Page 54 of Heartless Prince

14

Elias

Tatum’s head lolled forward,her body slumping against the restraints. After half an hour in the playroom, she was finally exhausted.

Dried mascara caked her cheeks from where she’d cried and begged me earlier, claiming she never lied. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Then I remembered what a fucking liar she was. What a liar she’d always been.

I put the whip away and headed back over to her, my eyes traveling over her stomach and then to her back as I stepped around her. She wasn’t bleeding. I didn’t hit her hard enough for that, only enough to raise pink welts on her pale skin.

She was still having an odd effect on me. I wanted to be far crueler to her, wanted her bleeding and screaming in agony, but something kept stopping me in the heat of the moment. Some treacherous voice in my head kept whispering that I would be better off humiliating her by making her want me instead.

I couldn’t deny that I’d enjoyed making her come in her cell last night. I loved the look of horrified guilt in her eyes afterwards, when the pleasure began to fade, and I loved the way her body quivered and clenched as she curled up and cried. The thought made me hard all over again. Unfortunately, she was too drained to blow me right now, and I couldn’t fuck her yet, even though she was dangling right in front of me, soaking through her panties with arousal.

My father was hell-bent on maintaining old Crown and Dagger traditions, and one of them was the Bonding ceremony. Once all the new girls had been given masters, they would lose their respective virginities to them during this ceremony. That included me and Tatum. So as much as I wanted to fuck my little doll’s brains out right now, make her scream and beg for me again, I couldn’t.

The ceremony was only a couple of days away, though. I could hold out that long.

Barely….

The sight of her shivering, nearly-naked body trussed up on the beam in front of me was almost enough to make me give into temptation and slide right into her slick pussy here and now. The only thing stopping me was the prospect of Crown and Dagger’s third level dangling in front of me like a carrot on a stick.

Part of the process of getting elected to the third level entailed gaining the complete trust of the other higher-up members. Breaking one of their favorite traditions and taking Tatum’s virginity tonight would anger them enough to never consider me. I wanted to know what the fuck the final level was all about, so I intended to obtain their consideration. That meant keeping my dick in my pants for now, as much as it pained me to do so.

Tatum suddenly let out a moan and mumbled the word ‘no!’ as she slumped below the beam. She was sleep-talking.

I stiffened, wondering if she was having a nightmare about the man who attacked her on the balcony earlier. That slimy fucking prick made me want to vomit. As much as I hated Tatum, I couldn’t stand the thought of her being hurt and fucked up the ass by some seventy-year-old sleazebag who refused to follow the rules.

Jealousy flared inside me at the mere thought of that man trying to take what wasn’t his. In fact, the idea of anyone else’s hands or dick going anywhere near my girl made angry red dots appear on the edge of my vision. Yes, I loathed Tatum, and I ultimately wanted to destroy her, but that task was for me and me alone. No one else could ever have her or touch her.

I released her wrists from the beam and picked her up, throwing her over my shoulder. She was light and easy to carry, and she stayed asleep as I carried her all the way back down to her cell in the underground section of the mansion.

She moaned, sleep-talking again as I put her down on the bed a few minutes later. “Ben…”

Hot anger flared in my chest. She wasn’t dreaming about the old guy, at least not anymore. She was dreaming about what she fucking did to him—Ben Wellington, my second cousin and best friend.

Even though we weren’t all that closely related (compared to a sibling or first cousin, anyway), my father was close to Ben’s father, so we practically grew up together, attending the same schools and vacationing with each other on my father’s private island just south of Martha’s Vineyard every summer. We were thick as thieves, and even when he went off to college on the other side of the country, we still caught up as often as we could. Private jet access certainly made it easier.

When I heard that he’d suddenly died at a party—a party I’d been invited to as well but couldn’t attend for some reason—it felt like my heart had detonated inside my body. Pure agony. My best friend, gone forever. Just like that.

The first discernible emotion I felt was torturous guilt, as if I could’ve somehow prevented it from happening if I’d gone to the party after all. Then the full story surrounding his demise came out, and the guilt dissipated until all I felt was boiling anger. The girl he’d been with that night was claiming he tried to sexually assault her, and in the ensuing struggle, he’d tripped and fallen over the edge.

My father and I knew it was bullshit from the second the Wellingtons called to tell us.

For one, Ben wasn’t a fucking rapist. He was wealthy and good-looking, and women constantly flocked to him. In our teen days, we’d have competitions to see who could score with the highest number of girls in one night, and he won just as often as I did. A guy like that didn’t need to drug girls to get laid, and if someone happened to reject him, he’d take it in his stride and move on. I’d seen it happen before; sometimes he struck out. He never attacked the girls who said no. He accepted they weren’t interested and moved on.

Secondly, there was footage from the wildlife cameras farther up the trail which proved what really happened. For some reason—some fucking bullshit to do with the discovery process of the trial—the footage was deemed inadmissible as evidence, and that smug little bitch Tatum continued to get away with her evil lies.

Unfortunately, there was also the issue of the secret witness who’d testified on her behalf, stating that he or she clearly saw Ben trip and fall of his own volition. That solidified Tatum’s innocence in the eyes of the justice system, and she got off scot-free. Given that she was a nobody and Ben was related to one of the most powerful men in the country, that was a huge deal. Whoever this secret witness was, it had to be someone very fucking credible. Someone whose word couldn’t be disputed or disbelieved under any circumstances.

Obviously, it wasn’t a friend or family member of Tatum, because any one of them would have a good reason to lie on her behalf. So whoever it was, they were probably a stranger to her. I still wanted to know who the fuck it was, though, because they were just as much of a filthy liar as Tatum.

I glared down at her as she dozed on the narrow-framed bed. She was still moaning softly in her sleep, calling out for Ben again. My hands curled into fists by my side.

I wanted to grab her and choke her until her face turned purple.

The fact that she spread such vicious lies about Ben made his death so much fucking harder to swallow. If it was truly an accident, I could’ve moved on. I could’ve grieved and eventually let go. But she made sure I couldn’t do that. She smeared him, made everyone believe he was a would-be rapist, when all the while, she was the corrupt one.

When the case was dismissed despite the fact he was purposefully pushed off that cliff, my whole world turned black. My feet kept moving and the Earth kept spinning on its axis, but I felt frozen in time, trapped in dark amber until I could have some sort of vengeance. I wanted to make Tatum confess her sins, wanted to make her feel the same sort of pain she made me feel when she killed Ben.

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