Professed Read online

  Professed

  Nicola Rendell

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  © 2016 by Nicola Rendell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs

  Interior Designer: The Write Assistants

  Editing: Aquila Editing & Alexis Durbin from Indie Girl Proofs

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written consent of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  www.nicolarendell.com

  www.facebook.com/AuthorNRendell

  http://bit.ly/ProfessedSoundtrack

  For him, my love.

  Dulce pomum quum abest custos.

  Forbidden fruit is sweetest.

  1

  He’s all alone, in a gold half mask. Messy blond hair, killer jawline. Simple, thin, black tie. Lean like a rock climber and easy in his body. He lowers his glass of absinthe. His eyes slide up every inch of me, land on my face, and I see his mouth form a single word:

  Damn.

  I drag my eyes away from him. Above me, the roof of the crypt vaults up three stories, everything granite and dark marble, lit by nothing but church candles. On a scaffold platform, snaked with cords, the DJ is perched above the dance floor, where dancers grind against one another on top of gravestones. The DJ looks like a human blackbird with a strange beaked mask covering his face. Tux pants, a tight, black motorcycle jacket, each hand on a turntable. Below him, in the dancing crowd, I watch a guy in a phantom mask slide his hand right up a woman’s dress. Her body arches backwards as he fingers her. The Whips, one of the secret societies, are here too. The Victoria’s Secret Angels meet BDSM. Girls in black harnesses and body paint, snapping riding crops through the air towards astonished carved angels in the walls. Two girls writhe, chained to one another around a column, with two men on their knees in front of them. One of the men lifts his mask and licks up one of the girl’s thighs, and her hands tighten on her restraints. In the corner, two girls in nothing but nipple clamps sling darts at a board shaped like the Yale official crest. Above it all leer the faces of furious gargoyles and purposefully forgotten Civil War heroes.

  He’s still looking. I sweep my hair forward over my shoulder and adjust my mask. It’s flexible plastic, but looks like lace, and one side has the eye of an ostrich feather. Etsy, of course, and borrowed. I feel a flush come to my face. That look he’s giving me, it’s the hottest thing in the room. Even hotter than the flaming metal trash can to my left.

  It’s a dinged, old, industrial thing, with fire licking up over the top. Into it, I drop my invitation, adding it to the already burnt dozens. The fire ignites the white ink before the black cardstock, and in the flaming letters I read one last time:

  the lux et veritas secret society

  invites you

  to

  the secretem luxuria

  masked. black-and-white. no underwear.

  11pm. tonight

  burn upon entry

  I grip the black satin ruched sides of my dress and yank it down for the seven-hundredth time, while the blond shamelessly lifts my hem from twenty feet away. The last time I wore this dress was three years ago at my high school prom. My date was a guy who smelled overwhelmingly of Axe body spray and preferred to dance at the edges of the crowd by moving his hands up and down his body like the gopher in Caddyshack. Back then, the dress was six inches longer and not nearly so tight as it is now. Either satin shrinks in the closet, or I’ve filled out a little. Tonight’s hemline is the result of the fastest sewing alteration I’ve ever done in my life. I didn’t think tea length was quite appropriate for a secret debauchery, but it’s possible I might’ve over-hemmed. Maybe. Now instead of tea length, it’s more hussy length.

  The blond doesn’t seem to mind, not a bit.

  I straighten my legs over my white stilettos, also borrowed. Until tonight, I’d only ever seen shoes like these on billboards next to the train on the way into Manhattan. I keep my knees together and notice something I’d missed. Between Blond and me, on the stone floor at the base of the staircase. I must have been standing right on top of it when I saw him for the first time.

  A single word, written in chalk in neat, tight letters. Ominous. Delicious.

  ready?

  2

  one hour earlier.

  I’m lying on my hotel bed doing the usual: eating Oreos, filling first, thinking about the philosophy of nothingness. Like how need and love are just nonsense ideas that humans invented to make sense of the infinite meaninglessness of life.

  That’s when I hear a noise at the door. I’m expecting the final bill, but I don’t see a business envelope. This envelope, it’s black with my name written in white on the front.

  b. beck

  I fling open the door. This doesn’t go entirely as I’d planned because when I yank it open, I yank it against the hotel lock first. Shut the door. Unlock the door. Open the door again. I see nobody in the hallway. There’s not even a ding at the elevators. Dead silence except for the whirrrrr of the halogen bulbs above.

  When I step back into the room, the door swings shut with a digital ding and a mechanical grind.

  Just to be sure, I fling open the door one more time. Yeah. Bupkis. I open up the envelope. The card inside is hefty and black, with white dots down one side. I give it a read.

  the lux et veritas secret society invites you…

  Whoa, buddy. Talk about cloak and dagger. Talk about skull and bones. That dress code? The Latin? The secrecy? Holy shit.

