by M. Robinson
Easy, I think. It’s easy to be with him. Maybe that’s what safe feels like.
He nips my bottom lip, and I whimper.
A shiver captures me, head to toe. He pulls back. His eyes are deeper now, forest green, a place of mystery and magic.
This isn’t insouciance. Or nonchalance.
It’s something darker.
He tightens a fist in my hair, turning me around so I face the wall, holding me against his hard chest. It took so long to do my hair for tonight. Hours of shampoo and conditioner and blow drying. Making the curls just right. They’re nothing but a handle for him now. Something stark and blatantly sexual.
I feel submissive this way. Trapped. My sex clenches beneath my evening gown.
“What are you doing?” I ask, breathless.
“Tasting,” he murmurs, dragging kisses along my neck, biting the juncture to my shoulder. “I just want a taste. I won’t hurt you. You aren’t scared, are you?”
I’m alone in a room with a man—a strong, virile man. One who isn’t afraid to shove someone against a wall. He’s holding me in such a way that I can’t defend myself. “Yes,” I whisper.
An unsteady laugh. “That shouldn’t turn me on so much.”
A large hand passes over my breasts, as if he’s an explorer, a marauder, mapping the terrain that he plans to claim as his own. He reaches beneath the neckline, and I gasp as his fingers rub across my nipples. I strain—whether to lean into his touch or get away, I don’t know. It only manages to wind my hair tighter in his grasp. The sharp pull brings tears to my eyes.
“So that’s what you’ve been hiding,” he says, pinching my nipple until I gasp. “Acting demure and innocent when you have these beautiful breasts aching for attention.”
As soon as he says the word I know it’s true. They are aching, but he pulls his hand away. In between a single breath and the next he releases my hair and turns me back around to face him. We stand there, connected only by pain, by wanting. I’ve been to mass a million times, but this feels somehow more religious than every moment I’ve spent kneeling.
I want to kneel in front of this man. Want to worship him with my body.
He pulls me against his body, tight and secure, but I can’t stop shivering. It’s a different kind of shock than the one that comes after violence.
This is the echo of intimacy.
“More,” I whisper.
“I’m not going to fuck you in a motel room,” he says, his voice raw.
I breathe out a laugh. I’ve heard the antechambers called motel rooms before. Most of the cousins call them that, but I’ve never done anything here. Never even made out with a boy on these leather chairs. At this moment it seems like a massive oversight.
I’ve been too busy helping my mother.
Too busy being hurt by my father.
Footsteps sound outside the antechamber. Finn moves me behind him just as the door swings open. I peer around his arm to see my brother storm in, looking furious.
“Leo,” I say on a gasp.
“So glad you could join us,” Finn says, his tone unconcerned. “A family affair. Will all the Morellis be joining us? Not sure there’s enough seating for everyone.”
He’s always ready for a joke, even when my father was here. Except this is worse. Bryant Morelli is wild, uncontrolled violence. My brother is a sharp blade.
He doesn’t pause. He heads straight for us, straight for Finn, murder in his dark eyes. “Take your hands off my sister. I fucking warned you.”
I’m stunned. “You warned him away from me? Why?”
“Because of this,” Leo says, biting out the words. “Because he’s putting his fucking hands on you, another Constantine. He’s using you.”
“Another Constantine?” Finn says, catching onto that detail immediately.
There’s a dark secret in my past, something Finn can never find out about. No one can find out about it. It would humiliate me, but that’s not the only reason. It’s a loose thread in the black fabric of our family history. If someone were to pull, the whole thing could unravel.
Chapter Four
Finn Hughes
“Don’t fucking talk to her,” Leo says, advancing.
He wants to fight me. And part of me wants to fight him. It’s perverse, but I’m angry at him for not protecting Eva better. Maybe what I wanted from him is superhuman. He couldn’t really have shadowed her every second of the night. But I hate that I found her at the mercy of her asshole father. I want someone to pay for that. Him. Me. Maybe both of us deserve to be pummeled for that ring of red around her wrist.
“What are you going to do?” I taunt him, pushing Eva back, because she’s struggling to get between us. She doesn’t want me hurting her hot-tempered brother. Or maybe it’s me she doesn’t want hurt. “Kill every man at the gala? They all want her, you know.”
“I’ll start with you.” Dark eyes flash. “Then see how I feel.”
“No, don’t,” Eva says, pushing in front of me, defending me with her small body. It’s enough to make her brother stop, at least. Which is a good thing. If he’d put his hands on her, if he’d pushed her aside or hurt her in any way, I would have lost my shit. “Don’t,” she says again, and whatever he sees in her expression makes him curse softly.
She turns to me, her dark eyes pleading. God, those eyes. So full of sorrow and mystery. They make me want to slay every dragon, starting with the overbearing brother. “Just go.”
“He doesn’t get to tell you who to talk to,” I say, pissed on her behalf.
“Please,” she begs. It’s my undoing.
“Christ.”
She stands there looking vulnerable and strong, delicate and defiant. I want to consume her. I want to save her. In the end I can do nothing. Her brother doesn’t get to order her around. I don’t either. If she wants me to leave, then I will.
