Chapter Three
SHE SHOULD HAVE left Xenakis Tower after Constantine’s ridiculous ultimatum. Instead, she’d ridden the elevator to the terrace and walked out, needing to purge him from her nostrils.
Night had inched across the sky before she realized how long she’d been standing there.
The wind was cold, whipping through the sleek glass barrier and needling against her skin, threading its fingers through the fine silk of her blouse. A violent shiver zipped down her spine, but she knew it was more because of the devil she had to bargain with than the crisp wind.
Below her, Athens glowing like a nest of coals left banked under ash. Orange traffic lights winked in slow succession. Car horns echoed faintly from the street. Everything felt distant.
No, not distant. The city pulsed with familiar brilliance at first sight but beneath it was cutting indifference. Like another angry lover she’d left behind.
She shook her head, startled at that particular line of thought. He was a dangerous, infuriating man to get into her head so easily.
She hadn’t left Constantine, she amended the thought with precise clarity. He had driven her away with his greed and his schemes and his…thirst for power.
Thoughts of the past washed away the powerlessness his ridiculous proposal brought forth, and then came anger and resolve, with a hint of recklessness.
Her bare feet gripped the marble as she stepped onto the narrow ledge, heels abandoned near the door.
One foot in front of the other, she took slow, precise steps.
Wanting to know the exhilaration of danger, to remember that she was alive.
To remind herself that while he might gain a foothold into her mind, even her body—she was realistic enough to acknowledge the flaming buzz of want between them—he would never have her heart, ever again.
Her hair fought against its knot as the wind shifted again, so she reached up and pulled it free.
Pins clicked against the tile behind her, disappearing into the dark.
The heavy mass spilled down her back, wild and untamed, tangling across her shoulders.
The wind caught it and made it fly like a banner.
She exhaled slowly and tilted her head to the side. From her vantage point, everything—the city, the entire world, her own problems—looked smaller. Manageable.
Unlike the man who hated her enough that he wanted her to be his wife. Who blamed her for…what? For getting out of his way when he made that deal with her father? For finding her own way in the world without needing him? For breaking her word to him?
Even the howling wind was no match for the chaotic swirl of her thoughts.
What Constantine was demanding wasn’t a deal or a partnership. It was her ruin, signed and sealed in legal ink, with a splash of fairy-tale glitter thrown on top. Her emotional surrender.
What shook her more—more than his cold mockery of the passion they’d shared once or his condescending judgment about her marriage to Richard—was the moment he’d touched her. His fingers had barely skimmed her jaw. It was a game of sorts; she knew that now. And he had won and she had lost.
A frustrated grunt escaped her lips, caught and swallowed by the breeze.
How could she have prepared for it though? How could she have known that her body would still sing for him at one touch?
It had been years since anyone had touched her like that. She had simply buried that part of herself—the naive, foolish woman who wanted love and desire—and moved on with life.
The shock of his touch lingered beneath her skin like a buried spark. Not desire. Not tenderness.
Just sensation. A jolt straight to the center of her, reminding her that she was made of flesh. That she still had wants. That she could still be undone.
Her marriage to Richard had been based on friendship. Rose had taken to her so quickly and so fully that he had been ready to do anything to keep her in their lives. And being a gentleman, he had wanted to protect her too—from the world and herself.
Later, genuine affection had blossomed between them. He had given her every material benefit. If he had asked, Aliyah would’ve been happy to do her duty as his wife but he had asked for nothing. For his heart had been happily buried with his wife.
After years of her parents’ indifference, even neglect, after Constantine’s choices had wrecked her, after learning how useless she was at making any sort of living, Richard had offered safety. And that safety had come at the price of locking away her desperate need to be wanted and loved.
Instead, for the first time in her life, she had poured her passion, her dreams, her entire soul into piano. Her concert pianist career had been a blessing that had come out of years of her single-minded focus—too late, but she had been determined to make something out of herself.
Rose’s love and Richard’s friendship and her suddenly stellar career—she had been more than content with her life.
