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.
“What I want is obedience,” I tell January. “That is the only thing I enjoy in a woman.”
She smiles. “Our history says you enjoy me more.”
It’s a statement so arrogant, it makes my blood boil. I can’t think of a retort. I drop into one of the velvet backed dining chairs and drink from the neck of my champagne. I will the alcohol to bring oblivion and free me from this situation.
“Enough,” I tell her. “You’ve made your point. Leave with Doc and Bobby. I want to be alone.”
Doc, now swigging from a bottle of JB, nudges January with his foot. “Go work your magic on him, Tesorina.”
January slides her legs off the table. “Is it okay if I touch you, Elliot?”
I despise that name, and as she stands in defiance of me, I despise January Whitehall. Ten seconds ago she was getting the life fucked out of her and now she looks like snow wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She’s exploiting us with her body, with her innocence. Her virginity is gone, but she remains as pure as she’s ever been and that feels like a curse. Like she’s taunting me.
“You may not touch me,” I tell her.
Her face falls and I feel a stab of something irrational, but something softer, too. “You can go to the bar and get me another bottle of Dom Pérignon,” I say.
She goes meekly, returning with a fresh green bottle. “Here you go, Mr. Morelli.”
When I take it from her, she drops to her knees on the floor before me. “Mr. Morelli, can you please touch me?”
I stare at her full breasts, her crimson lips. The excessiveness of her and the simplicity.
“No.”
I peel the foil away from the bottleneck. Alcohol is what I need. Alcohol and cigarettes, if Doc has any.
January tilts her head, staring at the front of my suit pants. My cock surges against my leg, betraying me.
“I think you want to play, Eli.”
“That’s because you’re a disobedient little slut.”
She smiles up at me, the picture of virtue. “I’m sorry,daddy.”
The air around me crackles. She said it again. The word that should only come out of her mouth while I’m fucking her into oblivion. “What did you just call me?”
“Daddy. Isn’t that what you want to be?”
I delicately place the champagne bottle on the floor. “Say it again?”
Her eyes widen. She’s scared and she should be. “D-daddy?”
I grab her by the hair, pulling it tight. The word thrums through me like a current. She called me daddy. Not sweetly as she should have done, but like a spoiled bitch. I’ll show herdaddy.
I drag her, gasping, to the edge of the table. Doc rolls out of the way as I bend January over so her round backside faces me. “Say it again.”
I expect her to cry, beg, but she just shakes her thighs so her ass bounces. “Daddy, everything between my legs hurts. Won’t you make it better?”
Bobby gives a low moan.
