Juliet

I blink several times at the tunnel that was unreachable to me just a short while before. The tunnel with armors and weapons in glass casings, where all the tourists were strolling, and still are. They all go about their business as if nothing, all save a small girl with rich black curls and powder blue eyes who looks cheerfully up at me.

“Ești prințesă?” she says in her language.

“Excuse me?”

“Ești super frumoasă. Trebuie să fii o priențesă.”

A smile twitches on my face as I stare at her, clueless.

“Mai fă o dată magia dinainte.”

“Magic?”

“Erai acolo mai devreme.” She points to something behind me. “Și apoi, dintr-o dată, erai afară.”

I turn around to follow the direction of her pointed finger, and I gasp, my hand flying to cover my mouth.

The monk figure with the vampire mask stands suspended in a tall glass casing, bigger than all the others, staring down at me from those Asian-like and almond-shaped dark eyes. Behind it, instead of a door, only a rock wall.

“This can’t be real,” I whisper, my mind frantically searching for a logical explanation.

“It was here just now,” I say, too loud. I’m talking to myself, trying to make sense of this madness, though I know I’m drawing attention.

“There was a tight flight of stairs and an old iron door, right there,” I tell them, looking desperately into their faces and pointing to the figure with the vampire mask.

A man puts a steady hand on my shoulder, and I realize it must be the girl’s father. “Miss, I’m pretty sure you came in the way we all have,” he says in a heavy accent. He points behind himself to the end of the corridor, where the green light linings of the elevator stand out. “That is the only entrance.”

Indeed, I must have gotten off the elevator at a different level the first time.

“No, you have to believe me,” I insist, grabbing his hand off my shoulder, holding it tightly in one of mine and still pointing in the direction that I’m certain I came from with the other. “Even before, I saw you through a glass door, there is another tunnel to the side.”

I let go of the man who’s looking at me with pity, his wife scrutinizing me from under knitted eyebrows, his daughter now holding tightly to the woman’s leg.

I run along the corridor, looking for the glass door around every other glass casing containing a medieval armor or weapon, but I’m already halfway through the corridor, and there’s no sign of it. I swiftly turn to the staring crowd, but bump into Miss Victoria’s stern headmistress face, her features drawn downwards, her brown eyes emotionless, her thin dark hair pulled up in a bun.

“I think you’ve caused enough disturbance, Miss Jochs,” she tells me in an even tone, her hands gripping my shoulders and forcing me to join her down the corridor towards the elevator. She keeps a grip on my upper arm along the way, and my body tightly close to hers. She’s about the same height as me, and skinny, but she’s clearly strong as a bull.

“Try to keep certain things to yourself,” she whispers in my ear.

“What is this place?” I demand, looking back to see the family I interacted with still staring after us, girl still gripping to her mother’s leg. The others have started to move away, back to their strolling and photographing, certain I must be nothing more than a crazy woman.

“Be quiet.”

“Quiet?” I tear myself from her clasp, forcing her to stop and face me. I narrow my eyes at her. “Why do I get the feeling you know exactly what happened to make me react like that? You know where I popped in here from, don’t you?” I take a step closer, nose to nose with her. She holds her ground, not a spark of emotion in her eyes. “How did that happen? Where is the dark corridor with the secret stairs and the iron door?”

“You’re looking for confirmation that you’re not seeing things,” comes the even reply. “All right, let me confirm—no, you’re not seeing things.”

I snort. “I didn’t think I was imagining any of it for one moment. It was real as all reality I ever experienced. But how did it happen?”

“Reality,” she repeats, grabbing my arm again and walking with me towards the corridor. “Reality is a tricky word, Miss Jochs. Everything you experienced was real, every room you saw, every item, every person.” She glances at me. “But it doesn’t mean you accessed them through doors and hallways.”

***

THE DOOR TO MY ROOM slams shut behind me.  I need to put my ideas to paper right now, before my mind starts to lose details.

I take a long swig of water from the bottle on the desk, then rummage in my briefcase for a new notebook—lost the old one in all the craze that happened downstairs. As I sit at the medieval desk, an idea hits me—the gadget that Isolde gave me! Now’s the time to use it.

