28. Hay in Your Hair and Almost Accidental Sex
Selene
"What's going on?"
Carolina's shrill voice echoes through the entryway, accompanied by the squeak of the front door hinges. She has a brazen smirk plastered on her face, her cheeks are flushed, and... there are a few strands of hay stuck in her messy hair.
Behind her, like two hypnotized bloodhounds, the twins Cade and Cole walk in. Their clothes are rumpled and they walk with a lazy swagger, their dark, predatory gazes glued shamelessly to the ex-princess's ass.
They are coming back in through the front door, while Ron and I are just finishing descending the steps of the grand staircase. All the other survivors of the night are already, or perhaps still, gathered downstairs, immersed in what feels like a collective hangover vibe.
The scream blasting through production's megaphone brutally yanked me out of a blissful dream. Up until ten minutes ago, I was deeply, soundly asleep in Ron's arms.
What the hell possesses someone to scream at four in the morning?
My body is one single, delicious map of soreness. He spent the entire night finding increasingly creative and devastating ways to make me come.
I honestly thought we had hit the unsurpassable peak in the bathroom.
When he slapped me, bent me over the sink, and grabbed me by the throat, forcing me to look at myself in the mirror, I felt a kind of dark pleasure that almost terrified me.
The pressure of his fingers on my windpipe, the burn on my skin, the calculated brutality with which he possessed me... shattered me completely.
I have never trusted a man to that extent.
But the moment I felt his hands tighten, I realized that I trust him absolutely.
And I'm fucking happy about it. For the first time in my life, I just needed to empty my head, to not think about a damn thing, to turn off my brain and simply feel good. To let go.
And he let me.
Then, since we were a total mess of sweat and fluids, we moved back to our room and jumped into the shower. I blush and squeeze my thighs together, feeling a liquid, pulsing throb just remembering what we did to each other in there.
"We can't find Emerson."
Katherine's pragmatic voice, answering Carolina's question, violently yanks me back to the present.
In that exact same second, Ron's hand slides possessively to the small of my back, guiding me down the last step.
His heat seeps through the fabric of my t-shirt, and I do absolutely nothing to push it away.
"What do you mean you can't find Emerson?" Cole comments, with his usual, unsurpassed tact. He takes off his hat and scratches the back of his neck. "I figured he was busy getting it on in some dark corner with the blonde."
"Jesus, please, never say that out loud again."
Susan is slumped in an armchair. She looks absolutely wrecked and is gulping down a glass of water. She massages her temples with red-lacquered fingers. "I don't understand how the hell I managed to get so wasted last night... I can usually hold my liquor way better than that."
Katherine pushes her round glasses up, fixing her hair. "I knew he was small," she comments with a clinical coldness that almost makes me smile.
"Wait, wait... so you're telling me the nerd hid because..."
Cole stops in the middle of the room. He raises one hand and makes an unmistakable, vulgar gesture: he repeatedly slides one finger in and out of the half-closed fist of his other hand, then contorts his face into an eloquent, disappointed grimace,
as if to imply the astrophysicist ran away because of a monumental misfire.
Carolina bursts out laughing, then looks over at Susan and covers her mouth.
"No, idiot," Susan hisses, rolling her eyes. She presses the cold glass against her forehead. "We were actually about to do it. Then we heard a weird noise, he got up, went out into the hallway to check, and... he never came back."
Carolina furrows her brow, visibly confused, absentmindedly picking a piece of hay off her shoulder. "What do you mean he never came back?"
Susan shakes her head, closing her eyes in a pained grimace. "I don't know. I don't remember anything. My memories of last night are a bit fuzzy... thankfully."
"Do you guys think they kidnapped him? Maybe it's like one of those horror movies where all the main characters are convinced it's just a stupid prank, but then something actually scary and weird happens for real..."
Emma's voice shakes just a bit.
"Um... not to contradict you, Emma, but it seems highly suspicious that they just gathered us all here right now," Sam answers, crossing his massive arms over his chest pragmatically. "I'm sure production has something to do with it."
"Well, it has to be them," Carolina snaps. She looks irritated. "Because they disturbed me at a very inopportune moment."
The twins, standing right behind her, exchange a look and chuckle in unison.
"Oh, sweetie, you were out all night," Indya teases her, bursting out laughing.
Cole wiggles his eyebrows in a silent, brazen agreement, a lazy smirk plastered on his face.
Indya shakes her head, still deeply amused by the situation. "You're selfish, Carol. You should leave some for us poor mortals."
Carolina looks at her painted nails, blowing on them nonchalantly. "Oh, you can join in next time, if you want."
