Chapter Five #2
I hadn’t meant to hear that. I was going to my room when I passed her office. Sofia had him on speaker while she was rummaging around in her desk. I knew she was probably looking for something she needed to take with her on their trip to Versailles and I recognized his voice immediately.
“She won’t survive if you keep treating her like a broken little doll, Sofia. Take her with you. ”
They didn’t. Even Axel went. It was a trip where they were meeting some important fucks and they couldn’t bring their mute daughter prone to fits of violence and panic attacks in crowds.
What if something happened and I couldn’t alert anyone?
In other words , what if I attacked someone for accidentally touching me?
They weren’t protecting me, per se. They were protecting everyone else from me.
I delight a little in that.
Scary little Raven.
I sat around in the mansion’s solarium that entire weekend, trying to force my voice to come out of me.
I drank the hottest tea, as if that would make my vocal chords function.
But I knew it was all in my head. My vocal chords didn’t function because I didn’t need them to.
Who was I going to talk to? Aphrodite's statue?
It was the memories that saved me that weekend.
Memories of me and Axel growing up in that cold place we called a home.
“What are you doing, Raven?” Axel said with a chuckle when he once found me posing like her during our senior year at Hawthorne.
I gestured to the statue of Aphrodite. “Practicing.”
“Don’t fucking move!” He said and scurried away only to come back with a canvas, an easel and his paints and brushes. He grabbed a stool and sat.
I stood for an hour while he scrunched up his face, furrowed his eyebrows in concentration and “mmhmmed" while he painted. And then, “There. Perfect. My finest work yet.”
“Let me see!” I dropped down from the base of the fountain as he turned the easel and I fell to my knees, clutching my stomach, laughing so hard I almost peed myself.
The portrait looked like a ten-year-old had painted it. It was all there, the rose bushels, the dahlias, the vines, the glass, the fountain behind a stick figure of me standing in that ridiculous pose with water sprouting from my sides.
“Are you laughing at my work?” He asked in his most posh English accent.
I finally got up and wiped at my eyes. “Absolutely not,” I responded in my own English accent. “I believe you’re right, Mister Monroe, this must be hung. It truly is a masterpiece, little brother. ”
And I did.
I hung it in my bedroom after he signed it and I paid him a hundred dollars for his masterpiece. Because to me, it was.
To me, the smile it brought to my face after my incident at the memory when I was finally allowed home, made it fucking priceless.
I would have paid him all the money in my trust funds for it now.
Yes, two trust funds. One from my tycoon grandfather, the other from the Monroe’s. Lucky girl, I guess.
Except lucky girls don’t have to wish to not be a broken little doll anymore.
I reach the final step and tug at the handle very softly, peeking my head out just a little, and when I don’t see anyone around, I sneak out of the book-door and close it behind me.
It’s so spectacular I can barely contain my excitement.
No wonder it took so long to get down here, it’s two whole floors of floor to ceiling dark-oak shelves, and the other bookshelves aren’t like the ones open to the university.
No, these are patterned in a way that’s like a maze.
Those same sconces on in the stairwell are on the ends of the bookshelves, illuminating the call numbers and the section I’m in.
Anywhere from fiction to science to biographies and histories.
Each section is beautifully dimly lit. I let my fingers trail against the spines, closing my eyes, I keep going forward, feeling the residual energy of every author that poured their heart, mind and soul into each page; only to hope someone would open their book and treasure it with all of their heart, mind and soul as well.
I’ve always believed that no matter what you read, whether you remember it later on or not, like music, it alters your brain chemistry.
It sticks with you. Each word is a musical note, each sentence a melody, each paragraph a harmony, coming togetherin a great crescendo to change our lives.
The same way a pianist’s long fingers may hover over ivory and ebony keys, an author’s fingers may hover over a keyboard to type and they both open our hearts; to wound, to heal, to open our minds and help us forget. .. in some cases (mine) remember .
My fingers land on a book that doesn’t exactly feel like leather, not matte nor glossy.
It’s rough and smooth and it feels… wrong.
