Something seemed to crackle between them, a new and more dangerous heat.
“Molly.” Constantine said her name as if he had never tasted it in his mouth before. As if he’d never tasted her, when the reality was, he had never been the same since he had. “Nothing here is safe. Not for you.”
He expected her to quail at that. To shrink down, there where she knelt before him, or shrivel a bit. To show some hint that she was torn into a thousand pieces as he could feel he was. As he would rather rip off his own head before showing her he was.
But instead, this confounding woman—his once-upon-a-time stepsister and his current obsession—smiled.
A big, wide sort of smile that made him want to shout out his frustration loud enough to topple the Arc de Triomphe. And yet, at the same time, it made him want to taste that smile himself. And then the rest of her.
Now.
Why could he not compartmentalize this woman as he had every other thing in his life?
“No one expects an intricately plotted revenge plot to be safe, Constantine,” she said in mock quelling tones, and he could hear too well the laughter in her voice again. It was its own heat. “That would completely defeat the purpose of all that plotting. All the demands for naked sunscreen application. And our current grand tour of the romance that wasn’t.”
“If this is still a joke to you,” Constantine said, and it hurt him to say it so lazily, but he managed it, “you might as well get dressed and take yourself off to bed. I told you the only circumstances under which we will have sex, Molly. Mockery is not among them.”
She sighed a little. “I didn’t realize we had to be as solemn and serious as death. I have to tell you, every story I’ve ever heard about the irresistible charm of Europe’s finest playboy—and I think you know there are a great many stories—was a lie.”
“Not a lie,” he found himself retorting, when he did not need to respond to her provocations. Surely that she wanted him to respond was reason enough to refrain. “But not for you.”
“I do enjoy being special,” Molly murmured, her eyes too bright on his. “It’s because of an experience I had when I was but a girl, you see. I’ll tell you the story. Once upon a time, I had an evil stepbrother straight out of central casting who tied himself in knots to make certain I knew that while he was marvelous in all ways, I was destined for nothing at all but a life of sodden beige porridge.”
“You must be speaking about Balthazar,” Constantine replied, sounding significantly less lazy than before. “As I have never trafficked much in either the color beige, nor, happily, porridge. Sodden or otherwise. I would rather eat paste.”
“Constantine.” She knelt up again, raising her hands before her in what looked like supplication, even though he could see that all that heat and all that humor in her gaze was still right there. “You may have to lead me through this, as I’m a little rusty. I believe I picked up your deeply subtle attempt to let me know that merely kneeling before you as a woman you consider beautiful is not enough. But I’m afraid my begging skills aren’t my strong suit.”
“You can start by taking this seriously,” he growled down at her.
And again, found himself something like confounded when all she did was smile wider, her eyes sparkling as if he just recited a love poem.
“I take this very seriously, actually,” she said. She paused, almost as if she was debating something, but then blew out a breath. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Beg for it?” He should not have felt that as a particular triumph, and yet he did. “I would not know myself, but I’m told it can add a certain...intensity. If not for you, then for me.”
“Not so much the begging part,” she said softly. “It, Constantine. The deed itself. This will be my first time and I want to thank you, in advance, for making it so soft, special, and beautifully caring.”
Despite himself, Constantine laughed.
Hard.
Because the very idea of Magda, whose many lovers pranced about the planet giving interviews about exactly what it was like to sample one of the most beautiful women in the world—interviews that had long driven him mad—claiming to be untouched?
It was preposterous. Hilarious.
And somehow, it reset something in him. It settled him. If she needed to play games to get through this thing between them, then who was he to deny her that opportunity?
Constantine had always liked a game or two. It only made things more fun.
“Yes, of course,” he drawled, trying—if not too hard—to sound more serious then. “I should have known at a glance that you were a virgin. I’m honored indeed that you have chosen to hand over such a glorious prize to your enemy.”
Her smile grew practically beatific. “Constantine. You’re not my enemy. I’m afraid that’s always been a one-way street. Left to my own devices—those being, you know, when no one is mounting a coordinated campaign to crush my mother, taking both her money and mine—I don’t think about you at all.”
He shook his head, as if in disappointment. “Liar.”
Then, finally, at that single growled word, her smile faded.
And he watched, transfixed, as the heat took over.
It was possibly one of the most beautiful things he had ever beheld.
He could see it all then on that beautiful face of hers. Heat, growing by the moment. Need and longing, a match for his own. And that same wild, incoherent desire that stormed through him.
“That is a lie,” she admitted. And when he only held her gaze, she swallowed. “And I’m not kneeling here, naked yet again, to lie.”
“I would hope not.”
Molly’s blue eyes were nothing like cold any longer. No hint of ice.
He felt the heat there like a
