Page 13 of Twins to Tame Him
The loneliness she’d endured for so long came back with a sudden bite, keener and sharper now. As if something inside her knew that what she’d wanted all along was within touching distance. Which was strange, because as she’d told him, Laila had never entertained ideas of romance or marriage. After giving birth to twins, it had become even more distant, for no man wanted to raise another man’s twins. Not that she’d even considered the option of dating or fun or anything that didn’t remotely concern her sons and her career and how to juggle it all.
But something about Sebastian had always called to Laila. She’d crossed so many of her self-laid boundaries back then and apparently that draw he had held for her hadn’t dimmed one bit.
It was simple curiosity, she told herself, basic need for adult company, since she spent every waking hour—and some half-asleep ones—deep in dialogue with two toddlers or in statistics models she hadn’t yet solved.
The stability and complexity she had sought in her career all her life suddenly didn’t seem enough. Apparently, her body equated Sebastian Skalas with risk and how well and pleasurably it had paid off last time. Awareness didn’t make her immune to Pavlovian responses.
She gave in to the urge and reached the cozy landing off the bedroom where he stood. Two bowls sat on the coffee table, one full of fruit and the other covered. Lifting the lid on the second, she found thick creamy yogurt with an assortment of nuts and seeds and honey in smaller bowls around it. He’d remembered the snack she’d asked for the first time they’d woken up tangled in each other that night. Warmth flickered in her chest, even as she reminded herself that the second time, she’d woken up alone and had gone through his apartment.
“Thank you for making today easy,” she said, conveniently to his back. To avoid meeting his eyes, she busied herself with adding the nuts and seeds to the yogurt, and then a generous dollop of honey on top. She licked one thick streak from her thumb, and looked up to find his gaze on her mouth.
Heat licked through her blood, like the very honey on her tongue. Suddenly, she was aware of the heavy achiness of her breasts, and a loose, languid pulse fluttering low in her belly, right at the center of her core, desperate for friction.
“Is there anything else you need for tonight?” he said in such a matter-of-fact voice that Laila instantly felt foolish. It was all in her head, then—the lick of heat she’d seen in his eyes.
“No,” she said, tugging the ends of the threadbare oversize cardigan she’d thrown on at the last minute over her worn-out T-shirt. “You thought of everything.”
He nodded and then took the seat opposite hers, while she stirred the honey in.
A soft briny breeze was a welcome relief against her overheated skin while the yogurt was thick and creamy against her tongue. The quiet, breathtaking beauty of the setting, the sudden silence after hours of constant chatter from Nikos and Zayn, seemed to amplify the tension she felt around him. Spending too much one-on-one time with him was a bad idea, her gut said, and for once, she knew she needed to heed the instinctual voice.
“Am I speaking out of undeserving paternal pride,” Sebastian said, stretching his legs, his fingers steepled on his abdomen, “or are they especially easygoing for two-year-old boys?”
Laila smiled at the lingering awe in his voice. It was good to know he was capable of those emotions, at least for their sons, and felt no shame in expressing it. “They are easygoing. Your paternal pride, I’d say, is not undeserving, either. You have a knack with children. Annika...” she said, hesitant to bring up the other woman but wanting to make sure he understood she’d only done the right thing, “told me you used to spend endless hours playing with her.”
He shrugged, his gaze on the ocean. In profile, in repose, the magnetic quality of his presence should have been minimized, at least blunted. And yet, there was still that near-violent thrum around him, as if he was forcing himself into stillness and calm.
“Alexandros was too busy studying, doing magic with numbers and trying his damnedest to please Konstantin, to indulge in silly games with me. Ani...made it easy to escape the things I loathed. Which was everything, living under my father’s thumb. Entertaining myself while I watched her for Thea and played with her...was purely selfish. It also had the added benefit of getting under Alexandros’s skin, because even back then, he cared about her more than he would ever let on.”
Laila absorbed every word and nuance like a sponge parched for water. There was such fondness when he talked of Annika and yet, he had refused to even look at her again after Laila’s arrival. Something about how he framed it made her frown. “Is there a selfish motive in how you behaved with the boys today, then?”
He smiled. And it was the soft, disarming smile of a predator, who for some reason wanted her to feel safe with him. “Of course there is. I want them to feel safe with me, to trust me. To let me in. I know Nikos warmed to me pretty quickly, but I didn’t miss how much Zayn’s behavior dictates his own.”
“You don’t miss anything,” she said, feeling both relief and a strange dread at the realization.
“You fooled me very thoroughly that night,” he quipped, one corner of his mouth tugged up. The lack of any rancor only made her want to explain.
“I didn’t mean to. Or I mean, yes, I meant to corner you and demand some kind of...answer for why you were targeting Guido. I dressed up so out of my comfort zone, spent hours making myself up because you would’ve never paid me attention in my usual getup,” she said, pulling at her T-shirt. “But everything that happened after I actually met you, that was unplanned. It spiraled into...something else. I didn’t plan to sleep with you, Sebastian.”
“I should feel rewarded that you did before stealing from me and blackmailing me that you would out me as the artist to the world?”
“Whether it was a reward or not, I don’t know. But I’d never done that before and that—”
“You did not do what before?”
“Sleep with a man after knowing him for a few hours. Or sleep with any man,” she added, though she immediately wished she hadn’t. All this intimacy between them, it was forced by circumstance, not mutual want. In the normal world where she dwelled, she would have never gotten this close to Sebastian Skalas, nor should she want to.
“So you might think it’s some cunning plan to seduce you but it wasn’t. The moment you noticed me and started speaking to me, I lost control of everything. Including myself.”
For a long while, he didn’t say anything. Frustration coiled around Laila’s heart. The man had a knack for making her own up to all kinds of things and yet clammed up just when she needed him to say something. But she’d come this far, so she might as well say the rest. “I stand by what I did to protect Guido from you. But I wish I didn’t have to do any of it. I would have come to you ages ago to tell you about the boys if not for the history between us. How can you insist on any kind of relationship between us when what I did will always color your thoughts, Sebastian?”
“Do you want me to forgive you, Laila? Or beg for forgiveness myself? Will it clear the slate between us?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
He pushed a hand through his hair. “It is enough if I admit that I understand why you did it, ne?”
“But I want to—”