Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction

by Candace Wondrak

  I ran both hands down his chest, feeling a tight abdomen beneath me. Not overly muscled like a few of the other guys here, but lean and slender all the same.

  Payne’s pale cheeks looked flushed, or maybe that was simply because of the lantern’s odd lightning. Ambiance, right? “What are you doing?” he asked in a bare whisper, his breath hitching when I started to unbutton his shirt.

  “I don’t know,” I spoke the truth. My head felt funny and light; if I was honest with myself, I was hardly in my right mind, but I couldn’t fight the feeling swelling inside of me…and that feeling started between my legs and grew.

  Relief would only come one way.

  Was this what being horny was like? I’d never felt this way before, and it wasn’t like I didn’t date or have sex. I did. I just…it was never like this.

  Once every button on his shirt was undone, I ran my palms down his bare chest again, this time doing it slowly, carefully, touching every single plane of skin beneath me. He appeared both confused and slightly turned on, if his facial expression was anything to judge—and the steadily growing hardness beneath me meant anything.

  “This is…wrong,” Payne spoke, his words and his body telling me two very different things.

  I let out a laugh. Just a short chuckle, because I found it ridiculously ironic that the guy who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong when it came to killing animals and draining them for their blood suddenly knew it now.

  This was wrong. Grimmstead was full of things that were wrong, but did I run? Did I hide? Did I ever once do what I should’ve done and try to leave this place?

  No, I didn’t, and that could only mean that I’d found my home here, amongst the crazies and the psychopaths.

  After all, if I was totally honest, I would admit that seeing the small flame in the lantern heated up my body in a way a dick simply could not. There was nothing hotter than fire, you know. Nothing as powerful and as beautiful.

  I supposed Payne could’ve stopped me, could’ve told me no, but he didn’t. After claiming this was wrong, and after my silent acknowledgment of it, I went to work undoing his belt and tugging down his pants. Within moments, his dick was free, and before I let myself linger on the fact that this was, indeed, a thousand different types of wrong, I hiked up my wet dress and moved my underwear to the side.

  Nope. Wasn’t even going to take them off. Then I’d have to take off the boots and just…yeah, the heat of the moment would be gone by then. This was me getting straight to business, taking dick when I wanted it.

  It was wrong, but I somehow knew it would feel oh so right.

  As I lowered myself onto his length, I let out a flurry of sighs. Payne turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. He made no moves to touch me, no moves to grab me and hold me over my dress, but that was fine. Right now it was all instinct. Right now it was all me.

  I began to move my hips, rocking along him as I focused on the budding pleasure inside. Stoking the embers of my inner core until they reignited and caught everything aflame. I was in another world, my mind nothing but a pleasure-seeking entity as all of my worries faded to black. Here and now, in this house, in a basement I wasn’t supposed to be in, I realized that I might just be as sick as the rest of these guys. We all had our own problems, but me? I tried to fake it for so long.

  Faking it was useless now. I craved the chaos, loved the fire. My past didn’t matter here. What I’d done…it wasn’t something any of these guys would blink twice at. I was a bad girl, and I was finally losing myself to the blissful feeling of taking control and doing whatever the fuck I wanted.

  Over and over I rocked my hips along him, groaning every so often as the sensual pleasure became too much to keep stifled. My hands rested on his abdomen, helping keep me upright as I rode him. Payne had turned his face back to look at me, his silver eyes shining almost unnaturally in the darkness.

  The air around me turned colder, and I let out another sigh as a gentle breeze swept by, circling me and wrapping around me. Maybe it was all in my head, but I could’ve sworn I felt something caress my cheek.

  Or maybe I was just crazy, and that was that.

  If there was one place where the unnatural turned natural though…I knew it was here.

  The heat in my core grew to an unmanageable rate, and I threw my head back, crying out as I came. I felt my inner walls clench against his length, and I kept rocking only for him, hardly cognizant in my own mind to do it.

