“You really are an arrogant ass pig, aren’t you? And for a second there, I actually thought you were nice.”

The nightstand drawer slides open and out come the condoms.

“You thought I was nice?” Church asks, smirking. “That’s your mistake.”

“Did I really just … agree to like … marry you or something?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer with words, using his body to fill in the gaps instead. He kisses me deeply, the touch of his mouth cutting right through all the bullshit and going straight for my soul.

I never expected to like Adamson; I most definitely didn’t expect to like the Student Council.

And yet, coming here is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Church sighs contentedly and unbuttons his slacks, revealing the hard length of his cock to me. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it—hot springs, remember?—but it’s different somehow, now that we’re alone, now that both of our intentions have been made clear.

He slips a condom on and then reaches beneath my dress to remove my panties, tucking them into the pocket on his blazer before he takes it off and tosses it aside.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I murmur, as Church pushes the frothy white skirts up around my hips, running his tongue up the side of my neck and then resting his lips against my thrumming pulse.

“Why’s that?” he asks, looking down at me.

“Because I wasn’t even sure if you liked me for the past year.”

“We all have our secrets, Chuck,” he whispers, just before he slides into me, keeping himself propped up with one hand and using the other to touch the side of my face. He never stops looking into my eyes, not even as his body’s moving inside of mine and bringing tears of pleasure to the corners of my gaze. I try to meet his eyes, but it’s so intense, I end up turning away. He turns me back to him, stroking across my bottom lip with his thumb and making me tremble.

When he kisses me again, my eyes close of their own accord and he lets them be, moving his mouth down the side of my neck and encouraging me to lift my chest up to meet the touch of his lips.

It’s slow and torturous, but in the best possible way, like a fire stoked slowly and then left to burn. And I’m burning.

“Church,” I moan, trying to pull my arms down by my sides. But I’m trapped, and not just physically. My heart’s trapped, too, stuck right here in Adamson Academy.

I just hope that doesn’t turn into a literal statement.

My body betrays me, muscles tightening, pleasure flooding through me in a wave.

Church cuts my gasp off with a kiss, taking my chin in his hand, owning me with a gentle grip of fingers. He scoots back and then, with another naughty smile, disappears beneath my skirts. I’m still shaking, and I haven’t quite recovered yet, but I want more. I crave it.

Or maybe I’m just craving him?

Church’s fingers curl around my pelvis, holding me in place and giving me a lesson in the alphabet with his tongue.

It doesn’t seem to be any difficult task for him to give me multiple orgasms.

Soaked in sweat, I lift my head up to look at him as he comes up for air, eyes dark with the fervid heat that’s taken over our room.

“You’ve done this before, huh?” I ask, my body quivering as he comes up beside me, lying casually with one elbow on the bed, head resting on his hand.

“Not much, actually. Two girls, one time each. You’re more experienced than I am.”

“But … you’re really good at it,” I choke out, breathing hard, my arms burning but that ardent heat in my lower belly burning more.

“I read too much,” Church says, gesturing at his manga stack on the nightstand. “Lots of hentai,” he whispers, putting his mouth up against my forehead. Hentai is Japanese porn, by the way. “The occasional romance. You know what my favorite genre is?”

“Am I about to find out?” I look over at him, still breathing hard, still tied up.

“Bully romance,” he says with a smile. “I like to see the bad guys get redeemed in the end.”

“And who’s the bad guy here?” I ask, cocking a brow as Church sits up and leans over me to grab one of the books, flipping open to a page that’s been marked carefully with a bookmark.

“You. You are the bully, Chuck Carson. You knocked my project into the water, and then refused to apologize. When we asked you to help fix your mistake, you acted like we were in the wrong. So, you’re the bully in this scenario, trying to regain my trust because you’re madly in love with me.”

“Is that what’s happening here?” I ask, but my voice is too foggy from the double orgasms; I don’t sound much like a bully right now. More like a girl who’s just trying to figure out how to be an adult.

“He uses his cock, his tongue, and his fingers to bring me to pleasure over and over again, until I feel like I’m breaking apart. And then I let him put me back together with his body. That’s when I knew I belonged to him—fully and completely.” Church stops reading and lets the cover flip closed, thumbing through the pages absently.

“So you want to belong to me, fully and completely?” I ask, getting a bit of that snark back in my voice. Hah! Take that, Church, big old dominant douche-canoe. “That works for me.”

“No, Charlotte Carson. You might be the bully, but I’m the boss.” He smiles and hooks his left leg over mine, moving between my thighs and grabbing my ass to readjust my hips. “We’re going to recreate every scene in this book, starting with this one. The hero ties the heroine up after their wedding and takes her nice and slow. He doesn’t worry about his own pleasure until she’s shaking.” Church turns his head to the side and looks me over. “This should do.”

He covers my body with his own, sliding into me inch by careful inch, so slow that it feels like we might never be fully joined together.

“My little California girl,” he whispers against my mouth, moving inside of me until I’m coming again, and then using the shudders of my body to find his own climax.

Afterward, Church unties me, leaving the loose tie around my wrist, and kissing me until the sun sinks low in the sky.

“We just defiled your mother’s wedding dress,” I whisper against his mouth.

“Yes,” he says, our foreheads pressed close together. “Yes, we did.”

When Church told me that riding in his family’s jet would make first class look like a joke, he wasn’t kidding. The plane that we end up boarding is at a private airport, just outside of Nutmeg, and it’s so tricked out on the inside, it makes my father’s house at Adamson look like a dump.

“Fucking rich people,” I murmur as Tobias pokes me in the back and encourages me to actually set foot inside what’s essentially a fancy little dining area. There are four seats—similar to regular airplane seats but decked out in leather—around a dining table, and just across from a long counter with a wall-mounted TV above it.

“That’s right—sometimes I forget you’re a peasant,” Tobias teases as I pause to elbow him in the side. My father, as terrifying as he can be, is no match for the Montagues. I’m going to London, even if he doesn’t want me to. “Poor people don’t do much travelling, do they?”