Heartless Prince by Brook Wilder

Chapter 14

Lucas

 

I braced myself against the bed, heart hammering in my chest. Fuck! It had been a long time since I enjoyed myself like that. I looked down and saw Leda’s head was bowed, her own heaving from what we had just done.

 

Her mouth. I could spend all day fucking her little mouth.

 

My cock started to rise again. I hastily backed away, shoving it into my slacks.

 

“Up,” I said roughly, not wanting her to see how much she had affected me. Our eyes met, and I quickly reined in my surprise at the simmering heat in hers.

 

She liked that.

 

I fucking knew it.

 

When she rose, I was rewarded when she didn’t attempt to cover herself up. The shreds of her chemise framed her willing body. I could take her now: throw her on the bed, bury my cock in her, and leave her a quivering mess.

 

But it wasn’t time. The thought came out of nowhere, and I clenched my jaw. “Move.”

 

Only when she gathered the sides of her ruined clothing did I see her chafed wrists, and the redness that encircled her tender skin.

 

The sight bothered me. But I wasn’t about to let her see it.

 

I escorted her back to her room.

 

“Rest,” I ordered.

 

Leda turned her eyes at me, and for a moment I wanted to say more. Never in my entire career of dominating women had I wanted to wrap my fucking arms around someone as much as I wanted around Leda.

 

I wasn’t a touchy-feely man. My touches were reserved for pleasure and pain in equal measures. I didn’t know how to comfort.

 

Especially not someone I wanted to break.

 

Disgusted with my own weakness, I closed the door behind me and walked back to my office, picking up the same whiskey decanter I had been drinking from earlier. I poured it straight into my mouth, letting the burn override what I was feeling.

 

My body was sated, but my soul felt restless.

 

Why the hell was it restless?

 

I pushed open the patio door and stepped out into the predawn morning, whiskey in hand.

 

This house was situated in the hills high above the nearest city, giving me the luxury of privacy whenever I needed it. I purchased it shortly after being named Don for the purpose of having a space of my own hidden from the world.

 

For years I had been surrounded by people who always wanted something from me, and to live in this sort of solitude was a welcome respite.

 

Now, the silence—once soothing—was damning.

 

I hesitated with a woman. I never hesitated before, especially not with someone as fiery as Leda. Cosimo taught me to never let women see the other side of me. I was to maintain an air of arrogance, to make it at least appear that I was someone not to fuck with.

 

But when Leda had attempted to grab my cock with her hand, I had nearly lost all control.

 

A part of me wanted her to touch me all over, to surrender myself to someone else taking the lead—to see where it could go.

 

Hell, I would probably enjoy it far too much.

 

The problem was: she would have power over me. She’d make me crave her touch when it should be the other way around.

 

That was something I could not tolerate.

 

Shoving a hand through my hair, I took another pull off the whiskey. I had started that interaction between us with one goal in mind: to dominate her—soul and body, willing or unwilling.

 

The defiance—damn, she’d played that up well. When she arched against my hand, all rational thought on my plans had been burnt away like morning fog. Suddenly I wanted to draw out our time together, to bring her to the brink of wanting me but not give her what she wanted just yet.

 

A cat-and-mouse game that I hadn’t initially thought about playing. At least, not with her.

 

But right now, I couldn’t figure out who was the cat and who was the mouse.

 

“Fuck,” I breathed softly. Exhaustion started to pull at my bones. I needed some sleep if I was going to face her again, if I was going to maintain some resemblance of control. Because right fucking now, I felt like control was the one thing I didn’t have.

 

It was those fucking eyes of hers that bothered me the most. There was something hidden in their depths, a secret that I wanted to uncover.

 

My cock jumped at the thought and I willed it down, taking another long swallow of whiskey before I placed it back on the table.

 

It had taken me years to get to this point, and I would not risk losing it all just so that I might pretend to play house with Leda.

 

Being Don was a twist that I hadn’t seen coming. I had been perfectly happy with killing people for Cosimo. After all, he pulled me out of the slums of his organization and gave me something to look forward to—something that would bring me true pleasure.

 

I didn’t have that. Not when I was the person I used to be.

 

I steeled myself against the memories that threatened to resurface, knowing full well it was a combination of being drunk, tired, and pleasured. But for a moment, I didn’t care.

 

At age fifteen, I hadn’t known much about the world I was getting into. I thought the day that my mom had handed me over for her next fix was the first day of freedom.

 

Instead, it had been the first day of being in chains. Gone was the ability to escape by attending school. Gone was the need to stay out as late as I could so that I wouldn’t have to come home and find her passed out on the bed.

 

My owner later told me that my face was my downfall. I was too good-looking to be anything other than what he made me. I was put to work and made to serve—did things that I didn’t want to remember but would never forget.

 

Cosimo dragged me out of that world. He told me that once he had seen the anger in me, he knew that my talents were being wasted doing anything else.

 

And that was that. He put me into enforcer training, kicking my ass for a few months before I learned to fight back. Soon, I was being put on assignments in the name of the Cavazzo Mafia.

 

I put more cold bodies in graves than warm bodies in beds.

 

When Cosimo asked me to be his personal enforcer, I jumped at the chance. Because now it meant some of those who had once treated me like shit was now afraid of me.

 

I craved that fear. Fear from others held me together. It forged me. Strengthened me. Became my shield and my sword.

 

It had also made others despise me.

 

Adrian was a perfect example. He was weak, as I had heard many times from his own uncle, not fit to lead an empire. I could keep myself in control, but Adrian couldn’t. He was always causing one shitstorm after another that his uncle was forced to clean up.

 

Usually, it was me who had to clean up his mess—one life at a time, one name at a time. I didn’t know that I was auditioning for the ultimate role at the time.

 

I shoved my thoughts away.

 

I wasn’t that man any longer. I was a Don, one that was going to outlive them all and put them out of commission. There was a new era coming, one that was more ruthless and bloodier than they could have imagined. Not one of them thought that it would be me who’d come to haunt their future.

 

I was going to ruin them all.