IT HURT, BUT MOLLY had expected it would.
She’d been told a thousand stories of terrible, horrible pain the first time, but people didn’t seem to let that stop them from having sex. She didn’t intend to let it stop her.
Because there was something right on the other side of the pain. Something almost seductive, like a new kind of fire. Molly knew that no matter what, she wanted to taste it.
For his part, Constantine looked poleaxed. He stared down at her, an expression she couldn’t begin to interpret on that beautiful face of his.
And to her impatient fury, he didn’t move.
So she did.
Molly might not have done this before, but she understood the mechanics. Or she understood them well enough, anyway, to lift her hips and try to press herself into that bright, sharp pain. Especially when it made him tight all around her, that astonishing body of his nearly vibrating as he held himself still.
“Molly—”
But she ignored him, rocking herself against that insistent press of his need until it hurt too much to bear. Then she pulled in a ragged breath and impaled herself.
And then lay there beneath him, panting.
Impaled and panting.
“That was very foolish,” Constantine gritted out, in dampening tones.
“Only if it’s bad.” Molly laughed a bit at that, aware that it was shaky at best, but that didn’t make her stop. “Is it going to be bad?”
And he still didn’t look...quite like him. Something of that internal storm that so marked him was gone. Or not gone, exactly, but not the same. His dark gaze seemed flooded with gold.
Meaning she did, too.
He shifted over her so he could brush moisture she hadn’t known was beneath her eyes away with his thumbs, as he held her head in place. Not in a way that made her feel held down, but in a way that made her feel precious.
She melted a little at that, inside and out.
“No,” he said gruffly, his gaze intense. “I can promise you, it will not be bad.”
And then he kissed her.
Molly found it was different from the kisses that had come before. She would have said it was sweeter, but this was Constantine—and he was inside her. What sweetness could there possibly be?
And yet she thought of the honeyed sweetness she’d eaten in Skiathos, the richness on her tongue.
Constantine was better.
He kissed her and he kissed her, as if he wasn’t buried deep inside her body. As if there was no hurry whatsoever. His chest brushed against her breasts as he held her face, and she hadn’t thought that she was tense at all until she felt herself relax beneath him. Until she was melting into that kiss, pouring herself into the dance of his tongue and hers.
And slowly, surely, everything changed.
Until she felt as if both of them were liquid sunshine, tangled all around each other. The newness, the shock of his penetration began to change, too, rolling into a kind of molten thing. Bright. Warm, then hot.
Then hotter still, laced through with all that shine.
And only when she sighed a little against his mouth, running her own hands up and down the glorious planes and muscles of his back, did he lift his head and smile down at her.
She thought he was about to say something, likely something cutting and indisputably him.
But instead, he began to move.
And it was unlike anything she had ever experienced before in her life.
The heat of it. That unbearable, unimaginable slide, each one hotter than the last. Each one sending intensity and sensation searing through her. Into her limbs, lighting her up, making her dig her heels into the sofa they lay on so she could lift herself up to meet each impossibly beautiful thrust.
She’d spent her whole life posing for pictures and pretending, but this was real.
This was him, and her, and a slick joining that changed her every time he plunged deep inside. Changed her, then taught her.
Then it made her new.
Until she not only couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them, she lost track of all those differences she’d maintained within herself, too.
This was too real for separations. This was too powerful.
Molly felt a different kind of quaking come over her and almost protested, because it was too soon. She wanted this to go on forever. And she couldn’t tell if she cried because she knew it couldn’t or because of the sudden surge of wildfire ecstasy that ripped through her, making her arch up against him and cry out.
She thought she might even have said his name.
But he didn’t stop. He kept going, and that explosion shifted as his thrusts grew harder, more demanding.
All that golden light turned to fire. And her whole body seemed to light up, burning red and hot from the inside out.
And he knew. She could tell he knew, because he gathered her beneath him, his hands gripping her hips, as he pounded into her.
Molly met him, reveled in him, and to her surprise, shattered once more.
And that time, heard her name on his mouth as he followed.
She could feel a kind of oblivion beckoning, but she fought it off, because she didn’t want to miss a moment of this. Of Constantine, his face next to hers and that remarkably powerful body of his laid out over her as if wanting her that much had made him weak.
How had she missed out on this for so long?
But on the heels of that thought came another one, and she almost made a sound in response. What if she had given in to one of the many invitations she’d received over the years and done that with anyone but Constantine?
She shuddered at the thought.
And nothing had been settled between them, but she didn’t care. Because Molly might have been lost as a sixteen-year-old girl, but she’d been perfectly clear about one thing. That it was him. That it had always been and would always be him.
