My heart thudded so hard it threatened to crack my ribs.
This was it.
What I’d been waiting for.
The key to the lock of the Constantines demise.
So why the fuck did I feel like throwing up?
* * *
“She’s late.”
I stalked back and forth over the cold floors of the entry hall as I waited for Bianca to finish getting ready for the Lane Constantine Memorial Ball at The Met. The gala started at seven and it was already nine o’clock. I’d always planned to get there fashionably late, to make an entrance, but this was pushing it.
“She’s a girl,” Brando told me sagely from the ground where he rolled around playing tug-of-war with Picasso. “They always take forever.”
Henrik chuckled from where he stood huddled with Walcott and Ezra, all of them pretending to talk business when I fucking knew they were just waiting to see Bianca in all her finery for the event.
The truth was, I was agitated by exactly that and not our lateness.
I’d barely slept the last few days as I prepared for my plan to go off without a hitch. Lawyers were ready to tackle the will if I found it where I assumed the clever Constantine bastard had hidden it, a messenger ready to courier it over to the Lombardi & Ghorbani offices as soon as it was in my possession. I’d gone to Judge Bartley to finalize my custody of the Belcantes so that assuming guardianship of Colombe Energy Investments would be absurdly easy.
I was ready for it.
What I wasn’t ready for was the sight of Bianca coming down the stairs.
I hadn’t seen much of her in the days following our torrid assignation on the beach of Bishop’s Landing. It seemed, if not easier, then infinitely smarter to stay away from her. My skin fucking itched every time I thought about that plush mouth, that sweet, wet pussy clutching at me in the same greedy manner as her hands on my shoulders. The way she’d licked my scar like a cat grooming a sore on her young. As if she could heal me with her touch.
I didn’t need the added temptation of her in my actual presence, all the memories that assaulted my waking and sleeping hours confirmed by the feel of her in the same room as me.
I’d vowed not to take her again. This wasn’t about satisfying some carnal craving.
This was about revenge. Cold-blooded, rage-hot revenge.
Finally delivered.
I was ravenous for it.
Almost as ravenous as I was each time I thought about her marshmallow-flavored kisses.
My teeth ground as I checked my Patek Philippe watch, the same one I’d worn the day I met Bianca for the first time.
“Bianca!” I roared, my voice filling the nooks and crannies of my gothic home. “Get down here now.”
“Jesus, old man, there is no need to yell.”
I froze at the sound of her voice floating down the stairs, but I didn’t look her way without taking a deep, bracing breath.
She’s just a girl, I reminded myself.
A seventeen-year-old too naïve for her own good.
“Wow,” Brando whispered into the sudden quiet, even Picasso still at his side.
“You look stunning, Bianca,” Walcott agreed warmly, almost proudly.
I wanted to scoff at him for being so enchanted, but fuck, I couldn’t blame him when I was almost terrified to look at her myself.
“Tiernan?” she called, a hesitancy in her voice that found its way under the crack of the locked door to my heart and made it pound madly. “Will I do?”
Slowly, my head swiveled, eyes narrowed as if I prepared to look directly at the sun.
And there she was.
Not a seventeen-year-old girl.
No.
She was all woman, all grace and subtle feminine power.
The dress that skimmed the lush curves of her lean body should have been ridiculous. The bottom half floated around her, all white feathers moving as if she glided down the stairs instead of stepped. The bodice was flesh-toned mesh and careful collections of diamonds and silver lace that made her shine in the light from the ancient chandelier glowing over the entryway. The light caught on her hair, spinning it to pure golden curls spilling down her back and shoulders, caught up at one side by a diamond clasp over her left ear.
But it was her eyes, done up in deep browns that made the blue of her irises seem oversaturated, too blue to exist in nature, that did me in. They sought mine across the expanse of the hall and asked a simple question that carved itself into my fucking chest.
What do you think of me?
I thought she was exquisite.
The most beautiful thing to grace the earth.
An angel descending the curved staircase into hell, into the arms of a man she knew to be a monster.
It should have filled me with shame, maybe, but it was desire I felt coiling low in my belly. I was hungry for that contrast, to take that pretty painted mouth and smear her lipstick across her cheeks with the head of my cock, to watch that mascara drip off her lashes as I forced myself into her throat. I wanted to mark her all over as mine, dirty her up with the blackness of my soul and see how far I could drag her into hell with me.
I was walking forward before I noticed what I was doing, my long legs making quick work of the stairs between us. There was no idea in my head of what I would do when I reached her, but suddenly face-to-face with her perfection, my body seemed to find an answer.
My tattooed hand at her throat where diamonds should have nested, my rose ink her only adornment, and then my mouth over hers, parting her lips like a sword through flesh.
Under my palm, she trembled.
I ate at her, the beast in me hungry, voracious for every inch of her mouth, the space behind her teeth, at the back of her tongue. She clung to my elbows as I held her still and took what I pleased.
When I finally pulled away, she was panting, her lipstick kissed off to reveal swollen lips made red by the scruff of the beard I hadn’t deigned to shave off.
A low growl of satisfaction rumbled through my chest before I could stop it.
And Bianca?
She caught the noise and offered me a tiny, tremulous smile as a reward for my possessiveness.
“You like it,” she guessed, recovering her sass enough to laugh at me with sparkling eyes.
I didn’t answer her because words would only give me away. Instead, I grabbed her hand and tugged her unceremoniously down the stairs. She giggled behind me, as if my rudeness was somehow charming.
I ground my teeth together.
Walcott, Ezra, Henrik, and Brando all stood together at the bottom of the staircase with matching shit-eating grins.
“You never kissed Mom like that,” Brando noted with all the candid awkwardness of a child.
I dropped Bianca’s hand like a hot coal and shot Brando a withering look, but he had already turned his attention to his sister, murmuring about how she looked like Wonder Woman, like an Amazonian princess.
“Here,” Walcott said quietly, pulling me away a few paces to press something into my hand.
It was a flat velvet box the same dark sapphire as Bianca’s eyes.
“No,” I said immediately, pushing back at him. “Absolutely not.”
“She’s representing you tonight. The McTiernans, not the Morellis or the Constantines. She should look like the belle of the damn ball, T, not a pauper. Give it to her,” Walcott argued quietly but intractably, so the words wouldn’t reach Bianca’s ears.
He was usually the most good-natured of The Gentlemen, but today he was obstinate, jaw tensed around words carved from stone.