Why would I want to see it?”
“Riiight,” I say. “You like the dry, hard ones, made of solid gold. I’m too soft and wet for you.”
He swallows, but his eyes stay hard. “Stop talking like a whore.”
“Oh, but what else could I talk like?” I ask, batting my eyes at him and slipping my thumbs into the top of my pants, like I’m going to pull them down and change right here. “According to you, that’s all I am.”
He strides across the closet and grabs my arm, spinning me around and marching me out the open door. The basketball girls watch him march me to the locker room. “Get off my dick and go put some clothes on,” he growls, shoving open the door and manhandling me inside.
He doesn’t follow.
My heart is pounding in my chest as I change, and fucked up as I am, I can’t help but picture him watching me the whole time, even though he’s not here. Every time I get close to him, I feel like I’m balancing on a precipice, and if I fall, I’ll either soar like a fucking phoenix in a shower of sparks that light up the sky like fireworks and make every single person on earth stare in wonder, or I’ll plummet straight to the depths of hell.