Obsession

by Marie Robinson

We move in slow, torturous movements. I can’t even tell what’s happening in the show right now as Victor has my complete attention. How can I focus on anything else when his head is leaning against mine, his fingers making me so hot I think he’s burning his fingerprints into my skin. By now, my hand is perilously close to his groin, and I honestly have no idea where to go from here. I can feel the tension in his pants, so I know he’s as affected as me, but my courage flees as I consider slipping my fingers from his thigh to the hard bulge so, so close to my hand.

  I’m on a tightrope a hundred feet high, balancing there carefully. I know I’m only a few steps away from safety behind me, and I can pull away and pretend this never happened. But the exhilaration is too addicting, probably more addicting than whatever Frankenstein gave me.

  So when he moves, I’m already running across the tightrope towards him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Victor’s kiss is slow, taunting me with his control. His hand on my skin still sends jolts of electricity right to my core, his other fingers wrap around my chin in an imitation of the first day we had class together. He keeps my face tilted towards him, my head no longer resting against his shoulder as he takes his time kissing me. It’s so different from Malcolm’s earlier. That kiss was fueled by intrigue and bravado, the combination combustible until we were aware of nothing else.

  Victor kisses me with all of the control of a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. Slowly, methodically, wholly focused on my responses. He tastes slightly of the berry sparkling water we shared. His lips are firm against mine, helping me follow along in this new dance of intimacies. With Malcolm, instinct had taken over and every kiss I gave was one of instinct. Now, it’s as if I’m his student. He leads, pausing for fractions of seconds, letting me follow the path he sears between us.

  When he pulls away, his breathing is even though my lungs struggle to remember how to work.

  His pupils are so wide, only the thinnest ring of amber is visible. I don’t know if it’s because of the drugs or our kiss.

  The end credits of the show are rolling, the music upbeat until it’s cut off and the next episode begins. I’m lightheaded but I want more, of everything.

  “I want to be reckless.” I’m so quiet, even I wonder if I actually said the words out loud.

  But I know he heard me when he gives me a slow, satisfied smirk.

  “Then let’s be reckless.”

  He’s off the bed, the laptop dropped on his desk as he grabs the plastic box again. With a few clicks, the show is gone and now moody instrumental dubstep is playing through a speaker he must have concealed above his bed. I can feel my heart matching the rhythm of the music and I’m becoming restless, but I wait as he opens the box again.

  “What is this anyways?”

  “Do you really care?”

  It’s a good question, and I laugh—probably louder than I would without the first round of powder. “Not particularly,” I confess.

  “Thought so.”

  He’s measuring out a considerable amount more this time, and my stomach twists with nerves. It’s as if he’s expecting that, as he holds up the small cup. They’re the same ones that grocery stores use for samples, I realize randomly, and giggle. Still, I hold out my hand for it—but he lifts it away from me.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he admonishes me slyly. He sits on the bed again, his back against the headboard, cup in hand and a challenge in his eyes. “If you want more, you have to come get it, Mary.”

  I scoot closer and closer, until with a blush, I realize he wants me to straddle his lap. Victor doesn’t seem to care that I feel awkward as I settle my knees on either side of him, holding myself up slightly off of his legs.

  “Okay, I’m here.” I still have some false bravado apparently, as I try to make my brain work so close to him. I want to blame it all on the drugs, but I know deep down, I’d be this way even without them. He watches me as he raises the cup.

  “If you want it, you’ll have to kiss me for it.”

  Then he’s tipping it back into his mouth, the white powder falling to coat his tongue like my favorite candy powder.

  I wanted to be reckless and Victor Frankenstein is indulging me. He tilts his face upwards as I lean forward, bracing myself on his shoulders, and press my mouth to his. His mouth opens immediately under my kiss, his hands holding my hips, and this time I’m the one licking into his mouth. Our tongues press together, the slightly bitter taste of the opiates is easily forgotten when he pulls me down against his hips.

