Instead of being the fake trophy leader that his mother had wanted to place in the Headmaster position for, Michael actually had a vested interest in bettering the school and making sure its students and families didn’t get swindled out of their wealth by my father’s embezzlements.

“I had no idea you took such an interest in school operations,” Adam teased him as Michael was delegating various tasks to a handful of trusted members of the student body. One of which was putting together the next exam schedule. “I thought you were going to abolish exams.”

Michael chuckled. “People change, I guess.”

Adam nodded, and I was pleased to see all of them getting along so well on the same team. We all knew that it would only be a matter of time before my father made some sort of move to try and abolish the school, or us, or both. But none of us wanted to run anymore. We all had too many things that we had given up or had taken from us by my father. And none of us felt like we were going to let him get away with running the city and its people into the ground. We were going to stay and fight.

The only person that didn’t feel like he had a solid reason for wanting to exchange our freedom for this fight was Julian. He was on-board, and he wasn’t going to leave without us, or at least not without me, but he still seemed to have a lingering desire to just hop a train and get the hell out of dodge. He didn’t seem quite as obsessed with taking down Jack White as the rest of us were, and that was because he didn’t know about his parents. I had to tell him. I had to let Julian know that his parents, who, even though he hadn’t been super close with, he loved and respected, had aided and hidden my father during this entire time, which allowed him to grow and tighten his hold on the academies. I just didn’t want to.

I felt as though we were in a holding pattern. We had all talked about various ideas and plans and ways to expose my father and to keep all of us safe at the same time. But until he made a move, Michael thought it was best to stay low and stay together. Michael had the Headmaster’s suite wholly cleared out. He turned it into a minimalistic loft where we could all stay together. After all the separation, I never once complained about all of us being on top of each other again. In fact, we were all more on top of each other than we ever had been before, but at least we all had our own rooms.

“You’re kind of quiet tonight,” Julian said as he leaned into me on the couch.

Michael and Adam had just gotten up to go dig up some drinks. I was hoping that I wouldn’t start swigging bottles of wine one at a time like my mother had when she was going through her roughest times, but I figured an excess of alcohol consumption was one of the least of my worries. Especially since this situation was far from over. It was nice to have a little reprieve, though, and it gave me time to think about things.

“Julian,” I said gently, figuring now would be as good a time as any. “I need to tell you something about your parents.”

He furrowed his brow. “My parents?”

“Yeah. It’s something my father told me about your parents.”

He sat up to look at me and waited. He was always so good about waiting. I was awful at it. I blurted everything out, and even when I couldn’t, I was still terrible at holding anything in. I always thought that it was better to be blunt and honest right from the start, a quality that I got from my mother.

However, it seemed like I had been doing a lot of lying and secret-keeping that past year. With only a few months until graduation, and hopefully, only a few months until we could all wrap this mess up and finally leave Charleston, I wanted to be better at being truthful one hundred percent of the time. I did wish that I had a little more tact and decorum about it, though.

I drew in a deep breath. “My father said that your parents are the ones who hid and harbored him all of these years.” There it was, blurted out. Ugh.

Julian didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look that shocked either.

“Did you already know that?” I asked him.

He didn’t move. Only his lips did. “No.”

I swallowed hard. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. To be honest, my parents always seemed like they were leading double lives. They were only ever half-present for much of the time. This makes sense now. It makes sense that they were trying to do their best raising me, but without getting too close to me in case, I would grow up to be as fierce and investigative as your mother was.”

“You’re taking this a lot better than I had expected,” I said.

Julian shrugged his shoulders and wrapped his arms around me. “What does it matter?” he said. “The only person I care about now is right here in my arms. My parents have their own lives to lead and their own beds to lie in.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. It started as just a small kiss, the kind of kiss that two people who were “more than friends” have on occasion. But something changed at the moment that brought the heat of it all rushing to the surface again.

The small and tender kiss gave way to more when Julian’s tongue pushed softly through my parted lips and found mine. It grew as he pulled closer to me, and I shifted my hips to get closer to his lap. By the time I had started grasping my fingers in his hair, he lifted me up off the couch and carried me to his bedroom.

