“What the fuck—” Lucian began, but he knew when he looked into my eyes. He knew exactly what the fuck was going on with me.
I took hold of my tights and tried to pull them back up, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Why the fuck would you cut yourself?” he asked, and I should’ve given him a shrug and kept my silence, since it was none of his damn business, but again, I guess I had the alcohol to thank for my loose tongue. The words flowed from my mouth like they’d never done in my life, gushing free with no restraint before I could try to stop them.
“It was a long time ago.”
“You’re not that old, Elaine.”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
My heart twists at the words. “Maybe I cut myself because I need alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Maybe it’s because nobody will ever love me. Because they wouldn’t, would they? No man would ever fall in love with a freak like me, even if my family would let them.”
His eyes widened on mine, and I saw more than hate. Worse than hate.
Pity.
I saw damn pity.
“You need to get some fucking therapy,” he said, his hands still gripped tight on my wrists.
“Yeah, so I keep hearing. Therapy, therapy, therapy. I’ve had years of it, you know. From expensive therapists. Take deep breaths. Positive self-talk. It’s never helped.”
He stared at my cuts, and I felt ashamed of them, so fierce in my pain. I was wearing a lace thong, but he barely even noticed. His attention was fixed on my flaws and not my strengths, just like the rest of the world’s always seemed to be.
Even the people who gave a shit.
“Do it,” I said again. “Just do it.”
His stare tightened on mine. “Do what, exactly? Fuck you? I’m not here to service you, sweetheart. You’re the one who needs to serve me, but you don’t even know how.”
“Yeah, well maybe I’m a failure at that, too.”
I knew the tears were pricking at my eyes, and I despised myself for it. I forced my jaw up in the air, trying to look as proud as I could manage, even though my bottom lip was trembling.
Shhh, secrets. Secrets.
Never tell your secrets.
He dropped my wrists and pulled away from me, and the pity was worse, his eyes still struggling to take it in. I pulled my tights up, but didn’t attempt to squirm away, just gathered my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
Lucian got to his feet and brushed himself down, clearly feeling as though anywhere with less than a million-dollar decor value was obviously infested with cockroaches.
“Hurt me,” I said, and I meant it. I truly meant it.
He cocked his head, looking at me like I was a bug under a magnifying glass, curious but detached. “So you can use me like a knife? So you can earn another scar on your pretty little thighs? I don’t take orders from Constantines.”
We glared at each other with more spite than you could put into words, both of us seething on waves of malice built up over decades. But it wasn’t spite that was making my heart race.
“Do it,” I rasped through his grip on my neck.
His eyes were slick with evil, and I saw it. Felt it. Sadism…cruelty…brutality…just like I’d known from so many men, so many times.
I felt like that again. I felt it deep. I felt it in him. In the monster in front of me.
But this monster was different.
This monster made me flutter in a way no other man had ever done.
Lucian Morelli wanted to hurt me, and it wasn’t just because of my bloodline. It was because he wanted it. He wanted to see me suffer. He wanted to see me lose myself in my pain.
Oh God, please, I wanted to lose myself in my pain too.
I wanted the perfect monster to make me hurt for him.
Please, give it to me. Please.
But no.
Like a switch had flicked inside him, his fire turned to ice.
“Enjoy your last moments of freedom, little doll,” he said. “I’ll be coming for you one day. And when I do, you’ll be mine. For good.”
I wanted to beg him to stay, even though it was insanity piled on top of insanity, and made no sense to my soul. I didn’t beg him for anything. I summoned enough pride from the scrappy little pits of my heart and stayed silent as he walked away, watching him leave with my sobs battling in my chest. He didn’t even look back.
I flinched as the front door slammed closed behind him, and then the sobs burst their way free from my lungs.
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.