Chapter 4
“I can’t believeit’s HIM.”
That’s the third time my sister has blurted it on our call, and I don’t blame her. Ruby’s the only one who knows about Luca.
At first, I didn’t want to admit it to my sister or my friends that I may have fallen for a man I fucked in a sex club. A stranger who I never saw again. Not like they’d judge me. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.
Hell, I don’t want to admit it now.
But after I saw Luca again today? After I watched him hold his daughter like she belonged on his arm and nowhere else. He loves her. He’d never leave her.
That’s got to be this shitty feeling nagging inside my chest. I can’t catch a full breath.
Even a year ago, Ruby knew something was off. I was acting weird and not listening to her latest drama with her boyfriends, so I finally confessed, “I caught the Fuck Flu.”
That’s what we call it; when you fuck someone, and it makes you sick with feelings.
“Girl, are you serious?” Ruby couldn’t believe it. “After only one night?”
“Well, what else can it be?” I asked her. “What else explains this sick feeling clawing in my chest like I’m missing something and this heat I feel, though I don’t have a fever? I can’t stop thinking about him.”
Ruby’s like me. We share the same scars and won’t let anyone hurt us again. We don’t fall for anyone.
Or so I thought.
And yes, my sister’s name is Ruby. She’s a year younger than me. Then there’s Rose and Cherry, the youngest. You get the trend—red.
If you ask me, Cherry got off the worst.
Anyway.
“Yes, it’s HIM,” I tell her again. “And god must hate me because I work for him now.”
Pressing my phone to my ear, I stare through my sliding glass doors. Moonlight sparkles over the wide Cooper River.
I love my dockside condo on the tenth floor with its sweeping views. I love my new puppy, a cute mutt I rescued. I named him Crimson, of course. And I love my new red Alpha Romeo Stelvio. I love everything I’ve worked hard for, earning good money at a job I love, too.
Me and my sisters come from nothing. After my dad bailed on us, my mom did her best. She kept our trailer clean and fridge stocked, but she was never there, working long hours to support us. So I watched over my sisters, and we were fine until he came along—the stepdad from hell. Now, I realize he targeted my mom, a woman with daughters.
“God doesn’t hate you,” Ruby chides. “Maybe it’s a hot blessing y’all met again.”
“No, it’s a HIF.”
“You and your HIFs,” she huffs. “Your life is not fucked.”
“Fine. Then Luca’s a hot blessing with a big dick I can never fuck again, or it will be a HIF—How I’ll get Fired.”
“Honey, with the way you say he fucked you…four times in one night! And the way his tongue cleaned your pussy like a Lysol lover after each time. I wouldn’t give a damn about my job.”
Ruby’s the only sister who knows my kinks and deeds. She doesn’t care that I fucked Luca in a sex club.
Once, when she was a senior in high school, I came home and caught her messing around with two football players when Mom wasn’t there.
There’s no shame between us.
It’s Cherry who’s the survivor, the sister I almost killed for. She keeps a lot of things private, and I understand.
“Cherry’s only a sophomore,” I remind Ruby. “I’ve got two more years of her college to pay for, so no, I’m not getting fired over a big dick.”
“Can I at least come to his hotel and meet him?” Ruby teases. “I mean, I know who Luca Mercier is. The whole world does. But I want to shake the hand of the man you called ‘Master’ because that is not the Scarlett I know. You usually want men on their knees.”
“Yeah, well, get this—” I tell her, “he’s a widower, too. He still wears his wedding band, and for a second, I thought he cheated on his wife with me until he told me and my boss that his wife died four years ago.”
“Oh, my god,” Ruby sighs. “Why does that make him even hotter?”
“Hotter?” I refresh the water in Crimson’s bowl before I set it on the floor. He laps it up while I add, “No, that makes him damaged in the most heartbreaking way because you should see his daughter, Gia. She’s so cute. She reminds me of Cherry when she was little, all precocious and shit.”
“Uh-huh.” I can see Ruby shaking her head. “Watch:” she says, “y’all will get married one day.”
“Married? Even if Luca wasn’t my client, I ain’t his type.”
I give a treat to Crimson, who eagerly chews it, leaving crumbs and slobber on my white tile floors.
“You sure were his type for a night.” Ruby jokes. “He left hickeys and bruises between your thighs. And on your neck. Oh, and on your tits, too, you said. Girl, he marked your ass like a Sex Sharpie.”
