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 his grip. Because maybe, just maybe, I could finally know what it was like having a real cock inside me before I choked out my final breath.
That’s when the coke spoke louder than anything. That’s when the coke, and my racing heartbeat, and the tingle between my legs laughed at me, and told me I wanted to be a toy in Lucian Morelli’s grip.
So, I did it.
I spread my legs even wider for the devil between them, and I kissed him. I kissed him, and I hoped he’d make it hurt. I hoped he’d make my first time something that would scar me forever. Especially if my forever wasn’t going to last all that long.
The monster pinned my wrists above my head.
Yes. Do it.
I smiled at him, my lips puffy from when he bit at them. I felt like a whore, and I spoke like one.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. “Show me just what a badass you are, Morelli, and fuck me.”
He twisted his fingers even deeper and his smirk was evil enough to burn the sun. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I never thought Elaine Constantine would be a virgin.”
My belly lurched. Actually lurched.
How did he know that? How the fuck could he know that? Was it really so obvious that I was a dumbass little girl who’d never taken a cock before?
Maybe it was. Maybe I really was that crap at the whole damn lot of it.
One thing was for sure – if he hadn’t known for definite, the flush of my cheeks would have told him he was right.
I was a virgin.
A desperate virgin, aching to be touched. To be used. To be fucked hard enough to hurt.
The one thing that would save me from hurting myself was finding someone else to do it for me.
“Do it,” I hissed. “Show me what a bad boy you are and fuck me, Morelli. Fuck me and die for it.”
He would have done it. I know he would. I could see the raw lust in his eyes, fixed on mine as he tugged my panties down my thighs. I’d have lost my virginity against a bathroom wall with my dress hitched up around my waist, and I’d have been grateful for it.
But Lucian Morelli didn’t get the chance.
We were both jolted to our senses by the thump of the bathroom door, and there were footsteps. Men’s footsteps. Getting closer.
“Elaine? Are you in here? Your clutch was on the floor outside; have you lost your fucking mind?”
Lucian was silent, and so was I. Faces just an inch apart, breaths ragged.
“Elaine?! You in here? Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking? Your mom is going to lose her shit. At least take your damn coke with you when you take a piss.”
Oh no.
No.
It was Silas. My cousin, and one of the few I considered almost an ally.
My cousin burst straight into the water closet without a second’s pause, catching me right in the grip of our family’s arch nemesis. Even being pinned by the guy wouldn’t have hidden the fact that I was desperate for him. It was obvious.
Shame piled on top of the rest of my frazzled emotions as Silas lurched backwards, mouth open wide.
Lucian dropped me back to my feet and stared at him, still not even flustered.
“You’ll be dead,” Silas snarled and jabbed a finger at him. “You’ll be fucking dead, Morelli. You’ll never get out of here alive.”
Lucian was smirking as he bent down to the floor to get his mask.
“If I die here tonight, Roosevelt, your whole world will be dead around you within days.” He laughed and lurched towards him with a boom of his hands to illustrate.
Finally, I snapped to my senses. “GO!” I screeched and shunted him from behind. “Just get the fuck out of here!”
Silas didn’t speak, because he knew the monster was telling the truth. As much as he would have hated to admit it – Lucian Morelli was right. If the eldest child of the Morelli family was killed at Tinsley Constantine’s birthday ball, she would be the first one to have her throat slit in the aftermath.
Tinsley and then me.
Again, maybe it would be a blessing in disguise.
Our family had been up against his for decades, billionaires out to kill for the thrill, just so long as we were spilling the blood of the other. My family was better than his at hiding our corruption from the world – smarter and more cultured – but that didn’t matter. We were all bound in the same pit of cruelty and criminality, pursuing wealth and power at any cost.
Drugs, arms, trafficking, fraud . . . it didn’t matter. We were all up to our necks.
It made no difference to anyone but us, of course – the police and the courts were so tightly in our back pockets that they’d have rolled over and shown us their bellies in a flash.
“Get the fuck out of here, Morelli!” Silas snarled again, and Lucian laughed as he pulled his mask back on.
“I was leaving anyway,” the monster told my cousin and slapped his shoulder on the way past. “This place is a joke. Your party is a sorry excuse for one.”
He was right on that score, too. The party really was a joke. False dumbasses singing to the same dumbass tune. Nobody really gave a fuck for anyone else in our world.