That it wouldn’t create an even greater impossibility between us, make me salivate for the young, untouched flesh even more?
‘Please, Kal. If you care about her, or me, at all. You’ll leave her alone. Each time you even so much as look at her, it puts her in danger. You know what The Elders would do if they thought she’d been impure before her wedding night, and that’s not even including what Rafe would do.’
The thing is, though, I don’t.
Care, I mean. At least about anything other than hurting Carmen and defiling Elena Ricci. Claiming her for myself and ruining her soul beyond repair.
Something tells me she’d enjoy the fucking ride, too.
And as much as I want to resist the twenty-year-old goddess, as much as I don’t want sinful thoughts of her delicious ass running rampant through my mind, I can’t stop myself.
Can’t wrench out of the depraved fantasies playing on repeat behind my eyelids, amplified by the silence cloaking my bedroom.
Her mother may have ruined my childhood with her abuse, but my interest in Elena has nothing to do with Carmen, outside of the fact that it pisses her off.
In truth, I justwantElena.
Throwing off my comforter, I yank on a pair of discarded black slacks and head for my office, tossing the deli owner passed out in the corner a disgusted look.
For a moment, I consider resuming my work on him—lustful depravity aside, my main focus is supposed to be the job Rafe brought me to town for: figuring out who leaked word of the Riccis’ business being used as a front for a sports betting ring.
I don’t know that Tony Pesognelli has the exact answers, but I’m willing to bet a greaseball like him isn’t innocent.
Still, even as I prod his knee with a branding iron, waking the balding man from his fitful slumber, my heart isn’t in it.
Sighing as he sobs into his ball gag, something I had leftover from the last time I entertained a lady years ago, I stalk to the other side of the room and flop behind my desk.
Propping my feet up on the wooden surface, I exhale and pull a manila envelope into my lap, opening one side and studying the pictures in it.
My computer monitor comes to life, indicating movement on the security feed, but I don’t look immediately.
Instead, I peer into the deep, warm brown gaze that haunted my memory long before Elena ever did.
Black hair twisted into an elegant braid that hangs off one pale, freckled shoulder, a smile that beams for another as she stares off beyond the camera.
There’s a softness here I don’t see often; she’s absent of the sharpness I feel in my veins and the tar in my heart. Everything that makes meme, and evil by default.
A monster.
Part of me wonders which girl I’ll destroy first.
Carmen’s words echo through me as I shut the envelope and tap my keyboard, bringing the camera feed up with the push of one button.
Elena stands in front of the floor-length mirror in her en suite bathroom with her sister Ariana checking her makeup. Preparing for the Christmas-slash-birthday shindig the Riccis throw every year.
I normally make it a point not to attend. Crowds and I don’t exactly mesh.
But as I zoom in, my gaze roving over my little Persephone’s curves, exaggerated in the skin-tight, blush-colored gown she has on, I notice the slightest hint of a fresh bruise on her right shoulder blade.
The average onlooker might not see the hand-shaped shadow, might not see the wince as she turns to apply mascara to her sister’s eyes, but I do.
And as I watch her, my obsession expands, a balloon stretching to accommodate as much air as it can before it pops.
My girl likes to fight—that’s a common fact around Boston. But there’s something about this particular mark that makes my insides shrivel.
It looks too familiar to be random.
And as I stalk back to my bedroom, pull on a dress shirt and my trench coat, I know exactly how to quell the typhoon of noise wreaking havoc on my mind.