Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Elaine

My insides were going crazy with nerves and flutters. That curiosity I knew so well was going wild inside me, desperate to know just what Lucian Morelli was hiding from the world.

He was quiet and brooding as he made another coffee, his hand still bleeding into the towel. I wondered if he needed a doctor for stitches, but he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, and his hand seemed to be working just fine.

I didn’t push him, didn’t speak, just let him churn in his darkness. The thrill and hope was already burning deep inside me that maybe, just maybe, he’d tell me something. Anything. Just something to give my curiosity one little tickle.

“If you stab anyone in the hand again,” he finally said, “you want to make sure you do it more centrally. You barely cut more than skin.”

If. IfI stab anyone in the hand. Like I was ever going to see anyone. I nodded at him. “Sure thing. I guess I’m a crappy hand stabber. My bad.”

He smirked, unable to hide the amusement, even though I’d just sliced him open. “You have such an impudent little tongue on you, Elaine,” he said. “Some people might even find it funny.”

Some people like him, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

Still I kept quiet, letting him churn, letting him think. I couldn’t even imagine what went on inside a mind like Lucian’s. He was such a different creature to me that the very idea of the life inside of him must be like an alien planet. Or maybe the depths of hell.

I pretended not to care so much about what he might tell me, but it was a pointless exercise, I’m sure it was blatantly obvious that I was desperate to know. My thighs were still sore from the places I’d sliced them, but I didn’t give a crap about that anymore. I didn’t feel the need for that anymore. All I needed was the words of the monster in front of me as he sipped his coffee.

“It’s a power,” he told me after another minute of pure silence. “I’m immune to every pain that people want to dish out to me. I don’t have to worry about anything they might dish out. They either kill me or mean nothing.”

That’s an interesting thought. They either kill me or mean nothing. I could see how that was a form of power. I wished I could feel that way. “You must wonder about pain though.”

I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own fucking business, but he didn’t. He fixed me with that piercing stare of his and put his mug on the counter. “Of course. I enjoy the thrill of watching people in pain. Especially you.”

“I guess I would too,” I said with a shrug, and he pulled a face at me.

“You think you’d be a sadist, do you, if you didn’t know pain?”

I pulled a face right back at him. “No, probably not. I’d probably not be a sick fuck like you, but I’m sure I would be curious. I’m curious about everything.”

Another smirk from him. “Clearly you’re curious. If you weren’t overly curious you’d have the sense to shut your mouth.”

I dared to push him, just a little. “When did you find out? You must have been young.”

I wasn’t expecting him to actually answer me. The facts were simple enough. The pain tolerance. But I was in shock when he told me just how much of a little boy he was and how his father had pushed his body for the truth. No wonder Lucian Morelli was so twisted, he’d been fucked up from one hell of an early age.

He pulled another face when he registered how my mind was working. “He didn’t fucking abuse me, Elaine. He was finding out who I was.”

I didn’t agree with him but didn’t voice it.

“You have no idea how much power it gave me, knowing just how immune I was to hurt.”

“I have an idea how much power it gave you,” I told him. “Considering just how much you’ve used it to get your own way and bully people into submission every moment of your life. It’s just a shame you’ve never actually done things with people because they want to, not because you bully them.”

“That’s not true in the slightest. I’ve done plenty of things with people because they want to.”

I could see him thinking about it, trying to work out when that was, and it made me smile at him. “Don’t worry, Lucian, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. Bully people all you want. It’s just a shame. I’m sure plenty of people would do things with you just because they wanted to.” I couldn’t resist turning the knife even though he couldn’t feel it.

He still hated me, I could see it all over him. I still hated him, my eyes must have told him right back. “You don’t have a clue what you’re fucking talking about,” he told me. “Plenty of people have done things with me because they want to.”

I stared straight at him. “Who? Tell me.”

My heart was racing, preparing myself for the end, but the end didn’t come. His eyes were fierce as he propped himself against the counter, wrapping his hand up in a fresh towel. “Right from the beginning people have done things with me because they want to,” he said, and then he told me.

Lucian Morelli stood against his kitchen counter, and he told me about Bethany Fryers, the very first girl he punished and how she cried out for him in pleasure as well as in pain. It gave me tingles where it shouldn’t, and my heart was still racing as fast at his descriptions, and that was about more than what he did to her. It was about the dirty sparkle in his eyes as he relived the memories.

He’d had feelings for Bethany Fryers.

Even if he didn’t want to admit feelings for anyone or anything in this world, Lucian Morelli once had feelings for Bethany Fryers.

I found myself wondering what she looked like, and what she sounded like and just what it was about her that drove him so wild. Because she did. She drove him wild. Beneath his evil walls, and his callous ways, and his not giving a shit for anyone, that woman drove him wild.

“There you go,” he told me when he’d finished recounting her story. “She fucking wanted it.”

I had flutters when I spoke next. “So if you liked her wanting it so much, why did you stop choosing people who wanted to enjoy it?”

His voice turned to spite. “Because I like power. Because I take whatever I fucking want. It’s about my fucking pleasure, I don’t give a shit about anyone else’s.”

“Good for you, Mr. Selfish,” I said and knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I’d pushed the attitude too far. He was on me in one of my frantic heartbeats, his bloodied hand tight around my throat, towel cast aside.

I felt his blood on me, still hot. It gave me chills, picturing how it would be my blood feeling like that if he chose to cut me. “I like power,” he said. “Remember that.”

He forced my thighs apart enough to press himself against me, and even in my choked state I found I was moving against him.

Iwanted to be Bethany Fryers. I wanted to be the little blonde girl who drove him wild.

His eyes were evil, but there was depth in them, a curiosity that danced with mine.

“You look like her, you know,” he told me, and it gave me a whole new wave of shivers. “At that masked fucking ball, you looked like her. I should’ve known you were fucking trouble then.”

I tried to speak, but his choke hold wouldn’t let me. He freed me enough to take in breath, and I sucked in a decent lungful before I found my voice. “You didn’t realize it, did you?” I asked. “You hadn’t thought about me looking like that girl, not until tonight. I can see it.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “You can’t see shit about me.”

But he was wrong. I could. I was getting to know him and his monster ways, even if he didn’t want me to. Just as he was getting to know me and my crazy ways right back.

I was still moving against him when he spoke next, still desperate as he pressed his mouth to my ear.

“Now then,” he whispered. “Seeing as you know some of my filthy secrets, it’s time you told me some of yours.”