And she’d been right.
“Come,” he said in a low voice.
Molly didn’t have time to think about how or why his voice was different, only that it was. Because he was lifting her up, hoisting her into his arms as if she was one of those dainty, tiny girls who men were always toting about as easily as they heaved pints to and fro.
She felt a delicious sort of softness everywhere. She liked it. And so she did nothing at all but tuck her head beneath his chin, the better to contemplate the gorgeous strength of his collarbone, his neck, the underside of his jaw as he moved.
He carried her into the bedroom he’d claimed in this penthouse when they’d arrived, then brought her to a large, ornate bed that looked like the sort of thing whole French revolutions had been fought to protest.
Fitting, really, for Constantine Skalas.
He placed her down on the grandiose bed, then straightened, looking at her with a dark, unreadable look on his face that probably should have made Molly feel self-conscious.
But it didn’t. Nothing could. Not when she felt like this, loose and beautiful and made entirely new.
His jaw tightened, and he turned, walking off into what she assumed was the en suite bathroom.
Sure enough, she heard the sound of water, and for once, was perfectly happy to simply stay where she was and wait to see what might happen.
Constantine was there at her side again in a moment, with a warm, damp cloth he pressed between her legs, and that was what made her suddenly feel...vulnerable.
“I had no idea that you were serious.” His voice was almost too low to hear, a thread of darkness between them. Almost. “It never occurred to me that you could possibly be an innocent.”
“Not anymore,” she said brightly, and she didn’t know what to do with that look in his eyes. She didn’t know what to do, so she got back onto her knees, and ran her hands over his chest where he stood beside the bed. She reveled in the feel of her palms against his skin, his muscles, him.
“Molly.”
Her name was a command, but she had no intention of heeding it. She let her hands wander where they would until one made its way down that fascinating arrow of hair to find his sex. Almost accidentally.
He was so hard, though not as hard as he had felt inside her. She wrapped her fingers around the width of him and he thickened, and Molly smiled. Because that, too, felt like a power she wished she’d known she’d had all this time.
“Molly,” he said again, now sounding very nearly stern. “I do not think—”
“Can we do that again?” she asked, smiling up at him. She tipped herself forward so she could rub her aching nipples against his chest and taste all the parts of him she’d admired on the walk here. His corded neck, his bold jaw. “Please? I’m begging.”
He made a low sound, but then his mouth was on hers again. And he was picking her up and turning her, rolling with her down onto that wide bed, until they were tangled up with each other again.
Constantine rolled to his back and let her explore him, but when she went to take his hardness in her mouth, he gripped her beneath her arms and hauled her up the length of his body.
“I want to,” she said.
“We do not always get what we want, Molly,” he told her, then kissed her until she melted against him once more.
He taught her how to sit astride him, then take him deep inside her from that different angle.
She rocked her hips against his, staring down at him in a kind of wonder. He looked up at her, his expression so fierce, his hands moving almost restlessly from her breasts to that place where they were joined.
He pressed a thumb down hard at her center and she dissolved, almost sobbing out at the sharp pleasure of it.
Then he flipped her over onto her belly and came into her from behind. He slid one arm beneath her hips to lift them at an angle so that he could pound his way into her, once again taking her from the middle of one explosion and throwing her like a catapult straight on into another. And another still.
And when the last one hit, she heard him roar behind her.
Then she knew no more.
Molly didn’t know what woke her, or how she knew that it was later. Much later, by her guess, and she knew instantly that Constantine wasn’t in the bed with her. She’d slept but she’d been always aware of him beside her, wrapped around her, hot to the touch.
She sat up, her heart pounding at her as if in fright, but then she saw him.
He stood by the window, and for once, she got to gaze upon his glorious nakedness instead of the reverse. The lights of Paris flowed all over his perfect form, making him seem unreal. Like one of the statues in the Musée Rodin, where she had spent many a stolen afternoon while at loose ends in the city.
He put them all to shame.
“Constantine?” She hardly sounded like herself, but that didn’t shock her. She didn’t feel like herself either, not any longer.
She felt like his.
He didn’t turn toward her, and yet she knew, somehow, that he had heard her all the same. A small, shivery thing teased the nape of her neck.
“I hated your mother long before I met her,” Constantine said, his voice gravelly, his gaze on the city before him. “I hated the idea of her, probably before my father ever met her. But then, there she was. And she had a name and a face, and told me to call her Isabel, as if we were friends already.”
Molly had spent her life wanting to have this conversation, and now that it was happening, she wanted no part of it. She wanted to fly across the room and throw her body against his, hoping that could distract him from whatever he was about to say. But just as he seemed to stand there, frozen solid at the window with Paris at his feet, she couldn’t seem to move, either.
