“Protocol and Desire”
Elena
I have the rare luxury of being alone. The snow has turned everything outside muffled and slow—it makes the world feel a little farther away, which suits me.
I’m quartered tonight at the Antonius, a structure with more lives than most of its guests and an attitude to match. The building is older than any of us, layered with secrets and serious about its status as an “architectural monument under state protection.” Nothing here is accidental: every stucco flourish, every warped bannister, every white-glazed tile stove with its fussy cornice is someone’s statement from an era gone strange.
History suffocates politely in these walls. According to the faded guide in my desk drawer, the Antonius started as two landed properties conjoined in the late 16th century, then rose, burned, rose again—stone to ashes, ashes to dreams, wooden houses going up in smoke, then more stone. Every generation needed a different excuse for survival. The Great Northern War levelled the earlier buildings; the fire of 1775 did the rest. Nothing here is afraid of loss.
Meanwhile, I ponder the history and open my laptop. In a subconscious second, I begin typing.
The current bones went up in two acts: a single story facing the university in 1778, then more stories, more ambition as the centuries ticked on. Layers of early classicism, stucco plagiarized from better addresses, extensions stitched on as the city’s fortunes shifted. Even the staircases have stories—migrating slightly southward in the 1840s, an architectural shrug against fate.
Subject: Tallinn-Tartu Logistics (updates + questions)
From: elena.k.official@cycrds.eu
To: h.henderson@bridge-UK.net
Time: 10:14 PM
Mrs. H,
Made it to Tartu despite delays—still a fair bit of snow slowing things, but logistics are smoothing out.
Quick notes:
- Ran into two “old friends” at the Telegraaf before departure, both asking after our former French and North African colleagues (seems everyone’s in town for the festival?). Showed appropriate professional courtesy and avoided extended conversation.
- Noticed extra attention at arrival—security tight, but no one was overtly interfering. For now, keeping low profile and sticking close to schedule.
The deck is progressing well—local variants more promising than expected. University archives yielded three 19th-century fragments, and tomorrow’s folklore session should fill remaining gaps. The Thunder/Grove sequence is particularly rich here.
FYI, Sandi called in and confirmed the brewery visit; she’s digging up additional folklore as requested and monitoring all “unusual weather” or “late-night traffic.” I’ll relay anything she flags.
Would be grateful for any last-minute travel advisories if you hear of “blizzards” forecast for our sector—especially unexpected changes or visitors.
Will check in after tomorrow’s university meeting. If my phone is off, assume I’m just in another “underground archive” with poor reception. Will use the old cataloguing protocol if there’s anything more urgent.
Let me know if I should adjust routes or messaging.
Stay warm,
E.
My room is on the upper floor, where the actual eccentricities still linger. I run my fingers over a heavy 19th-century door handle, cold and stubbornly solid, the kind that would outlast any siege. The ceiling boasts enough cornice to make a Viennese baroque composer weep. The tiled stove in my corner broods, salon white, older than every digital device in my suitcase.
Through these doors, pawnshop clerks, Livonian bankers, police officers, and possibly the odd guildsman have all left atoms. Who knows if any of them ever loved, or merely survived.
I’ve read the building changed hands at least twenty times—pawnshop, Credit Association, even a police office. During the Soviet period, it became apartments. I imagine samovars brewing under faded wallpaper as intellectuals rationed potatoes and saved secrets for the walls. Now it’s luxury, of a sort. The original cellar vaults lie just below, still chilly with the memory of centuries. If anywhere in Estonia is still haunted, it’s right below my feet.
I finish my message to Mrs. H., letting the cursor blink patiently as if it too resents the hush outside. I hit ‘send’ and close the laptop with a soft snap.
I have done everything right: locked the door, checked the schedule, sent the coded update, listed my whereabouts. Visible, not exposed, not heroics, not tonight. Professional boundaries intact, even if my employer’s proximity tests every other kind of boundary I possess.
