Fallen Rose

by Amelia Wilde

  There’s a keypad on the outside of the door.

  Caroline has locked her in a prison. She’s made a fucking prison for Haley, brought Rick here for whatever the fuck a “date” means, and kept her from me. I shake the man by his collar so hard his teeth rattle. “Do it before I carve you open.”

  With shaking hands, he punches in a code on the keypad and the lock clicks. Lucian reaches around and opens the door. The whole world draws down to this one moment. If there’s anything on the other side but Haley, safe and sound and whole, I will lose my mind. I will never come back. New pain layers in over the inferno of my back.

  But then.

  A lamp turns on, the glow soft as she is, and there’s Haley, blinking into the light. Her eyes fly open when she sees me and she scrambles out of the bed. She’s wearing a nightgown I’ve never seen and I can’t get to her because this fucking guy is in my hands. I shove him at Lucian, open my arms, and she’s there, she’s there, she’s there.

  Haley tumbles into me with a raw cry that’s almost a sob and my heart bursts. I can’t hear what she’s saying, can’t separate the words from the sound of her voice and the beat of her heart under my arms. I lift her face away from my shirt and smooth back her hair because I have to see if she’s okay.

  She’s not.

  “Leo. Come on. Let’s go,” Lucian says behind me.

  Rick is a fucking liar. Her eyes are red and swollen. She’s been crying. They did something to her.

  And then she turns her head.

  A bruise.

  On her jawline.

  A bruise.

  I pull her toward the bedroom door on pure instinct, pull her out into the hall so I can get enough air, and my vision goes red.

  All the rage and pain and yes, terror—all of it erupts. I can’t hold it back anymore. It’s in my skin and bones and blood. My pulse. It’s not always a show. It’s not always pretend. Sometimes, if you play a role long enough, it becomes you, and that bruise on her face has stripped away everything but a searing thirst for retribution. Someone’s going to pay for this. Someone. Now. I have her in my arms and the fury of my heartbeat is all I can hear.

  Lucian’s voice is a distant whisper. “This way,” he’s saying. “This way. We have to go.”

  “Leo,” Haley says.

  At the end of the hall, two more Constantines step into view.

  Perry and Keaton. They’re at home for the night, in comfortable clothes. “Jesus Christ,” says Perry. “Are you invading our house? What the—”

  He doesn’t finish, because I’ve let go of Haley, and I’m on top of them.

  You don’t throw a punch the first time and expect it to do any damage. You practice. You throw hundreds of punches. Thousands. You train the motion of a kick until it can cause exactly the harm you intend. Fighting takes restraint, and it takes skill. It takes the most skill to subdue a person without hurting them. To use restraint.

  I don’t care about hurting Perry and Keaton. All of my skill has burned down into pure violence. There’s nothing left but a killing rage. Perry first. A hit to the side of the head that rattles him. Keaton next when he tries to run for help. They’re responsible for this. Haley has a bruise. They hurt her. The two of them try to work together but they weren’t born into hell. Violence is not their first language.

  It’s mine.

  Blow after blow. I don’t feel it, don’t bother to feel the force of the hits. Don’t bother to hold back. It doesn’t matter that they land a few of their own. Every inch of me is already in agony. It changes nothing, nothing, nothing. All of them. I’ll kill them all. Beat them to a bloody pulp and cremate them in their own house.

  I haul Perry off the floor, where he’s fallen, and I’m going to hit him so hard he never gets up again. I have my fist drawn back to do it.

  The softest touch on my arm.

  I look down at that gentleness and find Haley’s hand there. Follow the path from her fingers all the way to her blue eyes. My pulse is outsized for my body. Every heartbeat hurts. But when I look at her, it eases enough to let me breathe. I’ve settled into the short, adrenaline-fueled breaths of a fight but now I take a full inhale.

  And then, though I’m a monster, though I’m the most dangerous bastard ever to share space with her, she puts her hand on my cheek. Her thumb moves over my cheekbone. Slowly. Slowly. “Perry didn’t do anything. He’s my family, and he didn’t know what was happening. Caroline told them I was sick. He and Keaton didn’t do anything. Put him down, Leo.”

