Unaware chapter 4 - Private Lessons, take two (A.k.a a study on the shock effect)
...And after taking a few days off for lack of sleep and such, I'm back with more Rin. More pissed off Rin, to be specific. This time we're back at his summer class, with the darkness and the blindfold... and Michal being... well, the teacher of the things he's supposed to teach. (Even if Rin would really prefer not to be there.) Oh, and we get just a little bit of "screen time" for Mark (Rin's best friend)... who will be a bit more important starting next chapter. ^_^; (And through the end of this part and into Unstable, actually.)
So I'll shut up now and get out of your way.
Chapter 4
Private Lessons, take two* (*A.k.a. a study on the shock effect)
Nothing seemed to have changed from the night before when I showed up in that same room for my second class. The room was empty, again, with the chair sitting next to desk. Well, two things, small things, had changed. For one, the heavy black fabric blindfold had been replaced for a lighter (weight-wise) and softer one, though it still looked just as effective at keeping all light out. And the message card was different.
It said, in the same handwritten script as before, "Like yesterday, please turn off the lights, blindfold yourself, and wait in the chair for my arrival. However, this time I ask that you please remove your pendant before we proceed. It will cause problems with what I wish to work on tonight."
It shouldn't have surprised me that he knew about that, seeing as everyone involved with the Academy seemed to know everything about me when I knew nothing. But it was still kinda weird. The pendant he was referring to was something that Dad had given me years and years before, probably when I was about six or seven. It was a bright green stone, though not emerald, about the same color as my eyes (and as Dad's eyes, come to think of it, though his glasses made his eyes seem so small that it was hard to tell what color they were most of the time), surrounded by a cage-like mess of silver wire. Dad had told me to try to wear it as much as possible, and he had sounded serious when he said that. So I wore it all the time, usually under my shirt, to the point where it felt like my glasses: I more or less forgot about it when I had it on, but I noticed it when it was missing. Still, there was something about the note on the card that made me realize that I should do what Michal told me to do, even if it went against what Dad had told me to do so many years ago.
So, I slipped the black leather string that held the pendant up over my head and put the entire thing on the desk next to the card. Then I took the blindfold in hand and headed over to the light switch. Moments later, the room was completely dark again, I had the blindfold tied over my eyes, and I was sitting in the chair, waiting almost patiently for Michal to show up.
Almost as if he had been waiting for me to finish what he had told me to do (and that was a definitely possibility), I heard the door open only moments after I sat down in the chair and tightened the knot in the blindfold. Then the door closed, almost silently, behind Michal, and I heard footsteps crossing the room. A hand lightly rested atop my head told me that he had arrived.
"So your father explained things to you?"
"Some."
"Such as?" His voice sounded oddly detached and cold, and it was more than a little frightening for a moment. I told him what Dad had explained to me, my voice shaking uncontrollably as I talked, despite the fact that I had been calm before he entered the room.
"But he didn't tell you what I would be teaching you..."
I shook my head. Based on the way he had acted the night before, I was fairly sure that he could see well in the dark. But even if he couldn't, he would have been able to tell that I was shaking my head based on the feeling under his hand.
He slid his hand off of my head. Moments later I felt both of his hands on my shoulders. Like the night before, he started to massage my shoulders with slow, but steady and deep movements of his hands. Just as before, I felt all the tension in my shoulders and bank start to melt away under his hands, and before long I started to sag in the chair, too relaxed to stay fully upright.
"Aren't you going to tell me what all of this is about?" My voice sounded oddly distant to my ears at that time. I think I might have been close to falling asleep at that point, and when I realized that, I woke right up again. For some reason, the thought of falling asleep there bothered me more than anything else about the situation.
"I believe I told you yesterday that I find it easier to teach through hands on experience."
"I don't care about that!" The words came out a little more angry than I really intended, as a little bit of the tension rushed back into my body, despite the hands that immediately rubbed it right away. "That doesn't mean you can't at least tell me what sort of things you want to teach me. How the hell am I supposed to be able to learn anything if you won't even tell me what I'm supposed to be learning?"
"The things I will be teaching you are not the sort of things that you need that sort of attention to learn." He pushed my back slightly, causing me to lean forward in the chair almost as far as I could without falling over, and then started lightly pounding on my back. "I assure you, even if you are not putting any effort into learning what I teach you, by the time I am done with you, you will know my lessons, each and every one of them."
Despite the fact that I was relaxed almost to the point of drowsiness, this annoyed me. First it had been Dad waiting until lunch time to tell me anything out of what I wanted to know. Then it was Dad refusing to answer any of my questions after not wanting to tell me what the third reason was. And now it was Michal being so damned reluctant to tell me just what he was supposed to be teaching me. It was annoying, and I decided in that moment that I was tired of it and wasn't going to put up with it anymore.
So, I reached back and grabbed one of his wrists, which stopped the pounding on my back. Then I turned in the chair to face him. I couldn't see because of the blindfold, not to mention the dark room, but I wanted him to know quite clearly that if not for the blindfold I would be staring right at him.
