In fact, the only bitter taste I couldn’t shake off was Papa’s betrayal. The way he’d hidden the truth about my internship from me. It felt like my father had compromised me to help my enemy, and I was furious with him.

Vaughn owed me nothing.

But my father? Oh, he did.

“And I mean, you could hurt me,” Vaughn continued, clearing his throat. “I mean, blood and shit, if that’s your jam.”

I don’t know why it saddened me so much that he offered me his pain as a token for our deal. I liked hurting him when he was hurting me. I wasn’t a connoisseur of pain, like him.

“I don’t want that.” The timbre of my voice reminded me of padding on tiptoes.

“Okay.”

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way.” I slapped my thighs, desperate to push the rage and disappointment with my father out of my consciousness. “Remember your first kiss with Luna?”

“Vaguely…” The ruby in his cheeks flared again. He wouldn’t look at me.

Oh, Vaughn.

“I want you to erase it from your memory.” I stood up, stepping between his legs and draping my arms around his neck. Slowly, I sank down, my knees straddling his waist. His breath hitched. Mine stopped completely. The air seemed thick and moist again. I settled on his hard-on, feeling the thick bulge pressed against my center.

“And all the ones with me that followed. This is your first kiss.” My lips fluttered over his as I spoke.

“Len.” My nickname dropped from his mouth into mine, hot and desperate.

His eyelids slid shut, despite his best efforts to stay in control.

But not mine. I stared at him as I kissed him, with eyes wide open.

There was nothing more beautiful than watching Vaughn Spencer let go.

There.

I fucking did it.

I kissed a girl, and I liked it.

A whole fucking lot.

It wasn’t the first time I’d kissed Lenora Astalis. But now we had an arrangement, and I was going to milk the shit out of it until I finished this damn internship. I was going to kiss her, fuck her eventually, then get out of Carlisle Castle a normal person, sexually.

Maybe.

Fine, probably not.

After the conversation with Dad where he’d asked if I was gay, I knew I had to take a proactive step toward dipping my cock into more than one hole. People had started to notice, and I didn’t like that.

I spent the next couple weeks working from seven in the morning till nine at night. The sculpture was shaping up nicely. The heads were proportioned now, and I’d carved the faces in detail, down to the very last vein, crinkle, and freckle. Getting each individual hair right was going to take weeks, though. Having Lenora around in the studio would probably cut the time it took me to get shit done in half, but I didn’t want her help.

It looked good, though—the sculpture. Edgar had come to check on the piece a few times, muttering profanity all the way from the first door to the second about the fungal smell and creepy atmosphere. But he said my soul poured out of the sculpture.

“Keep this up, and you got yourself an easy sell. If you could sell it. As it happens, it is going to be Carlisle Prep’s property. Forever.”

Bet he wouldn’t be so smug if he knew that after I worked on my piece, I ran to my second shift: making his daughter, my other piece, moan my name every night.

The good thing about my working hours was I managed to avoid human interaction almost entirely. I woke up every morning at five-thirty, jogged, took a shower, went through my emails with my coffee—answering Dad, Mom, and Troy Brennan, AKA The Fixer, who’d started working on the Harry Fairhurst case—then locked myself in the cellar before classes started at eight a.m. By the time I finished working at nine p.m., people were already in their dorms. The dining hall was closed, and other than random punks who bowed down in my presence and the occasional dry-humping couple, I didn’t see a fucking face.

Not even Arabella’s.

Definitely not Rafferty Pope’s.

And, thank fuck, not Harry’s, either.

I was sure he kept his guard up despite my lack of presence in his life. He’d gone as far as framing my mother to make sure I wouldn’t retaliate, so I knew he wasn’t the dumbass I’d pegged him to be. However, just because I was silent about it didn’t mean I wasn’t working on taking him down.

Then there were the nights with Good Girl.

After a shower and an entire buttered loaf of bread and ham, I’d slip into her room and kiss her mouth.

And neck.

And eyes.

And hair.

I was ready for more—tasting her tits, maybe. I hadn’t touched them yet, but I’d been thinking about them since that day she got out of the pool naked.