Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Elaine

Ihad no idea what time it was when I woke up. It was dark outside, just the orange glow of the London streetlights showing through the window. We hadn’t even closed the blinds, we’d been that tired when we’d flopped on the bed.

Lucian was still deep asleep beside me, and I loved that. I knew I’d be loving that for the rest of my life. I loved it way too much to ever take it for granted.

I just hoped the rest of our lives was quite a long period of time, and not going to be snatched away from us in just a few days, if people found out where we were. That was another case of optimism on my part at best.

I needed to pee, and tried to move without waking him, but I didn’t manage it. He reached out for me before I’d made it off the bed.

“Get back here, Elaine,” he said, and his voice was low and beautiful.

“I need to pee,” I whispered.

He let go of my arm with a grunt. “Then hurry the fuck up. And ditch those clothes while you’re at it. We need to rebandage you as well.”

I hurried to the bathroom as quickly as I could while still flinching at the pain, didn’t flick on the light switch, thinking it might wake up some hitman sniper on the roof opposite. God this was crazy.

I ran the sink tap to hide the sound of me peeing. That was crazy, too. As if that mattered anymore. I flushed the toilet and had a quick drink from the tap before I tore my clothes off and hurried back in there, stopping short of the bed. He was sitting up, still dressed, his beautiful face bathed in the orange glow through the window.

He didn’t say a word, just opened his arms and I fell into him as he held me tight.

“God, I love you,” I said and it rolled off my tongue in the most amazing of ways.

“Just as well, sweetheart, since I love you right fucking back.”

I knew he was smirking.

I let out a breath against his chest. He smelled so much of him through his sweater that I pressed my nose against him just to smell him deeper. I loved it. Love, love, love. I loved every damn thing about Lucian Morelli, or Jason, or Evan, or whoever the hell he was now.

His fingers trailed up my back and his touch made me shiver—a nice shiver.

That was another thing I loved about Lucian. I loved how hard his cock was for me constantly. It made me feel like the most attractive woman alive. Even now, after grabbing sleep after a crazy, crazy few days, his body was still seeking out mine.

And it was crazy instinct as I ached for his body, lifting his sweater off over his head for him.

It didn’t take him long to get naked.

Didn’t take him long to pull me onto bed and under the covers with him, still being so tender around my bandage that he was like a saint, even through his dark eyes.

And it didn’t take me long to grab hold of his cock and squeeze it hard.

“I love what a horny little doll you’re turning out to be, Elaine,” he said, and his face was illuminated just enough by the glow from the window that I could see his smile.

“So treat me like one,” I whined. “Make me your horny little doll.”

“Oh, I will be treating you like one,” he told me. “Don’t you worry about that, little doll. I’ll be making you my horny little doll so much you’ll barely be able to take it, just as soon as we get you nice and healed.”

The pause was magic. Our eyes meeting in that stillness that only the early hours of the morning can give you.

He took my hand from his cock and wrapped it around him, his voice was so deep and pure when it came, when he hugged me.

“Luckily right now, sweetheart, I’m enjoying this too much to move.”

That gave me a weird little pang in my chest. Something like a tickle, because it felt so nice. To be wanted by someone so much that they just wanted to have their bare body next to yours and savor that moment was so weird I never thought I’d feel it. I never thought I’d be good enough.

I reached up and took his face in my hands, just touching his cheeks, feeling him right back.

An I love you just wouldn’t have cut it right then. Even those three magic words just wouldn’t be enough.

Neither of us said anything, just lay there together, holding, breathing. I felt so secure. Protected by the monster.

It was me who broke the silence.

“I can’t believe you gave up being Lucian Morelli for me. It’s just…crazy.”

“I’d happily give up anything for you,” he told me, and his voice was so sincere. “You’re worth everything I could ever give.”

“Clearly, since you’d die for being here.” I gave a little laugh. “Hopefully people won’t hunt down Jason and Penelope and we’ll manage to live a sweet little life.”

He kissed my forehead before he rolled away. I had to blink as he flicked on the bedside lamp, eyes shocked at the light.

