Page 60 of Soulless Rivalry

“Konstantin, release me!”

“Are you gonna calm down?”

She stayed silent for a beat, ceasing to try and free herself from me.

“Yes.”

So I let her touch the ground again but didn’t release my hold on her waist, turning her around so she’d face me instead.

The fury on her face was addictive. I liked putting it there and making her scream my name in anger almost as much as I liked it when she had moaned it last night.

“What do you want?” she gritted.

“Why did you leave this morning?”

The question seemed to startle her like maybe she wasn’t expecting me to acknowledge it at all.

“I—I just… why would I stay?”

Pulling her to me so that her chest was flush against mine, I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Because I wasn’t done with you.”

Her breath caught in her throat, her eyes flashing with desire before something else washed it away. Elyssa looked away quickly, gulping and clearing her throat.

“That was a one-time thing.”

“Like fuck it was,” I growled, digging my finger further into her soft skin.

“Be for real, Konstantin. You know this couldn’t work. Yesterday was a—a… lapse in judgment. We were tired, let’s just… forget about it and go back to how things were. It was a mistake.”

The word echoed through my brain like a gunshot.

Mistake.

I hated that she’d used that particular word to describe something as special to me as what happened last night.

It took me a minute to comprehend that what I was feeling was hurt. It hadn’t happened to me since we came to live here in the States; I had sworn I wouldn’t let it happen again.

The realization that I’d let myself be fooled by her again felt heavy in my chest.

“You know what? Fine. Get lost.” Angry at both of us, I let go of Elyssa… by pushing her into the pool behind her.

The sound she made as she fell into the water was deeply satisfying and almost brought a cruel smile to my lips. I was hurt and thought maybe having to go back up to her dorm while completely soaked might be humiliating enough for her to put us on even ground.

But when I saw her struggling to come back to the surface, flailing her arms around and unable to breathe, that thought was quickly forgotten.

Because apparently, Elyssa Ayaari couldn’t fucking swim.

ELYSSA

Back in Italy, Jedde used to take me to the beach every Sunday. We walked on the sand, picked up the prettiest seashells, and finished the day with ice cream from a local parlor we both loved. Jedde had a sweet tooth.

We did all that, but we never swam. Ever.

Other than the fact that she refused to wear a swimsuit for modesty reasons—Jedde wasn’t particularly religious, but she came from a traditional village, back in Tunisia—she was also scared shitless of the water. She had told me tales of her childhood back in her homeland, how one of her sisters had almost let her drown when she was eight years old because she and her friends got distracted.

That event traumatized her so much that she never set foot in the water afterward. She limited her visits to the beach to shellfish-hunting and sightseeing. Against her will, Jedde had passed on that fear to me. I wasn’t angry at her for that. I missed her terribly.

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