Chapter Twelve
S YLVIE WAS DROWNING in him.
Maybe she shouldn’t kiss him. Maybe she should punish him for the way that he had treated her for the last two months.
He had abandoned her. Perhaps she should be angry.
Perhaps she should hold it against him. Perhaps she should be spiteful and vindictive and make him miserable for the way he had treated her.
But the way that he had looked when they had found out they were having a son…
It made her want to cry.
He was terrified. And she kept reminding herself that he was the man she had been texting all those months.
He was.
Christos was hurting. He was broken.
He had revealed a little bit more to himself before she had decided to come. Before she had decided that she had to be the one to come for him, and today, even without him giving details about his life, she had learned more about him by watching his response to finding out he was having a boy.
He didn’t think he was a good man.
He wasn’t arrogant, not really. He didn’t like himself.
I like you.
She poured that truth into the kiss. It was a sweeter kiss than any they had shared before.
It didn’t have the same desperation.
And yet it was still intense.
Maybe even more so for it.
She angled her head, deepening the connection.
She bracketed his face with her hands, pulled him down to her as she parted her lips for him. As she encouraged him to take it deep. To slide his tongue against hers. She had missed him. She had missed him so much.
I love you.
She liked him. She loved him.
Because of all the things that he had told her about himself. Because of the way he had been there for her before.
She had to find a way to let that man escape. To break him out from behind the brick wall.
It isn’t that simple. Because the fact is that he’s both.
That stark truth made her feel out of her depth. Why had she realized that before she had gotten on a plane?
Because yes. That man who had connected with her was real.
But so was this one. Equally. The one that had had a panic attack when he’d found out he was having a boy.
The one that had no idea what to do with the strength of those emotions.
With the fear and self-loathing that coursed through him.
The one that didn’t even know what to call a longing for connection.
The one that didn’t know what to call what he felt for her.
He was real. And he was damaged.
And she had to find a way to reach him. She had to.
Because she had spent a lot of years lonely. She had never known real connection until he had answered her text.
It had to be something they could bring into the real world.
It had to be something they could create here.
She was desperate for it. Not just because he was the father of her child.
Because he gave her something. Because he completed something inside of her.
Because he was the first person that she wanted to talk to when she woke up and the last person she wanted to talk to when she went to bed.
Because it was that way, and it had been for almost a year now.
Because she had been devastated when they’d slept together, and he had cut off contact.
Because she had felt like the sun had finally come out from behind the clouds when she had started to talk to him in the first place.
Because he had changed her life. Completely and fundamentally.
She wanted to change his. She wanted to do something big enough, meaningful enough, that it would make him into someone better. Because her relationship with him had taught her something. She had learned that she needed to reach out to people. That she needed more connections.
She had found a way to talk out some of her more complicated feelings.
And she had learned that she was far more interested in sex and sensuality than she thought before. He helped her explore, and even though anyone reading the transcript of their encounters might find them cringe or embarrassing, she had learned new things about herself.
What had she done for him?
She wanted to give him what he needed. The sad thing was, she simply didn’t know.
And she couldn’t figure out how to learn.
So she kissed him. Because she knew how to do that. Because she knew how to connect with him here.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m kissing you. Because I’m here.” She put her hand to his chest, she felt his heart beating hard.
Like it was going to beat right out of his chest.
“I’m here,” she repeated.
He growled and backed her up against the wall. Flattening her against the hard surface. He moved his palms up her forearms, pinned her hands flat against the wall, held her fast. He poured his own desperation into the kiss, and she swallowed it down.
She began to finish the work he had started, taking his shirt off. Oh, how she loved the look of his body. How she loved touching him.
He was here. He was real. This was real. She moved her hands down his muscular chest, his stomach. She undid his belt with shaking fingers. And then she pushed his pants down his lean hips, exposing his length to her hungry gaze.
She curled her fingers around him. They had talked about this. She had promised to do this to him.
