I could be fluent in stuck-up-ese if I wanted to.

  But I chose not to. I’ve never been that girl.

  I was the library girl.

  I was the book nerd girl.

  I was the wallflower.

  On the whole, I tended to avoid people. I didn’t people well. I had an affinity for blending into the background. It’s a skill. I’d been perfecting it all my life.

  But anyway, Blaise DeVroe was the opposite of that.

  He may have moved to this school late in the year, but he walked in as if he already owned it. And to his credit, he kinda did.

  The guy who ran the school before Blaise showed up was Zeke Allen. He’s this wealthy jackass who’s a bully, a muscular douchebag, and who slept with girls and then talked shit about them. He was king of the school by default, I guess—not because he was anything fantastic.

  Then Blaise DeVroe walked in.

  Guess who gave him a welcome-home hug? Zeke Allen did!

  I was there, just coming out of the counselor’s office, so I saw it all.

  Blaise DeVroe strutted in with that cocky walk all the athletes had, and he was gorgeous. Like, seriously gorgeous. He had the high, arching cheekbones only the prettiest of the pretty-boy models had.

  I knew this too because I’d done some reluctant gigs in the business.

  But back to freaking stunning Blaise DeVroe. He had a chiseled, square jaw. He could have had his own waterfall off that jawline. Dark eyes. His hair was short, but long enough so he could rake his hands through it and let it be all adorably messy. And his body. Don’t even get me started on his body—I was all crushing on it because it was sick and I mean that in the hot kind of sick way, not the real sick way. He was definitely not the real sick way at all.

  He wasn’t as big as Zeke, but he had these big, broad shoulders. Trim waist. And there were muscles everywhere. I swear I saw shape definition in his neck.

  Blaise DeVroe: the hottest guy at Fallen Crest Academy.

  One of the richest guys too.

  I didn’t hear the story of why he came here—not the real reason. Rumors circulated that his mom was going through a divorce, but there were also whispers about secret siblings. I wasn’t on the up-and-up with anyone, so I never heard for sure if any of that was true. All I knew was Blaise DeVroe had walked into the hallowed and pretentious hallways of the private school in our town, and he was hailed like a long-lost son or something.

  Or something, as it turned out.

  Blaise and Zeke knew each other from childhood. Zeke considered him his long-lost best friend. So it was a coming home sort of situation.

  Not that I could talk much about the history of FCA, because I was new myself, but I had been here almost a whole semester before Blaise. And full disclosure, I’d been here when I was much younger at the private elementary/middle school. That was before Mom and Pops decided they didn’t like the influence my older brother’s best friend was having on him, so they pulled both my brothers and me out of here.

  But that’s a whole different story.

  The story for right now is that I’m being a total weirdo stalker and perving on Blaise DeVroe getting his dick sucked.

  Like, right in front of me.

  In hindsight, this was probably not the best idea I’d ever had. And I’ve had some doozy ideas. But this one takes the cake. I just couldn’t help myself. As I’ve mentioned, I usually keep to myself, but something got into me this year. Every time I heard about a party, I couldn’t make myself go, but I also couldn’t not go.

  So...I went.

  But I stayed on the outskirts, so the people actually attending the party didn’t realize I was there. There’d been a big bonfire that our town and the neighboring two towns had a while back. I was there, but I’d decided to make it a camping trip—just for me.

  I was there, but not there. And that night had ended weird too, but nothing like this one.

  This time the party was at Zeke Allen’s lake cabin. Not that his cabin was a cabin. It was a mansion—a twenty-room mega log cabin, which no one even blinked at, because that’s just normal for these people. Most everyone was staying at the cabin, not trekking back here into the woods like me. I’d set up my tent a bit away, doing my camping thing again (something I love, by the way), when I heard voices. They weren’t down by the house, spilling out over the back patio, or even at the lake. Nope. These voices were up the hill, coming from farther into the woods.

