Lords of Pain (The Royals of Forsyth University #1)(7)

Four years ago, to be exact.

She looks back at me and scowls. “Jesus Christ, Killian. You’re such a fucking asshole.”

“Yep,” I say, wiping off my dick. I bend and toss her the clothes in a pile on the floor. “You heard Tristian. I have a meeting. Go.”

She gapes and looks at my buddy. Tristian. One of my best friends since as far back as I can imagine. He and Rath and I have been through thick and thin, bad and worse. He’s seen way more sordid shit than my spunk running down some slut’s thighs. He just gives her a sharp grin and shrugs. If she’s looking for sympathy, he’s the wrong one to ask.

A moment later she’s out in the hall, trying to get her panties over her skinny hips and futilely covering tits. Like every LDZ hasn’t seen her naked and spread-eagled already.

Rath squeezes past her in the hall, saying, “You guys need to hurry up, Martin is about to lose it.”

I pull up my jeans and remind him, “Martin works for us. We’re the Lords, not him. He can chill the fuck out for a minute.”

“It’s not just Martin,” Tristian says, clearly annoyed with me. “The Dukes have their Duchess. The Counts have their Countess. Even the Princes have their Princess. We’re dragging ass with finding a Lady. Makes us look weak, Killer.” He says this even as he pulls the pistol from the waist of his jeans, shutting it in the drawer of my dresser. “I did not just spend three hours on the South Side negotiating with two people named Nick and Pretty Nick to have this be our downfall.”

I pull on a shirt, guessing, “Pretty Nick give you trouble?” He usually does. Despite the name, nothing about him is pretty.

“Nothing more than the usual,” he answers, folding his arms.

I rub my chin. “Do I need to have my dad talk to him?”

Rath cuts in, “What you need to do is not be fucking last year’s Lady.”

“He’s right.” Tristian nods. “That won’t fly once we have our own Lady.”

I roll my eyes at this, not needing them to tell me the rules here. Fidelity when it comes to a house’s girl is a joke. The Dukes, the Counts, the Lords…we fuck who we want, when we want, how we want. The Princes might get off on treating their girl like a princess, but that’s not us.

Either way you shake it, though, fucking a previous Lady is a huge affront—not just to the current Lady, but to the whole system itself. It says she’s worth having outside the context of The Game. It tells her she’s special. Better than the rest of the Ladies. Someone to keep around.

No Lady is any of those things.

“Relax,” I assure them both. “I just wanted to approach this with some post-nut clarity. You two will be panting over the first big-tittied whore who walks into this place, but I’ll be level-headed. We need some new blood. I’m sick of the same, tired pussy.”

Tristian stresses, “We have to choose someone good—someone interesting. I saw the Duchess last week, and she is fucking stacked.”

I scoff at this. “Big tits are nothing.” All the girls are pretty and slutty. It takes something special to really set one apart in this place.

“Choosing a Lady is the worst part of winning The Game,” Rath complains once again.

“Yeah,” Tristian agrees, mouth twisting into a devious smile, “but having one is the best part of winning The Game.”

The Game. The fuel that runs the Lambda Delta Zetas, or Lords, as everyone calls us. Despite the titles, the Lords are the highest tier frat on campus, and the most notorious due to the cutthroat Game played every year. It’s pretty simple, all the frats on campus compete for who gets the most points by participating in a variety of challenges.

Lords always win.

As a result of our long history of owning this town, the Lords reside in our fancy as hell brownstone, complete with custom, individual rooms, a cook, a personal assistant, and of course—the very best-worst part—our own Lady, hand-selected by the previous year’s winners.

Years ago, Tristian, Rath, and I made a pledge to own the Lords by senior year. We made it by our junior year instead. We didn’t even have to work for it—our names were enough to get us to the top—but we did anyway.

The Game isn’t the garden-variety university shenanigans. There’s a lot riding on the line. Reputation. Stacks of money. Careers. Mostly, it’s about proving that you’re the most ruthless, the most heartless, the worst of the worst, the cream of the creep crop. Some frats don’t even bother with it. The Princes treat their Princess like a pampered little show wife. But we know what this Game is all about.

It’s a competition that was practically made for us.

We moved in at the end of the summer, each of us taking a room in the house. Martin is our personal assistant who handles the logistics of the frat. Ms. Crane is the housekeeper and cook. They both come with the brownstone.

But the Lady? Well, that’s a special job, created by Lords decades before. A female college student is hand-picked to live in the house and provide for our needs—all of our needs—as we see fit. In return, she gets special status on campus, free room and board, and the badge of honor of surviving a year with the most merciless guys on campus. It takes a special kind of woman to handle a Lord. It takes even more to handle three of them—especially when those Lords are me, Tristian, and Rath.