  If this were any other night, I’d toss it in the trash. Parties, they’re not for me. I never have any idea what to say, because the minute you say you study how nothing ma
tters, people clam up pretty damn quick. Tonight, though, it feels different. Tonight is different.

  Tonight feels like my last night of freedom. Only I’m not getting married to a woman tomorrow. I’m getting married to a new job.

  Tomorrow, shit gets real. Ivy League real.

  In my small, black, rolling bag, all my clothes are packed, and I mean all my clothes, including my only suit. Which happens to be black. My only tie, which happens to be black. My three button-up shirts, which are all white.

  I look down at my feet. Brown shoes. Nobody’ll notice.

  I turn the invite over in my hands. Last night of freedom. Nothing to lose.

  Yeah. I’d like to know about this secretem luxuria, this secret debauchery. A whole hell of a lot.

  When I step outside my hotel room, showered and adjusting my tie, I’m met by a long line of chalk dots on the carpet. Clear enough, as spooky-ass signals go. I follow them all the way to the elevator and then into the lobby. But outside my hotel, I’m met with a chalk X on the ground.

  Turning over the invitation, I read the back again. You will be guided. Just wait.

  Yeah. That’s not weird. At all.

  What I’m waiting for, I don’t even know. Straightening my collar, I watch a crow eat a cookie across the street. I mean, what could it even be? Uber? A cab? A guy in a white van? Fuck. Is this a good idea? Probably not.

  A young woman approaches from my left, talking on the phone. She’s cute. Yoga pants, flip-flops because it’s fall and still warm outside. I do have a thing for yoga pants. Flip-flops. Hoodies with thumbholes. She’s not quite my type. Short blonde hair. I’m a raven-haired man. Preferably black hair. And blue eyes. That combination. Goddamn.

  The blonde bumps straight into me, knocking me in the shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I say. I don’t know why. She managed, against all odds, to slam into me on a totally empty sidewalk.

  “Batell Chapel,” she says.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” I tell her. I haven’t been here long, but I know that much at least. “It’s down Elm.”

  She’s already ten feet past me, and she says, “You heard me, Professor Beck. Batell Chapel.”

  Professor Beck? She knows me? Holy. Shit.

  I pass under the big stone archway over High Street. I head down College and approach Batell from the back. It’s a massive old thing right near the Green. One of those places it would never, ever cross my mind to go inside. Just as I’m about to make a left to circle around to the front, I see a chalk X on a tiny, old door. I hear the music and the noise of a serious, serious party somewhere behind that door.

  Game. On.

  I walk up a narrow, ancient stairway, hardly big enough for my shoulders across, and there’s another door. On it, in chalk, the word READY?

  Bring it.

  As soon as I come out of the tiny stairway, a guy grabs my arm and pulls me aside. Tuxedo, high-necked collar, like he’s in the wrong century. On his face, he wears a clear plastic mask that warps his features completely. “Dr. Beck,” he yells over the music, and doesn’t wait for an answer. “Welcome to the Luxuria. Dress code?” he says.

  So yeah, I’m wearing boxers, because I’m a lot of things, but a guy who goes commando isn’t one of them. Either he can tell that by looking, or this is the drill. “Sorry, man. Too weird,” I yell into his ear. “Who the hell are you?”

  He pitches his head back in a laugh and slaps me on the shoulder, acting like I should know him. A girl approaches, carrying a tray and dressed entirely in strips of electrical tape. The tape crosses her curves, accentuates her breasts, making geometry of the human form. For one second, I think I’d like to peel that tape back myself. But she’s not my type, and she’s clearly a student. Something in her brashness just screams senior year. So that’s a mess I don’t want to get involved in.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” I ask the stranger.

  He hands me a mask. A simple gold mask, designed to cover my forehead, eyes, and just one cheek.

  “Put it on,” the stranger says. It looks ancient, but as I take it from him, I realize it’s not. It’s plastic. Hardly weighs an ounce. I position it on my face while he says, “You’re here because you’re a big fucking deal.” He nods at the girl as she lowers a tray between us. “This is our red carpet.”

  On it there’s now one thick-stemmed, low-slung glass, ready with a slotted silver knife over the top, with a sugar cube balanced on that. From a shaker, the girl in the tape pours down a slow trickle of green liquid, which eats away at the cube.

  Absinthe. Ivy League serious, for real. Some kind of red carpet.

  She hands it to me and turns away, the ripples of the tape showing the topography of her whole body, like the sexiest USGS map that was ever made.

