Chapter Nine
C HRISTOS POURED HIMSELF WHISKEY as he waited for dinner to be served.
He had sent Sylvie a text to let her know that she could meet him at a specific time, and she hadn’t responded.
But the time came and went, and she didn’t appear.
The table was set, and it was beautiful in his opinion. She should’ve come downstairs wearing something lovely. He could have watched her enjoy her food and…
He supposed today had been…difficult for her. But it was really no different for him. She had her pregnancy confirmed, and it meant that both of their lives were going to change. She had no right to act as if she was the only person who was impacted by the event.
Yes, she had to marry him, but he had married her.
It was…
It was the same.
He thought of how she had looked, vulnerable as she had asked about the sonogram, and him looking at her. As if he disgusted her.
He had not disgusted her that night they’d been together at The Luxe. No. She had been aroused by him. And he by her.
She had wanted him then.
She had texted him and told him all of her fears.
And you stopped. Before you knew who it was. You cut her off.
He had done that. But it had been in a bid to preserve his way of being. He had recognized whatever he was feeling for her was… It was an anomaly, and he could not allow it. That seemed reasonable to him.
It was reasonable.
He found himself setting his whiskey down on the table, abandoning dinner and walking out of the room.
He found himself compelled to walk up the stairs. Toward her.
Perhaps she would be angry. Maybe she would shout at him and tell him to leave.
He paused at the door and raised his hand to knock, even as he chided himself of the ridiculousness of having to knock to enter a room in his own home.
He did, though. To prove a level of civility even to his own self.
But it was firm. Decisive.
“Go away, Christos.”
“Sylvie,” he said. “I wish to speak to you.”
“And I don’t wish to speak to you.”
He growled, and reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Baby: Don’t be like this.
Kid: Like what?
Baby: Petulant.
Kid: It isn’t petulant to need some time alone after the day that I’ve had. And it isn’t like I’m going to get any emotional support from you.
Baby: I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you feel this way.
It was easier to type it than it was to say it. He didn’t even really know how to think it.
Baby: I know that everything changed for you today. I felt that it must be the same for you as it was for me, but I recognize that it isn’t. You are…pregnant. This is perhaps scary?
He heard footsteps, and then the door opened slightly.
He looked up from his phone, at her. “Are you trying to be human?”
“I’m trying to talk to you. The way that we did. Because we did one time.”
“And then you stopped.”
He didn’t want to explain that.
“I didn’t see anywhere for it to go.”
“Well. Fate intervened and laughed at you.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“Yes, it did.”
She was barefoot now, wearing a matching pajama set with leopards on them. She looked soft, sexy.
He found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss her, knowing that it was Sylvie.
It had been a gut punch back when it had happened in the dark; it would be something entirely different now. He knew it.
There was a feeling at the center of his chest, the one that he had identified far too recently as being something that seemed to affect the ice in his core.
Sylvie. It was Sylvie’s fault. And she was looking up at him with an expression on her face so much like longing.
He wasn’t sure for what. For things to be easier? Simpler?
For…
“That night,” he said. “We never spoke of it.”
“Because you wouldn’t speak of it.”
“I have never… I have never experienced anything like it.”
“Then, why did you leave my text unresponded-to? Why did you treat me like I didn’t matter?”
“No one matters in my life,” he said. “You have to understand that. I am a man who fashioned himself into an island. And there is no place in my life for…whatever that was.”
“But now here I am.”
“Yes. But it’s different now. Because I know who you are.”
“Does that make it different?”
“Yes. It changes things.”
“Help me. Tell me what it changes.”
“It changes everything. Because it must. Can’t you understand that?”
“No. I can’t, Christos. I can’t understand it.”
“It is just different. It was a dream before, again. You weren’t real. You were…something that existed only on my phone, and I made a mistake… I made a mistake.”
“But it wouldn’t be the same now.”
“Of course it wouldn’t.”
“Prove it,” she said, stepping forward, tilting her stubborn chin upward.
Her green eyes sparkled with rage, and he could barely breathe.
He had no idea what was happening to him.
The fire that was building inside of him…
it shouldn’t exist. It should not be like this.