His face was so serious when I managed to focus on him, his stare firm on mine. I could almost hear his brain ticking. I could see his mind at work behind his eyes.

“This is the thing though, baby,” he said. “Do we really want a sweet little life? Do we? Do we want to spend our life glancing over our shoulders worrying people are going to catch up with us and wipe us off the fucking planet every damn day?”

I shrugged. “What choice do we have? We could try to make it great, like Bishop’s Landing. We could get a little place somewhere, where nobody would ever know who we are. It could be okay. I do like gardening, you know?”

He didn’t laugh along with me. His brain was still ticking.

“The choice we have, is that we don’t fucking take it. We make it work however we want to make it work. We be whoever we want to be.”

“I don’t think we can be Lucian and Elaine anytime soon.”

I was laughing. He wasn’t.

He wasn’t laughing at all.

“But what if we were?”

It stopped me laughing in a heartbeat.

My face must have looked puzzled. “But we can’t be. Ever. People would come for us. They hate us already.”

“They’re going to come for us regardless,” he said. “Lucian and Elaine, Jason and Penelope, Evan and fucking Matilda, it doesn’t matter. They’re coming for us.”

His words were bristling with fire. With fight. With the kind of strength that people always associate with a beast like Lucian Morelli.

“So, what do we do?” I asked him.

My heart was racing, only it wasn’t fear it was racing with, it was something else. Respect and awe. Because it’s the monster in him that stole my heart. The man who controls and dominates whatever is around him, not just me.

Everything.

Every fucking thing in his path.

He was sitting up on the bed, naked and brilliant. I felt like a meek little lamb lying beside him, staring up at the monster.

His answer was enough to make me tingle. The idea was one I’d never have considered in a million years.

“What we do is take hold of London and put our mark on it, loud and clear. We work our connections and we use our strengths and we own it. We own our names and our lives for who we are, fuck our families and what they want to do to us. They can keep their bitter shit across the Atlantic and accept who the fuck we are.”

I didn’t even know what to say, I was so shocked.

His smile was proud.

“Who would you rather be, baby? Penelope or Elaine?”

My answer was quick and obvious.

“Elaine.” I managed a proud smile too. “Provided Penelope doesn’t live seventy years longer next to Jason’s side than Elaine lives next to Lucian’s. I like gardening a bit too much for that.”

I was trying to make light of the tension, because I just didn’t know how to process it. I didn’t know how to even begin to digest that we could be Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine, walking the London streets together as Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine. It just seemed…unreal.

But that’s when I realized just how much power that gave my heart—the idea of us walking the streets together as us. Proud. Because that’s what I’d be. Proud. I’d be so fucking proud of being Elaine Constantine at Lucian Morelli’s side with the whole world there to see it.

“Then we do it,” Lucian said. “We take hold of London and we put our mark on it, loud and clear.”

I propped myself up onto an elbow, still trying to let it sink in.

“The very idea of a Morelli with a Constantine is going to drive people wild. Everyone in the world knows we detest each other.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “They do. So let’s fucking surprise them.”

I let out a giggle. “It’s hardly how Romeo and Juliet ends, is it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not, but what if Romeo and Juliet had used every bit of power they had in them and stepped out proud and given their families the middle fucking finger?”

I shrugged. “Their families would have probably stabbed them and danced on their corpses.”

He was shaking his head. “Not if Romeo and Juliet had a whole fucking army around them, ready to stab their families right back.”

I could see his reasoning now. I could see what he meant by connections and strengths and using them.

He was planning on working this city and all the associations he’d known at a distance from across the Atlantic and forming allegiances in this new world.

I had a whole flood of new admiration for him when I saw another burst of fire in him. He was truly a monster. A monster who needed to be ruling an empire.

A monster who deserved it.

The anonymous man in hiding Jason Reynolds could never be ruling an empire. Not from some cute little cottage on the British coast.

“You with me?” he asked. “You ready to stand up as Elaine Constantine at my side? The two of us, proud to be one?”

I could feel the fire in my eyes match with his.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m with you all the way.”