Chapter Nine #2
Her red pantsuit clung to her frame perfectly, highlighting the sharpness of her features, the warmth of her skin. The fabric hugged her body, emphasizing the long line of her legs, legs that had wrapped around him only days ago as he’d taken her so roughly.
Her mouth, soft yet composed, barely quivered with a smile, but it was the same mouth that could wrench his soul from him in a kiss.
The soft swell of her breasts pressed against the fabric, reminding him how they had trembled beneath him when he had kissed, licked and sucked at them—how she had begged him, her voice breaking as she had pleaded with him for more, for harder, for deeper.
Her hair was in a tight, high ponytail that made her look polished, even remote.
Foolishly, he kept searching for the sweet, shy, uncertain young woman he had known once—even though she was the one who had broken his trust, his heart. The woman who stood in her place was someone else, someone new, someone about whom almost every assumption he’d made was being proved wrong.
Including the fact that she wanted to protect Rose from her uncle for no other reason than that she loved the teen. His PI had proved that she’d been left nothing, not even a penny, by her dead husband.
Christos, he didn’t know what to make of her.
Constantine noted Aliyah’s shock as she realized the party had been arranged to celebrate her, but she quickly masked it with a practiced smile.
The guests, who had just witnessed her performance, surrounded her, their congratulations and praise flowing freely.
She’d had no idea this celebration was for her—her music, her birthday, her brilliance.
The recognition in the room was overwhelming, and for a moment, she seemed almost lost in it, but she composed herself.
As the guests swarmed around her, Constantine watched, a knot of discomfort twisting in his gut. He hadn’t been able to discourage Theo from attending the concert or the party. The old man was a variable he couldn’t control, especially when it came to how much power he still had to hurt Aliyah.
For once though, whatever it was that he said to Aliyah—or maybe it was the uncharacteristic kiss on the cheek he gave his daughter—her amber eyes lit up with even more light than when she had bowed in front of a stunned crowd earlier.
But it wasn’t just her appearance that held his attention.
The music she had played had been a revelation. Each note had rippled through him, uncoiling emotions he hadn’t realized were so tightly wound. He didn’t understand the technicalities, the complexity of the pieces, but the feeling—the intensity of her performance—had cut through him like a blade.
Aliyah had devoted herself to this music in the years they’d been apart; that much was clear. Such mastery couldn’t be acquired without sacrifice, without utter devotion to craft, without complete immersion.
A wave of realization hit him. He didn’t truly know this woman he had trapped into marriage. Not the one who had played that piano like it was her soul speaking through the keys. Not the one who had demanded that he give her oblivion.
He grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, needing something to steady himself. His fingers felt tight around the glass, the cool liquid a sharp contrast to the heat coursing through him.
Someone congratulated him on his recent marriage, on acquiring such a talented wife.
His jaw tightened, and he stifled the scorn rising in him. The stranger’s comment, congratulating him on acquiring such a talented wife, mirrored the assumptions he had made about Aliyah—how he had reduced her to just another pampered, privileged woman.
A bitter self-realization gnawed at him. He had judged her just as harshly, just as narrowly. The resentment that she hadn’t trusted him or wanted him without the guarantee of a privileged life still festered, but its hold on him…had loosened. Lessened, almost against his own better instincts.
He still wanted her surrender, but it was for a reason he didn’t dare examine too closely.
The voices around him faded to a low hum as their eyes finally met. A question glinted in hers, assessing, searching. It sent him spiraling back to the greenhouse…the way she had looked at him, desperate and willing.
This was why he had stayed away, why he’d given her space for two weeks. But clearly, it hadn’t worked. One look from her, one whiff of her scent, and his body reacted with brutal clarity.
He was hard again, just making eye contact with her.
Thinking about how she had demanded his possession, how her breasts had heaved beneath him as he thrust into her, the feeling of her tight, wet channel sucking him deeper, keeping him lodged inside her.
Her amber eyes had locked onto his as he had come, and for a moment, it felt as though she had tethered him to her in that instant.
He couldn’t shake the way she had flinched at that first thrust, the way her body had jerked, as if she wasn’t prepared for him, but had needed what he gave anyway.
