Soulless: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Starcrossed Lovers Trilogy Book 2)

by Jade West

  Soulless

  Jade West

  Soulless

  Dangerous Press

  Jade West © 2020

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Dangerous Press LLC.

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Want More Midnight Dynasty?

  1

  Elaine

  I was one of those girls who used to think about it late at night – being kidnapped by a monster. There was a strange dread and fascination with being owned by a beast. It was no different in real life, walking away from my apartment complex at the side of Lucian Morelli, the evil knight of my world.

  He didn’t speak to me, because no words were needed. I knew he was my god from here on in. I was nothing more than a little toy doll in his sadist show. That’s what he was. A sadist. A sadist who wanted my blood.

  I had no doubt he’d be taking it, slowly and painfully.

  I was the one who broached the silence, making sure we were far enough away from the latest passersby so they couldn’t hear my voice.

  “Where are we going?”

  He could have told me it was none of my business, and I’d have still followed him. I had no choice. Not while my best friend in the world was being held for ransom if I didn’t obey Master Morelli. Tristan’s life was worth more to me than mine.

  “We’re going to get a cab,” the monster said, just like that.

  We could have called one via cell easily enough, but I guess he didn’t want to. The anonymity of a taxi rank must have been a more appealing option. It made sense. A Morelli with a Constantine in any form would be criminal in our world.

  Lucian didn’t look over at me. His eyes were fixed ahead of us, glittering in their darkness. His jaw looked as firm as ever from my angle, looking up at the beast. His pretending to be Terence Kingsley way of dressing couldn’t disguise the evil in his stare. Button-down shirt or not, Lucian was glistening in his Morelli evil.

  It occurred to me for just that second, trotting alongside him on the sidewalk, that he was as unsure of how things were panning out as I was. It seemed odd that he was acting on impulse, totally out of character with the way he usually reeked of control and structure.

  Yeah, he was out of his comfort zone. The thought made me smile a little, even in my crazy fear.

  It happened to be the moment he chose to fix me in his stare.

  “You won’t be fucking smirking when we’re home and dry, little girl.”

  It didn’t stop me smiling. Even now, with the mind-spinning promise of fate ripping me out of this world, there was a beautiful sense of relief in my soul.

  Yes. Lucian Morelli would be the end of me. Yes. The end of me would be welcome, once and for all.

  “Maybe I will be smirking,” I countered. “Maybe I’ll be happy when you kiss me my final goodbye. I was about to end my own life, after all.”

  I thought back to the bottles of pills I’d left behind and how he’d disturbed me from them by turning up at my apartment door. He still had the Tristan suicide note I’d written in his inside pocket. It was typical that he’d used it to work out just how important Tristan is to me.

  “You’ve had plenty of chances to end your life, little girl. You didn’t. Even tonight you were waiting for the big bad wolf to come and take you. You’re lying to yourself.”

  That offended me.

  I stopped walking and folded my arms across my chest.

  “I wanted to be the one to take my own life,” I told him. “Me. That was my right.”

  My heart leapt a little as he turned to face me and stepped close. He loomed tall. His voice was barely more than a hiss when he spoke.

  “It’s not your right anymore, Miss Constantine. You can wave that fucker goodbye. Your life belongs to me now.”

  I belonged to Lucian Morelli. “Ha!” I couldn’t help laughing in his face.

  But he didn’t laugh back. He didn’t even flinch. He held out a hand, and I looked down at his outstretched fingers, so big and firm. He was so big and firm. It felt weird to take his hand in mine. The power in his grip was . . . intense . . . My heart leapt again as he pulled me along with him.

  In that moment, hand in hand on the sidewalk, we must have looked like any regular couple enjoying their evening. If only we were. If only we’d been two people meeting each other at a party and wanting to fuck. If only we’d been two people drawn together without our family war gripping us tight. It was a bizarre truth how instinctively I hated the man holding my hand, and had done since I was old enough to understand his name.

  Constantines versus Morellis. Brutal enemies through the generations. Malice to the death.

  I’d long forgotten even half of what was so terrible that their family had done to ours. More than our family had done to theirs though, that was for sure. That was a mantra I’d learned since I was a toddler. The Morellis are evil.

  “You’d better behave in the cab,” the monster told me as the rank came into view. “Even so much as a squeak for help will lead to nothing but the death of the driver and your pathetic little gay friend to follow.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence by thinking you have to tell me that. I’m well aware what an evil piece of shit you are, Lucian Morelli.”