Not for him. Not for Christos Onassis, a man who had learned long ago that need was the enemy.
That other people were a scam. He should not feel drawn toward her. He should not burn for her.
But she was…she was Sylvie Jones. And she was his wife.
His wife .
His.
He growled, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her heart against the firm wall of his body. “You said that you could hurt yourself, flinging your body at me. Is this what you want?”
“I think it’s what you want. And you won’t admit it.”
“Do you want it any less than I want it? I think not.”
“Christos…”
“You want me,” he said. “Tell me that you do.”
“I want you, and I hate it, dammit. What I wanted was for you to be a different man. What I wanted was for you to be…a pleasant-looking man with glasses. That curated bugs in a museum. I didn’t want you to be you.
But here we are. And I can neither control it nor stop it.
But I won’t have you standing there pretending that you can.
That you are somehow above it. When I’m not. Because that simply isn’t fair.”
He loved her like this and hated it in equal measure.
Because it made him feel things. And he didn’t have the patience for that. He didn’t have the capacity for it. This alchemy between them was something he was never supposed to know. Never supposed to experience. It was anathema to him in many ways. And yet he was addicted to it.
He had been correct when he had compared it to illicit substances.
He was at the end of his rope now, and that never happened. He never felt these things. Not for anyone or anything. And yet as she looked up at him with those green eyes sparkling, he felt something shifted inside of him. He felt himself begin to bend.
And so instead of suffering that indignity, he lowered his head and let his mouth crash down on hers.
He claimed her. In the bright light, he claimed her.
For one second he thought that she was going to push against him, and that he would have to let her go. But as she brought her hands up, she didn’t push him away. Instead, she gripped his shirt, drew him to her.
“Christos,” she whispered against his mouth.
He growled. She was a drug.
Her saying his name…it was everything.
It was like these two distinct pieces had come together, clicked into place. Like they fit together in a unique way that he had never foreseen.
That woman in the hotel room. The woman in his texts. Sylvie Jones.
They were the same. How had he ever missed that?
When he had felt the stirring urge to bend Sylvie over his desk, how had he ever been ignorant enough to believe that it was a free-floating desire? Disconnected from everything?
Of course it was because of her.
Because the woman in his phone was the one that made him act out of character.
She was the one that got under his skin.
She was the one who made him like this.
He couldn’t bear it. It was awful, horrendous. Beautiful beyond belief. A bright, glimmering thing that he had never even expected to see, let alone touch. And so he kissed her.
He kissed her and pushed her back into the bedroom, his hands waited at her hips as he held her fast to his body, let her feel exactly what she did to him.
“I need you,” he growled against her mouth.
She whimpered.
“Tell me,” he commanded. “Tell me that you need me.”
He gripped her chin and forced her to look up at him, making her meet his gaze.
“I need you,” she said, her voice soft.
“My name,” he said. He didn’t let her look away. “Say it.”
“I don’t…”
“Do not turn me into your soft boy fantasy. Do not close your eyes and imagine that you are with a man who doesn’t even exist. You want me .
All that time, you wanted me. Admit it, Sylvie.
That boy would never entice you. If you were a virgin, it’s because I was the one that you craved and you couldn’t admit it to yourself. ”
“Why do you have to be like this?”
“You want me like this,” he said, and he wasn’t sure why it mattered. Only that it did. “You want me like this, Sylvie. Because I am the only one that you want. Tell me,” he said. “Tell me that you want me.”
“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t if…”
“I am what you crave. You want the darkness. You want the difficulty.”
He said it maybe because he hoped it was true, more than he could prove that it was. He said it, because he needed to believe it. Because he needed to believe that there was one thing, maybe only one thing about him that was redeemable in any way. A part of him that Sylvie wanted.
And why that should matter he could not say. Why it should be important he didn’t know.
He felt like he was drowning with her. And he resented it, he also couldn’t control it. So if he was going to feel this, if it was going to be this way, then he would have her surrender. He would have her admit it.
He would have his triumph.
“Tell me that you want me,” he said, sliding his thumb over her bottom lip. “Or I’ll leave.”