Chapter Nine #4
He tucked his chin onto her shoulder—with her heels, she fit perfectly against him—and pressed a soft kiss to the arch of her neck. A tremor went through her. He pushed his luck and pressed another one, this time tasting the salt of her skin. “Tell me.”
“I thought you were put off by my wanton begging, by how I threw myself at you. That you had your cheap win and were already soured on the prize.” The whole time she said this, she didn’t look at him.
“Two weeks of silence will do that to the most confident woman and I am nowhere near that with you.”
Her honest confession, bit out through stiff lips, made his own resolve crack like a strike against a mirror.
For the first time in years, that feeling of not being good enough for her came back to him. It tasted like bile at the back of his throat. Because all she had given him was her honest desire and he had…made her doubt it.
He tightened his arm around her waist and pulled her until she was plastered to him, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, her back to his chest. His cock poked at her round behind eagerly, rearing to get inside her warmth again.
“Feel that, fterouga? Every minute since I left you in that bed alone… I have been in this state. All I have to do is close my eyes, see you in that wedding dress, spread out on that dirty floor, looking up at me with those big eyes and I get hard like this. I stayed away because I…” He shook his head.
He couldn’t give her full honesty—might never be able to tell her the power she’d had once to hurt him, change him, ruin him even—but he refused to lie to her.
Now or ever again. “I’m sorry, agapi, for making you think I was rejecting you. The truth is far from it.”
She softened then, instantly. And he wondered if it was her own honesty that made her easily believe everyone around her. Unwilling to push her when she was clearly feeling fragile, he released her.
She turned to face him, the slight sway of the elevator car making her unsteady. “I…don’t know what you want from me. As a wife. If we aren’t going to live together, I’d rather know now.”
“I gave in to Theo’s demand that we have the wedding at the villa,” he said, sensing where her confusion began. “But I refuse to live at the house that I have slaved away at for most of my life. So, if you need me, you have to come to me.”
“You think I want to start our married life at the villa?” She looked so genuinely horrified that he felt like a fool. “Clearly you’ve forgotten that I was even more miserable there than you were, Constantine. And that was my parents’ house, my house.”
Our married life… The words landed hard on his chest, like a boxer’s fists coming at him, punching the breath out of his lungs.
“You were the only thing that saved me there,” she whispered, almost to herself, dealing him another punch.
“Aliyah,” he said, for once not knowing what to say.
A sudden resolve dawned in her eyes. “I’ll just move into your bachelor pad. As long as it’s free of lovers, current and ex.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not right for you.”
“Constantine,” she said sounding utterly miffed, “anything is an improvement on the sterile hotel suite and my parents’ house.
The greenhouse was different—that had been our special place once.
Believe me when I say this, I refuse to conceive our child or spend my pregnancy in either of those lifeless places.
You cannot force me to. Not in this, whatever tricks you have up your sleeve. ”
“You are serious about having a baby? This soon?”
“As serious as you are about becoming the unchallenged lord and master of Andros International for the next fifty years. As for going for it this soon—” the pulse at her neck danced like a wild bird flapping its wings against a cage “—I quite like the idea of conceiving the traditional way and have to get it done while I still hold your interest. No doubt the honeymoon phase will be over soon enough.”
He laughed and her gaze caught on his mouth.
A gleam of hunger shone in her eyes but for once, she didn’t struggle with it or hide it. “We didn’t use any protection that night, you know.” Her hand moved to her flat belly, on top of the jacket. “For all I know, it’s already been done.”
Christos, but this woman was a hurricane, a snowstorm. The idea of a baby already growing in her belly, his baby, their baby, made his head dizzy.
His chest tightened—a family of his own, finally. It was a dream he had never even imagined and yet, he knew now, that it was his heart’s deepest desire.
And he also accepted the fact that he hadn’t dreamed of it because it had been tied to this woman. Only this time, it was an arrangement between them, an agreement, and had nothing to do with trust.
He pulled her to him just as the elevator opened out onto the rooftop and took her mouth in a kiss. She tasted of champagne and sweetness, her choppy breaths feathering over his lips when he ended it.
“Let’s just make sure with another attempt right now, agapi,” he said, lifting her into his arms and walking into the rooftop lounge.
And as she stared up at him, with her lips stretching into a smile, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was what happiness tasted like. And how far he would go this time to keep it intact.