5. Winter

A packet of cotton pads,three different cleansers, and a bottle of acetone later, and my forehead was dark red, but you couldn't make out the letters anymore.

In the morning, it was only slightly less red from the frantic scrubbing I'd put it through last night.

I lay there in my bed, scared to look in the mirror again. I stared at the ceiling instead. Last night would've seemed like a dream if the smell of nail polish remover hadn't still been stuck in my nose.

That psychopath. He was unhinged. He'd broken into my goddamn house, after ignoring me for a year. He'd spanked me.

The memory of his hand landing on my behind again and again had blood rushing to my face. When it came down to it, all my snappy comebacks and mean-girl zingers had disappeared, and everything had left my head except for one maddening reality.

I hadn't hated it.

As soon as I'd realized how good it felt, to be helpless in his arms, under his control, struggling to no avail and just forced to take it, I'd been too horrified to say anything. I couldn't ask him to stop. He'd have heard the lie in my voice.

I turned over, pressing my hot face against the sheets. Something was wrong with me. I was too sheltered, or frustrated, or something. Too used to the polite young men my parents set me up with pressing a dry kiss to my cheek after driving me home at a respectable hour. So much so that the pure, wild energy of a bad boy like Asher, someone I couldn't control or manipulate, had broken something inside me.

When Trent had laid his gross hand on me at dinner, it hadn't been anything like the slow, atomic melting sensation that had happened deep inside when Asher had touched me.

It wasn't just that he didn't follow the rules or care about breaking them. It was him.

And he knew it. When his fingers had traced a path up my thigh, he'd felt the evidence of how much his little psycho act had turned me on. He knew. The fact that he knew was going to haunt me the rest of my days. My pride and dignity had left the building. The sobering realization that if he'd decided to finger me right there and then, I'd have welcomed it with open legs. There was something wrong with me.

A knock sounded at the door. The maid had come to tidy my room. I glanced guiltily at the picture frame I'd smashed with my bad aim last night. I'd put all the shards in the trash, but it still felt like a dickish thing to do.

Spoiled. Little. Brat.Asher's voice taunted me inside my head. Great, he'd become a menace to my sanity now, even when he wasn't present.

I told the maid to come in, warned her about the glass, then grabbed my phone. It was already full of messages from Selena, the only person who ever texted me.

What are you going to wear tonight?

I'm thinking something sequined, but not like…common, you know?

Can I borrow your black Valentino minidress, in case I can't find anything I like today?

Hello? I'm trying to plan New Year's Eve, and you're sleeping?

Right, it was New Year's Eve. One of the reasons why my parents usually didn't come for my birthday. They were invited to all sorts of fancy galas to ring in the new year. Staying home in Hade Harbor for New Year's wasn't usually on their list of things they could do.

I should be grateful for this year, and relieved that my dad hadn't found out about last night. Yeah, grateful you got Asher fired instead. A pang of guilt hit me, but I shoved it away. Any guilt I would have felt over his situation had dissolved under the acetone I'd had to use on my face to clean off the permanent marker. Asshole. My facialist was going to be furious. God only knew what kind of skin barrier damage that maniac had caused. Who writes on someone's face? The same kind of person who breaks into their house to spank them and cut their hair off. And you liked it. No!

I took a deep breath and pried my shoulders from under my ears. It was over. He'd taken his revenge. We were even. Now, I could just go back to pretending that Asher Martino didn't exist, and then everything would be right in the world again.

I got dressed and slapped an avalanche of concealer on my forehead before driving over to the Chickadee Diner. It was a crappy retro joint that the football team and the cheerleading squad had been coming to for years. There was a comforting nostalgia in following old traditions while home for the holidays. Selena had twisted my arm to come, and sure enough, as soon as I walked in the door she was at my side.

"Did you bring the dress?" she asked, rifling through my bag.

"Yes, but I left it in the car. You thought I was going to stuff it in my handbag?"

