Heartless - Jade West Page 0,41

but not quite drunk enough to be rattling off shit she didn’t mean. Her pupils were wide, but they were focused, and I could tell from everything about her, plus from years of knowing what drugs do to the people caught up in them . . . Elaine Constantine wasn’t off her tits on cocaine. Not tonight.

“You must be craving the powder somewhat since you’re clearly going without it,” I said to her. “Are you in so much debt that nobody will give you just a few pathetic lines?”

She tipped her head at her bag on the floor. “I’ve got plenty in there, you can check if you want. I don’t need it. I’m not taking it anymore.”

I laughed in her face. “Like fuck you don’t need it. You’ve got addict written all over you. You fucking reek of it.”

“I don’t care what you think. Think what you like.”

That sentence maddened me much more than her laughter had. I pressed my knee against her pussy, so hard I damn well knew it would hurt.

“Everyone gives a fuck what I think,” I snarled. “I’m Lucian Morelli. My word is God.”

“God means nothing to me,” she whimpered, squirming against my knee, even through the pain. “God gave up on me a long time ago.”

“Only because you gave up on yourself. There’s always redemption, little girl,” I replied, and the words sounded strange coming from me.

Her surprise was genuine. “Redemption? Wow. Didn’t have you down as the religious type.”

I ground my knee against that sweet pussy some more. “Not religious, sweetheart. Godly. Godly enough to hear your sins and deliver your salvation.”

“You’d be here a long time,” she said. “Hearing my sins would take a lifetime. Like you’d ever understand them.”

Jesus Christ, how I wanted them. I wanted to hear every single one of them from her quick little breaths.

Thank fuck my senses picked that point to come back to me. I broke the tension, dropping her to the floor with a curse.

“Forget it. I don’t have another second for you, let alone a lifetime,” I spat and crouched down to her strewn belongings. I looked through her purse, digging my fingers into the lining until I found her cocaine. I slipped it into my inside pocket as she stared.

What she didn’t notice was me gathering the slick little item I’d chosen to replace it. I forced the tracker inside the lining in a heartbeat, deep enough that she’d never find it without a pair of damn scissors.

I handed it back over with a smirk. “Make sure you don’t bid on any more penguins now. Be a responsible little bitch for half the night at least.”

“That’s it, is it?” she asked. “You’re really going to steal my coke and fuck off again?”

I straightened my cheap bowtie as I got to my feet. My silence was answer enough as I walked away.

I was out of sight of her when I pulled my cell from my pocket and fired up the app through encryption. I was out of the venue and in the parking lot when the first bleep of her location showed up on my screen.

Yes. Perfect. Absolutely damn perfect. Just as I’d been planning, and just as I’d been craving.

The pretty Constantine bitch was at my fingertips.

16

Elaine

I would have probably snorted a fresh round of coke if he hadn’t stolen it from me. I was trembling as I gathered my things together and headed back through to the sea of people in the gala room. My heartbeat was fast, and my legs felt like weak little twigs.

He could’ve killed me. Yet again, he could’ve killed me. So, why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he torn me apart?

Harriet was still her amazing self as I sat back down at our table. She gave me her usual supportive smile and reached out to pull me close.

“You’re doing great,” she encouraged, but I felt anything but great. I felt like every bit the broken mirror – a flawed Constantine blonde, at odds with all the others.

Harriet seemed blind to the fear in my eyes, no doubt putting my shivers down to coke withdrawal and little else.

Or maybe not . . .

“Did I see you talking to the journalist guy?” she asked me with a smile. “I was only joking when I said he looked like Lucian Morelli and you could go after him instead.”

I nearly spat it out and told her, but I didn’t.

“I know you were joking, don’t worry,” I whispered. “I couldn’t go after anyone