Heartless - Jade West Page 0,28

the question with such a groan. Familiarity. Hardly a usual occurrence for a playboy. He rarely petted the same pussy twice.

“I’m coming over,” I told him, and he grunted a sigh.

“What the fuck, Luke? It’s barely eight a.m.”

“I’m coming over now,” I said. “Get that bitch out of your bed, will you?”

“Sure thing, whatever,” he said, and hung up.

I hailed a cab, knowing full well the slut would be gone from his apartment by the time I got there. Sure enough, Hunter was padding around his living room, dressed in nothing but some low-slung pants as I stepped across his threshold.

I dropped myself onto his sofa and let out a breath as he rubbed his eyes and stared down at me.

“What the fuck brings you here on a Sunday morning?” he asked, and I spat it out before I came to my senses.

“Elaine fucking Constantine brings me here on a Sunday morning.”

He looked at me like I’d taken a knock to the head since he’d last seen me.

“Why the holy crap would Elaine Constantine do anything to you? Please tell me you’ve stayed away from her. Your dad will lose his shit. Her family will start a war.” He paused. “I mean, if you’ve finished her . . .”

I almost wished I had done. It would save the embarrassment and absurdity of what I’d truly been doing to the bitch.

Predictably for Hunter, my one true friend in the world, he read my mind.

“You fucked her, didn’t you? You fucked her and left her breathing.”

“Not quite,” I told him, and cursed myself under my breath.

He crouched down in front of me, eyes searching for signs I’d taken a battering to my brain. “Not quite as in what? What the hell’s going on?”

I shouldn’t have told him any of it. I should’ve put it to bed in my mind and turned my back on it for all time, or at least until I had some method to hurting her and making her family pay. Yet, I didn’t. I was still twisted up enough from her bullshit ways that I didn’t.

“Tinsley Constantine’s masked ball,” I said, and he pulled a face.

“Yeah, what about it? Everyone’s been raving about it. Tabloids have been lapping it up.”

“I was there,” I told him, and he laughed at me. Actually laughed at me.

“What in the living fuck were you doing at Tinsley Constantine’s ball?”

My eyes were daggers. “Plotting ways to execute her demise.”

He scoffed. “Sure thing, but that’s madness, right? How the fuck would you have made it out of there alive? And what the fuck has that got to do with Elaine?”

I wished I was a smoker, just to take a drag on a cigarette and break up my own damn mood.

“I saw her there, coked up and trashed, barging around the place like she owned it.”

“Yeah, I think the whole world knows she’s a cokehead. I heard she was in debt to the Power brothers last time the Constantine gossip was going around the Regent.”

That pricked my interest – one small sliver of Constantine intelligence that had slipped my ears.

“The Power brothers?”

“Yeah, the Power brothers. Big time, apparently. They say her mother is done with her. I think she’s hoping someone else will wipe her out and save them the embarrassment.”

I was mulling over this new information when he spoke again.

“So, what happened when you saw Elaine Constantine at the ball?”

I despised the shame and humiliation brewing in me. Hunter had been a trusted ear for decades, but I was struggling to voice this confession to him.

He saved me the battle.

“You grabbed her, didn’t you? You let your dick rule your hate, and you grabbed her?”

“That isn’t quite how it went–” I began, but he was already smirking at me.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Luke,” he said. “I’ve seen her. She’s quite a looker, even by Constantine standards. I mean, they’re all lookers, but she’s something else. I doubt there are many guys in that position who wouldn’t want to grab her and fuck the life out of her.”

He thrust his hips to demonstrate. It felt cheap to hear it framed that way.

“I was going to hurt her. It wasn’t anything to do with her pussy.”

He was still smirking. “Yeah, but it became about pussy, right? Believe me, I know you well enough to know she’s got you all fucked up over that tight little body of hers.”

“Forget it,” I said, and made to leave, too stinking with embarrassment to stand another minute of his smirking.

He