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All for this.
This.
He would not say that he was used to her nakedness by now, for who could ever grow used to the sight of such perfection? He would sooner be dead thanused toher.
But it was a different thing altogether to see her on her knees before him, graceful and gorgeous, and her head tipped up to him. Showing him, in case he’d had the slightest shred of doubt, that she hungered for him as he had always dreamed.
As he had been so sure she would.
Those arctic blue eyes were filled with heat, and Constantine could feel the weight of her hunger, its sharp claws, deep in his sex.
He could not wait to get inside her at last.
But all he did was swirl his drink in his glass and regard her idly. As if he was on the verge of boredom, but was trying to be polite, and he had the pleasure of watching her expression change as he looked at her.
He wanted her off balance, even on her knees. Maybe especially on her knees.
“That is a very pretty picture you are presenting to me, Molly,” he murmured. “But that is your stock in trade, is it not? Pretty pictures. Pretty images. None of them you. You don’t even use your own name.”
“Did I misunderstand the stage directions?” she asked, and for some reason, the warm undertone in her voice, that thread of laughter when surely she should have been more mindful of her own surrender, was nearly his undoing.
Why was it that he could not seem to remember that what was happening here was serious? It was revenge. It was not the place for laughter. He should not havelikedher.
“This is the trouble with beautiful women,” he told her, and it was harder to sound as disaffected and jaded as he usually did.
But then, that was nothing new. He had been acting unlike himself when it came to Molly for far longer than he cared to recall.
Once again he was struck by how at ease she was in her skin. It was powerful. It made her seem something like mystical, adding to the glory of all her elegance. She settled back on her heels now, her breasts jutting out and her blue eyes gleaming with more than simply that hunger, now.
God, the ways he wanted her.
Especially when she smiled at him, that clever little curve of her lips that made him feel almost...silly. “I can’t wait to hear the thoughts of an inveterate bedpost-notcher when it comes to women,” she said. “Such things are always so incisive and hard-hitting, aren’t they? And not at all patriarchal. I’m surprised you haven’t already written a book on the subject, given how many women’s names you’ve likely forgotten in your time. In the last week, even.”
“Here is the thing about beautiful women,” Constantine said again, refusing to rise to her bait. And then, as he considered it, astounded that he had to caution himself against such a thing in the first place. “A beautiful woman assumes that thefactof her is sufficient. That she need not think or do or say anything further. She exists, therefore that is all that need be expected of her. Her mere appearance on any scene should do all the thinking, doing, or speaking necessary, and she therefore assumes it will.”
Molly’s head canted slightly to one side, and he could no longer see any of that humor in her gaze. He should have been thrilled.
He told himself he wasthrilled.
“Beautiful women are born with a face that they did not choose,” Molly said quietly. After a moment that stretched on too long for Constantine’s comfort, and he was the one who was in control. He was not the one on his knees. “And they are taught, over time, that people will react to that face. That strangers and loved ones alike will treat that face in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with the person behind it. You learn quickly that it is far better to simply present yourself and see what the reaction will be first. It’s safer.”
Something seemed to crackle between them, a new and more dangerous heat.
“Molly.” Constantine said her name as if he had never tasted it in his mouth before. As if he’d never tasted her, when the reality was, he had never been the same since he had. “Nothing here is safe. Not for you.”
He expected her to quail at that. To shrink down, there where she knelt before him, or shrivel a bit. To show some hint that she was torn into a thousand pieces as he could feel he was. As he would rather rip off his own head before showing her he was.
But instead, this confounding woman—his once-upon-a-time stepsister and his current obsession—smiled.
A big, wide sort of smile that made him want to shout out his frustration loud enough to topple the Arc de Triomphe. And yet, at the same time, it made him want to taste that smile himself. And then the rest of her.
Now.
Why could he not compartmentalize this woman as he had every other thing in his life?
“No one expects an intricately plotted revenge plot to besafe, Constantine,” she said in mock quelling tones, and he could hear too well the laughter in her voice again. It was its own heat. “That would completely defeat the purpose of all that plotting. All the demands for naked sunscreen application. And our current grand tour of the romance that wasn’t.”
“If this is still a joke to you,” Constantine said, and it hurt him to say it so lazily, but he managed it, “you might as well get dressed and take yourself off to bed. I told you the only circumstances under which we will have sex, Molly. Mockery is not among them.”