  I’d done my research. Zeke Allen’s cabin was set a good ten miles away from the nearest neighbors. I should’ve been in the clear to sneak onto their land, do a little freestyle camping, and listen to the party sounds like the loser I was. But noooo. I was about to get company.

  As I snuck out of my tent, and realized who it was, I almost crapped my pants.

  It was Blaise DeVroe, holding hands with Mara Daniels.

  As popular girls went, Mara Daniels was one of the nicer ones. She was on the dance team. Dark hair. Shorter, but athletic. The problem with Mara was that she was friends with the other popular girls. Some of them were nasty—hence the reason I wasn’t friends with them. Not that they’d tried to get to know me. Not that I even registered on their radar. But then again, that’s what I did.

  I didn’t engage. I didn’t attend. I was on the edge. I was the invisible girl, and here I was, being the invisible girl once more, but man…

  When I saw it was him, and then saw how his hand went from holding hers and guiding her to a tree to slipping around and grabbing her ass, something came over me. I couldn’t retreat back to my tent. I couldn’t even stay hidden behind a tree and just listen.

  I know, I know. This was all sorts of wrong, but Blaise was Blaise.

  He’d become the guy in my dreams, my weird schoolgirl fantasies. He was my high school crush. Everyone had one. If you didn’t, you’re even weirder than me, and that’s saying something. So when I started salivating over Blaise DeVroe, I kinda just let myself go. I mean, nothing was ever going to happen. Guys like him didn’t date girls like me. They didn’t even notice girls like me.

  I wasn’t crazy. That’d make me all sorts of delusional.

  I was a realist. I knew my place in life’s hierarchy. I was at the bottom. I was not the very bottom—because of my family—but socially, I was barely one rung up the ladder.

  Anyway, when Blaise started kissing Mara, when Mara knelt in front of him, when she opened his pants and took out his cock—I lost all train of thought.

  I watched as she took his dick in her mouth, as her head began bobbing up and down over him.

  And, oh my God.

  My whole body was awash with sensations, and I was captivated. Captivated! Entranced. Mesmerized.

  I could not look away.

  Then I felt throbbing and a warm feeling between my legs, and it was game over. It was all I could do not to make a sound, because I wanted to. So bad. I wanted to moan. I wanted to touch myself, but I didn’t. I kept myself reined in, but watch? Oh yeah. I watched.

  I couldn’t not watch.

  I watched the whole thing.

  I loved the whole thing.

  And then at the end of it, I almost died.

  BLAISE

  I was getting my dick sucked while a weird chick watched us.

  “Hmmm…Blaise.” My girl moaned, readjusted, and took me in again. She reached up to stroke under, and damn, that felt good. My eyes almost rolled back, but I caught myself and held steady. My hands went to her head. Sometimes a little guidance went a long way, and as I applied gentle pressure, my girl was receptive. So I started to drive her mouth over me. All the while, I never stopped watching the other girl.

  I couldn’t place her.

  I was pretty sure she hadn’t been at Zeke’s party, but who the fuck knew. He’d invited fifty people, way more than he needed to, but Zeke was a lovable bully idiot. He was mean. Some might say he had a slime effect on them, but he was my best friend. I couldn’t judge. I had an attitude the size of fucking Alaska. Anyway, back to Zeke. He liked to go big, and that included his parties and his fuck-ups, and there were a lot of both.

  That girl…

  I liked her.

  Fresh face. I could tell she was light on the makeup. Her face was one of those that would look jaded under a ton of crap, but without it, she looked the way she did right now: innocent and pure. Though the fact that she was watching my blowjob didn’t fit either of those adjectives. She was tugging on her lip now, her hand lingering on her shorts.

  Christ.

  Her shorts.

  My chick was wearing a bikini top and shredded jean shorts—and those shorts were hardly there. They were more decorative so she didn’t get arrested for public indecency. All the girls at this party were like that. Bikinis, and anything else they wore was painted on their bodies. The old school way of thought might’ve labeled them sluts or whores, but since we were all liberal and progressive, we went with sexually healthy appetites.

