10. Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
T he fall was brutal and unexpected. I instinctively put a hand on the back of Elyssa’s head, the other grasping her waist so I could turn us around and take the brunt of the fall.
We hurtled down hard stone stairs, probably hundreds of years old, and it hurt like a bitch. When we finally reached the floor, my head hit it with a thump and I groaned. Elyssa was sprawled all over me, and just like the first time my skin had touched hers a few weeks ago, it didn’t bother me at all.
If anything, I found the proximity to her… comforting. Warm.
I hated myself a little for it.
I felt like a horny fucking teenager lately and I despised it with every fiber of my being. For so long, I had prided myself in not showing any interest in things as futile as sex or physical attraction.
Matter of fact, the mere thought of anyone touching me in pretty much any way before made me sick.
But when I’d touched her for the first time, I didn’t feel the familiar souring in my stomach. I didn’t immediately feel the need to scrub myself off of her touch, or her scent.
It was pathetic.
Neither of us moved for a few seconds, silently assessing if our bodies still worked well enough to walk. My ribs felt bruised, and I just hoped they weren’t broken because that would hurt for weeks.
My head also throbbed from the way it had slammed against the floor, but thankfully my back took the brunt of the fall. Elyssa groaned as she pushed herself up with her hands, her knees falling on either side of me as she straddled me on her way to stand. Against my will, desire was heating my stomach. If I got hard while Elyssa-fucking-Ayaari of all people was on top of me, I might’ve just killed myself from shame.
That too was a new feeling to me. I’d never felt it before. I wholly accepted who I was and the fact that emotions didn’t come easily to me. Unlike my siblings, except for Roman, I had learned from a pretty young age that I would not be able to feel a wide range of emotions.
Growing up, I was always the silent kid, the one watching his siblings play while not understanding what type of enjoyment they got from kicking a ball or playing pretend. I much preferred reading. My siblings didn’t always understand why, and I remembered a short time in my life where I tried fitting in with them. Mimicking them.
It didn’t feel natural and only left me frustrated. I stopped when my mother pulled me aside one day and told me I didn’t have to do that.
She said I shouldn’t have to try and act like them, that I was inherently different and that it was okay.
Whenever I felt a new emotion, I spent days, sometimes even weeks trying to dissect it, to understand why it was that I felt that. The first time I experienced anger was against Mikhail—not surprising, the fucker loved to play with my nerves growing up. I recalled a vivid sensation of heat in my stomach, then my fists clenching and the desire to hurt him. So I did.
I punched that motherfucker so hard I broke his nose, even though he was older and taller than me at the time.
And my mother was right, none of my family made me feel ashamed or got angry at me for it. If anything, they were relieved that I was finally showing emotion. Hell, even Mikhail smiled through a bloody nose and looked at me in awe because the punch had been a great one. He was eleven at the time, I was nine.
My family was fucked up, but it was mine. I might not feel love the typical way, but I did love them the only way I knew how: by showing protection and loyalty. I’d bleed for them just like I’d kill for them.
Elyssa groaning put me out of my thoughts; she rubbed the back of her head and winced a little, like I hadn’t been the one taking the brunt of the fall.
She winced as she looked around, taking in our surroundings in astonishment. Then, as if remembering it was my dick she was sitting on and not some kind of comfortable pillow, she looked down at me and jerked away so fast she ended up on her butt.
I took that as my opportunity to sit up, my back creaking and making me hold back a growl. The floor was cold as fuck and fucking dirty. White dust was all over my pants and jacket. Wherever we were, it hadn’t been visited in years. Darkness surrounded us and made it nearly impossible to see. The only light came from cracks in the wall up the stairs that had closed back up after we triggered it somehow.
Elyssa had gotten closer to me, crawling on her knees until her thigh grazed mine. “K-Konstantin?”
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “Oh, I’m not ‘bitch’ anymore?”
“Shut up. I can’t see shit. I hate the dark.”
It was stupid of her to give me more ammunition given what I already had on her, but I wasn’t about to complain.
I grunted as I pushed myself off the floor. “Fuck.” Everything hurt.
“Where are you going?!” She followed me up and then stepped blindly until she was all but stuck to my side.
“What the fuck are you doing? Back off.” I pushed her away, clearly unwilling to get hard from how she was wrapping herself around me.
The minx gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin like my body wasn’t in enough pain as it was.
“Please. Believe me, I hate being so close to you, but not as much as I hate the dark.”
More like she was terrified of it. Quickly assessing the situation in my head, I concluded half-heartedly that fighting her would only make her clutch me harder.
“You can grab my arm, but keep the rest of you off of me,” I conceded.
She quietly agreed and her warmth came off, making me regret my words a little, but it was for the best. The last thing I needed was to grow an erection right then.
Elyssa still clutched the sleeve of my jacket as I grabbed my phone from my pocket. I tapped the screen and the light coming off of it made me wince. I used the lamp app to look at our surroundings.
Next to me, the bane of my existence whispered, “Where the hell are we?” as she too looked around.
