Page 195 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
“I know, I know. We hate you, you hate us. La la la. Like I give a fuck about that.”
I took another step closer, and this time she didn’t flinch. Didn’t even drop her stare. The whirlwind was speeding up inside her, sure as fuck not slowing down. I could taste her as I closed the distance, my mouth watering at the orchids and plums.
“You’ll give a fuck when I punish you for being a Constantine,” I told her, but again, the whirlwind inside her kept on spinning. I could feel it pulsing from her. Fear. Rage. Hate. Confusion.
But more.
I could feel so much more.
She took a breath and slumped her shoulders, casting a glance up at the shitty night sky.
“What makes you think I’d give a damn about anything?” she asked me. “Just get on with it, or get the fuck away from me, will you?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elaine
Ireally wasdone with it. I was done with caring. Done with feeling. Done with living. Maybe Lucian Morelli would be the monster that liberated me from this painful existence.
To the outside world I had it all. Money. Designer clothes. Bentleys.
But inside, my world was pain. Pain I’d been breathing through in agonizing little gasps since I was a little girl trying to begoodfor Reverend Lynch and his sick friends. Fucked up, and used, and twisted. Hurt by so much of the life I’d held dear.
Seeing Tristan gazing so adoringly at Blue Hawk tonight, and knowing Blue Hawk’s dick was coming to him, had only compounded the obvious inside me.
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 champagne and more dancing. 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 goaded him. “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 be fucked,” he said, “Nice and slow, or hard and fast?”
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. Thatneed.
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.”
“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 need I hadn’t heard before. Control. Command. 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.