I drink more water while unloading my purse on the desk, searching for the special paper and the special pen with feverish fingers. I start scribbling, the words crammed together to get as much as possible on the small pink slip. Somewhere in Berlin, probably in the top drawer of Isolde’s desk, the letters begin forming on the twin slip of paper.

I write about secret rituals, masks, and about two legendary brothers, one a beautiful vampire, the other a monstrous—Wait. I look up through the darkening window at the fading mountain contours. In what way could Radu the Handsome have been ugly? Did they call him “The Handsome” exactly because he was, in truth, unbearable to look at? And in what way were the people cursed who looked upon his face?

Some of the villagers should remember the legend, right, at least the elderly? Even if they don’t know exactly how the curse worked, maybe the devil is in the details. Lazarus comes to mind—he appears to get around, and he sure seems erudite enough to know stuff like this. I stride to the door and fling it open, only for the blood to leave my head in a second, without warning. I grope my way to the bed and plop down on it, holding my head in my hands. This day has been too much, I need rest before I do anything else.

I lie down on the cold, slightly humid sheets, my skin creasing at the touch of the clean but cold pillow on my cheek. My head feels heavier by the second, like a rock sinking into the pillow. The sensation spreads to my entire body until I snap out of the sleepy haze, panicking—My body feels as though tied to the bed, I can’t move a muscle except with great difficulty, like in those creepy dreams. But this can’t be a dream, since I’m hyperaware of the room’s semi-obscurity, of the night chill enveloping me as the curtains undulate into the wind through the open window.

I need to get to my feet and close the window. But it’s such an effort to move my body. A velvety male voice slithers to my ears, and I stiffen.

“It will help you a great deal if you relax.”

I know it’s Radek, even though his voice sounds deeper than usual. Like it’s enhanced by some inner darkness. And slightly muffled, as if he’s holding something in front of his mouth. I can feel him standing beside my bed, and it seems that all this heaviness pinning my body to the mattress is pressure oozing from his presence. Try as I may, I can’t fight this force. My muscles flex to help me turn around to face him, but he’s much stronger, applying pressure to my entire body at the same time without even touching me. All I can still move is my face and eyes, as well as my fingers and toes.

“This is invasion of privacy,” I manage.

“And it’s one of the lesser evils I’ve done, I assure you.”

No shit. “How come I can’t move?” I try to keep my voice calm. The guy’s clearly a psycho, so I guess it’s safer not to upset him.

“That’s not so important.”

“It is to me. I can’t move a muscle, and you’re not even touching me.”

“Listen, Juliet.” He slurs the words, sending ripples of strange pleasure up my spine, like his breath were stroking my skin. “During your stay here, you’ll encounter many things that you won’t understand. But sometimes understanding isn’t everything. Sometimes, just sometimes, feeling is what points us in the right direction.”

His voice grows more hypnotic with every word, infiltrating my brain like mist, clouding my thoughts. He peels the duvet off my body from behind, the chill kissing me inch for inch. At the same time shame sends heat to my cheeks as I’m being exposed, with only the flimsy white satin of my nightgown between my naked body and his eyes.

“Such beautiful skin,” his voice caresses my senses, while his fingers do the same to the exposed part of my back. I can’t deny the pleasure engulfing my heart at the admiration in his words.

“What are you doing?” I manage in a trembling voice.

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “But I don’t want you to stop.” The truth just rolls out of my mouth, and tears of embarrassment pool in my eyes.

My words seem to please Radek.

His caress moves to my waist, pushing the flowing nightgown from my shoulders downwards to the upper curve of my butt, his gentle touch leaving a trail of goose bumps in their wake. I press my lips together to fight the shame. If only I could move.

“Let me turn around.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to see me.”

“Jesus, Radek,” I burst. “You’re one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen, what could you possibly have to hide?” Why do I feel so compelled to tell the truth? I simply feel like it’s going to overfill my heart and break out of my chest if I don’t.

“Beauty,” he repeats softly. “Beauty is only skin-deep, a worthless asset.”

“Only someone who has an overload of this commodity can afford to speak about it in these terms. It’s easy to despise what you have too much of.”

He hisses, as if my words arouse him. “Your smart mouth, Juliet,” he confirms. Hell, this guy is twisted in more ways than I thought.