She clapped her hands together and smiled gleefully. "Thanks, bitch. Because of you, I'm going to be the belle of the ball."

I wasn't sure that Beckett Anderson's cliff-top mansion New Year's Eve bash could really be described as a ball, but Selena was prone to exaggeration. I couldn't complain too much. She was my best and pretty much only friend. Her mother had been friends with mine since we were kids, and because of that, she'd been in my social circle before I brought my guard up. Not that I trusted her as far as I could throw her, but she was honest. She didn't hide her intentions or pretend to be a good person. She was an unapologetic mean girl, queen bee, and that was just her. Take it or leave it.

"Everyone's here," Selena told me, slipping her arm through mine and steering me between the red leather booths. "Even the Ice Gods."

"Wait, what? Why?" I'd stopped in my tracks at her words. Panic bubbled up in my chest. I couldn't see Asher right now. Not after last night. Not when he knew what his rough, humiliating touch had done to me.

She raised an eyebrow at me. "How should I know? They felt like pie and milkshakes? I'm not a mind reader. Shall we go and ask them?" She turned around and focused on a booth near the back. "Martino is looking extra fine now that he's back in town. Colorado did him even more favors than he was born with, which is just rude when you think of how butt-ugly some of our football players are. Marcus is hot, as always. It's just bad manners that the others have girlfriends now."

"I don't want to talk to them. Let's get something to eat, I'm starving."

Selena sighed. "You eat, I'm on a diet for your dress. My mom and I are fasting. It's a fun way of making not having money for groceries seem like a choice."

We slid into an empty booth, the surrounding ones filled with other cheerleaders and football players.

"What? I thought your mom got that gig at the hospital."

"Yeah, she did. It's not going great, though. Cici's got that special school to go to, and you know it's not cheap."

Selena's little sister had severe learning difficulties and couldn't go to a regular school. She'd been happy at a private school for special-needs students until their father had died of a sudden heart attack a few years before and thrown their lives into disarray. Selena's family had been close with mine, our dads were even in Invictus H.H Group together, but that all changed when her father died. Selena, her mother, and her sister were on their own, and it wasn't easy. A fact about Selena that she didn't allow anyone to know, if she could help it, was that she was on a full scholarship at HHU gifted by her father's trust. One of the last things he'd managed to provide for his family.

"I'll talk to my dad about it. Invictus H.H Group could sponsor her…or I will," I suggested.

She rolled her eyes at me. "Bitch, no one wants your money here. It's no good. But Invictus… Yeah, maybe that could work. It's a good cause, they could probably write it off or something."

I nodded firmly. "If not, I'm sure my mom can find some program to help at one of the hundred charities she chairs."

Selena sighed and nodded, glancing longingly at the menu.

"You want something? My treat."

She shook her head slowly, her attention still on the shiny laminated sheet. "I'm fasting, remember."

"Right, of course." I then went ahead and ordered double the food I could possibly eat, knowing she might be too proud to let me pay, but she'd eat my leftovers if I said I was going to waste them.

"So, I think tonight is the night," she said, reaching out and snagging a paper off a nearby table. It was the Harbor Herald, the campus paper.

"The night for what?"

"Asher Martino." The sound of his name on her lips gave me a jolt.

"What about him?" I strived for nonchalant, even though my heartbeat had picked up.

"Well, he's back on the Hellions, he goes to school with us again, lives in the Hellions' dorm…He must be overwhelmed with catching up and looking for a shoulder to cry on."

She raised the paper and tapped the picture on the front page. It was Asher in his high school Hellions jersey, an action shot. The headline claimed that home talent couldn't stay away from Hade Harbor for long. There was a whole article about his hockey accomplishments. Great, just what the arrogant jock needed.

I pushed the paper aside. "I don't know, I wouldn't be so sure. He seems confident enough to me." Not to mention insane.

Selena scoffed. "Like you'd know anything about him. You aren't exactly a hockey enthusiast."

"And you are?"