I pull on it, rubbing my thumb over the glittering almost translucent title that seems to have been stitched with invisible silk in to the weird material of the binding.
The little hairs all over my body prickle and it feels as though the temperature has significantly dropped even more.
I exhale and a small, almost non-existent misty cloud lingers, indicating the temperature is definitely too low down here.
The Syndicate
My eyes widen at what I’m holding, fear incapacitating me at that all too familiar feeling of my shadow looming ever so close to me. I can almost hear it breathing behind me. I shiver, closing my eyes.
Inhale for five. Exhale for five.
I open my eyes, about to steal the book and turn right as I step smack dab into a hard wall.
No, not a hard wall. A hard chest and that wall…
is a wall of pure muscle. I swallow thickly, pushing the weird book only a little bit back in so I can find it later.
I’m turned and I let my eyes slowly drift upwards, my head tilting back, only to land on green eyes with gold flecks. Strong hands grab my shoulders.
“And what, pray tell, are you doing in the restricted section , Miss Monroe?”
I take a step back from Professor Harrington, eyes widening when he takes a step forward, his arms grabbing me tighter, pulling me flush against him, but I try to wrestle out of his grasp.
“Do you believe because your family’s last name is on the building you have unfettered access to the restricted section?
You believe you’re special , Miss Monroe? ”
I gasp inaudibly, yanking my arms out of his strong hold and a glint of fire flashes in his eyes before they darken.
I’m barely out of his grasp when I’m back against his chest. I put my hands on his waist, feeling the muscles in his abdomen, and try to break free again but his hold on me is too strong.
He smells of crisp citrus, spice, and leather.
His masculine scent alone intoxicates me.
I try to look behind him, but it’s dark and we’re alone; even the usual sounds of the library are non-existent because it’s too early… and we’re the only ones here.
“Ah, no one to hear you now, is there, mute ? Not even a squeak. Would you squeak for me? ”
I tug myself backwards and a book falls behind me somewhere and I wince.
Please don’t let it be that one.
“That could cost the university thousands . But I suppose that doesn’t matter to you, does it, Miss Monroe?
Mommy and Daddy can pay for it?” I resent that.
I really do. “That could be a precious first edition, or even a very rare priceless grimoire, something we could never get back. You’ve been a very, very naughty girl, Miss Monroe.
I believe it’s time we see the dean.” Maverick reaches for me again but I step out of the way and begin a quick, silent pace through the maze to get back to the discolored book-door.
Footsteps quicken behind me. I can feel him.
His presence looming closer to me like a silent predator.
Like that goddamn shadow I’ve been running from for half my life.
The fear of him catching me and either taking me to Dean Whitmore or doing what he wants to do with me, here, in a secluded area where he knows I won’t scream both frightens and makes my nipples tighten even more.
I haven’t felt this excited in a long time.
I take a right, hoping to get closer to the wall but I come up to a dead end and when I head to the end to go left, he grabs me by the end of my ponytail, we tumble down on the soft carpet but I pull a fast move and straddle him.
His arms wrap around my waist, his face against my chest and I’m so ashamed of how wet I am, the heat of him against me is both maddening and comforting and the fact that his mouth, those perfect lips of his are so achingly close to my breasts is erotic to me.
I struggle against his stronghold, and then…
and then I feel it. He’s grown hard underneath me, the front of his slacks touching right where I need it, and so I move .
My sick mind is pleading for more just as my body is seeking more friction, more of him – my professor.
It’s wrong it’s wrong it’s wrong .
But it feels so right, so good - like a fire I’ve been dying to burn for. I’ve been ignited and I want to spread far and fast and consume everything and leave a path of my own self-destruction in my wake. More, more, more .
“Stop it, Raven.” He growls.
Except I can’t. It feels too fucking good.
It feels dirty and forbidden and my brain short circuits on the warmth of his strong hands around me in an embrace that both soothes and sets me on fire and his breath against my cheek and I want whatever wrath he’d give me if it meant he’d be this close to me, touching me, growing hard beneath me, struggling with me and not against me like those fucking orderlies would because his restraints feel like fire and ice and I almost whimper at how good it feels to be touched.