He groaned as he pulled out of me but wasted no time tucking himself back in and walking out without another word. I listened to the door click behind him, the only sound in the room my harsh breathing.
I didn’t know what to think, really. For a moment I lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling as my heart started to slow in my chest. I had missed the way he had fucked me before.
But this, this wasdifferent.
After a few minutes, I forced myself to get up off the bed and walk to the bathroom. Lucas’s blood was smeared on my cheek from where he had kissed me. I turned on the shower, finding my hands shaking a bit. It wasn’t because of the animalistic sex we had just experienced. It was everything else that came with it.
I had done more with Lucas than I had with anyone else. I gave him liberties that hadn’t been something I thought I had in me. From slapping him to challenging him to fuck me, it was out of my comfort zone.
And I liked it. I liked the person he brought out in me. It made me feel like I wasn’t weak, like I wasn’t just a pawn in my father’s game, the expendable daughter that was meant to bring him power.
I was something else. I was someone else, though in Lucas’s eyes, I wasn’t sure what he saw. Did he see me as a pawn as well? Given the events over the past few days, I did think that a little.
It sucked.
Turning on the shower, I shed the rest of my clothing and climbed under the spray, letting it soothe my tortured soul. Lucas had been concerned when he had entered my room, worried that I had been hit.
But the events that had followed worried me the most. He had never been like that before, not allowing me to take my pleasure. Was it because of his need to forget the carnage below or something more?
Was he breaking away from me? God, the man confused me to no end! In one breath he claimed me, and in the other, he ignored me.
I wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to these mood swings at all. But if there was something there, if he truly loved me in his own twisted way, I wanted to cling to that fact. I didn’t want to give up so soon.
Pressing my forehead to the warm tile of the shower, I tried to take some even breaths. There were two ways I could go about this. I could fight for him, give him a reason to see that it was worth loving someone, letting down his walls so he could let me in.
Or I could give up. I could go back to being his prisoner and wait for the moment that he killed me or handed me off to the next person waiting in line. He had already tried to do that once, and if it happened again, I didn’t think he would be coming after me once more.
Which way was I going to go? My traitorous heart wanted his love.
I wanted to continue to be confused, torn, even, if it meant that one day he might share in my feelings.
Lucas was a Don, but he still was a man, a man who needed me.
“Ugh,” I breathed, knowing full well I had already made up my mind about which way I was going to go.
Chapter 14
Lucas
I grabbed the toast from the toaster, the hot bread burning the tips of my fingers as I threw it on the plate. The kitchen was a mess. Pots and pans were strewn everywhere, but the plates before me didn’t look half bad.
I needed to get a chef and a full staff back in this fucking place. Right now, though, I couldn’t trust anyone except for the men that were already on the premises, and those in town. After the attempted bombing yesterday, strangers were to be treated like enemies until proven otherwise.
Adrian had been able to waltz one of his goons up to my fucking house and nearly killed me in the process.
He nearly hurt Leda.
There could be no room for error. If a dirty house was the price we paid for that, then so be it.
Shoving a hand through my hair, I felt the weariness pull on my body as I picked up the tray. I managed a single hour of sleep last night, and even that came only when I could no longer keep my eyes open. Emil brought me hourly reports until I dismissed him. I took up a few watches myself with the paltry number of guards we still had, determined to not let anyone else come up the road.
The house was locked down tight, but there was only a false sense of security. The only way to stop living in uncertainty was to take the fight to Adrian. But I couldn’t do that. Not right now.
Until Emil can bring more men to our cause, I had little room for maneuver and almost no resources to speak of. I had put out a few discreet calls back to the city. The ones who responded just told me that Adrian was still rounding up my supporters in a bid to keep everything under the lid. The Battery boys might be loyal to him, but the others were still reluctant to throw their lot with him.
But it was his inroads with the otherDonsthat concerned me. All of them saw him buy Leda, and all of them knew that I took her from him. I’d broken the one sacred rule that existed between Dons: hands off other people’s properties.
To them, Adrian and I had an internal squabble. Oh sure, they could influence it from the outside, but they would never have bothered with stepping in.