And yet I realize, with a flicker of irritation at my own predictability, that I am listening for a sound. The sound. Some part of me, perhaps the oldest and most foolish, is waiting for that inevitable knock on the door. Heavy hand, unhesitating—Tarmo never hesitates when he wants something. I picture his silhouette in the corridor, that shadow of controlled impatience, the particular hunger I already know how to name.
The cold room aches around me. It would be easy, just for tonight, to let history repeat: to open a door, undo a thread, mistake longing for research ethics, loneliness for professional judgment. I almost want the interruption—almost.
But pride, old as the building, keeps me still. And something else: the knowledge that he needs this work completed, needs me to be functional, needs the delicate balance between anthropologist and woman to remain intact until we reach our destination. For now, I remain: unasked, unentered, half-dreading, half-desiring the thud of knuckles against antique wood.
Tarmo
I pace the room, city lights bleeding along the ceiling, the snow shrouding every threat and promise. My phone is a stone in my palm—silent, but never still.
Mikael has checked in: Karim’s trail is cold. There are other matters requiring attention, plans that must be layered, risks neutralised. The Heritage Trust board expects quarterly reports, and donors want updates on preservation initiatives. That is where I should live—in the careful architecture of legitimacy—and for a brief stretch of minutes, I do.
But by the third circuit of the room, my discipline fractures. The image returns: Elena in her room, impossibly close yet professionally untouchable, the echo of her body still branded into my hands. I tell myself it’s a distraction, some chemical residue of conquest, nothing more. But I cannot ignore what stirs each time I close my eyes: the memory of opening her, the shock of losing composure, the baffling ache of being denied.
You are not a man who waits, I warn myself. You are not a man who begs. Yet here I am, pulse thick, fighting the urge to walk that corridor, to reclaim what I tasted before I was foolish enough to make her essential to my plans.
There are more urgent things—there always are—but nothing feels as pressing as the animal urge to be inside her again. To prove to myself that what happened was not just magic, but repeatable, controllable. To test whether I can take what I want and still maintain the professional distance this operation requires.
I smother the urge. She is too valuable to lose now, too integral to what comes next. The social dynamics we’ll face require her expertise, her particular blend of academic credibility and intuitive reading of cultural undercurrents. I cannot risk her walking away, cannot afford to blur the lines between employer and lover until the work is done.
But I know—I always know—that she is the unsolved variable, and that the real game tonight is between restraint and the door.
My body betrays me. There is a scent in this corridor, a knowledge in the bones. My mouth is dry with wanting; my hands remember the heat and slick of skin, hips arching, the taste of surrender and challenge braided tight. I built an empire on patience—knowing when to wait, when to strike, when to let others think they hold the power.
Men like me are supposed to be cold: calculate, absorb, repress, move on. I have made a principle of it, training discipline into the very nerves. It only works until you meet your reckoning—not money, not power, but the rare collision of desire and genuine need. With Elena, the hunger is not just physical. She sees patterns I miss, reads the social architecture I require her to navigate. I need her mind as much as I crave her body.
The contradiction burns. I stalk the room, shirtless, feverish. One floorboard creaks—faint echo of movement from her direction. For a moment, I’m wild with the urge to break protocol, to cross that damned corridor, not for power, not for casual pleasure, but because my body will not let me sleep while she is that close and not mine.
I grip the cool sink edge, watching my reflection blur. This is no minor distraction. This is a need rising in my chest, an ache that doesn’t fade, only sharpens. No amount of strategic thinking dulls it.
If I opened her door now, I would not speak—I would take, bury my hands in her hair, let her pull me apart as she did before, lose myself in the heat until there’s nothing left but breath and claim and her. But then what? How do I maintain authority with someone who has seen me lose control? How do I ensure she stays when the work grows dangerous?
Still: I stand here, circling like a caged animal, telling myself I will wait just one more minute. Five more. Until the operation is complete. But even as I pretend professional distance, every sense is tuned to her—heartbeat, scent, the memory of her claiming me and being claimed in turn.
