Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Lucian

The woman had twisted me up inside, so tight I didn’t even know my own mind as I left that slum of a building. I marched out into the street, hoping that a random lowlife would come chasing after me, just so I could slam my fist into someone’s flesh.

They didn’t. It was me, alone, wandering through downtown in the early hours of the morning, barely aware of my surroundings as I paced through the city.

It was all on her. Her lonely soul begging mine for peace. Her burning heart flaring up to lash out, even in her weakest moments. Her fear, so pretty. Her eyes, so wide and hurt.

Her need for touch and pain, blurring together to take her to the heights.

She was a masochist, and I knew it, even if she didn’t truly know it herself.

She put her need for release through pain down to whatever traumas she’d pushed into her depths, but she was wrong. I’d seen enough pain sluts to know what she was. She was one of them. I’d put every ounce of my fortune on it.

It was the swell in my pants that told me just how desperate a pain slut she really was. She had potential to be the best of the best, and I felt it with every single beat of my filthy heart.

No. She was a Constantine. Her pain had to be about my pleasure, not hers.

I knew Violent Delights would be empty, and even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have scratched the itch that Elaine Constantine had raised in me. I could’ve summoned up a fresh girl to hurt, picking a gorgeous woman of my choosing, but that wouldn’t have scratched it either.

I could’ve even picked up a woman from the street and played my cash purchase game with a total stranger, but I didn’t.

I did nothing, just kept walking through the night until the sun finally poked its head above the skyscrapers, thinking about Elaine Constantine and making her my wife.

NYC was bustling with Sunday morning life when I finally came to my senses and called Elliot Morelli up on my phone. He was still in bed when he answered, his voice slurred with a clear hangover from the night before. I could read him a mile off.

I wasn’t particularly close to anyone in my family. My father and my “condition” had seen to that. However, I stayed in touch with my cousin. He was the closest thing I had to a friend.

I heard a woman’s voice next to him, moaning out a who is it? and realized it must be a repeat conquest considering that she was asking the question with such a groan. Familiarity. Hardly a usual occurrence for a playboy. He rarely fucked the same pussy twice.

“I’m coming over,” I told him, and he grunted a sigh.

“What the fuck, Lucian? It’s barely eight a.m.”

“I’m coming over now,” I said. “Get that random out of your bed, will you?”

“Sure thing, whatever,” he said, and hung up.

I hailed a cab, knowing full well the woman would be gone from his apartment by the time I got there. Sure enough, Elliot was padding around his living room, dressed in nothing but some low-slung pants as I stepped across his threshold.

I dropped myself onto his sofa and let out a breath as he rubbed his eyes.

“What the fuck brings you here on a Sunday morning?” he asked, and I spat it out before I came to my senses.

“Elaine fucking Constantine.”

He looked at me like I’d taken a blow to the head since he’d last seen me.

“Why the holy crap would Elaine Constantine do anything to you? Please tell me you’ve stayed away from her. Your dad will lose his shit. Her family will start a war.”

Predictably for Elliot, my one friend in the world, he read my mind.

“You fucked her, didn’t you?”

“Not quite,” I told him, and cursed myself under my breath.

He crouched down in front of me, eyes searching for signs I’d taken a battering to my brain. “Not quite as in what? What the hell’s going on?”

I shouldn’t have told him any of it. I should’ve put it to bed in my mind and turned my back on it for all time. But I didn’t. I was still twisted up enough from her bullshit ways that I didn’t. “Tinsley Constantine’s masked ball,” I said, and he pulled a face.

“Yeah, what about it? Everyone’s been raving about it. Tabloids have been lapping it up.”

“I was there,” I told him, and he laughed at me. Actually laughed at me.

“What in the living fuck were you doing at Tinsley Constantine’s ball?”

“Finding a wife.”

He scoffed. “Right. Sure. Next thing you’ll tell me you’re going to be a father. And what the fuck has that got to do with Elaine?”

I wished I was a smoker, just to take a drag on a cigarette and break up my own damn mood. “You can guess.”

“The whole world knows she’s a fucking party girl. I heard she was in debt to the Power brothers last time the Constantine gossip was going around the Regent.”

That pricked my interest—one small sliver of Constantine intelligence that had slipped my ears. “The Power brothers?”

“Big time, apparently. They say her mother is coming down hard on her.”

I was mulling over this new information when he spoke again.

“So, what happened when you saw Elaine Constantine at the ball?”

I despised the shame and humiliation brewing in me. Elliot had been a trusted ear for decades, but I was struggling to voice this confession to him.

He saved me the battle. “You grabbed her, didn’t you? You let your dick rule your hate, and you grabbed her?”

“That isn’t quite how it went—” I began, but he was already grinning at me.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Lucian,” he said. “I’ve seen her. She’s hot, even by Constantine standards. I mean, they’re all hot, but she’s something else. I doubt there are many guys in that position who wouldn’t want to fuck her if they had the chance.” He thrust his hips to demonstrate. It felt cheap to hear it framed that way.

“It wasn’t anything to do with her pussy.”

He was still grinning. “Yeah, but it became about pussy, right? Believe me, I know you well enough to know she’s got you all fucked up over that tight little body of hers.”

