Mated with My Ruthless Bully

Chapter 1

Sophia's POV

The bass from the speakers kept thumping and vibrating through the soles of my new and now regrettable shoes and climbing straight up my spine. I was pretty sure it was violating several laws of physics or at the very least, the quiet sanctity of my personal space.

I’d tried to calculate the resonant frequency of the windowpane next to me to pass the time but the variables were too chaotic.. much like my social life.

I was Sophia Ellis, wallflower extraordinaire and reigning champion of the Everbrook University library silent study section. And I was waiting for my boyfriend.

Jake Thompson… Just thinking his name sent a little fizzy thrill through me, a sensation that felt dangerously close to static electricity.

This was a big deal.. a monumentally big deal. Jake, the impossibly cool business major with a smile that could short-circuit a motherboard had finally, finally invited me to a party as his date.. his girlfriend!

He’d always refused before. He’d say things like, “These parties are so shallow, Soph. You’d hate it,” or my personal favorite, “It’s just a bunch of people yelling over bad music. You’re better off with your textbooks.”

I knew the unspoken truth, of course. He was afraid I’d embarrass him.. Nerdy. That's what I was. I was nerdy and Jake’s social currency was all about being effortlessly and flawlessly cool.

But tonight was different. He’d texted me himself: ‘Party at Brandon’s. Parents are out. Coming? It felt like a turning point.. a cosmic realignment. Maybe we were finally syncing up.

It didn’t hurt that the good vibes were universal today. My mom, after years of raising me solo and thinking love was a statistical improbability had called me giddy this afternoon. Her long-time boyfriend had been acting “weirdly nervous.” She suspected a proposal was imminent so I was swimming in a sea of double happiness and it was glorious.

After three fizzy sodas and two rounds of awkward small-talk at Brandon's, the glow was starting to dim. Jake was late.. very late.

I checked my phone for the eleventh time. 10:47 PM with no new messages.

The fizzy feeling had been replaced by a cold sinking sensation in my gut with the emotional equivalent of a failed experiment. I was a prop, a potted plant in a too-tight dress waiting for its owner to remember to water it.

I should leave. The data was clear.. standing alone in a corner for two hours while people gave you the “what’s she doing here?” look was a definitive indicator of a bad night.

My mom’s rule echoed in my head.. “When the universe gives you a sign, Sophia, for heaven’s sake, read the fine print.”

But first, a tactical retreat. I needed the bathroom.. a moment of quiet to recalibrate my emotional compass and decide on an exit strategy that didn’t involve tripping over a beer pong table.

I tapped the elbow of a guy who looked like he’d been mainlining energy drinks since breakfast.

“Hey. Bathroom?”

He smirked with a weird slanted smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. For sure. Down that hall,” he said, jerking his head toward a dimly lit corridor off the main room. “Last door on the left. Kinda hard to find.”

There was a glint in his eyes, a flicker of something I couldn’t quite parse. Amusement? Malice? Maybe it was just the strobe lights. My social algorithm wasn’t advanced enough to decipher it.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, already feeling a prickle of unease.

The hallway was quieter with the music dulling to a throb behind me. Last door on the left. I repeated it like a mantra. The door was slightly ajar but it was not a bathroom door, though.. this was a bedroom.

I was about to turn away when I head it.. a breathy familiar laugh I’d heard whispering sweet nothings about my eyes just last week.. Jake’s laugh. But it was tangled with another sound... a higher, more melodic giggle I recognized immediately.

Jessica Monroe.. the school's beauty queen!

My hand, moving with a will of its own, pushed the door open.

The scene that unfolded was rendered in hyper-realistic, 4K, soul-crushing detail. Clothes formed a trail on the floor..Jake’s varsity jacket, Jessica’s sequined top and in the center of the rumpled comforter was the main event.. my boyfriend bare-assed naked and letting Jessica ride him like a horse!

The air left my lungs in a silent whoosh. It was like watching a supernova from the front row.. so beautiful, cataclysmic and freaking devastating!

Jake saw me first.. but he didn’t jump, he didn’t scramble for a sheet.. he just… stopped. Annoyance flickered across his face, swiftly and coldly.

Jessica followed his gaze with her expression one of lazy triumphant amusement with no shame.. not even a hint of it. She came off him with a sickening pop.. the sound of his d**k coming out of her wet cunt and they just lay there naked as my entire world compacted into a singularity of pain.

“Sophia?” Jake said flatly. “What are you doing here?”

The question was so absurd it jump-started my vocal cords.

“I… I was looking for the bathroom,” I whispered, my voice sounding thin and reedy. “You… you said to meet you here, remember?”

He sighed as if I were the inconvenient problem. He swung his legs off the bed, still offensively naked and strode over to me, grabbed my arm and pulled me out into the dim hallway, closing the door behind him to give Jessica her privacy. How chivalrous..!

“Look, you can’t be here,” he hissed, his face close to mine.