“Exactly. One night.”
I turn back to the one outside, stepping onto my balcony and sliding the glass door back quickly before Crimson can escape. A tanker sparkles on the water, slowly gliding across the wide river, seeking its path to the Atlantic, which I also glimpse.
“Luca Mercier is a fancy billionaire who’s all class, and I’m a redneck who’s all trash,” I remind my sister. “Yeah, he fucked me for a night and loved calling me his whore, and that’s why I’m not the kind of woman he’d marry.”
“Hush your fuss,” Ruby interrupts my logic. “You ain’t trash. You’re hot as fuck, and you said you could tell he felt something, too. That’s why he left you all dickmatized and brokenhearted. I’ve never seen my tough sister so soft for a man. Usually, you never trust them.”
I don’t argue with her. That’s what I told her the next day because I know what Luca and I felt.
I did trust him.
I trusted him to have me however he wanted, and he didn’t let me down. Luca took our bodies to heights I didn’t know were possible to share with a man, and afterward, he gently held me on the sofa in the middle of the club like no one else was there, resting his chin on my head, kissing my hair and softly rubbing my back. It felt so new and natural. I was open, tender, and exposed to him.
When the bartender announced the club was closing, Luca said he didn’t want to leave, and I believed him.
But then he shocked me.
Darkly, he murmured some prophetic words before he got up, grabbed his jeans and shirt, and yanked them on. I sat there, speechless, too proud to ask what had changed because I couldn’t believe the sight, silently watching Luca Mercier walk out of the club while he left me there, naked, on the sofa we had shared all night.
It was cruel and not the man I thought I had just met.
Our first time, when Luca was on top of me, thrusting into me, he gazed down, letting me see the passion he felt but the tears he fought, too. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t speak.
His crystal eyes were so full of pain and pleasure, and he shared it with me. I swear, I felt it, too. It’s like he wanted me to take what he suffered, and I did. Everything Luca made me feel made me come.
Then, he roared with his first orgasm, spilling inside me, bruising the wrists he held pinned above my head before he leaned down, kissing my lips. Then, his brutal body wouldn’t relent. He became ruthless and addictive all night.
But our first tender moment was real and raw, and it was my ruin.
Not until Luca was gone did I finally let my clenching heart bleed. My past and present collided, and there was no way I could fight the pain flooding my chest. I sat naked on the sofa, alone.
Luca left without a word. He left me crying.
Just like my dad left me.
And it’s tortured me ever since. Did Luca use me? Was I really a whore? A filthy one-night distraction from his pristine life?
I mean, how buck wild can the father to a little girl really get?
I didn’t get the impression the sex club was a regular place for him. It wasn’t for me either. I was there for my friends, to watch Cade and Redix celebrate their Dirty Thirty birthday with their lover, Silas. I wasn’t there to get my heart broken, but I did.
“Yeah, well,” I answer my sister. “I was a fool to trust Luca that night. Because he’s hiding something, I can tell.”
“Bitch, Luca Mercier is so fine; he can hide his Mr. Big in any backyard he pleases.” Ruby halts, reading my mind. “And you said he told you that night he also called you?—”
My phone beeps, interrupting her with another call. I check the screen. “Oh fuck,” I mutter. “It’s HIM. He’s calling me.”
“He’s got your number?”
“Yes, I work for him now, remember? I gotta go. Bye.”
My fingertip shakes, ending the call with my sister and accepting the call from my boss, the cruel maledom I can never fuck again.
“Hello?”
“MS. JONES.” Luca needs to STOP sounding like an orgasm of the tongue. “Am I interrupting a date?”
I snap, “I’m not paid enough to make my dates your business.”
He pauses, processing my sass. “Indeed. Then, is it too late to discuss work?”
“No. Shoot.” I try to sound in control, but I’m not. My thighs weaken, so I plop in the chair on my balcony. “Whadayawant?”
That question can be answered a million forbidden ways, and he chuckles at it.
“I called to discuss…”
He hesitates, and I hold my breath.
Are we going to be adults and talk about it? About how he called me his “beautiful whore” while he fucked me against the wall, the second of four times. I clawed at his back, making him moan for more before he grabbed my throat, growling, “Yes, my whore. My beautiful whore. Fight me. Make me fuck you. Your pussy is mine. You’ll come for me. You’ll kneel for me. Won’t you?”
