“What is going on?” I whisper as Spencer walks me down the hall, squeezing a stress ball in his right hand. I’m not gonna lie: it’s a sperm stress ball. Like, it looks like a giant white sperm. They gave them out for free in health class, and everybody thought they were hilarious. I keep seeing white sperm stress balls everywhere.

“You’ll see,” Spencer says, grinning as he glances over at me. “Church isn’t the only one who can scheme and throw his weight around.”

“Meaning what?” I ask as we head in the direction of the auditorium to cast our votes. They’ll be tallied up by volunteers from the Adamson staff—including my father, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Dave—and the winners will be announced at a special ceremony at the end of the day.

Frankly, I’m not all that hopeful, but none of the boys seem concerned, so I’ve been trying not to let it bother me.

“You’re a real hard-ass, Hargrove,” a boy in a junior’s uniform says, flipping us off as he passes by.

Now I’m really curious to find out what’s going on.

“Chuck-let,” Spencer says, turning and pushing me gently into one of the decorative alcoves that lines the walls of the school. It’s this big stone archway that’s just deep enough for two people to hide in … I mean, if anyone walks by and glances over, you’re screwed, but there’s at least some privacy here. We’ve tested out six or seven of them for, like, research purposes. And obviously at this point, you know that by research purposes, I mean make-out sessions. “Don’t you like a little mystery in your life?”

“Do you?” I retort, letting my bookbag fall to the stone floor, so I can put my arms around Spencer’s neck. He leans over me in that way I like, one of his arms above my head, his lips curved into a feral grin. “Because last time I surprised you by telling you my dick was actually a vagina, you freaked out.” He rolls his eyes at me, but he can’t argue that point, now can he?

“This isn’t a lie though, just a surprise.”

“A surprise that’s going to win us the elections?” I clarify, and the grin is back.

“As soon as we do, we’re going to rain terror down on Mark and all of his idiot friends. Oh, and that Aster chick, too. Either she’s sleeping with a creep or she is a creep herself, I don’t know, but I don’t like her.”

“What are you planning on doing?” I ask as Spencer tucks the sperm-y stress ball into my pocket and I make a face.

“Besides kissing you, you mean?” he pretends to clarify, sliding the fingers of his left hand along the length of my jaw. He cups the back of my head and then moves his other hand to the opposite side, holding me still and stroking his thumbs down my throat. “We can do all sorts of fun things to them. Move their lockers, change their class schedules for next semester, swap their dorm room assignments. Never underestimate the power of petty bullshit. Mark’s already like an ugly pimple ready to burst. If we poke and prod, he’s going to fall apart, and we’ll be able to get him.”

“And by get him …” I start as Spencer laughs, low and throaty, making my toes curl in my shoes. A man shouldn’t be able to smell so good, by the way. It’s making it freakishly hard for me to concentrate.

“Bury him six feet under, in the dead of night, in the old cemetery by the railroad tracks,” Spencer whispers, and then he laughs, moving away from me. I grab onto his blazer and yank him back, kissing him on the mouth and opening my lips for his tongue. Several minutes later, we come up for breath, and he smirks. “Your mouth is a good motivator, Chuck-let, you know that?”

“So, the plan with Mark …?”

“We report him—to authorities outside of Nutmeg. Shit, we report those authorities, too. There is a chain of command for this stuff, you know.”

“Won’t his ultra-rich family just take care of it the way yours does for Jack?”

“Between the five of us,” he says, as students pass by in small groups, whispering about the elections. “We’ll take care of it. But we need as much evidence as possible first.” Spencer leans in closer, one of his hands traveling down my side and cupping my ass through my skirt. He exhales sharply, like he’s seriously holding back right now. “You know I have a thing for schoolgirl uniforms, right?”

“You’ve never said as much, but I could tell.” I grin back at him. “You’ve fantasized about screwing me in this, huh?”

“Screwing, making love to, fucking, doing it … all of the things.”

He nuzzles the side of my neck and makes me go weak at the knees.

“We should really get to the auditorium to vote,” I whisper, knowing the others will come looking for us if we don’t show up soon. Mr. Murphy walks past us, my eyes briefly meeting his over Spencer’s shoulder, but he knows better than to stop or say anything.

“What if we just … made it quick?” he asks as he runs his tongue across his lower lip and I inadvertently mimic the motion.

“Where should we go?” I whisper back, totally getting off on the conspiratorial nature of the moment. My heart gallops like a herd of wild horses, manes billowing in the wind, whinnying softly … Eww. What? Eww. No, that’s not poetic or cool-sounding whatsoever. The hell is wrong with me?

“Go?” Spence asks, kissing down the side of my neck as he slides his hands underneath my skirt, palms sliding up my bare thighs. “We don’t have to go anywhere. I want to do it right fucking here, where anybody could walk by and see.”

“Are you nuts?!” I choke out as his fingers knead the soft flesh of my ass. “We’re being hunted by a cult, remember?”

“We better make it quick then, huh?”

He lifts me up and pins me against the wall with his body, my arms automatically encircling his neck, fingers digging into his silver hair. Our mouths meet in a hot, desperate tangle as he presses his erection against me. My lips part in sweet surrender to his tongue, and I can already tell by the heavy weight of my limbs and the flutter of my lashes against my cheeks that I’m giving into him.

“I want to do it without a condom so bad right now,” he growls, one of his hands slipping between us to open his slacks. My eyes are closed, my pulse pounding inside my head. I don’t have the strength to say no, but at least he does. “But I won’t.”

“Because Ranger would kill you if you did it again,” I whisper and Spencer groans, freeing himself and then digging a condom out of his blazer pocket. I chastised him the other day for carrying them around all the time, but then I did stick several in my bookbag, just in case.

Teenagers are straight-up hoes.

Spencer slips the condom on, letting the wrapping fall to the floor, and then waits for me to hook my panties to the side with two fingers.

His eyes meet mine as he lines up with my opening and thrusts deeps, filling me up and pushing my body into the stone wall with the weight of his own. The pleasure is immediate and intense, releasing a flood of hormones into my body that make me feel both heavy and weightless, all at the same time.

Our mouths find each other again, searching and claiming, as he finds a rhythm that works, grinding me into the alcove with frenzied thrusts. The wall has no give, so each movement sheathes him fully inside of me, taking my breath away. A scream rests in my throat, but I bite it back.