Shake You | MV Ellis: Boys Of Trinity Hall Book 3 Read online

  Shake You | MV Ellis

  Boys Of Trinity Hall Book 3

  MV Ellis

  Shake You

  Published by MV Ellis

  Digital Edition

  Shake You © 2020 By MV Ellis

  First published April 2020

  All rights reserved. ©

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold, or given away. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to your favourite retailer, and purchase your own copy

  No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied format without the express permission from the author as allowed under the terms and conditions with which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.

  Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Thank you for respecting the work of this author

  Disclaimer

  Shake You is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and places found therein are either from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons alive or dead, actual events, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The author acknowledges all song titles, song lyrics, film titles, film characters, trademarked statuses and brands mentioned in this book are the property of their respective owners. MV Ellis is in no way affiliated with any of the brands, songs, musicians, artists or other entities mentioned in this book.

  “I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake.”

  ~Charlotte Brontë

  For everyone who stands up for what they believe in.

  Shake You Playlist

  Billie Eilish - hostage

  Sandro Cavazza - Don't Hold Me

  John Legend - Surefire - Piano Version

  Kiana Ledé - Chocolate. (ft. Ari Lennox)

  Tei Shi - Keep Running

  Liz Huett - STFU & Hold Me

  Kesha - Praying

  Albin Lee Meldau - Lovers

  Tank - When We

  Mickey Blue - Breathe

  Maroon 5 - Lips On You

  R.LUM.R - Show Me

  Halsey - Not Afraid Anymore

  NAKAYA - Jump

  Harrison Brome - Body High

  Sia - Midnight Decisions

  Laura Hyde - Bliss

  Emmit Fenn - Blinded

  Bebe Rexha - Atmosphere

  OZZIE - FRZZN

  Emmit Fenn - Modern Flame (feat. Yuna)

  HAIM - Right Now

  DJDS - Why Don't You Come On

  The Brinks - Comatose

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  TAKE YOU - BOYS OF TRINITY HALL BOOK 4

  Books By MV Ellis

  Thank You & Follow me

  Acknowledgments

  ABOUT MV ELLIS

  Prologue

  Honey

  Four months earlier

  * * *

  From my vantage point under the heavy black-velvet drapes at the back of the oak-paneled room, I held my breath afraid they would hear the sound of my breathing or the boom of my heart as it crashed erratically against my ribcage. I watched in absolute terror as the situation unfolding in front of me became increasingly and scarily bizarre.

  The cloaked and masked figures were sinister in the extreme—their hooded black-velvet capes, not dissimilar to the drapes that I was hiding in, serving to obscure their bodies, just like the drapes obscured mine. Coupled with the identical white theatrical masks, each was as unidentifiable as the last, but there was clearly a hierarchy.

  Five of the cloaked figures stood at the front of the room, facing the back wall where I was hiding, while the others had their backs to me, focused in rapt concentration, on the five. The nervous tension in the room was so palpable, it was like an extra person hovering in among the disguises.

  “Formation!” Even among the five figures facing the rest, there seemed to be a pecking order—the voice had come from the figure in the middle of the lineup, who was standing just head of the others. Interesting. At the sound of his voice, the figures with their backs to me scurried into a semi-circle formation. WTAF?

  “Step forward!” yelled the voice.

  One of the members of the semi-circle stepped forward, haltingly.

  “Now!” boomed the voice. The figure who’d stepped forward jumped at the sound—as did I—and scurried forward faster.

  While that had been going on, two of the five facing the crowd had withdrawn from the line to open the huge French doors at the front of the room, letting in an icy cold breeze and exposing the balcony beyond. I had no idea what the hell was going on, except to know that it was bizarre as fuck.

  The masked figure with the booming voice shoved the person who’d come forward toward the French doors. They stumbled out onto the balcony followed by the five, one of whom—the tallest—reached up for something above the French doors. A few moments later, the object swung into view, dangling above the door. Holy. Shit.

  That was the point at which I could have, and definitely should have, done something to make my presence known and halted what was unfolding in front of me, but for reasons I wasn’t even sure of myself, I remained cocooned in the drapes, silently watching it all unfold.

  One of the five had gotten one of the high-backed leather and oak chairs from inside the room and placed it on the threshold of the balcony. Another pushed the lone figure toward it, then “helped” him climb onto it. Judging by the dramatic increase in tension in the room, I assumed the semi-circle had come to the same conclusion as I had about what was about to transpire.