And now he was in front of her. She could see him.
She could finally take exactly what she wanted. She sank down to her knees in front of him. And she leaned in, darting her tongue out, slicking it over his arousal.
Then she took him into her mouth, looking up at him as she did. As he had done to her the last time they were together.
Watch me. Watch me give this to you.
It was like he heard her, because he was watching. Because he was giving himself over to this, and never taking his eyes off her.
She swallowed him down, luxuriated in the taste of him. The feel of him. She moved her hand down between her thighs and began to stroke herself as she continued to pleasure him.
His hand went back to grip her hair, and he pulled hard, drawing her head away. “Careful,” he said.
“Are you afraid to lose control?”
“You don’t want me to lose control.”
She lowered her head again and took him in deep, keeping her eyes locked on his.
He growled, but he didn’t pull her away again. She kept on pleasuring him. Pushing him until he was shaking.
And when she finally pushed him over that edge, she swallowed him down.
He was breathing raggedly. He pulled her to her feet. “You are…extraordinary.”
He looked truly undone. He looked truly at a loss. And she relished that.
Because he was at a loss for her. Because he was undone for her.
He picked her up, cradling her in his arms.
“I’m too heavy,” she said, even as he made a mockery of the statement by carrying her easily out of the room.
She clung to him. And he brought her into the bedroom, laying her down on the bed.
“Surely you can’t do anything yet.”
He growled again, completely feral now, and he stripped her of her shirt. Her bra. Her panties. Everything.
Then he forced her thighs apart and lowered his head between her thighs. She wrapped her arm around the back of his head, pushing her fingers through his hair as he pleasured her.
As he took her to the heights, he brought her crashing back down. He tortured her, over and over again. But this time she could see him. It was like that first night, but now she knew who it was.
Now she really knew what it meant to love him. With all of his difficulties. With all of his hard angles and lines.
But the inconvenient truth was that the man who had captured her body and soul was Christos Onassis.
She didn’t know the details about who he was. She didn’t have his entire life story. But she knew that she loved him. And that they had time to get to know each other. That she had time to help him change. He was her husband.
It was that thought that pushed her over the edge.
Breathing hard, he moved up and kissed her on the mouth.
Turning her onto her side, with her rear pressed snugly against him.
She could feel that he was hard again. He positioned himself at her slick entrance and entered her from behind, holding her with his arm wrapped around her midsection, his hand on her belly as he moved inside of her. Deep and sure.
She began to tremble. She began to shake apart.
He took her slowly. Thoroughly. Until they were both out of breath. Until they were both at the end of themselves.
And when it was done, she lay with him, listening to his harsh breath in her ear.
She could feel him withdraw. She could feel him putting distance between them.
She reached out and grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”
But he got up anyway. He left. And she realized that he had carried her into a room she could stay in, not into his.
She lay there, staring at the ceiling, tears sliding down her cheek.
She didn’t know what she was going to do with that man.
But she did know that she loved him.
She didn’t know if there was anything to learn from her parents’ marriage. From the mistakes they had made. Her father in marrying a woman who was never going to love him as much she loved herself. And her mother in not being able to recognize who she was.
Were they the same? Had she fallen in love with a man who could never love her back with the same intensity?
No. Christos had intensity.
It was real. In fact, it was so terrifying that he couldn’t face it. That was the real issue. It wasn’t that he felt nothing. It was that he felt everything.
She had chased him down. She had come here. And she wasn’t going to stop.
She picked her phone up.
Kid: I wish you would talk to me.
She wasn’t sure if he would respond. Her heart beat in her throat while she waited.
Baby: I don’t know how.
Kid: Only because you never talked to anybody. You already told me you don’t have any friends. You don’t have any practice with it. Maybe that’s what this has been all along. Let’s practice. You can tell me. Anything.
She wondered if she’d pushed him too hard. If she’d overplayed her hand.
Baby: I’ve never told my story to anyone.