He brushes my thick curls away from my neck, exposing my wildly pulsing jugular. There’s a strange pressure on my skin right where the vein pulses, a pressure that makes me think of the kiss of carnal lips. But somehow the sensation is new, as if the touch is on my skin but his lips somehow...aren’t. It feels good though, too good.

I’m so giddy at the prospect of having sex with this mad prince, even though everything he’s doing is sick, and possibly dangerous. I mean, come on, the guy most probably drugged me, had something put in the water on my desk or something, in order to render me unable to move. Now, he’s having his way with me without showing his face—probably wearing the Prince of Midnight’s mask. He clearly has a mind as twisted as all those tunnels he’s built inside the rocky base of this castle. But, despite all that, it seems my brain has descended between my legs.

“Just, please, be gentle. I haven’t been with a man in a very long time.”

“Really? How long?” I feel the kiss of his carnal lips on the back and side of my neck, then my shoulder, growing more powerful, lustful. As his desire grows, his hands sink in my hair, kneading my scalp and messing my curls, the energetic field of his body hot behind me, even though there was no dip in the mattress that would signal that he knelt on it or lay beside me.

“Almost two years.”

The sensations stop all over my body, as if the prince turned to stone. I can sense his surprise.

“A woman like you has been without a man for two years?”

Now how am I supposed to take this? I try to move but no, I’m still pinned to the bed with my back at him.

“What do you mean by a woman like me?”

“Attractive. Very attractive.”

Pleasure rises inside of me at his words.

“Most men wouldn’t miss the chance of sleeping with you,” he continues as he begins circling the bed, the strange power oozing from his presence forcing my chin upwards as I lay on my side, so that in the end I’m forced to look up at the headboard, unable to see him. “So, if you haven’t felt a man inside of you in two years, it’s because you chose not to.”

His power forces truth out of me again. “It’s not that I didn’t want to.” That night when Herald pushed me up against the wall goes through my head, along with the way I rejected him. “But I just...”

“Why didn’t you take a lover in two years, Juliet?” he presses when I don’t continue. “Why would you become—” He looks for the word. “A vestal?”

“I can’t have meaningless sex,” it rolls out. “I want to mean something to the man I sleep with. He gets to see me down there, enter my body, things don’t get any more intimate than that. I can’t treat sex like some kind of recreational activity.”

He stops at the foot of the bed. I can sense his eyes like fire on me. I got his attention, and I got it in a very special way. He’s not playing.

“Well, emotional intimacy isn’t what I’m after tonight. Do you want me to go?”

“No.” The truth squirts out from me, and I’m mortified to the core. But there’s nothing I can do to keep it from coming out of my mouth. “I can’t stop imagining your beautiful lips on my mouth and then between my legs.”

What the fuck am I doing? I’m screaming with embarrassment on the inside and, in the silence that follows, I begin sobbing like a baby.

“What are you doing to me?” I manage in a cracked voice. “Did you put some kind of truth potion in my water?”

“I told you, Juliet.” His voice caresses my name like he wants to kiss it. “Some things are better understood with the heart than with the mind.”

No doubt he’s playing with me now the way he’s played with me by sending me down all those twisted hallways. The way he played with me when he led me to another door than the one I came in through down in the masks room. All to make me feel like I’m losing my mind. Now he surely had someone put a drug in my water to make me unable to move or tell a lie. I press my face into the pillow and cry out in frustration.

“I’m sorry it has to be like this,” he says softly.

The mattress dips at my feet, and the tears freeze in my eyes. I don’t dare even look up from the pillow, but I’m stunned as I realize—he just knelt on the bed at my feet, palms warm and smooth as they brush their way up my calves. The first thing I can think about is thank God I shaved my legs yesterday during my bath. Was I hoping to become intimate with the prince even though I didn’t actually think I was worthy of his attention? Could it be that, in the back of my mind, I knew this was the true reason why he brought me here—to have sex with me in some sick way?

“Are you a sex freak?”

“I suppose you can say that.” His hands slither under my satin nightgown, heading boldly for my inner thighs and cupping my flesh. My thighs are so damn sensitive I can’t repress a hiss, my lower back straining to arch. But I’m still pinned down.

