Chapter 4

4

Xander's pov

Charis was on her knees between my thighs, her dark hair spilling over my lap.

God, she knew exactly how I liked it, slow at first, her tongue swirling around the head of my cork with teasing pressure, then taking me deeper, her lips forming that perfect tight seal that made my hips buck involuntarily.

Her soft palm caressed my balls while her tongue did magic on my cork.

“C’mon” I groaned, throwing my head backwards in esctasy. 

She hummed softly, the vibration shooting straight through me, her eyes locked on mine with that wicked playboy smirk mirrored back at me.

Beside us, the other girl Lila, with her lithe body and eager gasps writhed under my hand. My fingers plunged into her wet pussy, curling just right to hit that spot that had her moaning my name like a prayer.

“Oh! Xander” She moaned loudly. She was soaked, grinding against my palm as I pumped two fingers in and out, thumb circling her clit in rhythm with Charis's bobbing head.

"Fuck, yes," I growled, threading my free hand through Charis's hair, guiding her pace while Lila's walls clenched around me.

This was my world, two beautiful women lost in pleasure, all for me. Charis sucked harder, hollowing her cheeks, saliva dripping down my shaft as she worked me like she was born for it. 

Lila arched, her breath hitching, nails digging into my arm as she chased her release.

The room filled with wet sounds and desperate whimpers, my cock throbbing in Charis's expert mouth while Lila came undone on my fingers, her juices coating my hand.

I was the king of this game, playing their bodies like instruments, drawing out every gasp and shudder.

People assumed a lot about me because of that balance, mostly that I was the harmless one, the disposable one, the twin nobody worried about because I wasn't the one who'd inherit anything that mattered.

I let them believe it. It was useful, being underestimated. Nobody watched you closely if they'd already decided you weren't worth watching, and there was a kind of freedom in that even if it came with its own quiet cost most people never bothered to notice.

*****

I left the room satisfied and smiling, cutting across the courtyard toward the dining hall proper, when I spotted the commotion by the fountain.

A familiar cluster of Bianca's crowd had formed a loose circle around someone smaller, someone with her shoulders pulled in tight and her chin still lifted despite it, the particular posture of a person trying very hard not to look like she was about to break.

"Aw, don't cry, wolfless," one of the girls cooed, and the group laughed the ugly kind of laugh that only exists to make someone else feel smaller than they already do.

I don't know exactly what made me walk over. 

Curiosity, probably, or boredom, or some combination of the two that had gotten me into more trouble over the years than either alone ever could have managed on its own.

I was sure it wasn't sympathy.

"Ladies," I said, stepping into the circle with my hands in my pockets and my easiest smile already fixed in place. "Shouldn't you be somewhere terrorizing someone your own social class?"

That got a laugh, mostly nervous, and the circle loosened enough for the girl in the middle, Mabel, I remembered now, the Sinclair name attached to whispers I'd only ever half listened to, to step back and catch her breath properly.

I have seen her around campus a couple of times, but I had never spoken to her or even have the interest to.

"We were just talking," one of Bianca's friends said, unconvincing even to her own ears.

“This is no business of yours Xander” Bianca said, stepping forward.

I chuckled as I stared at her.

“You think so?” I found myself asking, while the Mabel girl turned her head slightly to look at me, she looked a little stunned to see me.

Bianca gritted her teeth and turned to her girls.

“Let's go girls.” She ordered, shooting Mabel one last glare before walking off while her group followed her.

I smirked as I watched their receding figures, before stepping closer to Mabel.

"You didn't have to do that," Mabel said once they were finally gone, arms crossed, chin still up.

She wasn't thanking me?

That was interesting, and interesting was rare enough at Mooncrest that I found myself paying closer attention than I meant to.

"I know." I shrugged. "Didn't do it for you. Bianca's crowd bores me and I needed an excuse to interrupt something."

"Charming."

"I've been told that too."

She studied me for a moment with an expression I didn't often get from girls at this school, something closer to assessment than admiration, like she was cataloguing me for later reference rather than falling for anything I was doing. "You're Xander."

"Guilty."

"The fun one." There was an edge in how she said it, not quite an insult, but close enough to sting a little if I let it land.

"That's what they tell me."

"I've heard about you," she said. "Mostly from girls with broken hearts, actually."

I laughed, surprised into it in a way I rarely was anymore. "That's fair. I never promised anyone hearts stayed intact around me."

"At least you're honest about being terrible."

"I prefer charming," I said. "But I'll allow terrible if you're feeling generous today."

"I'm really not."

I found myself grinning, actually grinning, the real version and not the practiced one I usually handed out like a business card.

Most conversations with girls at Mooncrest followed a script I could have recited in my sleep, compliment, deflection, invitation, the same three beats over and over until I forgot which version of myself I was supposed to be performing that week.

This wasn't that. She wasn't performing anything back at me, which meant I couldn't fall into the familiar rhythm of it, and something about being knocked off that rhythm felt oddly like waking up.

"You're not going to ask me to walk you anywhere," I said, half a question.

"Why should I?"

"Most girls do, eventually."

"I'm not most girls." She said it plainly, without any of the practiced flirtation that usually came wrapped around a line like that, and somehow the lack of performance made it land harder than if she'd meant it as a line at all.

She didn't smile at my jokes the way most girls did, didn't lean in, didn't do any of the small unconscious things people did around the Blackwood name whether they wanted to or not.

It should have bored me but instead it did the opposite entirely, some small hook catching somewhere behind my ribs that I didn't have a name for yet and didn't particularly want one for.

"You're impossible," she said finally, not unkindly, more like an observation she'd been turning over carefully since we started talking.

"Extremely," I agreed. "It's part of my charm. Keep up."

That got the smallest crack of a smile out of her, gone almost as soon as it appeared, and something about it felt like winning a much bigger argument than the one we'd actually had.

That was when it happened.

A shift in the air between us, barely perceptible, and beneath it, her scent finally registered the way it hadn't quite until that moment, something underneath the ordinary that made no sense on a girl who supposedly had no wolf at all.

It hit low and sudden, unsettling in a way I didn't have words for, and I found myself going quiet mid sentence for the first time in longer than I could remember, my usual easy patter simply drying up in my throat.

"What?" she asked, noticing the shift in me immediately, sharper than most people would have caught it.

"Nothing." I recovered fast, the way I always did, smile sliding back into place like it had never slipped at all. "Just remembered I'm late for something."

I wasn't late for anything. I walked away because I needed a minute to figure out what had just happened in my own chest, and I was three steps into that walk, already telling myself it was nothing, some trick of the light or the wind or my own imagination overreacting to a girl who was objectively nothing like the ones I usually noticed, when something inside me spoke in a voice that wasn't quite my own.

Mine.

I stopped dead in the middle of the courtyard.

Mate Recognition hadn't happened yet. It wasn't due for two more days.

There was no reasonable explanation for a word like that surfacing now, unprompted, uninvited, aimed at a girl who couldn't even shift, a girl half the school called wolfless behind her back and sometimes to her face.

I stood there a long moment, staring at nothing, students moving around me on either side without noticing I'd frozen at all, before I made myself keep walking, though the word stayed with me the rest of the day like something lodged too deep to shake loose no matter how hard I tried.

By the time I reached the dining hall the feeling still hadn't left me. I sat with a plate I barely touched, half listening to conversations happening around me, replaying the sound of her voice calling me impossible, the way she hadn't smiled at any of my usual lines, the way something in my chest had gone quiet and strange the second her scent registered properly.

I told myself it meant nothing, I told myself a great many things that afternoon, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I didn't believe a single one of them.