  When Payne came it was beautiful. His peculiar silver eyes rolled back, his lips parting ever so slightly as he let out the deepest sound I’d ever heard from him. His hands clenched on the stone below, and he went to grip my knees over my dress, finally touching me. Finally grasping me as he should’ve done during the entire ordeal.

  I went to get off him—slowly but surely I was coming back into my own head, realizing what position I was in with a man whom I was technically an authority figure for—but he shot up, moving so fast I could hardly blink. He didn’t go for my wrist again; this time he wrapped an arm around my waist, his other hand swiping the wet hair off my shoulder so he could lean his nose against my neck. With his cock still inside me, it was a strange position to be in.

  Especially since, you know, we shouldn’t have done any of that.

  Whoopsies.

  His nose brushed against a tender spot on my neck, and I shivered. Suddenly the position we were in felt so intimate, as if it wasn’t before now. “Your blood is spectacular,” he murmured, his breath warming my neck, causing my heart to beat even faster.

  Now that I was no longer hazy-minded and had come down from my orgasm high, I was sane enough to realize that was a weird thing to say. A very strange thing to tell someone, especially after forbidden sex in a basement.

  Being complimented about my blood was not something I ever thought I’d be, but here I was, and here he was, and there his dick was—still inside me, if you forgot. Still semi-hard and inside of me, and right now neither of us were in any position to move.

  “Uh, thanks,” I whispered, not sure how to answer him…or why I liked the feeling of his arm wrapped around my lower back.

  Of course you like his arm around you, you idiot, I told myself, you just slept with him!

  Right.

  “It would paint an immaculate picture,” Payne murmured, his lips brushing against a vein in my neck, causing my pulse to quicken.

  Another weird thing to say, but I was rendered speechless by the way he started to nuzzle my neck. When talking about blood, Payne got rather passionate. Again, I found it absolutely bizarre.

  And then his words made me recall that painting I’d been looking at. The handsome portrait of that man. Something had gotten into me afterward, because I could’ve sworn I watched Payne round the corner further in with a bucket—but now the bucket was nowhere to be seen. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I’d gotten momentarily high.

  And then, just like that, Payne removed his face from my neck, giving me a curious yet distant look, as if his dick wasn’t still inside of me. “What were you doing down here, Felice?” Back to business. Of course.

  “I…I saw Midnight—”

  “You shouldn’t be in the basement,” Payne said. “It’s off-limits to everyone.”

  “If it’s off-limits to everyone, that includes you, you know,” I told him with a huff, frowning as his pale features twisted into shock and then acceptance.

  “You…you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” I said with a shrug, as if I was used to having conversations while straddling attractive men whose penises were still inside of me. “And, anyways, the only reason I came down here was because the door was open. I was going to run right by it, because Koda and I got locked outside, but then—”

  The ground and walls around us shook as thunder echoed outside. It was still storming? Huh. I remembered it being quiet while having sex with him…but then again, while we were banging it out, I wasn’t rea
lly in my best mind space.

  “You were outside with Koda?” Payne asked, brows furrowing.

  “Yes, and then I might’ve locked him out because he looked a little—” How did I say this lightly without sounding overly dramatic and damsel-in-distress-y? I settled for finishing with “Murderous.”

  Payne let out a long breath, appearing—for the first time ever—frazzled. “We need to find Lucien.” He helped me off him, pulling up his pants without a second thought, starting to button up his shirt before I could even fix the wedgie that pulling aside my panties had created.

  The lantern I’d broken, notably, was nowhere in sight. It was gone, as if it had never happened.

  What? I was so confused, it wasn’t funny. But Payne was right: we had to find Lucien.

  Which was what I was doing before I got sidetracked in this basement. By now, Koda was probably already inside the building, looking for me.

  Crap on a crapsicle.

  “Come on,” Payne said, grabbing his lantern before getting up, his clothes unruffled as if we’d never had sex. “Stay close. If it’s Bram out there, he’ll want your blood—” He paused as he threw a look over his shoulder at me. “—which I will not allow. Your blood is too good to spoil like that.”

