36. Hungry Grave
Hungry Grave
Desdemona
Afterwards, Elias, without me even asking, walks me back to my dorm. He kisses me outside the doors, in the frosty cold, and a selfish, hungry impulse makes me pull him in through the doorway.
His eyes go wide, and he whispers, “I thought boys weren’t allow—”
But I break into a run through the dimly lit corridor of the girls’ dormitory, and Elias follows me, bumping into a side table.
There’s a crashing sound, but I don’t look back.
Without even taking the time to check if anybody can see us, I rush us past the common room, up the stairs, and all the way to my door, which I slam behind us, heart beating fast.
For a second, we stare breathlessly at one another.
Elias’s eyes are dark and full of laughter, and my cheeks burn from the cold outside, heart hammering. My body feels light and untethered, like I’m mid-fall, and maybe that’s exactly what I am. All these broken rules, missing the meeting, and now sneaking a boy into my room.
Who cares?
And then Elias and I are moving, the air between us like an elastic band stretched taut then snapped loose.
Elias’s mouth falls hungrily on mine, and I kiss him back with equal greed.
His tongue delves against mine, his breath practically a groan, and my hands scramble for the lapels of his blazer, pushing, tugging at his shirt, pulling impatiently at buttons.
I’m filled with the destructive, incandescent urge to rip away anything that keeps me separate from him.
Neither of us takes the time to undress properly: we end up falling back onto my bed in a messy state of half-dress, Elias’s pants tugged open, his chest bare and covered with fresh red marks where I’ve dug my nails into his skin.
My own skirt is bunched around my waist, my shirt unbuttoned and my bra pulled roughly up to reveal my breasts, which Elias is covering with wet, hungry kisses, leaving the nipples wet and hard as he moves down my chest, trailing kisses over my abdomen, my hips.
His face disappears beneath my skirt, my underwear swept aside with a deft thumb, and I feel his mouth on me, hot and sloppy and insistent, tongue lapping at me until my hips are squirming so bad he has to pin them down with his hands.
“Elias.”
I come quickly, his name stuck in my throat, on my tongue.
I come hard, in obliterating waves, in hot deep spasms, the muscles of my stomach rippling.
My orgasm is still rushing through me in pulsating waves when Elias guides himself inside me, thrusting in with a wet squelch, a hoarse gasp escaping his mouth.
“Fuck, aah—” He gazes down at me with an expression like a drunk man.
“Fuck, love, you feel so fucking good.” His thrusts are artless and harsh and frantic, the muscles in his arms straining, eyes rolling back into his head when I wrap my thighs around his hips to pull him closer.
“God, fuck, Desdemona, love.” He leans down, catches my mouth in a kiss.
“Love,” he whispers, hoarse and desperate, against my lips. “Love.”
Our gazes meet, and his eyes widen a fraction, pure panic. I wrap my arms around him, my heart suddenly wide open, a gaping, hungry grave in which to bury him.
“Please. Elias.”
He comes inside me, hard and uncontrolled, a broken whine unfurling from his throat as he buries himself into me with rough hard thrusts. I feel hot wetness deep inside me, and a sensation of pleasure and closeness so intense it brings hot, stinging tears into my eyes.
We lie tangled together on top of my bed without a word, catching our breaths. I wish I had a knife with which to carve out this moment from reality, a precious preserved slice of time, where he and I could stay forever.
Then Elias props himself up on one elbow and gazes down at me, the panic vanished from his expression, the familiar smirk tugging a corner of his lips.
“Naughty girl,” he whispers huskily. “You’ve done this before.”
“Of course not.”
I roll my eyes and squirm, wriggling myself around so that I’m lying on my stomach beneath him. A satisfying, hot wetness seeps out of me, and I feel Elias’s cock, still half-hard, rest on my hip as he reaches down and bites into my exposed shoulder.
I grin sleepily into my pillow and add, “But I would definitely do it again.”
“Better be with me,” Elias says, biting harder. Not hard enough to leave a mark. I wish he did.
