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They had made exactly the splash Constantine had wanted. The world was obsessed with them. No one had ever seen Magda look so sweet, so smitten. No one had ever seen Constantine look even remotely possessive—of anything.
The public was hooked.
What worried Molly was her dawning realization that she was, too.
She was careful to remind herself—she tried to remind herself—that if he expected her to put on an act, he was likely doing the same. No matter how it felt sometimes.
In all, the trip took two weeks. It was a jumble of time zones, flashbulbs, and the flights in between, tucked up in that jet of his. Kept stocked, after the first week, with tabloids from too many countries to count. All featuring their faces.
“It makes a difference to actuallytryto make it on the cover of the tabloids, I suppose,” Molly had said somewhere in the beginning of their second week. “A bit inside out, if you ask me.”
“I want to be certain that for the rest of your career, no matter what happens, you will be asked about me,” Constantine had told her, with that smile of his that let her know this was a part of his revenge he loved the most. He liked to study her over the edge of his laptop, where he did who knew what. “Of course, a girl can only model for so long. As you might imagine.”
Molly had not shared with him that no one knew the expiration date on a model’s career more intimately than the model in question.
“Handy, isn’t it, that you can go right on being a bastard forever,” she replied instead, smiling wide.
And had pretended not to notice it when she’d gotten a real laugh out of him for her trouble.
Because all the while, the tension between them grew. A tension she tried to tell herself had to do with his great revenge and only that revenge...but she knew it didn’t. It was rooted in the way he touched her. Every time skin met skin, an electricity that only seemed to rage brighter and longer between them flared. And never dimmed. It was every event where they were stood next to each other, always touching, always gazing adoringly at each other.
Always acting, she told herself.
Only acting, surely—though more and more, she feared that wasn’t what she was doing at all.
They landed in Paris in the early afternoon and because it was Paris, Molly took extra time preparing herself for the evening ahead. That night, she went for more drama overall, but compensated for that with an understated face and a flat shoe that would be seen as edgy. Particularly amongst the fashionistas of France.
It was a typical evening. Too many pictures taken. Too many faces, all of them avid and insinuating, not much more than a big blur before her. Another formal dinner where she ate heartily no matter if she liked what she was served or not. Because Molly distinctly disliked the fact that as a model—a woman whose job it was to maintain a certain body shape—she was constantly observed when food was around. It tired her.
We must take our rebellions where we can,she told herself as she smiled at a sharp-eyed society doyenne seated near her, then ate a huge forkful of creamy pasta just to watch the other woman recoil.
Like many of these events on their little tour, there was also dancing. And no matter how many times she told herself that she was used to it, she wasn’t. No matter how many times Constantine gathered her into his arms and looked down at her as if nothing else existed save the two of them, she wasn’t ready.
You will never be ready, a voice inside her pronounced.
And in another sense, she’d been ready since she was sixteen.
Maybe that was why, when they made it back to a Parisian penthouse apartment that, like all of the Skalas properties she’d sampled on this trip, commanded astonishing views, Molly...lost it.
If this night went the way all the other nights went, she and Constantine would sit about drawing blood and scoring points over drinks. Then he would take himself off and she would find herself lying wide awake in another strange bed, her hands between her legs yet unable to give herself the relief she craved.
Tonight, she thought that going through this same routine of hers might kill her.
“I was promised a very specific kind of torture,” she said, standing in the great living area with the City of Light shining in all around. Molly could hear that her own voice sounded...distinctly unhinged. “You made it perfectly clear this was supposed to be a real affair, or else how could you possibly destroy me at the end of it?”
Constantine, pouring the usual drinks at the bar across the room, turned. “I beg your pardon?”
“To be honest, Constantine, it seems to me that after all this jetting about the planet, not to mention starting off the whole thing with a one-way nudist colony, I deserve some kind of compensation.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked mildly, though his gaze had gone glittery in that way that made everything inside her cartwheel about. She should have been used to it by now. And yet was not. At all. “Surely I cannot have given you any reason to assume that your feelings matter here? I did try to avoid it.”
“Perish the thought,” she said grandly. “I’m only looking out for your interests. If, after all, this is nothing but a little act we’re putting on for the press, well. That’s a different scenario than the initial bold threats that were issued. With, I suppose, a dose of compulsory nakedness from time to time, just to keep everyone honest?”
Constantine swirled the liquid he held in a heavy tumbler in one hand. His eyelids, already so seemingly sleepy, seemed to droop even lower. It made his gaze seem all the brighter.
“Why, Molly. I am shocked. Are you asking me for sex?”
Was she? But she knew she was. “And if I am?”
