Page 36 of Her Deal with the Greek Devil

Or something better than fainting, maybe. Something to address the way she prickled all over with that heat she now knew all too well.

“I don’t require these confessions from you,” she told him then. “I don’t even want them.”

She wanted to tell him she forgave him, but she didn’t quite dare. Even if, as she let that notion take root in her, she knew it was true. Or she would never have taken off her clothes for him. She would certainly never have writhed about in his hands on that first day, all abandonment.

But there had been something about all those sun-drenched days on the island. Something about baring her skin and letting the breeze and the light find her wherever she was. Something about opening herself wide to Constantine’s gaze and never wavering, never hiding, never falling apart.

Molly had forgiven him, yes. But she’d forgiven herself, too.

“I do not care if you want this confession,” Constantine said tightly, as if this was a fight they were having. He certainly looked as if he was prepared to wade into battle, so tautly did he hold himself. “And despite all that, I’m sure I would have forgotten you in time. Isabel’s relationship with my father didn’t last, because nothing my father touched ever lasted, except the fortunes he hoarded. You were no threat. I could have gone quite happily about my life and never thought of you again, Molly. That was the goal all along.”

She found herself staring back at him at that, mutely, not certain how to respond to that, much less the ferocity she could see stamped all over him.

“But instead, you became Magda. And you were everywhere. It began to feel not only as if you were hunting me, but as if you had played me from the start.” His laugh then was dark. “There I was, the jaded and worldly Skalas son, stamping out an innocent for my amusement the same way my father had always trodden on anything that dared attract his notice. But no. That whole time I thought I was crushing you into the dirt, you had one of the most famous women in the world right there inside of you. Ready to come out the moment you left Skiathos and escaped my family. You became my obsession.”

“I can’t imagine why you would care what happened to me.”

“Can you not?” His voice was a bitter lash. “Because I felt guilty, Molly.Guilty.You are the only thing I have ever felt guilty about in my life. Because for all I have always reveled in sin, for all I have sought out the darkness and the lowest of places, you did not deserve what I did to you.And I knew it.”

Now there was no stopping the way her heart catapulted against her chest. Now there was no hope of doing anything but sitting there, waiting to see what he would lob at her next. What mad grenade. What bomb she wouldn’t see coming.

“Now it turns out that once again, you have shamed me,” he said quietly. Ferociously. “Your innocence is my guilt made new. It proves that all along, I was never who I thought I was. And you... You have been even more pure, from the start, than I imagined anyone could be.”

Molly felt turned inside out. Or maybe she only wished she had been, when all she could see was the rich darkness of his gaze turned bleak.

“This is a lot of talk of guilt and shame,” she said. She found she could move then, so she did, crawling down the length of the bed until once more she could sit there before him, her knees beneath her. “And it seems to me that if we’re going to spend the night castigating ourselves for the despoiling of innocence, there should be more despoiling. Don’t you think?”

“You are not hearing me,” Constantine thundered at her then. “You are the only thing on this earth I have ever felt for, Molly. First it was guilt. Then it was fury. And now—”

“Constantine,” she said, desperate and greedy, her heart a great clatter. Needy and sure, at last. Absolutely sure what this was—what this had always been. “Shut up.”

Then she launched herself at him.

And he caught her.

Molly might not have known what she was doing, but she knew it felt good.

And this time was different all over again. This time was slow. Constantine put his mouth on every inch of her body, as if committing her to memory, one lick of heat at a time.

He settled between her thighs and drank deep from the heat of her core, until all she could do was sob out his name like a prayer.

It felt that sacred.

Then he set her before him on her hands and knees and took her that way, a slow, delirious rhythm that made every part of her body seem to come alive. Then burn bright.

Only when she was sobbing again—but this time in the grip of that fiery need—did Constantine flip her over, gather her beneath him, and drive them both home.

When she woke again, it was morning.

Daylight poured in through the windows, bright and sweet. Molly felt deliciously battered from head to toe, and as she stretched she laughed as she found so many interesting tugs in new places.

She did not see the note until she sat up and looked around for Constantine. He was nowhere to be found in the vast bedchamber, but the note had been clipped to the pillow beside her.

She picked it up, trying to make sense of the words written across the heavy card stock in a slashing, dark hand.

It was a simple message, direct and to the point.

Molly felt it like a stab wound through her heart.