Page 25 of Buried Souls
That makes him smile—slow and dangerous. “Good,” he says. “Then this is going to be interesting.”
Niko searches my features as I glare at him. His fingers glide across my cheek, following the delicate lines of my face, caressing the soft skin of my lips as he rubs them with his thumb.
I gasp, shivers erupting across my flesh, my mouth parting ever so slightly.
I don’t understand it. My body’s reaction to him.
He stands too still, as if listening to something I can’t hear. And yet, my breath catches every time he’s in my vicinity. Every time he looks at me.
The air around him is different. Thick. Magnetic. My skin prickles whenever he enters a room, like my body recognizes something my mind cannot name. And his voice—God,his voice. It carries the weight of old things—promises unkept, graves unmarked.
It isn’t just attraction. It’s a sensation I can’t file away in the neat categories of sound logic. It’s wrong and thrillingbecauseit’s wrong. Like standing on the edge of a precipice and knowing the fall will kill you, but stepping closer anyway just to see what the wind would feel like against your throat.
I stare at him, mesmerized, and when his eyes meet mine, dark and steady, I swear it’s as if he already knows everything that I try to hide.
“There is something about you,” he begins in an almost whisper, his deep baritone resonating around us as he playswith my lips. “Something so familiar, as if we’ve met somewhere before.”
I swallow, feeling like I’m standing in two places at once. Here, in this ruined house with rotting wallpaper and flickering firelight. And somewhere else. Somewhere older. Somewhere forbidden.
He didn’t need to touch me. That was the most dangerous part.
He only needed to look at me a moment too long, tilt his head slightly, and the whole world shifted. The corners of the room darkened. My heartbeat slowed, or quickened, it was always hard for me to tell. Time became syrup. Sound stretched and faded. I would blink and forget what I was meant to say, like now.
“Maybe we have.” I finally manage to form the response, then choke on air as he presses his thumb between my lips.
Niko smiles faintly, but there is no kindness in it. Only sorrow. “Yes, maybe. Once upon a dream.” He watches my mouth as the pad of his finger glides across my flesh. “Maybe, we’re sleeping and need only wake up to remember.”
The words catch me off guard. His tenderness is unexpected. Raw. A side of him that I now realize he hides so well. Too well. But why? Courage drives me to ask the questions that hours ago, I would have been too afraid to ask.
“What happened to you to make you so angry and hardened at the world?”
He stills. I feel it then—that subtle shift. As if by asking, I’d taken a step I can’t undo. As if he’s been waiting all this time for me to pose the question.
“I lost someone very dear to me.”
Olga’s tale of the Bear Mansion and its inhabitants comes to mind, once more. “Your family.”
He nods, his face falling. “All of them, gone, in a singlebreath.”
A pang hits my chest as I try to imagine the amount of pain and suffering that this man had to endure. “I’m sorry for your loss.” I hesitate. “Why did you stay here, in this house that only reminds you of the past?”
“Because this is my home.”
“Is that why you never sold it?”
He nods again. “This mansion has been in my family for centuries. My great ancestor built it, and it has been passed down to the eldest son ever since. It’s my legacy, Elena. I cannot abandon it. No matter how painful of a reminder it is to the tragedy that has befallen it.”
I scowl, trying to make sense of why he’d willingly relive his trauma each waking day. This level of devotion to a building, a cause, a memory of something that has no real meaning other than one of sentimental value, has always fascinated me.
“I’m sure your brothers will understand. They’d want you to find peace away from this place.”
An unexpected chuckle has butterflies erupting in my stomach. “Ah, yes, my brothers. Always so considerate. Always worried about me.” He shakes his head, his thumb returning to my lips, once more. “Even now, after all this time, their presence—however distant and fleeting—would have been welcome and comforting.”
Confusion rakes my insides. I try to make sense of his words, but come up blank, once again. It’s as if he’s speaking in riddles, each sentence a new puzzle that only heightens my need for answers.
“What do you mean?” I begin, but my pondering is cut short when Niko pushes his thumb back in my mouth, rekindling the fire in my belly that seems ever present and burning in hisvicinity. I lick the tip, taunting him, stroking it with quick, fluid motions.
He growls again, cuffing my neck. “Do not toy with me, little lamb, or I will find a better use for that tongue of yours.”
