How had they kept this a secret? Who in the family knew about it?
“Is this why you hurt people so much?” I asked him. “Because you have no idea what it feels like? Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t be such a bastard to people.”
“I don’t need an excuse to be a bastard to people, don’t try to make one for me.”
I leaned back against the counter. “I wasn’t going to. You can’t excuse being that much of a sadistic asshole with a damn illness.”
We stood staring, eye to eye, both of us hating each other, both of us curious, both of us in so much of a fucked-up state we must have been in some surreal dimension in Constantine-Morelli hell.
I guess my tone was genuine when it sounded out next, because I saw his eyes lighten just a touch. “What do the doctors say about it? Can it be fixed?”
“I didn’t want to be fixed.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because pain is a weakness, Elaine. I’m free of it. I’m stronger for it.”
I didn’t believe him. Pain was a truth and a connection to yourself. Pain was something that made us stronger, not weaker. “Is it something you’ve had your whole life?”
“From when I was young enough to scrape my knees and not cry along with it.”
I could only begin to imagine the little toddler Lucian with bleeding legs, not needing to cry for his mom. “Who else knows?” I pushed. “People must know, right?”
“None of your business,” he told me, but I shook my head.
“Seriously, Lucian. You can’t tell me it’s none of my business. I just stabbed you through the hand, and you’re telling me you didn’t feel it. How could that never have come up before?”
“People see what they want to see. You should know that. They look at you and see a party girl. They don’t know that you’re a virgin. Or that you’re absolutely terrified.”
“You are an interesting piece of shit, Lucian Morelli, even if I can’t stand you.”
I knew he was trying to hide a laugh at my bold words. Sometimes I definitely made him laugh inside, no matter how much he wanted to hate me. “Forget about it,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll be paying for your actions badly enough already.”
I didn’t give a shit about that. I was more interested in the weird creature in front of me than I was in what he was going to do with me.
I wondered if the rest of his family had it too. The question was out of my mouth before I’d even realized I was saying it. “Who else around you has it? Nobody talks about you guys having it.”
He walked away far enough to flick the coffee machine on, the intensity of the mood broken. His sigh felt casual, almost affectionate. “Stop asking questions, little doll.”
I didn’t want to shut my mouth, I wanted to know every little bit of his secrets. I was like the sneaky little girl tiptoeing through everyone else’s mysteries all over again, curious. “I can hear your brain ticking,” he told me. “Forget it.”
My brain sure was ticking. “Even the Morellis don’t know, do they? You didn’t tell anyone?”
He poured a coffee, and I waited quietly as he took a sip of his drink, wondering just what other secrets his body was holding tight. Maybe we were both creatures of secrets. Maybe there was more in common between us than I would’ve ever believed.
I watched him, trying to understand. I tried to imagine what it must be like in a body like his, so perfect but so oblivious to pain. What must it be like to watch everyone around you crying out when things hurt them, but not having a clue how on earth that could feel?
I got a shiver as I began to realize just what that might mean for a man like Lucian…just what that could lead to…such natural sadism…this natural need to hurt people…
“So that’s why, isn’t it? That’s why you’re such a fucking psycho?”
Another sigh. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”
He sounded tired.
He was fixated on causing people pain…and he would be…of course, he would be…he’d be fixated on causing people pain because he had none of his own…
“It makes you a sadist, doesn’t it?”
“Sadism doesn’t need a reason, sweetheart. We aren’t broken men for you to fix. I hurt you because I’m a bastard who likes seeing you in pain. What does it matter, the reason why?”
His stare made me shudder when it landed on me again—a whole load of layers glistening through the surface, like a moth in the darkness with the faintest of color in his pitch black wings.
Chapter Sixteen
Lucian
I was a private person by nature. Having to keep my secret made it worse.
And being the son of Bryant Morelli… well, that sealed the deal. Any weaknesses as a boy were chased out of me by my father. The Morelli heir had to be a monster of utter perfection.
Still, despite my lifetime of privacy, part of me wanted to tell Elaine my history. I wanted to see the shock in her pretty eyes as I told her the complete Lucian Morelli story.
I wanted to see her open mouth as I told her about the very early days when Father noticed my insensitivity to pain, and how he’d tested my limits with his gritted jaw.
“Can you feel this, boy? Tell me when it hurts…”
His hand, then his belt, then the nasty cuts. The way he twisted my flesh and held me down and thumped me hard enough that it sent me flying.
I didn’t feel a thing.
Part of me wanted to. I wanted to know what it felt like to have my body so abused and broken.
He took me to the doctor, and then a specialist after him, with the threat of death if they so much as recorded my results. Their reply was quick and definite. Congenital insensitivity to pain.
My body had no concept of what hurting meant.
Father told me that it would be a sin against the Morelli name to tell a soul about my condition, even my mother. He told me that he’d be ashamed of me forever if I breathed a word of it to anyone in this world. So I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell my mother, or my brothers and sisters, or any of my friends at school. I didn’t tell my teachers, didn’t explain a word to them why I didn’t ever cry out in sports matches when somebody crashed right into me.
It was none of their business. Nothing about me was anyone’s business.
I don’t remember how old I was when other people’s pain began to fascinate me.
Everyone’s pain began to fascinate me, but I had a particularly strong taste for pretty girls with big, crying eyes. Maybe I was twelve or thirteen. I’d long grown to rule the schoolyard by slamming my punishment out on anyone I chose, but that was mainly on other boys—rivals and losers alike. Big for my age, I enjoyed going after older boys and making them suffer.
The first girl I hurt was Bethany Fryers. I was fourteen years old. She was walking through the park after art class one day with a spring in her step, blonde hair swinging as she walked. I’d noticed her before, her gaze on me. Curious. A little intimidated.
My mouth watered at the sight of her, and my cock hardened like I’d known it to do at night for years. I had such a strong need to see her beg me to stop that it took my breath away. So I asked her to take a walk with me. And there in the bathroom of the school, I fucked her in a dirty stall. She didn’t mind spreading her legs but her eyes got wide when I covered her mouth. She squirmed in pain when I twisted her nipples. But she was wet and bucking against me. She wanted it.