“I’m many things,” he says as one of his hands moves over my hip to my butt, cupping the cheek greedily. “I’m a freak, but I’m not a rapist. I’ll only go on as long as what I’m doing is good for you. Is it good for you, Juliet?”

“Yes, very good.” Damn it, the truth again.

“Wonderful. We’ve only just begun, pretty vestal. You don’t know what I have in store for you.”

“I’m dying to find out.” I’m anticipating it, my skin prickling with expectation.

“You tell me when you want me to stop, and I will. Whatever happens here, it won’t happen against your will.”

But I’m drugged, so I’ll surely agree even to the sickest things, won’t I? And he knows it. He slips a finger under my panties and between my folds, then slowly inside my cleft.

“Oh, God,” I whimper, pressing my head into the pillow. It’s been forever since I felt a man’s touch down there, and his is exquisite. The only thing that bothers me is that his hand moves so expertly, as if he’s had dozens of women before.

“Wait.”

He stops, but some kind of connection must have been created between us, because I sense that he’s puzzled. He’s not used to women stopping him at this sweet point in the act, is he?

I try to look at him, and I manage to move my head just a little. But it was only a slip in his attention, since the invisible force pushes my head back into the pillow immediately.

“For two years I’ve been rejecting sexual advances because I didn’t want to be just a meaningless affair to a man,” I state with all the dignity I can muster in this all but dignified situation. “It wasn’t easy, but it was a sacrifice I chose to make, and I stuck to it no matter what. So please, don’t just use technique on me. Make me feel like I’m special.” I pause and swallow, mortified to say what I say next, but I have to. “Make me feel like I’m the woman you’ve been waiting for your entire life.”

There’s a long silence between us.

“You bewilder me, pretty vestal,” the Prince eventually says. “Your hormones must be killing you after two years, you have a man you desire in your bed, and yet you stop him.”

“Some things are about the emotion.”

There’s a sharp intake of air, as if my words turn him on. He lunges over me with his head at the level of my privy parts, his hands greedily grabbing my buttocks.

“You have a perfect ass, Juliet. I’m going to lick your ass and your pussy.” Cream slips into my panties. I try to fidget with my legs in order to get some control, but I can’t move, so he has easy access to my wet privy parts under the flimsy panties. My head is pinned to the pillow, which means that despite my crazy desire to look into his beautiful face, all I get is the dark canopy above my eyes.

“Your smart mouth turns me on. Keep talking to me,” he says, his breath touching my clit over my wet panties. My pulse races in expectation, while my inner self screams, bewildered and terrified that Prince Radek is preparing to put that blood-red mouth on my folds.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking when I do this.”

He takes a hand off my buttocks just to push something off his face—the Prince of Midnight’s mask, I imagine—and then rips my panties.

“Oh, God,” I cry, struggling to move. But he won’t let me, forcing me to experience unbearable pleasure when his mouth touches my folds, his tongue stroking my clit.

“I’m thinking things unworthy of a prince’s ears,” I manage as my breath hitches.

His tongue pushes on my inner folds, stroking upward to my clit and then back again as if he’s deeply, romantically kissing my pussy.

“God, please, let me move, just a little.”

“That would take away from the pleasure.” His breath tingles my exposed, screaming, sensitive flesh.

“Let me rock my pussy into your mouth.” Shoot, does the truth about everything need to come out?

“You want to fuck my mouth, Juliet?” There’s provocation in his tone. He wants to prove to me that I’m not about emotion after all, that I’m all about animal instincts. And, this time, I’m dying to play the game.

“Yes, yes, I want to fuck your beautiful mouth.”

He must like that, because my hips are soon free to move. I grind forward to meet his suckling and kissing, the smell of my own arousal filling the air. He begins to moan, pushing his face harder between my legs, greedy for more, his hands clawing into my ass like he hasn’t had a meal in days. I can feel his hard shoulders against the back of my thighs and, when the sensation pairs with the thought that a beautiful Carpathian prince is eating my pussy like there’s no tomorrow, a shattering orgasm runs through me.

His tongue laps at my clit until I come back down from my bliss, my muscles relaxing. I reach down, touching his hard shoulders through what feels like leather. It turns me on like a spark directly to my core. I want to feel that hard body dressed in leather on my naked skin, his hard cock entering me inch for inch.

