“That’s not true in the slightest. I’ve done plenty of things with people because they want to.”
I could see him thinking about it, trying to work out when that was, and it made me smile at him. “Don’t worry, Lucian, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. Bully people all you want. It’s just a shame. I’m sure plenty of people would do things with you just because they wanted to.” I couldn’t resist turning the knife even though he couldn’t feel it.
He still hated me, I could see it all over him. I still hated him, my eyes must have told him right back. “You don’t have a clue what you’re fucking talking about,” he told me. “Plenty of people have done things with me because they want to.”
I stared straight at him. “Who? Tell me.”
My heart was racing, preparing myself for the end, but the end didn’t come. His eyes were fierce as he propped himself against the counter, wrapping his hand up in a fresh towel. “Right from the beginning people have done things with me because they want to,” he said, and then he told me.
Lucian Morelli stood against his kitchen counter, and he told me about Bethany Fryers, the very first girl he punished and how she cried out for him in pleasure as well as in pain. It gave me tingles where it shouldn’t, and my heart was still racing as fast at his descriptions, and that was about more than what he did to her. It was about the dirty sparkle in his eyes as he relived the memories.
He’d had feelings for Bethany Fryers.
Even if he didn’t want to admit feelings for anyone or anything in this world, Lucian Morelli once had feelings for Bethany Fryers.
I found myself wondering what she looked like, and what she sounded like and just what it was about her that drove him so wild. Because she did. She drove him wild. Beneath his evil walls, and his callous ways, and his not giving a shit for anyone, that woman drove him wild.
“There you go,” he told me when he’d finished recounting her story. “She fucking wanted it.”
I had flutters when I spoke next. “So if you liked her wanting it so much, why did you stop choosing people who wanted to enjoy it?”
His voice turned to spite. “Because I like power. Because I take whatever I fucking want. It’s about my fucking pleasure, I don’t give a shit about anyone else’s.”
“Good for you, Mr. Selfish,” I said and knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I’d pushed the attitude too far. He was on me in one of my frantic heartbeats, his bloodied hand tight around my throat, towel cast aside.
I felt his blood on me, still hot. It gave me chills, picturing how it would be my blood feeling like that if he chose to cut me. “I like power,” he said. “Remember that.”
He forced my thighs apart enough to press himself against me, and even in my choked state I found I was moving against him.
I wanted to be Bethany Fryers. I wanted to be the little blonde girl who drove him wild.
His eyes were evil, but there was depth in them, a curiosity that danced with mine.
“You look like her, you know,” he told me, and it gave me a whole new wave of shivers. “At that masked fucking ball, you looked like her. I should’ve known you were fucking trouble then.”
I tried to speak, but his choke hold wouldn’t let me. He freed me enough to take in breath, and I sucked in a decent lungful before I found my voice. “You didn’t realize it, did you?” I asked. “You hadn’t thought about me looking like that girl, not until tonight. I can see it.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “You can’t see shit about me.”
But he was wrong. I could. I was getting to know him and his monster ways, even if he didn’t want me to. Just as he was getting to know me and my crazy ways right back.
I was still moving against him when he spoke next, still desperate as he pressed his mouth to my ear.
“Now then,” he whispered. “Seeing as you know some of my filthy secrets, it’s time you told me some of yours.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lucian
I felt like someone had scraped my insides out and laid them on a platter on the counter. I’d never felt like it before. Exposed, like parts of me had been spewed from my center.
The realization that Elaine had reminded me of Bethany Fryers from the very first sight of her at Tinsley Constantine’s masked ball was a hammer. Was that where the fixation had come from? Or did I simply have a type, regardless of the trauma surrounding these women.
The curve of her pretty little chin. The slope of her neck. The blonde waves cascading from her, and those pretty blue eyes. Yes, she reminded me of Bethany. They were both beautiful young women. But they were also drastically different.
Were the comparisons between them simply happenstance?
Was I trying to atone for past sins?
I’d done my best to blank out my early memories of Bethany. Somehow, I knew she was a weakness in my perfect strength. I’d long since lost track of the girl who’d first captivated my fetishes, and I’d wanted to. I didn’t want even a hint of her in my life.
I was uncomfortable with the swing of the balance—her knowing more about my past than I knew about hers. I didn’t tolerate any form of weakness in myself, and that’s what it felt like.
I felt weak. It made my words lash out at her as they came. “I’m serious, Elaine. It’s time for you to reveal your dirty secrets. I want to know every filthy little part of you.”
She shifted on her feet, nervous. Still, she couldn’t hide that addictive curiosity in her stare. “I don’t have to tell you anything, Lucian,” she said, but again there was no venom in it. She couldn’t have mustered any if she’d tried. I could smell her temptation to talk to me. It was ripe in her shallow little breaths. She wanted to share.
“You owe me your fucking life,” I said, knowing cruelty would compel her more than kindness. “The Power brothers would have killed you by now if I hadn’t taken you.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” she said, but again, there was no venom in it.
The standoff arced between us, laced with a concoction I didn’t understand. Hate, disgust, retribution, want, need. I hated needing anything. Need was something I could usually snuff out with a click of my fingers, getting whatever I wanted in a flash, but not with her. Not with Elaine.
“You’d better start using that tongue of yours,” I said to her, “or I really will make you pay back the debt. I’ll make you pay in ways so vile, you could never imagine.”
She raised her chin at me, proud, even though she was a wreck, standing in my kitchen, with crusty bloodied thighs, swamped in my shirt. “You would get off on my secrets,” she told me. “You’d do nothing but laugh in my face. You’d like them.”
I would’ve usually agreed with her. Her stories should give me nothing but inspiration for how I wanted to make her suffer in my grip, but I wasn’t feeling it. The twist in my gut was another one of those crazy sensations that made me want to retch. Feelings? Emotional pain? What they did to me, she said. Who hurt you, little doll? The thought made me clench with rage.
“Who did things to you?” I asked her, and her chin dropped, eyes on the floor.