  The tall figure placed the loop of the rope around the pledge’s neck and tightened it. Jesus Christ. What was I witnessing? Once the figure was secured, nobody moved for a few moments, and I briefly wondered if my assessment of the situation had been wrong. Maybe the process was purely symbolic, some kind of dramatic reenactment of a pivotal moment in the society’s history, like the pilgrim plays kids did for Thanksgiving.

  The lead figure stepped forward and rested a foot on the crossbar of the chair, paused momentarily, then kicked the chair out from underneath the trussed-up pledge. Holyshitfuckfuck.

  Everyone in the semi-circle gasped, as did I, momentarily forgetting
my need to remain hidden—the shock of what I’d just witnessed far outweighing my self-preservation instinct for a few moments at least.

  I brought my hand rapidly to my mouth, to contain both the sound, and the bile burning its way up my throat. I swallowed both back down inside—there was no way I could risk discovery now.

  As the singular figure turned his back to the balcony, a stunned hush settled back over the room.

  “Congratulations, swan brothers, and welcome to Cygnus Dei.”

  Seven insignificant words. Flanked by two of the four other members of the front line, the figure walked toward the back of the room—and me—leaving the twitching body dangling from the noose without a backward glance.

  Chapter 1

  Bear

  * * *

  “Hey, sorry, umm...” What the fuck was her name? I wracked my mind and couldn’t come up with anything. I had a vague recollection of something unisex, or basically a dude’s name. Georgie? Eddie? Something like that. “...babe...”

  If in doubt, always go for the generic term of quasi-endearment. “...hold up a minute, I gotta...” I tapped her on the head lightly, then lowered my hand to her shoulder to move her gently sideways. She looked up at me in surprise, as my dick left her mouth with a satisfying “pop.”

  “What’s wrong—don’t you like it?”

  I liked it just fine, in a generic “every other blow job I’ve ever had from an anonymous chick, the morning after the night before,” kind of a way.

  “Of course. It was great. It is great. It’s just I gotta bounce. I have practice, and if I’m late, Coach will roast my balls over an open fire.

  “Oh.” She looked genuinely disappointed, which was kind of a surprise to me. I mean, I was having an okay time—it was a decent blow job as far as still drunk or slightly hungover coitus went. If I hadn’t been distracted by the movement by my door in the far corner of the room, then I would have come, for sure. But it was hardly the stuff of porn legends, so I didn’t really understand her disappointment.

  “Yeah, sorry. It’s been great though. Rain check, okay?”

  She looked at me through heavy-lidded eyes, but not the sexy type—more like the “I had a big night and can barely keep my eyes open” type—then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, nodding slowly.

  “Yeah sure. Anytime.” We both knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had a strictly “one and done” rule. Besides which, I highly doubted the sex had been memorable enough for either of us to want to go back for a second helping. Definitely not for me, anyway. “Mind if I freshen up a little?” She nodded toward the bathroom.

  “No of course not. I gotta head out in ten, though.” The inference was clear—there was no way I was about to leave her in my room alone while I was gone.

  What I’d told her had only been a partial lie; I did have practice, but the reason I’d pushed her off my dick had nothing to do with wanting to avoid a roasting from Coach, and being made to run laps of the field, and everything to do with whatever had been slid under my door while she gave me head.

  As Teddy/Eddie/Georgie padded across to the bathroom, I hauled myself out of the bed also, and headed toward the front door. As I got closer, I realized what I was looking at.

  “A Polaroid? Who even uses those these days, except like twelve-year-old girls at sleepovers?”

  “Firstly, I don’t even want to know how you know what twelve-year-old girls do at sleepovers, or anywhere, for that matter. Secondly, that’s your take out of this whole thing? What fucking planet are you even on?” It was something I’d found myself wondering often in the time I’d known Fox, and I genuinely still didn’t feel like I had an answer.

  He looked at me like I was out of my mind. “What am I missing here?” His tone suggested that he thought there was nothing, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Well, the entire fucking point, for a start.” Xavier snapped tersely. Actually, I was surprised how calm he was being in the face of Fox’s apparent willful stupidity. There was a time in the not-too-distant past where he would have had to be talked down from the ledge in order to refrain from tearing Fox limb from limb, no questions asked, in the exact same situation.

