“You knew what?” His brows came together, his expression impatient.
I heaved a sigh. “I knew I belonged here.” Felt strange to say it, even weirder to admit it to myself. Grimmstead had given me the heebie-jeebies since I stepped foot on its property, and yet there was always something forcing me to stay, a reason why I didn’t just hightail it out of here and quit immediately.
No. There was no leaving Grimmstead. Once you were here, you were here. The only way I’d ever leave would be if the guys could come with me. If those gates opened and I was free to go…how could I walk out with a clean conscience when I’d know the others would be stuck here, forever tormented with memories of me?
Or maybe they’d forget me. Maybe this place would wipe their slates clean, so to speak. It was quite possible I wasn’t the first woman who’d come here. There had to be others.
I didn’t like thinking about that.
Lucien stared at me for a long time. He ran a hand over his mouth, pensive as he thought on my words. He also knew that if he denied me, I’d still figure out a way to do it. The others might fall in line when it came to him, but I would not. I might be willing to let him take charge in bed, but out of it, the last thing I would be was submissive.
Hah. Submission. That word wasn’t in my vocabulary.
“You want to talk to Bram? Fine,” Lucien spoke, leaning forward on his desk. He folded his hands atop one another, inches away from his untouched blueberry muffin. “But the moment he starts acting like himself, I’ll drag his ass back down into that basement and throw away the key.”
I knew he was serious, which was why I had to wipe the nervous sweat off my palms before agreeing.
If this little chat between Bram and I didn’t go well…I’d rather not think of what would happen next. Mainly, nothing. Bram would get thrown back downstairs, forgotten about. If this place didn’t keep him alive—as it had been doing since Lucien dragged him down there in the first place—he’d wither away and die, and maybe there would be no saving him. Maybe Bram, and thereby Koda, would truly die.
No one deserved to be locked away. No one deserved to be kept in the dark forever. And, I wholly believed, no one should ever have to die under this roof. No matter what any of us did in our pasts, we were each broken. Each a criminal or psychotic. We all had our own problems, even me.
I had blood on my hands, just as Bram did, and I was up here and he was down there. That wasn’t fair, was it? Granted, I liked to think I acted more normal about it, less outright murderous, but…deep down, underneath it all, we were the same. We killed and didn’t feel guilty about it.
Everyone deserved a second chance.
Chapter Seventeen – Payne
I dared not leave my room often. The floors were starting to be worn where I walked. Paced, more like it. Over and over, I could not stop the gears from running in my head. I couldn’t shake the feeling of urgent hunger gnawing at my stomach. I didn’t want the food that was served for dinner and the other meals; I wanted the one thing I knew I shouldn’t.
Felice’s blood.
It was, in itself, ridiculous, because a human being could not survive on blood alone. Not for long, at least. There wasn’t enough nourishment in it, not enough to keep every function in the body performing at its peak level. And that said nothing about the taste—it shouldn’t taste so damned good, either.
But it did, hence my problem. Hence my pacing. The blood had tasted delicious, and it was all I could think about. I didn’t sleep, didn’t do anything. I even tried tasting the blood I had bottled up for myself and my work, but it wasn’t the same. It was old, room-temperature. It wasn’t Felice’s warm, smooth, coppery blood.
I wore the usual Grimmstead ensemble: dark grey pants with a white button-up shirt. I had shoes on, though no belt. My shirt was half-buttoned, my mind too frazzled to focus on finishing. It wasn’t like I could leave this room anyways.
The first few days it hadn’t been bad, but as the time wore on, the hunger grew worse. I began to feel slow, lethargic, like my whole body was becoming sluggish. That’s what hunger did to you. My mind was fuzzy, beyond the blood I could not think of anything.
I wanted to wash my hands of this. To become who I was before—just a man who took great care in what he did. A man who obsessed and fed this place, not a man who wanted to tear into Felice’s flesh and feast for myself.
