He breaks away from me, his hand sliding back down to plant on the ground beside me. Flickers of remorse or shame, I can’t tell, are punctuated by the stern pinch of his brows. The mask of his drunken stupor lifting to the sobering reality beneath it all.
“Lucian?” I reach up to cup his face, and he pushes off me, falling backward against the wall behind him. Sitting up from the ground across from him, I watch him silently chide himself through the shocked and disgusted expression on his face.
I don’t know what’s worse: the way he looks right now, brimming with regret, or the arrogant smirks the boys in school used to wear when they were finished with me.
The thought of them leaves me frowning, as well.
“I’m sorry.” Lucian’s voice draws my thoughts back to him, where he’s slouched with his shirt opened, his tie undone, clutching his skull with one hand. Completely disheveled and tormented.
“You regret kissing me?”
“I regret wanting to. It was wrong.”
Wrong. Wrong to kiss me.
No. I won’t let him cheapen the moment and turn me into some kind of mistake.
“Maybe for you.”
His gaze slices to mine, the darkness in his eyes burning with intensity, but he doesn’t reveal whatever is spinning inside his head. There’s something sinister there, regardless of his apology. Something devilish. Dangerous. A duality that exists within him, like two personalities trapped in one body, both vying for control. I felt it when he kissed me, the shift from desolation to aggression, ferocity, an animal waking from its slumber.
Starving for something.
Clambering to my feet, I hold his stare and back myself to the door. Perhaps it’s not regret that he feels in this moment, but the realization that I got a small peek of the man he hides beneath his business suits and indifference. I just had a taste of the passionate man underneath those scars. One who’d probably never admit that he makes love harder than most.
In fact, I’m pretty sure he just bared his soul in a single kiss.
“Goodnight, Mr. Blackthorne.”
Cool satin sheets slide over my legs as I writhe across the bed, my view trapped behind the pitch blackness of a blindfold. Soft, silky bands tighten at my wrists, when I tug my arms to no avail, while quiet, indiscernible whispers of a man fill my head, as if spoken in another language. A palm slides over top of the sheets, and the sensitive tickle at my thigh, only dulled by the thin barrier, tells me I’m naked beneath.
“Please.” Exhaustion weighs heavy on my voice while I plead with my captor. “Let me go.”
“Shhh, Isa Bella.” The deep timbre of Lucian’s voice skims across my skin like a feather, and I shiver, dizzy with the sensation. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“We want to watch.”
“We?”
The veil over my eyes is lifted, and I glance to the side, catching sight of my arm tethered to the bed by silk ties. Lucian stands alongside me in my room, wearing a half-buttoned white shirt, and he brushes his knuckles over my cheek.
A hand glides across my belly, and I look to my right. Lying beside me is a second Lucian, this one wearing a black shirt, his hands rough, demanding, as they slip beneath the sheets.
I snap my attention back to the first Lucian, who leans in for a gentle kiss along my jaw.
“You belong to both of us, Isa.”
A finger travels down between my thighs, over the sensitive cleft there, and I arch up, pulling my knees together.
“Relax, Isa,” the gentle Lucian breathes. “Don’t fight him.”
My knees are pried apart, and the Lucian beside me settles closer, keeping my leg tucked against him. “He’s going to make love to you, Isa. But I’m going to fuck you.” His jaw hardens at the same time that he thrusts his fingers hard up inside of me.
I shoot upright on a gasp, fingers curled tight around the bedsheets that I hold to my chest. Quick pants of breath fail to fill my lungs. I search my surroundings for the two of them, finding only the curtain softly fluttering across from me in the otherwise still room.
Sliding my hand beneath the pillow, I prod the pocketknife there, the cold metal a comfort against my fingertips, and exhale a long breath.
I raise a trembling hand to my forehead, mentally noting none of my limbs are tied down, and pat down my chest and legs to find my sweats and T-shirt from earlier in the night are still in place.
“Just a dream,” I murmur, resting my forehead against the heel of my palm to catch my breath.
As my heart rate settles, I touch my fingers to my lips, recalling his kiss from earlier. When I returned to Laura’s room, and Nell finally arrived, I swore Lucian’s scent was embedded in my clothes, that forbidden kiss written all over my face for her to call me out. Even now, I can still feel his skin on mine, the warmth of his breath. The flavor. A small chiding voice inside my head says it was wrong to let him kiss me like that. An older man. My boss, no less.
As if I had a choice!
That same voice tells me to forget the kiss, it was nothing but a drunken mistake. Forget him and go back to sleep. Except, that voice isn’t mine. It belongs to my aunt and everyone else who thinks they know what’s best for me.
I can’t forget the kiss that's now permanently seared within me. And even if I never get the opportunity to kiss Lucian again, I’ll never forget how wonderful it felt.
At a cracking sound, like the shifting of walls, I startle out of those musings and scramble for the lamp beside me, switching it on to find nothing there.
But I know there’s something there. I can feel it.
Something about this place slips beneath my skin when I’m not looking. It’s subtle, but ever present, easily mistaken for a fine stray hair, or a thin web. A tickle of imagination that toys with me every time I close my eyes. The same peculiar feeling I get when I’m around Lucian.
Lucian.
Visuals of those pale amber eyes drilling into mine as he stared down at me earlier, an infernal promise of wicked pleasures, cast a shiver down my spine. I don’t know why I find the man so darkly intriguing in a way that draws my curiosity like nothing else. The same curiosity that lures me into dreams that are as delusional as the shadows crawling about the room each time I wake, shaken and unsettled. Questioning my sanity.
Maybe that’s the reason they call him the Devil.
Because the madness that breathes within these walls is as real as the man who feeds it.
Chapter 24
Lucian
Fifteen years ago …
I find comfort in darkness. The only place they can’t see me. In the light, I’m bare, naked, exposed, but here, nothing can touch me. I’m invisible. A silent observer.
Knees bent to my chest, I sit in the corner of my room, staring through the window at the moon. Three weeks ago, I was lying strapped to a bed, with no idea whether it was day, or night. There was only light and darkness, and in the darkness, I found peace.
Where I stayed for all those weeks was no hospital. The place where my mother discarded me like a bag of old, unwanted clothes was a farce. A lie.
It looked like a hospital. Smelled like one. Was cold, and reeked like suffering. But beneath all the sterile veneer and medical equipment was something sinister and wrong. Something designed to slip inside my skull and rearrange the synaptic connections inside my head. To take what I learned to perceive as thrilling and exciting, and turn it into something I fear. Something I associate with pain and loathing. Panic.