It’s a test of willpower to leave her there. I push past her brother, bumping his shoulder the way he bumped mine earlier, making it clear this isn’t over.
I’m leaving because she asked me to—not because of him.
There’s a surreal quality to the gala when I return to the ballroom. The Christmas music. The whirl of dancers. The oversized boughs of holly hanging from the ceiling. All of it feels like a holiday funhouse mirror, everything distorted and different. All because I held Eva in my arms. Because I tasted her. She trembled for me. I still feel the slight vibration of her against my skin, the warmth of her against my palms. I form a fist, as if I can keep the sensation inside.
I watch Sarah Morelli hold court, a queen in this particular castle. She’s too austere to be a social butterfly, but it works in this setting—the somberness of Christmas, the scaffolding of religion. People fawn over her elaborate dress, the beautiful decorations. Waiters emerge from the kitchens with trays of mince pies—the pies that Eva worked on.
I’m standing in the ballroom, but I feel a million miles away from these people. I’m still back in that antechamber. Still wrapped around Eva’s sweet, panting body.
Daphne Morelli, Eva’s younger sister, hovers on the other side. She stands with a young blonde I recognize as Haley Constantine, the woman Leo’s with. From the corner of my eye I see Lucian and his lady-love make a quick exit.
I’ve been to a million events like this, but suddenly I feel out of place. It’s not the gala that changes. It’s me. As if the touch of Eva’s lips shifted some small, crucial part of me.
Great.
I stride through the other side of the ballroom, passing a couple making out beneath a heavy garland of mistletoe. It’s darker back here. This leads away from the public wing, into the family spaces. I’ve been here before during intimate dinner parties.
Never upstairs, though.
I climb the wide, sweeping staircase. Deep carpet hides my footsteps.
A worried servant steps out of a door at the end of the hall, holding a first aid kit. Bingo.
“Is he inside?” I ask when he approaches,
my voice pleasant.
The man looks nervous. “No one’s supposed to be up here.”
I pull out a few hundreds from my billfold. “I’m a close friend of the family.”
That’s enough to make him hurry away. No loyalty. It doesn’t speak well of how the family treats their employees. But it serves my purpose right now. I enter the room.
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone.” The words are slurred. He was already drunk downstairs. And I’m guessing he’s been drinking steadily since he left.
“You don’t sign my paycheck,” I say, crossing the dark library. I stop at the ice-coated window, looking down at the revelry on the lawn, where a snowball fight has broken out.
Worry. Anger. Resentment. Through the window’s reflection I watch those emotions play over Bryant Morelli’s battered face. He wants to demand that I leave. More than that, he wants to take his rage out on me, but he must know I’d love any excuse to punch him again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he finally asks, sounding resigned.
“Having a conversation.”
“About what?”
I watch as one of the Morelli cousins, Charles, packs a snowball down hard.
He aims. Fires. It lands in the face of Maise Dunlevy.
That’s got to hurt. I can hear her shrieking from the second story, through thick glass. It’s like watching a live action snowglobe. She was Miss New Jersey Teen a couple years back. Now she’s hunting for a rich husband to refill her parent’s coffers.
Pageant coaches don’t come cheap.
“About what?” Morelli demands again.
“About how you’re not going to lay a finger on your daughter.”
“I don’t care what she told you. She’s always been a willful, spoiled child.”
“And you’ve always been a terrible liar. Why the hell Sarah Morelli stays with you, I have no idea. But I don’t think she’d stand by you if you lost the money. Or the power.”
“How dare you,” he sputters. “You’re nothing. A fucking child.”
I don’t bother looking at him when we talk. He’ll notice the slight. I’m twenty-nine years old. Young, compared to Bryant Morelli. Young compared to others in the game of money and power. It doesn’t stop me. “Is that so? You haven’t heard any rumors? You haven’t heard whispers? Then you’re even less well-connected than I thought.”
In the reflection, his eyes widen. Those same dark eyes that Eva has. It’s unnerving, the similarity. That’s the irony of family, I suppose. He’s heard the rumors. That’s the important thing.
Eva has her secrets. I haven’t forgotten what Leo said. Another Constantine? Who was the first? Well, I’ll find out. She isn’t the only one with secrets, though.
Hers are probably innocent. Mine are goddamn gruesome, but it doesn’t matter. At the moment it’s something I’m using to my advantage.
“Do we have an understanding?” I ask.
Silence. Then, “Yes.”
Without a word I leave the room and retrace my steps down the carpeted staircase. The gala has lost its appeal. I text my driver to pick me up at the entrance. It’s time to go.
Bryant Morelli will keep his promise, for now. Because he’s afraid of me. He should be, but eventually he’ll forget. Eventually he’ll hurt her again. She’s too loyal to walk away from her family, no matter how toxic and abusive they are.
I’ll have to watch over her from a distance.
I can’t have Eva Morelli, but I can protect her from afar.
* * *
Thank you for reading this holiday story set in the lush and dangerous Midnight Dynasty world! Finn Hughes and Eva Morelli will meet again. Sign up for the newsletter to find out when their full-length book comes out: www.dangerouspress.com/download.
