She’d come to realize that he’d wanted that to be her fate.
Her curse was that she’d spent even longer than that trying to justify the things he’d said and the way he’d said them to relieve him of any responsibility. It was her fault, clearly. She should have made it more clear that the things she’d told him were private. She had misread him, or misheard him, or taken it all in wrong because—as everyone had reminded her all the time in those days—she was so sensitive.
But no. Over the last few years, as Molly had begun to understand that her mother, for all her faults, could not possibly be quite this unlucky, a different picture of Constantine Skalas had emerged.
Now she knew the truth. The nicest, most approachable Skalas brother was, in fact, the devil.
The tragedy was that, like Lucifer himself—not called Morning Star because he was deformed or horrible—Constantine was beautiful. Ridiculously, absurdly beautiful.
And he knew it.
Everything about him was dark and rich and seductive. Dark brown hair that glinted gold in the Greek sun and always looked as if fingers not his own had moments before raked through it. His eyes were heavy-lidded and suggestive, as impossibly dark and yet inviting as the bitter coffee he preferred. And he used his unfair cheekbones to their full effect, always. He had a generous, sensual mouth that was forever curving with a hint of wickedness. Or grinning widely without a care. Or more often still, laughing lazily at all the women who flailed about at his feet, all the lovers who trailed behind him weeping and wailing and clinging to his trouser cuff, and the whole of the great and glorious world that loved him all the more when he treated everything and everyone in it as his.
As one of the Skalas brothers and thus one of the wealthiest men alive, the truth was that much of the world really was.
And for a man who never seemed to do anything but lounge about, languid and bedroom-eyed, Constantine was obnoxiously fit. He was unnecessarily tall and rangy, with long, lean muscles that he was forever showing off. Glistening his way across exclusive seaside resorts, shedding his shirt to crash a game of footie in the park, leaping in and out of the odd plane yet living, propping up beautiful women on his black-tied arm, and always infusing all of his nearly overwhelming sexual energy with more than a hint of lurking danger.
That was just the grainy pictures in the magazines. Constantine in person was...worse. He had been shockingly attractive when they were younger, something Molly had tried to tell herself had been something she’d made up because she’d been such a young and foolish sixteen. But there had been nothing wrong with her eyes back then. He had been feral and gorgeous, always. And now, all of those relatively softer edges and blurred angles had disappeared entirely.
Leaving him relentlessly, ruthlessly, inarguably masculine. Every last inch honed to brutal, sensual effect.
And that was not the only tragedy.
Molly’s deep and abiding shame was that even now, after all she knew about Constantine Skalas and all he’d done—and had yet to do to her, personally—she still had only to think about him and she felt everything inside her...melt.
She was pathetic.
Especially because, despite everything, she had not been adequately prepared for the reality of seeing him in his considerably mouthwatering flesh today. What was wrong with her? Maybe he’d been right all along when he’d suggested to the impressionable girl she’d been that she was simply wired wrong.
“Struck dumb in the face of my generosity?” he asked, sounding lazy and amused, as always. “I do not blame you. Being my mistress is a privilege, I grant you. Even under these vulgar circumstances, it would, naturally, constitute quite an elevation for you.”
“Your mistress,” Molly repeated.
Her mind couldn’t take that on, much less the other insults packed into his words. She couldn’t actually let herself visualize what being his mistress entailed because it was too much. It was an explosion of golden limbs and heat and his mouth...
Stop it, she ordered herself. Dear God.
And though it hurt, physically, she pulled herself together. Or tried. “Right. You want a shag. If I was paid for every man who wanted the same, I wouldn’t need to come crawling to you because I’d be far, far richer than you’ll ever be. But by all means, Constantine. If you’re that basic and boring, I’m perfectly happy to lie back and think of England on my mother’s behalf.”
She didn’t know why she’d said that. Molly had no desire whatsoever to trade her body for anything, particularly not when she already used it as a product—and as such, was keenly aware of the kind of slippery slope divorcing her body from her emotions could be. She was fully aware that there was a cottage industry of those who claimed to have had passionate affairs with her, and she liked that. The more people gossiped about her, telling each other and everyone else lies about all the scandalous things she was up to in her spare time, the less likely anyone was to notice that she did very few scandalous things at all.
But she also knew, because she was a grown woman who lived in the real world, that few things irritated men more than being laughed at. Obliquely or otherwise.
So she was totally unprepared for Constantine to throw back his glorious head and laugh himself.
And laugh. And laugh some more.
“Did I say something amusing?” she asked when he finally stopped. A bit peevishly, she could admit.
And then watched, her mouth dry, as Constantine rose in all his considerable glory from behind that dreadful desk.
She had nothing but terrible memories of this place. Which was no doubt precisely why Constantine, who had more houses than he