That’s exactly what he said. My pussy won’t let me forget because it made me mewl, “Yes,” before he choked me while I came in his grasp.
But now he says, “Your attire for the job.”
Well, knock me out of the chair with a tissue.
“My attire?” I snarl. “You want to discuss what I’ll wear while I protect your daughter? That’s the important discussion we need to have?”
“I suppose there are several things we should discuss,” he threatens, “like your beautiful boss who can never know about our past. Is that clear, Ms. Jones?”
I shake my head, feeling the rage boil again. “Yes, Mr. Mercier, let’s discuss.” I begin. “First, if you tell my boss about us and get me fired, I’ll armbar your shoulder so hard, you won’t be able to jerk off again. You’ll have to hump your pillow. And second, I’ll wear what I can fight in. A business suit with pants.”
“You’ll stand out. None of the women who work for me wear pants. They wear skirts or dresses.”
My eyes narrow. “Why? Is that your sexist dress code? Men get to wear sensible pants, but women must submit and wear dumbass tight skirts? And let me guess—stupid high heels, too?”
He growls, “You’ve got a lot of attitude in your tone, Ms. Jones.”
“You’ve got a lot of shitty asshole in yours, Mr. Mercier.”
That makes him suddenly laugh. “You know I’m an ass-man.” Then, he pauses. “And you wore heels today.”
“Yeah, because it was a debriefing meeting. But I can’t fight in heels.”
“I disagree. I’ve seen what you can do in heels and a skirt. And you do it very well, I might add.”
Fucking dickhead. A really big, thick dickhead.
He liked teasing my entrance with it, making it gape while he circled his thumb over my clit until I was begging for each stretching inch he slowly tortured me with and…
Quit it, bitch. You’re thinking with your lusty loins and not your brain because…
Is he flirting with me again?
Yes, I wore a black pencil skirt and a matching leather bustier the night we met. And yeah, I wore heels to a sex club. What was I supposed to wear? Flip-flops while I got railed for an audience?
“It’s the culture of my business.” Luca fills my silence. “I’d never impose such a rule. But we are a five-star, European line of luxury hotels with select American properties. My staff, men and women, bring their mostly French fashion with them. But it’s your job, Ms. Jones, your decision.”
I’m quiet, feeling my cheeks flame while my heart pounds.
Am I angry or aroused?
“Your luxury suite and executive office will be ready when you arrive tomorrow morning,” he continues. “Wear whatever you like when you accompany us to Gia’s open house tomorrow, though it’s an elite, private school. You may want to blend in there, too.”
The bossy fucker isn’t wrong.
Yes, I need to blend in. I need to look like Luca Mercier’s French, high-class personal assistant, not like I’m running for president.
The fact that I suspect that’s a dirty kink for him—the powerful boss and his sexy secretary—is going to burn through me and my wallet. I can’t afford the expensive role-play fantasy or these feelings.
As if Luca can read my mind, he says, “I will give you my company credit card tomorrow. Mercier Hotels will pay for your attire. It’s part of the job. Go shopping for whatever you need. Pants. Skirts. Guns. Black lacy panties.”
“Stop it.”
Luca is flirting with me, and suddenly, it hurts. I hate it. I stare at the river, remembering how I wore black panties that night, how Luca ripped them off of me, and rapid tears sting my eyes, catching me off-guard.
I let him do so much to me.
“You got what you wanted that night, and then you left me,” I mutter. “And it won’t ever happen again.”
He doesn’t answer. The only sound is a distant ship’s horn across the water, and now I feel as inky and churning as that river. Deep currents of pain wash through me, and I guess I’ve been holding this in.
How Luca left me feeling used.
How he did something to me, and I don’t know what it is.
How men never get inside me, but he did.
Yes, I have a tough exterior. It’s my job. It’s how I survived. But I know, my sisters know, how we all slept in the same bed. How I’d sleep by the edge while they slept closer to the wall, so I could protect them. So, if my stepdad came for one of us in the night, it would be me.
I never trusted him, and I was right. I acted brave when really…I cried silent, broken tears. I was so afraid, so hurt that our father left us. He left us at risk, and it was like I became the dad.
The tough one.
But I’m not.
I’m very human, and Luca left me very hurt. It’s a pain that cuts too deep, and I have no one to blame but myself because I let him do it.