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O Come All Ye Faithful
Amelia Wilde
Chapter One
Haley
The gown is too much.
Don’t get me wrong: I look so good. Maybe better than I’ve ever looked. I actually have no idea how Leo pulls this off time and again. Every dress he’s ever bought for me tops the last one. This one—floor length, the color of red wine, so expensive he wouldn’t tell me how much it cost—was made for me by a designer he flew in from France last week.
That’s a scenario that would make anyone lightheaded. A fancy French designer. A private jet. A small marathon of consultations and a finished product within two days.
For me. Haley Constantine. I was a Constantine who wasn’t really a Constantine until I made a deal with Leo Morelli, the Beast of Bishop’s Landing, a man known for his volatile temper and an affinity for violence.
And my own personal prince. My own personal fallen angel.
I twirl my engagement ring around my finger and try to look haughty in the mirror. Haughtiness probably isn’t the way to go for this event. I won’t be able to pull it off for very long with my heart in my throat.
Leo gave me everything I need to play the part. As a girl, I dreamed of the things the other Constantines had. Hair stylists and couture gowns and confidence. Leo hired the same woman he got for my birthday party to do my hair and makeup earlier this afternoon, and of course there’s the gown, but the confidence—
I’ll have to borrow some of his.
He sweeps into the closet like my thoughts have summoned him. I’m a wine-red jewel against the backdrop of all his black clothes, but he makes my breath catch. Leo wears a black-on-black tux. There’s not a single white shirt in this entire space. He has both hands at his neck, finishing his tie, but at the sight of me his gold-shot eyes widen and he puts both hands over his heart.
“It’s too much,” I say to his reflection. He prowls closer and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Leo’s nothing like he’s rumored to be. He keeps a tight leash on his temper. His anger only uses him under rare circumstances—most times, it’s the other way around. He uses the illusion of barely constrained rage to protect the people he loves.
Leo’s raking his eyes over me in the mirror as the heat of his body meets mine. I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s stunning. Dark eyes, dark hair, and so much power under his skin that the closet is too small to contain it. His gaze is so focused it feels like a physical touch. He follows it with one, wrapping a big hand around my wrist and tugging my arm behind my back. The other arm. He pins both wrists and pulls me back, close as he can get me, and peers at our reflection, satisfaction curving his mouth into the suggestion of a smile.
I look caught. Breathless. My chest rises and falls under the dress, faster now that he’s here, and the pink in my cheeks is deeper now. With his free hand, he traces a fingertip over my bare neck. For a fraction of an instant the pad of his finger tests my pulse. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was only about making me hot and wet, which of course it does. But I do know better. Leo likes to make sure my heart is still beating. It doesn’t seem to matter that he can see me breathing. Feeling is believing.
True for me, too. Sometimes, when I wake in the night from a terrible dream, the throb of Leo’s heartbeat is the only convincing thing.
He bows his head and kisses the side of my neck, his eyes on mine in the reflection. I really am going to stop breathing if he keeps doing that. It’s the same way he looked at me from between my thighs when he proposed.
“Excuse me?” he murmurs, and kisses the same spot
again. Slower this time, with a glancing nip that won’t leave a mark. Heat chases away the tension in my muscles and I give him my weight. It’s not possible for him to hold me up with my wrists in one hand. It shouldn’t be possible. “I didn’t hear what you said, darling. I was looking at the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I search out the leather of his belt and hold on. With my hands behind my back like this, I look like a captive. Fine. Good, even. I’m going to belong to him for the rest of my life. “It’s more than I—”
Leo turns my head and kisses me, and it’s the kind of kiss that would ruin the work of a stylist. Deep and possessive and biting. He tastes like mint and cold, though he hasn’t been outside. I didn’t think I could get more boneless and helpless but it happens. I’m liquid. He’s stone. I’m out of air by the time he lets me up again, turning my face back to the mirror for me.
I’m prepared for a wreck. Ready to exclaim that we’ll have to call the stylist back, we’ll have to get her to rush, but—
I’m in one piece. He hasn’t disturbed a hair on my head. The elegant knot is still in place, and so is my makeup, though my lips are slightly swollen and redder than they were before.
Leo squeezes my wrists, a light touch that says stay where you are, and reaches into his pocket. I feel almost unwell with love for him. The only solution is to get into bed immediately. But Leo has no intention of going to bed.
The necklace makes that clear.
He eases cool metal against my skin and skims his fingers around to the clasp at the back. Leo laughs, his grin heartstopping in the reflection, and I meet my own eyes there. They’re wide and shocked, as if I’ve just now discovered myself here. Rubies and diamonds and emeralds glint at my neck. “Okay,” I say. “This is too much. This is way, way too much.”
Leo finishes with the clasp and tugs my hands away from his belt. I get to watch in the mirror while he folds his arms over mine, pressing me fully against his body so I can feel his clothes and muscle and bone and exactly how much he’d like to fuck me right now. He looks me in the eye, through the glass.
