Page 38 of The Castle (Endgame 3)
Minutes pass with agonizing slowness, as Penny’s eyes drift shut—and then my own.
I watch myself sleep, feeling strange, as if I’m in a dream now instead of watching myself on a screen. Even from this high angle I can see a faint movement behind my eyelids, some sign that I’m not completely gone. The lights are bright enough to gleam off my hair, to dust my lashes with gold.
My lips move, indecipherable. It’s impossible to make out the words, but I know what I’m saying. I remember it too clearly. Who are you?
And someone answered: “I’m the monster under your bed.”
Only there’s no other sound on the recording, not until Gabriel walks down the hallway. I scramble out of bed, my eyes wide with terror, terror for the voice I heard, for the one I answered.
The voice that definitely isn’t real.Chapter TwentyWhen I emerge onto the balcony, I find Gabriel already there. Instead of looking out over the expansive lawns and hedge maze, he gazes down at a small marble piece—white and glinting. His thumb brushes over it in a way that feels definitely sexual. Definitely invasive. The rest of the pieces remain on the board where we left them during our last game, where I had bested him. Checkmate. Of course he always gets his revenge in the physical sense. My cheeks heat as I remember what he did to me after.
Then he had been dominant. A little playful.
Now he seems pensive, his handsome expression drawn tight. His golden eyes gaze at the small marble statue as if it holds answers. As if he can unlock them with sight alone.
An air of melancholy squeezes my heart. Gabriel’s confidence, his borderline arrogance may be frustrating at times, but I greatly prefer it to the humbled man who sits before me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He cocks his head to the side. “How do you get in?”
I take a step closer, studying the smooth compact surface. “Into marble? I’m pretty sure the only way is with a saw.”
His thumb smooths over the stone—and again. “You’d have to break it, then.”
“Yes, but…there’s nothing inside.”
He finally looks at me, a shadow of a smile on his lips. “Nothing at all?”
“Solid stone. You can feel how heavy it is.”
“Almost not worth the trouble,” he murmurs.
“What?”
“Never mind.” He sets the castle down on the board. “Tell me about your day, little virgin. Did you have strange feelings between your legs while I was gone? Did you touch yourself, only to find it made the ache worse?”
My cheeks heat. “No, I didn’t.”
“All my daydreams,” he says, mocking. “Destroyed.”
“Actually I worked on my course essay. I only have a few more weeks to finish.”
“Are your gods being vengeful again?”
“This one’s for the psych class.”
“What was it? Subjectivity, Individualism and…some kind of crisis. The crisis of masturbation? I knew you touched yourself. You have that guilty expression.”
“Crisis of morality,” I say, feeling embarrassment in my cheeks.
He manages to look grave. “Ah, that’s completely different.”
My gaze darts around the shadows, desperate for another topic. He doesn’t need to know that I masturbate every morning in the shower, thinking of him, sometimes moaning his name.
The chess set sits between us, pieces left unattended. “It’s about chess, actually. My essay.”
“Chess pieces as sex toys?”
How does he always manage to turn me around?
I’m about to self-combust from embarrassment, even though I have no real reason to be. He’s been my only sexual partner. My first. And he’s just as moved by our encounters as I am. But I know the answer: he pushes me because I am embarassed. He likes me on the edge, teetering, off balance, and the scary truth is that I like it, too.
“Female roles in chess,” I amend, trying to sound prim. “An analysis of gender and the real-world implications.”
“Oh, that does sound interesting. Anatomically speaking. Perhaps we could work up a few visuals together. Purely out of academic interest.”
He picks up a castle again, this time from the black side, and I can’t help but shiver. All he’s doing is sitting there holding a rook, but it feels like a threat. Unlike the pawn he once touched me with, this doesn’t have a round head.
The battlements at the top wouldn’t be sharp, but they wouldn’t be completely smooth either.
They would have a bite, like his teeth.
“Morality,” he says, his tone genial. “You were saying?”
My brain can only focus on the castle in his hand, on all the ways he might use it. All the places he might use it on. “Yes, well. The focus of my paper’s the creation of the queen.”
“Like when a pawn becomes a queen?”
There’s enough weight in his words to make me blush. “No, I mean like the queen piece itself. When there didn’t used to be any women on the board.”
He quirks a brow. “What was there instead?”
