Lucian’s eyes were so firm on mine as he digested everything I was saying.
I told him about how Reverend Lynch’s kisses became sucks, and about how he’d tell me I was a good girl as I dropped to my knees and gave him what he wanted.
He’d still spank me, harder and harder.
I got so desperate to get away from Reverend Lynch that I tried to sneak out of the place in the middle of the night. That’s when he started using my escape antics as an excuse to shackle me to the wrought iron bed frame at night. He’d say it was because I looked like I was planning to be a bad girl. That was when other men started coming at night.
I should’ve known what was coming, but I tried not to think about that. My behavior was getting worse and worse at home because I was so angry every minute of the day.
Uncle Lionel told Mom that he would start overseeing my education there. He said he owed it to me as my uncle. But he wasn’t anything like my uncle when he was in Reverend Lynch’s place.
He would be the one to open the door at night when a man stepped inside. I was already used to kissing Reverend Lynch, but not a few different men at once. Sometimes they would punish me. Sometimes they would praise me. Sometimes they would make me pray.
“Your uncle fucking watched this?” Lucian asked me once I took a pause to breathe.
“He shook their hands as they came inside.”
“They were paying him,” he told me, and I nodded.
“Probably.”
“Definitely,” he said. “I’ve heard of some depraved things, but this is fucking sick. And to think the board wanted to confirm my character. Meanwhile, there’s men like your uncle and this reverend. An underhanded allegiance of filth between men who think they are something noble.”
I retched when I thought of the men who’d come to me at night.
I knew their names. I knew their position in the world. I knew just who they were.
Sometimes, I still came into contact with them. Drink and drugs were my very best friends of all time at those parties.
“They didn’t fuck you, did they?” he asked me, and I shook my head.
“Not the regular way. They didn’t take my virginity, no. I always thought they might, but they didn’t. Nobody has ever done that.” I give him a small, sad smile. “Not even you.”
“Even their allegiance doesn’t warrant the risk of taking the virginity of a Constantine girl.”
I felt my cheeks burning as I faced up to telling him another bout of truth. “They took me…in other ways.”
His eyes narrowed, and his anger wasn’t at me. It was a refreshing thing to see. “They fucked your ass.”
It was a statement not a question. My fingers twisted in front of me. “It hurt a lot at first.”
“They took turns.” Another statement.
“They were long nights.”
“When did they start fucking you like that?”
“I’d just turned eighteen,” I said. “Old enough to consent. Old enough to refuse. But it didn’t matter, because they had already conditioned me to accept them.”
“Your parents never suspected?”
“They believed my uncle.”
I pictured Uncle Lionel’s face when I saw him at our house, and the looks he gave me when nobody else was watching. I hated him so bad I wished I could see him die.
“They always believed him about everything. Every little thing that he said I did. Every lie that came from his rotten mouth.”
“And what is he like to you now?”
My response was instant. “An evil piece of shit.”
He nodded, but didn’t speak. He looked like he was battling with words of his own.
There was a whole load more I wanted to tell him but couldn’t; even then I couldn’t find the strength to voice it aloud. I couldn’t tell him how they confused me by touching me in places that felt good. I couldn’t tell him that they’d started rewarding me with alcohol.
I always said thank you to them.
Thank you for hurting me, thank you for hitting me, thank you for making me do what I’m told.
That’s when I got so confused that I started hurting myself when I wasn’t around them.
Lucian seemed to see where my mind was going, even though he didn’t speak to me. He moved in close, looked down at my legs. I flinched when he touched me then ran his fingers over my cuts nice and slowly. A loud breath escaped me. I expected him to slide his fingers between my thighs and make me come, but he didn’t.
His hands stayed focused on my legs.
“How about that for my secrets?” I asked him. “I guess we’re about even now.”
“Bound in secrets much stronger than blood,” he said.
I was sure I saw pity in his eyes as he stared down at me, and I hated it. I hated pity from the monster. “Go on,” I whispered. “I guess it’s about time you made me suffer now.”
He pulled back from me with a puzzled look on his face. “How the fuck does that work, Elaine? You think I’m going to hurt you for telling me that a group of sick fuckers hurt you first?”
I shrugged, because I didn’t know. I never knew how these things worked—punishment and rewards, pain and pleasure. I knew he wasn’t a nice guy in any sense of the word. I’d heard plenty of stories about just how fucked up he was and all the girls he’d been with. The ones he’d hurt. He liked pain. And I liked receiving pain.
That’s when I got the weirdest pang inside me. I didn’t want disgusting pity from a Morelli monster, I wanted some form of respect, even at the end of my life, even if he didn’t want to show it.
But that wasn’t it, was it?
Even now, kidnapped in this gorgeous place with the promise of my demise ahead of me, I still wanted the Morelli monster to want me. “Take it. Take what you want.”
That’s when he stepped away from me, taking his attention right back to his coffee machine.
His next words were enough to hurt me, in a way that was alien to any kind of physical pain.
He wasn’t looking at me, just stirring his mug.
“Right now, I want nothing at all.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucian
I was getting used to the bizarre sensation known as feelings.
But even so, refusing to fuck a vulnerable Elaine Constantine was something I’d never have expected in this lifetime. I didn’t want to touch her, and I definitely didn’t want to hurt her. It was something I was unaccustomed to, not wanting another person’s pain at my hands.
Fucking hell, what the fuck was wrong with me?
She looked bizarrely annoyed, shifting around on the spot like I’d just insulted her, even though it was the kindest thing I’d ever done. “Are you for real? You don’t want to touch me now?”
“I don’t want to touch you now.”
She laughed a snooty laugh. “I didn’t put you down as that much of a saint, Lucian.”
“A saint? Hardly.” I pulled another mug down and made her a fucking coffee. Her eyes were still burning as she took it from me with a thanks.
The strange, perverted fellowship should mean nothing to me. They were just a depraved group of rich pricks. Evil? Yes. But there was plenty of evil in the world.