It was red, dark red, and as I swished it around and held it up to the sunlight, I realized with a terrified start what it was.
Blood.
Each and every one of these jars was filled with blood.
“What are you doing here?” A loud, stern voice caused me to jerk around, and as I met eyes with Payne, my stupid fingers let the glass slip from between them. The small glass vial fell to the floor, shattering on impact, the glass shooting everywhere, and the blood…the blood splattered on the floor below.
I really didn’t mean to do that, but it was far too late to take it back. There would be no sweeping up that blood and putting it in another tiny jar.
“No,” Payne said, rushing to my side. He tossed me an irritated look. “Why would you do that?”
My lips parted, and I was about to tell him I didn’t do it on purpose, but then I realized I owed this man nothing. He had jars of blood arranged about the place, as if they sat on an altar and he worshipped them. I didn’t owe him a single thing.
This was worse than I thought. I needed to go straight to Lucien with this, because clearly Payne didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong. I said nothing as I left his room, balling my fists at my sides. Payne called after me, asking if I was happy for ruining his day, but I didn’t slow, didn’t stop, and I sure as heck didn’t say anything to him.
I’d been foolish for ever going to him first. I should’ve involved Lucien from the start.
These guys needed more help than I could give.
A therapist, among other things.
Chapter Nine – Lucien
Impossible. It was impossible for me to stay away from the room when I saw her everywhere. Seeing her only made me want her, but I knew she wouldn’t understand. She’d only just met me and everyone else here not that long ago; she wouldn’t comprehend just how badly I craved her.
It felt as if I’d been loving her for a lifetime, but that was ridiculous, because here in Grimmstead, a lifetime was not an adequate unit of measurement. Lives came and they went, flitting to and fro, not truly something you could ever count on.
So as the days went on, I found myself gravitating more and more to the room. My room. It had no name, because I didn’t know what it was. This room had shown me her before I knew she was a real person, before I’d known this place had a plan for her. And it had to. It had to have a plan. Grimmstead would not bring in new blood if there wasn’t a plan.
It was impossible to be in the room, to be with her, and not lose myself to thoughts of her. Her skin was soft, the softest thing I’d ever felt, and her body melded against mine the way it should, fitting me like an adjacent puzzle piece to my ragged edges.
Felice.
This place was going to kill her, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could keep everyone on their best behavior, but that said nothing about what this place could do to her. One of these men could kill her, or this house could swallow her whole in its black maw.
I’d gotten up off the chair, needing to feel her around me, needing to be the one in control. Having her was usually enough, but today I needed a bit more.
I had her pinned against the wall, her slender, curvy body against mine, her legs wide open, accepting each thrust of my hips. Her body fit mine like a glove, snug and warm in all the ways it should be. Her arms were wrapped around my neck, her mouth near my ear, allowing me to hear each and every sigh of pleasure that left her.
I’d love her for years, but I didn’t know until she walked through my office door, soaking wet, looking like a lost lamb.
It wasn’t so strange that I wanted to protect her. Any man would wish to protect the woman he loved. What really got me was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to save her. Her soul had been forfeited the moment she stepped onto the property, and I was helpless to save her, so I buried myself in a fake world, in this room, in arms which I knew were not real.
Reality had no place here, anyways.
I held her against me, her back bare against the wall as I thrusted into her, gliding in easily. Her eyes were closed, her breathy moans making me go at her harder, as if me doing this was me telling the real Felice how I felt. She’d consider me a madman, a crazy person, if I told her that I loved her, if I told her I’d dreamt of her, if I said I knew what she liked and how she liked it.
An absolute madman.
The only thing that I hated about this room was that she never felt warm. This Felice was not the real Felice; she didn’t radiate the warmth living creatures did, didn’t voice her own opinions about anything. She just listened to me when I spoke to her, and then she gave herself to me…or me to her.
Hiding away in this room was effectively sticking my head in the ground, refusing to acknowledge reality.
My mind went to Felice, the real Felice, as I pumped my cock in and out of her. I pictured the way she’d looked that first day, how that shirt had hugged the curves of her body, showing me her black bra. How her full lips had puckered when she’d thought I wasn’t looking at her. That was the thing, though—I was always looking at her, whether she was in front of me or not. In my mind, in my dreams, in this room. She was my weakness, and this house had known it, fostered it.
My skin flushed with heat of my own; I was more than warm enough for the both of us, although there really was nothing like the feel of Felice’s real hand touching mine.
When she’d been in my office, when she’d nearly collapsed, I’d rushed to her side, held onto her. I didn’t want to let her go, and letting her go had been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. Keeping myself from following into her room was the toughest thing. What I wanted to do was throw her down, show her how much she meant to me, apologize ahead of time for not being able to be her saving grace.
Having her on a bed under me, pinning Felice down under the sheets—paired with the feeling of her slick pussy wrapped around my cock—furthered me to orgasm, pleasure rocketing through my body as my back shuddered. I let out a low groan that almost sounded like a growl. My body had been hedging towards its precipice for so long, but thinking of her, the real her, had shoved me over.
