RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (2 page)

“Well, don’t worry, we’ll
find someone,” I said, gently squeezing her arm to comfort her. “Like I said,
there are plenty of men here who would jump at the chance to kiss you.”

An abrupt silence fell over
the crowd of
guests,
the kind you’d expect to hear in
a forest when a tiger was on the prowl. I could feel the tension manifest in
the air before I ever looked to see why the room had become so hushed.
Everyone’s eyes were suddenly cast back toward the front door, their gazes holding
the wild glint you’d see in a panicked animal. My stomach clenched.

Did
someone come to complain about the party? My parents will kill me if they find
out where I am tonight…

“Is something going on?
Why’d everyone stop talking?” I asked Becky, who’d also noticed the eerie quiet
that pervaded the house, save for the uncomfortable shuffling of some of our
guests.

“I don’t know,” she said,
glancing back over her shoulder, frowning, her brow furrowed in concern. “You
don’t think the cops got called because of…”

Becky’s words faded as she
turned to look at what had caused the commotion—or lack thereof. Her eyes went
wide and her jaw sagged at what she’d seen. She fell into the same stunned
silence as the rest of the guest, swallowing nervously.

Fearing the worst I turned,
searching for whatever could have caused such a widespread reaction from so
many people at once. At first I didn’t see what everyone was staring at, just
the usual crowd of people who’d been in front of the door when Becky and I had
passed by it only a few moments ago, but they too were staring, taking more
than a few steps back from whatever or whoever had caught their attention. It
wasn’t until the crowd parted like the Red Sea that I spotted just what had
turned my party as silent as a funeral.

Standing in the doorway was
an all-too familiar figure, his lean, muscular body filling out his tight t-shirt
just enough to leave little of his physique beneath it to the imagination. His
gorgeous, short blond hair was combed back from a face that God himself must
have taken his sweet time carving from that smooth, flawless skin. I licked my
lips, my mouth suddenly dry as a boneyard. My heart hammered in my chest and my
palms became sweaty, and before I even realized it, I had fallen silent just
like the rest of the people around me. I couldn’t believe who I was seeing.

“Jess,” Becky whispered.
“What is your stepbrother doing here?”

I swallowed hard, trying to
find the words to express my own astonishment.

“I don’t know, Becky… He
wasn’t supposed to know about the party—I made
sure
he didn’t know. That was the whole reason we didn’t have it at
my house!”

“Well it looks like he
found out about it somehow,” she said as we watched that cocky grin form on Richard’s
face. Just seeing that damn smile made my cheeks burn—with anger or
infatuation, I couldn’t tell which, though one might certainly have led to the
other.

“He ruins
everything
,” I muttered, clenching my
fists, summoning up as much anger as I could in hopes of overpowering my almost
constant desire to throw myself into against his body.

My party was ruined.

The
Dick
had arrived.

_
TWO
_

Dick

I’d never seen so many
sweet little nerds in one place. It was a world of difference from the sea of
jocks and cheerleaders I had been swimming in only half an hour before. This
would be fun.

I stepped into the room,
watching as everything around me almost came to a complete stop. Girls’ heads turned,
biting lips as they saw the school’s top football star walk into their quiet
little party. Men turned their heads too, though their reactions were certainly
much different than their female counterparts. I had a reputation of being less
than friendly to the men of the
academic
tribe, but that had been sophomore stuff, things I looked back on as childish.
I was a man now, not at all interested in the role of bully. With maturity came
power.

“H-Hi Richard,” came a
mousy little whisper from somewhere to my right. I turned my head, smirking as
I spotted a gaggle of bespectacled girls all crowding closer. “We didn’t think
you’d come to a party like this.”

They were cute, in that
nerdy little librarian sort of way. I could sense a wild side beneath their bookish
exterior. Even my own stepsister wore that conservative style with a weird
sense of pride.

“Oh,” I said, chuckling as
I ran a hand over my short cut hair, “I wouldn’t miss this party for the world,
ladies.”

The tittering giggles was
almost enough to shatter glass as they started to fawn over me. I certainly
didn’t mind. I loved the attention. The spotlight suited me, as did the
affection of the women that came with it. Besides, I needed to mingle. The
truth was I had come to this particular party for one person and one person
only—but I couldn’t possibly let her know that. Not yet…

“
Richard!
” came the all-too-familiar voice of my stepsister,
Jessica. I did my best to put on a look of shock as I turned my head to look at
her, pencil skirt, turtleneck, and all. “What are you doing here?!”

