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But he did not love her. She didn’t know what game he was playing with her, but it was clear that it had to be a game. It had to be.
And she was an idiot who did not have any kind of special insight into other people. Who was not more responsible than other women, than her mother. She had been ready to fling herself on that ghastly altar of love because she had finally thought that she had found... The one.
And she took such great pride in her ability to assess people. Because she did not feel that she was wide-eyed. She did not feel that she was naive. She had always felt that she was exceptionally realistic and pragmatic, and where had that gotten her?
Naked on a balcony.
Well, nearly naked.
And there was a man before her that called to fantasies that she had long tried to suppress.
He despised her. He did not love her as she had imagined Alex did.
And she did not love him.
But regardless, he had captivated her from the first moment she had seen him.
Alex had an ease about him, and Constantine was nothing like that. Constantine was every inch the man you might expect to have a mad wife in the attic. Constantine was...
“Do you think?” she asked, the question coming out much more breathless than she intended.
“I hate to see a woman all dressed up with nowhere to go.”
His voice had become a seductive purr now, nothing like the interactions she’d had with him prior. His tone was usually hard, deep and clipped. And now it washed over her like a wave.
Leaving her feeling restless.
“You’re very beautiful, Morgan.”
He thought she was beautiful? She was pretty. She knew that, but it had always felt a little bit like an inconvenience more than anything else. Her flame red hair and translucent skin drew a lot of attention, as did the vividness of her green eyes, but for a woman who had always wanted to keep her head down and get on with school and work, it had felt an uneasy burden to bear.
She had never much cared whether or not a man thought she was beautiful, but for some reason the revelation that Constantine did was... Well it was heady indeed.
“You think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes. But I would bet you know you’re beautiful.”
“Perhaps. But I imagine you despise everything about me. I did not ever consider that you might apply any sort of virtue to me.”
“Do you think beauty is a virtue?”
She blinked. “No. Not... That isn’t what I meant.”
“Beauty,” he said, his voice hard, “is a vice. Were it not, I would have grabbed hold of you by now and shipped you straight out the bedroom door, flinging you to your ass out in the corridor. However. Your beauty is a particular vice of mine. When I find I am not a man given to questioning a gift when it shows up in my room trussed up and ready to be unwrapped.”
“And if I don’t want you?”
He stood slowly, never breaking eye contact with her, never wavering. Then he made his way to her, and she felt her breath go more and more shallow.
“Darling,” he said. “Do not lie. It insults us both. You have wanted me from the very moment you first set foot in my parents’ house. And the more cruel I am to you, the more you seem to want it.”
Her breathing was truly labored now, and she hated it. Mostly because he was right.
She could recall easily that first encounter they’d had six months ago. When he looked at her as if she was something vile that he had to scrape off the bottom of his shoe. And she had found him beautiful.
She had been thankful, then, for Alex and his easy charm. For the feeling she had for him. Because they had done something to shield her from the scalding heat that came from his older brother’s disdainful gaze.
But there was nothing between them now. No feelings for Alex. Nothing.