My stitches had started to dissolve. It was almost like I healed at an incredulous, inhuman rate. After all, my head had been completely severed, cut from my body entirely, and now it seemed firmly reattached, the thick red line nothing more than a jagged scar that would be with me until the end of time itself.
I couldn’t help but wonder: was it the blood that helped me heal faster? If I would’ve taken more from Felice, would I have instantly been better? Such were merely what-ifs. It didn’t matter what would’ve happened, nor did it matter that I currently wanted more of her blood. No one would let me touch Felice like that again.
My tongue ran over my teeth. My mouth had changed a bit, too, becoming more angular, more concave. My teeth felt longer, pointier—which was, in itself, ridiculous, because teeth could not change shape.
And yet it had been almost too easy for me to bite into Felice’s wrist and drink from it.
I paused in my pacing near the window, breathing hard. Outside, the skies were a light grey. If this was what I must wrestle with from here on out…I had no idea how the hell I would do it. How I’d make it without going insane—or pulling a Bram and slaughtering everyone in this place for their blood.
I couldn’t say how much time passed, but eventually I heard a knock on my door. Pulling away from the window, I turned to stare at the door as if the door itself had grown eyes and sprouted alive. A visit from anyone was the last thing I expected, so when I saw Felice herself walk in, my heart nearly stopped.
Or maybe it did. Maybe that heart in my chest had ceased to beat normally the moment Bram cut off my head.
Not good memories, those.
Felice made the mistake of closing the door behind her before giving me a smile. And it most definitely was a mistake. A mistake due to the fact that we were now alone, while the one thing on my mind was that red stuff pumping through those veins.
I breathed out a hard breath, my gaze dropping to her neck. Her neck had called to my attention before, but never had it seemed so…enticing. The urge to move closer to her, to sweep her dark hair off her neck and bury my face in its crook had never been stronger.
What was wrong with me?
I was never a man to wonder about what was right and what was wrong, but even I was sane enough to know that craving someone else’s blood wasn’t normal.
“Hey, Payne,” Felice spoke, her smile growing. The blush on her cheeks deepened, and I wondered if it was because she knew I stared at her neck, or if she had other things on her mind completely. “Haven’t seen you lately. Tell me you’re not hiding yourself away up here.” Her wrist still held a bandage…how easy would it be to tear it off and break apart the wound again?
To taste that smooth, warm blood running down my throat—if there was a heaven, that would be it.
“Then I have nothing to say,” I told her. Obviously she didn’t want me telling her the truth—I was hiding myself away up here. Stalking through these halls like I was some ultimate hunter; it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
Even if, deep down, it was.
“You don’t have to be alone,” she said, moving around the bed. She stepped closer to me, and the closer she became, the more I was able to smell her. Her fresh, inviting scent. “Your neck is starting to look better.” Her amber eyes dropped to my throat, studying the red line there and the half-dissolved stitches.
I nodded. “How is your wrist?”
“Getting better. Itchy.” Itchy because it was scabbing, healing over. Now would be the perfect time to tear the wound open again. Another step closer to me, she now stood less than two feet in front of me.
So close, and yet still too far. Fighting an inner battle with myself had never been so difficult. “I didn’t come here to talk about me, though. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
Worried about me. How…disturbingly nice. Felice and I often butted heads—she was far too believing of the whole ethics and morality thing—but it cumulated in some stolen time in the basement.
Did she remember that day? Did she remember cutting her finger and me licking the blood off it? Even then, I’d known her blood was special. Maybe, somehow I knew her blood would be the key to bringing future me back.
And then the sex…
I wouldn’t mind tasting her again, maybe while I was inside of her in other ways.
“I’m fine,” I managed to say, fighting the growing arousal in my body and the gnawing hunger in my stomach.
Felice shook her head. “I don’t believe you. I know I have no idea what it was like, going through what you did, but I want you to know that I’m here if you need to talk, our sessions aside.”
