"Let me down," I hissed, trying to struggle out of his hold without being too obvious about it. My heart beat madly all the while, an instinctive response to the deep and burning passion that Constantijin was visibly struggling to hold in check, his body positively vibrating with sexual tension.
"Stop moving or I swear I'll take you right here," he gritted between clenched teeth.
I stilled.
"Do you know," he asked in a guttural voice that made his words almost incomprehensible, "how much I've been thinking of you – how I can't get to work the moment I let my mind be completely consumed of thoughts of your hot little body?"
I was so, so wet by the time he finished speaking.
One part of me questioned what I was doing. What the hell did true love have to do with all this? But the other part of me was rejoicing in my decision, of finally being free from all the inhibitions and just being able to indulge.
Did Vegas do this to me – get rid of my inhibitions all at once so I could finally know what it was like to have sex with Constantijin? Or was it that my subconscious had only been waiting for a scapegoat, and Vegas was exactly that – a reason to excuse the inexcusable?
In the end, it didn't matter.
I wanted him. He wanted me.
Constantijin took me to his room, which was – unsurprisingly – the hotel's penthouse suite. But I didn't really have time to look around, not when Constantijin was kissing me wildly the moment we entered his room.
His kiss sent my head reeling again, so much that I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, and totally hadn't a clue about what I should do. "Wait," I gasped against his mouth, close to panicking.
"Relax," he muttered as his mouth descended, leaving little kisses on my neck as he did. "Let me take care of everything."
And then the phone in his room rang. It was hard to ignore, but both of us did our best. It let out a loud beep, followed by a familiar tone that told me the call had been transferred to his voice box.
"Baby, it's me, Selena. I heard you were in Vegas? I am, too. I'm naked and hot---"
Buzz kill was the polite word for it as Constantijin sprang from me, cursing in Dutch – or at least I thought it sounded like cuss words – and stalking towards the phone. He tore it out of its sockets and threw it on the cushion. One part of me was taken aback by the rage in his actions, but another part of me was coldly indifferent to it.
Too freaking late, my Dutch playboy billionaire.
Just too freaking late.
He turned to me, hand outstretched. "Yanna---"
I avoided his touch.
His eyes darkened. "Don't. You know you can't blame me for her call. I hadn't had sex with another woman since I met you."
I hugged myself hard. "It doesn't matter."
"It fucking matters, and you know it!"
He was shouting. Wasn't I supposed to be the one shouting here? "We're just not a good thing together," I mumbled. Confusion, pain, and anger blended into a pit of darkness inside me, drowning my heart, and making my body feel numb.
"Yanna, you know you're being unfair. You know that."
I bit my lip hard to keep myself from my crying. "I know."
"Then let me---"
"You worry me. You scare me." Constantijin's face was pale by the time I finished speaking. But now that I had started, I realized I had to let everything out – as usual. Just because he was Constantijin Kastein didn't mean it was always going to be different with him.
"We're too different. You think about sex all the time. You make me think about sex all the time when I never even wanted to … " I forced myself to continue. "I never even wanted to touch myself before you."
Poor Constantijin.
He looked more than shocked. He looked sick now. Was he thinking he had a lucky escape – that he had almost had sex with a basket case? Sex was nothing to him and here I was, practically having an emotional breakdown before him.
"What do I have to do to change your mind?" He was asking the question, but he wasn't really asking it. You got what I mean, right?
But I gave him my answer anyway, never mind if I knew he didn't really care at this point. Everything about Constantijin right now told me so. The impassive look on his face, the stiff stance of his body – everything about it screamed ;I don't do complications'.
"Court me." Walter did that for Carole. Walter – the kindest man I had ever known, my father, the one man I looked up to, and the man Carole once described as the doctor who had affairs with nurses in every major hospital in the world he had been invited to visit.
Constantijin's eyes widened.
"Make me feel you want me – just me." I gave him a sad smile, my words halting as I spoke the truth. "But that's not your thing, right?" Constantijin would think this was another power play. It wasn't, but I couldn't blame him for thinking that way.
And he said equally slowly, his words like the final nails burying my heart six feet deep, "No. That's not my thing."
He walked me to my room after that, neither of us speaking.
Any time now, I whispered to myself. Anytime now he'd look back and realize he was about to do the greatest mistake of his life, that things could be so great between us, that I was worth chasing after---
We reached my door, and I opened it ever so slowly, waiting for something I knew was becoming more and more impossible. Say something. Please say anything so I can do something to salvage this.
I stepped inside my room, and when I turned around to thank him he was already walking away, killing all my futile hopes in a heartbeat.
It was the last I saw of him for the weekend.
BOOK 2: COURTED
Lesson #1
There's only one way to get over your billionaire.
And that's for you to see he's over you.
It had been exactly thirty-one days since I first worked for Kastein Inc. and eighteen days since Constantijin and I had parted ways in Vegas.
Constantijin Kastein was a Dutch billionaire, a gorgeous blond giant of a man whom the media loved to call Netherlands' #1 Playboy. Together with two of his other billionaire friends, he made up the society's infamous Three Pussketeers because of their long line of sexual conquests.
Constantijin was totally out of my league, but for some strange reason he had desired my body. I had desired his back – but I also wanted more. I had asked him to do something impossible, and he left me because it was impossible for him to do.
The memories had me sighing, like it always did. Lately, I was sighing so much it was a wonder I hadn't run out of oxygen. I should totally be choking on carbon dioxide by now. Even in my sleep, I had a feeling I still didn't stop sighing at what had been and what could have been between Constantijin and me.
George was so wrong. What happened in Vegas didn't stay there. It haunted me, stalked me, and killed me every time my gaze would find Constantijin, and I would see him laughing like nothing was wrong in his world.
It was Friday today – just a few minutes past six. I should be out by now, having fun with the rest of the world but instead I was stuck at the office. Charli had asked me to stay behind for some last-minute paperwork her own secretary had overlooked. Of course I said ;yes'. When you were single, heartbroken, and unable to masturbate because one) you couldn't get pass the embarrassment of it and two) you had an (almost) affair with a billionaire whose cock put every exaggeratedly designed vibrator to shame – work was the best painkiller you could ask for.
The fantastic overtime pay for staying behind at the office was another plus. I sort of – okay, I totally blew off my savings in the last two days I had been in Vegas. That was how fucked-up Constantijin had left me. Yes, it was pathetic of me. No, you didn't have to say it again and again. I knew it. George knew it. But knowing didn't stop me from feeling lost – like I once had the sun in my grasp and now I was in, like, total darkness.
I shuddered, hating how poetic and childish I sounded at the same time. Heartbreak so didn't suit me. If you hadn't noticed by now, I had this, like, really awful tendency to go Alicia Silverstone's Clueless mode when I felt super bad.
George also had overtime work, but he was already done and in a hurry to leave. He had a date with a guy from 25/F, never mind if both of them were already committed to someone else. They had a very elastic understanding of the word ;fidelity'. Sometimes, I wished I felt the same. Life would have been less complicated and more orgasmic if I did.
"Toodle-loo, Yanna," he told me with an air-kiss on the cheek while resettling his dorky glasses on his nose. For once, his checkered shirts were nowhere in sight, replaced by a smart-looking blazer and a silky blue shirt.