  His mouth pressed up to my ear. “I’m well aware what a filthy little liar of a bitch you are too, Elaine Constantine. And I’m going to make you fucking suffer for it.”

  I shivered as we stepped up to the first cab in the rank. Lucian held the door open for me. What a fucking gentleman. I shuffled along the backseat on instinct as he joined me. I stared out of the window on the other side, looking anywhere but at the man setting out to destroy me.

  This would be my final journey. Hard to believe, after all this time of trying, of wanting. But I believed it.

  Lucian leaned forward to the driver, keeping himself as low key as possible, no doubt, as he cleared his throat and pasted on a sad little smile.

  “Kington Peak,” he said, and my stomach lurched.

  Kington Peak, the weird little town outside the city. Quiet. Distant.

  Fa
tal.

  Farewell, NYC.

  Farewell, world.

  2

  Lucian

  Elaine Constantine was a little blonde butterfly already driving me insane in that backseat. Her pursed lips were still holding onto her spite, trying to be a little firebrand in my grip. It only made me even more desperate to toy with her.

  I knew I was playing a whole new game of crazy when I told the cab driver to head to Kington Peak. It was almost an hour from NYC. I could’ve caged Elaine in my city central apartment for a few long days safely enough without any questioning, and that’s what I should have been going for – a few long days with the butterfly before I ripped her wings off one by one. But I didn’t. My filthy heart wouldn’t let me give up my dirty little plaything so soon. I wanted every damn fucking second with her I could claim.

  Kington Peak was the answer. I hadn’t been there in months and generally used it as a personal escape from my social life. Nobody knew it was mine. It was just a shame that it was so far outside of my usual Morelli life. It would take more juggling than I was accustomed to. My time was usually torn heavily between Morelli Holdings and NYC pursuits. Fuck Elaine Constantine and her tempting little ways.

  She was watching the city rolling past outside, trying her best to feign disinterest.

  “Enjoy your lovely street view,” I told her, and it was my turn to be smirking.

  “I will, darling,” she said.

  I imagined there were a whole host of insults on her tongue that she chose not to voice to me. She was learning fast. Smart little cookie.

  I should have been looking at the view outside myself, and not the pretty little bitch alongside me, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Her blonde hair was alive under the glow of the passing streetlights. Her slim delicacy made her look like a porcelain puppet ready to be worked by the puppet master. I was only glad that I was proving to be the puppet master, not the idiotic fucking Power Brothers.

  Stupid little dolly, bailing pitiful losers out of their debts. So many druggie fools she was determined to save from the Power Brothers with her cash. Tut, tut, tut. She should have just stuck to funding her own white powder snorting. She wouldn’t have been in such a sorry little state.

  “I know you’re looking at me, Lucian,” she said. “I can feel the lust in your eyes.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  I didn’t reply.

  Even in her fucked-up fear, I knew the thought of me gave her shivers of a whole different kind.

  We were magnets, drawn to our vile polarity. Both of us transfixed by the black magic of our flesh. Not to mention she was a dirty bitch.

  I could still feel her tight little ass milking my dick dry from where I’d claimed her. Still feel the mix of rage and desire in her. Rage because she thought she was going to get a good fucking for the first time in her sorry life. Desire because she loved it. Loved me fucking her dirty little asshole. I’d been reliving the thrill over and over.

  The memory was burned into me – fucking her Constantine ass in a pool of another man’s blood. I’d butchered him for touching her. I knew it would be burnt into her, too. We were both snared with our own mutual hate and filth intertwined. Fuck the whole sorry fucking lot of it. We were both well into the depths of the forbidden from both fucking families. I’d crossed our bridge into punishable by death the very first moment I’d kissed her at Tinsley Constantine’s ball. May as well make the most of the risks and get my twisted thrill from her.

  The streets turned into stretches of open road surprisingly quickly. The silence only grew heavier as we grew closer to our destination. The cab driver said nothing, just kept his eyes ahead. I only hoped we were doing a decent enough job at feigning a regular life in a regular world.

  “Up here on the left,” I told him, and directed him up the drive to my place.

  My Kington Peak pad was nothing like my central apartment or NYC in general. The place wasn’t even that big, just a cut off little lodge of a house at the end of the Kington Peak gulley.

  “Here,” I said, and the cab pulled up at the top of the driveway. The place was pitch dark.

