We must take our rebellions where we can, she told herself as she smiled at a sharp-eyed society doyenne seated near her, then ate a huge forkful of creamy pasta just to watch the other woman recoil.
Like many of these events on their little tour, there was also dancing. And no matter how many times she told herself that she was used to it, she wasn’t. No matter how many times Constantine gathered her into his arms and looked down at her as if nothing else existed save the two of them, she wasn’t ready.
You will never be ready, a voice inside her pronounced.
And in another sense, she’d been ready since she was sixteen.
Maybe that was why, when they made it back to a Parisian penthouse apartment that, like all of the Skalas properties she’d sampled on this trip, commanded astonishing views, Molly...lost it.
If this night went the way all the other nights went, she and Constantine would sit about drawing blood and scoring points over drinks. Then he would take himself off and she would find herself lying wide awake in another strange bed, her hands between her legs yet unable to give herself the relief she craved.
Tonight, she thought that going through this same routine of hers might kill her.
“I was promised a very specific kind of torture,” she said, standing in the great living area with the City of Light shining in all around. Molly could hear that her own voice sounded...distinctly unhinged. “You made it perfectly clear this was supposed to be a real affair, or else how could you possibly destroy me at the end of it?”
Constantine, pouring the usual drinks at the bar across the room, turned. “I beg your pardon?”
“To be honest, Constantine, it seems to me that after all this jetting about the planet, not to mention starting off the whole thing with a one-way nudist colony, I deserve some kind of compensation.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked mildly, though his gaze had gone glittery in that way that made everything inside her cartwheel about. She should have been used to it by now. And yet was not. At all. “Surely I cannot have given you any reason to assume that your feelings matter here? I did try to avoid it.”
“Perish the thought,” she said grandly. “I’m only looking out for your interests. If, after all, this is nothing but a little act we’re putting on for the press, well. That’s a different scenario than the initial bold threats that were issued. With, I suppose, a dose of compulsory nakedness from time to time, just to keep everyone honest?”
Constantine swirled the liquid he held in a heavy tumbler in one hand. His eyelids, already so seemingly sleepy, seemed to droop even lower. It made his gaze seem all the brighter.
“Why, Molly. I am shocked. Are you asking me for sex?”
Was she? But she knew she was. “And if I am?”
She didn’t know what she was doing. Or maybe that was a cop-out. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe what she’d said to him was true, after a fashion. She was putting out all this effort. She was already linked with him in the press and everywhere else. The whole world thought she was engaged in a torrid affair with the Constantine Skalas, which did not horrify her the way it should have. Oh no.
Molly knew, keenly, that the sixteen-year-old idiot girl who’d been so enamored of him would have loved to find herself in this situation. Had, in fact, wished and dreamed and hoped for precisely something like this to have come along back then.
What she couldn’t seem to handle—because the longing for him had become a pulsing thing between her legs, on the insides of her wrists, at her temples, in her throat, everywhere—was not getting the opportunity to actually have that affair.
Because she’d spent her whole life not having affairs.
Not only with Constantine Skalas, but with anyone. The world kept turning and people were out there having life-altering sex, apparently. All while Molly just writhed about in photo shoots, selling sex to the camera yet having none herself.
If he was going to blow up her life anyway, she might as well enjoy the fire while she burned. Why not?
And since she had the distinct impression that they were going to end up in bed together anyway, once he finished playing his little revenge games, Molly could admit that she took a certain pleasure in moving things along her own schedule.
Because she had the feeling it might very well be the only thing she would control when it came Constantine. Ever.
“I thought I made it clear,” he said, still regarding her in that way that made her want very much to squirm. If she was a person who squirmed. Until tonight, she never had been. “If you want me, you must beg. I do not mean pretty words, though I fear I do require them. I will have you on your knees, naked, begging for the privilege.”
“You really do like a pageant, don’t you?”
He gave a very Greek sort of shrug, more his chin than his shoulder. “The only people who do not care for a pageant, hetaira, are those who know one will never be thrown in their honor.”
“Fair enough,” she murmured.
And it was one thing to want sex at last. Right now. But another to do what he was asking. To debase herself—
But who was she kidding? She had already debased herself to the moon and back for this man, and more, had loved it more than she’d hated it. What was a little more where that came from?
Letting out a long