  Not sure if that was a compliment or not, and I had no idea what he was talking about. I remained quiet as I followed him out of the basement. Needn’t have worried about the cat, because I saw his black tail scurrying down the hall—which was funny, because I didn’t remember him ever running past me in the basement.

  But back to what Payne had said. Bram?

  Who the heck was Bram?

  Chapter Fifteen – Ian

  It was back. It shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be standing near my bed, staring at that photo, but I was. Somehow, even though I could’ve sworn I’d tossed it outside and heard the frame’s glass shatter, it was back here without a single crack, as if my mind had made it all up.

  Hell. Maybe the picture wasn’t even real. Maybe it was all in my head, some make-believe fear nesting from a deep phobia of mine.

  The man in the picture looked haggard, tired. Heavy shadows hung under his eyes—eyes which were not so blue anymore. Their color was cloudy, murky, a shadow of what they should be. His yellow hair was greying—and thinning, too.

  I gulped as I stared at it, running a hand through my hair to feel it, absentmindedly fearing the worst—that I already looked like this man. If he was me, surely I was him as well. It went both ways, didn’t it?

  No, my hair was still thick, and I bet if I went to the attached bathroom to glance in the mirror, it would still be blonde, too. I was not yet as terrifyingly sickly as the man in the photo, but I would be, and that fear was what drove me to seek what I did. Enjoy the pretty things in life while I could, lose myself in the extravagance of bodily pleasure until I could do it no more. Rinse and repeat until the day I met my end.

  We would all meet our ends here. Finding an ending that was permanent was the hardest thing, though.

  My hand dropped from my head, and I went to pick up the picture. For whatever reason, it felt heavier than it did before. The man staring up at me looked worse than he did the last time I’d seen him. Each and every time I laid my eyes on this photograph, he looked worse and worse. Maybe because I was losing myself more and more these days.

  My door was cracked, which was the only reason I heard Payne’s voice in the hall shouting, “Dagen, Ian, are either of you down there? We need to find Lucien—” With each word spoken in the hall, it sounded as if he came closer.

  I went to hide the picture under my pillow. Letting anyone else see it was…my worst nightmare, quite literally. If they looked at that picture and then looked at me, surely their opinion of me would change. No longer would I be the devilishly attractive smooth-talker; instead I’d be the old, drained, hollow-eyed man who was a walking skeleton held together by flesh.

  “I’m here,” I called out, smoothing over my pillowcase as if I’d just recently made the bed. As if. The sheets practically did themselves here.

  Payne walked in, and I turned to face him, giving him a smile, but I saw he was not alone. Felice was with him, and her cheeks were flushed to an adorable shade of pink. Her hair and her dress were both wet, as if she’d been caught outside in the rain. Never before had I seen such a pretty drowned rat.

  It was odd that she was with Payne, however, given the fact she didn’t like him much. That’s what I thought, at least. The whole blood situation had kind of freaked her out, last I heard. Dagen said she’d stumbled onto the area where Payne buried his trash. It would be enough to freak any normal person out, but now, looking at her, I wondered if our Felice wasn’t so normal after all.

  I shot her a grin. “So it’s that kind of party, is it?” I crossed my arms, gesturing to the bottle on my nightstand, which sat, unopened, as if I hadn’t just downed it last night, or this morning. Pretty sure I did. “Why didn’t you tell me ahead of time? I could’ve gotten myself ready—”

  Payne stepped closer to me, blocking my view of Felice. Payne was a decent enough looking fellow, but I’d much rather have her if given the chance. Pleasure could come from a lot of places, but nothing beat the feeling of a woman’s wet pussy wrapped around your cock.

  “This is serious, Ian,” Payne spoke, not wasting a single breath as he got right to the point: “We have a Bram situation.”