"I'm starting to get sick and tired of these games that you Academy people are playing with me." My voice came out just a little more nastily than it should have, probably. "I'm here for class, so I'm obviously here to learn something. But you won't tell me what I'm here to learn, and that is just as aggravating as Dad refusing to tell me anything about what's going on. I don't care if it screws up this grand plan of the Nelene and Cellen families or any shit like that, but I am leaving if you don't spit out what my purpose for being here is."
He didn't say anything. He just sat there, completely and utterly silent, for almost an entire minute. And as we both sat there, deathly quiet and unmoving, I realized that my thumb was right over the pulse point in his wrist... and that his heart was racing far too fast to be healthy. Even as I was about to tell myself that there was something seriously wrong with him, the idea came to me that maybe he was just another one of those non-humans that Dad had mentioned, and that that sort of heart rate was natural for him.
Then, without even noticing that he had moved, I felt a pressure against my lips. A soft, warm, insistent pressure that I realized after a slight pause from shock and surprise was another pair of lips. Of course, unless there was someone else in the room that I didn't know about, it had to be Michal. And that meant... that Michal was kissing me.
The moment that thought actually took hold in my mind, I pulled back with a sudden jerk. I let go of his wrist as I did so and ended up jumping up from the chair and running as fast as I could away from him. Or, I tried to run as fast as I could away from him, but I instead ran into the desk almost immediately and fell to the floor, cursing quite loudly.
He hurried to my side almost the moment I hit the ground and tried to help me up. I pushed his hands away as hard as I could and forced myself back up without his help, using the desk for leverage. I felt my way along the desk until I was on the other side, hoping that I could at least keep the desk between the two of us. And then, I reached up with unsteady hands to fumble at the knot in the blindfold with the intention of removing it.
Once the blindfold was off, I found that I really couldn't see in the dark room. Even after being subjected to no light for more long enough for my pupils to be at maximum dilation, I could see nothing more than a fuzzy shape of a man on the other side of the desk from me. And even if I had been able to see better, I realized that there was no way that I would be able to tell if I recognized him or not, because the entire world was blurry without my glasses.
"You took the blindfold off."
"Of course I did!" My voice came high and loud, almost at a scream. "You fucking kissed me!"
"If that is the way you are going to react to a simple kiss, we will have a long way to go before we are even slightly done here." He sounded resigned, but at the same time, slightly... excited. And that caused a shiver to travel up my spine.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Your training. What else?"
"What does you kissing me have to do with my training?" Of course, even as the words left my mouth, a thought that I was loath to even think about started to creep its way into my mind. A thought that made him kissing me and then talking about my "training" make sense, though I immediately told myself that there was no possible way that could be right.
"You told me yourself that Willian explained that you will be given over to the elder Nelene son. As his bride. What did you think you would be doing for him? Cooking his food and doing his laundry, and nothing else?"
"You're saying there's more than just that, or are you referring to the magic?"
"Of course I'm not! With marriage nowadays, you always have to think about the sex. Always. What in the world do you think the young Nelene will be doing at night?"
"I don't know!" I paused for a moment, the full meaning of what he had just said trickling slowly through my head. "Wait a moment... are you trying to say that you people expect me to sleep with him?"
"You are going to be his bride..."
"But... but he's a guy."
"That he is."
"I'm not gay."
He sighed, sounding more than a little frustrated, and tired of the entire situation. "I never said you were. Though I am fairly certain that you will quite quickly find yourself to be bisexual, if you haven't already, as almost every single one of your predecessors, including your father and Lady Marguerite have. And seeing as very few people in the society that you will be spending almost all of your time in have any problems with same-sex pairings, and even those who do have more of a problem with married couples who cannot stay loyal to each other, I believe you will have no problems in that area."
"I am not bi."
"You've kissed a man before today." He said it as if he already knew, though I was sure that he couldn't have known about that... Unless, the nasty whisper at the back of my brain told me, he happened to be someone connected with my old high school and had heard all the rumors. Everyone at school knew about that, after all.
"So?"
"You didn't fight back then. Why are you so bothered by it now?"
"I don't know..." I didn't even try to hold back the sarcastic bite to my words. "Maybe because I barely even know you!" I paused, and added under my breath, "I think." Then I went back to my yelling and ranting. "That time it was with my best friend, not some weird teacher who is just another one of the people who aren't telling me anything and just expecting me to play along with some stupid plan of theirs. Besides, I was fucking drunk!"
He paused for a moment, and I thought I heard him mutter something under his breath. Well, actually I did hear him mutter something under his breath. I just couldn't tell what it was that he muttered. I was fairly sure that it was something I would be interested in knowing, but I realized without thinking that if he had muttered it that he wouldn't be willing to repeat it just because I wanted to know what he had said.
"No, you were not." This time he spoke loud enough to understand. Again, he sounded like he was sure of it. And this time I had absolutely no clue how he could possibly have known that. It was true, of course. I wasn't drunk when Mark tried to kiss me at that party during our junior year of high school. He was, but I wasn't, and I didn't fight back either. But that was something that I had never told anyone, not even Mark himself, so there was no way that Michal could have known about it.