  “I can’t.” It’s true. I can’t. I can’t fucking open my hand. “They hurt you.”

  “No. They didn’t touch me. I don’t want you to be a murderer over this. It’s okay, Leo. You can let go.”

  The red haze clears, washed away by her blue eyes. Unclenching my fist from Perry’s shirt is another exercise in torture. My grip was already committed to what I was doing.

  I hear him hit the floor and curse, but I don’t care. I have my arms around Haley again.

  Chapter Six

  Haley

  Leo drops Perry, who falls to the floor with a grunt and a soft fuck. Keaton, a hand pressed to his cheek, goes to his brother as Leo puts his arms around me. He lifts me into a carry and I focus on breathing. I could cry forever, but I won’t. I have the sense that if I break down, it will be like when Leo was sick. He’ll lose his mind. He won’t know what’s wrong.

  There are lives at stake.

  His brother is here. Lucian. The two of them look incongruous, standing in Caroline’s house, but we don’t wait for long. “This way,” Lucian says again. I expected him to be cruel, to be…a Morelli. And he is. There’s a set to his face that makes me think he might go back for Perry and Keaton if they say the wrong thing.

  “Haley,” says Perry. He looks like shit. Leo was going to kill him. There was murder in his eyes. It’s there now, just beneath the surface. A translucent layer of civility is over the beast now.

  “I’m okay,” I tell him over Leo’s shoulder. “Really. Just—”

  Just don’t do anything. Don’t keep me here. The urge to beg him is strong, here in Caroline’s house, but then Leo is moving with long, purposeful strides. Perry and Keaton don’t follow. Perry sits down hard on the floor as we go, and Keaton kneels next to him, and I think the only reason they’re not following is because Leo is such a menace.

  Lucian is dragging a fourth person with us, all the way to the door, by the collar of his shirt. Leo’s brother does this with such a casual stance that I have to think he’s done it before. When we reach the door, he shoves the man into a corner and kicks him. Something cracks in the man’s chest and he cries out. Lucian grins. I think Bishop’s Landing has been wrong about Leo. They got the wrong brother. Lucian is the real killer. The real sociopath.

  But—no. He’s here, after all, to get me. To help Leo. I don’t understand it and I can’t find my voice to ask. I don’t dare speak all the way out.

  Leo bundles me close as we step out into the night. I’m in a nightgown, no shoes, no socks, and the wind cuts through the fabric. “It’s not far,” Leo says. His voice is different. A razor’s edge. Sharper than I’ve ever heard before. Lucian walks by his side as we go down the block, away from Caroline’s house. A click makes me lift my head from Leo’s shoulder. Lucian’s got a gun out, and he’s taken the safety off.

  Lucian meets my eyes. No trace of discomfort there, only an intense curiosity. “Did they hurt you?”

  I shake my head. It’s close to the truth.

  “No more questions, Lucian,” Leo says, and we’re at his SUV. He opens the door, puts me into the passenger seat, and takes off his coat. He wraps it around me with efficient movements, his hands steady, and pulls the buckle over me. Clicks it into place.

  His expression—

  I don’t recognize it. I’ve never seen it before.

  “I’m following,” Lucian says from over Leo’s shoulder.

  “Fine.”

  “I’m meetin
g with your security.”

  “Fine.” Leo closes my door, and then he’s in the car, and then we’re driving away. A pair of headlights follows after us.

  It’s not the first time he’s driven me like this. A different route back to his house. Same heat turned up high in the car. Same full-body trembles that set in only after we’ve pulled away from the curb. Leo is silent in his dark clothes, his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel.

  I reach for him at the same instant he reaches for me. His grip on my hand is so tight it hurts, but I never want him to let go. He doesn’t. He holds my hand all the way back to his castle of a house. All the way through the gate, and down the driveway. He only releases me for long enough to come around to my side and take me in his arms again. Up the steps. Into the foyer.

  I’m expecting silence and space.

  A crowd greets us instead. Men in dark suits are all over the foyer. Gerard. Eva, who gasps, and starts to come forward. Her face changes when she sees Leo’s expression. “Come and sit with us,” she says quickly. “Come and sit with us, and—”

  “No,” barks Leo. He goes for the stairs without looking at her.

