No. A formerly poor Constantine can never really be ready for a black tie ball at the Morelli mansion. It’s not something that fits into my life experience. There’s no preparing for this. There’s only doing it. And in typical Leo fashion, he’s given me all the armor he can. No one will be able to say that my dress is a hand-me-down or that it looks like my sister did my hair. Well—they can say it, but it won’t be true. And they won’t be saying it where Leo can hear.

“Yes. If you’re going, I’m going.”

Chapter Two

Leo

If I had my way about it, I would spend Christmas Eve in bed with Haley Constantine. Sunup to sundown. I would lick her and hurt her and fuck her until she was a speechless, blushing mess. I’d let her have a nap. And then I’d start over again.

A short break for Midnight Mass. Then, celebrations for the birth of Jesus. In my imagination, they are accompanied by a leather strap that makes Haley cry so deliriously that I could come from the sound of her sobs alone.

As it stands, I’m buried in her now, torturing us both.

Haley circles her hips underneath the red fall of her lap. She’s straddling my lap in the back of the SUV while Thomas drives. I toy with her necklace, all of me throbbing. She is slick and tight and I am perhaps the hardest I’ve ever been. The glide of her over me is as much of a revelation as it always is. I keep thinking I’ve memorized the sensation, but I haven’t. I’ve spent so many years cultivating self-control. Haley Constantine threatens to unwind it.

But not yet. Not yet.

“Slower,” I order her. “You’re going to make me come.” She’s going to make me push her facedown on the seat of the SUV and drive myself into her until her dress is twisted and wrinkled and ruined. She’s going to make me love her until the end of time. Love is an intense pressure at my chest, an ache, a starlit bloom. It can’t be separated from my desire for her. Fuck, I want her. I need her so much that I have considered, several times, not showing up to the gala.