Christos. He had used her so badly. So roughly.
Seeing her mostly out of it afterward had been the hardest thing he had ever done. Leaving her there, small and alone in the bed, had torn at something inside him. But he had to leave.
He had needed to get out of there, or else he would have stayed, held her. Made love to her again in that small bed. And then there would be no separation between the past and the present.
Not that staying away had curbed his curiosity about her—hence he’d secretly arranged for her to play.
He pasted his usual practiced, slick smile as Theo linked his arm through Aliyah’s as she made her way to Constantine.
“Wasn’t she brilliant, Constantine? I had tears in my eyes at that last bit,” Theo said, his eyes shining full of pride. Talking to him as if there wasn’t an oceans-wide rift between them.
With each passing day though, this new version of Theo seemed to chip away at his resentment. And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to revert to that young, foolish youth he’d been once, hoping for a speck of genuine affection from a man he had worshipped for so long.
He nodded, refusing to indulge the old man in whatever it was he was doing.
The wily old fox instantly changed tack. He tapped the back of Aliyah’s hand, his excitement as palpable as a child with a new toy. “You do know that it was Constantine that arranged the concert, Aliyah?”
From his supposed happiness at their marriage, to his full approval to the board that Constantine was the future of Andros International, Theo kept surprising him. It was everything he had wanted once, but now…he was too cynical to trust it.
“Yes, Papa,” his wife said, her gaze still studying him with that new boldness that aroused him and infuriated him equally.
“The organizer told me.” She turned and smiled at her father, who seemed to inflate at the genuine warmth in it.
“My husband is fond of arranging my life as he pleases. Even though he has barely paid any attention to me in the past two weeks.”
Shock stole whatever throwaway protest Constantine would have offered. Was she flirting with him? Was that some new awareness in her eyes that seemed to light her up from the inside? Or again, was it just who she was now?
Theo’s boisterous laughter filled the awkward silence.
Puffing out air through his lips, Constantine glared at the older man.
He tapped his daughter’s hand again, pressed another kiss to her cheek and said, “Happy birthday, Aliyah Jasmine.” Something heavy dwelled in his eyes as they met Constantine’s.
“He has no experience yet with being a husband, ne? So give him time, child. There is nothing Constantine cannot do if only he sets his mind to it.”
With that strange reassurance, which seemed to hold a veiled warning, he left them to each other.
Aliyah took a step forward, closing the gap between them. Instantly, the jasmine-and-vanilla scent of her, overlaid with her sweat, filled his lungs. His poor body reacted promptly, everything rushing south.
“I think I will take his advice in this. You might have the makings of a good husband after all.”
Before he could process the flirty underpinnings of that, she took another step closer.
Constantine gripped her hip to stop her—Christos, the lush, jutting flare would drive any man crazy with need. “Aliyah…”
“Come, Constantine.” One slender arm came to his shoulder as she moved another step closer.
“Dance with me. Show me off. Let us convince these old cronies of Papa’s that you have my unconditional devotion.
” Another arm on his shoulder, another step forward, until his thighs lightly straddled hers, until her chest brushed his, setting him on fire.
“Make me earn this protection you are offering me and Rose.”
He flinched and was too late to hide his reaction. Bile filled his throat at how she put it, even though it was the bitter truth beneath the ridiculous contract he had offered her.
“Take your hair out,” he bit out, struggling for control over his temper, fully directed at himself.
For the first time that evening, she looked confused. “What?”
“Your hair, I like it loose and free. Not like that,” he said, signaling to the ponytail.
Sudden color filled her cheeks, though she instantly tugged at the band that held it. Without checking to see if anyone was watching.
She shook her hair, combing a hand through it, and the waterfall of it fell around her shoulders. “Anything else you want me take off, Mr. Xenakis?”
He eyed the deep V of her jacket—she only had a bra underneath—and shook his head. “No, the rest of you is for my eyes only,” he said, possessiveness dripping from each word.
Before she could react, he took her arm, signaled to the band and walked toward the dance floor.
A soft, slow jazz melody began as he took her in his arms. Other couples joined them. But nothing, not the music, not the presence of others, could dilute the effect of holding Aliyah like this.
His wife…