“We both got what we wanted that night, Ms. Jones,” Luca cooly replies. “You said it first. You said you wanted to be my whore, so I was honest with you. I told you I wouldn’t be gentle. I warned you I’d be rough, and it’d only be for a night. I told you that I would use you, and you could use me, and you agreed to those terms.”
“You said you weren’t a man,” I reply, caught in the memory of how he yanked my bustier down, pinching my nipples for others to watch, to hear him make me moan. “You said you were an animal who’d make me come. That’s it.”
“Exactly,” he soothes. “And I fulfilled my promise. I did make your pussy come, Ms. Jones.” His accent is ruthless. It’s strangling the life from me again, all my emotions surging at the sound of it. “Do you remember how many times I made you come?” He coaxes, “Do you remember the first time I made you come for me…Scarlett?”
Oh my god, the way Luca says my name.
He’s doing it again. He’s storming back inside me, seizing control of what he owns when I know he’ll only leave again. It wets my cheeks with tears but heats my core with lust, and why do I love his torture?
Only Luca does this to me.
“Do you remember,” he baits me, “how I told you to lift your skirt and pull your black, lacy panties aside so you could play with your pretty pussy for me? And you did. You loved submitting to me. Your breasts were exposed, your beautiful pink nipples got so hard. You let strangers watch you fuck your fingers for me and moan my name while you came before I told you to smear your sweet, creamy cum on my lips before I sucked them clean.”
“Luca.” I sigh his name again, my body drowning in the memory, my stomach flipping, rousing my pussy with sweet pain.
God, I miss him.
There’s no one like him.
“Do it again for me, Belle.” That’s what Luca called me that night—Belle—beautiful. “Play with your pussy for me now while I remind you of how I sat on the sofa and you stood over me. How I spread you open so others could watch how I fucked you with my tongue and sucked your clit so hard, you were dripping down my chin.
“You were so strong, Belle, grabbing my hair and suffocating me in that wet pussy. Oh, and your ass is so sweet, too. I couldn’t stop licking it. I wanted to eat you alive, and I did. I made you come three times on my face while others watched me do it, and you loved being my whore for them.”
“You loved it, too,” I answer, feeling my nipples ache under my tank top.
It’s all I’m wearing. I was ready to go to bed before Ruby’s call, and now, I tug my thong aside, gliding my finger over my clit that’s been screaming for him all day.
I can hate him, and he can hurt me, but still, I want him.
“You loved fucking me while others watched,” I sigh. “You loved pulling your hard cock out of my pussy and making me lick my cum off of it before you fucked me more, making me confess to everyone how I was your whore. Only your whore. You moaned whenever I said it—your whore. And you’re doing it now, aren’t you, Luca? You’re getting off on this; you’re getting off on me.”
“To your voice, Belle,” he says. “To that pussy I know is so wet for me. I’m hard as hell and lying on my bed, stroking my cock and remembering how you told me to fuck you so hard. ‘Harder, motherfucker,’ you screamed. You bit my neck, growling, ‘Make me your fucking whore.’ And we hurt each other until we both came. So. Many. Times. My belle.”
“Is that what you love, Luca? Giving pain while you fuck?”
“I don’t love. I don’t FUCK,” he snarls. “I destroy.”
Yes, he does.
Luca bombs your walls. He ravages your world. Any shame, pride, or reason you have? Gone. He fucks like an evil conquerer, erasing who you were before while he claims your flesh and you are…
You’re owned.
You’re his.
You belong to Luca now.
“Now show me my sweet pussy,” he demands. “Turn your camera on and fuck your fingers for me again.”
I already am, teasing my entrance and grinding my palm over my clit. I stand up on my balcony to be more shameless about it, pushing my thong down to my thighs.
“Let me watch you, too,” I demand. “I want to watch how I make you come so hard, don’t I? Your cock’s dripping for me, isn’t it? I get you so hard, so fast. You can’t get enough of my naughty pussy submitting to you, can you? I make your legs and lips shake, Luca. You need me, too.”
“Fuck,” he huffs, switching our call to a video first, and I moan at the sight, desire making me sway, dizzy.
It’s been forever and like yesterday since I’ve seen Luca’s naked body. His massive, shredded naked body. He’s lying on his bed, his bronze skin dark against his white sheets. Thrusting his swollen cock into his choking grasp, he holds his phone overhead like I’m on top of him again. There’s no hair on his chest, so every hard curve of his huge pecs and deep carve through his defined abs flexes for my view while he fucks his fist.
