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.