Chapter Ten #2
His mother had abandoned him and so had his father. And she hurt for him. For the responsibility he’d been given when he was just a child to take care of his mum. But—
‘I’m not your mother,’ she whispered. ‘I was never—ever,’ she promised, ‘going to do anything like that.’
‘I don’t know if my mother planned to do it either.
There was no note. But the current. The tide.
I wasn’t strong enough to pull her body back to shore.
I should have stopped her before she went into the sea.
I should have saved her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t because emotion…
’ His lips curled into something ugly. ‘I panicked, and she drowned.’
It hit her then. Hit her with the force of a bullet. She’d thought his distance was indifference. It wasn’t. It was a coping mechanism. He kept his emotions inside. Buried deep. He didn’t let them out. Any of them, because he needed to stay in control.
Her nose pinched.
He’d stayed in control when Isaak died because he had to.
It was the only way he could cope.
It wasn’t a lack of feeling.
He felt. Deeply.
Her heart broke for him. For the little boy who believed his mother’s death was his fault, and for the man who still thought the same. For the man who couldn’t grieve openly for his son because…
Did he think it was his fault?
She knew it wasn’t logical, but she’d blamed herself too. Still did, despite the therapy…
‘I’m so sorry, Konstantinos.’
He stared at her. ‘I vowed I would save you. It was my job to make sure I did not find you in the sea, held under by green weeds I could not cut you free from… I searched the world to find you… I prayed I was not too late, Poppy.’
He’d stopped his life. He’d stopped everything to find her. A man who did not let himself worry about anything, but he’d worried for her. He had saved her. He’d pulled her out of her deep depression. Provided the tools for her to crawl out.
Who had saved him?
Her mind reeled. Her emotions were being dragged in too many opposing directions.
Her heart wanted it. More words. More stories.
Words they should have said, stories they should have told each other long before they’d ended up here.
But their self-imposed limits and rules had stifled the truth.
They’d only really connected with raw honesty in bed.
But without love, their marriage was hollow.
It always had been.
Superficial safety.
They’d never had strong enough foundations to survive Isaak’s death.
‘Whatever happens between us in these upcoming months,’ he said, and she knew it was over. Whatever door he’d opened into himself, he was closing it.
She wanted to prise it back open.
‘Know I am grateful, Poppy,’ he told her. ‘Grateful I found you.’ His shoulders rose. ‘I am grateful that you are…okay.’
He was…grateful?
Her heart ached behind her breastbone.
She’d let him down like everyone else.
‘Now you understand why I didn’t tell you,’ he said.
‘And my reasoning is as valid as yours. You ran because you believed, however brittle your proof, your life was taking the same path as your mother’s.
That I was an adulterer like your father.
And you believed that because of your childhood.
I believed I had to keep you safe from a truth that could hurt you because of mine. ’
She stared at him. This man who had done everything to be better than the past that could have broken him. Should have snapped him in two. And to the world it hadn’t. But she could see it now.
Inside, he was as broken as she was.
Her chest pitched tightly.
He wasn’t ready to talk about Isaak, was he?
Would he ever be ready?
It had taken her time, too. Time to say his name without bursting into tears. Time to face her grief…
He sat so close to her. If she leaned in, shifted her bottom a few inches to the left, they would touch. Their knees. But the distance was a wall. A wall she’d put between them. They both had. She wanted to knock them down. Crawl into his lap and—
Poppy reached for him.
Konstantinos caught her wrist before her fingers touched him. Before she broke the divide between them. Cancelled out the distance. A space full of too many ghosts of the past he’d resurrected.
He knew his story was too dark. Too ugly. He never should have told her anything, he realised, but he didn’t know how to take the words back.
He didn’t want her pity.
He did not want her to touch him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, but it was too late. He’d breached the gap. He had touched her, and instead of putting her hand from him, he was holding it. Suspended in the air between them.
‘This.’ She pushed against the imprisonment of his fingers, and his wrist was weak. His hand fell.
She moved her hand to his shoulder. She clutched at the rigid arc. Her legs rose, and she used him to propel herself onto the sofa. Until she was on her knees—leaning in.
His nostrils flared. He breathed her in. Too deep. He could taste it. Taste her. The gentle husk of her sweet breath on his lips.
He closed his eyes.
Their mouths met.
His blood roared.
He didn’t know how to tell himself not to do this. He didn’t know how to tell his hands not to span her waist, to lift her until she was on his lap. And so he did not tell himself anything.
He couldn’t think.
He didn’t want to think any more.
His mouth pressed harder against hers. His tongue sought entry into her mouth.
Poppy opened for him. Let him inside. She didn’t resist. She straddled him.
Her bare thighs pressed to his. Her chest pushed against his, her pebbled nipples teasing him.
Reminding him of the barrier of his shirt when all he wanted was to be in nothing but his skin.
‘Konstantinos!’ she gasped into his mouth. Her fingers spearing into his hair, cupping the back of his nape. She pulled him harder against her.
His hand splayed between her shoulder blades. He possessed her mouth. Owned it. He stroked—he teased—until he felt her hips press down. Until he felt her rock against his erection, pulsing against the confines of his too tight trousers.
He’d become so hard. So fast. And he ached to tear her T-shirt over her head, to feast on her pink nipples, drag her shorts down her hips. Free himself. Thrust up inside her. End this confessional in the only place he let himself lose control. Inside her.
‘Stop,’ he groaned, but still she kissed him. Still she rocked.
‘I want you,’ she breathed into his mouth, each word expelled on a pant. A hiss of air. A moan of desire.
It pummelled his brain. This victory. This was what he wanted. He wanted her to want him. He wanted her to need him. But he didn’t feel powerful. He didn’t feel in control. He felt raw. Exposed by the words he’d given her. Told her. Words he’d said to no one.
