in him that stole my heart. The man who controls and dominates whatever is around him, not just me.
Everything.
Every fucking thing in his path.
He was sitting up on the bed, naked and brilliant. I felt like a meek little lamb lying beside him, staring up at the monster.
His answer was enough to make me tingle. The idea was one I’d never have considered in a million years.
“What we do, is take hold of London and put our mark on it, loud and clear. We work our connections and we use our strengths and we own it. We own our names and our lives for who we are, fuck our families and what they want to do to us. They can keep their bitter shit across the Atlantic and accept who the fuck we are.”
I didn’t even know what to say, I was so shocked.
His smile was proud.
“Who would you rather be, baby? Penelope or Elaine?”
My answer was quick and obvious.
“Elaine.” I managed a proud smile too. “Provided Penelope doesn’t live seventy years longer next to Jason’s side than Elaine lives next to Lucian’s. I like gardening a bit too much for that.”
I was trying to make light of the tension, because I just didn’t know how to process it. I didn’t know how to even begin to digest that we could be Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine, walking the London streets together as Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine. It just seemed… unreal.
But that’s when I realized just how much power that gave my heart—the idea of us walking the streets together as us. Proud. Because that’s what I’d be. Proud. I’d be so fucking proud of being Elaine Constantine at Lucian Morelli’s side with the whole world there to see it.
“Then we do it,” Lucian said. “We take hold of London and we put our mark on it, loud and clear.”
I propped myself up onto an elbow, still trying to let it sink in.
“The very idea of a Morelli with a Constantine is going to drive people wild. Everyone in the world knows we detest each other.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “They do. So let’s fucking surprise them.”
I let out a giggle. “It’s hardly how Romeo and Juliet ends, is it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not, but what if Romeo and Juliet had used every bit of power they had in them and stepped out proud and given their families the middle fucking finger?”
I shrugged. “Their families would have probably stabbed them and danced on their corpses.”
He was shaking his head. “Not if Romeo and Juliet had a whole fucking army around them, ready to stab their families right back.”
I could see his reasoning now. I could see what he meant by connections and strengths and using them.
He was planning on working this city and all the associations he’d known at a distance from across the Atlantic and forming allegiances in this new world.
I had a whole flood of new admiration for him when I saw another burst of fire in him. He was truly a master. A master who needed to be ruling an empire.
Jason Reynolds could never be ruling an empire. Not from some cute little cottage on the British coast.
“You with me?” he asked. “You ready to stand up as Elaine Constantine at my side? The two of us proud to be one?”
I could feel the fire in my eyes match with his.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m with you all the way.”
16
Lucian
I showered with Elaine, soaping her up in a lather very carefully around the slice on her chest before we stepped out together and toweled each other down. I brushed my teeth as she brushed hers, eyes on each other in the bathroom mirror, but my mind was already hard at work, weighing up what I needed to be doing in this place.
I still had my investments and my financial empire overseas, wrapped up safe and tight in the legalities. I had my reputation and my known power, and the talents that had led me to ruling the Morelli kingdom so effectively. Letting Lucian Morelli go would be a crime against my humanity.
I watched Elaine pull some fresh clothes on from her suitcase once we were back in the bedroom.
Not standing tall and proud next to that beautiful angel would be a crime against my very soul to match.
I hadn’t ever known my soul. It was still an interesting stranger to me. Elaine had brought that gift to me by showing me hers.
It wasn’t clothes I tugged from my suitcase,