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Then he watched, fascinated, as she looked from the tube of sunscreen to him, then back again, clearly fighting with herself.
He sat back and enjoyed the show.
And, if he was honest with himself, enjoyed the moment or two to pull himself together, because he had not quite anticipated the effect this would have on him.
Constantine had seen more beautiful women naked than he could begin to count, but this was different. She was different.
He was so hard that he ached. Heached.He wanted to throw all his years of careful planning aside and simply take her, as he knew he could. He had not imagined the way she’d responded to that kiss. He had not liked the way he had, come to that. He had meant it as a show, more than anything else. But somehow, what had started as an object lesson had turned into something else.
He was Constantine Skalas and he had spent the last two days reliving a bloody kiss, of all things. As if he was the gawky, awkward sixteen-year-old this time around. As if she had bewitched him, and that easily.
He would not allow it. He refused to allow the daughter of the unacceptable tart Isabel Payne, of all creatures, to affect him in this way. Or at all.
It was a physical reaction, that was all. She had made an entire career out of her beauty. She knew very well how to elicit the reactions she wanted. He should not be so surprised that he was susceptible to it. What man would not be?
Because naked, Molly was even more beautiful than she was draped in all the dramatic clothing she wore on this or that runway. Once again, he was struck by the stark, glorious lines of her body. A work of exquisite art, angles and curves together, creating a woman no one could deny was exquisite.
And now, for as long as he wanted her, she was his.
Molly came to her decision. He could see it on her face in the split second before she swiped up the tube of sunscreen with one hand, then closed the distance between them. With a challenging look on her face as she stood there, naked, as commanded.
“Come closer,” he told her, the terrible wolf to the not-quite-a-lamb, and when she did, he grinned. He held out his hand for the sunscreen, then waited.
And watched his favorite enemy as she fought, then surrendered, right there before him.
The way Constantine intended to see she did over and over and over again, until there was little left of Molly Payne but shattered pieces, and all of them in his hand.
CHAPTER FIVE
MOLLYHADNEVERbeen more grateful for her chosen profession.
Because if it weren’t for all her years as a model, could she have handled this? Could she have presented herself, so matter-of-factly, wholly naked in front of a man?
Not just any man. But Constantine Skalas, who had long been a shadow over her life whether she admitted it or not.
She tried to tell herself that there was nothing particularly worthy of her notice here. It was another gig, that was all. And luckily enough, she was more than used to finding herself in states of undress with very little privacy. If she’d been at all prudish about her body, she wouldn’t have lasted a month in the fashion industry. Much less a decade.
Constantine took the tube of sunscreen from her, and Molly told herself to pay no mind to the fact that she was now standing between his outstretched legs. He took a long, lazy survey of her body, and she supposed she ought to have been grateful that he’d chosen to seat himself at the fanciful table she’d been enamored of when she’d been here the first time. This particular table was basically a shelf that ran around the trunk of a large shade tree, making it possible to sit out on this particular terrace in the high heat of a Greek summer day and enjoy the cool breeze from the sea without broiling.
It made her wonder exactly how calculating Constantine really was. But even as she thought that, she had her answer, didn’t she? For here he sat in the shade, demanding her nudity, a convenient tube of sunscreen at the ready.
Molly really ought to have been ashamed that even now, when she had returned to Greece to trade her body for money—dress it up or down as she pleased, that was what was happening, and not, for a change, in the name of high fashion—even in the midst of yet another terrible thing he was doing to her, she wanted to excuse him. To give him some other reason for doing what he did.
When she should know better. The man was pure evil. More, he was proud of it.
He finally raised his gaze to hers again, sensual and heavy-lidded and, as ever, richly intense. She did her best not to react and her reward was the hint of a knowing smile in one corner of his mouth. He lifted an idle hand, then circled one finger in the air before him, telling her without words to turn around.
Molly complied, executing a sharp, crisp turn that would have made art directors sigh with pleasure in at least five languages. She presented him with her back and then she stood still—another skill that the average person assumed anyone could do. When, in fact, real stillness for more than a moment was significantly more difficult than most lay people imagined.
Constantine was also still, and she resented that about him. That he could simply do things it took others a lifetime to learn. Much less execute on a whim.
After a while she had the sense of some kind of movement somewhere behind her and braced herself, but she heard nothing that sounded like Constantine about to strike. There was the sound of the sea in the distance and the waters of the cove against the shore. She could hear the breeze through the trees. She was aware of bees buzzing, birds conducting their officious business, and wind chimes, somewhere near.
All of it seemed entirely too bucolic and sweet when she’d woken up in a gray and wet London morning. Especially when Lucifer himself was here with her. She should have been able to smell the sulfur.
She waited, but nothing happened. Time stretched out. She held her breath, but still, nothing.
The Greek sun she would have sworn she hated filtered down through the branches of the tree above her, yet because it provided her with a canopy, it felt like nothing so much as a kiss. And slowly, against her will, she began to feel the inherent sensuality of what she was doing. Standing there, letting the breeze caress her while the sunshine licked all over her, soft and sweet. There was salt in the air, and the scent of something sweet that she assumed must be flowers, and she was sorely tempted to close her eyes and drift off...