  “Let’s have a meeting,” Lucian says, his voice rising above all the chatter, and the front door slams shut, and none of it matters because Leo is taking me to his bedroom. My skin tingles with relief, and with delayed fear, and with everything I felt at Caroline’s. With the shame of crying in front of Rick. With the disgust of being touched by him. But it’s over. It’s over.

  What’s not over is Leo.

  He kicks the door shut the moment we’re past the threshold. Puts me on my feet. Pushes me back so I’m pinned against cool wood, slipping the coat off my shoulders as he does. His hands are so large on the sides of my face. They slip down to my neck. He’s warm, and he’s here.

  Leo’s grip tightens. He takes my air away. Makes it hard to breathe for long enough that my heart kicks up into a sprint. Even now, even when I can’t breathe, he smells so good I could die. Like a clean winter forest. Like a dark night.

  And then.

  He leans down and bites me. His teeth sink into the place where my neck curves into my shoulder, the heat of his breath tracing the marks. I’m on fire, lit up with him, every nerve responding to the pain. He’s never bitten me this hard before, never while he’s choking me like this, and I suck in a gasp.

  Leo shoves himself away from me. My spine knocks against hardwood as he backs away with a growl. “Get out of here,” he says. “Go to the guest room.”

  “What?” I put my hand where he touched me, press in like I can recreate the sensation. “No. I don’t want to leave.”

  Leo looks me in the eye, and my heart thuds. Cracks. “I’ll be too rough with you. I’ll tear you apart.”

  A heartbeat of fear. Another one of recognition. The gold in his eyes blazes with fury he’s not bothering to suppress.

  Or that he can’t suppress.

  The truth arrives like a bullet.

  I’ve only ever had sex with Leo Morelli. The man standing in front of me now is the Beast of Bishop’s Landing.

  This is the person Leo became to survive his father. This is the person he became to protect his siblings, and his secrets. I thought it was all an act. I thought he was only pretending to be angry. That it was skin-deep. A performance. And sometimes it is. Sometimes he allows people to think he is angry when he is really in pain. He allows people to think he’s ruthless and bloodthirsty when he is considered and calculated.

  But now?

  Now it’s real.

  I’ll tear you apart sounded so raw, so violent, that I know it’s real. And it’s too late to stop it. Too late to hide it.

  He’s trying anyway, though his anger is all in the open, it’s crackling in the air around us. It’s making the hairs on the backs of my arms stand up.

  “Go,” he orders.

  “No.” I separate myself from the door and take three steps toward him. Close enough for him to reach me. My body quakes with how lethal he is but I’ll never run from him. Never. Never. Never. “I want all of you. Even the beast.”

  I look at him then. Really look. And I see everything. The agonized set of his shoulders. The way he stands up so tall as a way to keep himself in check. His hands shoved into his pockets to keep them off me.

  The need in his eyes. A deep, animal need. He’s practically vibrating with it. Leo’s jaw works. “I promise, darling. I won’t be gentle.”

  Leo’s voice swears off softness. It’s as clear a warning as I’ve ever heard. This is my only chance to back out of this. To run to the guest room and lock the door. He’ll let me do it.

  I lift one hand and pull down the neck of my nightgown to bare my throat to him.

  I show him the marks he’s already made.

  “All of you,” I tell him. “Please.”

  One second he’s standing there, and the next he’s all furious motion. It’s like the night he came after me. Watching him run into that alley was the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. He is equally stunning now. A graceful violence. His hands are all over me. Squeezing. Pinching. Bruising. He bites me again, layering more marks on top of the fresh one, and I cry out at how sharp the pain is. How little he’s holding back.

  Leo tears my nightgown off. Shreds the fabric. Splits it down the middle.

  He tears through the panties I’m wearing underneath.

  When I’m naked, when there’s nothing left between us, he takes my face in his hands and kisses me in the ruins of my clothes. He kisses me so hard I taste blood. There is nothing gentle in his tongue, or his teeth, and I owe him everything, he is everything, because if he was soft with me now, I would be sick.

  It’s not cruelty, the way he hurts me now. We are beyond things like cruelty and kindness. This is claiming.