  “Love”, or whatever the hell it was he was doing with Rocky, was taking his inner psycho down a notch, which I appreciated. That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t still there. It was, bubbling away under the surface, but it seemed to take more provocation to push him over the edge these days. I mean, the guy still had way less chill than average, but it was definitely an improvement on before. Though to be fair anything was an improvement on before.

  “Bear wouldn’t have sent out a Code Black just for some regular drama. It means it’s fucking serious. Now look again.” Xavier was exactly right.

  Code Black was Cygnus’s shorthand for “drop whatever the fuck you’re doing—whether that was abandoning a piss mid-stream, or bailing on dinner with the president—and get to the meeting point immediately.” Nine times out of ten, that meant getting to Xavier’s room, and today was the same.

  Fox turned his gaze back to the photo, and the rest of us turned our attention to him as he brought it closer to his face, squinting to try to decipher what he was seeing.

  “It looks like one of the wooden floor tiles at The Swan Club…,” he offered hesitantly. Xavier nodded.

  “And...?”

  “And...” Fox squinted at the photo again. “And some black drapes... Oh. Oh. Shit!”

  “And welcome to the party. Jesus. For someone whose IQ is higher than all of ours put together, that took way too fucking long for you to figure out.” Xavier was right, on paper, at least, Fox was smart as balls—hands down the most intelligent dude I knew. Not always the most practical, though, clearly.

  “Holy shit. So if this was from that night, and none of us took it—” he paused as though waiting for someone to confirm or deny, but Xavier shot him a look that suggested he was about to rip his balls from his body with his bare hands, and Fox hurried on with his train of thought. “—there are only two other possible explanations. Either it was one of the cygnets, or someone else. A guest, or other third-party who shouldn’t have been there, but was, and who now knows a bunch of shit they really shouldn’t.”

  “Bingo, bango, and the not-so-quick sly Fox is back in the game.” Xavier’s sarcasm was legendary, and no amount of love or sex was ever going to change that.

  “Holy. Motherfucking. Shit.” Fox was clearly still in shock, the same way the rest of us had been minutes earlier.

  “Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it wasn’t one of the cygnets. I mean, they know that no cameras, phones or any other kinds of recording device are allowed at any Cygnus event, and they know the consequences if they infringe the rule. They were also all searched on the way in.

  “More than that, though, I think most of them would be too shit-scared to risk the outcome if they were found to have betrayed Cygnus in this way. So then we have either an attendee of the party, or an interloper.” Fox rubbed the furrow in his brow.

  “Yeah, I agree.” Kane nodded. “No way one of the cygnets would be suicidal enough to do this—plus, they have only marginally less skin in the game than we do, so they’d be risking their own necks if any of this shit got out. I’d like to think that we have more sense than to co-opt someone that dumb. So it was a guest, or some other fucker.”

  “Okay, but the guests were all searched, so unless they had a camera in a “cavity” somewhere”—we all snickered—“then there’s no way they could have done this.”

  “Which leaves an intruder,” Drew picked up Kane’s train of thought. “But we had the place on lockdown, so it should have been impossible for anyone unauthorized to get in. But okay, let’s say for argument’s sake that a rogue person did get in, but now they want us to know they were there? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, whether it makes sense to us or not, something clearly happene
d, or else we wouldn’t be sitting here now. So rather than flounder around questioning the logic, let’s work out how the fuck we’re going to find out who, what and how the hell whatever it is that happened even occurred.” Xavier’s tone was so sharp, it could have cut through granite.

  “Oh thank you, great leader. If only the four of us could be so smart as to come to the same conclusion. What would we do without you? It’s a wonder we can even wipe our own butts. Meanwhile, you’re brushing over the most obvious and most important question, which is why? Why would anyone want to be there?” The sarcasm in Drew’s response was bound to have Xavier’s blood boiling.

  I whipped my head toward said fearless leader, just as he jumped from his seat, turning to face Drew, his fists curled and the telltale vein at his temple throbbing. Shit.

  “I’m not brushing over shit, but if you speak to me like that again, an undertaker will be brushing leaves over your grave.” So yeah, that chilled thing was a minor improvement, not a total personality transplant.

  “That so? I’d like to see you fucking try.” Drew was up and out of his seat equally quickly, his bulky frame towering over Xavier’s. The love-hate-love thing he had going on with his girl Kik had also marginally taken the edge off of his own sometimes-volatile temper.