  I kiss him, over and over, letting him hold me in his lap, until he breaks away. But it’s just to move his kiss from my mouth to my neck. My fingers curl in his shirt as I gasp. This time, everything is so much more intense. I can feel my head swimming and I want to panic, but I throw myself into the sensations, letting Victor control everything.

  Even when ghosts flicker in and out of view, I’m not concerned. I do tell him, though, since he’s the only person I feel believes me.

  “The drugs alter your neurotransmitter receptors,” Victor whispers against my neck, his hands sliding up my sides and under my shirt.

  “So, to not see them, I’d have to be the opposite of high?” I’m distracted from any answer as his fingertips dance up my stomach, my shirt bunching up against his wrists.

  “Off,” he says instead of answering and I frown at him, pulling back enough to look at him as seriously as I’m capable in the moment.

  “You said no sex,” I remind him, making him roll his eyes.

  “I did,” he says slowly, as if explaining it to me like a child. Even now, with the drug racing through my veins, making every nerve feel a hundred times more sensitive, he can irritate me with his patronizing. “I’m not asking to have sex. I’m telling you to take your shirt off.”

  When I still hesitate, he drops his hands away from me and I panic, reaching for him. “No, I want to—”

  “Relax.” He bats away my hands and reaches behind him. Then he’s pulling his shirt off, ignoring the buttons entirely, and now I’m faced with acres of tan chest, devoid of hair save the dark trail leading from his belly button to under his pants. “There, now I’m topless. You going to one-up me?”

  I know what he’s challenging me to do, and I don’t care, because I want to. Before I can let any sense of trepidation stop me, I’m pulling off my shirt. Then I’m clambering to my feet, standing over him as he watches me, a smirk on his lips and fire in his eyes. I shove my pants down over my hips and as I kick them off, he steadies me with a hand behind my knee. The moment my feet are free, he’s yanking on my leg.

  With a shout, I land on my back across his bed, and then Victor’s on top of me, our legs tangled together. He captures my wrists in his, pinning them above my head, before he’s kissing me again. I let go of the last of my reservations and I respond to his every touch. Our hips are grinding together and I can feel how hard he is. I wrap one leg around him, bringing our centers closer and I moan into his mouth as I feel him press against me.

  We aren’t even having sex and I feel as if I’m about to explode. If we’re like this together, what will it feel like to actually have sex with him?

  I’m shameless in my desire, rubbing myself against him, making him grunt into my mouth as he presses back down against me. He breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against mine, looking down between us to where my leg is wrapped around his waist and his pants are dark from my own need.

  “Please.” I’m whimpering but I don’t care. I need him to do something. My body is screaming out for it and I don’t know what it is, but I just know that he’s the only one that can really do anything about it.

  He lets go of one of my wrists, and then his hand is sliding into my underwear and I let out a sob of relief or desperation. His fingers tease me, slipping inside of me, his thumb swiping against me. My body seizes, arching up against him. I can’t even breathe. Another circling of his thumb and the hair trigger is let loose, waves of pleasure washing over me.r />
  I’m breathing so hard, it’s like I’ve just run five miles, my legs are limp against the bed, tangled again in his. I want to move, but I can’t. I’m a blissful puddle. Victor grabs my free hand, and he’s guiding me to his pants. He frees himself, his eyes closed above me, and he wraps my hand around his shaft. More sparks of desire shoot through me as he pumps my hand around him. I’m hypnotized by the movements of his face, the pinch of his brow as we reach the tip, his mouth going slack as we pull down around the base. Then he’s groaning, his head dropping down against mine again, as I feel him lace my stomach.

  Victor flops onto his back beside me, his hands coming to rest on his chest, his eyes still closed. The music is still going, thrumming and beating, sending my mind into whirling eddies of thoughts and clarity. I see why he prefers to listen to this while high. It’s a lot of fun.

  “You should go.”

  “Huh?”

  Victor gets up and heads to the wardrobe where he pulls on a black tee shirt, and I sit up, watching him.

  “You need to go,” he repeats with his back to me.

