SWNOVELS Alluring Darkness: Chapter 24
Standing by the window, I watch the grass field below where the first-years are forced to go through a grueling obstacle course over and over again. Soft chatter and the occasional chuckle fill the corridor as the other third-years around me comment and make bets on the outcome. We’re on a short break from our own morning class, so we decided to get some entertainment. Though, I have no idea how the other first-years are doing, because my eyes have been fixed on the same person from the moment I walked up to the window.
Raina is so far behind the others that her black hair stands out like a beacon against the green grass when she runs alone towards the next obstacle. It’s a smooth wooden wall with a few ropes hanging down from the top. I watch as Raina grips one of the ropes in both hands and starts trying to climb up.
Terrible restlessness and impatience flickers through my soul. She shouldn’t be down there, uselessly running through an obstacle course. She should be here. With me. Trying her best to fight back while I slowly but surely grind her stubborn defiance to dust underneath my boot until she finally breaks.
Squeezing my hand into a fist, I clench my jaw and use every ounce of my self-control to stop myself from going down to that field and dragging her out of there so that I can do just that. I blow out a long breath through my nose and flex my fingers.
My obsession with Raina is becoming dangerous. I can barely concentrate on anything when she’s not in the room because my mind is spinning when I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. But at the same time, I can’t concentrate when she’s in the room either. Because when she’s there, it’s as if she sucks all the oxygen out of the room until all I can see is those confident green eyes and all I can hear is that utterly unapologetic voice of hers and all I can smell is that intoxicating scent of jasmine from her perfume. I can’t breathe when she’s not in the room but I also can’t breathe when she is.
I resist the urge to rake a hand through my hair. Fuck, what is she doing to me?
Out on the field, Raina tries to pull herself up along the rope, but her arms give out before she can make it more than a foot off the ground. She drops down to the grass again.
From a couple of windows over, I notice Connor Smith abruptly turning around and stalking away. I track him with my gaze as he moves away from the window and back towards our lecture hall. I flex my fingers again. I’m itching to take out my frustrations on someone, but before I can do anything about it, my gaze is drawn back to Raina again.
I watch her grip the rope again and make another effort. Her body wiggles against the wall, and I’m reminded of the way she squirmed underneath me when I fucked her in that forest two days ago.
That experience had… not gone as expected.
I had tried to terrify her by threatening to let my brothers fuck her. I had tried to make her see me as the monster and the heartless lunatic that I am, so that she would run far away. But is that what she did? No. Instead of running from the darkness, she fucking dove headfirst right into it with me.
Telling me, someone who gets off on taking other people’s control away from them, to act out a forced sex fantasy? It’s like handing crack to an addict. Pinning her to the ground and fucking her hard until her body submitted to mine was so fucking addictive that I’m already craving my next fix.
I want her so badly that I can’t think straight anymore. I sleep even less now than I usually do.
She makes me crazy. But at the same time, she makes the craziness go away. Or rather, she makes me crazy when she’s not here and she makes the craziness disappear when she’s with me. When she’s near me, all I can see and hear and smell and feel is her, and that for some reason makes my head go completely silent.
But that also makes it hard to breathe because panic slams into me when I realize just how much power this insane girl has over me. I can’t let anyone have any power over me. But she somehow consumes my thoughts every waking hour, and half of the already dangerously few hours I sleep too.
Exhaustion pulls at my body. I discreetly rub my fingers against my temple. I have a throbbing headache behind my left eye, and it makes me even more short-tempered and vicious than usual. I practically threw one of my classmates across the hall earlier because he was in my way when I arrived.
Every part of my body is screaming for rest, and my mind most of all. But there is no rest to be found here.
The memory of those ten hours I slept when I had Raina’s body pressed against mine drifts through my brain. I would kill for another night like that right now.
Another flash of panic shoots through me.
I cannot be dependent on Raina for anything. I’m already too obsessed, too distracted, by her all-consuming presence. By the way her insanity sings to mine. I have to take back control over this.
Out by the wall, Raina loses her grip on the rope again. This time, she was almost halfway up. Her arms and legs flail around her as she plummets down and lands hard on the grass. The instructor yells at her from across the field.
Next to me, a guy laughs derisively. “What a loser. If I could get my hands on her, I would—”
I slam my fist into his stomach.
Air explodes from his lungs as he doubles over from the unexpected hit. I ram my elbow into the back of his neck, making him crumple to the floor with a dull thud.
I sweep my gaze over the other people around me, and I know that there must be absolute fury and insanity swirling in my eyes, because two of them even flinch.
“Anyone else?” I growl.
They all snap their gazes back to the field. But no one is even looking in Raina’s direction now.
Rational thoughts slowly start trickling back into my mind. Didn’t I just tell myself that I was going to stop letting Raina drive me crazy? And yet here I am, beating someone up just because he called her a loser.
Raking a hand through my hair, I blow out an inaudible sigh as I slide my gaze back to where Raina is completely ignoring the yells and threats from her instructor as she instead marches around the wall.
I shake my head.
What the hell is this girl doing to me?