“You’re a self-pitying little bitch, you know that?” I said. “Really, you’re a silly little girl who should know better than to wallow in your own pit of bullshit choices.”
“Thanks for that,” she snapped. “I’ll take a note of your wisdom, shall I, Terence Kingsley?”
It was then that she noticed my bandaged hand.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Get into a fight with some freak in your underworld empire, did you? Big, bad Lucian Morelli hurting his poor hand? Caught in the crossfire?”
I stepped up closer to her and breathed in her scent. “Why are you such a sad, impudent little bitch? What is it that makes you such a filthy little loser, aching so much for her own demise?”
Her eyes were brimming with tears, even though her jaw was gritted tight.
“Fuck you, Lucian. Fuck you, and fuck off. I don’t want anything the fuck to do with you, and never have.”
I backed her up into the wall, pinning her tight.
“Such a liar,” I snarled. “Such a dirty little liar. You can’t resist me. You’ve not been able to resist me since the very first moment you laid eyes on me at your sister’s sad bitch party.”
“Interesting accusation,” she hissed. “Considering you’re the one standing in my apartment, even though you’d be dead if anyone so much as got a sniff you were here.”
I saw that flash of need in her eyes, and it was the one that set me on fire. The one that always set me on fire.
It was her masochistic need for hurt. The little girl who wanted to suffer at my hands.
“Seriously,” she whispered. “Fuck off now. You don’t have to worry, I’m going to say my goodbyes. At least let me do them for myself.”
“You’re really going to overdose for the sake of a debt to the Power brothers?”
She shrugged, squirming her body tight against mine. Her breaths were in my face, and her eyes were still glassy. Hurt.
“I’m going to overdose because I want to. I’m done with the whole sorry state of my existence.”
I tugged her nightdress up around her thighs, and swallowed as I saw the beauty of the fresh slashes on her flesh.
“An overdose would be such a waste,” I said with a snarl. “You have too much of a beautiful body to chow down some meds to say goodbye.”
“Like what? You think I should slash myself to pieces on my living room floor?”
And that’s when I knew it, above anything else. The one thing I should’ve known right from the beginning when I’d very first caught sight of the woman in gold and that mysterious, irrational web of want she’d snared me with.
She wasn’t going to be slashing herself to pieces. I was going to be destroying her, one tiny petal at a time.
“You won’t be slashing yourself anywhere,” I told her and took her throat in my hands. “You’re coming with me tonight.”
Even though her throat was in my hands, she managed to choke a grin.
“You’re planning on kidnapping me from my city center apartment, sneaking me down past the eons of security staff and right into the main street outside while the world is watching you, are you? Good luck with that.”
But no.
It was me who grinned right back at her. A grin that chilled her right to the bones.
“I won’t be kidnapping you from anywhere. You’ll be joining me very fucking willingly. You can think of it as a far more interesting form of suicide.”
That sparked something in her, some final flare of self-respect in that battered little heart of hers.
“No!” she hissed at me. “I’m doing it for myself. My own final shot at my own fate, everyone else can get fucked!”
She didn’t even ask me to fuck her this time. Her body was rigid against mine, unmoving.
Yet again, it only made me want her more.
I kissed her once. Deeply. Nipping and tugging at her lips with my teeth.
I nipped her lower lip so hard she whimpered, even though she was struggling for air. I tasted her blood in my mouth as I pulled away.
It tasted fucking divine. Her blood. A delicacy I’d been keen to sample the whole fucking time I’d been chasing her.
“You’re coming the fuck with me,” I said.
I cast her aside and she fell to the floor, gasping for breath as I freed her throat. I strolled over to the table without giving a shit for the medication bottles. What I wanted was right next to them, the scrawled remnants of the letter she was in the midst of writing.
Tristan.
I should’ve known it would be pussy boy featuring in her last goodbye.
“You really like that guy, don’t you?” I asked her.
“You don’t know anything about Tristan,” she lied, and I smirked.
“He really likes you too, you know,” I told her. “He was prepared to stick his neck well and truly on the line to save you from my grasp the other night. He wouldn’t tell me where you were, not even if it cost him his life.”