The Wild Mustang & The Dancing Fairy: A Gorgeous Villain Prequel Novella by Saffron Kent (ereader for textbooks .txt) 📗

But now I look at him.

Only to find that he’s looking back.

That his wolf eyes glint and shine as much as his split lip that’s bleeding.

I don’t know what I see in his gaze but whatever it is makes my heart spin in my chest. Makes it race and pound and squeeze.

This is it, isn’t it?

I’m never gonna see him again.

Well, I will see him at school but I’ll never see him like I did tonight. Or talk to him or be near him or touch his hoodie.

I’ll never dance for him either.

I bite my lip at the thought.

The rogue thought.

I shouldn’t want to anyway but I do.

I do and I…

“Hey, Ledger!”

For the second time tonight, Reed jars the breath out of me when he calls out, this time to my brother, while still keeping his eyes on me.

Ledger, who had started to walk away, comes to a halt and turns around to face him.

Reed isn’t alone anymore. Along with Tempest – who’s staring at Ledger with wide gray eyes – others from the crowd have joined him now.

And I fist my hands at my sides as I hope and wish and pray that this isn’t going to get out of hand.

“I’m sorry,” Reed says, jerking his chin at him.

“For fucking what?”

“That you lost tonight.” Then, “Even though you deserved it.”

Around me, my brothers seethe and I watch some of the players from the Mustang camp snicker.

But Reed still obeys Conrad’s rule and simply flips him the finger before turning around and striding away.

But I can’t move.

Because Reed is back to looking at me.

His wolf eyes home in on me for a few seconds before doing a final sweep of my body and then looking away as he’s submerged by the crowd.

And I realize that he kept his promise, didn’t he?

The one I forced him to make before I danced for him.

He apologized to my brother.

***

It was someone from the party who told.

Someone from the party who texted someone else. Who in turn texted another someone else and that’s how Ledger got the news about where I was.

He tried to call me first.

To confirm, I think. Because he gave me the benefit of the doubt, but when I didn’t pick up and when the friend that I’d used as an alibi told him that she never saw me after school ended yesterday, he got pissed.

I’m guessing Conrad came along to calm Ledger down and to rein in the situation if it got out of hand. He’s been a witness to many such situations over the years he’s been coaching the two.

And when my other two brothers, who were trying to surprise us with a weekend visit, found out where I was, they came along in case Ledger needed reinforcements.

At least that’s what I’m guessing from past experiences – Ledger is the youngest brother and like they are with me, our older brothers are protective of him as well. Not that they’d tell him or that Ledger would like that since he’s all grown up and everything but still.

Anyway, they never told me why or what except how they found out where I was.

They never told me anything actually.

Last night when I tried to say something as soon as we reached home, they didn’t let me either.

Con told me to go get some sleep and the rest of them just dispersed without having a conversation with me.

Now it’s morning and they’re still not talking.

Con is shut up in his study and we all know not to disturb him when he’s working. One of the ground rules he set up for us when he quit college to come back and take over everything.

The rest of my brothers, I have no idea about.

They’re not home.

So I’m upstairs in my room, trying to get my homework done before my ballet class in the afternoon.

But ugh, I can’t focus.

They won’t even let me apologize to them. They won’t even talk to me. They won’t even…

There’s a knock on the door and I sit up straight; I’ve been lounging around in my bed with my books spread out in front of me, but now I close them, cross my legs and call out, “Yeah?”

The door opens and I see Con.

He’s got a slight frown on his forehead as he says, sort of roughly, “Hey.”

“Hey,” I say eagerly.

“You got a second?”

“Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

I say this with even more eagerness and my oldest brother, who is so freaking tall that he has to slightly hunch his shoulders to get inside my room, enters.

Without volition, my mind goes to him.

My mind goes to the fact that he’s just as tall, isn’t he?

Would he also have to hunch his mountain-like shoulders to get inside my childhood bedroom?

God, Callie. Not now.

I’m all ready to beat my stupid thoughts into submission but I don’t have to. They vanish on their own because as soon as Con enters and moves away from the doorway, I see the rest of my brothers.

They were hovering behind him and one by one, they enter too.

First Stellan, who almost has to hunch but not quite. Then Shepard, who enters with a slight grimace on his face because he thinks my room is too pink for his manliness, and finally, the brother who’s closest to me in age and hence has always been my best buddy, Ledger.

It takes them a few seconds to situate themselves around my room and from experience I already know where they’re all going to end up before they do.

Ledger leans against my desk, which is located by the white door. Shepard, the noisiest one, drags my desk chair out, spins it around and sits on it backwards with his arms on the backrest.

Stellan goes to stand by my window on the far side of the room. And the reason he does that is because Con is going to sit on the armchair right beside it, which he does a second later, and Stellan is Con’s right hand.

Maybe