AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She holds her breath as I walk over to her. The shape of her lips is exactly the same as I remember. How many times had I dreamed of those lips on my cock? It had never gone beyond kissing and some heavy petting when we were younger. I’d only ever seen her naked once, but the image of her was blazoned in my mind, as indelible as the tattoos that cover my body. I trail my eyes up. The slope of her nose is the same, the long dark eyelashes look more startling framing the icy blue instead of the deep sapphire, but there’s no mistaking that they are exactly the same. They don’t dilate the way they used to when she looked at me. I run my hand in front of her eyes. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t have any reaction at all. If anything, this just pisses me off more.
“Lucinda?”
“Yes?” she whispers back.
“If you really are Lucinda, you are a bitch that fucking destroyed my life.” I grab my hand to her neck, squeezing it tightly enough to scare her.
Her eyes widen and she makes a pathetic attempt to push me off. The Lucinda I knew had twenty pounds on this girl, but even twenty pounds heavier, she’d be no match for me. Six foot four and built from pure muscle, I could hold her back with just my pinky finger if I chose to. Some might find me kinda sick using my strength over a woman who is seven inches shorter than me, not to mention blind, but if she’s who she says she is, she’s a conniving cunt who deserves everything coming to her. I just need to figure out what that’s going to be.
“Now tell me the truth,” I growl. “Who the fuck are you?”
I let go a little to allow her to speak. She turns her eyes to me and this time she’s almost spot on. Almost. Half a millimeter out.
“I’m Lucinda Alexandria Stephanie Julia Winscote Waldgrave. I’m Sin.”
The name is like a slap in the face. Sin was a childish nickname Lucinda had made up for me to call her. It was our third date. Back then, I believed in dating before trying to get into a girl’s pants. I was a virgin, and she was, too. My fifteen-year-old sex obsessed mind couldn’t think of anything else but popping Lucinda Waldgrave’s cherry. Even back then, she oozed sexuality. Everyone wanted her, but I was the one that got to have her. Except I didn’t. In that long summer we were together, I must have called her that name a hundred times, but not once did we fuck. Since then, she’s fucked half of Tinseltown and most investment bankers in New York. Her bed sheets have had more famous people in them than Celebrity Magazine spreads, but I was her first love.
I heave out a growl of frustration. Sin Waldgrave is a conniving bitch and a fantastic actress, but I know she’d never tell anyone that name. She loved it and hated it. When I called her Sin, she’d move her body in ways I’ve never seen anyone else do, but she froze if she thought anyone else had heard. It terrified her that it might get out so, eventually, I stopped using it.
I put it away, like I’d put away all the other memories of Sin Waldgrave, in the back of my mind, where it had festered for years. And now all those hateful memories are flooding back, filling my veins once again with poison.
8
LUCINDA
I feel him stiffen as I use the almost forgotten name. It’s a name I wish I could forget for many reasons, not least because it’s horrifically corny. Or it used to be. Now it’s threatening. Perverse.
He pulls his hand away from my throat. I resist the urge to reach up and grab at it as I draw a long breath into my lungs.
“You really fucked me up, Sin.”
I don’t know what he wants me to say. It was a long time ago. I’m not here to right any perceived wrongdoing. I’m here so he can get rich and I can escape my father. Nothing more. I lick my dry lips, wishing I had some water, if only to use as a prop. My throat is dry and I can’t keep the tremor from my hands. A glass of water would solve both those problems. “I’m sorry,” I say cause that’s clearly what he’s expecting. I just want him to leave me alone and not dig up the past. I can’t change it anymore than he can.
“You are sorry?” His voice is low and harsh. He brings my chin up with his fingertips. It takes me a few seconds to realize he wants to look me in the eye. I stare out into the darkness where I assume his eyes will be, praying that this will be over soon. He’s not explicitly threatened me, and yet every word he utters is full of malice.
“You are fucking sorry?” he repeats.
My stomach twists at the harsh tone in his voice. I’m so frightened I can barely speak. “It was a long time ago. Let it go.”
He lets out a raspy laugh that chills my blood. When he speaks again, his voice is almost a whisper, but it’s full of threat. “You nearly fucking killed me, Lucinda. Do you know that? Your father might have well of bent me over and fucked me in the ass and you were the one holding me down while he did it.”
