“Don’t you worry,” Molly said, as if trying to soothe him. She smiled. “I’m very, very good at my job.”
But she was just as happy when his attention was redirected to his mobile, because that had all been...a little too close to the truth for her liking.
Because she had the terrible fear that despite all her tough talk, she was more in danger when it came to Constantine Skalas than she ever had been, even back when they’d lived together in Skiathos the first time.
Because the teen girl she’d been then had never imagined he would look twice at her. Not really. Whereas the grown-up version of Molly was a little too aware that at any moment, there was the possibility he might kiss her again.
Or more.
Why hadn’t he done more?
She had spent ten days wandering around naked all over his estate in Skiathos, pretending she didn’t feel half-feverish at the thought, waiting for him to put his hands on her at any moment. To her dismay, it was nearly all she thought about, unable to understand why it was that he simply kept her...wanting.
Maybe the wanting was why.
If so, it worked. It drove her mad. She had lounged about near the pool every day, near the sun if not quite in it, imagining that every stray breeze was his touch. And even though ten days of forced idleness should have driven her crazy, she had never felt particularly idle. Too busy was she...imagining.
Because the things that had happened inside of her the first time he’d put that sunscreen on haunted her. Not to mention the things she’d done. God, the things she’d done... She still daydreamed about it. Those hands of his, all over her breasts. That hard thigh thrust between her legs. Her absolutely shameless display as she’d rocked herself against him... How she’d moved her hips, making no secret of the fact that she was pressing the molten, aching core of her femininity against his hard-packed muscles.
Deliberately. Desperately.
Molly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t died from embarrassment. Instead, she had lived. And now relived those moments, over and over and over again, and if she was honest with herself, not because she was attempting to browbeat herself with guilt and shame. Not at all.
She had managed to keep herself contained every other time he ran those hands, slicked with lotion, all over her skin. She had simply packed those sensations away as she did every time she stepped in front of a photographer. She felt as she was told to feel. She moved as she was told to move. She was a canvas who existed for others to paint their vision all over her.
It was harder than it sounded, but during the day, it worked well enough. Even at their typically fraught dinners, she did her best to funnel her feelings away while she dressed in what he’d left for her. And because she was dressed for his pleasure, she took the evening meal as an opportunity to vent her spleen.
The truth was, she’d gotten used to it. She had gotten used to Skiathos, and while the fact she had no choice but to be there again could never make her love it, she found herself becoming something like affectionate for the place, after all.
But it was when she went to bed in that bedroom that had been hers once before that everything she kept at bay all day long swamped her.
At first she thought it was just as well. He might excite her to a fever pitch, but there was nothing to say she couldn’t handle her own pleasure as she pleased once she was alone.
Except she didn’t.
Because Constantine had told her not to. It was as simple as that. And her own obedience to this man who made no secret of the fact that his aim was to destroy her appalled her. It made her wonder, not what spells her mother might have worked back in the day, but why she, personally, was cursed with an inability to treat Constantine as he deserved in turn. Or even think of him as she ought to.
But however appalled she might have been, she didn’t disobey him.
And as they rode in the back of a limo through Los Angeles, a city she knew well, she had to assume that all of this was part of his game. Her uncertainty. Her feeling of being forever off balance. Even his rules about sunscreen and the clothes he insisted she wear, so that at all times, whatever touched her body was his. It was a game, all right.
What Molly didn’t understand was why she kept playing right into it.
The house he took her to sat propped up high in the Santa Monica Mountains that ran through the center of California’s largest, most sprawling city. They took one of the canyon roads up from the valley floor, a winding, slow affair. Slowly they climbed into the foothills, one tight curve after the next, passing houses that defied gravity and nature as they clung to the sides of cliffs. A grand, if vertical, mansion next to what looked like an old cottage, all tucked away in that southern California lushness that always surprised her. Think of Los Angeles and what came to mind was traffic, but the city was much more than that. The mysterious hills, where coyotes roamed and some nights, it could seem as if civilization was far, far away. The famous beaches and beyond them, surprising pockets of charming little places