"How the hell do you know about that?" The words came out more a hiss than anything else. He just laughed.
"You had this on when it happened, right?" I vaguely saw the shadow that I thought was him hold something up in the air. I couldn't tell what it was - it was too dark - but I realized almost immediately after that that he was in just the right position to take my pendant from the desk. And, surely enough, when I reached forward to where I had left it next to the card, it wasn't there.
"This knows everything that you know about the situations you went through with it on. And it looks like the only times you take this off are to shower, and other such activities."
"Magic?"
"Of course. Though my particular brand of magic only allows me to view certain happenings. It's nice to know that you were not lying to the people at the Academy when you told them you were a virgin, by the way. Well, unless you took the pendant off before you had sex. But I doubt you would have thought of that."
"How would you know whether I'm a virgin or not?"
"I just told you, I can only see certain happenings through this stone of yours. It just so happens that the things I can see are all related to sex or romance. Every kiss you've ever had, with the stone around your neck. Every sexual encounter. Every time you have masturbated. Even every single time you've been in the middle of a crowd and a pervert decided to take "things" into his, or possibly her, own hands. Considering just how many time that has happened around here, you should be glad you don't have to ride the subway in a major city."
"So what are you supposed to be that you can sense those kind of things?" I asked, a nasty bite taking over my words. "Some sort of fertility god or something like that?"
"Nothing that great." He let out a little laugh. "And I'm sure my wife is glad that I'm not. No, I am part of a family of... I suppose you could call us incubi and succubi. Sex demons.
"Not full blooded, of course. The full blooded ones specifically feed off of sexual energy and live for little more than sex. My family is part human, so all of that boils down to an affinity for almost any sex magic out there and an instinctive knowledge of the act itself."
I wasn't quite sure what to say in response to that, so I stayed silent. I was still trying to figure out if I really wanted to have heard the answer to my question at that point, after all. I had heard it, but I was starting to regret having asked in the first place. Though, when I thought about it more, I realized that I would almost certainly have ended up learning it anyway.
"Have you figured out what I'm supposed to be teaching you here, yet?" he asked, his words little more than a whisper.
"Probably." I wasn't lying. I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear it from him, not guess and see if I was right.
"I mentioned before that even those of the under society that don't particularly care for same sex couples are more open to that than to infidelity, did I not?" I nodded. "And I'm sure you understand that Master Nelene cannot be expected to remain chaste just because you happen to be male..."
"Duh. But I don't see why it should be my fault for being born a guy."
"It isn't. But just as most of the people in your family tend towards bisexuality, particularly those of you who have been awakened, I have never heard of a Nelene who hasn't been bisexual from the beginning, human or no. As strange as it may seem to you, the vast majority of the families in this world that you have entered are not anywhere near as fussy with strict heterosexuality as full humans are.
"So you will be expected to attempt to minimize Master Nelene's desire to cheat on you. No matter how much you may dislike the idea, you will be expected to fulfill him sexually. That is the third need that your family fills for the Nelene family that Willian was not willing to tell you earlier. And you will be expected to know how to do just that, which is where I come in."
"So this training is just you teaching me about sex?"
"For the most part."
"I already know how gay sex works, thank you very much. You stick your dick in the hole. Pretty much like normal sex, except that the hole you stick it in is a hole that isn't supposed to have things stuck up it. Not really my cup of tea, but it can't be that hard."
He sighed, again. "I don't think you understand your position in all of this..." His fuzzy shadow form backed away from the desk slowly to sink into the chair. "I am tired, and I do not feel comfortable with you standing while I am sitting. Come sit here on the floor in front of me. You can stay near the desk, if it makes you feel safer being a little farther away from me, but I swear I will not do anything else without giving you fair warning."
I glared at him, but I realized that the entire situation wasn't going to go anywhere unless I did what he asked me to do. So I made my way around the desk and sat down on the floor on the other side, facing him, though I could still barely see enough to tell where he was. Then he took a deep breath, and started talking again.
"You are going to Master Nelene as his bride. Do you understand what that means? This is not an equal relationship that you will be going into. It never has been, and I highly doubt it ever will be. The Nelenes, despite being only human, are the most powerful family in the world, among those associated with magic, of course. The majority of their power comes from their Cellen brides, but they are more than powerful enough in their own right. They would not hold the position they do now if they weren't, even with the Cellen backing that they have had for longer than we have recorded history.
"And as for your Cellen family... You are descended from an immensely powerful being, that is true. However, the human blood that is cut into that being's legacy works against you. You have power within you, far more than the Nelene you will be bride to, but there is no way you will ever be able to summon most of it on your own. Some of it you will be able to harness, for sure, but not the majority. The majority of your power will stay locked away forever without the help of the sex magics and rituals that only those from the Nelene family know how to perform any more.
"In other words, you will be quite a bit like a magical battery for the young Master Nelene, and you yourself will have no real power against him. This completely unequal relationship of yours will determine the roles that each of you plays within the relationship. And, as may be expected, you will not find yourself with the upper hand. You will not be, as you so quaintly put it, "sticking your dick in the hole." And I'm sure you will have no trouble guessing what is left given that information."