“Jessica?” I asked, a mock
tone of shock heavy in my voice as I spread my arms out wide. “What’re
you
doing here? Wait. Is this
your
party?”

Her face reddened into an
adorable maroon color, the one I’d always enjoyed putting on her cheeks. My
sister and I had always had a distinctly love-hate relationship, emphasis on
the
hate
. I knew for a fact that
she’d kept this party a secret from me just so I wouldn’t do something like
this—which was exactly why I had to do it.

“You’re supposed to be at
your own party!” she hissed, stomping closer and giving the other girls a
scathing look that sent them running. It was kind of hot, the way all her
little nerd friends respected her. She was valedictorian, head of more clubs
than I could even count, and our school’s
mathlete
team leader. Calling Jessica smart would be doing her the greatest insult; my stepsister
was a genius. “That’s the whole reason I planned this party for tonight—so that
you
wouldn’t be here!”

“Well that’s just mean,
sis!” I said, my hurt expression faltering as a grin began to crack again
across my lips. “And for your information, I
was
at my other party. But I got bored—and then I heard somebody
was throwing a
rockin
’ party across town! I thought
I’d stop by.”

“Richard, this is
my
party. I don’t need you coming in
here and ruining it!”

“Call me Dick, sweetheart.
You know how much I hate that name.”

“C’mon Richard,” she
replied, giving me a glare I’d always found sexy.

“I’m not going to ruin
anything,” I said, glancing around at the less-than-lively atmosphere. “Jess,
I’m here to get this place jumping!”

“Please, don’t—” she began,
but before I heard another word out of her mouth, I was making my way to the
sound system with my iPhone in hand. I wove my way through the other
intellectuals my sister called friends and pushed aside the geek hovering over
the stereo. It was a pretty sweet setup—something you could always count on at
a nerd party was that they’d have the best tech to play with.

“Sorry, but this crap needs
to go,” I said, unplugging the in-use iPod and tossing it to the makeshift DJ.
I could certainly do without the greatest pop hits from the eighties. The
moment I hit play, the walls thrummed with the deep bass as the sounds of
Nelly’s
The Fix
pulsed through the
speakers.

“Richard, what the hell!”
Jessica screamed over the music. “Nobody here likes this—”

But before she could
finish, a cheer had already risen up in the room. More and more people started
to move in time with the beat and the sexually charged lyrics. It wasn’t long
before most of the party was dancing dirty. The look on Jessica’s face was
priceless, a mix of shock and indignation as she saw her friends start to grind
against one another like they were in a club.

“See?” I asked, leaning
down to whisper into her ear, “
This
is a party. They want to let loose for a change.”

She stood there in stunned
silence, her eyes fixated on the people who she’d thought would never act so…
dirty
. I got a weird sense of enjoyment
out of the way her perception of everything around her seemed to shatter,
watching her question just how much she knew of the people around her and maybe
what she knew about herself.

“I…” she stammered,
watching as her once quiet party turn into something she’d never anticipated.
Even her best friend Becky had started to shake her ass on the dance floor,
much to Jessica’s dismay.

“You’re going to have to
get used to parties like this, Jess,” I said over the music. “This is what
college life is all about.”

She let out a muted cry of
frustration, lost amongst the throbbing bass before she turned and walked into
the crowd to collect her friend and save her from my devilish music. I couldn’t
help but laugh at the way she stomped away, furious that even at her own party
I could turn everything upside down.

But I was only just getting
started.

“Anyone looking to have a
little real fun, follow me!” I shouted to the crowd before turning heel.

“Truth or Dare!” I shouted,
pushing open the door to what I assumed must have been the master bedroom. By
Becky’s squeals of protest behind me, I knew I’d picked the right door. Spinning
round I took stock of my latest followers. Sure enough, the girls who’d met me
on my way in were here, along with Becky and a few of Jessica’s other nerdy
friends. Surprisingly, Jessica herself had come along, arms crossed and her
brow furrowed. She looked ready to breathe fire.

“We’re not doing that!”
Jessica said over the throbbing music still pulsing in through the open door.

“Not going to play the best
party game ever created?”

“I think you mean the worst,
Dick
,” Jessica snapped, leaning
against the walls as the others all made themselves comfortable around me. “Who
the heck wants to be dared to do stupid things like stand on their head or tell
their secrets?”

I let out a loud, almost
mocking laugh.

