22. Elyssa
ELYSSA
T he secret room was less scary when you came prepared. Which was exactly what I did: borrowed Lorenzo’s flashlight, took the small knife that Aunt Matilda had gifted me when we first joined the Academy, a thick jumper, and a bag of chips, because uncovering years-old mysteries made me snacky.
It was freezing in there though, and even the wool sweater I had taken with me was not cutting it. I made a mental note to take a lighter with me next time on the off chance the fireplace was still working.
I found the journal right where I had left it, or rather, where I’d let it fall in my haste to join Konstantin in fear of being left alone down here. I picked it up, went to sit on the old sofa after I took the dust-ridden sheet off, and started reading. I couldn’t explain the type of weird fascination I had for this journal, just that somehow, it had sparked my curiosity.
December 19, 1898
If you’re reading this, it means I do not belong to this world anymore.
I will not name names in this journal, not of the main ones concerned, for fear, not for my life, but that of my family. The reason why I am writing this in the first place is that guilt is eating at me, keeping me from sleeping, eating, and living life as I used to. The things that I have done on those nights with the brotherhood do not only dishonor me, but also my family, my education, and my faith.
I shall recount and repent in this journal as I hope to get better and keep others from making the mistakes I made.
My name is Arnold Hangmire, I am the son of Jeremiah and Felicity Hangmire. My family does not own thousands of acres of land or any blossoming business, and we are not in politics. We are but simple farmers from Connecticut who try to do things right, the way God Almighty intended them to be.
Though I always aspired to more.
Joining the Longfield Academy was a dream come true for me. I was the first of my family to attend college, by reason of the Sweet Tale Academic Grant offered by our small town. My pa’ was against me going, because he believed nothing good came from a school that needed to hide on a remote island to exist, but Mother was ecstatic. She knew how much it meant to me and, as any mother, was proud of her only son.
I came here with dreams and aspirations. With the goal of making connections that would serve me once I obtained my diploma.
The reality of being a scholarship student was drastically different from the one I had made up in my mind. Nobody cared or respected me for my smarts. All they ever saw me as was a poor farmer from Connecticut.
I do not say that to stir up pity or justify my actions. What I did could never be forgiven or explained rationally.
But it was the reality of my life at the Academy. The boys would torment me day and night, uncaring of my tears or pleading for them to stop. Professors looked at me in disdain. I was an easy target, getting devoured by my hatred for them but also myself as the days passed. By the time Thanksgiving came, I was ready to give up and go back home.
Thinking about it now, I should have done so. Better to be a poor farmer than a murderer?—
The book was suddenly snatched away from me and I screamed in fright. Looking up from where I sat, relief washed over me when I recognized who stood there.
But his presence did nothing to slow my rapidly beating heart. Quite the contrary, it continued beating fast, but not for the same reasons.
“Bitch, you scared the fuck out of me.” I put my hand on my chest, exhaling loudly while Konstantin tilted his head to the side, eying me, perplexed.
“Made yourself at home, I see,” he commented, taking in my little sweater, slippers, and reading glasses.
I felt myself blush and broke away from his gaze before standing up. He was still a good head and a few inches taller than I but it wasn’t as bad as when I was sitting.
“What do you want, Korolov?” I narrowed my eyes at him, folding my arms against my chest and leveling him with a glare.
“Why are you here? I thought you were scared of the dark.”
“Hence the flashlight.” I nodded to the object sitting on the back of the couch I had been resting on. “Now give me back my book.”
“You can’t come here alone.”
I huffed, my shoulders falling in annoyance. “What’s up with you and thinking you can tell me what to do?”
“What’s up with you having no survival instinct?”
I gasped, “Fuck you! I’ll have you know I came prepared this time.”
“Oh, yes, real prepared. A bag of chips and a little sweater. No charger in case your phone battery died, no one knowing where you are in case the door doesn’t open back up… a real champ.”
Again, I opened my mouth to respond but ultimately decided to snap it shut. He was right. I was being stupid.
“What’s up with you and this journal anyway?” He opened it at the page where I’d stopped, his eyes quickly scanning the lines.
“I think whoever wrote it was a member of an ancient brotherhood,” I sighed.
When he frowned at me but said nothing, I took it as a sign to continue.
“According to Greek mythology, Tyche was a goddess, the goddess of good fortune?—”
“Obviously, I knew that,” he rolled his eyes, cutting me off.
I ignored his arrogant ass and went on, “I tried looking up the name on this journal, but I couldn’t find anything. But I found an old blog that said that back in Ancient Greece, a group of men from all backgrounds had teamed up to build a temple for Tyche. They became the guardians of this temple, hoping that worshiping her would grant them good fortune and success.”
“And you think somebody decided to randomly start that brotherhood again this year?”
“No.” I shook my head, sitting back down. “I think the brotherhood never died. I think they have been using women as sacrifices for centuries.”