  It’s like everything becomes crystal clear, despite my head being so light. Any sense of pleasure is gone, replaced by uncertainty. When he turns around, that uncertainty is replaced by ice. His face is impassive, his eyes—moments ago so hot and full of desire, are filled with disinterest and maybe even contempt. He tosses me a box of tissues, and I scramble to catch it before it can hit me in the face.

  He sits at his desk, and turns off the music, leaving the room utterly silent. My eyes burn with tears as he continues to ignore me. I rip out a handful of the tissues, wiping his mess from my stomach and leaving them on his bed. I have to bite my lower lip to focus on the pain instead of the hurt and anger inside me as I get dressed. I cry when I’m angry, and between the hurt and fury I feel, I’m close to a sobbing mess. I refuse to let him see that he hurt me though.

  I’m reaching for the door when he says my name. I look over my shoulder and he slowly turns to look at me, already lost in his work apparently.

  “Don’t be like Cordelia and think this means I like you.” I stiffen at his words, but he doesn’t seem to care. “I’d rather not go back to her next time I need to get off.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The hall outside of Victor’s room is full of people. No, not people. Ghosts. It’s exactly what I don’t need right now. I don’t look at any of them too closely; most of them seem to ignore me too. Unfortunately, not looking at them makes it harder to avoid anyone living too.

  “Miss Wollstonecraft.”

  I freeze, taking a deep breath as I steel myself. I can hear Mrs. Browning’s heels clicking against the stairs and I consider running for the briefest moment.

  “You should be in your room.” Her tone, as always, is clipped and ice cold. Is everyone in this place frozen at their core? It’s starting to seem like that.

  “That’s where I’m headed.” I keep my eyes down, hoping to avoid her noticing that I’m still on the high from whatever Victor gave me.

  She hums and I risk looking at her face. She’s closed off more than normal, and her hair has one strand slightly out of place. Is she... nervous?

  “We’re interviewing all of the students,” she says as she steps to the side, gesturing down the stairs. “You may as well get yours out of the way.”

  “Do—” I swallow and try again. “Do you think a student has something to do with Melissa?”

  She looks at me warily, as if I’m a stray dog and any moment I can snap out and bite her. Little does she know I’m nowhere near as dangerous as the monsters who are closing in.

  “Something of this nature has happened in the past,” Mrs. Browning says at last. “Please, if you would move along?”

  She’s definitely rattled if she uses please with me. But her words have me nearly falling on the stairs. Something like this has happened before? What goes on at this school?

  I follow her through the manor and none of the ghosts come closer than ten feet. It’s as if Mrs. Browning can even intimidate the dead. When we step into her office, I stare out, wondering if they’d come in to follow me but it’s as if they can’t cross the door.

  “Mary?” Her voice is different. It’s still the same, really—clipped short, but instead of ice cold, she’s almost... room temperature. I look at her, she’s watching me as if she’s seen me for the first time. She glances towards the office door and back to me. She looks as if she’s going to say something, but then she shakes her head and flips open a folder, picking up a pen.

  “You told me you were with Mr. Van Helsing,” she says, her voice back to normal. I know I wasn’t imagining the change of tone, even with the lingering effects of the drugs. “Can you walk me through the two hours before 3:00 p.m.?”

  As carefully as I can, I begin when I was cleaning the equipment in Nikolai’s lab while the three boys talked over Van Helsing’s project. I hesitate before deciding not to tell her about the ghost appearing, and I know she can sense I’m hiding something but when I tell her about the glass breaking and something happening to Nikolai, she seems to forget about it. I get the feeling it wasn’t the first time Nikolai freaked out like that before.

  I tell her how Malcolm took me through one of the secret passages to the balcony that faces the back property, and how we stayed there, talking. I most certainly did not tell her that he kissed me, but with how red my cheeks feel and her deeper than usual frown, I suspect she suspects something. We heard Cordelia screaming from our vantage on the balcony, then scrambled up over the roof to the dining hall.

