I’d never feel like that about anyone, even if I was allowed to.
My family had already destroyed that for me.
Shh, more secrets. More secrets.
More drink and more cocaine. Drown it out. Drown it out.
I let out a sigh and slumped against the wall. No one would stand a chance of knowing Lucian Morelli had broken me down in this part of town. Not unless he wanted to gloat about it. I was his to do as he wanted with. He’d barely have to let me send out a scream before he silenced me forever.
“Go on,” I pushed. “Do it, or go. I’m done with your crap.”
I felt the heat from him as he stepped even closer, his breaths, warm on my face, his eyes boring down into mine.
“Tell me how you would like to meet your demise,” he said, “Nice and slow, or over before you can blink?”
His tone made me shudder. I tried to hide my terror when I replied.
“Please, just make it a quick one. I’m bored of this already.”
I was lying, as usual. I wasn’t getting bored already. Even through my abject fear, there was a strange calmness soothing me deep underneath at the thought of giving myself up as done, and more . . . there was still a tingle of more I couldn’t shake. That want. That need.
I knew the need I was feeling. The need I’d felt with his hands on me in the bathroom at Tinsley’s ball. The need I’d felt rippling through me at the first glimpse of him in Cyrus Bar.
Fuck, I hated that need.
Lucian Morelli was a monster in an angelic body . . . and I was craving that angel’s touch.
“Do it,” I whispered. “Please, just do it. Kill me.”
He slammed his palm against the wall above my head, and I flinched.
“I’ll do what the fuck I want, whenever I want to fucking do it,” he said, and there was something new in his voice. A low growl I hadn’t heard before.
He jangled the keys in his hand, holding them up to the entrance light. Jemma’s keyring was on there, a leather fob with the number seven printed on it.
Number seven, lucky for some.
Not for me, it seemed.
I guess Lucian Morelli read something in me I didn’t want to admit to reading in myself. He didn’t bother wrestling me alongside him when he stepped up to the door and slipped the key into the lock, just left me there, staring after him.
Part of me begged me to run and at least give it a shot at escaping, but no. I found myself locked in position by nothing but my own mind, my arms wrapped tight around my chest.
He pushed the door open and looked back over his shoulder, and the hate in his eyes was tinged with something more. Something I felt all the way through to my core.
“Come and meet your fate, little girl,” he said, and it was insane, just how much of a little girl I felt under his stare.
I should never have considered it, not even for a heartbeat, but he beckoned me with his finger, and I found myself moving. My feet took on a life of their own as I stepped forward, my clutch still gripped tightly under my arm. I was shaking, from too much crappy beer as much as anything else, but shaking nonetheless.
I watched him swallow as he realized just how hard I was trembling.
He liked that.
I walked past him and into the cheap hallway of the cheap apartment block – my cheap escape from my expensive life. Jemma was away for the month, chasing down some environmental peace on some ocean liner somewhere, just as she had been doing on and off since we were teenagers.
I should’ve been with her. Once upon a time, I believed I would be. We’d planned to fix the oceans, and save the whales, and help anyone who needed helping, but I couldn’t do it. My life wouldn’t let me.
My family wouldn’t let me.
She should’ve been a close friend of Tristan’s rather than mine, both of them much more accustomed to trailer life than listening to my woes of billionaire existence, but that didn’t matter. She’d been my escape for over a decade and wouldn’t accept my cash handouts as an incentive; it was all from her heart. Still, I barely saw her.
I didn’t bother letting Lucian find the way upstairs to Jemma’s apartment, just snatched the keys from his hand and led the way. The other doors were all closed tight, no doubt their occupants holed up in bed. The door to number seven was right at the end of the upstairs corridor.
I pushed the key into the lock, opening the door and stepping in ahead of Lucian. I didn’t even attempt to shut the door in his face, only led the way in for him to follow.
He found the light switch as soon as he was in after me, his eyes checking out the neat little hallway around us. Jemma really was a sweet soul in her eccentricity. She had a handmade tapestry of a whale by a boat hanging up proud above my head, and a picture of her charity friends by the kitchen doorway. Hardly the surroundings I’d have expected to take my last breath in, but life is certainly weird sometimes.
I could see the questioning glance on Lucian’s face as he wondered about our surroundings. I answered him before he spoke.
“It’s my friend Jemma’s place. She’s away saving the world. Please don’t leave too many bloodstains on her carpet for her to come home to.”
He didn’t reply, just stepped in after me as I headed through to the kitchen. Jemma’s coffee machine was waiting ready on the counter, just like always, and I got it fired up without a word.
I dumped my clutch on the side and grabbed a mug from the cupboard, then held another up for the monster.
“Hey, asshole. How about a coffee before you