  I, currently, was enjoying my girl’s appetite.

  She opened her mouth wider, angled her head to the other side, and oooh yeah—I was in at a whole different depth now. Fuck it. I took hold of her hair and started moving. She moaned, but only widened her jaw and spread her knees a little more apart. She was bracing herself.

  Fuuuuck yeah.

  That meant I could go a little harder, which I did. I shoved her down a bit more, a better angle, and right there. I loved when they let me take over. But then I looked back up to watch Voyeur Girl. My friends and I did not hang out with girls like my voyeur. My dick got harder. I almost cursed, gritting my teeth. I had not expected that reaction, but I’d take it.

  The girl watching wore a buttoned-up maroon shirt, the ends tied at her waist. She had a good rack. The shirt was bunched up to hide ’em, but I saw her girls. They would be a decent handful, almost perfect. And she wasn’t wearing a bra. There was enough of a tease between the buttons that I could see just skin, just tits.

  The rest of her… I had no words.

  Khaki shorts that ended mid-thigh, and what a fucking thigh she had.

  This girl could model.

  Long. Lean. Legs meant to wrap around your waist—I thrust a little harder, and my girl groaned around me. I needed to ease up, but I was almost gone. Almost. Not quite.

  Then Mara reached up and massaged my boys. That was enough.

  I unloaded into her.

  She swallowed like a champ and smiled up at me. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and for a second, the weird chick was forgotten. I grinned at Mara. I always liked Mara’s blowjobs, and because I wasn’t an asshole, I tugged her up and moved her farther behind the trees so she was hidden from view.

  Now was my turn to make her feel good.

  Kissing her, I slid my hand inside her shorts and inside her, and when she was done and moaning, I looked over my shoulder. The other girl was still there, still glued to her tree, her eyes still right on us, but this time, she saw me.

  Her eyes bulged out, and she inhaled sharply. She jerked back, and I grinned, lifting my hand to my mouth. I tasted Mara on my fingers as I watched her. Then I winked.

  She uttered a muffled scream.

  Chuckling, I grabbed Mara as she tensed in my arms.

  Her head snapped around. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” I kept her tight to my side as she fixed her pants. “Come on. Let’s go back to the party.”

  As we left, I glanced back.

  The girl was gone.

  * * *

  Read the rest here!

  THE NOT-OUTCAST

  1

  I was lit, weak, and horny.

  That was not a good combination for me. Usually my willpower was strong, like industrial-strength super-latexed condom strong, but not tonight. Tonight, the combination of the booze and cocktails had melded together and taken down my last holdouts of willpower. I was gonzo and then I got this text.

  Dean: Mustang party! Now! Where r u???

  Dean was my colleague, but let’s forget about why he would be texting me because we are not ‘texting’ colleagues. Kansas City Mustangs. That was the important part of that text, and it was getting all of my attention.

  Dear God. I could hear the whistle of the impending bomb right before it hit.

  That was the professional hockey team that he played on.

  Party.

  Did I mention the he that was him? He, as in the only rookie drafted for Kansas City’s newer team? He signed his contract after he had one year at Silvard.

  The he that the team’s owners were hoping could be grown into one of the NHL’s newest stars, but that’d been a three-year plan. Nope. He had different ideas because once he hit the ice in their first debut game, he scored a hat trick in the first period. First. Period. Playing against five to ten-year veterans, and that had not gone unnoticed. By everyone. After that he exploded into the NHL scene and in a big fucking way.

  They started calling him Reaper Ryder after that.

  It was the same he that I perved on during a brief stint in high school, and then again during that one year in college before he got whisked away to superstardom. Though, he didn’t know any of that 411 about my perving habits.

  The second text from Dean gave us the address where to go, and the whistle got louder, target hit…direct implosion.

