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“How many teenage girls do you know who had their confidences funneled directly to the gossip rags?”
He eyed her. “Do you imagine that I will apologize for this?”
Her lips curved, but there was only frigid cold in her gaze. “A Skalas? Apologize? The very earth would tremble.”
“If you resent finding yourself in these crosshairs, Molly, I would suggest that you address yourself to your mother. As she is the one who put you there.”
Molly scowled at him. “I get it, Constantine. You didn’t want a stepmother. Boo-hoo. It may shock you to discover that I didn’t particularly want a stepfather, either. Particularly not one like your father, who was, at best, sadistic. And that’s about the nicest thing I can think to say about him.”
He made a scoffing sound, but she didn’t subside. Instead, she leaned over the table, still aiming that scowl right at him. “It amazes me that you seem to think my mother, a housekeeper with no formal education whatsoever, managed the astonishing feat oftrappingDemetrius Skalas, who was at that time the richest man on earth.Trapping him.What a joke. If she had that kind of power, why would she have stopped with a simple trap? Why wouldn’t she have used her power to either make him a better husband, or, failing that, kill him off so she could live out her days as a very wealthy Skalas widow?”
Constantine couldn’t say he liked either one of those questions very much. “You are naive in the extreme if you don’t know precisely how your mother ensnared my father.”
“Because... What? Demetrius Skalas, once again the richest man in the world—and also well renowned for the parade of women on his arm all throughout his marriage—suddenly tripped over one particular woman and could no longer function? My mother worked some kind of spell, is that it? And he was susceptible for only as long as it took to race off and marry her. Then, in another bit of magic, he became completely impervious to her in every way.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Constantine. You can’t really believe any of that.”
He found his ribs were too tight, suddenly. He was too aware of his pulse, and the way it racketed around inside him. He glared at her, wishing the lantern light didn’t make her look even more beautiful than she already was. Because the beauty was distracting, and somehow made the charges she was levying against his father—and against him—seem that much starker.
And something he almost wanted to call painful.
“Nothing you can possibly say to me is going to make me change my opinion of your mother, Molly,” he said.
When he could speak with the voice that was only dark with warning, not bright with his temper.
“Of course not,” she said quietly, her arctic blue gaze pinning him where he sat. “Because if you did that, you would have so many other unfortunate questions to ask yourself, wouldn’t you? If you’re wrong about my mother, then all the years you spent sandbagging her every move would seem...vicious, wouldn’t they? If you’re wrong about my mother, this price you intend to extract from me by naked days and romantic nights really does make you a monster, doesn’t it? And that’s not even getting into what you did to a lost teenage girl who could have used a friend. The less said about that the better, I think you’ll agree.”
“I think that’s enough,” he managed to growl.
“I’m sure it is,” Molly said with a rueful little laugh that set his teeth on edge. “It gets scary straying that close to the truth, doesn’t it?”
He was on his feet, though he didn’t recall when he’d decided to move. Constantine stood over the table, staring down at her, and for all her talk of what was and was not a spell, he felt cursed.
She had haunted him for years. And over the past ten days, that haunting had only grown worse. Because everything had gone according to plan here, except his reaction.
He had wanted her to be lulled into a false sense of security. He had wanted her to stop worrying he might pounce on her at any turn and to embrace both the insistence upon nakedness as well as the sunscreen he ritualistically applied to her body every morning.
But while she seemed to have acclimated with ease, all Constantine seemed to do was lose sleep.
“You seem to have forgotten your place,” he managed to get out.
But Molly rose, too, like a shimmering blue flame. She was a gloriously tall woman, no doubt used to looking men in the eye. Or looking down at them. Yet she had to tilt her chin to manage it with him, and Constantine found he liked that he did not loom over her as he normally did over women.
Because it put her mouth that much closer to his.
“You’d better teach me my place then,” she shot back at him. “Don’t you know? We Payne women have a terrible habit of casting spells on unwary men like witches of yore, then making them do our bidding. Behold my success, for it has made me...your plaything.”
“Shut up,” he growled at her.
And then he took her mouth in a fury.
It had been too long since that last kiss. It had beentoo long.
He found his hands on the sides of her jaw, holding her mouth right where he needed it. He kissed her and he kissed her, a wild taking. A claiming, possessive and dark.
He kissed her until he realized that if he didn’t stop, he would take her right there, out on the terrace beneath the stars.
And that was not the plan.
Just as the fire that coursed through him was not the plan, because it threatened to undo everything. It got in his head, it made him far too hard, it made his hands move over her as if all he’d been put on this earth to do was worship the glory she wore so easily.