I decided to master the ache the oldest way—fist wrapped tight, silent in darkness, stroking out the hunger with deliberate force, as if pleasure could cauterise longing. The climax left me raw, not satisfied. Just emptied and more exposed to everything I swore I’d contain. No release can touch what she stirs.
Tomorrow I will be cold again, the mask will fit, and to the world I’ll be just another magnate with cultural interests to protect. But tonight, there is no mask—just raw, helpless craving for the only woman I cannot have without risking everything I have built.
Tonight, I surrender to nothing but the ache. Let her think she has won. For now.
Elena – Morning
I wake with the memory of him thick behind my eyelids, a pulse in my thighs that lingers long after sleep dissolves. I shift and feel the wet proof of my dreams, embarrassed and strangely defiant all at once. Apparently, my body refuses to read the memo about professional boundaries, about the careful distance required between anthropologist and benefactor.
I lie for a moment with my hand between my legs, surprised at how quickly my two fingers recall him pressing inside me, his mouth, the rough weight of him lost in my skin. The ache crests fast, need making me blunt and reckless—I come in short, tight waves, smothering a gasp against my palm. When it ebbs, I catch myself smirking—so much for boundaries, so much for principle. I suppose even the most seasoned sceptic can be outmanoeuvred by her own hormones. Another point to biology: the scoreboard remains lopsided.
After, I lie trembling, thighs quivering, sweat cooling. It isn’t relief. He’s still there, behind my eyelids—the hunger, unsated, undiminished. Apparently, my body refuses every warning my mind repeats: boundaries, danger, the long litany of reasons that should keep me away from him, all drowned in want.
The shower is a confessional—steam, water, the echo of last night’s hunger. I repeat my mantra, soft and clipped: He is your employer. He needs this work completed. You cannot afford to compromise the end result.
whisper my mantra, clipped and soft:
This man is too dangerous.
This man is not for me.
This man belongs to another world.
I recite it again and again, until mantra becomes a shield—or so I want to believe.
Again, and again, until professional ethics becomes a shield, or so I pretend.
At breakfast, he’s already waiting: pressed shirt, perfect composure, eyes that give almost nothing away. He greets me with business-first efficiency, and we run down the day’s schedule—university archives, the folklore interviews, contingencies. I nod and take notes, but all the while I’m glancing at his hands, his mouth, trying to measure what remains unspoken between us.
My body still remembers. My mind keeps chanting not to.
Tarmo – Same Morning
She arrives, crisp and outwardly unruffled, and I lock my posture into place as if perfect deportment could rein in what’s coiled underneath. I discuss the university meetings, the archival permissions—every word calculated to maintain the careful fiction that she is simply a contracted researcher, and I am simply a patron of cultural preservation.
I did not sleep. I spent hours mastering myself, burning the want off until nothing but emptiness remained. Or so I thought. But now, one glance—a stray thought of her lips, her heat—has me surging again, insubordinate, animal. I command myself: focus. The Heritage Trust requires results. The social complexities we’ll face demand that her expertise remain uncompromised.
Yet each sentence I utter is a small war. Part of me imagines abandoning the careful choreography—not just of the day, but of our entire professional arrangement. Another part, more pragmatic, recognises
that she is too valuable to risk losing over momentary hunger. I mask it perfectly. I always do.
Stay with the plan, I repeat. Everything else waits until the work is done.
But as we stand to leave, brushing just close enough for our sleeves to whisper, I am hard and hungry despite all last night’s discipline. I let the mask hold. She needs to believe I am in control, even when I am anything but.
The Sacred Grove
By midmorning, the city is all sun on old university walls and the bite of cold at my collar. Between archival appointments, Tarmo and I drive toward the edge of Tartu, the landscape turning denser—road folding into the hush of the ancient oak forest, roots and sky tangled in each other’s longing.
