I could see the woman was trashed. Cocaine as well as champagne, no doubt. I could virtually taste it in the air around her as I heard the hurried clack of her heels against the polished floor. But there was more. Something . . . darker . . .
Secrets.
I could see them inside her, burning deep. A chasm in her façade that people were failing to see.
A silly little slip of a girl in red came dashing towards her.
“Elaine! My God, Elaine! You look A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!”
And that’s when it floored me. Seriously fucking floored me.
The woman in gold was Elaine fucking Constantine. The embarrassment of the whole Constantine family.
I knew of her, the party animal freak with desperate eyes. Always on the raucous outskirts of Bishop’s Landing, hitting the clubs in NYC and getting pictured in every damn tabloid that would post her antics. I should’ve known it a mile off, Venetian mask or not.
I glanced around the room, and it was so fucking obvious who I’d been staring at. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Caroline was scowling in her direction, gritting her teeth as Elaine let out another husky laugh. If the woman in gold wasn’t the Constantine matriarch’s daughter, she would already be dead.
If I wasn’t Terence Kingsley, I would too.
I guess that made us two fucked up peas in one fucked up pod.
It only made my cock throb harder.
I brushed up behind her, and she twisted her head to me; that’s when I first fixed her in my stare. Cruel. Bold. Dangerous.
The harpy in red was laughing about some bullshit on the Bishop’s Landing social circle, but that didn’t matter. In that moment, eye to eye, Elaine Constantine couldn’t give a shit about the Bishop’s Landing gossip.
She swallowed hard as our stares fixed and held, and I didn’t need to see the rest of her face. I saw enough in her gaze to know she was a doe in headlights. Her eyes were pools of blue, broken and needy, captured by the chill of mine, dark as charred coal.
I didn’t smile and stepped away as though she was nothing but a fly in my ointment. It only made her eyes more desperate as they followed me through the crowd.
I could feel it. Her curiosity.
On the back of just a few seconds, Elaine Constantine was desperate for me.
Her and the rest of the damn world.
I sipped on my mineral water and talked politics with the Weston crowd by the grand piano, ignoring her as she made her way closer.
She mingled. We stared.
My gaze was cold; hers, hungry.
There was chatter all around us, but still she made her way closer.
She should have learned her lesson as a baby girl long ago, that curiosity killed the cat. Clearly, she hadn’t. She kept advancing, trying her best to keep her cool, but failing. I was loving it, smirking to myself when she was almost with me. This golden siren was going to get herself slaughtered.
She was almost there. Almost. But no. The Happy Birthday song blared out as the charade of a celebration reached its peak. The whole gang of Constantine siblings assembled around the birthday girl as a massive cake appeared in a procession, all looking so damn proud of the stupid little princess as she jumped up and down.
But not the woman in gold, she didn’t look proud of anyone in the hall that night. She didn’t join her siblings. Didn’t clap along with the procession or sing any happy songs.
No.
Elaine Constantine did nothing but guzzle down another glass of champagne before making her retreat towards the rear exit. No one looked at her, not as closely as I did. But every move she made was coated in sadness, the sort that tasted like blood in the water to a predator like me. It may’ve been a happy birthday for Tinsley, but in reality, the Constantine kids weren’t all right. Elaine was most certainly not all right.
Interesting.
Maybe I’d let the pussycat survive a little while longer while I played.
My cock made me follow her far more than my brain did. I was snaking in her wake as people cheered for Tinsley. I really was a monster for chasing the forbidden. A crazy one at that.
Elaine’s manicured fingers were already digging in her clutch when I stepped out into the hallway to join her. I knew exactly what she was digging for, but I didn’t give her the chance to reach it.
She let out a gasp as I spun her to face me, and a squeal as I slammed her up hard against the wall.
“Are you fucking crazy?” she hissed. “What the fuck? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
She tried to push me away, but I wouldn’t budge.
Her blue eyes were saucers through her mask. “You’d better get the hell away from me! Don’t you know who the fuck I am?” She gave a quick glance down the hall and lowered her voice. “Don’t you know what they’ll do to you if they see you with me?”
The hallway was empty around us, everyone firmly consumed by Tinsley Constantine’s birthday bullshit, so I smirked.
“I know exactly who the fuck you are, Elaine,” I told her and pushed my thigh between hers.
Her eyes widened even more through the glitter of her mask. I wasn’t afraid of her crazy-ass family, but her words confirmed how isolated they kept her. She could mingle in public, but they would cut the dick off any man who dared touch their little princess.
“Then you really are fucking crazy,” she said. “Just touching me could get you killed in seconds. SECONDS!”
I shrugged, still smirking. “But it won’t.”
She gritted her teeth. “I could scream!”
“But you won’t.” I gripped a hand around her neck and pressed my lips to hers.
I guess I really was fucking crazy.
I hated her, the woman in gold. I hated everything about her. Everything about the Constantines. Everything about this
