Page 223 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
He took hold of my neck and shoved me toward the body. I was whimpering, trembling, scared, and I couldn’t speak. “I’m asking you again,” he said, and his voice was an evil rasp. Evil and…
Hurt.
Lucian Morelli was hurt. By me. He was hurt by me. He was hurt by me being here with that man on the floor.
And I shouldn’t understand it. I shouldn’t want to understand it. But I did.
I did understand it.
I was feeling it too. That connection. That crazy connection between us. A forbidden want that made no sense, that had no place in this world.
He turned me to face him, and he dropped the knife on the floor, onto the blood-soaked carpet as he took my arms and shook me. He shook me so hard my legs were nothing but Jell-O.
“What the fuck did you want?” he asked, and he was scary. His voice was scary, and harsh, and angry, and beautiful. Lucian’s voice was beautiful. So beautiful he set my heart on fire.
My eyes were on his. Crying. Crying so hard I could barely see.
“You!” I cried. “I wanted you!”
He stopped at that. He stopped shaking me and stared, and those dark eyes of his flashed with something raw.
It took a few long moments before he spoke again.
“How the fuck would he ever be a substitute for me?”
I didn’t have an answer for that because there wasn’t one. Stephen could never have been a substitute for the monster in front of me. Lucian Morelli was the leader of my heaven and my hell both at once. His touch was gold and sin, both at once.
He was my love and hate, both at once.
He let go of me, and I sank to my knees with another round of tears.
I tried to catch my breath, watching Lucian pace up and down alongside the body without even casting it a glance. He didn’t give a fuck about it. Didn’t give a shit about committing murder.
Of course he didn’t give a shit about committing murder…no doubt he’d done it before.
But why here? Why now? How did he even know where I was?
I closed my eyes and forced myself into some kind of rational thought, just to speak out loud.
“What the fuck didyouwant?” I asked him. “What the fuck didyouwant here?”
The hate in his stare was still there when it met with mine, and he didn’t answer, just kept on pacing.
“Tell me,” I said. “What the fuck didyouwant, Lucian? Why the hell are you here, saving me?”
“I wasn’t here to saveyou,” he told me. “I was here to save your pussy.”
“That’s why you’re here, is it?” I pushed. “For my pussy?”
He sighed, his limited patience wearing out. “I can’t believe you thought he’d be anything like me. You don’t know the first goddamn thing about sex, do you?”
I was still a virgin. Still a virgin with the darkest Morelli in the world.
“You just killed a man,” I said, like I wasn’t stating the obvious. “A celebrity. They’ll know you killed him. They would have seen you…at the party…”
“A celebrity.” His sarcasm left me cold. “Hardly.”
My gaze was pulled to the body so close to me. I’d never seen a dead body before, let alone seen someone stabbed and taking their last breaths. I let out another sob and put my hands to my face, and that’s when I heard Lucian sighing again.
