AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ella
Ican’t stop shaking. What is happening to me? First, I knock myself out because I can’t do that one thing women are supposed to know instinctively - walk on heels and now I’m wearing Lucas Emiliano’s shirt, tucked up in his bed, waiting for the man himself to join me.
Just thinking about what that may mean makes me feel excited and afraid in equal measures. This whole experience is turning out to be something else and just thinking back a few days when I was safe and happy in the knowledge my family were ok, seems like light years away.
I daren’t move. The man’s an animal and obviously has no regard for doing the right thing. Who treats another person like he does?
Lucas Emiliano, the Casino King.
The fact I’m surrounded by such luxury has not gone unnoticed. His bedroom is even bigger than the one I’ve been enjoying. It’s absolutely immense and yet appears empty despite the luxurious furnishing and attention to every detail. This room has no life in it, it’s cold and emotionless, much like its occupier and I shiver as I think of the man who rests his head here. Just thinking of the previous occupants of this bed makes me shake a little because I’m guessing a man like that is used to perfection. Supermodels, actresses perhaps, certainly not a copycat from downtown, fresh out of college.
I hear footsteps and prepare myself for another game of cat and mouse because I’m under no illusions that’s what this is to him—a game and I’m the prize at the end of it. I’m not stupid, or deluded enough to think it’s a game I can win, I know better than that and as he sets the glass down on the table beside the bed, he opens his palm and I see the two pills nestling in the center of it. “Take these, they will help with the pain.”
“What’s this, drugging me to sleep in your bed?”
I grin to take the sting from my words, although I mean them that way, he just doesn’t need to know that.
He sits on the edge of the bed and it dips slightly and picks up the glass of water, holding it to my lips. His gaze is intense as he watches me pop the pills into my mouth and as the cool water slides down my throat, he nods his approval.
“Good girl.”
For fuck’s sake, when did I become a girl who positively glowed inside at a compliment from a bully and a bastard but that’s how I feel now and I’m horrified at myself? If I was a cat, I’d be purring right now as he strokes my face and whispers, “Does it still hurt?”
I shift awkwardly. “A little.”
His eyes darken and I quickly pull a face and wince—purely out of self-preservation and say, “Actually, it does throb a little.”
He grins. “I know that feeling.”
He laughs out loud at the horror on my face, and the fact it must be burning right now doesn’t make me feel any better. I try not to look, but my eyes shift lower and I almost whimper when I see the evidence of the throbbing between his legs.
He strokes my face lightly, almost absentmindedly, and then shocks me by saying, “Tell me about yourself, why the store, it’s an odd choice?”
“Not really. It’s what paid my way through college. People will pay a lot of money for something bespoke.”
“You don’t say.”
He shakes his head and I say tentatively, “The coin, what does it mean, why is it so… well, destructive?”
“It isn’t. the coin is an inanimate object that just represents something. It’s that I’m worried about.”
He doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to stop petting me like an animal and yet I quite like it, so I say hesitantly, “The woman who collected it, um, how did she die?”
“A bullet though the brain, messy business.”
Thinking of his gun that is never far from his side, I wonder if he had anything to do with it and edge away a little.
“It wasn’t me.”
“So, you’re a mind reader now?”
He laughs softly. “You’re like an open book. Every thought in your head shows in your eyes.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Are you saying I’m wrong?”
“Ok, what am I thinking now?”
