The Vessel - Jenika Snow Page 0,26

let him explore that part of me as well. I imagined him moving his tongue over every square inch of my body, which caused a chill to race up my skin, a moan leaving me.

My heart was racing, a flush stealing over me. His groan of approval spurred me on, had my arousal moving even higher. I was gripping his biceps, not even realizing I reached out to hold onto him, to pull him closer. I didn’t register how hard my grip on him was until I heard him hiss. I was about to break the kiss when he groaned again.

“No. Give me more, Elise.” The way he hummed those words against my mouth told me this was the beginning. This was the start. So I let everything else go until all I felt, tasted, heard, and smelled was Lucius.

I walked up to my apartment in a daze. It was a very pleasurable haze, this intoxication that filled every piece of me. I could still feel Lucius’s lips on mine, and I lifted my fingers and placed them on my mouth, feeling the flesh tingle, loving the sensation that moved through me right now.

I opened the door and stepped into my apartment, closing it behind me and then leaning against it. I closed my eyes, breathing out slowly, pleasurably. I shouldn’t like the way this felt, shouldn’t have let it get that far. But I hadn’t been able to stop it or myself.

I had tomorrow off, and for the first time since being employed, I wished I picked up yet another extra shift for the sole purpose of being able to see Lucius. But I knew it was better this way. It would give me a chance to think about all this, to rationalize what was happening and weigh the pros and cons.

But I already knew the truth.

I wasn’t going to try to stop this, rationalize it, or even talk myself out of what I felt for Lucius.

Because it was clear he felt the same way.

16

Lucius

I sat in my car and looked at the piece of shit house in front of me. I contacted my IT guy I used for all Blacksmith affairs after I dropped Elise off. It had been late, but I knew Mason was a man who kept late hours. I trusted him with legal inquiries, as well as the not so legal ones I asked him about.

He never asked questions if I needed him to do some digging for me. And it had been easy enough for him to find the information I needed on the fucking landlord after I gave him Elise’s mom and aunt’s names.

And he found the info I needed in less than three hours.

And here I was the next morning, doubtful the man inside that shack of a house would be accommodating in my request.

Rodney Johnson. Fifty-two-year-old high school dropout who owned five equally piece-of-shit rental properties.

But the properties weren’t how he made his money. The illegal gambling rings he ran in three of those properties was where his real money came from.

I clenched my jaw as I thought about the asshole, as I pictured him giving Elise a hard time. He messed with the wrong woman, and now I was going to make sure that never happened again, make sure he never gave any female an issue.

I climbed out of the car and made my way up to the front door. The closer I got, the more pissed I became, picturing Elise’s bruise, wanting nothing more than to give him one that matched hers. But I wasn’t here for violence... not unless he pushed me to that point, which I was precariously close to as it was.

Once I was at the front door, I opened the metal screen door and brought my knuckles down on the scarred wood one, and I curled my hands into tight fists at my sides to keep myself from breaking the damn thing down. A long moment passed, and I was about to lift my hand and beat on the damn thing again, my patience wearing thin, when it was finally opened and a disgusting display of a man stood on the other side. His beer gut protruded from his stained gray shirt, his hair—what he had left anyway—was slicked back, greasy in appearance. He smelled like a combination of old cigarette smoke and stale beer.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked with annoyance in his voice as he looked me up and down. “You a