"There is something I like about hockey…if not Asher, Marcus is a good plan B, though he's not really a fan of mine," Selena sighed.

"And Asher is?"

Selena tossed her head. "Maybe it's time to look outside the Ice Gods, to the rest of the team," she sighed.

"Whatever. After last night, I'm swearing off men." I'd called Selena on the way home to talk about Trent Fitzgerald. Since Selena's late father had been part of Invictus H.H Group as well, she knew the family.

"If Trent is interested in you, count yourself lucky. That boy is going to be rich as Croesus one day."

"There's more to a man than his bank balance."

"Yeah, I know, why do you think I like the Ice Gods? It's not for their checking accounts…but there's a reason why you get those conquests out of the way at college. Trent is the sort of man you marry."

"I'd rather die," I announced shortly.

"Well, don't be overdramatic or anything. You're just saying that because your dad is still alive. Believe me, when he's gone, and everything starts drying up, you'll pray for a guy like Trent to come along." Selena sighed. "There's Jessie, remember her from the squad?"

I turned to follow her gaze and saw the girl in question. She'd joined the cheerleading squad when I'd been a senior. She was painfully shy and timid. It looked like being a cheerleader hadn't really changed that.

She was edging past the tables of HHH football players with nerves that were palpable. The idiots were sitting in two booths, with an aisle between them, and had decided to toss the ball back and forth over the gap.

"Still as quiet as a mouse," Selena snorted. "I wouldn't be letting those bozos throw balls around so close to my face."

"No, you'd just let the hockey team do that," I quipped.

Selena elbowed my side. Just then, one of the throws went wide and hit Jessie before she'd managed to get clear of the danger zone. Her backpack fell, and the contents scattered across the floor.

"Ouch, embarrassing much," Selena muttered.

Her cell phone came to rest beside my foot. I grabbed it and got up, bending to pick up other fallen items on the way.

I lowered myself beside her. "Nothing's broken, is it?"

A snigger broke through the babble of male voices in the aisle. "Seems like Jessie's on the rag."

I rolled my eyes at Jessie, grabbing the pads that had fallen from her bag and stuffing them back in, but Jessie's eyes had filled with tears. Her cheeks were red as hell, and she was sniffling.

"What's with the granny pads? Maybe her pussy's too loose to keep a tampon in."

I ignored the ignorant comments to focus on the girl who looked like she wanted to die.

She was embarrassed. It seemed like a small thing, but she was shy, and she probably thought most of the dumb meatheads watching us right now were hot and didn't want to admit she was a fully functioning human female in front of them.

I grabbed a pad and stood.

Folding my arms over my chest, I fixed one of the players leaning over us with a cool glare.

"It's mine. Got something to say about it?"

Silence fell. Four pairs of eyes fixed on mine and didn't dare glance away. I stared the ringleader, Evan, down. He was the quarterback at HHH and thought that made him God's gift. He was insufferable.

"It was just a joke, Winter," Evan muttered.

"Really?" I stepped closer to him. "Tell me another joke about my vagina. I dare you."

The silence was deafening. Honestly, I was abusing the fact that the players, without exception, knew my father was the team's biggest donor and that they couldn't afford to upset me.

"Whatever, who cares?" Evan said after a moment, backing down. "I'm sorry, Jessie. My bad."

"Oh, and FYI — there are no such thing as big vaginas, just small dicks…got it?" I called after him and his idiot friends, still staring him down until he dropped back into his booth and shut his dumb mouth.

"Thanks," Jessie mumbled as she stood beside me and put her backpack on.

"No problem. You can't let them get to you," I told her.

She nodded, a small smile playing around her lips. "I know I shouldn't but that doesn't mean it's not hard."

"Yeah, I know. Some jerk will always be able to get to you. The key is not to let them see they managed it…poker face, that's the way," I squeezed her arm, feeling oddly maternal over her. I knew exactly what the football team was like, and I hated the thought that they were continuing their reign of terror over impressionable cheerleaders now that Selena and I had graduated from HHH. Selena had always been able to put them in their place when she'd been captain.