  “Oh, well, why didn’t you say that to begin with? I made us all matching t-shirts for when it happens again—”

  Payne was having none of my witty repertoire. He glared. “He wants to hurt Felice.” Behind him, Felice was busy muttering something about how she didn’t quite understand what was going on. She didn’t know who Bram was.

  But we all knew. We knew, and I picked up on what Payne wasn’t saying: Bram wanted to hurt Felice, and none of us were sure what would happen if he did. Would Felice become like us, trapped in this place?

  None of us wanted to take that chance. Today, tonight, until Bram was caught and under control, all of our main missions would be to protect her.

  “Can you watch her? I’ll look for Lucien,” Payne told me. “Keep the door locked once I leave.”

  I watched him, amazed at how in control he sounded. Very alert, very focused. If I wasn’t certain he would punch me, I would’ve given him a round of applause for gaining some agency in life, even if that agency was for Felice, who I was dying to make mine.

  But, all that aside, maybe having her in my room would help. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to deny my charms anymore and I could sweep her off her feet and into my arms.

  A fool’s wish at a time like this, but I was a fool among idiots. None of us knew what we were doing here.

  “Aye-aye, sir,” I said, saluting him.

  Payne shot me a look, and if Felice wasn’t in the room, he probably would’ve strung me up and gutted me right then and there. He wasn’t normally the kind who gave in to his emotions, but for some reason, he was awfully riled up. Because of Felice, undoubtedly.

  Once Payne was gone, I went to lock my door. By the time I returned my attention to Felice, she was lost in her own thoughts, moving to the window, where she could stare at the rain splattering the glass. Every once in a while lightning lit up the sky, thunder following almost immediately after it. The storm was close. I had the main light on, using the yellow fluorescent light to study Felice’s figure.

  She was a woman no matter what way you looked at her. A beautiful, pretty woman who, if I was utterly honest, I sought to watch some nights. If I was lucky, I caught her in the tub. If I wasn’t lucky, I simply stood there and imagined seeing her.

  It wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing, but you made do with what you were given.

  God, if there was one thing I wanted to do, it was take everything she had.

  “So,” I mused, walking closer to her, stopping only when I stood beside her. “Want to tell my why Payne is so intent on protecting you? Usually he
’s a very distant fellow.” I watched her shift her weight and bite her bottom lip.

  I wanted to bite that lip.

  “I was outside with Koda,” Felice explained, launching into everything that had happened to her. She was with Koda, something in him changed, they got locked out, but by the time they made it to the side door, something more was off about him. She locked him outside and stumbled upon Payne in the hallway downstairs. She turned her face towards the window, whispering, “I cut myself trying to get away from Koda.”

  Ah, well there you had it, folks: the reason why Payne was so obsessed with protecting her. It wasn’t because he’d fallen for her charms or because he wanted to fuck her. It was simply because he’d gotten a taste of her blood and needed more. You didn’t get more blood when a heart wasn’t beating.

  At least, in theory.

  But the truth was none of us knew exactly what would happen if Bram got his hands on Felice. If he killed her, would she just…die? That’s how it worked out there, in the real world. In Grimmstead, things were always different, but you could never predict just how different they’d be, hence the conundrum here.

  Either way, I wasn’t going to complain. Letting Bram get those filthy, murderous hands on her was the last thing I wanted. The only hands I wanted on her right now were my own.

  “So Payne’s got a thing for your blood,” I spoke with a smile, causing her to turn her glare to me. Such a feisty expression…I liked it a bit too much. I wondered if she’d still look feisty when she was under me, her legs wrapped around me. “What? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve all got blood, some of it is just more special than others.”

  Payne’s words, paraphrased. I, personally, wasn’t a huge fan of blood. Too messy. If there was one bodily fluid I wanted to be messy in, it definitely wasn’t blood.

  “I don’t want him to want to save me because of my blood,” she muttered, frowning slightly.

  A pang of sorrow tweaked my stomach, because I didn’t want to see those pretty lips frowning.