One for the Money

Maybe I was too rough with her. She could be sore.

Lord knows I had no control. No restraint.

“You didn’t hurt me, but… it’s been a while.”

I force my voice to remain casual. “How long?”

“Fourteen years.”

Holy shit. I’m propped on my elbow before I can stop myself, looking down at her. So much for sounding casual. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes.” She blushes. “It doesn’t matter. Why are you upset?”

“I’m not upset.” I run a hand through my hair and tug. Hell. Maybe I am upset. “It’s just that you should have told me. I would have been more gentle with you. I would have—”

“I didn’t want you to be more gentle with me. I liked the way you were.”

Her soft admission makes my cock throb. It reminds me that I have a very good view of her beautiful breasts, full and plush with dark tips. Desire yanks hard at my control. It would be so easy to have her right now. A distraction. It’s a distraction from what I really want to know. “Why, Eva? You’re beautiful, passionate, and very active in Bishop’s Landing. How is it that no one can get you into their beds?”

She looks away, leaving me her profile. “Your father was right, okay? I did have my heart broken. No, he said it was shattered. And it’s true.”

I turn her chin back to me. “Who was it? And can I kill him?”

A pained laugh. “You can’t. He’s already dead.”

Her words slam into me. I almost lose my breath. Is that why she’s been single all this time? Been abstinent for fourteen years? Because she was in love and tragically lost him? It makes my chest feel tight to imagine her pining for him. Even as I licked her pretty sex, even as I fucked her so hard she saw stars, she loved a dead man.

“I’m sorry,” I manage to say.

“It’s not like that,” she says, looking up at me. Her eyes have turned a paler brown in the morning light. Or maybe it’s that she’s baring her secrets right now that makes it seem that way. As if I’m looking past her defenses and into the heart of her. “I’m not still in love with him, but I was once. I wish I could shrug it off as childish infatuation, but if it had been that, I could have gotten over it. No. This was real, foolish, unthinkable, impossible, stupid love.”

“What makes it stupid?” I ask softly.

I’m not against love. In fact, I want it. I want to experience it the same way as everyone else, with all the doubt, all the uncertainty. I don’t want to know that I’ll lose it by forgetting it ever happened. I don’t want to saddle her with a childlike husband who screams at her when he gets confused at night. It’s a sorry fate to face alone, but I won’t take her down with me.

And considering how loyal she is to her family, if I did marry her for real, she’d probably stay with me to the bitter end. It’s sad that my mother’s left my father, but there’s a kind of mercy in it, too. At least her memories of him are mostly from the past, when he was really himself. Eva would chain herself to her husband through sickness as in health.

“It was Lane Constantine.”

Christ. Lane Constantine was married, though he was known for having affairs. And it would have been normal for him to have younger women as his mistresses, but still. Eva was so much younger than he was. “How old were you?” I say, struggling to contain my anger. If Lane weren’t already dead, I would definitely punch him for taking advantage of her.

“Nineteen,” she says, almost defensively.

Defending Lane fucking Constantine, as if that makes it okay. He would have been in his mid-forties by then. And she had been raised so sheltered, so Catholic.

That’s not the worst part.

The worst part is that everyone knows he was mortal enemies with the Morellis. It’s made for some creative guest lists and seating charts at Hughes events. We’re connected to the Constantines via my mother, Geneva. Her sister Caroline married Lane.

We’re also friends with the Morellis.

We don’t pick sides in their little feud. With our power and fortune, we don’t have to.

Then Lucian Morelli hooked up with Elaine Constantine.

Leo married Haley Constantine.

There’s enough of a connection that the feud has cooled… for now. At one time, though, it was vicious. And Lane Constantine fucked his enemy’s daughter. That’s cold, even for ruthless billionaires. “Did he… hurt you?”

“No,” she says quickly. “Nothing like that. At least not during…sex. He swept me off my feet, actually. I believed him when he said he loved me and wanted to leave his wife. I thought we could have some kind of fairy-tale ending.”