“Jake, what is going on?” My voice cracked. “We’re dating!”

“Keep your voice down!” he snapped, his eyes darting around the empty hall. “This… this is a complicated situation. Jessica can’t know about you and me. Nobody here can.”

The cold in my gut turned to ice.

“What?”

“You heard me,” he said, his voice low and brutally calm. “We were never serious, Sophia. It was fun. But this?” He jerked his head back toward the door. “This is real. She’s everything. And you… you’re a sweet girl but let’s be real. You’re not exactly party material, are you? You’re into your weird science stuff. You’re nothing like her.”

Each word was a precise strike to my heart. Nothing like her.. not serious.. weird. They echoed in the hollow space he’d just carved out of my chest.

Tears burned my eyes but I refused to let them fall in front of him. I wrenched my arm free.

“I hate you,” I hissed, the words feeling inadequate.

He just smirked, a perfect replica of the guy in the living room.

“Yeah, yeah. Just keep your mouth shut about us. It’s for the best.”

I turned and fled.. I didn’t walk.. I teleported through the crowded house like a ghost already, unseen and unheard. The music and laughter all sounded like mockery. My double happiness had undergone nuclear fission and the fallout was toxic!

I burst out into the cool night air, gasping. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t face my mom’s potential joy while my own heart was a smoldering crater so a rebellious un-Sophia-like thought erupted in my brain.

A bar…!

I’d never been to one. They were loud ecosystems with unpredictable variables. But right now, my own carefully controlled environment had just exploded. Why not embrace the chaos?

I found the nearest one with a flickering neon sign that felt appropriately dire. Inside, it was just another version of the party I’d fled, albeit with darker lighting and a more potent smell of desperation.

I slid into a sticky booth in the darkest corner I could find and ordered the first thing I saw on the menu... something called a “Screaming Viking.”

I sipped it, trying to look nonchalant like a girl who had her heart routinely stomped on and then went for appletinis afterwards. I was failing miserably.

“Well, hello there. You look like you just found out the square root of four is actually ‘spaghetti’.”

The voice was a low smooth baritone laced with amusement and lust.. I looked up.. and my already malfunctioning brain completely blue-screened!

Lucas Kane?!

Lucas. Freaking. Kane!! Everbrook’s golden boy and captain of the Everbrook basketball team was a notorious playboy and professional school bully!

He was the guy whose smile could launch a thousand sighs and whose glare could freeze them in mid-air. And he was sliding into the booth opposite me, a lazy grin on his handsome face.

“I… it’s two,” I blurted out, my nerd-core programming overriding my sense of self-preservation. “The square root of four is two.”

His grin widened. He was a little drunk, his movements loose, his alluring green eyes glinting with a gleam under the dim lights.

“Is it? You’ll have to show me your work sometime, smart girl.”

He was flirting with me. Me! Sophia Ellis, human calculator.. It made zero sense! He’d never once looked in my direction ever!

“I’m not really…” I started, trying to shrink into the booth.

“...in the mood? Yeah, I can see that.”

He reached across the table to gently tap the textbook I’d unconsciously been clutching like a security blanket. Advanced Thermodynamics.

“Rough chapter?”

His finger brushed against mine in a simple accidental point of contact.. and something… happened.

A wave of warmth shot up my arm.. a dizzying honeyed heat that cut straight through the alcoholic fog and the heartache. It was his scent, too… incredibly alluring and intoxicating!

My carefully constructed walls of rejection and confusion began to liquefy under that simple touch.

Why was he so interested? It was the million-dollar question but my brain was too busy to analyze it. The Screaming Viking was mixing with my shock and his inexplicable proximity, creating a dangerous chemical reaction in my veins.

He was still talking in a hypnotic rumble but I wasn’t hearing words, just feeling the sound vibrate through me. He leaned closer with his face inches from mine and his eyes held mine captive. They seemed to be glowing faintly but that had to be the alcohol, right?

“You’re much more interesting than everyone else in this place,” he murmured, his breath warm against my cheek.

It was a line. It had to be a line. But wrapped in that voice, accompanied by that dizzying scent and the residual warmth from his touch, my defenses evaporated.

Before I knew it, before my brain could run a single logical diagnostic, his lips were on mine and the world reversed polarity!

The heartbreak, the humiliation and the confusion all melted away, burned up by a kiss that was less an expression of passion and more a claim of ownership. It was electric, consuming and terrifyingly perfect.

When he pulled away, my head was spinning, my lips tingled and the entire terrible night had been rewritten in an instant.

“Sophia,” I blurted out suddenly. “My name's Sophia.”

He looked at me, his eyes darker now, filled with a hunger that made my breath catch. He traced my bottom lip with his thumb, his touch sparking another one of those strange warm jolts.

“This corner is too loud,” he said, his voice growling in promise of everything and nothing. “I’ve got a room upstairs. Why don’t we continue this somewhere… private?”