I emptied myself inside of her, leaning against her and the wall for a few moments before pulling out. Once I was out, once I let her doppelganger go, I was slow to fix myself, putting on my clothes piece by piece. She never had to clean herself, because she wasn’t real.
I was drowning myself in a lie, but I could never deny her.
Once my clothes were back on, once my breathing had slowed and I no longer looked like a man who’d just fucked the woman he loved, I glanced at the wall, where I’d left her. She was gone, as she usually was after sex, vanished into thin air.
I hated it, because I wanted her to stay. But then, she wasn’t real. The real Felice was somewhere in Grimmstead, doing her best with the almost fantastical position she was given.
When she was gone, there was no reason for me to be in the room, so once I was dressed and ready, I left, locking the door behind me. It was as I inserted the old-fashioned key into the lock and turned it, listening to the deadbolt slide and lock, that I wondered if they would see her, too. If I allowed the others into the room, if they would see Felice or someone else. Something else. No man under this roof was perfect; we were all flawed, and we all had our weaknesses.
She was mine, and she always would be.
No one was down the hall in either direction, so I was able to slip the key into my pants’ pocket before starting to stroll to my office. My cock was still a little hard in my pants, but the hardness was fading fast. Fortunately, I encountered no one as I walked to my office, and I immediately headed around my desk to return the key to its rightful place.
I didn’t keep the key on me, because if I did, I knew I’d visit that room too much. As it was, I already went to it too often, but I blamed the up-spike on her being here, in the flesh.
It was as I was closing the bottom drawer that someone walked into my office, closing the door behind them before ploppi
ng themselves in one of the seats before me. I was slow to sit up, to not act like I was doing something wrong and meet the warm amber eyes of Felice herself.
My mind went back to the room, my body heating up as I remembered how good she’d felt pressed against the wall, how her eyes were slit, her pupils dilated in desire.
Not the best thing to think, not when Felice herself had no idea of my feelings for her, or even how crazy this house was.
I coughed, leaning forward on my desk, giving her a long, hard look to cover up the twinge of longing I felt in my cock. As I stared at her, I noticed the way her cheeks were flushed, how her hands fiddled with each other. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost—which wasn’t too far out of the question here. “Felice. Is something wrong?”
Felice didn’t stay silent for long. She blurted out, “Are you aware that Payne keeps jars of blood in his room? I think he’s…writing with them, or something. I don’t know, but there’s a graveyard in the woods that kind of reminds me of Pet Sematary.”
So this was about Payne? I wasn’t sure what she was talking about when she referenced a pet cemetery, but I knew enough about Payne to be able to put it all together. I hoped I sounded stern when I said, “You should not have gone into Payne’s room.” Knowing Felice had been in Payne’s room was not a pleasant thought, and I could imagine it hadn’t been an enjoyable time for her, either.
He was so clinical, I doubted he’d ever look at her twice in a sexual manner, but Felice was alluring in every single way, so I knew better than to believe it whole-heartedly.
“Out of everything I just said, that’s what you got from that?” Felice was shocked, and her voice rose an octave or two with the question. “What about the blood?”
Oh, right. Hoarding blood was not something people did outside of Grimmstead.
“I will speak to Payne about his…hoarding tendencies,” I slowly spoke, but as I watched her reaction, I knew instantly I hadn’t said the right thing.
“He’s getting the blood from somewhere,” Felice said. “And I bet I know where.”
I heaved a sigh. Things had escalated quicker than I wanted them to. She’d confronted Payne about the blood before coming to me. That proved to me she didn’t quite trust me, and that hurt. If there was one thing I wanted this girl to do, it was trust me. Out of everyone here, I’d never hurt her.
Not unless she wanted me to.
Felice studied me, drawing those eyes up and down my chest as her lips pulled into a pout. “You’re not surprised. You knew, didn’t you? You knew about what Payne does in his free time.” She let out an incredulous chuckle. “Is there anything else I should know?”
There was a lot she should know. Payne liked blood, Ian liked pleasure, Dagen was too lost in his paranoia to enjoy anything, and Koda was constantly at war with Bram. And me…I was just as fucked up as the rest of them, but I liked to think I masked it better.
I couldn’t tell her the truth, not yet. I supposed I could, technically there was nothing stopping me from divulging the entire truth of this place, but as I stared at her, I found I just couldn’t.
“Payne won’t hurt you,” I told her, mostly believing it. He kept his antics geared toward the animals that found themselves on the property.
“What about Midnight? If he’s killing and draining squirrels and rabbits, what’s to stop him from killing a cat?” Felice spoke, leaning forward as she glared, trying to appear a whole lot tougher than I knew she was. “That’s how they start, you know. Killing animals is the first sign in a lot of cases.”
Payne wouldn’t be a serial killer, if that’s what she was going on about. I was reasonably certain of that.
Mostly.
“You don’t have to worry about Midnight,” I said. “He can take care of himself.”
Felice sat back in the chair, giving me an incredulous look. “He’s a cat. If someone comes after him with a knife, he can’t defend himself.”
If she knew the truth about the cat, she wouldn’t be defending him so much.
Trying to change the subject, I asked, “How’ve you been feeling? No more passing out?”