“Who else?”
He laughs low in his throat. “Some Harvard fuckwit.”
“You better get into Harvard, then,” I tell him. “So you can be the Harvard fuckwit in question.”
Elias doesn’t say anything; I fall asleep waiting for his reply.
For the first time since returning to Spearcrest, I sleep the entire night all the way through, a warm, dreamless sleep. I wake up the following morning, naked, wiped clean and covered with blankets.
Elias is long gone.
The following week, as if summoned by my conversation with Elias, I receive my offer from Harvard.
I’m not surprised to find out I was accepted into the selective DART programme: after all, my mother is an alumna, and my grandmother, Eleanor Knight, is a patron of the programme.
My letter of recommendation was written by Alice Liu, Mum’s friend and another famous alumna of the programme.
I’m all but destined for it.
Maybe that’s why I feel no outrush of joy when I receive the letter, only a faint sense of having ticked something off a list. Well, that was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? Everything, according to plan.
Become head girl.
Achieve top grades.
Keep siblings out of trouble.
Get into Harvard Law School.
Everything on my list is now more or less ticked off.
Nowhere does it say: save Elias Lennox from fulfilling his obligation, save him from the Pearsons, make sure he goes to Harvard too.
But then, my list never told me to fall in love with him—and I still did.
So maybe that’s why I find myself heading for the boys’ dorm room with my letter.
If I’ve heard back from Harvard, then maybe Elias has heard from his own university applications.
If he even applied. No matter how hard Elias tries to seem like he doesn’t care about school, I know he has the grades and the intelligence to get into the world’s best universities.
Not to mention the influence now—Spearcrest, the Pearsons, the Brotherhood, all the connections he made through our deal.
Why risk the terms of our bargain if he wasn’t going to leverage them to secure his future?
“Looking for your little boyfriend?”
I start and turn: Julian is leaning against one of the old oak trees lining the path up to the boys’ dormitory.
He looks like he’s not been sleeping well either—shadows under his eyes and a slightly wan tint to his skin.
But the expression on his face oozes smug satisfaction, and I immediately feel alarms going off in my head.
I look away and try to hurry past him, but Julian shoves himself away from the tree and into my path, a grin broadening on his face.
“He’s not there, but I can tell you where he probably is.”
“I can work it out on my own,” I snap.
“Oh? So you must know all about this new friend of his, right?”
How much did I hate myself that I ever allowed this person near me?
I meet his gaze. “Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”
“It’s not?” Julian widens his eyes and shakes his head. “Right—sorry, you probably already know about him and Ophelia.”
My skin goes ice cold. My muscles tense, my body suddenly hard and numb, as separate from myself as a suit of armour, heavy and ill-fitting. Julian, pressing his advantage, swipes his new phone with an indifferent flick of his thumb, turning it to show me his screen.
I don’t want to look—but I can’t help it.
Footage taken from a window of the courtyard outside the Old Manor, near the broad flat steps. Ophelia, eyes huge, talking intensely up at Elias, who listens in silence, nodding every now and then.
Ophelia, who’s been avoiding me all year, who hasn’t spoken to me since we came back from our Christmas break. Ophelia and Elias—who hasn’t said a word of this to me.
And I don’t know which is worse—Ophelia speaking to Elias, or Elias speaking to Ophelia.
Maybe that’s the most painful part of this: not the betrayal, but the fact that it’s both of them, and I’m the odd one out. Neither of them could tell me the truth. Neither of them could trust me.
Like I’m not even worthy of their trust.
“I can see you’re upset,” Julian says quietly, sliding his phone back into his pocket and drawing closer. “This must hurt. But hey…” He smiles down at me. “So long as he’s good in bed, right?”
There’s a loud crack—my arm moves before I even realise. His head goes snapping to the side, his lip split from the impact. My palm stings. I don’t bother destroying his phone a second time. He’ll just replace it and get a new one. I turn around and walk away before I can see his reaction…
Before he can see the tears in my eyes.