I wasn’t looking for a condom. I was looking for an exit.
I shoved him away again when he leaned back in.
“Sorry,” I managed, “I have to go.”
“Go?” he asked and didn’t move a muscle. “Where the hell do you need to go to right now?”
I didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t give him one, just pushed my way to the side.
That’s when he grabbed me, and his voice turned darker. “I left the fucking party for you. I could’ve had any fucking snatch in that place.”
“I’m sure the party’s still rocking,” I said, and I was slurring, feeling strange. “Sorry, Stephen. Didn’t mean to waste your time.”
“You aren’t wasting it,” he replied. “I’m not gonna let you.”
He pushed me back up hard against the wall. That’s when his mouth met with mine, and his tongue forced its way inside. That’s when he kissed me deep enough that my drunken haze disappeared under the adrenaline rush.
He was rough. I should’ve liked it.
His cock was hard against me, grinding through my dress. I should’ve liked that too.
Lucian.
Stephen didn’t look like Lucian Morelli up close. His kiss was sloppy, and his brows were far messier. His cheekbones were less sculpted, and his jaw was weaker.
He didn’t taste like Lucian Morelli either. He tasted of cheap beer and cigarettes.
I pushed him away again. “Let me go, and get back to the fucking party.”
He sneered at me. “I’m not going fucking anywhere except inside that pussy of yours,” he whispered, and I knew it then. I knew it in that moment. I saw it in his eyes.
Stephen wasn’t a nice man.
“No,” I said, but his mouth was back on my neck.
My hands were weak against him. My stilettos were unsteady. “No,” I said again, but he didn’t listen. “I mean it,” I said. “Get back to that fucking party and get some other girl.”
His eyes were darker than ever when they met mine, his breaths were fast, and his cock was hard. “After you give it up for me.”
“I’m Elaine Constantine,” I told him. “Lainey damn Marsh is a lie.”
“I don’t give a fuck who you are,” he sneered. “Tonight, you’re mine.”
He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know he was signing his death sentence if anyone in my world found out about this, and my threats wouldn’t make any difference to him.
“Let me go,” I begged. “My family… they won’t let this go…” But that’s one thing about the girl who always lies…nobody ever believes her when she tells the truth.
A sneer. I’d pushed him too far. I’d pushed him hard enough that he was losing his shit rough enough to hurt me. He slammed me harder into the wall, and this time it really hurt. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled. “Believe me, baby, you’ve cost me enough time already. You’d better buckle up. I’ll be fucking you hard to make up for it.”
“No,” I said. “Please no.”
“It’s gonna be a long, dirty, slow fucking ride, baby girl,” he said. “Just as well the drummer ain’t back until morning.”
Chapter Twenty
Lucian
I was pacing like a madman when the cab finally showed up on the street outside Spirit Club. I was a charging bull when I leapt forward in my seat and told the driver who I was.
As soon as he heard the name Morelli, he put his foot on the gas.
Every second felt like a year on that journey. The tracker was in some house down on the west side. Another hovel on top of a hovel.
The tracker didn’t move a meter the whole journey.
“Come on,” I snarled at the driver. “Faster.”
He couldn’t go any faster. There were drunken assholes in the street singing and swaying across the road when we tried to pass them. So I did it. I used the Morelli title to get me what I wanted, regardless of the cost. I ordered the cab driver to run the assholes down, but he was a statue in his damn seat until I barked at him.
“Drive, you bastard. Drive even if you have to run them over.”
The cab screeched forward, and the men bailed out of the way. Good call, asshole.
“Faster!” I snapped again, and the driver nodded.
He pulled up outside the house so fast that the brakes slammed and sent me lurching forward. I didn’t care. I was already scrambling out of there. I threw some money into the front of the cab, and it pulled away at full acceleration.
It was a house party, and I went straight up to the front door of the shithole, elbowing my way past fools and storming my way toward Elaine.
Because that’s what she was.
She was my Elaine. My Elaine Constantine.
I barged my way through the final few partiers, plowing into a mess of a kitchen space, but she wasn’t there. There was a green-haired woman standing where the tracker was pointing me, and one shove of her aside told me all I needed to know.
Elaine’s clutch bag was on the sideboard amongst the beer bottles.
My blood froze in my veins.
I grabbed it and looked inside. Everything was still in there—phone, keys, and cash.
Where the hell was she?
I gripped that clutch tight and charged around that place like a maniac, looking in every single damn space and shadow on the ground floor. I grabbed people and barked out the questions, where is she? Where the fuck is she? until the whole place was on edge, looking at me. I didn’t fucking care. All I cared about was that pretty little fool.
I climbed the stairs, leaping over people fondling each other on the landing, shoving some of them aside. If she was up there…if she was up there and sucking his cock…my blood boiled at the thought.
The first bedroom I burst into had girls giggling on the bed with a wine bottle being slugged between them. The second had couples littered all over it, grunting and fucking. The third bedroom was in darkness, and I pawed for the light. No sign of my pretty fool, but Tristan was in there with his mouth around his loverboy’s dick.
He recognized me.
Tristan recognized me.
The Blue Hawk freak rocker let out a groan of a fuck you, fuck off out of here, but I was already on him, shoving him down onto the floor.
I was on Tristan in a heartbeat, my face right up to his as I held her clutch up high.
“Where the fuck is she?”
He knew who I was talking about. He swallowed hard but he shook his head. “Stay away from her. She can’t be around you.”
Turns out Tristan had bigger balls than I thought. “I’m not asking you again. Where is Elaine Constnatine?”
It was the Blue prick who answered. He answered in no time at all. “That little blonde is Elaine Constantine? Whoa, shit. She’s downstairs with Stephen Cannon.”
My teeth clenched. “If she was downstairs, I’d have found her. Where the fuck has she gone?”
“Don’t tell him,” Tristan said, but the Blue prick was staring at him with saucer eyes.
“That’s Lucian Morelli, of course I’m fucking telling him!” The guy shot his stare back to me, and he was shitting himself. He tossed me some keys from his jeans pocket. “She’s on Fifth Avenue, top floor of block twelve.”