Konstantin sat next to me, looking perplexed.
“Are you… are you saying you believe in that bullshit? That the more blood they shed, the stronger they get? Like… magic?”
“Of course not. I think… I think it’s more like leverage. The blog said that the brotherhood was started by the seventh son of some aristocrat from Athens who didn’t have much chance of inheriting his father’s fortune. He recruited men from all backgrounds, and promised to help them achieve their dreams if they helped him get rid of his brothers.”
Making myself more comfortable, I put my leg under me and leaned towards Konstantin.
“Did they do it?” he asked, clearly invested in the story. I nodded.
“They did, but before that, they each had to prove their loyalty.”
“By sacrificing someone,” he concluded, relaxing into the cushions. I beamed, not because of the nature of the story, but because I loved how all the pieces fit in together.
“Women. I guess we’re easy targets. Always paying the price for men’s greed.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth, but that didn’t make them any less true.
“Fuck, that could work. That would explain the weird marks on the girl’s body in the woods.”
I nodded. “I wonder if they found the second missing girl. Or the third. When we went to town, an old friend said there had been another disappearance.”
“Shit, then… what? It means this little brotherhood has three members.”
“Or more. We have no idea when they’ll stop killing.”
His hand gripped his hair and I could hear his mind running a hundred miles an hour.
“And I know it happened before. You saw that newspaper.” I leaned over his lap and grabbed it from the side table on his side of the couch. “It’s happened before and I think the Academy tried hiding it back then too. There’s nothing on the internet about these murders. Just like there’s no news about the missing girls either. They haven’t even been officially reported missing to the police.”
“Of course not,” he shook his head. “The police on the island are paid by the Academy. These people have no one to turn to.”
“Exactly.” I fell back against the couch, my position similar to his.
“I have to say, you did a good job researching all this.”
I smiled shyly, liking the praise.
“Thank you,” I breathed.
Silence stretched between us as he took in the room surrounding us. I had to say, hanging out with him when he wasn’t out to get me or threatening me every chance he got was pretty pleasant.
Deciding this was a good time to apologize for what I did, I cleared my throat before I started to talk.
“I’m sorry I hid weed in the box I gave you. I knew there would be a drug check and I knew you would get in trouble.”
He chuckled lightly and the sound made goosebumps appear all over my skin. It was the first time I’d heard Konstantin Korolov genuinely laugh and, again, I had no idea how to feel about that.
“To be honest, I liked that you did that.”
“You did?” I turned to face him and he hummed.
“I like your spirit.” He looked like the words had made it out of his mouth before he could order them not to. Then he glanced away, suddenly shy.
There was a bashfulness to Konstantin Korolov that I had rarely seen in anyone. He was confident, dangerous, cutthroat and downright rude sometimes, but the blush on his cheeks was just proof that there was more to him than only that.
“I never really wanted to extinguish your fire.”
He looked up at me and my breath caught in my throat. There was a softness to his gaze that made my insides warm up. All the confusing feelings I felt where he was concerned just came back tenfold right then.
And before I could think it through, I moved first and my lips fell upon his in a burning kiss.
His tongue tangling with mine made me moan out in delight. I couldn’t believe I was kissing him again, but it felt so right. Before I realized it, I threw a leg over his lap and straddled him. The bulge I had felt against my belly the first time we kissed was back, pressing against my most sensitive point this time around. And it was fucking huge.
My clit was throbbing, heat eating at me, making me yearn to move my hips and grind against his hardness. I didn’t have to, though, because Konstantin surprised me by grasping my hips and bringing my core down on his pants-covered cock, hard. I whimpered in his mouth and he swallowed the sound eagerly.
“Fuck, I’ve never felt like this before,” he confessed breathlessly and I nodded blindly.
The feeling was mutual, but I was too far gone to speak. It felt like years of pent-up frustration were finally breaking the dam and it was making its way out of me. Years of academic rivalry, tension and quickly-disappearing hatred, all came to an end with the fusing of lips.
Tentatively, unsure of what I was even doing, I rocked my hips against his. Konstantin grunted his approval, so I did it again.
And again, and again. I couldn’t stop.
He brought so many emotions out of me, that it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that arousal would be one of them.
I could feel the start of an orgasm building up deep in my belly, but grinding myself on his lap like a bitch in heat wasn’t enough anymore.
“Please…” I whimpered, pulling my lips away from his and peppering kisses down his jaw and neck.
“I can’t get enough of you. Why can’t I get enough of you?”
I yelped when he suddenly had me on my back, quickly settling between my legs. I spread them wider to accommodate his size, sighing in pleasure when his mouth crashed back on mine.
The old sofa creaked under our combined weight, but it didn’t matter at that point. We were too far gone to stop.