“The grove variants should be particularly strong here,” I murmur, checking my field notes. “Local informants mentioned thunder associations, sovereignty themes.” Professional language, but the air is thick with something older than academic research.
We park in a glade dimpled with moss and silence. Tarmo gestures with only a flicker of his hand: “This way.” He’s all business, but here among the oaks, the careful distance between us feels more fragile.
I walk beside him, trail crunching beneath us, the smell of leaf mould and ancient bark filling my lungs. This is where the real work lives—not in university archives but in the places where stories still breathe. Here, the Estonians say, goddess Taara walked: long-necked, green-eyed, sometimes a hare, sometimes the deep hush itself. Uku, thunder-god, was her only match, if he dared. The cards I’m crafting need this texture, these layers of meaning that can only be gathered on sacred ground.
I should focus on documenting—recording the variations, noting the atmospheric details that will inform the imagery—but my eyes keep snagging on the bones of light flickering through branches, the steam of Tarmo’s breath, the way he moves like he belongs to this place. Even he can’t escape the pull of the forest; there’s a charge in the air, the kind that makes you believe thunder could tumble down mid-step, not for warning but for the pleasure of interruption.
Our conversation flickers between my research and something more primal—each folkloric detail, each cultural note, a way not to lean into the magnet between us. I think of Taara and Uku: her sovereignty, his pursuit, the way their stories beg for union and disaster in equal measure.
“The thunder motif appears strongest in the eastern variants,” I note, voice steady despite the way he’s watching me work. Professional. Necessary. The cards require this authenticity.
But the grove holds older truths than any I can capture on paper.
Underground
Lunch in Pühaste Kelder is a necessary break: brick-vaulted cellar, bread still warm, smoked fish melting on my tongue. Stone and shadow pressed tight as the tension between our bodies. We eat close, knees almost touching, the space between us full of unspoken possibilities.
“The cellar motifs will work well for the underworld sequence,” I say, sketching quick notes between bites. Work. Always back to work. But I think about finishing my bite, leaning across the table, tasting the salt from his mouth—the way the thunder-god must have watched the goddess: awe-edged, hungry, knowing pursuit could both build and break a kingdom.
Instead, I reach for water, the glass trembling only slightly in my hand. He watches, dark-eyed, the thread between us pulled tighter with every silent minute. There’s laughter from another table—a break in the spell—but here, in this ancient cellar, it’s harder to tell where research ends and desire begins.
“The cards are coming together faster than expected,” I tell him. Truth, but not the whole truth. What’s coming together is something more dangerous than folklore—an understanding that some hungers cannot be catalogued, cannot be contained by professional boundaries, no matter how necessary those boundaries might be.
Author’s Note
This narrative is an exploration of intimacy as both a battleground and a confession—where longing undermines discipline, and the body overtakes the best-laid plans of intellect. The explicitness here is not for provocation’s sake, but to honour how desire crashes against the boundaries we set for ourselves—how it blurs the lines between vulnerability and defiance, shame and hunger, caution and abandon.
I believe that eroticism in fiction should not shy from the raw, the real, or the flawed; it is in the honest recounting of need, restraint, fantasy, and release that characters become fully human. If these moments feel exposed, it is because, for both Elena and Tarmo, desire is an animal logic—a force as old as history and as immediate as breath. Their bodies remember, even when the mind resists; their self-mastery is always partial, always at risk.
Reader discretion is advised: The following pages contain graphic detail and emotional turbulence, best suited for adults who like their fiction with both spice and existential side effects. If you’re squeamish about desire or allergic to complicated feelings, you may want to exit gracefully and claim you were here by mistake.
If you spot familiar urges—the defiant ache, the valiant farce of self-control, or the irresistible temptation to jump barricades you built yourself—rest assured, you are among fellow troublemakers. Welcome: Dignity is optional, good stories are compulsory.
I.Ph.
The C.O.M.C. Files 