Jessie smoothed her expression and I nodded approvingly. "That's it. Now, shoulders back, head up, and walk like you own the place," I smiled at her.

She sauntered toward the doors, trying out my advice. It was amazing what a good poker face could do for confidence. I'd worn mine for so long, I'd forgotten what I looked like underneath. Until last night. Ugh. Why did everything remind me of last night?

I headed back to my table and grabbed the empty soda glasses. "I'm getting us refills," I told Selena.

"Whatever, I'm not eating, remember?" Selena said, a French fry dipped in ketchup already halfway to her mouth.

The path to refill the sodas, however, brought me dangerously close to the hockey team. There were a few of them, plus the Ice Gods themselves, near the kitchen. I quickly scanned the group and immediately felt a dark, intense pair of eyes on me.

Asher.I didn't look at him, but I could tell that he was staring at me. Last night skittered through my mind, my insides shivering. That insufferable asshole. I shouldn't be scared to meet his eye. I should show him I was unbothered by last night's antics. He couldn't scare me that easily, even if that wasn't strictly true.

I was scared of how turned on I'd been.

Scared that he'd unlocked some dark and violent need I'd never known I had. Something the stuffed shirts I'd dated to please my dad hadn't come close to exposing.

Poker face, Winter, remember? Swallowing my nerves, I sauntered past and waved at Eve, who was sitting between her psycho brother and her boyfriend, Beckett. I met Asher's eye and flipped my hair back over my shoulder, dismissing him and his attention like it was nothing.

Who's the bitch now, Martino?

My flash of bravery lasted until I had passed their table and reached the ice machine. I filled both our glasses with ice and then moved to the soda.

I was almost finished filling the second cup when a deep voice made me jump and spill soda all over my hand.

"Tell me the truth, Your Majesty. Which one was redder this morning…your ass or your forehead?"

I took my time setting down the drinks, ignoring him as much as possible, and wiping my sticky hand on a paper towel.

I didn't expect him to touch me. I wasn't prepared for it. His hand wrapped around the uneven strand of hair he'd cut, and he tugged hard, forcing me to stare up at him. He was standing right damn beside me.

"Nice haircut." He smirked.

"Let go right now, or I'll scream my head off."

"Go ahead. I dare you," he murmured.

My threat was empty, of course. That would be crazy. Instead, I rolled my eyes at him and turned as much as I could so as not to have to look at his smug, handsome face.

"That's what I thought. It seems like your first lesson in not being such a spoiled brat has taken."

"Fuck off, Martino, before you bore me to death. I know this little power trip must be the highlight of your life, but it's pathetic. Go find someone else to bully. You have no authority over me." I grabbed the two full glasses of soda and turned, coming up against his body, blocking me.

"Is that right?" he drawled.

I nodded, trying my best to exude uncaring energy. "Yeah. Your need to play Discipline Daddy to someone is boring, and like I've told you before, I have vibrators worth more than you, so move along."

Asher leaned in, his hands landing on the counter on either side of me. "You've got some fucking mouth on you, DeLaurie. One day, someone, somewhere, is going to show you that the sun doesn't shine out of your ass…and put you in your place."

"In my place?" I snorted, fighting the suffocating feeling of heat pooling in my core. What the hell was wrong with me? Was I actually enjoying this? He carried a knife, for fuck's sake; he'd cut my hair and spanked me. I was more messed up than I'd ever imagined. It was clearly past time to start seeing a therapist.

"Yeah, in your fucking place." He leaned in, his hot breath against my lips. "On your knees…crawling, naked and humble, until the brat act dies…"

I was transfixed by the intense glint in his eyes. "Then what happens?" I wondered aloud, and then immediately cursed myself for encouraging his psycho daydreams.

"Then…you find out who you really are, because this mean girl, Ice Queen thing? It's getting old."

