Heartless Prince by Brook Wilder

Chapter 26

Lucas

 

I sat on the terrace outside the study, a drink in my hand as the still night moved around me. I hadn’t touched the drink since I poured it, too busy thinking about what had happened earlier and what the hell I was going to do about it.

 

I had fucked Leda D’Agostino. It hadn’t been the plan, not this soon. But now that it was over and done, all I wanted was to take my happy ass upstairs and do it all over again.

 

Leda wasn’t just some object I had bought, a pretty vase that I could keep in the room, touch once, and ignore for the rest of my lifetime.

 

I had a taste of her.

 

And I wanted more.

 

“Stop it,” I leaned my head against the chair and breathed.

 

What had possessed me to lose control like that? I had tried to do it the way I wanted to, to keep her face away from me so that she would be nothing more than a plaything.

 

Yet every time I closed my eyes, I heard her breathy moans, the way she had started to meet me thrust for thrust, and how I wished I had turned her around to see her reaction.

 

It wasn’t what I needed to be thinking about. Leda wasn’t what I expected from a Mafia princess. Actually, I had no idea what I was expecting. Certainly not the hellcat that she actually was—one who was just as turned on by being humiliated like she was.

 

And to add to that, she was a virgin. A surge of primal pride ran through me. I was the only man who ever had her, the only one to have given her pleasure like that. And no matter how hard I tried to keep it cold, she wanted it as much as I did.

 

But one thing continued to bug me.

 

Why the hell hadn’t she broken down in tears? Other than a token resistance at the end, she never once begged me not to take her. That was what I expected from her.

 

I blew out a breath and looked up at the stars. What would she be like the next time I opened her legs? Would she hurl the insults I was supposed to hear for a man who stole her innocence? Would I find a completely different person in the bed by morning?

 

Whichever it was, I wanted to go back and find out.

 

It wasn’t just lust. It was curiosity.

 

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to fuck her. Hell, I would keep fucking her until neither of us could walk. But there was a part of me that—and I fucking hated to admit this—wanted to find out more about her.

 

She was a fighter—strong, resilient, and made of sterner stuff than I had given her any credit before.

 

I wanted to know why.

 

And how.

 

It was bad for me to care like this, to have this craving inside that couldn’t be sated even after I had her. She did something to me just now.

 

I didn’t fucking like it.

 

I didn’t go back to her for the rest of the night. Instead, I resolved to lock myself in my own room to keep myself from going to hers. Sleep was nonexistent. By the time morning rolled around, I was pissed off and exhausted, craving the woman who haunted my dreams.

 

When the sun flooded my room with light, I went to the kitchen and fixed her a tray for breakfast, having some myself before I got ready to see her. Maybe it was just the anticipation. Maybe once I see her, I wouldn’t feel the same way.

 

But every step on the stairs sent my pulse racing, anxious to see what she was going to be doing or what she’d be wearing when I opened the door.