  “And why were you in the halls after the isolation order was given?”

  I really hate that my head is still all over the place. It’s a struggle to cling to linear thought and I really just want to lie down and sleep off whatever Victor gave me. I hate that I can still feel the mess he made on my stomach, that I can picture his face with absolute clarity as he came, how it was a perfect sculpture of beautiful agony.

  “I was with Victor,” I say at last. “Then we had a disagreement, or he was just ready to be by himself and told me to leave. So I left.”

  “First Van Helsing, then Frankenstein?” She tsks. “You are certainly making friends with the top students of the institute.”

  “We’re not friends,” I bite out with so much venom that Mrs. Browning is taken aback. “I’m a novelty to them, obviously. They never let me forget that I don’t belong here.”

  That’s what sucks the most. All three of them drip Hell on me in public view. Little drops as red as blood that burn like damnation, covering my face—and there’s nothing I can do about it because the woman in front of me doesn’t care.

  She clears her throat. “It is fortunate, then, that your father will be arriving soon.”

  An awkward silence stretches out between us. She doesn’t seem to know if she should look at me, or somewhere else. For once... I feel like I might be intimidating to her. But what on Earth could change her opinion?

  “Why aren’t you calling the police?”

  She startles at my question, but covers it quickly. “We’ve had incidents like this before. The institute has... permission to address it ourselves. We do not involve outside authority unless absolutely necessary.”

  “You’ve had your students die before?” My voice breaks, shock running through me. “What kind of school is this?”

  I expect her to shout at me, to insult me while defending her precious school. But Mrs. Browning doesn’t. She watches me closely, before going to the door and closing it. I hear the click of a lock and then she’s moving to a small speaker, and when she presses the button, white noise fills the air.

  Instead of returning to her seat, she pulls a chair next to me. I honestly start to be afraid.

  “Mary.” She says my name way too seriously. “We have everything under control. You will not speak of this to anyone outside of Crowsrest. If you do, the repercussions will be swift and without mercy.”
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br />   A pit has replaced my stomach and yet I still want to vomit. I stagger to my feet, the chair falling to the floor.

  “I need to leave, I need to get out of here.” Voices fill the silence and even though I cover my ears, they get louder and louder. “No, no, no. My monsters are here. Make them stop.”

  Pain and anger and heat and cold war against each other in my body. A cry breaks through the voices screaming at me and it takes me a moment to realize it’s me.

  “I want my mother,” I whimper and everything I’ve been holding back releases. Sobs wrack my body as I feel the loss of my mother for the first time. This whole time it hasn’t seemed real, that she’s coming for me instead of the father I’ve never met.

  “Mary,” Mrs. Browning’s voice is gentle and I jerk away from her when arms come around me. But her grip is iron despite her thin appearance. She crushes me to her chest, the stupid wool of her dress scratching against my cheek.

  “Let me go.” I struggle to get the words out between sobs. Snot and tears cover my face but I can’t wipe it away, not with how she has me pinned against her. I beat at her back, fighting against her embrace.

  The grief is overwhelming, and I collapse into her arms. Gulping in air, I struggle to breathe through the pain and the tears. All through it all, Mrs. Browning is there, holding me tightly.

  “Full of berries, and the reddest of stolen cherries,” her voice is steady as she sings a familiar song. She’s rocking me, sitting on the floor with me halfway in her lap. “Come away, oh, human child, to the waters and the wild. With a fairy, hand in hand, for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

  I pull in a ragged breath, focusing on her singing. It’s the same song my mother would sing to me when I struggled to sleep. She keeps singing, and slowly, so slowly the voices lessen and the tears ebb. And then I’m just sniffling, a mess against my great-aunt, as she sings the final verse, and then we’re in silence.

  “The world has been unkind to you, Miss Wollstonecraft,” she speaks against my hair, her grip as strong as when she first pulled me to her. No one has hugged me like this since my mother. “But the world is unkind to everyone. You must learn to carry on, else it will destroy you.”