My stomach flutters. How can I possibly keep up with both of them? But even as I think it, my flower contracts, informing me that she needs more. I guess I’ll figure it out along the way. I move to take Doc’s hand and Eli emerges from the darkness and slams the champagne bottle on the table. “This ends now.”
I curl under his furious gaze, but Doc squares up to him. “She stated her terms, Morelli. You didn’t wanna play along. It’s over. Basher and I are gonna take her up to my room and nail her.”
“No one moves.”
“Fuck you.”
Eli pounds a fist into his chest. “I’m the boss of this family.”
“Boss, not the fucking king. Don’t take it out on the girl because you’re too proud to say what’s obvious.”
“And what’s obvious?”
“You’re in love with her,” Doc says coldly. “That scares you, so you want to control everything about her, and you can’t. So, do what you told me to do.”
“And that is?”
“Suck it up and give in.”
Eli stares at Doc with something close to hatred, then he looks at me. His eyes are so dark, I can barely see the amber.
“January, come here.Now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Elliot Morelli
I’m losing control.
The thought echoes through my head, undulled by champagne or lust. January kneels on the table, naked and covered in sweat and whatever Doc and Bobby have left on her but she looks exquisite. More stunning than she did in silk and rubies. It’s the look on her face, the defiant tilt of her chin. She knows her power now. I could see it as she fucked my brothers, her mind expanding to take in new pleasure and exude new strength. She shifts closer to the edge of the table, but she doesn’t get down. She doesn’t obey. It makes me want to hurt her. To take her so roughly she’s left wearing my bruises like jewels.
“Come, Miss Whitehall,” I repeat. “Come and I won’t punish you.”
She stares at me with her luminous green eyes. She doesn’t move.
Doc loops his hands around her stomach. “Don’t you dare give in, Tits.”
“Let go,” I say. “She’s not yours.”
“She’s not yours either, Morelli.”
January pushes Doc’s restraining hands from her belly. “It’s okay. I want to go to Eli.”
“Is this… are you choosing him?” Doc asks.
The question makes my heart stop, but January shakes her head. “I want to belong to all of you. I want to live here and cook and work in a café as a barista.”
“Sweet.” Doc collapses back onto the table. “Hand me the JB, Basher.”
I glare at him. “Get dressed and leave. That’s an order. And you,” I point my Dom Pérignon bottle at January. “No woman of mine is going to work, least of all in food service.”
She tosses her shiny hair over her shoulder. “Then I can’t be yours, at least not the way you want me to be.”
“You’re wrong,” I tell her. “You’ll be exactly what I want you to be.”
She stands. The face of an angel, a body bred for sin. “I think that you’ve wanted someone like me for a long time, Eli. Someone to challenge you. Someone to share with the men you love.”
I have wanted someone like her. Idowant someone like her. I want her to sit at the swirling center of Velvet House and make all of our miserable lives better. But I don’t like the way she commanded me to apologize to Adriano. As though she were the one with all the power.
