Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Elaine

It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense.

Lucian Morelli had his fingers inside me at my sister’s masked ball. And I liked it. More than liked it. Wanted it. Needed it. How did I end up in this situation?

He was dead, once my mother found out. Fuck. Fuck.

“How the hell did you get in here?” I asked against his mouth, but even at the height of the deadliest storm I’d ever known, my body didn’t care about the answer. My body only cared about him. My flesh was a law of its own, bucking against him for more. My senses were screaming, needing him. Needing a man who would finally make me his. Finally.

But it couldn’t be him.

It couldn’t be Lucian Morelli, of all people.

He pushed my thighs further apart and hitched me higher against the wall, and he wasn’t even slightly concerned. Not even a little scared of my mother. That would make him the only person at this masquerade ball who wasn’t afraid of her. Maybe the only person in the world. Even in that moment, even knowing exactly what I was capable of in this place with security all around us, he didn’t flinch. Didn’t shy away. Didn’t give a shit for what she could do.

Lucian Morelli wasn’t scared of anything. The man was the devil, reigning over hell.

“I walked right through the front door,” he told me, and I didn’t doubt it.

I pasted on my bravado. “If I tell one single person you’re in here, you’ll never make it out alive. You know that, right? You’re a fool if you don’t realize the danger you’re in.”

He answered in a beat. “I’m not the one in danger, sweetheart. You are.”

He was probably right about that. He was the wolf in a pasture of sheep. That’s me, a sheep. I should have been petrified. A sheep in the jaws of Lucian Morelli—oldest son of Bryant Morelli, poised to take over Morelli Holdings one day.

I was torn between screaming for help or accepting the inevitability of this. Because maybe, just maybe, I could finally know what it was like having a real man fight for me.

I spread my legs even wider for the devil between them, and I kissed him. I kissed him, and I hoped he’d make it hurt. I hoped he’d make my first time something that would mark me.

The monster pinned my wrists above my head.

Yes. Do it.

I gave him a half smile. “Do you think you’re such a badass, Morelli?”

He twisted his fingers even deeper. His smile was evil enough to burn the sun. “More of a badass than you,” he said. “I never imagined Elaine Constantine would be a virgin.”

My belly lurched.

How did he know that? How the fuck could he know that? Was it really so obvious that I was a naive little girl who’d never been with a man before? Maybe it was. One thing was for sure—if he hadn’t known before, the flush of my cheeks would have told him he was right.

I was a virgin.

A virgin aching to be touched. To be used. To be fucked hard enough to hurt. The one thing that would save me from hurting myself was finding someone else to do it for me.

“Do it,” I said. “Show me what a cruel man you are and fuck me, Morelli.”

He would have done it. I know he would. I could see the raw lust in his eyes, fixed on mine as he tugged my panties down my thighs. I’d have lost my virginity against a bathroom wall with my dress hitched up around my waist, and I’d have wanted it.

He didn’t get the chance.

We were both jolted to our senses by the thump of the bathroom door, and there were footsteps. Heavy footsteps. Getting closer.

“Elaine? Are you in here? Your mother’s looking for you.”

Lucian was silent, and so was I. Faces just an inch apart, breaths ragged.

“Elaine? You in here? Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking? Your mom is going to lose her shit. At least take your damn clutch with you when you hide in the bathroom.”

Oh no.

No.

It was Silas Roosevelt. My cousin, and one of the few I considered almost a friend.

My cousin burst straight into the water closet without a second’s pause, catching me right in the grip of our family’s nemesis. Even being pinned by the guy wouldn’t have hidden the fact that I was aroused for him. It was obvious. Shame piled on top of the rest of my frazzled emotions as Silas lurched backwards, mouth open wide.

Lucian dropped me back to my feet and stared at him, still not even flustered.

“You’ll be dead,” Silas snarled. “You’ll be fucking dead, Morelli. You’ll wish you never laid a finger on her when Caroline gets ahold of you.”

Lucian fixed his mask into place. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. No one wants word getting out that mommy’s little princess was defiled in a bathroom.”

Silas didn’t speak, because he knew the monster was telling the truth. As much as he would have hated to admit it—Lucian Morelli was right. I’m the second-eldest daughter in the Constantine family. If I were found compromised in the bathroom, I’d be the one who suffered.

I snapped to my senses. “Go. Seriously, you need to leave.”

Our family had been up against his for decades, billionaires out to fight for the thrill as long as we were spilling the blood of the other. The Constantines were better at hiding our corruption from the world—smarter and more cultured—but that didn’t matter. We were bound in a pit of cruelty and criminality, pursuing wealth and power at any cost.

Sure, we had legitimate businesses. But we had secrets, too. Drugs, arms, trafficking, fraud…it didn’t matter. We were up to our necks.

It made no difference to anyone but us, of course—the police and the courts were so tightly in our back pockets that they’d have rolled over and shown us their bellies if we asked.

“Get the fuck out of here, Morelli!” Silas snarled again.

“I’ll see you again soon,” the monster told my cousin and slapped his shoulder on the way past. “Elaine and I are far from finished.”

“You’re wrong,” I told him. Even though the man was Lucian Morelli, and I hated him with every scrap of my soul, he was seriously damn beautiful. His features were preened but rugged. His jaw was firm, sculpted like a statue.

He was the opposite of me and of all of us Constantines. Dark to our fair. His hair was styled in thick dark sweeps away from his forehead, and his eyes were deadly black. His shoulders were huge, but he was toned all the way down to slim hips. The tuxedo he wore fit perfectly to his insanely hot frame.

Lucian Morelli was a god.

An evil god.

“Never come back,” I told him. “I mean it, Morelli.”

He gave me a mild smile of refusal. It was a promise to return. The door closed behind him before Silas grabbed my arm and yanked me over.

He shoved my clutch to my chest and shook his head at me. “Be careful before you get us all fucking killed. He gets three minutes before I tell security he’s on the grounds, then I’m done with it. And I’m done with you, too.”

“He grabbed me and pinned me,” I told him, but Silas snorted.

“I saw the way you were looking at him, Elaine. You wanted him. You wanted that scum to touch you. You don’t deserve to call yourself a Constantine.”

The cousin I’d been so close to through my childhood stared at me with disgust in his eyes. Almost as much disgust as he’d had for Morelli.

Betrayal and shame burned through me.

Silas didn’t hang around to make sure I was okay, just stalked out of there without a goodbye. Yeah, it was definite. The one final member of my family who didn’t wish I’d rot in hell, besides my cousin Harriet who loved everything with a pulse, had written me off. Silas was now on team hate Elaine with the rest of them. Great. What an achievement.

With shaking hands, I took my phone back out of my clutch and ordered an Uber. Ironically I wasn’t planning on hitting any clubs tonight. Wasn’t planning on dancing. Instead I would curl up with the Real Housewives of Wherever the Fuck and a pint of ice cream. It didn’t make any difference. I could’ve partied at every club in New York City, and it wouldn’t have meant shit to the self-loathing in my eyes as I stared in the mirror.

If only everyone knew the truth.

If only they knew the filth that had turned me into the woman I’d grown up to be.

But it was too late for that.

It was too late for anything other than to destroy myself as quickly as possible. Maybe one day I’d finally pluck up enough courage to change things.

Maybe not.