“Forget it,” I said and made a move to leave.

He pushed me back down in my seat, dropping his humor. “Jesus Christ, Lucian. You’ve got feelings for her. Are you out of your mind?”

“I don’t have fucking feelings for anyone.”

“Nah, I’m serious. This isn’t you, pal. She’s done something to you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, but he wasn’t believing me. I could see it in his stare.

I wanted to believe myself, and I should have. The concept was absurd. Never once in my life had I had feelings for anyone, let alone anyone with even the hint of a Constantine connection. I didn’t do emotions, let alone the fluffy bullshit of falling in love and all that crap. It was weakness. Nothing but weakness. People were tools for me to use. Nothing more.

“It’s all right, you know,” Elliot carried on. “Seriously, just spit it out. Whatever needs saying.”

“You’re not a goddamn counselor, Elliot. Nothing needs saying,” I countered, but he gestured to the clock above his fireplace.

“Not quite what you showing up here before nine on a Sunday morning is telling me.” He smiled. “I kicked Melissa out for this, you know. I was planning on at least one fresh round of fucking her ass before she left today.”

“Melissa?” I asked. “The girl behind the bar at the Aegean?”

“Don’t change the subject,” he said, and joined me on the sofa, kicking back with his hands behind his head.

I forced myself to speak, for my own sanity. At least if Elliot knew about my bullshit choices then he stood a chance of keeping tabs on me if I lost my head again.

I told him about Tinsley’s ball, and about how I’d grabbed Elaine in the bathroom. I told him how she’d wanted me, even through her fear. I told him how I’d liked it, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.

“So, what happened next?” he pushed when I was done with the ball recounting. “Did she call you for a date night?” He laughed at the prospect.

That’s when it got awkward. That’s when I should have shut my mouth for good and bailed on out of there.

“I got access to her calendar through Alto. Her personal calendar.”

“What the fuck?” His whole body spun in the seat to stare at me. “You got access to her personal calendar? They’ll skin you for that, your side as well as hers. If they find out—”

I cut him off at that. “It’s a fucking calendar. Nothing more.”

“Yeah, and a swipe at an inroad into the heart of the Constantine world. They’ll come after you with full fucking force.”

He was pointing out things I already knew. It was redundant speech but still he kept on telling me how raging mad my father would be, and just how attacked the Constantines would feel through something so concrete in its intentions.

I’d wanted to track her down and destroy her. They’d know it. They’d react to it. It was a big statement, and I’d known it. I’d known the risks.

It wasn’t anywhere near the severity of me sneaking into the Constantines’ private party, but that didn’t seem to matter shit to Elliot. There was more concern than that in his tone…he was too astute for his own good.

“You tracked her down already,” he said, and there was no question in it.

“Yeah, I tracked her down already. I was intending to marry her.”

He shook his head. “Nah, you weren’t. Tell yourself that all you like, but you were intending to do a shit ton more to her than marry her.”

“I did fuck all to her in actuality,” I told him. “I tracked her down to some shithole bar and stalked her from the sidelines, enjoying every little sniff of her ignorance. Then it gets even better.” I paused to soak in his expression of crazy. “I followed her to some shitty apartment of some friend of hers. It seemed the perfect backdrop to fuck her, slowly.”

“And marry her.”

I finally admitted the obvious. “Yes, and to marry her.”

“Why?”

I still wasn’t quite sure of the answer to that, so I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I want to toy with her a little more before I do.”

“Don’t do it,” he said, and his voice was tighter with dread than I’d ever heard. “Seriously, Lucian, for the life of you, don’t do it. Don’t go anywhere near the Constantines again. It’s not worth it. She’s not worth it.”

The fire in me said otherwise, burning bright with the need for her pain and destruction.

“I fucking mean it,” Elliot said. “Don’t go anywhere near her again. Go after Tinsley if you have to. Or even that Haley chick, or whoever, none of it matters. Just not Elaine Constantine. Please God, not Elaine Constantine.”

I sneered at him, because his words made no sense. His logic made no fucking sense. “Why not Elaine?” I said. “Her mother would be crying harder about losing any of the others than that of her black sheep. Taking out any of them would be a much more dramatic swipe at their heritage than the one they want to disown.”

He was shaking his head, and I could read it in his eyes, something that made my blood freeze. “This is nothing to do with the Constantines and who they’d cry hardest about,” he told me. “It’s about you.”

“Me?” I scoffed. “What the hell has it got to do with me? Why the fuck does it matter which of the Constantines I fuck with? I’ll be firing a nice fucking shot into the heart of them, regardless. It’s about damn time one of us did.”

“It’s got everything to do with you,” he said, and he meant it. He really fucking meant it. “It’s got everything to do with which of the Constantines you opt to go after next.”

“So tell me,” I snapped at him. “Tell me what catastrophe you think is gonna happen when I go after Elaine Constantine and fuck her.”

Elliot Morelli looked at me like the best friend I’d known for decades, all summed up in that one short moment. “I don’t think. I know what catastrophe is gonna happen,” he said. “You’re not just gonna marry Elaine Constantine. You’re gonna fall in love with her.”