Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(47)

I’d been counting.

He found me in Sarah’s solarium, sitting at the edge of the large koi pond hidden among the greenery, an exact replica she’d had made of the one at Lion Court. I liked to sit there listening to the trickle of water while I struggled to read through my textbooks, the words merging together until my head ached.

I was so startled by his appearance, I almost fell into the fucking pond. He didn’t laugh at me the way Carter might have or offer to help me despite his fear like Eva. Instead, he threw something at me.

I caught it reflexively, the book slim in my hands. On the cover, a photo of a marble bust and the words “Oedipus Rex.”

“They wrote a book about you and Mom,” Lucian told me, his tone impossible to read, his expression flat.

He turned on his heel and left.

It was a cruel present when I struggled to read at the best of times with my dyslexia, but I was eager, happy almost that he’d given me a present. I was eager to read it and I spent the next month painstakingly moving through the pages.

Only to realize the extent of cruelty the book represented.

It was a tragic story about a man who unwittingly killed his own father and married his mother. When he realized what had transpired, he gouged out his own eyes.

The next time Lucian sought me out, he seemed surprised to see my eyes remained in my head.

Fucked up didn’t even begin to describe the Morelli family dynamic.

“So, what’re you doing with them?” my mother asked, her diamond-encrusted fingers trembling as she raised the martini to her mouth. “You wouldn’t mention them if you didn’t think they would be useful in taking that cunt Caroline down.”

I didn’t bat an eye at her language even though most people who thought of Sarah Morelli would conjure an image of the beautiful, polite, and much younger wife of Bryant instead of the cursing, pill-popping drunk he’d turned her into behind closed doors.

“There’s something there,” I agreed vaguely.

“You like them,” she ventured, much shrewder than anyone ever gave her credit for. “You don’t want to use them like this?”

“I will,” I said with a shrug.

“Of course. You’ve always done what you were told.” Her voice was as bitter as it was full of pride. She enjoyed my loyalty but hated Bryant’s use of me. “Nothing matters more than taking down the Constantines. You know that better than most.” She swept her hand down my arm, then tapped a finger to the tattoo on my left hand, a cherub crying blood. “They’ve taken so much from you. From this family.”

I didn’t respond, but then, I didn’t have to.

Sarah had been there through all of it, silently waiting in the wings to comfort me after all the bigger players on the board made their moves. It never occurred to her to stand up for her children. It stopped occurring to us a long time ago to ask.

In addition, she had her own vendettas and prejudices against the Constantines. Against Caroline, the woman who broke her husband before she ever got a chance at loving him.

“How old are they?”

“Seventeen and seven.”

I thought of Brando convulsing on the floor of the kitchen, of his smiles when I taught him to fight like Iron Man in the ring, of the sound of his voice endlessly babbling to Ezra or Walcott or Henrik, whoever would listen. He was as bright and green as lime juice squeezed straight from the fruit. It was impossible not to be drawn in by his candor and charm.

Then Bianca, so much older in age and soul, those big blue eyes filled with history I wanted to unearth like an archeologist. I wanted to pillage her for treasure, use her for my schemes and other, darker desires that seemed to surge further with shocking regularity.

My hand twitched where it lay on my thigh, remembering the sharp impact of the bamboo cane against the sweet, lush curve of her kilt-covered ass. The sweet schoolgirl bent over for me. It was a provocative image, but too generic. I hadn’t imagined when I ordered her to bend over for me that I would be like wet steel beneath my trousers as her pain blossomed into pleasure, her tears so pretty, her cries like music.

“You’re old enough to be their father.” Sarah’s voice interrupted my salacious memories. “The teenager, Bianca, isn’t it? She’s pretty?”

I shot her an unamused glance. “Not all of us fancy jailbait, Mother.”

She laughed at me, her tragic eyes flashing with mirth. In a way, they reminded me of Bianca’s. Unwittingly, I wondered if Bianca would end up like her one day, tragic enough to drown her sorrows in a bottle and her regrets in a pill-induced fog. A shiver of dread dripped down my spine like ice water.

“They shouldn’t make gardeners so cute,” she said coyly.

“And pool boys?”

Her eyes sparkled as she shrugged. “The odd instructor too. Those yogis are so limber.”

I shook my head at her, but it felt good to make her laugh. I didn’t usually evoke that response in people, and she didn’t usually give it.

“Are you attracted to her?” she asked, because she thought being my mother meant having the right to invade my privacy.

For the most part, I let her.

Her possessiveness was unhealthy, but it was all I had.

Still, I didn’t tell her about the way my body responded to Bianca. About how the sight of her tears when I wrenched off her locket made my dick hard. How my blood burned when she took up her verbal foil and sparred with me. How I’d almost tossed her into the pond and fucked her among the waterlilies after taking that bamboo switch to her ass. She wasn’t afraid of me, which was rare, but even more unique was the glimpse I caught sometimes in that bright blue gaze that suggested she might want me to hurt her. After last night, I was sure that she did.