“Fuck, Belle, yes, you make me come so hard.” He demands, “Fuck your pussy, too. You love being a slut for me, don’t you?”
When I switch to video, too, he groans, surprised. “You’re outside.”
“Yes, I’m on my balcony.” I flip on the electric lantern on the end table beside my chair. It glows over my skin as I lift my tank and leave it resting above my breasts before I pinch my nipple, tugging it for him and biting my lip.
“Oh, my belle,” he growls. “You get so dirty for me, don’t you? Playing with yourself and letting strangers watch.”
“Yes,” I answer him. “Now pump that big dick harder. I wanna watch you squirt your cum all over your abs for me.”
He grins. “How do you ask?”
And I remember wetting even more to what he demands.
“Please, Master,” I entice, “stroke your big dick for me.”
“You dirty girl, drop your wet panties first.”
I grin, shoving them down to my ankles before I step out of them. When I stand back up, I hold my phone so he can watch me step my thighs apart.
“Yes, my belle,” he says, the veins in his forearm tensing as his grip strangles, his strokes getting faster. “Now fuck your hand. That’s it. Slide two fingers inside. Yes… Nice and slow… Just like that… Now, pump them in and out for me. Yes, dirty girl, let me watch. Let me hear how wet you are for me… Um, yes, roll your hips too. Keep going. Play with your clit, and let me watch. Let me hear you spank that wet pussy for me.”
This is exactly how I came the first time for him, and I’m right here again—not caring who can see me. Not worried about what’s next. I only want this now and with him.
What Luca conjures inside me is all I need to feel. Adored. Desired. It’s how I’m supposed to feel. Cared for. It’s too good to be wrong.
“Keep going, my belle,” he urges, and I will skate on the edge of death for him because my orgasm is here. It’s right here for him. “Are you my whore? Playing with your pussy for me? Does it feel good?”
I’m shaking for him. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Luca,” I sigh. “Yes, Master, I’m all yours. I’m your little whore.”
“Then show me. Let me watch you come for me.” His cock is dripping. Its veins are swelling in his pumping grasp, his eyes glaring wild while his lips part with mine.
And it’s brutal.
It’s torture.
It’s incredible how I fuck myself so hard with my fingers; I come for him. My shoulders lurch, my pussy clenching around my fingers. It hurts so good, but I won’t break my stare. I look right at him on the screen as I cry out, “Luca,” my scream echoing across the water.
“Show me your cum,” he huffs, and he’s so close. When I hold my milky fingers up, licking them for his gaze, he grunts, “Fuck, yes, Scarlett.” Throwing his chin back, he grunts again, his back bowing, locking the muscles on his entire frame while ivory ropes of his release spurt over his hard abs, and he gasps, “Fuck, Belle. Ma flamme.” More cum spurts, over and over, from his tip while he moans, “Scarlett,” and I swear I could come again at the sound, at the sight.
Luca is so beautiful when he comes.
It’s like the only moment he’s not in power, he’s not in pain.
But I don’t come again. My sanity returns, remembering how that night ended because this one has to end, too.
“Ma flamme,” Luca had sighed our last time while he was still inside me, making me fight tears. I clung to his back, to a feeling that had no name while he held me.
“Don’t leave,” I pleaded that night, and he said he didn’t want to.
For minutes, we lay on the sofa, with me in his arms, him kissing my hair, and I trusted he’d stay until he muttered, “It only dies,” before pulling away from me. “I always kill it,” he murmured, leaving my body empty, taking my heart with him.
Sitting in my car in the club’s parking lot, I looked it up that night. Crying for the stranger who left me burned, I looked up those words, and they mean “my flame” in French.
And tonight, I’m silent again. I can’t move. I’m that same woman, on fire for him, and Luca can see it. It’s the same look I had in my eyes the night he left me. It rises from someplace deep inside, and I hate him seeing me like this.
Vulnerable.
Hurt.
“It was a mistake, Belle,” he speaks of us now, though he’s covered in his desire for me. “We were a grave mistake, and it will never happen again.”
“Good night.” I end the call because I won’t beg him this time. My tears won’t fall. This is business now, and I’ll get used to it.
The hell of wanting a man who leaves.