Page 25 of Soulless Rivalry

If anything, I found the proximity to her… comforting. Warm.

I hated myself a little for it.

I felt like a horny fucking teenager lately and I despised it with every fiber of my being. For so long, I had prided myself in not showing any interest in things as futile as sex or physical attraction.

Matter of fact, the mere thought of anyone touching me in pretty much any way before made me sick.

But when I’d touched her for the first time, I didn’t feel the familiar souring in my stomach. I didn’t immediately feel the need to scrub myself off of her touch, or her scent.

It was pathetic.

Neither of us moved for a few seconds, silently assessing if our bodies still worked well enough to walk. My ribs felt bruised, and I just hoped they weren’t broken because that would hurt for weeks.

My head also throbbed from the way it had slammed against the floor, but thankfully my back took the brunt of the fall. Elyssa groaned as she pushed herself up with her hands, her knees falling on either side of me as she straddled me on her way to stand. Against my will, desire was heating my stomach. If I got hard while Elyssa-fucking-Ayaari of all people was on top of me, I might’ve just killed myself from shame.

That too was a new feeling to me. I’d never felt it before. I wholly accepted who I was and the fact that emotions didn’t come easily to me. Unlike my siblings, except for Roman, I had learned from a pretty young age that I would not be able to feel a wide range of emotions.

Growing up, I was always the silent kid, the one watching his siblings play while not understanding what type of enjoyment they got from kicking a ball or playing pretend. I much preferred reading. My siblings didn’t always understand why, and I remembered a short time in my life where I tried fitting in with them. Mimicking them.

It didn’t feel natural and only left me frustrated. I stopped when my mother pulled me aside one day and told me I didn’t have to do that.

She said I shouldn’t have to try and act like them, that I was inherently different and that it was okay.

Whenever I felt a new emotion, I spent days, sometimes even weeks trying to dissect it, to understand why it was that I felt that. The first time I experienced anger was against Mikhail—not surprising, the fucker loved to play with my nerves growing up.I recalled a vivid sensation of heat in my stomach, then my fists clenching and the desire to hurt him. So I did.

I punched that motherfucker so hard I broke his nose, even though he was older and taller than me at the time.

And my mother was right, none of my family made me feel ashamed or got angry at me for it. If anything, they were relieved that I was finally showing emotion. Hell, even Mikhail smiled through a bloody nose and looked at me in awe because the punch had been a great one. He was eleven at the time, I was nine.

My family was fucked up, but it was mine. I might not feel love the typical way, but I did love them the only way I knew how: by showing protection and loyalty. I’d bleed for them just like I’d kill for them.

Elyssa groaning put me out of my thoughts; she rubbed the back of her head and winced a little, like I hadn’t been the one taking the brunt of the fall.

She winced as she looked around, taking in our surroundings in astonishment. Then, as if remembering it was my dick she was sitting on and not some kind of comfortable pillow, she looked down at me and jerked away so fast she ended up on her butt.

I took that as my opportunity to sit up, my back creaking and making me hold back a growl. The floor was cold as fuck and fucking dirty. White dust was all over my pants and jacket. Wherever we were, it hadn’t been visited in years. Darkness surrounded us and made it nearly impossible to see. The only light came from cracks in the wall up the stairs that had closed back up after we triggered it somehow.

Elyssa had gotten closer to me, crawling on her knees until her thigh grazed mine. “K-Konstantin?”

I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “Oh, I’m not ‘bitch’ anymore?”

“Shut up. I can’t see shit. I hate the dark.”

It was stupid of her to give me more ammunition given what I already had on her, but I wasn’t about to complain.

I grunted as I pushed myself off the floor. “Fuck.” Everything hurt.

“Where are you going?!” She followed me up and then stepped blindly until she was all but stuck to my side.

“What the fuck are you doing? Back off.” I pushed her away, clearly unwilling to get hard from how she was wrapping herself around me.

The minx gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin like my body wasn’t in enough pain as it was.

“Please. Believe me, I hate being so close to you, but not as much as I hate the dark.”

More like she was terrified of it. Quickly assessing the situation in my head, I concluded half-heartedly that fighting her would only make her clutch me harder.

“You can grab my arm, but keep the rest of you off of me,” I conceded.

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