Eternally Seduced(30)

Someone suddenly took hold of my hand.

I looked up and my lips parted in shock. This had to be the worst coincidence in my entire life. "Drake?"

A familiar wry smile touched his face. "Don't sound too happy."

My cheeks flushed red. God, what a bitch I was. Drake Morrison would  have been quite a catch in any woman's eyes. He looked even more  gorgeous when he was dressed formally, and he still wasn't doing  anything to hide how much he, umm, enjoyed my company.

"Sorry, Drake. I didn't mean … " With a sigh, I confessed, "You just have the best and worst timing, Drake."

His smile turned into a grin. "Because Kastein keeps catching you in my company?"

My eyes widened. "How did you---" I paled. "Did I give myself away?"

He shook his head. "Relax, Yanna. Neither of you gave yourselves away.  But I like you  –  a lot  –  and because of that, I see things better than  other people do."

"It's not what you think."

He raised a brow.

"Really. We're not … we're just dating."

"Not exclusively?"

Thinking about the latest blond bombshell I had seen him on TV with, I  answered slowly, "No." Saying it out loud hurt, and it made me  unconsciously search for Constantijin again, as if I really had to  confirm the truth of what I was saying with my eyes. I needed to see him  with another woman  –  in person. If I did, maybe I could finally give up  on him.

It didn't take more than a second to find Constantijin, as if fate was  just waiting to give us a chance for our gazes to collide. He stood  poised on another pair of glass doors that led into the museum's  conservatory.

I knew I wasn't the only one looking at him. There were so many others  –   it was a gut feeling I had. But Constantijin only had eyes for me.

Oh my God.

The raw emotions in his gaze made me catch my breath, but then  Constantijin suddenly turned away, with such abruptness he almost  appeared rough, nothing like the utterly urbane and larger-than-life  billionaire he was known to be.

When he disappeared through another set of doors, I knew he had decided to walk away for me yet another time  –  maybe for good.

"Drake, I'm sorry---I have to go," I choked out even as I was unable to  take my gaze off the doors that Constantijin had just gone past.

Tears burned my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away before they  could ruin my mascara and I ended up looking like someone who had just  escaped from an asylum, which would result in security kicking me out of  the party.

Behind me, Drake said in a quiet voice, "Go get him."

It made me look at him over my shoulder with a wobbly smile. One day  soon, I really had to ask him why he seemed to know me so well, why he  always seemed to be there for me at the right time and place.

But not now  –  not when I finally accepted what my subconscious had known all along.

My feet started to move, the heaviness inside of me dissipating with  every step I took towards the man whose gorgeous face hid a wealth of  heartbreaking faults.

This time would be different. This time I'd court him myself if I had to  because this time, for better or for worse---this time I knew I was in  love with him.





BOOK 3: CAGED





Lesson #1




When you tell your billionaire you belong to him,

He will fuck more than your body.



"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Those were not the first words I wanted to hear from the man I had just  realized I was in love with. I expected him to be surprised that I had  come after him, but he wasn't. If anything, he appeared furious, coldly  and oddly so. It made me shift nervously on my feet, and my heels  screeched against the floor as I did. The sound echoed around the  conservatory, bouncing against the wooden domed ceiling.

A thick air of silent tension swirled around us, the heavy doors behind  me succeeding in filtering most of the party music being played outside.  The conservatory was as vast as the other exhibits of the museum, which  his parents had rented for their fundraiser.

The theme was black and white, and according to the message on my  two-thousand-dollar ticket, it was supposed to emphasize how prostitutes  should not be seen that way.

Even the conservatory had been redesigned to match the theme, with its  original lighting switched off and replaced by black-and-white  waist-high pillars illuminated from within and lining the pathways that  weaved through the cultured rainforest behind the stone fountain. All in  all, I felt like I had stepped into a giant-sized tree house filled  with shadows and white light.

A carpet of Bermuda grass separated Constantijin and me, but it looked  more like an entire ocean in my eyes. I willed Constantijin's gaze to  soften, to give me even the smallest sign that he still wanted me back.  Because he had to  –  surely I couldn't have fallen in love with a man  shallow enough to leave me the first time I didn't do something he  asked?

But his beautiful face didn't soften, and his silvery eyes remained impassive.

"I want to talk to you privately." The words were supposed to come out  even and confident, but they sounded squeaky instead. Shit.

His gaze strayed up, and my eyes followed his.

"Shit." The word escaped my lips when I saw the CCTV dome cameras  installed on the ceiling, a red light blinking underneath each and every  one of them. Didn't that mean they were recording everything going on  here? Shit.

The dome camera suddenly moved, making me jump. I looked around and bit  back a gasp when I realized all the cameras were trained on us.

Shit. It seemed to be the only word my brain could come up with. Was  nothing really going to go my way tonight? Did they think I was  cornering him here to do God knew what?

Shit.

I waved my hands madly above me, staring at the cameras. "I'm. Not.  Going. To. Kidnap. Him." I turned to Constantijin, exasperation briefly  winning over my heartbreak when he remained standing there without  uttering a word on my defense. "Please tell them I'm not going to kidnap  you!"

He tossed me a glance of disgust before he started to move. When he reached me, he took a firm hold of my shoulders.

I froze, wondering madly  –  and hoping just as hard  –  if he was going to kiss me.

But all he did was set me out of his path and he continued past me to  reach for the communication box planted next to the doors. He pressed  the speaker button and said curtly, "Switch the camera off and don't say  a fucking word about this."

Constantijin walked back to the fountain, as if he needed to place as  much distance between us as he could. Crossing his arms over his chest,  he raised a brow at me.

"Let me explain about Drake---"

His face hardened. "No."

"Please."

"No."

Brrr. He just kept sounding colder and colder. Taking a deep breath, I muttered, "If you don't listen to me, I'll---"

His eyes bored through me.

Oh God, I hated it when he looked at me like that  –  like he was a god, and I was the shit he had just stepped on.

I knew that was how the world saw the two of us. After all, Constantijin  Kastein was still the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life,  with wonderfully soft golden-copper hair and eyes the shade of liquid  silver. His body was just as beautiful, and the fact that I once had the  right to touch his fair skin, to feel the hardness underneath it  –  a  right I didn't have now  –  that hurt.

Next to this man, who had every woman salivating for him not only for  his sheer gorgeousness but also for his billion-dollar bank account, I  was ordinary  –  an old-fashioned twenty-something woman who used to  believe true love had to come first before lust.

But even though we were poles apart, he didn't have the right to treat  me like this  –  like I had to kiss his feet before he'd pay attention to  me.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "If you don't listen to me, then I might  as well go back to Drake and be his!" The words were a high-risk bet. I  knew my cards, and they all said that what I used to think was an  obsessive sexual desire for him had deepened into love. Sometimes, the  body just knew what the heart couldn't even feel yet.         

     



 

But I didn't know what Constantijin's cards hid  –  well, at least not  exactly. I knew he was just as obsessed with me sexually. I knew he got  jealous over me easily. And I knew he was still mad at me for going home  with another man when he told me not to.

Surely all those gave me reason to hope that eventually there could be more.

At my words, something flickered in his eyes, and then it was gone so  quickly I almost thought I imagined it. But I knew I hadn't, and my  chest tightened.

Nik  –  my best friend's husband  –  had been right. Once, when Daria hadn't  yet come into his life, Nik could have been Constantijin's twin  –   wealthy, gorgeous, and arrogant. He hadn't needed love, and he hadn't  believed in it. But Daria had changed him, had made him see how love  changed what could first appear set in stone.