Radek allows me enough freedom of movement to touch and knead the rock hard muscles of his shoulders, sliding down to his upper back.

“Do you work out?” I press my eyes shut. Do I have to say the stupidest things that go through my mind?

His tongue gives my creamy pussy one last stroke.

“My turn,” he whispers, his breath tingling me down there.

“Your turn to what?” My arousal intensifies as I think that I’m at his mercy.

“To take pleasure from you.”

I moan, delighted—he’s going to enter me.

He sits up on his knees, the mattress moving under him as he probably works on his fly. I’m lying on my back, but I use my momentary ability to move in order to lift my head and look at him.

All I get is a glimpse of the prince in a leather outfit that compliments his perfectly shaped body, the vampire mask covering only half his face, since he pushed it up in order to touch those blood-red lips to my pussy. I can’t see the exposed lower part of his face clearly but enough to make out skin way too white and lips way too red. If the contrast between his skin like ivory and his lips like roses was mesmerizing when I last saw him, now it’s creepy to say the least. He seems a monster.

“DON’T look at me,” he growls. A bolt of pressure shoots from him, forcing my head back into the pillow and my chin upward. Now all I can see is the top of the tester bed, veils of dark canopy.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” I manage in a trembling voice. He’s keeping my jaw locked, so talking is even harder, only through my teeth. “Why can’t I look at you? You’re the first man I’ve been intimate with in years, I want to look at your face while you take me. And how the hell can you pin me down without even touching me?”

The power he emanates forces my legs apart, exposing my craving pussy to him. I flex my legs, moaning in mortification. “Please,” I cry, my face burning.

“Remember, you can always tell me to stop.” His voice is deep, dark and gruff with a mix between desire and anger.

His velvety fingers push between my folds, finding and gently massaging my nub. He knows exactly how to do it so that it’s not too much, just perfect, pleasure radiating to the rest of my body.

“Oh, please, Radek, let me at least touch you.”

He loosens the grip on my hips and on my jaw.

“Keep talking,” he orders huskily. “I like your words. I like the sound of your voice.”

With that, he pushes something leathery and hard inside of me, inch for inch. I arch from my waist as much as I can, pushing my hips forward to take it in, soon realizing what it is—a dildo. God, this prince is twisted, but the way he wields the leathery cock is out of this world.

I moan hard, pushing my head into the pillow, my eyes rolling back as he wields it in slow strokes exactly to my sweet spot. Just when I’m a moan away from the first deep orgasm of my life, writhing to meet the dildo inside of me, he pushes a finger slick with the juice of my arousal into my butt.

“Oh, Radek,” I cry, and he lets me open my legs wider. He moans gruffly as he wields both dildo and his finger inside my pussy and my butt at the same time, pushing his naked cock between my folds and touching my nub.

I moan hard and flex all my muscles, struggling to writhe into his touch that sends quakes of pleasure all through my body. His breathing is hard, elaborate as he possesses me in three ways at the same time, my pussy, my ass, my clit.

“You’re my own personal slut, Juliet.” The darkness in his voice seeps inside my head. His mask is above my face now, rocking up and down as he pushes his slick cock on my clit, dildo inside of me, his finger up my ass. Guilty pleasure makes me sweat everywhere.

“Radek, please.”

“You can always tell me to stop, if something of what I’m doing or saying upsets you.”

I bite my lower lip, eyes fixed on the ivory mask of the vampire. Through the Asian-like yet big and almond-shaped contours of the eyes, Radek’s turbid blue irises stare right back into mine.

“Let me make this even easier for you,” he says huskily, moving faster. He’s close to coming, I can tell. “Do you want me to stop, slut?”

I sink my teeth into my lip harder, struggling to keep from saying, “no,” and making a fool of myself. I can sense the grin behind his mask as his theories are being proven to him—probably for the hundredth time. Some kind of telepathic connection has been established between us during this amazing intercourse, and I know he’s provoking and defying me, and women in general. And it will probably never be enough, he’s repeating some scenario in a struggle to heal a wound over and over again.

“Tell me to fuck you harder.”

“Fuck me harder,” I whisper. His power grips my jaw and forces my eyelids wide open, making me look clearly into his eyes that seem crazed with dark desire.

“Fuck me harder, my lord,” he specifies.