“I don’t need to talk.”
“Oh.” Felice paused. “Okay.” She probably thought I didn’t want to talk, that I was pushing her away. I wasn’t; that wasn’t my intention at all. She looked like she wanted to turn and leave, so I decided to take a tiny step nearer and say it again, this time emphasizing a different word.
“I don’t need to talk.” She was so close. I could easily grab her by the shoulders, slam her into my chest, and lose myself in her.
Her eyes widened. “Then…what do you need?”
I cocked my head. My white hair hung loosely over my forehead as I leaned closer to her, whispering, “I need to feed.” Feed. Not eat. The word sounded so natural to me, as did the urges in my gut.
They might be wrong, but that didn’t stop me from having them.
“Okay, we can go to the dining hall and—”
I drew a hand up her arm, lightly running my fingertips over her sleeve, stopping her from saying anything else. “We both know that’s not what I meant.” My voice came out low, almost a hiss.
Felice swallowed. “What did you mean, then?” Playing coy…the look didn’t suit her, but fine. If she wanted to play ignorant, I’d let her.
“I don’t want food,” I said, my chest now breathing evenly against hers. “I only want one thing—”
She lifted up her bandaged wrist, turning her head to look at the white square on her otherwise tanned skin. “You need more.” Her gaze flicked up to me. “More blood, don’t you? You don’t want the food downstairs.”
Felice was right, of course. Food was the last thing I wanted. My stomach growled for that sweet, delicious stuff in her veins.
“I should’ve known,” she whispered. “I should’ve guessed that things wouldn’t go back to normal for you, not after that. You bit me—but you didn’t do it accidentally. You did it to get more blood, like some kind of vampire.”
A vampire. I was not quite undead, but I supposed the imagery worked here.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’ve locked myself in my room because I…I don’t trust myself not to take more from you.” Take her blood, whether it was freely given or not.
Felice was quiet for a long time, her lips drawing into a pout as she thought. She did not move away from me, but I could tell she was a bit uneasy being so close. So close to me, a monster. Who could ever be comfortable being so close to someone like me?
She eventually broke her silence by asking, “And if I gave you some?”
I stared at her, having not anticipated that possibility. I just assumed she would be unwilling, because of the pain, the danger; not once did I ever think she’d simply offer it to me.
“Not much,” she added. “Just a cup.”
A cup…it would be better than nothing. It would stave off the hunger a bit, make my body feel better.
I didn’t get a chance to say anything; Felice said, “Let me go get a cup from the kitchen. I’ll be right back.” She pulled away from me, spinning on her heel, adamant about it. She would not be dissuaded, not that I would ever try to dissuade her from giving me some of her blood.
A cup full was nothing, but any amount of her blood was better than none. Maybe I could learn to make do on a small diet. Perhaps this body of mine needed acclimation.
Felice left my room, and I felt my shoulders slump as I moved to the side of my bed, sitting down with a sigh. This could get messy, in more ways than one. A better man would’ve told her no, would’ve tried to stop her. A good man would’ve refused to let Felice hurt herself for his own good.
Alas, I was not a good man, nor was I a better man. I was simply me.
She was gone for quite a while. I remained motionless on my bed, wondering what the others would think if they knew Felice was giving me a cup of her blood. Lucien would throw a fit; he’d probably want to punish me in some way. The others might only look at me strangely, not wanting to get into it.
When I heard my door open yet again, I didn’t look to see who it was. Oddly enough, I could smell her. Her scent had been imprinted in my mind, like my inner hunter knew her inner prey. She was mine.
Wait…
My nose upturned, and I breathed in. The air suddenly smelled of copper, and I turned my head to view Felice walking in, a new, tight bandage on her wrist. She carried a glass full of a dark red liquid: her blood. She’d already cut herself, bled into the cup, and bandaged herself up.
“Here,” Felice spoke, her voice a bare whisper as she rounded the bed to stand before me, offering me the cup of her blood.