"Guys..." Emma tries to cut in, her voice pitching a little higher. "One of us is missing... I don't think this is the time to—"
Emma stops dead.
Suddenly, the main lights in the living room pop off. There's a quick rustle, a dull thud coming from the center of the room.
But me... I feel like I'm watching the scene unfold from the back row of a movie theater, like a completely detached spectator. The reason is simple: Ron Willers cannot keep his hands off me.
And I absolutely do not want him to.
We are standing in the shadows. He is behind me. One of his hands has slipped slightly under my shirt, his thumb tracing slow, hot circles on the bare skin of my hip, reassuring me and setting me on fire all at once. His solid chest is pressed flush against my back.
Thud.
"Fuck," Katherine's voice hisses in the dark, followed by the sound of a knee hitting the wooden table.
Emma lets out a strangled scream.
"Sorry, sorry, it was me, Emmy, I hit the corner," Kat rushes to say.
I feel a rhythmic, happy, steady thump against my calf. Thump. Thump. Thump. It's Ollie's tail wagging frantically. That dog has zero self-preservation instinct, exactly like his owner.
Suddenly, a mechanical whine pierces the darkness.
A white spotlight clicks on from the upstairs balcony, slicing through the dark living room.
A frantic flapping of wings cuts across the beam of light. Pedro, Nino's myna bird, flies in circles above our heads, scratching at the air and playing the part of a creepy, cursed raven perfectly. He lands right on top of the old crystal chandelier.
Then, a second light turns on. And... Aunt Tina makes her entrance.
If her Freddy Krueger costume was grotesque, this is beyond the limits of human comprehension.
She's dressed up as a "sexy raven." She's wearing a corset made of shiny black feathers, an asymmetrical tulle skirt, fishnets, and a headband with a fake plastic beak attached to it.
Her eye makeup is dark and incredibly heavy, dramatic to the bone.
She takes two steps, stopping dead center in the beam of light. She raises her feathered arms.
"The shadows of Haunted Spurs are hungry!" she declaims. Her voice is enigmatic, almost feverish. "The darkness always claims the weak. The first toll of the night has swept science away, leaving only cold terror..."
Ron, behind me, huffs a silent laugh into my hair.
"CAW! CAW!"
Pedro, hyped up by the spotlight, flaps his wings. That sudden noise triggers a short circuit in the predatory instinct of the Labrador by my side.
Ollie barks, a high, joyful sound, and lunges forward. He launches himself into the air with a clumsy jump, trying to snatch the myna bird mid-air.
Ron moves faster than light. "No, Ollie! St— fuck!"
He catches him mid-air, ending up sprawled flat on his back on the rug.
Pedro, outraged by the attempt on his life, starts fluttering around the living room, scratching the air: "BAD DOG! BAD DOG!"
I look at Ron, lying on the floor with Ollie, and the bird insulting his dog from above.
An actual, genuine snort of amusement quirks my lips. This town is a madhouse. And this cowboy, with all his chaos, is short-circuiting every single one of my barriers.
Aunt Tina clears her throat into the microphone, shooting Ron a death glare, visibly irritated that her moment of glory was ruined. She smooths her black feathers and resumes her theatrical posture.
"As I was saying," she growls, before softening and darkening her voice again. "The astrophysicist is not dead. But his soul... or rather, his stay on this reality show... is suspended in a dark limbo."
We all go quiet, trying to figure out where she's going with this.
Aunt Tina smiles diabolically.
"Emerson has been chosen," she announces, savoring every word. "A shadow has emerged, a new, mysterious masked cowboy who has claimed the right to challenge him. In the next few hours, Emerson will have to face our intrepid challenger in a no-holds-barred trial."
She points a feathered index finger right at us.
"If the mystery cowboy wins the challenge, Emerson will be disqualified and eliminated from the game, and the intruder will officially enter the house in his place, inheriting his partner! If Emerson wins... he stays in the game, proving that science can conquer the darkness."
Tina lowers her chin, her eyes shining. "Let the duel for survival begin!"
Special Episode – HAUNTED SPURS: Secrets in the Dark, Hot Mics, and New Predators
[The Haunted Spurs logo appears on screen in blood red. The sound of a VHS tape fast-rewinding accompanies the scene change.
The on-screen text reads: UNCUT FILES - NIGHT 7]
[REC – FIXED CAMERA 02: MAIN LIVING ROOM]
The shot only manages to frame Ron's arm.
On the video, production has added pop-up graphic subtitles:
ON-SCREEN TEXT: [WHAT'S GOING ON BACK THERE, WILLERS?]