Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Elaine

Ireally was done with it. I was done with caring. Done with feeling. Done with living. Maybe Lucian Morelli would be the monster that liberated me from this painful existence.

To the outside world I had it all. Money. Designer clothes. Bentleys.

But inside, my world was pain. Pain I’d been breathing through in agonizing little gasps since I was a little girl trying to be good for Reverend Lynch and his sick friends. Fucked up, and used, and twisted. Hurt by so much of the life I’d held dear.

Seeing Tristan gazing so adoringly at Blue Hawk tonight, and knowing Blue Hawk’s dick was coming to him, had only compounded the obvious inside me.

I’d never feel like that about anyone, even if I was allowed to.

My family had already destroyed that for me.

Shh, more secrets. More secrets.

More champagne and more dancing. Drown it out. Drown it out.

I let out a sigh and slumped against the wall.

No one would stand a chance of knowing Lucian Morelli had broken me down in this part of town. Not unless he wanted to gloat about it. I was his to do as he wanted with. He’d barely have to let me send out a scream before he silenced me forever.

“Go on,” I goaded him. “Do it, or go. I’m done with your crap.”

I felt the heat from him as he stepped even closer, his breaths warm on my face, his eyes boring down into mine. “Tell me how you would like to be fucked,” he said, “Nice and slow, or hard and fast?”

His tone made me shudder. I tried to hide my terror when I replied. “Please, just make it a quick one. I’m bored of this already.”

I was lying, as usual. I wasn’t getting bored already. Even through my abject fear, there was a strange calmness soothing me deep underneath at the thought of giving myself up as done, and more…there was still a tingle of more I couldn’t shake. That want. That need.

I knew the need I was feeling. The need I’d felt with his hands on me in the bathroom at Tinsley’s ball. The need I’d felt rippling through me at the first glimpse of him in Cyrus Bar.

Fuck, I hated that need.

Lucian Morelli was a monster in an angelic body…and I was craving that angel’s touch.

“Do it,” I whispered. “Please, just do it.”

“I’ll do what the fuck I want, whenever I want to fucking do it,” he said, and there was something new in his voice. A need I hadn’t heard before. Control. Command. He jangled the keys in his hand, holding them up to the entrance light. Jemma’s keyring was on there, a leather fob with the number seven printed on it.

Number seven, lucky for some.

Not for me, it seemed.

I guess Lucian Morelli read something in me I didn’t want to admit to reading in myself. He didn’t bother wrestling me alongside him when he stepped up to the door and slipped the key into the lock, just left me there, staring after him.

Part of me begged me to run and at least give it a shot at escaping, but no. I found myself locked in position by nothing but my own mind, my arms wrapped tight around my chest.

He pushed the door open and looked back over his shoulder, and the hate in his eyes was tinged with something more. Something I felt all the way through to my core.

“Come and meet your fate, little doll,” he said, and it was insane, just how much of a little doll I felt under his stare. Docile and somehow innocent, despite what had been done to me.

I should never have considered it, not even for a heartbeat, but he beckoned me with his finger, and I found myself moving. My feet took on a life of their own as I stepped forward, my clutch still gripped tightly under my arm. I was shaking, from too much crappy beer as much as anything else, but shaking nonetheless.

I watched him swallow as he realized just how hard I was trembling.

He liked that.

I walked past him and into the hallway of the apartment building—my cheap escape from my expensive life. Jemma was away for the month, chasing down some environmental peace on some ocean liner somewhere, just as she had been doing on and off since we were teenagers.

I should’ve been with her.

Once upon a time, I believed I would be. We’d planned to fix the oceans, and save the whales, and help anyone who needed helping, but I couldn’t do it. My life wouldn’t let me.

My family wouldn’t let me.

No, that wasn’t quite true. It was my secrets that truly broke me.

I didn’t bother letting Lucian find the way upstairs to Jemma’s apartment, just snatched the keys from his hand and led the way. The other doors were all closed tight, no doubt their occupants holed up in bed. The door to number seven was right at the end of the upstairs corridor.

I pushed the key into the lock, opening the door and stepping in ahead of Lucian. I didn’t even attempt to shut the door in his face, only led the way in for him to follow.

He found the light switch as soon as he was in after me, his eyes checking out the neat little hallway around us. Jemma really was a sweet soul in her eccentricity. She had a handmade tapestry of a whale by a boat hanging proudly above my head and a picture of her charity friends by the kitchen doorway. Cheerful compared to the darkness of the moment.

I could see the questioning glance on Lucian’s face as he wondered about our surroundings. I answered him before he spoke.

“It’s my friend Jemma’s place. She’s away saving the world. Please don’t leave bloodstains on her carpet for her to come home to.”

He didn’t reply, just stepped in after me as I headed through to the kitchen. Jemma’s coffee machine was waiting ready on the counter, just like always, and I got it fired up without a word.

I dumped my clutch on the side and grabbed a mug from the cupboard, then held another up for the monster. “Hey, asshole. How about a coffee before you hurt me?”

I must have pushed him too far. He was on me in seconds, slamming me into the countertop as the mugs went crashing to the floor with a smash. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

But it wasn’t Lucian Morelli’s hands that attacked me next…it was his mouth. His lips. His breaths. His desire. He was fierce as he ripped my coat from my shoulders and flung it aside. His fingers were savage as they tore at my dress, ripping it clean open, revealing my lace bra.

