Heartless (Starcrossed Lovers Trilogy 1)

“Stay away from me!” she snapped, and this time around she tried to pull away. She lashed out with her hands and knees, a look of rage on her face as she tried to fight me.

She barely even managed to touch me before I pinned her, wrists high. Her clutch tumbled to the floor and the contents fell out onto the carpet. Makeup and cell and purse. She was panting, scared, hating me with every breath, but still she couldn’t fight it. She couldn’t hide the truth under the lies and the lashing out.

She wanted me.

And I wanted her.

Right there and then, beyond all doubt, I knew it. We were both crazy fucking freaks in a crazy fucking world.

“I never had you down for a stalker,” she rasped as her breath calmed. “Your family would laugh at you if they could see you right now. That or break your kneecaps.”

“What makes you think my attendance is about you?” I snarled. “I could be tracking down any one of your repulsive family right now.”

She ground her stomach against my swollen dick in my pants, and she laughed at me. Somewhere, summoned from a deep little surge of spirit inside her, she laughed at me.

“It seems the Constantine family aren’t all so repulsive, are we?” she said. “Not since you’re hard for one of us.”

“This has nothing to do with my cock,” I told her. “Your family are all due to perish, I’m just fulfilling my oath to live up to my family name.”

“Take me,” she whispered, and it surprised me so much I caught my breath. “I mean it,” she said. “Please, just fuck me before I die. At least give me that one little pleasure, tease me before you destroy me.”

Jesus Christ, she was already trashed on champagne. Her lips were so inviting. Her legs were a honey trap as she spread them for me. Her tits were aching to be mauled, and hurt, and teased.

I asked her the question again. “Who the fuck else is after you, Elaine?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “They can come after me. I don’t care anymore.”

It was beyond fucked up that I was seemingly more bothered about her survival than she was. Her legs were still spread and she was still grinding, her champagne breath hot on my lips.

“Please,” she repeated. “Please, Lucian, just fuck me. Make it hurt all you like, but please show me what it’s like to be taken.”

Sure, she was drunk, 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.