Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Lucian

Ididn’t sleep, just sat and watched the girl curled up naked on the couch. She was dreaming, exhausted. She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.

Just a shame she was a fucking Constantine.

I knew the city would shake as the war over Elaine began. Constantines against the Power brothers would be quite a spectacle. I’d be an avid spectator.

Just so long as they didn’t find out the kidnapper was me.

Then it would bring the Constantine wrath down on my family. I wasn’t worried about myself, but my mother and sisters would be in danger. I could walk away from Morelli Holdings…maybe. But I couldn’t live with myself if I brought actual harm to my family.

The sun was rising through the window when my phone started its usual round of bleeps and pings for the day. The Morelli empire was already awake, deals and trades galore springing up for their usual rounds. And for once in my life I wasn’t among them.

I wasn’t emailing or calling or reading papers in manila folders.

It was a strange and foreign peace.

It was light outside when I finally moved from my seat. The coffee machine was live and active when my little doll presented herself in the kitchen doorway.

She was scared and tired, a beautiful combination.

She didn’t bother to ask for a coffee. No doubt she knew better than that.

I made myself one as she watched me, the sadistic part of me set to enjoy her thirst as she watched me drinking mine. I felt insane as I realized the sadistic part of me wasn’t winning the battle. I already had a mug out for my little doll before I stopped myself. Fuck it. I made her one anyway. I didn’t give her options, just handed one over, black, to match mine.

“Thanks,” she said, and flashed me a rare, meek smile.

Fuck. She was such a natural temptress. “Turn around,” I said.

She looked at me blankly before she realized what I wanted to see. She turned her back to me, her ass so beautifully marked, faint lines of bruising.

The sight made my cock twitch. I stepped up to her just as she was raising her coffee mug to her lips. My hot breath on her neck made her shudder.

“I’m going back to the city,” I told her, like she deserved an explanation. “Don’t even think about trying to escape this place. You’ll get nowhere. I’m locking you up tight, and even if you did get out, I’m barely a few minutes from wiping out that friend of yours. You’d never save him in time.”

She turned to me and pulled a scowl. “Yeah, I know. I do have a brain you know. You don’t need to keep pointing out the obvious every thirty seconds.”

My hand was on her tit in a flash, squeezing hard. “Are you going to behave yourself?”

She winced as I twisted her flesh. “That depends on what behave myself means.”

I didn’t actually know what behave meant in that instance. Part of me wanted her tied up naked to the bedframe upstairs, another part wanted to think of her drifting around the place, curious and needy. “I’m going to have so much fun leaving bruises on you,” I told her, letting go of her flesh and hating how I was telling myself just as much as her. “I love to make you cry, because it’s like I can feel something through you.”

She stared at me. “You’re absolutely fucking insane.”

That made me smirk, and it made her smirk back.

I straightened myself up in the hallway mirror before taking my keys from the table. Elaine was sassy as she stood in front of me, hand on hip as she flashed me a grin despite the fresh marks on her tit. “Enjoy your day at the office, honey.”

“Watch your fucking mouth,” I told her, then stepped outside.

I’d make her pay for that later.