Kisses. Hot kisses. Deep kisses.

I wanted them. Oh, fuck, I wanted them.

“Don’t fucking speak to me like that again,” he said, squeezing my face in one big hand. “Or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

I don’t know what consumed me as I wrapped my arms around his neck. I didn’t know what depths of insanity were possible until I panted into the next round of kisses and rode the pang of desperation for more.

This was doomed. Forbidden. Madness on every level.

With another deep kiss, the beautiful monster yanked me away from the countertop and pushed me backwards into the hallway, charging us both through into the darkness of the living room. He threw me down onto the floor so hard I tumbled onto my knees, but that didn’t matter.

He got the light and was down on me in a heartbeat.

A feral animal.

The fabric tore right open. He was strong. So damn strong I was just a doll in his arms. I closed my eyes and let him strip me, knowing full well what would be coming. Wanting what was coming.

I heard him groan under his breath as he tugged my tits free from my bra, seeing just how hard my nipples were for his touch. His fingers were savage as they gripped and twisted my flesh, but they didn’t stop there. They slid right down my ribs and over my stomach, hooking into my tattered tights to pull them down.

Oh fuck. My thighs. He’d see my thighs. He’d see the scars.

I bit my lip before he tugged the tights down to my knees, feeling the self-consciousness brewing under the harsh glow of the bulb, even in the face of the mortal terror I should be racked with.

Sure enough, he saw them. Brutal under the overhead light, he saw them.

The cuts were fresh, painful lines over scars. So many scars, my thighs were a dance of them. Always high, out of view. Always deep enough to bleed nice and hard.

I’d been hurting myself since I was young, and I needed it. I needed the hurt in my body to free me from the hurt in my head.

“What the fuck—” Lucian began, but he knew when he looked into my eyes. He knew exactly what the fuck was going on with me.

I took hold of my tights and tried to pull them back up, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Why the fuck would you cut yourself?” he asked, and I should’ve given him a shrug and kept my silence, since it was none of his damn business, but again, I guess I had the alcohol to thank for my loose tongue. The words flowed from my mouth like they’d never done in my life, gushing free with no restraint before I could try to stop them.

“It was a long time ago.”

“You’re not that old, Elaine.”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

My heart twists at the words. “Maybe I cut myself because I need alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Maybe it’s because nobody will ever love me. Because they wouldn’t, would they? No man would ever fall in love with a freak like me, even if my family would let them.”

His eyes widened on mine, and I saw more than hate. Worse than hate.

Pity.

I saw damn pity.

“You need to get some fucking therapy,” he said, his hands still gripped tight on my wrists.

“Yeah, so I keep hearing. Therapy, therapy, therapy. I’ve had years of it, you know. From expensive therapists. Take deep breaths. Positive self-talk. It’s never helped.”

He stared at my cuts, and I felt ashamed of them, so fierce in my pain. I was wearing a lace thong, but he barely even noticed. His attention was fixed on my flaws and not my strengths, just like the rest of the world’s always seemed to be.

Even the people who gave a shit.

“Do it,” I said again. “Just do it.”

His stare tightened on mine. “Do what, exactly? Fuck you? I’m not here to service you, sweetheart. You’re the one who needs to serve me, but you don’t even know how.”

“Yeah, well maybe I’m a failure at that, too.”

I knew the tears were pricking at my eyes, and I despised myself for it. I forced my jaw up in the air, trying to look as proud as I could manage, even though my bottom lip was trembling.

Shhh, secrets. Secrets.

Never tell your secrets.

He dropped my wrists and pulled away from me, and the pity was worse, his eyes still struggling to take it in. I pulled my tights up, but didn’t attempt to squirm away, just gathered my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

Lucian got to his feet and brushed himself down, clearly feeling as though anywhere with less than a million-dollar decor value was obviously infested with cockroaches.

“Hurt me,” I said, and I meant it. I truly meant it.

He cocked his head, looking at me like I was a bug under a magnifying glass, curious but detached. “So you can use me like a knife? So you can earn another scar on your pretty little thighs? I don’t take orders from Constantines.”

We glared at each other with more spite than you could put into words, both of us seething on waves of malice built up over decades. But it wasn’t spite that was making my heart race.

“Do it,” I rasped through his grip on my neck.

His eyes were slick with evil, and I saw it. Felt it. Sadism…cruelty…brutality…just like I’d known from so many men, so many times.

I felt like that again. I felt it deep. I felt it in him. In the monster in front of me.

But this monster was different.

This monster made me flutter in a way no other man had ever done.

Lucian Morelli wanted to hurt me, and it wasn’t just because of my bloodline. It was because he wanted it. He wanted to see me suffer. He wanted to see me lose myself in my pain.

Oh God, please, I wanted to lose myself in my pain too.

I wanted the perfect monster to make me hurt for him.

Please, give it to me. Please.

But no.

Like a switch had flicked inside him, his fire turned to ice.

“Enjoy your last moments of freedom, little doll,” he said. “I’ll be coming for you one day. And when I do, you’ll be mine. For good.”

I wanted to beg him to stay, even though it was insanity piled on top of insanity, and made no sense to my soul. I didn’t beg him for anything. I summoned enough pride from the scrappy little pits of my heart and stayed silent as he walked away, watching him leave with my sobs battling in my chest. He didn’t even look back.

I flinched as the front door slammed closed behind him, and then the sobs burst their way free from my lungs.