by Marian Tee
If someone was going to do some convincing, it would no doubt be Constantijin, tempting me to forget all about my inhibitions and just give my virginity away like a freaking lottery prize.
It wasn’t hard to spot Constantijin even with all the bare-chested men around. You just had to follow the trail of sighs, giggles, and whispers and there you have it – Constantijin, wearing a pair of black board shorts that rode sinfully low on his hips. His abs, the muscled V that tapered down under his board shorts, and the chiseled perfection of his face---
Oh my God, if I wasn’t a die-hard virgin, I would have begged him to take me.
Leaning against the bar, elbows propped on the counter, Constantijin scanned the area with obvious impatience. I jerked when he suddenly turned towards my direction, as if he had some sort of sixth sense when it came to my presence. It stole my heart, it really did, and it successfully eroded my No to Relationship-less Sex beliefs by another inch.
His eyes burned bright as he stared at me head to toe, his gaze moving ever so slowly like a visual caress that had me shivering in my modest two-piece.
We met halfway, and Constantijin’s arm immediately curved around my waist, the possessiveness in his hold unmistakable. I was thrilled at his touch, more so when he whispered to my ear, “You look so fucking hot I want to lock you in my room so I can take you for days.”
Same here, I thought with a secret grimace. So totally the same for me, especially with all the women around us staring at him with unconcealed lust.
We walked toward the nearest available lounge chairs, George occupying one while Constantijin joined me on mine. As George started chatting with the guy next to him, I could feel Constantijin’s gaze follow my every movement.
“Allow me,” he said huskily from behind when I took out a bottle of suntan lotion from my bag.
“Constantijin.” It was a very weak protest and we both knew it.
He didn’t bother answering. I heard the clicking sound of the bottle’s lid being opened, the squirt of lotion being released, and then suddenly his hot hands were smearing the cream all over my back.
Even though he was kneading the muscles in my back beautifully, like an expert massage therapist, I couldn’t make myself relax. And when I felt his fingers touching the undersides of my breasts, I couldn’t help it. I instinctively turned around and slapped his hand away.
“What the---” Constantijin glowered at me. “I swear, Yanna. What is it with you and your tendency to slap?”
“It’s your fault,” I burst out. “You keep taking me by surprise.”
“Can’t you say ‘oh my God’ like a normal girl?”
I flushed. “Well, sorry if I’m not like those normal girls---” I coughed ‘bimbos’ under my breath. “---you date.” I got to my feet, more than a little mad, hurt, and jealous at how he had so unfavorably compared me to his battalion of former lovers.
“Yanna, come back here,” he gritted.
“Never,” I muttered, stalking off.
“Yanna, I’m warning you---”
“Sorry, you’re not my CEO right---” I let out a shriek as I found myself flying and hitting the water a few moments later. I came up thrashing. Gasping for breath, I couldn’t believe someone as supposedly well-mannered as Constantijin Kastein had actually pushed me into the pool.
I whirled around at the sound of his laughter.
“You---”
He laughed harder.
My rage died at the look of genuine amusement on his beautiful face. During the times I was able to watch Constantijin unobserved at our workplace, he was always charming and beautifully mannered, soft-spoken and smiling. But I had never seen him this happy.
Oh, oh, Lord. I was so in trouble with this guy. He made me want to protect him and care for him, which was a ludicrous idea considering he was a foot taller than I was, heavier by a stone, and billions of dollars richer.
“Yanna?” Feeling the movement of water as he walked towards me, I twisted my head around in askance and his lips immediately caught mine. Ah. My Dutch billionaire had gotten the better of me again. I gasped against his lips, but that only made Constantijin chuckle before deepening his kiss. The kiss was hot and wet, a carnal encounter between our mouths that had me silently moaning and wishing we weren’t in such a very public place.
