I didn’t just love Lucian Morelli, I adored him. I adored him as much as it could ever be possible to adore someone. He was like a god to me—a beautiful, vicious god who’d killed for me like a noble avenger.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and this time it came out from deep in my heart. “Thank you for loving me, Lucian.”
He pushed me away just far enough to look me in the eyes.
“I told him I loved you, you know,” he growled. “I told that bastard I was in love with you before I knifed him to death.”
The thought made me proud. It filled me with glee that Reverend Lynch knew that finally someone loved me enough to make him pay for his sins. Just a shame it was one of the Morellis and not the Constantines.
Lucian ran his thumb down my cheek, then pressed his lips to mine. His kiss tasted like blood, but I didn’t care. I’d already kissed him in someone else’s blood. Both times were because he was hurting them for hurting me. Boyfriend material didn’t even come close to it on reflection.
“What did you do with the body?” I asked. “Is it just lying there? The police will come find it, right? Will they know it was you?”
His laugh was depraved. “Lynch’s body is in the trunk outside,” he said.
“In the trunk?” The whole thing was growing more bizarre by the second.
“In the trunk. They’ll find plenty of blood in that fuck-up of a manor, but they won’t find him. The police might well find the scene, but they won’t be coming after me. The fellowship will be damned sure his death stays well hidden.”
“Oh, thank god.” The relief when I heard that was a beautiful thing. The idea of Lucian being arrested and taken away from me was becoming the most unbearable thing in the world.
“And that Margaret will be out of the country by the time the cops find anything. I told her to run if she wanted to live.”
I held him tight again, breathing against him, grateful to have him in my arms. I wanted nothing but Lucian for all time. I wanted him at my side through every step I took, right to the end of my life. I couldn’t be away from him if I tried. I’d never make it. I’d never want to make it.
“I mean it,” he whispered. “I’ll kill them all, baby, one by one. They’ll all rue the day they ever looked at you that way, let alone touched you. That’s a promise.”
His warmth against me was blissful, even soaked in blood. I squeezed him, kissed him, did everything I could to let him know just how much I loved him, and then I asked him all over again.
“Please, Lucian, please will you fuck me now? I need to feel you inside me, please.”
He brushed my hair from my forehead and smiled down at me with dark, sparkling eyes. “Yes, sweetheart, I’ll fuck you now. It’s time.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lucian
Elaine Constantine’s sweet virgin pussy was the greatest jewel in the crown there could possibly be. It was still amazing to me that taking the prize mattered less to me than how much she would enjoy me taking it. But still, I wanted her to gasp and beg, desperate for every second.
She wanted kisses. She wanted holding. She wanted me.
I was drenched through to the skin with the reverend’s blood. I dropped my jacket onto the kitchen floor and it landed with a damp thump on the tile. Elaine’s fingers were already on my shirt buttons as I guided her through to the living room. Fingers that were shaking, just like the rest of her, only it wasn’t fear that was making her quake for me this time. It was a whole other type of nervousness; I could see it in her beautiful eyes. Those pools of crystal blue were light and delicate, even in the dull of the pre-dawn. They were eating me up with a devotion I’d never seen before. I’d never felt before.
It was a beautiful thing to witness, just how surprised and moved she was by someone caring about her. There should have been a whole army of men in her life tearing down walls to destroy anyone who dared to fuck her over in the slightest, but that army had never existed. Her family was fake, each and every one of the sad fuckers too far up their own self-important assholes, casting her aside for telling lies when all she wanted was for someone to hear her truth.
I’d heard her truth. I’d avenged her truth with the very first vile bastard who deserved it.
I was already aching to get started on the next one on the list.
Elaine was still kissing me as we reached the bottom of the staircase. I tore the bloodied shirt from my shoulders, and she was already at my belt, unbuckling as we climbed the stairs.
I never thought I’d be desperate to take a virgin in my bed. I usually wanted them on all fours, begging for their first cock, or making them force themselves down onto my cock, not enjoying the comfort of the mattress like a princess with her legs spread beautifully wide for me.
“You’re really going to do it?” she said as we reached the top of the stairs. “You’re really going to take me?”
The nip of my teeth on her throat said more than words. The way I shunted her toward my bedroom screamed volumes.
I dropped my pants and kicked them aside before we reached the doorway. My hands were on the oversized shirt on Elaine’s body, tearing it from her tiny frame.
She thought I was going to throw her down onto the bed and take my fill of her, I could see it by the way she backed up against the bed ready for me. I didn’t. As usual, I surprised her.
I tugged her into the bathroom, still squeezing tight as I flicked on the shower. It was steaming in no time, the water pumping hard and fast in the little shell of a cubicle. I opened the screen nice and wide and guided Elaine in first, pressing her up against the back wall as I stepped in alongside her.
Steaming didn’t even come close as I claimed her mouth as mine. I consumed her, tongue to tongue. I ate her up like a starving man, and she ate me up right back as I grabbed up the soap and lathered her body.
She was my girl, and I was going to treat her like one. Maybe boyfriend wasn’t so far off the mark after all.
Maybe I, Lucian Morelli, really was Elaine Constantine’s boyfriend. It gave me another one of those damn fluffy tingles to think of being a damn sight more than that, too.
Maybe I, Lucian Morelli, wanted Elaine Constantine to be my damn bride.
“I’m so nervous,” she told me over the hiss of the water. “I’ve been waiting for this for years, and I never thought it would really mean anything, but now I’m here, ready. Now that it’s with you, it means so much.”
I wanted to kiss every inch of her until she was ready for everything that was coming. In the haze of how much I wanted the girl in front of me, I lost all sense of time, of urgency, of me.
I thumbed her clit just enough to make her grind against my hand before I slipped two fingers inside her and curled them. She supported her weight on my shoulders, moaning as she rocked, and I twisted my fingers inside her, just enough to make her whimper. She was tight, so fucking tight. Taking her sweet little pussy would definitely still hurt her. The thought made my mouth water and my cock swell.
I worked her soft skin slowly under the pummeling water. Kissing, stroking, squeezing. My fingers played her until the morning was bright outside the bathroom window, teasing her softly enough that when she came for me she was a bucking mess against my hand.