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Deliberately. Desperately.
Molly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t died from embarrassment. Instead, she had lived. And now relived those moments, over and over and over again, and if she was honest with herself, not because she was attempting to browbeat herself with guilt and shame. Not at all.
She had managed to keep herself contained every other time he ran those hands, slicked with lotion, all over her skin. She had simply packed those sensations away as she did every time she stepped in front of a photographer. She felt as she was told to feel. She moved as she was told to move. She was a canvas who existed for others to paint their vision all over her.
It was harder than it sounded, but during the day, it worked well enough. Even at their typically fraught dinners, she did her best to funnel her feelings away while she dressed in what he’d left for her. And because she was dressed for his pleasure, she took the evening meal as an opportunity to vent her spleen.
The truth was, she’d gotten used to it. She had gotten used to Skiathos, and while the fact she had no choice but to be there again could never make her love it, she found herself becoming something like affectionate for the place, after all.
But it was when she went to bed in that bedroom that had been hers once before that everything she kept at bay all day long swamped her.
At first she thought it was just as well. He might excite her to a fever pitch, but there was nothing to say she couldn’t handle her own pleasure as she pleased once she was alone.
Except she didn’t.
Because Constantine had told her not to. It was as simple as that. And her own obedience to this man who made no secret of the fact that his aim was to destroy her appalled her. It made her wonder, not what spells her mother might have worked back in the day, but why she, personally, was cursed with an inability to treat Constantine as he deserved in turn. Or even think of him as she ought to.
But however appalled she might have been, she didn’t disobey him.
And as they rode in the back of a limo through Los Angeles, a city she knew well, she had to assume that all of this was part of his game. Her uncertainty. Her feeling of being forever off balance. Even his rules about sunscreen and the clothes he insisted she wear, so that at all times, whatever touched her body was his. It was a game, all right.
What Molly didn’t understand was why she kept playing right into it.
The house he took her to sat propped up high in the Santa Monica Mountains that ran through the center of California’s largest, most sprawling city. They took one of the canyon roads up from the valley floor, a winding, slow affair. Slowly they climbed into the foothills, one tight curve after the next, passing houses that defied gravity and nature as they clung to the sides of cliffs. A grand, if vertical, mansion next to what looked like an old cottage, all tucked away in that southern California lushness that always surprised her. Think of Los Angeles and what came to mind was traffic, but the city was much more than that. The mysterious hills, where coyotes roamed and some nights, it could seem as if civilization was far, far away. The famous beaches and beyond them, surprising pockets of charming little places that still felt small and close-knit. Old flower-children’s retreats in far-off canyons, beautiful architecture, and the smell of citrus and salt on a sweet spring breeze. As she looked out her window now she saw hummingbirds darting between one blossom and the next, all of them bright and plush, and around them, great swathes of green and fruit-bearing trees. Outside, the air was scented with a hint of smoke, rosemary and sage, and the sweetness of too many flowers to name.
They made it to the top of the hill and stopped at its crest. The house they’d arrived at looked wholly unremarkable from the winding street outside. It was overgrown with exuberant vines of bougainvillea that reminded her of Greece, thick curtains of jasmine she knew would bloom at night, and an invitingly green arched trellis that led to the unassuming front door of what appeared to be a very modest bungalow.
Molly knew it wasn’t. Even before she exited the limo she knew that despite appearances, there would be nothing modest about any place Constantine Skalas frequented.
And sure enough, the house cascaded down the side of the cliff, a jumble of sleek modern levels flowing in and out of each other, creating a poetry of indoor and outdoor space. Rooms that were enclosed had as few opaque walls as possible and the rest was all glass, looking out over the enduring tangle of the City of Angels, stretched out as far as the eye could see. And because the day was clear, she could actually see the thick blue ribbon of the sea in the distance.
It was stunning. Because it was his. How could it be anything else?
“We leave for the red carpet in two hours,” Constantine informed her. And shook his head as she began to speak. “I don’t want to hear excuses about how much time you need to make your appearance. You claimed you could appear in a garbage bag, did you not?”
“I was being facetious.”
He smiled, nothing but challenge in his gaze. “I want to see magic.”
“Garbage bag magic?” She kept her voice light. “Who knew such a thing existed?”
But the intensity of Constantine’s stare did not waver. “Magic, Molly.”
“Then magic it will be,” she assured him. What else could she say?
“My staff will assist you.” He nodded toward a woman who waited there at the edge of the glass room, her gaze lowered.
Molly smiled at him. “You are too good, Constantine. Really.”
And her reward was a searing, almost painful blast from those coffee-dark eyes.
A warning she really should heed, she knew. But she couldn’t seem to do that.
Molly followed the woman down a series of exposed staircases, moving in and out of the glass enclosures. Then she led the way into a room that had been transformed into the kind of salon Molly knew best. Racks of clothing stood ready, and more, she saw a fleet of men and women she instantly recognized as stylists and beauty estheticians, armed with the tools of their trade.
Very well then. This was a test he wanted her to pass, and Molly did notpasstests. She aced them.
“What is this red carpet for, exactly?” she asked the woman beside her as she scanned the clothes provided. She recognized most of the designers from the cut of their garments, as clear to her as if they’d been labeled.
