Just wait, he thought with dark pleasure.
But the waiting, at last, was over.
He settled the broad head of his sex at her entrance, reveling in her softness. Her sweet molten heat.
Below him, Molly pulled her lip between her teeth and nearly undid him with that alone, then gazed at him as if she was close to overwhelmed already.
When they hadn’t even started.
“Hold on,” Constantine advised her.
And then, finally, he began to thrust deep inside her—
Except he didn’t.
Because he felt what could only be the innocence he had thought was a fine joke she’d made. A game she wanted to play.
But it was no joke.
Molly Payne—Magda, for all that was holy—lay beneath him, wincing slightly. Her nails were digging into his back, she was holding herself taut, and she was a virgin.
A virgin.
Constantine knew that this could not be. It could not.
Because if she was a virgin, that meant that he did not know her at all. And more, that every single thing he had thought about her as he’d plotted out his revenge was wrong. That he’d been completely and utterly off course.
And if he was wrong about something he had long since accepted as an incontrovertible fact, what else was he wrong about?
Something in him pitched, then rolled.
“Molly...” he gritted out, in genuine pain.
But she scowled at him, this impossible woman. This virgin in the body of a hetaira, the ancient Greek term for a courtesan.
How could he have been so wrong about her?
“Don’t you dare, Constantine,” she gritted out at him, her scowl deepening. “Don’t you dare stop now.”
And then, to his astonishment, she thumped him one in the ribs.
Hard.
CHAPTER NINE
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.
