Heartless - Jade West Page 0,26
my mouth like they’d never done in my life, gushing free with no restraint before I could try to stop them.
“Maybe because I’m a drug addicted failure whose family looks at her with nothing but disgust. Maybe because I hate myself and everything I am and will be grateful if you really do finish me off tonight, since I’m done with all of it.” I took a breath. “Maybe it’s because nobody will ever love me. Nobody will ever really touch me. Nobody will ever let me know what it’s like to have a man fall in love with me for all time. Because they wouldn’t, would they? No man would ever fall in love with a freak like me, even if my family would let them.”
His eyes widened on mine, and I saw more than hate. Worse than hate.
Pity.
I saw damn pity.
“You need to get some fucking therapy,” he said, his hands still gripped tight on my wrists.
“Yeah, so I keep hearing. Therapy, therapy, therapy. Like it’s ever going to do me any good.”
He stared at my cuts, and I felt ashamed of them, so fierce in my pain. I was wearing a slutty lace thong, but he barely even noticed. His attention was fixed on my flaws and not my strengths, just like the rest of the world’s always seemed to be. Even the people who gave a shit.
“Do it,” I said again. “Just do it.”
His stare tightened on mine. “Do what, exactly? Finish off your self-hate attempt? If you feel that fucking bad, you should finish yourself off, you know. Save all the goddamn wallowing. It’s pathetic.”
“Yeah, well maybe I’m a failure at that, too.”
I knew the tears were pricking at my eyes, and I despised myself for it. I forced my jaw up in the air, trying to look as proud as I could manage, even though my bottom lip was trembling.
Shhh, secrets. Secrets.
Never tell your secrets.
He dropped my wrists and pulled away from me, and the pity was worse, his eyes still struggling to take it in. I pulled my tights up, but didn’t attempt to squirm away, just gathered my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
“Finish me off,” I whispered.
“You seriously need to get some damn therapy,” he said. “It’s not as though you can’t afford it. Spending the rest of your life in therapy might be a good idea. Better for you than snorting coke every minute of the day.”
I was tired of hearing the same old bullshit, so I scowled at him.
“Last time I checked, you weren’t my personal advisor.”
He smirked at that, letting out a chuckle.
“I use that line plenty myself, darling.”
The atmosphere in the room had flatlined enough to make me feel useless. The tension between us was gone – any of the good tension, at least. If there could even be such a thing as good tension between the Constantines and the Morellis.
Lucian got to his feet and brushed himself down, clearly feeling as though anywhere with less than a million-dollar decor value was obviously infested with cockroaches.
“At least fuck me before you go,” I said, and I meant it. I truly meant it.
He sneered at me. “I wouldn’t want to fuck a Constantine, just strip them and hurt them.”
“That’s not what your dick is telling me,” I said and gestured to the bulge in his pants.
It was then that he came to his Morelli senses and came charging back to me, gripping my throat in his hands. “I will hurt you,” he snarled. “Don’t fucking push it!”
“Good,” I said, and I meant it. “You’ll save me the work.”
We glared at each other with more spite than you could put into words, both of us seething on waves of malice built up over decades. But it wasn’t spite that was making my heart race.
“Do it,” I rasped through his grip on my neck. “Hurt me.”
His eyes were slick with evil, and I saw it. Felt it. Sadism . . . cruelty . . . brutality . . . just like I’d known from so many men, so many times.
I felt like that again. I felt it deep. I felt it in him. In the monster in front of me.
But this monster was different.
This monster made me flutter in a way no other man had ever done.
Lucian Morelli wanted to hurt me, and it wasn’t just because of my bloodline. It was because he wanted it. He wanted to see me suffer. He wanted to see