  It gave me a little shiver of lust to see Elaine trying so hard to see our destination in the shadows. Here we were, at the cage of her torment. I was the big bad wolf waiting to tear open his prey.

  “Keep the change,” I told the driver and handed over just a sliver more than the right amount. Nothing too obvious or notable.

  Elaine didn’t have a last-minute freak-out as I opened her door for her. She didn’t have a burst of save me! for the driver. She didn’t try to run off into the night.

  No. She was a good girl. She stepped out of the cab and resigned herself to her fate like a sweet little lamb to the slaughter.

  I watched the cab rumble away down the drive before I dug the keys out of my pocket. I’d barely used them over the past year, too caught up in Morelli Holdings and business life to scrape even a scrap of time away from the city. I left Elaine standing on the spot as I headed up to the front door.

  I knew she was staring intently over at me with her heart in her throat as I pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, ready and waiting.

  “Come on in and meet your fate, little girl,” I said and led the way inside.

  3

  Elaine

  It wasn’t what I was expecting from him. Not in the slightest.

  The house was small and remote, hardly the grandeur I’d have pictured for the Morelli heir. He must’ve seen the surprise in my eyes as I crossed the threshold and stepped into the hall. My gaze was flitting around the place, checking out the mediocrity of the decor. It was cheap. Cheap for us anyway. Cheap for our billionaire existence.

  “This is nothing but a pathetic little shack to me. I’m barely here,” he told me.

  I didn’t believe him. Not for a second. It wouldn’t even be on his radar if he didn’t come here.

  It was a tiny chink in his Lucian Morelli armor and the very first glimpse at the man behind the beast. If such a man existed, that is.

  “Sure,” I said. “Just a pathetic little shack. Right, yeah, sure. Whatever, Lucian.”

  That raised his hackles. “I mean it. It’s nothing but a sad little listing on my empire. I thought pathetic surroundings would be fitting for you.”

  His elaborate justification only gave me more assurance I was right. Yeah, it was a glimpse of him. He was lying to himself. These pathetic surroundings meant more to him than anything I’d ever seen. I could read it in his shift in posture and the way he cast his keys so easily onto the side table. He loved this place.

  Wow. Lucian Morelli loved something. That was quite a revelation.

  He stepped through to the kitchen, and again it had a quaint little nothingness about it that I could relate to. My friend Jemma’s cheap apartment was my bolthole. My sanctuary so removed from my life that it was a welcome relief. This place had the same feel.

  The coffee machine looked like the most expensive item in the building. He’d definitely paid out decent cash for that thing.

  Weirdly, I liked it here – just like I did Jemma’s place. I could buy into his easiness in this space, even in the grip of the beast who’d be my demise.

  “Are you going to finish me off tonight, then?” I asked him, pasting on my bravest face.

  “I’ll finish you off whenever it suits me,” he told me, and he meant it.

  I looked at him fresh in these new surroundings, as though I was seeing him for the very first time. His darkness was radiating. His strength was brilliant –– muscular and sculpted with biological precision. It was a strange thing, just how opposite our family lines were, in every sense of the word. Who knows, maybe in some alternate dimension the bloodlines would breed and produce something vaguely normal.

  His hands were magicians whenever they moved, his fingers beautiful in their dances. His hair was perfect in his styling, even though he was still suited up as Terence Kingsley.

  I guess
it was the intensity of the surroundings, but Lucian Morelli looked even more of a god in this place. His opulence and class was obvious against the cheap backdrop.

  I leant against the counter and watched him.

  “You’re going to really make me suffer, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” he said with an evil smile. “I’m going to make you suffer. I’m going to enjoy every second of it. Morelli against Constantine in the most intimate of ways.”

  Somehow, even through the dread and the fear churning inside me, intimacy with Lucian Morelli gave me a shudder of something different.

  I expected him to fire up the coffee machine, but he didn’t. He crossed the room to the refrigerator and pulled out two mineral waters, pouring them into glasses from the shelf.

  “Drink,” he ordered, and handed one over.

  I did what he told me, but because I was thirsty, not because I was his meek little servant. Not yet, anyway.

  He watched me while he sipped at his.

  It was another clear light and dark between us both. Another polarity in our souls. He drank mineral water in life while I drank champagne. I’d never seen him touch a substance, let alone have a dependency on it.

  Control.

  He was all about control.

  I was all about losing mine.

  “I hope your ass is still hurting,” he said. “I’ve plenty of pain to be adding to it.”