I wet my lips, and his eyes followed the movement. I found my voice.

"Like I care what you think about me. You and your dumb hockey friends with pucks for brains could disappear off the face of the planet and I wouldn't even notice," I breathed.

Asher's eyes narrowed. "Is that right? What were you getting so worked up about last night then?"

Crap.I'd walked right into that one. Why couldn't I just ignore this guy?

Asher smirked. "If memory serves, I think you noticed me."

"You're insufferable, do you know that?" I muttered, tearing my burning eyes away from his asshole smirk.

"Tell that to your needy little cunt…she was the one weeping for me last night."

"Shh, keep your voice down. She? Have you lost your mind?" This conversation was running away from me. I glanced furtively over his shoulder. Could anyone hear us? The hockey team was loud behind us, and several of their voices were growing increasingly out of control.

"Of course, such a pretty little pussy is a she…you want me to name her for you?" His infuriating smirk was going to be the death of me.

I forced a condescending smile. "Look, I know that hockey players take a few too many blows to the head, but get this straight now, Martino — I'm not interested in playing any of your little games. I'm not interested in hockey players, period." I waved my hand over Asher's shoulder at the hockey players who were getting rowdy. "I mean, look at them. They don't even know how to act in public," I muttered scathingly, conveniently putting the football players and Jessie's incident out of my head.

Anyway, it wasn't like any of the football players were any better than the hockey ones. They were all huge and arrogant with a penchant for violence, and a major lack of personal boundaries, if Asher was anything to go by.

"By that logic, I suppose all cheerleaders are the same—" Asher started but broke off to frown at the noise coming from behind us.

I twisted to glance in the same direction, just as a fight broke out.

I didn't know any of the hockey players except the Ice Gods. This wasn't them. The table beside them had lost their shit. Two guys lunged at each other across the table, knocking plates and glasses to the floor. A worried waitress rushed into the mix and tried to pick up the broken dishes, but got slammed in the side when one of the guys heaved the other to the floor.

Assholes.

Shouts of the rest of the team telling them to knock it off filled the room, along with the quiet gasps of the waitress as she attempted to get to her knees.

She got up slowly, and the fallen hockey player got to his feet beside her.

"Shit, I cut myself. Can't you clean this shit up? Isn't that your job?" the player barked at the waitress.

He went to turn and was shoulder-checked hard. He staggered back a few paces, obscenities flying from his mouth until he saw who had stopped him.

Asher stood there, scratching his head, clearly perplexed and pissed off at the same time. I hadn't even felt him move away from my side.

"Martino, we all good? It was just an accident, man."

Asher laughed, and it was a chilling sound. "Sure, we're good, just apologize to the lady and pick up after yourself."

He pointed at the dishes on the floor. The diner was deadly quiet. The other hockey player blanched.

"Come on, man, isn't that the waitress's job? I'm not trying to be anyone's maid," he tried to joke.

He clearly didn't know that Asher's mom was a house cleaner, or that his sister had waitressed at this very diner. I hoped he got his head put through a wall.

Asher tilted his head to the side and stepped closer to the guy. He wasn't as tall as the other player, but there was an aura of violence around him that the other guy with his preppy loafers and ironed polo could only dream of, and they both knew it. There was no doubting who held the power in the face-off.

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. Apologize and clean up, before I feed you the rest of your lunch, broken plate, glass, and all."

I shivered. Asher's voice was damn menacing. He was all riled up over an asshole who'd been rude to a random girl. Was she his girlfriend? I wondered idly. No, I didn't think so. This was just Asher. He was famously overprotective. He'd managed to keep the entire school away from his sister for years, despite her being the prettiest girl there.

Once Asher was distracted watching the two guys who'd been fighting clean up, I made my escape.

"Here," I said to Selena, setting down her glass. "I think I'm going to go."

"Really? Yeah, it's a good idea, actually. We need to get ready, and we'll see these losers later."