She could only watch the light move over his dark form. And wait.
He seemed to grow even more frozen as she watched. “But as luck would have it, my new friend Isabel gave me more than enough reason to hate her, personally.” Constantine let out a laugh, though there was no humor in it. It sounded like a weapon, and this time, it wasn’t one aimed at her. Why did that make her ache? “She tried, you see. She tried so hard. Not just to make my father happy, a doomed endeavor if ever there was one. But she went out of her way to try to love me, too.”
He turned then, and Molly caught her breath. Because his face was a mask of anguish. Sheer torment. His eyes blazed with it, and she hated that, too.
“Constantine. I don’t understand—”
“And how dare she love me so easily?” Constantine gritted out, as if she hadn’t spoken. “When my mother’s life was a spiral of despair. When my own mother had never been any good at loving anyone or anything because she was so focused on my father—anything to get his attention, good or bad. How dare a stepmother come along and try to do what she had never managed?”
That hit Molly like a blow. Hard into her belly.
She whispered his name. And he laughed again, that awful sound.
“Your mother was kind, Molly. Understanding. Warm. And oh, how I loathed her for it.” He moved toward her then, and it felt like fate. Like doom. Then he stopped at the end of the bed and it felt a whole lot more like heartache. “But then you came.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she managed to get out.
Maybe she meant, Please don’t do this.
“But I do.” He raked a hand through his hair as if he would rather have put it on her. She wished he would. And her heart was beating so hard against her ribs that she was surprised she wasn’t rattling with the impact of each hit. “You were so soft. So astoundingly innocent.”
“I think you mean stupid.”
Constantine shook his head. “It was obvious to anyone who laid eyes on you that you could be easily chewed up and spit out and more, would never have the slightest idea what had happened to you.”
It was a searing sort of pain, she found, to imagine her former self like that. Particularly as she knew it was true. And more, could see too well the gap between the girl she’d been then and the woman she’d become.
“Again, I think the word you’re looking for is stupid,” she managed to say. “All I knew of the world was the village I came from. Our neighbors might not have liked my mum much. They might have watched me a little too closely, forever on the hunt for evidence that I was either like Isabel or looked a bit too much like one of their sons, since Isabel never named my father. But at least I knew my place there.”
“You had no business turning up in our world, Molly. You weren’t made for it. You made the terrible mistake of imagining that people, at heart, were basically good. No doubt another gift from your mother.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You treated me like a friend and I believed you meant it. I’ve had a long time to beat myself up for that, Constantine. A lot of years to regret it, but do you know what? I don’t. I would rather see the world as more good than bad. Or what would be the point of living in it?”
“How can you possibly continue to be this naive?” he asked, his voice filled with sadness and something like wonder at once. “The fashion industry should have succeeded where I failed and beaten this out of you years ago.”
Her smile was rueful then. “Oh, it did. So did you, Constantine. But cynicism is a choice. And I decided I would not choose it, despite all provocation.”
It hadn’t always been easy, because there was a certain ragged pride to be taken in weathering the storms of a volatile industry. Not to mention fame, fortune, and the joys and horrors inherent in both.
But she had decided, with great deliberation, that she would rather be happy.
Wasn’t that why she’d sought Constantine out? Oh, she’d told herself it was to face down the architect of her mother’s financial ruin. She’d assured herself it had less to do with her own demons and far more to do with protecting Isabel.
Yet she knew better. Deep down, she had known that she was never going to be happy until she either exorcised the devil...or embraced him.
He was staring at her as if she’d sprouted new heads. “The Skalas family has ever been a pit of snakes. I would rather have gone off to war than sit down to a family dinner when I was a child. You were woefully unprepared. Outgunned and outmaneuvered before your plane landed on Skiathos. I had every intention of snapping you like a twig. I wouldn’t have thought about it twice. If anything, your total destruction would have amused me.”
She cleared her throat. “My recollection is that you did precisely that. And happily.”
Constantine let out a small, harsh sound. She could not call it a laugh.
“No, Molly. Not quite. Because you lit up when you talked about your mother.”
Molly’s voice hardly seemed to work any longer. “Is that a bad thing?”
His smile was merciless. “You knew her flaws, but you loved her. It was obvious. It made your whole face change even as you shared your frustrations with me. And the stories you told me, your little village secrets, did something I thought was impossible.” That smile carved a deeper groove on his beautiful face and she understood, then, that his lack of mercy was aimed at himself for once. Not her. “You made me feel sympathy for Isabel, Molly. And I couldn’t forgive it.”