"Are you saying I'm supposed to be the girl? I'm supposed to let him screw me?"
"If that is how you wish to put it."
"Fuck no!" I stood up angrily. I was about ready to run from the room, and probably even from the entire situation, which would have entailed running away from home itself, at that moment. But before I could bolt for the door, he lunged forward and caught my wrist.
"Let me go!" I pulled at his wrist, but he turned out to be quite a bit stronger than I expected.
"Do you think that you are the only one in your position who has tried to fight it? You are just one more in a long line of Cellens who have been given up to a Nelene before they even had a chance to start living fully. My family has been involved in your training from almost the beginning. Even before we took the incubus blood into our veins, we were servants to the Nelene family. We watched over the Cellen candidates as one of a series of tutors. And I can tell you right here and now that not a single one of your predecessors has wanted to do what the family told them to do. But few ever tried to run away. The Cellen family is too proud for that."
"And I should care about that, why? Let them have their pride. I'll keep my fucking anal virginity instead."
"Who ever said you had a say in the matter?"
"I say that I have a say in the matter! It's my body, my life, and I'm the one who will say what I do with it! And I say that I'm not gonna let some guy who's four years younger than I am fuck me up the ass just to keep some age old agreement between his family and mine. No, thank you!"
And with that I pulled at my wrist again. This time I must have caught him off guard, because when I yanked I ended up flying backward into the desk. But even with that, I managed to get up to my feet before he could catch me again, and before I knew it, I was running for the door and into the suddenly way too bright hallway outside of the room. Moments later, I was out of the building and starting "my car" (actually it was my parents' car, but I was the only one who used it because we had two other cars in the family).
I didn't go home. I was pretty sure that Dad would sympathize with me, seeing as he had gone through the same thing, but that he wouldn't take my side. Not after he had said not even twelve hours earlier that he was on the "family's side," if he had to put a name to his position. The family said that I had to go marry a Nelene kid and be his "woman," both in bed and out. So instead I headed to a nearby parking lot where I could park the car for a bit while I called Mark. It had only been a couple of hours since I last saw him, but he didn't seem surprised when I called him and asked to stay over. Of course, nothing ever really surprised him, and I just took his willingness to play along without complaining.
I didn't tell him why I asked to stay the night. I hadn't been able to tell him what Dad told me when I was with him at dinner. The entire situation with Michal was even worse, though I knew that he would listen to me from beginning to end without saying anything if I decided to tell him. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I just told him that I didn't really feel like going home that night, and he took it at that.
Mark's family is... nothing terribly strange, but not normal at the same time. His mom is an engineer (can't remember what kind for the life of me) and spends the vast majority of her time traveling. And Mark's dad... I was never quite sure what he did, except that he was almost always at home. When we were growing up, he was the one who stayed at home and took care of Mark and his older sister, not the mom, and he was the one who was usually around. But, of course, now that Mark was in college and his older sister was married with a two-year-old (and very much not living with her parents anymore), he was never around as much as he had been back then. So it wasn't all that strange that, to my great delight, he wasn't there when I showed up.
Mark's bedroom was the in basement at that time. He had moved down there around when we graduated from high school, just because his parents would let him. We liked it that way. It meant that we could stay up to all hours of the night without bothering anyone when I stayed over, most of the time. And it gave Mark a little more privacy, which is always a good thing. But because of that, it always seemed weird to me that either Mark's mom or dad seemed to always make sure to check up on him before going to bed. It's not like they could say it was "on the way," or something like that. It was clear when they did it that they were specifically checking up on him.
But it was also something I had gotten used to, having stayed over several times since he had moved down to the basement, despite the fact that I hadn't been in the state for the vast majority of that time. And so, it didn't really surprise me when Mark's dad came to check up on him once he got home. He didn't say anything, just opened the door up and looked down in, waving at the two of us when we looked up from our game (retro, as usual with Mark, though still fun, despite the ancient graphics) to see who was there. (Though I took slight advantage of Mark's distraction to try and reverse the tables in the game; he had been kicking my ass with the electric rodent, and it was pissing me off.) Mark told him, in a far more cheery voice than I would have been able to muster at that time, that I would be staying the night, and he just nodded and smiled a weak smile at us before backing away from the door and closing it behind him as he walked away.
"He okay?" I asked, once the door had closed again.
"Mom's off traveling for work again." He's been more and more out of it when she's gone recently. And it's been really bad this time."
"That sucks."
And we went back to our game. In the end, despite my attempt to turn the tables, I got a thorough ass kicking from the electric rat. When I tried to make it a best of three, I still ended up losing. I remember that I decided it was because I was way better at playing modern games. Like ones made in the past decade, at least. Of course, it was probably more due to the fact that Mark had always been better at games than I was, retro or modern.