  It was two blocks away.

  He was two blocks away, and there went my restraint because I’d kept away from him for the last four years when I moved to the same city he was living in—of course he didn’t know that—but this city was totally amazeballs by the way.

  I was doomed. I might as well start digging my own bunker at this rate because I was already downtown partaking in some celebratory boozetails, so here we were. Here I was, well we because I wasn’t alone. My main girl since Silvard days, Sasha, was on my right, and Melanie on my left. Melanie came after Silvard, but that didn’t matter. She was one of my girls. The three of us. We were awesomesauce, and we were walking into this building that looked like a downtown loft, one that was probably the humble abode to someone not so humble, but someone with old-money wealth who enjoyed partaking in their own boozetails as well.

  I already felt a whole kemosabe camaraderie with whoever owned this joint.

  “This place is fucking awesome.”

  That was Melanie. She enjoyed coffee, girls, and she was an amazing barista at Dino’s Beans.

  “Girl.”

  That was Sasha. She owned a strip club, told everyone she was an angry Russian, even though there wasn’t one Russian strand of DNA in her body, and she enjoyed using one word for everything. That’s not to say she didn’t speak more than one-word answers, but those were her go-to for speaking.

  “Whoa.” That was me.

  Melanie had jet-black hair. Sasha had ice-queen white hair, and me—I was the in between. My hair was usually a dusty blonde color, but today it looked a bit more lighter than dusty blonde. I still enjoyed it, and I also had super chill electric-blue eyes. The other two both had dark eyes so I figured I was still the ‘in between’ for the eyes, too.

  When we entered that party, all eyes turned to us, and not one of us was fazed. We were used to it. Where we went, we got attention. Guys loved us (sometimes), girls hated us (usually), and we didn’t care (ever). We weren’t going to tone down our awesomeness because of their insecurities.

  But we were all works in progress, or at least I was.

  I was known to have entire conversations and whole other worlds and every version of apocalypses in my head. That was just me. You’ll understand the more you get to know me, but trust me when I say that I’m a lot better than I used to be. Meds, therapy, and a dead junkie mother will do that to you.

  But enough about me.

  Melanie was the shit, and she really loved the word ‘fuck.’ A-fucking-lot.

  Then there was Sasha, she’d been my roommate from college, and here we were, three years out of graduation (well, four for me since I graduated early, and don’t ask me how that happened because it still shocked the hell out of me) and going strong. But we were on a mission.

  That mission was more boozetails.

  There were people everywhere. Stuffy people. One woman who had a tiara on her head. There were guys in suits, some in hella expensive suits, and tuxedos, too.

  Whoa.

  This wasn’t just a party party. This was like a whole shindig party.

  Fake Stanley Cups were placed all around with mucho dinero inside.

  Crap.

  I started to mentally shift through the emails—easier said than done when one was halfway to boozeopolis—that I liked to avoid and I was remembering some of the subject lines of those that I had skipped. There’d been a bunch from Dean lately, though, and one was about some ‘Celebrity PR for Come Our Way’ and I needed to double down on the crapattitude because I had a feeling we just waltzed into a fundraiser.

  “Cheyenne!”

  Dean rushed over to us, holding a boozetail in one hand, and his eyes glazed over. He was medium height with a more squat build that he easily could buff up more, but I didn’t think Dean went to the gym. He was always at work and because of that, I usually saw him with his hair all messed up. That’s how it was now, and his eyes glazed over.

  My dude coworker was lit.

  I started smiling, but then no. Not good. What corporate espionage was he up to by telling me to come here?

  “Where’s the bar, Deano?” Melanie.

  I was impressed she hadn’t used her favorite word.

  “There.” Directions from Sasha and like that, both my buds moved away.

  I settled back, knowing they’d have my back. They’d be bringing the boozetails to me—even better—so I had the time to grin at Dean. “What’s happening, hot stuff?”