He’s speaking metaphorically, and yet his words are like blades to my heart. He wasn’t the only one fucked over by my father.
I swallow dryly. “I loved you,” I whisper. Joshua Nix is the only man I’ve ever loved. I spent so many nights thinking of him, pretending he was near me, but he vanished. Left without a word. And now he’s back and blaming me. My heart lurches as he runs his thumb along my lower lip. I seize up with his touch. It’s both torture and pleasure and my body can’t decide whether to endure his touch or to enjoy it. My muscles are locked up for fear he’ll do something worse. I’m completely at his mercy and he knows it. The thought terrifies me. I need to get away from here before it’s not just words Josh uses against me.
I let out a long, slow breath as he pulls back. The door slams and I’m finally alone again. I can’t live with these men. Sooner or later, they are going to make a decision to either let me go or throw me back to my father. I know now that I’m not going to be able to appeal to their better natures. I don’t think any of them have one.
I need to escape them. It took me years to escape my father’s clutches and I know that if I end up back there, he won’t make the same mistake again. I escaped because the security system was being updated. For one hour, the old system was down before the new one went up. An hour was all I needed to pelt through the gardens, hop over the huge perimeter fence and race out into the woods. Waldgrave House backs onto miles and miles of forest with trees so thick, it’s easy to get lost in. So that’s precisely what I did. I packed up a few day’s worth of clothes into a bag and ran. Josh was right about one thing. Running through a forest alone without sight would be impossible, but I’d rather face the impossible than spend another minute in my father’s house. Running through those woods was my first time tasting freedom. I tripped and stumbled, but I made it far away. If Joshua and his friends hadn’t found me, I’d be thousands of miles away now. I don’t know how, but I’d have made it. The thought instills confidence in me. I still have no idea how Josh found me in that cabin, but he did, and because of that, I’m finally away from my father and his men. Running away from them should be a walk in the park after escaping my father. They don’t have the reach or technology he has. They only have themselves and the confidence that a terrified blind girl couldn’t possibly escape them. Maybe I am terrified and maybe I’m at a major disadvantage both because of my blindness and my famous face, but I have something they don’t know and will never understand that trumps all that. I have the drive to get out of this place. To get away from men who want to control me. For the first time in my life, I’m going to be in control of me. I’m going to get out of here before they get the chance to throw me back to the wolves. Joshua Nix thinks I betrayed him. He’s wrong, but soon that notion of his will be true. I plan on betraying Joshua and there’s not a thing he can do to stop me.
9
DACRE
Nix’s face is dark as thunder as he leaves Lucinda’s room. He walks right past me and sits at the kitchen island. Mercier pushes a plate of eggs towards him, which he ignores. I’m guessing this means that the girl really is Lucinda Waldgrave, and he’s finally decided to accept it. Who she is, isn’t really a big concern of mine. Lucinda or not, she’s worth thirty million dollars, but only if we give her back to her father, something which I want to do as quickly as possible for a great number of reasons. Nix pushes the plate away from him and pulls out a cigarette. I rush over and take the seat next to him, pulling the plate of eggs to me and smothering them in hot sauce. If he even thinks about lighting that cigarette, I’m probably going to murder him myself. I won’t need to worry about charges of kidnapping Lucinda if I murder Nix. May as well go down for the sheep as the lamb. Nix is my best friend, but he doesn’t really understand what it’s like to have to conform. To fit in. We both have tattoos, but where mine are discrete and can be hidden by a shirt, his go all the way up to the base of his neck and cover his entire torso and arms. He once told me he had his cock tattooed too, but he’s full of shit sometimes, so I have no idea if it’s true. And though we sometimes partake in fucking women in the same room, we keep our junk separate and I never look. We’re close, but we’ve never crossed that line. It was Nix that got me kicked out of my family home. Believe me, I was no saint, even before he came along, but he took rule breaking to new heights. He often said he had nothing to lose, forgetting that I had everything to lose. And lose it, I did.
I peer up at him. He’s been keyed up since the news of Lucinda’s kidnap broke, but the intense expression he’s been wearing for days has slipped slightly. “It’s really her?”
Nix grunts and twirls the cigarette around between his fingers as though he’s a majorette, and the cigarette is his baton. “Looks like it.”