So that was how I spent that night. I had turned off my phone before I even got to Mark's house, just in case Michal had decided to contact Dad, who knew all the ways to get a hold of me. I wasn't in the mood to have logical, reasoned arguments presented to me for why I should go along with what they wanted to me. I wasn't in the mood for what I was sure would be Dad's first reaction either, understanding of my protests coupled with a firm insistence that it was "for my own good," as well as the good of the family. Mark wasn't asking, so I had almost managed to forget about it all by the time we went to bed.
So I'll shut up now and get out of your way.
Chapter 4
Private Lessons, take two* (*A.k.a. a study on the shock effect)
Nothing seemed to have changed from the night before when I showed up in that same room for my second class. The room was empty, again, with the chair sitting next to desk. Well, two things, small things, had changed. For one, the heavy black fabric blindfold had been replaced for a lighter (weight-wise) and softer one, though it still looked just as effective at keeping all light out. And the message card was different.
It said, in the same handwritten script as before, "Like yesterday, please turn off the lights, blindfold yourself, and wait in the chair for my arrival. However, this time I ask that you please remove your pendant before we proceed. It will cause problems with what I wish to work on tonight."
It shouldn't have surprised me that he knew about that, seeing as everyone involved with the Academy seemed to know everything about me when I knew nothing. But it was still kinda weird. The pendant he was referring to was something that Dad had given me years and years before, probably when I was about six or seven. It was a bright green stone, though not emerald, about the same color as my eyes (and as Dad's eyes, come to think of it, though his glasses made his eyes seem so small that it was hard to tell what color they were most of the time), surrounded by a cage-like mess of silver wire. Dad had told me to try to wear it as much as possible, and he had sounded serious when he said that. So I wore it all the time, usually under my shirt, to the point where it felt like my glasses: I more or less forgot about it when I had it on, but I noticed it when it was missing. Still, there was something about the note on the card that made me realize that I should do what Michal told me to do, even if it went against what Dad had told me to do so many years ago.
So, I slipped the black leather string that held the pendant up over my head and put the entire thing on the desk next to the card. Then I took the blindfold in hand and headed over to the light switch. Moments later, the room was completely dark again, I had the blindfold tied over my eyes, and I was sitting in the chair, waiting almost patiently for Michal to show up.
Almost as if he had been waiting for me to finish what he had told me to do (and that was a definitely possibility), I heard the door open only moments after I sat down in the chair and tightened the knot in the blindfold. Then the door closed, almost silently, behind Michal, and I heard footsteps crossing the room. A hand lightly rested atop my head told me that he had arrived.
"So your father explained things to you?"
"Some."
"Such as?" His voice sounded oddly detached and cold, and it was more than a little frightening for a moment. I told him what Dad had explained to me, my voice shaking uncontrollably as I talked, despite the fact that I had been calm before he entered the room.
"But he didn't tell you what I would be teaching you..."
I shook my head. Based on the way he had acted the night before, I was fairly sure that he could see well in the dark. But even if he couldn't, he would have been able to tell that I was shaking my head based on the feeling under his hand.
He slid his hand off of my head. Moments later I felt both of his hands on my shoulders. Like the night before, he started to massage my shoulders with slow, but steady and deep movements of his hands. Just as before, I felt all the tension in my shoulders and bank start to melt away under his hands, and before long I started to sag in the chair, too relaxed to stay fully upright.
"Aren't you going to tell me what all of this is about?" My voice sounded oddly distant to my ears at that time. I think I might have been close to falling asleep at that point, and when I realized that, I woke right up again. For some reason, the thought of falling asleep there bothered me more than anything else about the situation.
"I believe I told you yesterday that I find it easier to teach through hands on experience."
"I don't care about that!" The words came out a little more angry than I really intended, as a little bit of the tension rushed back into my body, despite the hands that immediately rubbed it right away. "That doesn't mean you can't at least tell me what sort of things you want to teach me. How the hell am I supposed to be able to learn anything if you won't even tell me what I'm supposed to be learning?"
"The things I will be teaching you are not the sort of things that you need that sort of attention to learn." He pushed my back slightly, causing me to lean forward in the chair almost as far as I could without falling over, and then started lightly pounding on my back. "I assure you, even if you are not putting any effort into learning what I teach you, by the time I am done with you, you will know my lessons, each and every one of them."
Despite the fact that I was relaxed almost to the point of drowsiness, this annoyed me. First it had been Dad waiting until lunch time to tell me anything out of what I wanted to know. Then it was Dad refusing to answer any of my questions after not wanting to tell me what the third reason was. And now it was Michal being so damned reluctant to tell me just what he was supposed to be teaching me. It was annoying, and I decided in that moment that I was tired of it and wasn't going to put up with it anymore.
So, I reached back and grabbed one of his wrists, which stopped the pounding on my back. Then I turned in the chair to face him. I couldn't see because of the blindfold, not to mention the dark room, but I wanted him to know quite clearly that if not for the blindfold I would be staring right at him.
"I'm starting to get sick and tired of these games that you Academy people are playing with me." My voice came out just a little more nastily than it should have, probably. "I'm here for class, so I'm obviously here to learn something. But you won't tell me what I'm here to learn, and that is just as aggravating as Dad refusing to tell me anything about what's going on. I don't care if it screws up this grand plan of the Nelene and Cellen families or any shit like that, but I am leaving if you don't spit out what my purpose for being here is."
