This Is No Place for a Girl Like You (Harper's POV)

In a panic, I grabbed the bath towel hanging on the rack and wrapped it loosely around my chest, then pressed myself into the far corner of the bathroom.

"Get out."

I kept my voice as low as I could, trying not to sound like a girl.

My eyes trembled as Vaughn's face loomed closer—too close, too sudden, too sharp in its beauty. His pupils contracted for just a moment before his cool fingertips skimmed across my wet back, and I crossed my arms over my chest in a reflex, curling myself into as tight a ball as I could manage while crouched against the tiles, hiding the curve of my chest and what lay between my legs.

That ghost of a touch moved through me like a low current running up my spine. Something stirred lower down, a tingling warmth spreading from deep inside my thighs, and before I could stop myself a soft, suppressed sound escaped my lips.

Vaughn's fingertip traced the wet curve of my lower lip. I was breathing through my parted mouth, and I could feel his gaze settle on my tongue—I hadn't even realized I'd let it slip out.

His eyes darkened.

"Va——"

"Mm."

I'd barely started to speak, to beg him to leave me alone, when Vaughn pressed his finger deeper and caught my tongue, dragging it forward. A few drops of moisture fell from the tip of it, and I could feel his stare fixed there, burning with an intensity that was almost physical.

He watched for a moment. Then, without any warning, he closed the distance and took my mouth with his, kissing me with a hunger that left no room for argument.

My eyes went wide. I couldn't believe what was happening.

I was in no position to push him away—I didn't dare free my arms from where they were shielding my chest. Vaughn's lips and tongue invaded my mouth, moving with complete authority, and I could barely breathe. Only when he had taken nearly all the air I had did he finally release my tongue, shifting instead to pull at my lower lip.

"Ah——"

I bit him.

Vaughn pulled back, pressing his thumb to the corner of his mouth where I'd broken the skin. I was terrified inside, but I forced my chin up and met his eyes anyway.

He didn't look angry. He smiled, long fingers closing around my jaw with a firm grip, his expression carrying that particular edge of someone who enjoyed the game. "Harper," he said, "if you were a woman, I'd fuck you until you couldn't move."

He let the pause sit there deliberately, his gaze dropping to what lay below my waist.

His fingertips traveled slowly down my spine and came to rest at the most private place, tracing the outer ring of it.

"Mm——"

I bit down hard on my own lip, my whole body shaking against my will.

I couldn't let him get any closer. If this went any further, everything would be exposed.

"Trembling like that?" Vaughn let out a low laugh, his palm pressing against the small of my back, his fingertip sinking in just slightly. "I haven't even done anything to you yet…"

The bathroom door exploded inward with a single kick, slamming into the wall hard enough to shake loose dust from the grout lines between the tiles.

I shoved Vaughn away and scrambled back into the corner, putting distance between us in an instant.

Against the backlight flooding in from outside, the figure standing in the doorway was unreadable—I couldn't make out his expression, only the top button of his school uniform shirt fastened without exception, his tie knotted with precise, unforgiving symmetry. His shoulders nearly filled the entire door frame. He stood like a wall of cold stone.

Derek.

His gaze swept across my body, and for one fraction of a second—brief enough that I almost missed it—it stopped.

But the moment was too short, and the light was behind him, and I couldn't be certain what he had seen. I couldn't be certain whether Vaughn had noticed either.

Derek's eyes moved on without leaving a trace of what they'd registered, sliding from my bare wet skin to Vaughn.

"Vaughn." His voice carried no inflection at all, but every syllable was edged with cold. "What are you doing in here?"

Vaughn's hand was still suspended in the air. He tilted his chin upward without any particular hurry, showing none of the guilt of someone caught in the act. "Left my phone in the bathroom. Just came to get it."

"You need to put your hands on someone to pick up a phone?"

"He was in the way."

Derek didn't answer that.

He stepped inside, his dress shoes crossing over the wet floor, and positioned himself between the two of us. When he spoke to Vaughn, his tone didn't invite discussion. "Leave."

"You——"

"I said leave."

Vaughn held Derek's gaze for two seconds, then turned and walked out—but not before casting one last look in my direction. A single look that carried the weight of everything that had just happened, and the clear suggestion that it wasn't finished. That look alone was enough to make a cold knot settle in my stomach.

Vaughn was going to be a problem.

The bathroom was quiet now, just the two of us, and my heart was lodged somewhere near my throat. I held my position against the wall, arms locked over my chest, my wet hair plastered against my temples, still dripping at the ends.

I couldn't bring myself to look up at him. I only wanted him to leave.

Derek's gaze moved over me slowly.

Unlike Vaughn's, his attention was steady to the point of detachment—traveling from my wet hair down to my collarbone, to the arms barricading my chest, and then to the red pressure mark left by something at my waist.

"Do you live here?" he finally said, his voice flat and cold as ice.

"Yes… yes, Derek."

My own voice came out raw.

"Do you know who he is?"

"I… I know."

"You know, and you still let him in?" Something sharp surfaced briefly beneath his tone.

I didn't want to drag this out. I just wanted him gone. "Vaughn's phone fell in here, I——"

Derek let out a short, humorless sound. "His phone. With the door wide open. And you just let him walk in."

The contempt in it was unmistakable.

I pressed my lips together and said nothing. I didn't know how to explain it. Should I tell him Vaughn had forced his way in? That Vaughn had said I was hiding something? None of that was something I could say out loud.

Derek watched my silence, and something in his expression shifted—dimmed.

He took a few steps closer, looking down at me from where he stood. "If you're that wound up," he said, his voice carrying something close to disdain, "handle it yourself."

He dropped to one knee in front of me, gripped my jaw, and forced my head up. "This is Kingston Academy for Boys. It's not a stage for you to put yourself on display."

I looked at him without understanding.

What did he mean by that? Did he think I was gay? Did he think I had led Vaughn into something?

I pressed my fingernails into my palms. "I didn't."

"Whether you did or didn't," he said, "you already know the answer."

His eyes were pale and still, but somehow the weight of them made something inside me go unsteady in a way I couldn't account for.

Then Derek shifted his grip from my jaw to both my cheeks, drawing me toward him. Our lips were separated by no more than a few millimeters—close enough that the slightest movement forward would have closed the distance entirely.

"Don't go near anyone." His eyes stayed cold, and the warning in them was absolute. "You won't like what happens."

Looking into those eyes, something surfaced in my memory without asking permission—a fragment from that other night. Darkness, and a man's breath against my ear, the same unyielding tone, the same suffocating sense of being entirely in someone else's control——

The warmth between my thighs was slicker now than it had been when Vaughn touched me. More than when Vaughn touched me.

"Derek, don't worry. I'll keep my head down."

"See that you do."

He gave me one last unreadable look as he turned to leave, then the door swung shut behind him.

I let out a breath I'd been holding without knowing it and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor.

After a minute or two, I got up, turned the shower to cold, and stood under it from head to toe—as though the water could wash away the heat of shame that had settled over everything.

Too much had happened today. Too fast, too sudden, too much to process.

I made my way back to my small room—the room with no lock on the door—lay down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling.

My phone buzzed once.

A message appeared on the screen from a contact saved only as "M," and the words made my heart skip a full beat:

Miss Grayson — masquerade ball at Sterling Manor, Friday evening. As the designated party to the arrangement, your attendance is not optional.