She shouldn’t be on his lap.
She should not want him now.
‘Poppy!’ It was a cry of agony. It bellowed from his chest. ‘Stop!’ His hands gripped her shoulders, dragged her mouth from his.
Both breathing hard, they stared at each other.
Regret tortured his insides. He felt haggard. Old. His bones ached with a fatigue he’d never known. It was rooted in his very skin. His muscles.
How could he have ever thought his plan was an option? His plan, so flawed, it slapped his cheeks now. Slapped the controlled lines from his features he’d presented to Léon—to her.
Was he truly cruel? Ruthless? Like his father? Was he really going to let himself forget the people behind his needs? His father had forgotten his mother. Abandoned her. He’d forgotten him.
He couldn’t continue.
Not with his plan.
Not with this.
He removed his hands from her shoulders, let them fall to his sides, and he demanded his fingers didn’t curl into fists. ‘We must stop.’
‘Do you want to stop?’ she asked. ‘Or are you stopping because you think I’ll regret it if we sleep together?’
‘You would regret it.’
‘At Versailles I would have,’ she agreed. ‘It would have happened with so much still misunderstood between us. But we’ve told each other things that will give us some emotional closure, but not physical closure.’ She tilted her head—considered him for a beat too long. ‘We should sleep together.’
‘We should not,’ he rejected, but he was torn.
Conflicted. He didn’t know how to put himself back together.
Not with her eyes watching him so intently.
Not with her sat on his lap—wanting him—when he’d told her of the ugliness inside him.
The darkness of a sick mother and a power-crazed bastard of a father.
He was his parents’ child.
He was damaged. He knew this. Had recognised it and so he’d made himself a man who rejected his very DNA.
He had never wanted children. Never wanted to risk passing on his genes to an innocent child. But they had made Isaak. And somehow, he’d manifested his son’s death.
His chest tightened. He’d made himself a fair man. A man so opposite to his father. But beneath all the layers—beneath both the two personas he’d tried to be, he couldn’t be either right now. He could not reconcile himself with them. They felt imaginary. Fake.
‘I understand why you stopped at the ball,’ she said when he didn’t speak. Couldn’t. ‘But if we use a condom, there will be no risk.’
‘There’s always a risk, Poppy,’ he countered, because it was the truth.
There were no one hundred per cent safeguards.
He couldn’t promise that.
The only way to guard themselves completely against an accident was not to have sex.
His core spasmed.
But he wanted to.
He wanted her.
‘We’ll be careful,’ she said, and he knew that was all they could be. Careful. But it didn’t feel like enough.
The rules had changed when she’d become pregnant. Everything had changed. Emotions, hers, had leeched into their relationship. He wasn’t stupid, he knew they’d leeched from him, too.
Poppy had carried his child. She’d swelled with their son. He’d have done anything to keep them safe. His need to do that…
It was a violent desperation. A desperation that had coordinated his every action. And when she’d disappeared… His desperation to find her, it had blinded him to all else, to the detriment of his business. His reputation.
He couldn’t let emotions leech now.
He couldn’t allow her in. Close. But he was desperate.
Desperate to be inside her.
‘Why shouldn’t we do this?’ Her hand moved from his shoulder. Her fingers inching towards his face. Her thumb, so small, pressed to his bottom lip. Gently she dragged it across his skin. ‘I won’t regret it,’ she said, her words uneven.
This didn’t feel fake.
This chemistry between them. Heating her cheeks—controlling her words. Controlling the involuntary fall of his mouth.
This had never been fake.
‘One last time,’ she said, her eyes dipping to his mouth. ‘For closure.’
‘Closure?’ he repeated.
‘I regret many things, Konstantinos,’ she admitted, and he now knew the truth of those words.
He understood the weight she carried on her too small shoulders of regrets that never should have been hers to have. Her father should have protected her. Whatever he did outside of their family home, it never should have been his daughter’s secret to keep.
‘I don’t want to regret you,’ she continued. ‘I know now, however hard it was to tell each other our stories, it’s not enough.’ Her hand fell from his mouth. ‘We need to do this. We need to wrap up…close the door—on everything. Including this.’
She moved. Only a fraction but every part of him hardened. Pulsed.
‘Hssss!’ His teeth gritted, he dug his fingers into her thighs and dragged her harder on the pulsing heat of him.
She gasped. ‘Konstantinos…’
Closure. It was such a small word. It was such a necessity, he realised now.
For them both. And the only place they would find it…
His chest rumbled. It would not be on the sofa.
He would not fuck her here. Like an out-of-control teen.
Without a condom. Without the extra protection he could provide.
‘We will sleep together,’ he decided out loud, his hands moving to the bare flesh of her outer thighs. He smoothed his thumbs down the seam of them. Her spine curled with the downward stroke of his fingers.
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
It was a breath in his ear. A single word. But it felt like a storm. It attacked him from every direction. His mind. His senses. He couldn’t pinpoint the attack. Where this single word hit him hardest.
‘Make love to me,’ she said, so forthright in her needs.
He ignored the drag in his gut. The ache in his chest. He felt all twisted. His thoughts. His insides… He didn’t make sense. This didn’t. It contradicted…everything.
‘Not here,’ he growled. It was raw. Animalistic.
‘Then where?’
He’d take her to a place where they made sense. A place where they’d always found each other. Where words were never difficult.
He’d take them back to the place where they’d started.
He placed his hands on her hips, held her against him, and he stood.
It was fate for him to do this. For the war to end between them there. For them to lay down their arms and surrender to the inevitable in the place where they’d begun, and their marriage would end.
‘We will go to bed.’