I hated the smell of her. I hated the taste of her. I hated her fucking voice, and her fucking stare, and her whole fucking life.
But still, I wanted her.
Insanity.
My mouth was rough, and my hands were rougher. My thigh pressed hard against her pussy, hitting just the right spot to make her shudder.
She should’ve fought. Screamed. Battled. But no. With a whole round of insanity of her own, at the height of her sister’s birthday party, the foolish woman kissed me back.
Forbidden doesn’t even come close.
She dropped her clutch to the floor, gasping into my kiss, but the way she danced her tongue with mine was a far different experience than I’d have imagined. She was messy and nervous – everything I’d never expect from a billionaire heiress addicted to the social circuit.
Yeah, that tongue of hers was . . . way too damn enthusiastic.
I guess that’s when I realized it. Right there and then. Elaine Constantine wasn’t a woman in her mid-twenties who’d fucked her way through every good-looking dick in the States. Not like the tabloids and the gossip would have you believe. Elaine Constantine was a girl who didn’t know what the hell she was doing. A broken toy, cracked on the inside yet still smiling beautifully through the window of her pristine box.
“We should stop this,” she groaned into the kiss. “This is madness.”
“I never stop for anyone,” I told her and snaked my hand between her thighs.
Her golden silk dress and lace panties underneath were a thin veil over her wet slit. I could feel the heat of her. Delicious. She spread her legs and wrapped her arms around my neck, grinding against my hand like a cat in heat.
“You really are crazy,” she hissed, and she was right.
I was crazy. I’d been crazy since the day I was born.
I forced her along the hall and shoved her into an ornate bathroom. The door made one hell of a slam as I pushed her inside and kept pushing until we were shut in the water closet, but I didn’t care. I hitched her dress up, biting her neck as my fingers circled hard around her clit.
“Take it like a good little bitch, or I’ll make it hurt real fucking bad,” I growled, and I could feel the shock bristling right through her.
Shock and something more. Something deeper.
Her eyes were searching mine as I pawed at her. Seeking.
“Who the fuck are you?” she panted, “Do I know you?”
“I’m your true damn nemesis,” I said and forced two fingers inside her.
She was so tight it made my mouth water.
The golden goddess moaned for me. “Nobody touches me. Ever. They wouldn’t dare.”
I laughed in her face and dropped the British accent. “I take whoever I want, whenever I want.”
That’s when it must have clicked for her. That’s when she pushed me away hard enough to tug my mask off.
The shock on her face was divine.
“No! NO! It can’t be. You can’t be! My God. My fucking God . . .”
I was still laughing. “Oh, I am, sweetheart. I am. You’d better believe it.”
“Lucian Morelli! What the fuck? You’re Lucian damn Morelli!”
“Pleased to meet you, Elaine Constantine,” I said and twisted my fingers inside her.
2 Elaine
No. No. NO.
It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense.
Lucian Morelli – LUCIAN MORELLI – had his fingers inside me at my sister’s masked ball.
How in the damn fucking world did I end up with Lucian Morelli’s fingers inside me at my sister’s masked ball?
He was dead. We were both dead. Fuck. FUCK.
My head was spinning, stomach lurching hard enough that I’d have been sick if I had anything but fizz to spew up.
“How the hell did you get in here?” I asked, but even at the height of the deadliest storm I’d ever known, my body didn’t care about the answer. My body only cared about him.
Even through the spinning and the lurching, my flesh was a law of its own, bucking against him for more. My senses were screaming, needing him. Needing a man who would finally make me his. Finally.
But it couldn’t be him.
Please, god, no.
It couldn’t be Lucian Morelli.
He forced my thighs further apart and hitched me higher against the wall, and he wasn’t even slightly scared. Even in that moment, even knowing exactly what I was capable of in this place with security all around us, he didn’t flinch. Didn’t shy away. Didn’t give a shit for a thing I was saying.
It was obvious that Lucian Morelli wasn’t scared of anything. The man was the devil, reigning over hell.
“I get in wherever I want, whenever I want,” he told me, and I didn’t doubt it.
I pasted on my bravado. “If I tell one single person you’re in here, you’ll never make it out alive. You know that, right? You’re a fool.”
He answered in a beat. “If I thought for one second you’d be telling one single person I was in here, you’d be dead already, sweetheart.”
He could’ve snapped my neck with his fingers still inside me, and I knew it. He’d have made it out of the compound before anyone even noticed I was gone. It’s not as though anyone would have cared I was gone anyway – Mom would probably be grateful. She’d probably raise a glass to my demise, just so long as nobody saw her do it.
If I wasn’t dosed up on cocaine and champagne, I’d have been petrified. A mouse in the claws of Lucian Morelli – head of the whole Morelli clan since his father handed him the reins.
He was a brute. An evil brute. A freak on a mission to tear down my family every single day of his life. An oath sworn in blood.
Maybe I was the next sad little victim in his quest.
Maybe I wouldn’t even care. Maybe it would be a blessing. So long, world.
I was torn between screaming for help or accepting I was a toy in