“Constantine...” she whispered.
“I never sold your stories to the tabloids, Molly. I was so determined to punish you for the things you made me feel that I gave them all away. For free.”
Molly sucked in a breath at that. Her head was spinning. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him, but he was still glaring down at her in that stern, uncompromising way that should have made her faint.
Or something better than fainting, maybe. Something to address the way she prickled all over with that heat she now knew all too well.
“I don’t require these confessions from you,” she told him then. “I don’t even want them.”
She wanted to tell him she forgave him, but she didn’t quite dare. Even if, as she let that notion take root in her, she knew it was true. Or she would never have taken off her clothes for him. She would certainly never have writhed about in his hands on that first day, all abandonment.
But there had been something about all those sun-drenched days on the island. Something about baring her skin and letting the breeze and the light find her wherever she was. Something about opening herself wide to Constantine’s gaze and never wavering, never hiding, never falling apart.
Molly had forgiven him, yes. But she’d forgiven herself, too.
“I do not care if you want this confession,” Constantine said tightly, as if this was a fight they were having. He certainly looked as if he was prepared to wade into battle, so tautly did he hold himself. “And despite all that, I’m sure I would have forgotten you in time. Isabel’s relationship with my father didn’t last, because nothing my father touched ever lasted, except the fortunes he hoarded. You were no threat. I could have gone quite happily about my life and never thought of you again, Molly. That was the goal all along.”
She found herself staring back at him at that, mutely, not certain how to respond to that, much less the ferocity she could see stamped all over him.
“But instead, you became Magda. And you were everywhere. It began to feel not only as if you were hunting me, but as if you had played me from the start.” His laugh then was dark. “There I was, the jaded and worldly Skalas son, stamping out an innocent for my amusement the same way my father had always trodden on anything that dared attract his notice. But no. That whole time I thought I was crushing you into the dirt, you had one of the most famous women in the world right there inside of you. Ready to come out the moment you left Skiathos and escaped my family. You became my obsession.”
“I can’t imagine why you would care what happened to me.”
“Can you not?” His voice was a bitter lash. “Because I felt guilty, Molly. Guilty. You are the only thing I have ever felt guilty about in my life. Because for all I have always reveled in sin, for all I have sought out the darkness and the lowest of places, you did not deserve what I did to you. And I knew it.”
Now there was no stopping the way her heart catapulted against her chest. Now there was no hope of doing anything but sitting there, waiting to see what he would lob at her next. What mad grenade. What bomb she wouldn’t see coming.
“Now it turns out that once again, you have shamed me,” he said quietly. Ferociously. “Your innocence is my guilt made new. It proves that all along, I was never who I thought I was. And you... You have been even more pure, from the start, than I imagined anyone could be.”
Molly felt turned inside out. Or maybe she only wished she had been, when all she could see was the rich darkness of his gaze turned bleak.
“This is a lot of talk of guilt and shame,” she said. She found she could move then, so she did, crawling down the length of the bed until once more she could sit there before him, her knees beneath her. “And it seems to me that if we’re going to spend the night castigating ourselves for the despoiling of innocence, there should be more despoiling. Don’t you think?”
“You are not hearing me,” Constantine thundered at her then. “You are the only thing on this earth I have ever felt for, Molly. First it was guilt. Then it was fury. And now—”
“Constantine,” she said, desperate and greedy, her heart a great clatter. Needy and sure, at last. Absolutely sure what this was—what this had always been. “Shut up.”
Then she launched herself at him.
And he caught her.
Molly might not have known what she was doing, but she knew it felt good.
And this time was different all over again. This time was slow. Constantine put his mouth on every inch of her body, as if committing her to memory, one lick of heat at a time.
He settled between her thighs and drank deep from the heat of her core, until all she could do was sob out his name like a prayer.
It felt that sacred.
Then he set her before him on her hands and knees and took her that way, a slow, delirious rhythm that made every part of her body seem to come alive. Then burn bright.
Only when she was sobbing again—but this time in the grip of that fiery need—did Constantine flip her over, gather her beneath him, and drive them both home.
When she woke again, it was morning.
Daylight poured in through the windows, bright and sweet. Molly felt deliciously battered from head to toe, and as she stretched she laughed as she found so many interesting tugs in new places.
She did not see the note until she sat up and looked around for Constantine. He was nowhere to be found in the vast bedchamber, but the note had been clipped to the pillow beside her.
She picked it up, trying to make sense of the words written across the heavy card stock in a slashing, dark hand.
It was a simple message, direct and to the point.
Molly felt it like a stab wound through her heart.
YOUR DEBT IS PAID IN FULL.