His hands made their way underneath my shirt, and their warmth made me forget I was ever cold in this small room. Konstantin pushed my sweater and the t-shirt I had on underneath up until my braless breast came uncovered. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him stare at my bare skin like he was trying to commit it to memory.
Nobody had ever seen me in such a state of undress. The thought of sex had always made me anxious, mostly because I couldn’t think of anyone I’d trust enough to share that part of myself with.
I wouldn’t say that I trusted Konstantin fully, but I still did to a certain level. He’d saved me, shielded me from his crazy family, kept my secret… I realized at that instant that although we had our disagreements and he had cut me with his words at times, Konstantin had never really done anything to harm or hurt me in any way. Fuck, my own blood treated me way worse than he had, on the regular too.
When he still wouldn’t talk and kept on staring at my tits silently, not even touching them, I started to get self-conscious. I tried pushing my clothes back down to cover myself, but he grabbed my wrist suddenly.
“You’re not hiding. Not from me. Not ever.”
I gulped, his voice making heat spread down my thighs. “You’re just… I’ve never done this before. You going so silent is kinda freaking me out.”
Konstantin frowned, looking flustered out of the blue. He cleared his throat as a sweet blush made its way up on his cheekbones.
“I’ve never done this either. I’m sorry if I’m fucking it up.”
I froze at his words. This was the first time I’d heard him apologize. And the fact that he did it so easily was fucking me up a little. Pushing myself up on my elbows, I lifted a hand to cup his jaw.
“It’s okay. We’ll learn together.”
My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was hoarse and breathy and so aroused. Konstantin turned his head to kiss the inside of my hand, making my heart flutter. His kiss was soft, slow, so unlike him… or rather, unlike the version of him that I knew. He leaned over me again, pushing me until my back was flat against the cushions.
Then his head came down and he bit my nipple with no warning. I yelped, my back arching. The pain he caused slowly spread over my skin, quickly transforming into pleasure. I loved it, I wanted more.
Konstantin sucked my nipple into his mouth and my hands flew up to tangle in his soft hair, messing it up as I marveled over how soft it was. I’d spent years secretly wondering what it felt like; to be able to finally touch it felt unreal.
“You’re making me crazy,” he mumbled against my breast, “I want to taste every inch of you. I want to know what you feel like stretched around my cock, I want my tongue so deep inside your cunt that you can’t do shit but writhe underneath me, moaning my name.”
And I did just that. His words compiled with the suction of his mouth around my nipple made a gush of wetness seep between my thighs, soaking my pajama pants.
“I want this too. I want it so much.”
“How does it feel knowing we could have been doing that for years but were too fucking dumb to act on it?”
I didn’t respond and threw my head back in bliss instead. I was so turned on, my pussy was throbbing, but something was lacking.
One of my hands snuck between our bodies, slowly inching towards the waistband of my pajama pants. I needed to touch my clit if I wanted to come; it had always been like that for me. I never wore panties to sleep, which made it all the more convenient.
My pussy was soaked.
I had never been this wet before, not even on that one occasion when I tried watching porn to get off.
Konstantin soon noticed my hand between us and joined it with his own. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him. He seemed so focused, like bringing me to orgasm was his new life calling.
“Fuck, you’re soaked.”
I nodded eagerly, my eyes falling shut when one of his thick fingers joined mine over my clit.
He didn’t take my hand off, rather added his to the mix and followed my lead. His skin wasn’t as soft as mine, creating a whole new level of friction against my most sensitive spot. I moaned out loud and he kissed me deeply. This kiss, unlike the others, was lazy and dirty. He was busy taking his time, discovering my body, and appreciating my mouth.
Then he applied pressure over my clit and my back came off the cushions. “Fuck, Konstantin!”
He took it as encouragement and continued moving his thumb back and forth over the sensitive bud. I writhed underneath him, crying out his name just like he said I would.
“Fuck, you’re so hot. I never thought… I could do this forever,” he whimpered and I lost it right then.
That, added to him pinching my clit between two fingers, had me throwing my head back in pleasure, back arching, and cum flooding his hand as I came. Hard.
My orgasm felt like it lasted forever. My thighs were shaking. I chanted his name over and over again while he went back to sucking and biting my tits, his thumb still pushing against my clit while I rode the climax.
I had no energy left in my body but still managed to lightly push his hand away from my pussy when he wouldn’t take his finger off it. “Too sensitive,” I explained.
He kissed me then, pulling his fingers out of my pants. I pulled away and noticed how much they glistened in the dim light. I felt myself blush uncontrollably, the reality of the situation springing up on me. Konstantin stared at his hand in disbelief and curiosity.
I expected him to freak out any time now, but to my uttermost joy, he never did.
Instead, Konstantin put his wet fingers into his mouth and sucked diligently. I sighed, watching him as exhaustion caught up with me.
My heart hammered inside my chest when he closed his eyes and groaned around them, clearly appreciating the taste.
“Fucking delicious, lebedochka .”