He didn't say anything. He just sat there, completely and utterly silent, for almost an entire minute. And as we both sat there, deathly quiet and unmoving, I realized that my thumb was right over the pulse point in his wrist... and that his heart was racing far too fast to be healthy. Even as I was about to tell myself that there was something seriously wrong with him, the idea came to me that maybe he was just another one of those non-humans that Dad had mentioned, and that that sort of heart rate was natural for him.
Then, without even noticing that he had moved, I felt a pressure against my lips. A soft, warm, insistent pressure that I realized after a slight pause from shock and surprise was another pair of lips. Of course, unless there was someone else in the room that I didn't know about, it had to be Michal. And that meant... that Michal was kissing me.
The moment that thought actually took hold in my mind, I pulled back with a sudden jerk. I let go of his wrist as I did so and ended up jumping up from the chair and running as fast as I could away from him. Or, I tried to run as fast as I could away from him, but I instead ran into the desk almost immediately and fell to the floor, cursing quite loudly.
He hurried to my side almost the moment I hit the ground and tried to help me up. I pushed his hands away as hard as I could and forced myself back up without his help, using the desk for leverage. I felt my way along the desk until I was on the other side, hoping that I could at least keep the desk between the two of us. And then, I reached up with unsteady hands to fumble at the knot in the blindfold with the intention of removing it.
Once the blindfold was off, I found that I really couldn't see in the dark room. Even after being subjected to no light for more long enough for my pupils to be at maximum dilation, I could see nothing more than a fuzzy shape of a man on the other side of the desk from me. And even if I had been able to see better, I realized that there was no way that I would be able to tell if I recognized him or not, because the entire world was blurry without my glasses.
"You took the blindfold off."
"Of course I did!" My voice came high and loud, almost at a scream. "You fucking kissed me!"
"If that is the way you are going to react to a simple kiss, we will have a long way to go before we are even slightly done here." He sounded resigned, but at the same time, slightly... excited. And that caused a shiver to travel up my spine.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Your training. What else?"
"What does you kissing me have to do with my training?" Of course, even as the words left my mouth, a thought that I was loath to even think about started to creep its way into my mind. A thought that made him kissing me and then talking about my "training" make sense, though I immediately told myself that there was no possible way that could be right.
"You told me yourself that Willian explained that you will be given over to the elder Nelene son. As his bride. What did you think you would be doing for him? Cooking his food and doing his laundry, and nothing else?"
"You're saying there's more than just that, or are you referring to the magic?"
"Of course I'm not! With marriage nowadays, you always have to think about the sex. Always. What in the world do you think the young Nelene will be doing at night?"
"I don't know!" I paused for a moment, the full meaning of what he had just said trickling slowly through my head. "Wait a moment... are you trying to say that you people expect me to sleep with him?"
"You are going to be his bride..."
"But... but he's a guy."
"That he is."
"I'm not gay."
He sighed, sounding more than a little frustrated, and tired of the entire situation. "I never said you were. Though I am fairly certain that you will quite quickly find yourself to be bisexual, if you haven't already, as almost every single one of your predecessors, including your father and Lady Marguerite have. And seeing as very few people in the society that you will be spending almost all of your time in have any problems with same-sex pairings, and even those who do have more of a problem with married couples who cannot stay loyal to each other, I believe you will have no problems in that area."
"I am not bi."
"You've kissed a man before today." He said it as if he already knew, though I was sure that he couldn't have known about that... Unless, the nasty whisper at the back of my brain told me, he happened to be someone connected with my old high school and had heard all the rumors. Everyone at school knew about that, after all.
"So?"
"You didn't fight back then. Why are you so bothered by it now?"
"I don't know..." I didn't even try to hold back the sarcastic bite to my words. "Maybe because I barely even know you!" I paused, and added under my breath, "I think." Then I went back to my yelling and ranting. "That time it was with my best friend, not some weird teacher who is just another one of the people who aren't telling me anything and just expecting me to play along with some stupid plan of theirs. Besides, I was fucking drunk!"
He paused for a moment, and I thought I heard him mutter something under his breath. Well, actually I did hear him mutter something under his breath. I just couldn't tell what it was that he muttered. I was fairly sure that it was something I would be interested in knowing, but I realized without thinking that if he had muttered it that he wouldn't be willing to repeat it just because I wanted to know what he had said.
"No, you were not." This time he spoke loud enough to understand. Again, he sounded like he was sure of it. And this time I had absolutely no clue how he could possibly have known that. It was true, of course. I wasn't drunk when Mark tried to kiss me at that party during our junior year of high school. He was, but I wasn't, and I didn't fight back either. But that was something that I had never told anyone, not even Mark himself, so there was no way that Michal could have known about it.
"How the hell do you know about that?" The words came out more a hiss than anything else. He just laughed.
"You had this on when it happened, right?" I vaguely saw the shadow that I thought was him hold something up in the air. I couldn't tell what it was - it was too dark - but I realized almost immediately after that that he was in just the right position to take my pendant from the desk. And, surely enough, when I reached forward to where I had left it next to the card, it wasn't there.