I wanted to yank it out of her hand and down it in one gulp, but I knew that’d be too much, so I held back, flicking my grey eyes up to her as I asked, “Are you sure?”
“It’s already in a glass,” she spoke dryly. “It isn’t like I can stuff it back in.”
Hmm. That much was true, at least.
I gingerly reached for the cup, my fingers brushing hers as I took it. She was so warm, just as I knew the blood in the glass was. In a perfect world, I’d have her naked under me, able to drink straight from the vein. But this wasn’t a perfect world. Far from it.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, feeling very strange to be thanking Felice for a glass of her blood. Still, I couldn’t fight what I felt inside; I needed to devour this blood, and I needed it now. I brought the glass to my lips, inhaling the delectable scent, my gaze locking with Felice’s.
She could leave, could turn her head and not watch me, but she wasn’t. It appeared as though Felice wanted to watch me drink her blood. Maybe she got a thrill out of it, or perhaps it simply made her feel powerful, knowing I needed it more than I’d ever needed anything before.
The moment that blood hit my lips, I had to stifle a moan. It was unlike anything I’d ever tasted in my life. Like I’d been wandering in the desert for years and had finally found something to quench my thirst. The blood slipped onto my tongue, trickling back until it met my throat, where I swallowed it in huge gulps.
The world around me became more vibrant, more colorful and lively. Felice’s eyes started to twinkle, my ears catching the faint beating of her heart. My nerves became alight with fire, every part of me feeling alive. And, again, a certain part of me began to grow aroused.
There was something in her blood that drove me crazy.
I downed the entire glass in less than a minute, ravenous and addicted to the warm, metallic substance.
“How do you feel?” Felice asked, her voice a whisper—and yet in that whisper, I heard the world. I heard everything I ever needed to hear. It was almost like magic, my senses picking up on things they otherwise wouldn’t notice.
Her blood was like a drug.
My chest rumbled with a newfound strength, and I tossed the empty glass onto my bed, growling out, “Better.” I sounded like an animal, but I didn’t care. I felt so unlike me that what I did next shocked not only me but her.
I stood up, shooting to my feet the same second I grabbed her backside, holding her against m
e so tightly she had no hope of escaping. I held onto her ass, pressing her abdomen against the erection that had sprung up in my pants.
Her cheeks flushed deeply, and she managed to say, “You moved fast.” Her breath caught as she stared up at me. “Your eyes…seem whiter.”
Whether or not that was true didn’t matter. My nose could smell the fresh cut on her wrist, and it took all of the strength within me to not grab her arm, yank up her sleeve, and get more of that tasty stuff.
“I need you,” I murmured, my hard cock throbbing.
Felice didn’t miss a beat: “Then take me.”
It was all of the affirmation I needed. I spun us, reversing our positions so that her back was now to my bed instead of mine. I released her so that I could position her how I wanted: her top half bent and resting on my mattress, her ass in the air, her bandaged wrist held further up, further away from me—but still just as tempting as ever.
With my cock straining against my pants, I bent and hoisted up the skirt of her dress, piling it around her upper waist. My hands tugged at her dark panties, exposing her ass to me. After undoing my pants, my cock sprang free, ready and eager to get to work.
I’d never been so needy when it came to sex. Never before had I ever craved something, someone so much, it was all I could think about.
The moment Felice had wandered onto Grimmstead grounds, things had changed. I had been oblivious to the changes until now. Now, I was an animal. Now, I would not sit back and let the others walk all over me. I would take what I wanted, and right now that was Felice.
Bram…that beast would have another thing coming when I saw him again.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t wait a moment longer. My hands spread her cheeks, giving me a nice view of her backside. My cock found her entrance, and I pushed myself in with one hard thrust of my hips, filling her up instantly. Felice cried out, but it wasn’t a pain-filled cry. The very opposite, in fact.
Grimmstead Academy: Submission Page 19