I could only stare at him by the time he lifted his head, shocked at how my body still ached for his touch even though I could feel the pointed glares of other women around us. I couldn’t blame them. If I were in their shoes, I would have been envious after such our extreme bout of PDA.
But Constantijin didn’t seem to be aware of how every woman within five meters was stared at him hungrily. He only had eyes for me, and that, too, was effective in eroding my inhibitions by a few more inches. If I didn’t put a stop to this, I could find myself raping him in the end.
His eyes blazing with need and desire, he said, “Let’s swim, Yanna.”
Oh, let’s, especially when he said the words like he was saying “let’s fuck” instead.
Only a few couples were in the water with us, and all of them occupied the shallower end of the pool. Constantijin started to laugh when he saw me clutching the sides of the pool the moment we reached the five-foot mark.
“Don’t you know how to swim?”
“I do,” I said haughtily. At his knowing look, I grumbled, “But I don’t know how to float.”
He laughed harder. “You are too adorable for words, schat.”
I rolled my eyes. “Adorably pathetic, you mean?”
He grinned but said nothing. I watched him shake his head a bit, fascinated at how several locks of his hair showered droplets of water on his broad shoulders. It made me want to lick every drop until he was dry and dripping for another reason.
I closed my eyes. You are such a bad girl, Yanna.
When I opened my eyes, he was smiling at me, “Yanna, hang on to me so we can go further?”
Blinking rapidly at what he was suggesting, I stammered, “I…I…”
“Come on, it will be fun.” And then he was slowly pulling me away from the edges. I thought he meant I should ride piggyback style while he floated for us both, but apparently he had something else in mind – something that had me aroused again in seconds.
Constantijin took me in his arms, arranging my legs around his waist.
In my mind, I heard my imaginary version of George chortling. What happens in Vegas – stays in Vegas.
This time, I totally agreed with him.
Constantijin gazed at me challengingly, as if waiting for me to protest. When I put my arms around him instead, moving close so that my breasts brushed against his chest, he sucked his breath in shock.
The look in his eyes was pure heat, and I wrapped my legs around him more tightly. It made me shift against him, and his cock rose against me, demanding entrance past the tiny blue triangle that served as my bikini bottom.
“You’re so close to being fucked,” he whispered.
“Am I?” I whispered back, drunk in the heady sensations that his body, his touch – his very presence evoked. My voice actually sounded a bit slurred when I spoke. Oh, yes, I was so drunk – intoxicated with the passion that never failed to erupt between us.
I wriggled my hips under the water, biting my lip when I got what I wanted, his cock practically pushing against my core.
His eyes widened, and his warning came out unsteady when he spoke, his fingers digging hard in the softness of my butt. “Yanna. Stop playing with fire.”
So, so drunk, I thought, still caught in a sensual haze of his doing – and mine. There was no need for wine. I just had to look at Constantijin’s nearly naked form – be overexposed to it for more than five minutes, and I was totally undone.
Just this one night, I promised to myself. Surely in this century my unknown Mr. Right wouldn’t care that someone else had taken my virginity? If he did, then he wasn’t Mr. Right, after all.
Constantijin’s gaze was tr
ained on my breasts, which bobbed in the water every time I moved.
Giggling, I bent lower towards Constantijin, wanting him to see more.
Oh, God, I was so, so drunk.
His face darkened with desire, his fingers cupping the undersides of my butt as if in reflex. “Yanna, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I fluttered my lashes at him.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t start something you can’t – won’t - finish.”
I dropped the proverbial penny. “Who says I won’t?”
Constantijin had hauled both of us out of the pool in seconds and I found myself being literally carried away.
“Constantijin,” I gasped, totally not drunk anymore as I could feel everyone around us gaping. Someone – George probably – even whistled.
He didn’t answer, striding purposefully toward the nearest elevator. It opened almost on cue when we reached its doors, and he stepped inside, still carrying me in his arms. Constantijin didn’t seem to notice the increasing number of wide-eyed looks going our way but I did.
“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.