Until now. Until she had been breathing air that was coated with the spicy scent of the man who had nothing of the boy she’d once loved.
Her skin had prickled at the barest of his touches, her breath had caught, her entire body had surged with a single, shameful awareness.
She still wanted him.
One touch, one brush, one look at his presence, at his command, and a blaze would follow.
They would fall into bed again. Sooner or later. His little revenge scheme hinged on the fact that she wouldn’t be able to resist him despite everything. The inevitability of it sat like a stone in her stomach. And she hated it. Hated that he could still make her feel this sharp, furious want.
But if he thought he could cage her again—heart and soul—he was mistaken.
She needed Constantine’s help—there was no way around it. But she couldn’t offer herself up to him without getting something in return. Without getting something out of whatever form of ruin he had planned for her.
Because there would be an end to this marriage.
Even if he wouldn’t admit to it, just to be contrary.
She just wasn’t the same girl who had worshipped him without restraint.
She wouldn’t surrender her heart to him ever again, which was what he wanted, so that he could stomp on it. Just to prove that he could do it.
And without her blind adulation to make him feel big, without learning who she was now, without the shared grief and neglect they had both suffered as children and teens, they had nothing in common.
Any chance that they might connect as adults now was null because he couldn’t see past that girl she used to be.
She had survived him once and she would do so again. With herself intact this time.
Marrying him would help get her custody of Rose.
But as much as the teen loved her, she would be eighteen in a few years and would want to stretch her wings.
While Aliyah herself would be stuck in a cold, vengeful arrangement masquerading as a marriage.
At least until the infuriating man came to his senses and quit his petty revenge scheme.
What if this was the way to achieve her heart’s wish?
To gain something that had grown into a resolution in the last year?
All she’d ever wanted was a family to love and to care for, to call her own.
But the time to wait around for it to happen to her was long past. She had to build a family of her own, build it with the bones of affection and trust and laughter that Richard had shown her was possible.
Something utterly different from what her parents had created.
Fresh urgency rattled through her bones. She was thirty-three years old, and she wasn’t going to waste the next few years while Constantine worked out whatever lingering resentment he held toward her.
Behind her, the door to the terrace creaked open just as her resolve solidified. A gust of wind caught it, slammed it gently back against the frame.
Nerves twisted her stomach into tight knots as she sensed that dark magnetism of his presence. She was making the biggest, most dangerous yet pragmatic bargain of her life, and suddenly, she wished for Richard’s comforting presence more than anything.
But, if Richard were here, she wouldn’t have to fight to protect Rose. She wouldn’t have to face this man who could reduce her rational self to a raw, hungry mess with one look. Wouldn’t have to question her own past choices or look at herself through his point of view.
“Aliyah,” came Constantine’s voice, clipped and sharp. “What the hell are you doing?”
Feeling stubbornly perverse, she didn’t turn. The note of worry in his words made her own nervousness settle. “Enjoying the view, what else?”
Footsteps sounded behind her, then a hiss of breath. “Is marrying me really so unbearable,” he asked dryly, “that standing on the edge of a rooftop feels like the better alternative? Because as far as I remember, you don’t have a reckless bone in your body.”
No, she’d never been reckless or impulsive or even plugged into reality. But she wasn’t the same Aliyah who let others take control of her life.
Taking a deep breath, she turned to step down from the ledge.
This was going to be a long battle, one she was very possibly going to lose, but hearing the frustrated anger in Constantine’s words felt like a small win.
A very small one, but definitely a win.
The marble was cool beneath her bare feet, the stone slick with mist curling up from the city below. Her skirt whispered around her calves as the wind shifted again, blowing her hair into her face in loose, wild ribbons.
Aliyah liked the feel of it—unbound and defiant—exactly how she wanted to be in this upcoming war with this man.
She hadn’t heard him approach, but suddenly Constantine was there. Close enough that she could feel the tension radiating off him like heat from coiled steel. But even looking down at him from above didn’t lessen the magnetism of his presence or her reaction to it.
His face lay in shadows as he slowly extended a hand toward her.
She stared at it for a moment too long.