He set me down and laid over me, and I was reminded of that time in the tree when I felt his longing press against me, and he tried to push it out of his mind. This time, there was no pushing it off as the hard bulge in his pants pressed against me on the bed. I had wanted Julian ever since I could remember. Even before I knew how much I wanted him, the feeling sat simmering under the surface.

When I thought about all the times that we wrestled around playfully, or laid wrapped up with each other, or saw each other half-naked; now when I thought about those moments, they didn’t seem innocent and platonic at all. Now I could feel the urgency of all that yearning we had kept for each other hidden neatly away just below the surface.

He could feel it, too.

I tugged at his shirt and he lifted his body up, leaving only his pelvis sitting against mine with his body straddling me so that I could pull it up and over his head. I ran my hands over his chest and down his abs and into the top of his pants. He didn’t look like the boy I grew up with anymore. Not with his chiseled body and happy trail that led down into his pants where the huge and bulging part of him pressed against his jeans.

He pulled my shirt over my head and unclasped my bra, tossing it over the side of the bed. When I felt his hand on my breasts, I was jealous for a moment of all the other girls he had touched before me.

Julian and I should have been the first for each other.

But when he came back down to kiss me, and the soft waves of his hair fell against my face, I knew that none of that mattered. We were there together, and it was finally time for the separation between our bodies to be over. He kissed me as I loosened his pants and helped me to pull them over his hips until he kicked them onto the ground. After all the time I felt him ever-so-slightly against me and after every time I caught myself looking at his pants at random moments, I could now finally see and feel him completely.

And the throbbing cock that hung between his legs against me made me squirm beneath him.

Julian carefully pulled my pants off in one swift movement and then scooped his hand behind the small of my back to bring me perfectly into the place beneath him where we seemed to fit together like a puzzle. His cock, pressed against my heated folds. Throbbing for me, as if I were the only place his body wanted to be. And as I gazed up into his eyes, his mouth came down against my own. His tongue, exploring my mouth before I whispered against his lips.

“Where my body ends, yours begins. That’s what you always said,” I reminded him.

He smiled as he reached between our bodies and lined himself up with my entrance.

When he pushed himself inside of me, light burst forth from my mind’s eye. We fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, and the way he stroked the back of my clit made me wetter than I’d ever been. I felt my arousal dripping down my ass crack as our bodies rolled together. My arms, threaded around his neck as our hips met each other in the middle. I breathed the air he afforded me. My lips ached to be against his own. And as his thrusts drove me higher and higher into the heavens, I groaned down the back of his throat.

Before our tongues intertwined with one another.

“Oh, Lisette. I love you so fucking much,” he whispered.

His words drove me higher into the clouds, until I felt as if I were soaring over earth. I felt the heat of his words deep in my gut as that coil began to tighten. I bucked my hips ravenously. I felt his hands pawing at me, trying to touch every single part of me at once. We were a knotted entanglement of limbs and passion, fervently chasing the same end as one another.

And when I felt his cock thicken against my walls, my eyes rolled back.

“Oh, that’s it,” I groaned.

He rolled his hips quicker. “Come for me, Lisette. Do it. Take me with you.”

I clawed at his back. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

He growled. “Oh, yeah. Grab that dick. Holy fuck.”

Julian made love to me in a way that was like no other. He was gentle and strong, patient, but steady. It was as if every movement of our bodies undulated in a rhythm that climbed further toward a perfect utopia. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. His movements became stunted. And when I felt his cock burst within me, it pulled me over the edge with him.

I shook against his body with the force of my orgasm until I collapsed beneath him. Spent, and panting.

And wanting more.

As we lay in each other’s arms afterward, I thought about the night in my dorm room when we had almost had sex. Where he professed his love for me and how things always seemed to get in between the two of us at the most inopportune time.

“I’m glad we didn’t have sex that night in my room,” I said.

Julian slid off to the side and pulled me close. “Why? Was it that underwhelming for you?”

I sat up and turned around to look at him. His eyes that had been filled with happiness and fulfillment were now filled with a bit of concern. And I needed to remedy thanks to the careless way that I blurted out all of my thoughts.