Damage Me (Crystal Gulf Book 2) by Shana Vanterpool Page A

pairs of eyes all looking at me like I was a prude, like I was somehow less because I didn’t think I was less to begin with, made my stomach fall.
    I hung my head and reminded myself I was doing this for Piper. Once this night was over, we could do something I wanted. I hatched plans for the biggest wallpaper con known to man. Tea bags would hang from the ceiling, and we would welcome every cat lady within a fifty-mile radius. “Where exactly are we going?”
    “This guy named Jona,” Jasmine answered, doing her makeup on my bed. Her hair hung down her back in dark waves. She dabbed red lipstick on her full lips. “He lives on frat house alley. He’s so hot and promised we could get in. You’ll love it, I promise.”
    I doubted it.
    Piper was watching me carefully. Why did it feel like I was suddenly a lamb in room full of wolves? Piper and I used to be lambs together. Now I sensed she’d rip me in half if I embarrassed her in front of her friends. I had half a mind to tell her to leave. Take your wolves and go bite someone else . But we’d been friends forever. She understood what it was like suffocating under the rules.
    “Hot,” I mumbled, trying to pull my skirt down.
    Emery, a dirty blond with a figure I’d swore graced the cover on a magazine, came over with my only pair of heels. They were black, and I’d gotten then on sale at the Shoe Barn for my graduation. “This will have to do,” she said, shoving them at me. “Put these on and then we’ll go.”
    “Do we have the money to get in?” Jasmine asked as she put the final touches on her makeup.
    Piper bent over to rub lotion on her legs, showing me her skirt was also too short. She was wearing a thong. Her pale bottom was bare for me to see, and that meant others as well, which unfortunately I suspected was her goal. I was wearing the smallest pair of underwear I owned. They were cute and comfortable bikini styled, with rainbow stripes on the white cotton. All three girls had done their best to change my mind, but I’d stood my ground. No one was even looking at my underwear tonight. How they looked didn’t matter.
    “I’ve got mine,” Piper assured her. “And Hill has hers.”
    “Em?” Jasmine checked.
    Emery looked down to pick a piece of lint from her skin tight jeans that did not exist. “I already covered my charge.”
    A knowing smile spread across Jasmine’s face. A beautiful wolf with razor sharp teeth and a desire for flesh. “You bad girl. How was it?”
    Emery shrugged, but when she looked up her wolf’s smile was broad and dripping blood. “I’ve had better.”
    I didn’t understand what that exchange meant until Piper and I piled into my car, and Emery and Jasmine slid into the backseat. Emery had sex with Jona to get into the party. A nauseous feeling settled in my stomach. I understood I wasn’t like these girls. That didn’t make me more or them less. This wasn’t about who was better; this was about the rules. Rules I was breaking for Piper, because I did not enjoy the idea of losing her to them. Their darkness was hovering in the car, making it hard to breathe as I drove across the tracks. The night seemed blacker, or maybe it was that I hardly spent time out after the sun set unless I ran late studying or stopped by to see Mom at the bar.
    Something about the darkness always made me unsettled.
    Tonight I was out with a pack of wolves, and I was their sacrifice, slinking within the black of the night, enveloping myself in their sin. Chills broke out across my skin, and I looked over into the passenger seat at my best-friend. Her long tan legs poked out of her skirt. It was at that time I realized exactly what I’d done. I was dressed just like them. The desire to go home and the desire to save my friend swirled around in my brain as the girls talked about wolfish things, confusing me.
    Mom was going to kill me .
    “Turn here,” Jasmine ordered.
    I followed her instructions and ended up on the notorious frat