Unlike our rooms, which had been renovated in recent years, the walls around us were still made of hard stone and provided hardly any isolation from the cold. A huge marble fireplace was on the largest wall, but it was in bad shape and clearly didn’t work anymore. Furniture dressed the room, although most of it was covered by a white sheet, itself covered in a thick layer of dust. The biggest piece of furniture, right in front of the fireplace, was a four-poster bed with a mattress so old the foam would probably turn into dust if anyone so much as sat on it. There were also several chests of drawers and shattered mirrors which had been left uncovered.
On top of the mantel was a portrait of who I recognized as Seamus Langfield himself, the crazy fuck who’d had this whole castle made.
Elyssa too knew who he was. “This was Seamus Langfield’s private room. It must have been.”
I rolled my eyes, ready to thank her for pointing out the obvious when something else caught my eye at the far end of the room.
I started walking to it, startling Elyssa and making her follow readily. A wooden desk stretched against the farthest wall from where we had landed, and on it were several books, pictures and journals. I picked up some ancient-looking newsletter, The Longfield Gazette, and checked the date. I frowned when I noticed it was from over twenty years ago.
“Chelsea Michaels found dead in the woods…” I was reminded of Elyssa’s presence next to me when she read the headline aloud. “Oh my God, these are our woods! A girl was found dead there.” She all but snatched the paper from my hand to read the article herself.
It took all of my strength not to push the little nuisance to the ground. She seemed to have forgotten not to stand too close to me because I could feel the fucking heat coming off of her.
“Can’t you fuck off for a second?” I grabbed the paper back from her dainty fingers and she made an angry noise with her throat.
Shining light on the article, I read it through while she occupied herself with whatever it was she found on that desk.
The island of Longfield, home of the infamous Longfield Academy, woke up in mourning. Chelsea Michaels, who had just turned fifteen a week ago, was found dead in the woods separating our small, respectable town, from the Academy. Her corpse was found by her older brother after he and his friends went in search of her when she failed to come home. The young man, along with their parents, are devastated by the gruesome circumstances of the girl’s death.
The people of Longfield won’t rest until justice is brought to our little village, for the memory of one of our children.
As a precaution, a curfew has been put in place from nine at night to five in the morning.
The police are investigating but no fingerprints or DNA have been found on the crime scene so far…
I stopped reading when I realized I couldn’t feel Elyssa’s presence next to me anymore. Turning my head around, I noticed she was seated on the little stool in front of the desk.
“Made yourself at home.”
The little minx put her index finger up and shushed me. That’s when I realized she was reading too, only it wasn’t a newsletter like me. She was immersed in some kind of book, or maybe it was a journal.
Without a word, I easily grabbed it from her and inspected the leather-bound thing. Elyssa leapt to her feet and tried getting it back from me.
“Hey! You didn’t want to share yours so give me mine back!”
Given our height difference, all I had to do to keep her away was put the palm of my hand on her face. For some reason, that seemed to piss her off even more, but I didn’t mind. I liked her angry.
The cover was made of brown leather and had Order of The Sons of Tyche embossed on it, with a capital T upside down right under. I opened the first page and the writing was all in black ink.
This journal belongs to Arnold Hangmire…
She clawed at my hand and eventually wore me down until she snatched the book back from my hand and hugged it to her chest.
“Don’t take my stuff if you’re not willing to share yours.”
I rolled my eyes. “Last time I checked, you weren’t Arnold Hangmire. But whatever, it’s irrelevant. I don’t give a fuck about this room or whatever’s in it.” That was a lie, I would probably come back here alone and swipe through everything. I didn’t have a lot of flaws but curiosity was unfortunately one of them. “We need to find a way out of here.”
“Want to push me on one of these walls, see if any of them gives out too?” she asked sassily and I narrowed my eyes at her, closing the distance between us and surprising her a little.
“Don’t tempt me, moshennik .”
With one last look in her direction, I started walking towards the stairs we had stumbled down from.
“Hey, wait!” Elyssa exclaimed as soon as I started stomping away from her.
I heard a thumping sound, like she’d let the book fall to the ground in her haste to follow me. She didn’t stop to pick it up though, like her curiosity wasn’t stronger than her desire not to be left alone in the dark. Soon enough, she was back on my arm as we both silently ascended the stairs together. Once up there, I splayed both hands on the stones and searched for whatever we had pressed earlier that had forced the wall open.
“Why are we already getting out of here? There are still so many things to look through down there.”
“Don’t let me stop you. By all means, get back there and have fun.”
Of course, I knew she wouldn’t because the dark scared her too much.
She remained silent and, after sighing loudly, like I would care about her obvious disdain, she started feeling the wall with me.
At some point, her fingers grazed mine and we were both quick to pull apart. As always, the feeling of her skin on mine was electrifying; I could barely take it but, at the same time, I craved more.
When, finally, I felt a stone give way after I pushed down on it, I held my breath. The wall opened back up and the dim light of the hallway nearly blinded me from how used to darkness I had gotten.
Elyssa rushed out of the secret passage and went to grab her phone that had fallen during our altercation. I silently made my way towards her, hearing the wall get back into place from behind me.
She inspected the screen before turning back to me. She seemed surprised at how close I had gotten, but I didn’t care.
Cupping her throat and ignoring how soft and warm her skin felt against my hand, I got in her face. “Not a word about this to anyone. You hear me?”
Gritting her teeth, she reluctantly nodded.
Prideful little thing.