"This knows everything that you know about the situations you went through with it on. And it looks like the only times you take this off are to shower, and other such activities."
"Magic?"
"Of course. Though my particular brand of magic only allows me to view certain happenings. It's nice to know that you were not lying to the people at the Academy when you told them you were a virgin, by the way. Well, unless you took the pendant off before you had sex. But I doubt you would have thought of that."
"How would you know whether I'm a virgin or not?"
"I just told you, I can only see certain happenings through this stone of yours. It just so happens that the things I can see are all related to sex or romance. Every kiss you've ever had, with the stone around your neck. Every sexual encounter. Every time you have masturbated. Even every single time you've been in the middle of a crowd and a pervert decided to take "things" into his, or possibly her, own hands. Considering just how many time that has happened around here, you should be glad you don't have to ride the subway in a major city."
"So what are you supposed to be that you can sense those kind of things?" I asked, a nasty bite taking over my words. "Some sort of fertility god or something like that?"
"Nothing that great." He let out a little laugh. "And I'm sure my wife is glad that I'm not. No, I am part of a family of... I suppose you could call us incubi and succubi. Sex demons.
"Not full blooded, of course. The full blooded ones specifically feed off of sexual energy and live for little more than sex. My family is part human, so all of that boils down to an affinity for almost any sex magic out there and an instinctive knowledge of the act itself."
I wasn't quite sure what to say in response to that, so I stayed silent. I was still trying to figure out if I really wanted to have heard the answer to my question at that point, after all. I had heard it, but I was starting to regret having asked in the first place. Though, when I thought about it more, I realized that I would almost certainly have ended up learning it anyway.
"Have you figured out what I'm supposed to be teaching you here, yet?" he asked, his words little more than a whisper.
"Probably." I wasn't lying. I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear it from him, not guess and see if I was right.
"I mentioned before that even those of the under society that don't particularly care for same sex couples are more open to that than to infidelity, did I not?" I nodded. "And I'm sure you understand that Master Nelene cannot be expected to remain chaste just because you happen to be male..."
"Duh. But I don't see why it should be my fault for being born a guy."
"It isn't. But just as most of the people in your family tend towards bisexuality, particularly those of you who have been awakened, I have never heard of a Nelene who hasn't been bisexual from the beginning, human or no. As strange as it may seem to you, the vast majority of the families in this world that you have entered are not anywhere near as fussy with strict heterosexuality as full humans are.
"So you will be expected to attempt to minimize Master Nelene's desire to cheat on you. No matter how much you may dislike the idea, you will be expected to fulfill him sexually. That is the third need that your family fills for the Nelene family that Willian was not willing to tell you earlier. And you will be expected to know how to do just that, which is where I come in."
"So this training is just you teaching me about sex?"
"For the most part."
"I already know how gay sex works, thank you very much. You stick your dick in the hole. Pretty much like normal sex, except that the hole you stick it in is a hole that isn't supposed to have things stuck up it. Not really my cup of tea, but it can't be that hard."
He sighed, again. "I don't think you understand your position in all of this..." His fuzzy shadow form backed away from the desk slowly to sink into the chair. "I am tired, and I do not feel comfortable with you standing while I am sitting. Come sit here on the floor in front of me. You can stay near the desk, if it makes you feel safer being a little farther away from me, but I swear I will not do anything else without giving you fair warning."
I glared at him, but I realized that the entire situation wasn't going to go anywhere unless I did what he asked me to do. So I made my way around the desk and sat down on the floor on the other side, facing him, though I could still barely see enough to tell where he was. Then he took a deep breath, and started talking again.
"You are going to Master Nelene as his bride. Do you understand what that means? This is not an equal relationship that you will be going into. It never has been, and I highly doubt it ever will be. The Nelenes, despite being only human, are the most powerful family in the world, among those associated with magic, of course. The majority of their power comes from their Cellen brides, but they are more than powerful enough in their own right. They would not hold the position they do now if they weren't, even with the Cellen backing that they have had for longer than we have recorded history.
"And as for your Cellen family... You are descended from an immensely powerful being, that is true. However, the human blood that is cut into that being's legacy works against you. You have power within you, far more than the Nelene you will be bride to, but there is no way you will ever be able to summon most of it on your own. Some of it you will be able to harness, for sure, but not the majority. The majority of your power will stay locked away forever without the help of the sex magics and rituals that only those from the Nelene family know how to perform any more.
"In other words, you will be quite a bit like a magical battery for the young Master Nelene, and you yourself will have no real power against him. This completely unequal relationship of yours will determine the roles that each of you plays within the relationship. And, as may be expected, you will not find yourself with the upper hand. You will not be, as you so quaintly put it, "sticking your dick in the hole." And I'm sure you will have no trouble guessing what is left given that information."
"Are you saying I'm supposed to be the girl? I'm supposed to let him screw me?"
"If that is how you wish to put it."