  He takes his mouth off mine, fists his fingers in my hair, and drags me to the fireplace. Leo sweeps up the remains of my clothes as he goes. The fire springs to life when he hits a switch and he throws the clothes into it. The white turns to black curls in the flame as he forces me to my knees in front of the heat. One pull of his zipper and his cock is freed, thick and hard, and Leo doesn’t hesitate. Not at all. He pushes the crown past my lips and I can’t do anything but take it.

  “Get it wet,” he says. “You have ten seconds, darling.”

  What Leo means is that I have to survive the next ten seconds. I can’t lick him, can’t swirl my tongue around him, because he’s shoving all the way to the back of my throat and down. Tears roll down my cheeks. It feels good to have them drawn out of me. It feels good to lose myself to this moment. My body tries to resist him but I don’t want to resist, I want to take him, I want to. I need to. I’m hot between my legs. Wet for him already. I try to tell him but he’s filled my throat so completely that all that comes out is a needy hum.

  “Fuck,” Leo says. He pulls out and strips off his clothes.

  His hand goes to the back of my neck. Leo doesn’t guide my head to the carpet. He shoves it there and pins me in place, one big hand in my hair. The other snaps my thighs apart and three fingers impale the soft part of me. Testing. He’s testing me to see if I’m wet enough, and that’s all, that’s all. He fucks his fingers in and out, in and out, and then he pulls them away and wipes them on the small of my back.

  Leo lines himself up and thrusts in so hard my face scrapes against the carpet. A vicious push. I’m not used to him, but he doesn’t give me time to adjust. I scream at the stretch, at the pain, but he ignores me. Another thrust interrupts my breathing. Makes my heart skip a beat. My pussy clenches around him and I want him to stay, stay, stay, but he pulls out again so he can fuck me harder.

  He’s so strong above me. So unforgiving. His hand in my hair hurts, it hurts so badly, and it’s a homecoming. He hurts me because I like it. Because I can take it. Tears slip down my cheeks. He takes his hand from my hair to swipe some of my tears from my skin. There’s a pop as he sucks them off his fingertips, and
then he laughs.

  It’s a dark, evil laugh, brimming with all the fury and violence he’s been holding in, and it makes me tighten around him again. He groans. “I fucking love it when you cry, darling. I love it. I love it. I love you.”

  Leo finds his rhythm now. Harsh. Unrelenting. He fucks me like he can bind us together through this act alone. Like he’s trying to mate with me for life. Like a wolf. Like a beast.

  “You’re wet.” Even his voice is rough. “That’s the sound of your cunt getting wetter for me while I fuck you to tears. So fucking loud. You love being fucked like this. Tell me how much you love it, darling.”

  I can barely move, he has me pinned so tight to the carpet. “I need it,” I pant, and then I’m sobbing for real. “I need it.” Terror washes over me. I’m not afraid of Leo. I’m afraid that this won’t erase what happened. That the way Rick touched me won’t ever go away. “Please,” I beg, and I don’t have the words to explain what I need.

  Except.

  Leo doesn’t need an explanation. Five more strokes and then he turns me over, onto my back, and forces my thighs apart again. He fills me with another cruel thrust as his hand comes up around my neck. He angles my head up so my neck is exposed and pins my wrists to the carpet with his forearm. He kisses me brutally anywhere he can reach, his arm a steel cage across my wrists, and I sob and sob.

  “It’s over,” he says into my ear, and his voice is half Leo, half beast, and it makes me cry harder. “I’m the only one who’s ever touched you. I’m the only one who will ever fuck this pussy. It belongs to me. You belong to me, darling. Every last inch.”

  He punctuates every last inch with three thrusts that stretch me beyond what I thought I could take.

  “Now come on my cock.”

  My orgasm tumbles free at the words. I’m spread wide, too wide, my thighs aching with staying apart for him. Trembling. It shakes me from head to toe, shakes me into the carpet. Shakes me into the center of the earth. Rips apart like an atom bomb. Washes everything clean. Leo pushes in deep deep deep and somehow, somehow, he gets bigger. I have a flash of fear—he won’t be able to get back out, he’s too big, he’ll stay inside me forever—and then he makes a sound deep in his throat and shudders.