Chapter Fifteen
T HE WEATHER BEGAN to turn hot, and it was mere weeks before her due date, summer in the sweltering city. She was starting to feel ungainly. Unattractive, even though Christos seemed to find her beautiful no matter what.
And she realized something abruptly as she got into the elevator that would take her home after a long day at work. She didn’t feel insecure anymore. Not about her value, not about her looks.
That conversation with her mother had changed so many things.
The realization that she just wasn’t what her mother wanted. And that she didn’t want to be.
Coupled with the way Christos treated her: like she was special.
He treated her like everything she did was amazing.
She supposed it wasn’t really fair. Because in many ways he was like a child.
It didn’t take a lot to amaze him. It made her feel guilty, actually.
Because the act of making him dinner was like handing him gold for his hoard.
He didn’t say anything, but the fire always burned in his dark eyes.
She started to realize how little had ever been done for him.
Basic care seemed to be his love language because he had been denied so much.
They didn’t talk about feelings, but she could see them, burning brightly inside of him.
He was home when she arrived. In the kitchen, wearing an apron.
“Christos,” she said. “Are you cooking?”
“Yes. Chili dogs, so I hope that it is okay with you.”
Her stomach growled. “Yes. It is. That actually sounds amazing. Of course, I’ll be hungry again an hour later, but then I get to choose something else to eat. It’s a win-win.”
They ate dinner, and then, he drew her a bath. Not too warm, but just enough. She sank down into the water, and he reached down and lifted up her foot, massaging the sore spots, working her swollen ankles.
She groaned. “I’m really not the woman you married.”
“But you are,” he said. “Do you know, it’s such an interesting thing, because I was fascinated with you starting…maybe five years ago. That was probably when I began to notice you. You were always so opinionated.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you noticed me at all,” she said, the wind pushed out of her lungs.
“I did. I told you that.”
“Yes. You told me about your very crude sexual fantasy. But I didn’t think—”
“No. I noticed more than that. I thought you seemed very bright. A worthy opponent.”
“Why did you go after the publishing company so hard?”
He looked down. “I chose it as a target. And I have never known how to back down from a battle. I wanted to acquire it, and I was willing to wait all that time to do it.”
“It was about the win, not about the company specifically.”
“Correct.” His voice got rough. “I’ve been fighting for so long. I don’t know how to lose. Even if…even if there are no stakes. Because everything feels like it has high stakes. It just…it still does.”
She pulled her foot from his grasp and turned so that she was leaning against the lip of the tub. She lifted her hand and touched his face. “It doesn’t here.”
“Sylvie,” he said his voice rough. “I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in mysterious forces at work in the universe. I’ve never believed in much of anything except my own grit. My own will to survive.”
“Who could blame you?”
“But why did you find my phone? Why did I drop my phone? I have never done that. Not once in all my life. How could that happen?”
“I believe in fate,” she said, holding his gaze, willing him to see just how she felt about him. Exactly how much she loved him. “And I believe I was supposed to find that phone. Something compelled me, something outside of myself, to send that text message so that you can get in touch with me.”
“Because you wanted me,” he said.
“I did,” she whispered. “I hated myself for it, but I wanted you.”
“And you still do. Even knowing me, you still do.”
He was so hungry for that. How could he not be? This man who had been sold for a pittance by his father. He would always be that boy. She could see that, clearly, painfully. He would always be that boy who hadn’t been loved enough.
She wanted him to feel how much she cared. She wrapped her arms around his neck and she kissed him, kissed him deep and long. He lifted her out of the tub, pressing her wet body against his fully clothed chest.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she said.
“All of it,” he said, pushing his hands through her hair. “It’s all like magic. And I don’t believe in magic. But I believe in you, Sylvie Jones. You have given me something that I never imagined possible. I want… I need… I have always…” He kissed her, crushing her up against him.
He walked her into the bedroom. And just stood her in front of the mirror, his large frame behind her.
“Look at you,” he said, tilting her chin up.
The first thing she saw was how her body had changed.
All of her flaws. Her breasts were bigger, her stomach distended, with silvery stretch marks moving across it. She looked tired.
“You’re a goddess,” he said. “There is nothing that can compare.”
And suddenly she realized that she wasn’t the only one engaging in acts of healing.
He was doing the same to her.
Yes, she had just thought about all the ways he had changed her. The ways that he had helped her see her own beauty. But there was something deeper about this. Something different.
“I wanted you then. I wanted you when you were an obstinate, angry woman yelling at me on the top floor of your publishing house. I wanted you when you were a soothing voice in my phone. I want you now. Like this. How were you made for me in all these different ways? I will never understand it. Because I shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be standing here with you. I should be on an island in Greece.
I should be six feet in the ground. Lost forever like so many of the other boys sold into that life.
I should have become the same manner of monster as the man I fought in the end.
I shouldn’t be here standing with you, but I am.
We did not find each other at those publishing parties.
We didn’t find each other in a boardroom. It took me losing my phone.”
It seemed like he was having a revelation. Like something was shifting inside of him.
He bent down and kissed her neck, his hand moving up to cup her breast, cover it. “Sylvie,” he whispered.
“I have wanted this for a long time.”
He bent her forward at the waist, and she gasped, grasping the edge of the vanity. She saw him behind her, looking intense. He undid his belt and freed himself.
She shivered with need.
If he could show her like this, then she would take it like this. If this was how he was going to show her the feelings that existed inside of him, then she wanted it.
She was desperate for him. Always.
They had found ways to speak over the phone. And they had found a way to speak with their bodies. Someday, maybe he would be able to speak everything with words.
But until then…
He moved his hands over her breasts, then slid one down between her thighs.
He began to tease her. Torment her. He tilted her hips back farther, and the blunt head of his arousal pressed against her slick entrance.
He slid inside, deep. She gasped, and he gripped her hair as he began to thrust inside of her.
She loved this about him. That he maintained his intensity. That he hadn’t stopped seeing her as a woman, as his lover, even as she took such an obvious maternal shape.
He revered her, enough to want her.
And she adored him for it.
He wrapped his arm around her midsection, supporting her stomach as he thrust deep. And then with his free hand he slapped her rear, and she yelped, the pleasurable sting sending lightning strikes across her skin.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I have wanted this.”
This thing between them was a storm.
It was always intense when they were together. But this was something more.
Everything that wasn’t spoken, everything left unsaid was burning between them like a wildfire.
And she realized then that this was where she was a gladiator. Fighting for him.
This was where they did battle. She was doing battle for his heart and soul. To show him that he could open up.
Because she believed that Christos had a deep and endless capacity for love.
It was the kind of man he was.
If he wasn’t, then she wouldn’t be in love with him.
So many people thought he was cold.
She had for the longest time.
But it was because everything inside of him was too great and too terrible for him to control, and that was what scared him.
So she unleashed her own wildness. And when they reached their peak, she cried out her pleasure.
He held her against him, his body protective over hers as his breathing returned to normal. She could feel his heart beating hard against her back.
He leaned down and bit her shoulder. “Mine,” he said.
And he might as well have said love , because she knew for him it was all the same.
She turned to him and cupped his face. “Yours.”
She wanted more from him. She wanted everything. But what they had was wonderful. And nobody had ever said that life was going to be perfect.
After all, her mother had said that she loved her father. But it hadn’t been real.
Not the kind of love she wanted.
This… She wanted this. Whatever they called it.
So she let her husband carry her to bed. And she listened to him breathing until they both fell asleep.