“Fuck me harder, my lord.”

“Pump all my holes, my lord.”

My nub swells, hurting with the need for release. I repeat the words exactly as he wants me to.

“You can’t believe how dark your desires actually are, isn’t it, Juliet?” He provokes. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

“But what do you want?” The mask moves up and down as his cock slides between my folds and over my clit over and over, making my lip curl over my teeth with dirty satisfaction.

“I want you to fall in love with me.”

He stops, looking into my face from behind the mask. He wants to keep fucking me this twisted way, I can feel that, but he also wants to use this moment to make a point.

“Whose love do you want, Juliet? The love of the beautiful prince? Or the love of this masked man who’s giving you pleasure?”

“I want the love of Radek.”

He throws his head back, laughing hard. I notice the skin on his neck, now exposed to me, is as white as a corpse’s, with dark blue veins swelling behind it as he laughs.

“You don’t even know, Radek. All you’ve ever seen of him was his beautiful face. Hell, you don’t even like him as a person, you think he’s a crook.”

“This is the point where you wanted to bring me, isn’t it? The point where you prove to yourself that all women are shallow, frivolous, in love only with appearances.”

I use the glitch in his attention to my immobilization to bring my hands to his mask, caressing it. He lets me do it at first, searching my gaze for something, then his power pins my arms swiftly above my head. He laughs like I’ve just made the very point he was trying to prove.

“If you saw my true face, if you knew who I really was, you’d throw up.”

He starts moving again, very controlled this time, and I sense the defying fury behind his mask. He pushes the dildo inside my ass this time, and his cock inside my pussy, causing me an amazing sensation. It doesn’t hurt, because he prepared me with his finger, and he does everything so expertly. Soon his finger is inside my mouth, having me taste myself, while I come so hard around him that my head swims. The orgasm shakes me, draining me of all my juices and leaving me exhausted on the bed, still pinned under his power.

“Oh. My. God,” I say as he extracts himself from my still pulsing inside. His manhood glides up and down on my outer folds again, surely avoiding coming inside of me.

“Please, please let me touch you.”

“No,” he says, his breathing elaborate, betraying that he’s close to coming. He isn’t using any gadgets anymore, but grips to my hips like a beast hungering for my flesh.

“I won’t try to remove your mask, I promise.”

He keeps gliding on me without a reaction to my words, my hands still pinned above my head, his eyes now sweeping greedily all over my body from behind his ivory vampire mask with the blood-red lips and the shiny fangs. I resort to the one thing that could make him want to yield to my pleas.

“Please, my lord. Let me aid your pleasure.”

He hisses and bucks as his seed squirts from his cock onto my lower belly. He comes with animal growls, looking down at the place where we’re connected and giving me a view of what should be his glossy, thick chestnut hair.  But what’s crowning his head is a dry mess the color of copper, like the hair of a corpse. I realize my hands are free, and I move to touch him. I doubt he’s letting me do it, rather, in his pleasure, he forgot to keep me immobilized.

Slowly, gently, I sink my hands into his hair, letting it fill the space between my fingers. It feels like straw at first, but then, at my fingertips, it starts to feel glossy, growing thick, sliding between my fingers like satin.

“What the hell,” Radek reacts, his head jerking up. The leather covers him up to his throat, leaving only a strip of skin between it and the mask, but it’s enough for me to notice the difference—it’s the ivory skin of Prince Radek. It doesn’t take a genius to realize—He IS the Prince of Midnight, and he’s changing shape. The legend is true. At night, he becomes a monster.

I freeze with my mouth open as the truth hits me. I’m tipsy-dizzy from whatever power he’s exerting on me, but I must say this: when you realize that paranormal stories are real, it feels just....freaking normal. Because of the shock, no doubt. Sort of like, What? That shit is true? Oh, okay.

I’m still fixed on that last idea as the prince gets off of me, staring at me from behind the mask as if I’m the eerie thing in here. As if I’m the anomaly. I blabber, trying to tell him something, but I fail. Bracing himself as if he’s suddenly in pain, he begins retreating to the door, keeping his eyes on me until he reaches it. He stands there for as long as his seemingly hurting body allows him, then he crumbles and growls like a transforming beast, gripping to the handle. The door flashes shut behind him.