“Oh, you sweet, innocent,
girl,” I said, sitting myself down on the floor, two bashful little wallflowers
quickly taking up the spaces on either side of me. “We’re all at least
eighteen, Jess. Tonight we’re breaking out the
adult
version of ‘Truth or Dare.
’_”

Everyone crowded around in
a circle, some of the party guests sitting on Becky’s mom’s bed while others
crowded around on the floor, nervous smiles on all of their faces. I knew kids
like these were just waiting for excuse to cut loose and go a little wild, and
I had every intention of being the person to set that powder keg off.

“This is so stupid,” Jess
muttered, taking a seat opposite me on the floor, her legs folded demurely. “We
were having fun before you got here, Richard.”

But from the mutterings and
nervous squirming of the other guests, that statement seemed less than
accurate. Even Becky couldn’t meet Jessica’s gaze, biting her lip as she
glanced over at one of the other boys in the group—a boy who looked a little
familiar, though I couldn’t exactly place him.

Jessica too seemed to
notice everyone else’s discomfort and frowned, her face turning that cute shade
of red all over again. Seeing her mad was honestly the highlight of my life
ever since our parents had moved in together and gotten married.

“Whatever,” she muttered
after a moment, resigning herself to sitting back and playing the game. “But
I’m not doing any of your stupid dares.”

“That works for me,” I
said, chuckling as I searched for my first victim.

It was so hard to choose at
first, but after a moment of watching everyone, my eyes kept coming back to
Becky as she stared at the boy a few spaces away from herself. He wasn’t a
terrible looking guy—in fact, there was a charming quality about him that I
knew would drive some girls insane. I smirked, deciding that Becky would make
for the perfect start to tonight’s festivities.

“
Beckster
!”
I said, knowing full well how much she hated that name. “You’re first.”

“What?” she squeaked, her
cheeks flushing with color as she looked around at all the other people around
her. “Me?”

“That’s right,
Beckerino
,” I said, my grin growing wider the more nervous
she became. With every new nickname, more giggles erupted from the crowd. “So,
what’s it going to be? Truth or Dare?”

Her eyes widened and she
gulped down what might have been her own bile. Becky was never one for the
spotlight, and seeing her squirm was almost as much fun as seeing Jessica
squirming herself, though that brought to mind a much different kind of
squirming. Becky glanced down at her knees, sweat beginning to bead at her
temples, wringing her hands as though I’d just asked her to choose between her
parents and a bus full of children.

“Tick-tock, Becky. Take too
long and I pick for you,” I said in a sing-song voice, which only seemed to
make her more nervous.

“I—
Dare
! Wait! Truth!”

“Sorry, Becks, no take-
backsies
,” I said with my shit-eating grin. “Dare it is.”

Maybe it was just the kind
of guy that I was, but dares were always my favorite, even when I was on the
receiving end of them. Something about making people do what I wanted just did
it for me in a way I couldn’t describe, even when I had to do something else in
return.

“I dare you…” I began,
making sure to draw my words out, enhancing the tension that seemed to bubble
up in the room as all eyes turned on Becky. “I dare you to go into that closet
and play a good, old-fashioned game of Seven Minutes of Heaven with whatever
guy I send in there after you.”

“Seven Minutes of
What?
” Jessica asked, her tone
incredulous. “What is this, the eighties?”

“I… okay…” Becky said,
biting her lip and glancing again at the dark-haired guy she’d been eying since
we’d sat down. “Just seven minutes, right?”

“Becky!” Jessica exclaimed,
her eyes wide. I did my best to hold in my laughter, watching Becky shrug in
response to Jessica’s objections before she disappeared into the roomy walk-in
closet and shut the door behind her.

Jessica turned her venomous
gaze back on me as I combed over the prospective gentlemen in the room,
deciding on whether I should grant Becky’s silent wish of having the young man
she’d been eyeing be the one to play the game with her. Deciding to be
merciful, I granted her wish, pointing at the charming boy and motioning him to
follow after Becky for his seven minutes.

Another distressed sound
from my stepsister told me that I’d once again made the perfect choice as the
young man smirked and eagerly strode across the room. I couldn’t shake how
familiar that guy felt as he closed the door after him, blocking both he and
Becky from sight.

“While they’re doing that,
let’s move on to the next victim,” I said, my eyes immediately resting on my stepsister,
an enormous grin on my face. Her face went immediately went pale, her frown
deepening as I tapped my chin in thought. “Jessica… Truth or—”