"Fuck no!" I stood up angrily. I was about ready to run from the room, and probably even from the entire situation, which would have entailed running away from home itself, at that moment. But before I could bolt for the door, he lunged forward and caught my wrist.
"Let me go!" I pulled at his wrist, but he turned out to be quite a bit stronger than I expected.
"Do you think that you are the only one in your position who has tried to fight it? You are just one more in a long line of Cellens who have been given up to a Nelene before they even had a chance to start living fully. My family has been involved in your training from almost the beginning. Even before we took the incubus blood into our veins, we were servants to the Nelene family. We watched over the Cellen candidates as one of a series of tutors. And I can tell you right here and now that not a single one of your predecessors has wanted to do what the family told them to do. But few ever tried to run away. The Cellen family is too proud for that."
"And I should care about that, why? Let them have their pride. I'll keep my fucking anal virginity instead."
"Who ever said you had a say in the matter?"
"I say that I have a say in the matter! It's my body, my life, and I'm the one who will say what I do with it! And I say that I'm not gonna let some guy who's four years younger than I am fuck me up the ass just to keep some age old agreement between his family and mine. No, thank you!"
And with that I pulled at my wrist again. This time I must have caught him off guard, because when I yanked I ended up flying backward into the desk. But even with that, I managed to get up to my feet before he could catch me again, and before I knew it, I was running for the door and into the suddenly way too bright hallway outside of the room. Moments later, I was out of the building and starting "my car" (actually it was my parents' car, but I was the only one who used it because we had two other cars in the family).
I didn't go home. I was pretty sure that Dad would sympathize with me, seeing as he had gone through the same thing, but that he wouldn't take my side. Not after he had said not even twelve hours earlier that he was on the "family's side," if he had to put a name to his position. The family said that I had to go marry a Nelene kid and be his "woman," both in bed and out. So instead I headed to a nearby parking lot where I could park the car for a bit while I called Mark. It had only been a couple of hours since I last saw him, but he didn't seem surprised when I called him and asked to stay over. Of course, nothing ever really surprised him, and I just took his willingness to play along without complaining.
I didn't tell him why I asked to stay the night. I hadn't been able to tell him what Dad told me when I was with him at dinner. The entire situation with Michal was even worse, though I knew that he would listen to me from beginning to end without saying anything if I decided to tell him. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I just told him that I didn't really feel like going home that night, and he took it at that.
Mark's family is... nothing terribly strange, but not normal at the same time. His mom is an engineer (can't remember what kind for the life of me) and spends the vast majority of her time traveling. And Mark's dad... I was never quite sure what he did, except that he was almost always at home. When we were growing up, he was the one who stayed at home and took care of Mark and his older sister, not the mom, and he was the one who was usually around. But, of course, now that Mark was in college and his older sister was married with a two-year-old (and very much not living with her parents anymore), he was never around as much as he had been back then. So it wasn't all that strange that, to my great delight, he wasn't there when I showed up.
Mark's bedroom was the in basement at that time. He had moved down there around when we graduated from high school, just because his parents would let him. We liked it that way. It meant that we could stay up to all hours of the night without bothering anyone when I stayed over, most of the time. And it gave Mark a little more privacy, which is always a good thing. But because of that, it always seemed weird to me that either Mark's mom or dad seemed to always make sure to check up on him before going to bed. It's not like they could say it was "on the way," or something like that. It was clear when they did it that they were specifically checking up on him.
But it was also something I had gotten used to, having stayed over several times since he had moved down to the basement, despite the fact that I hadn't been in the state for the vast majority of that time. And so, it didn't really surprise me when Mark's dad came to check up on him once he got home. He didn't say anything, just opened the door up and looked down in, waving at the two of us when we looked up from our game (retro, as usual with Mark, though still fun, despite the ancient graphics) to see who was there. (Though I took slight advantage of Mark's distraction to try and reverse the tables in the game; he had been kicking my ass with the electric rodent, and it was pissing me off.) Mark told him, in a far more cheery voice than I would have been able to muster at that time, that I would be staying the night, and he just nodded and smiled a weak smile at us before backing away from the door and closing it behind him as he walked away.
"He okay?" I asked, once the door had closed again.
"Mom's off traveling for work again." He's been more and more out of it when she's gone recently. And it's been really bad this time."
"That sucks."
And we went back to our game. In the end, despite my attempt to turn the tables, I got a thorough ass kicking from the electric rat. When I tried to make it a best of three, I still ended up losing. I remember that I decided it was because I was way better at playing modern games. Like ones made in the past decade, at least. Of course, it was probably more due to the fact that Mark had always been better at games than I was, retro or modern.
So that was how I spent that night. I had turned off my phone before I even got to Mark's house, just in case Michal had decided to contact Dad, who knew all the ways to get a hold of me. I wasn't in the mood to have logical, reasoned arguments presented to me for why I should go along with what they wanted to me. I wasn't in the mood for what I was sure would be Dad's first reaction either, understanding of my protests coupled with a firm insistence that it was "for my own good," as well as the good of the family. Mark wasn't asking, so I had almost managed to forget about it all by the time we went to bed.