  The stranger puts one hand on my shoulder, leans in and says, “Enjoy yourself, Professor.”

  Then she walks off, into the thumping crowd of masks, tuxedoes, and girls in collars. Masks on every face, and it’s all black and white, everywhere.

  Except for one thing.

  A girl is coming down the staircase opposite me. Black-haired, blue-eyed, in a sexy little black dress and black lace mask. She’s a fucking vision. She makes it hard to breathe. But that’s not all. From where I’m standing, now slightly below her, I can see up her dress. There’s a line of red lace showing off the curve of an absolutely perfect ass.

  A gorgeous blue-eyed, raven-haired woman. A rebel in red lace panties.

  That’s not a student.

  That’s trouble. Just my kind of trouble.

  “Damn.”

  3

  I feel a million butterflies landing on me, and I hardly feel like myself, neither in this place nor this dress. My normal Saturday night consists of falling asleep over a book in my dorm room and startling myself awake with drool coming down my chin. My normal wardrobe consists of an exquisitely well-worn array of hoodies and soft yoga pants with inexplicable black stains—you know the ones, they stay black while the pants fade to a soft gray? But here I am, in satin and $600 shoes. With an absolute hunk giving me the eye.

  I’m hit with a familiar wave of not belonging. It feels like the opposite of nostalgia. But I’m here. This is happening. To the breach, like my dad always says. To the goddamned breach. So I take one step towards him and raise my eyes to his. A girl passes in front of me, dressed only in undulating stripes of black electric tape, curving over her breasts and her hips. Her body is utterly stunning. Beautiful and sensuous, with creamy white skin and swimsuit-model legs.

  She wears a simple black mask that covers her whole face. But wait. I recognize that blonde fishtail braid. I recognize that collarbone. That belongs to my best friend.

  “Lucy!” I whisper and lean down to hug her.

  It’s all starting to make sense, I think. If Lucy’s part of the Lux et Veritas secret society, then she invited me. Why? I have no idea. A lobsterman’s daughter would never really belong in a place like this.

  My eyes dart back to the blond. I can’t stop looking at him. I’m almost sure I see his lips form into a slow whistle, as he stares at my breasts. Astonishingly, he’s not looking at Lucy. He’s still looking at me. A rush of embarrassment warms cheeks. I press my fingers to my mask like I’m adjusting it, but really I’m just checking on what I knew already. I’m bright red all over.

  Lucy swoops past, and then pinches me on the ass before disappearing back into the crowd.

  The blond is a now approaching me, making his way around the edge of the crypt. He’s got such a presence, one of those guys that you just can’t take your eyes off of, not for love nor money. That hair is honestly messy, I can tell, not arranged to look that way. That scruff is real scruff. The sex appeal? Truth. And the way he’s looking at me? The kind of guy who knows what he wants and is going to take it. What he wants is me.

  And what I want is him.

  Suddenly, another man comes into my line of sight, blocking out the blond. This one is wear
ing a Guy Fawkes mask, but I’d know that body anywhere, those shoulders and the way he looks in a suit.

  It’s Isaac. My ex-boyfriend, of course. Right on cue.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he says, putting his hand to my waist. I swiftly remove it.

  The blond stops cold, but he’s still watching. I can see him in my periphery. Peeling my underwear from my body.

  Isaac tries to pull me close, but I resist again. He dwarfs me and has me by a hundred and fifty pounds. He rows crew and looks like a J. Crew model, which would be because he is. He actually models for J. Crew part time. I saw that they put him in a pink polo for their Spring/Summer line. He’s not man enough to wear pink.

  And he’s an insufferable, jealous ass. We haven’t talked since the end of spring term. He sends me Facebook messages whenever he gets drunk, and I see red every damn time. And typos. So many typos.

  “I missed you,” he says.

  “I saw you in Spring/Summer,” I yell up towards his ear.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Pink isn’t your color!”

  “Let me teach you the ropes,” Isaac says, trying to pull me to the dance floor. I smell the nose-pinching richness of his cologne, and like scents do, it thrusts me back in time. To meeting him, to being in bed with him. To him screaming at me in the streets, asking who else I was fucking.

  Charming, just charming.

  Now I dig in my heels, quite literally. I wobble a little in my shoes, but by bending my knees I get leverage against him.

  He lets go of my wrists and gives me what the fuck hands.

  In return, I thrust a stop hand at him. That’s when Lucy swoops back in, like some aggressive rare zebra. She hands me an absinthe and a bottle of water and positions herself between us. Isaac is terrified of her. She said she’d gouge out his eyes with the blunt end of one of his complimentary J. Crew pens if he ever talked to me again. I look at Isaac over Lucy’s head, like, Remember? She wasn’t kidding.