She rolled her eyes, crossing her long legs beneath the skirt of the dress. The motion caught my eye and kept it. Those legs…felt spectacular wrapped around me, and I imagined they would only feel better when they were warm and alive. “I didn’t pass out. I just got…dizzy.”
“All right, have you had any other dizzy spells?” I was annoying her; I could tell by the way her jaw ticked and her eyes flicked to the side. It wasn’t like I was doing it on purpose; I was only trying to guide the conversation away from Payne and his antics.
“I appreciate your concern, but you don’t have to waste your time worrying about me.”
Something about her words caused the blood to pump faster in my veins. Who was she to tell me not to worry about her? If only this woman knew how much I cared for her, how badly I wanted her to be safe, she wouldn’t have said that.
“It’s not wasted time,” I told her, “to worry about you. And don’t you ever tell me what to do, Felice, do you understand? I am the one who tells you what to do, not vice versa, so do as I say and drop this thing about Payne.” Yes, that sounded rather boss-like, didn’t it?
She jutted out her bottom lip, almost pouting. “You may have the authority to tell me what to do during my work time, but you can’t tell me what to do on my time off. If something happens, I won’t hesitate to call the cops…” Felice paused. “Or walk off this property and call them, because this place is the weirdest dead zone of the century.”
I knew better than to argue with her about this, so I merely nodded and said, “Okay.”
Felice said nothing else as she stood, whirled on her heeled boots, and left my office, not bothering to shut the door as she went.
I watched her go, watched the way the dress’s train sashayed with each sway of her hips, the kernel of longing blossoming into a full-blown raging need. Felice was my weakness and my obsession, but strangely enough, I felt as if she was untouchable, like I could never have her. Truly, there was nothing worse in this world than being so close to the one you desired above all else and not being able to take her.
To touch her. To love her. To make her truly mine.
I was a dying man crawling in the desert, and she was my oasis. A mirage so close and yet so far, never getting closer no matter how hard I tried to reach her. She was life, everything I wanted.
Everything I wanted, but nothing I could have. There would be no happiness in Grimmstead.
It was a long while before I got up, leaving my office with a purpose. My first few years here, I’d thought it strange how easily everything came to me. Now, time itself blurred, the minutes blending into hours, which in turn blended into days. A whole year could go by here, and you’d never realize it.
You also would be hard-pressed to know it, due to how closed-off we were to the world. A year might’ve gone by, but that didn’t necessarily mean you’d aged a year. Things didn’t work like that here.
I found Payne in his room, on his hands and knees cleaning spilled blood up. I made not a sound as I entered the room, though I did slam the door behind me to alert the man of my presence.
He glanced over his shoulder, relaxing when he saw it was me. He shouldn’t relax. My presence here was not a good one. I might seem like the calm and collected headmaster to Felice most of the time, but every so often, I was prone to letting my anger get the best of me.
Payne was slow to stand up, leaving the bloodied towel on the floor as he turned to me. He’d gotten some red on his sleeves, along with a few small splotches on his pants. The red color was such a stark contrast to his white hair and light grey eyes, to his skin, which was so pale he was near porcelain himself.
“I assume Felice found you,” Payne spoke, frowning slightly. He wasn’t too upset, just displeased at the whole situation.
I was, too.
“You didn’t do a good job hiding your peculi
arities,” I muttered, scowling as my eyes danced along the cluttered walls, eventually moving to the dozen or so small vials near the window. Felice must’ve picked one up and dropped one; Payne would never waste blood.
“It’s hard to act normal when, in fact, one is not normal,” Payne muttered.
I took a step towards him, one hand lazily hanging in my pocket, the other tapping my side. The suit I wore suddenly felt worlds too tight, too restricting. “You need to do better,” I stated, eyeing him up. I’d said I would handle the punishments, and I meant it. This house would be on my side.
“But she spilled my blood,” Payne whispered, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation. His grey eyes fell to my feet. I didn’t have to look to know that I was no longer alone in the room with Payne; another old soul had accompanied me, although I hadn’t noticed until now.
Midnight.
The cat did not abide by most laws of nature, able to go where he wanted when he wanted.
The cat, simply put, was not a mere cat, though I doubted Felice realized it. I hated the feline, because I knew behind those golden eyes laid an expansive void of destruction, but here and now? I found myself thankful for his sudden presence.
It meant I was right to shield Felice for so long, to not simply toss her to the wolves and hope for the best—alas, it meant the house’s plans aligned with mine, for now. I wasn’t sure what that said about me.
“Okay,” Payne said, needing no further convincing. “I’ll be better. I’ll do better.”
Midnight blinked his wide, slit eyes at him, letting out a yawn that flashed his sharp teeth.
“Good,” I said, saying nothing else as I walked out, leaving Midnight there to stare at him. It’d been so long since I’d had to punish someone. Most people would never understand, but it was something I took pleasure in. Not as much pleasure as Felice’s arms and body, but that was beside the point.
I tried to be a good man here, sought to stand a head above everyone else, but I wasn’t. I, Lucien Grimmstead, was not a good man. My last name made sure of it.
Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction Page 10
