CHAPTER TEN

DAYSAFTERLAILA had driven him wild and ravenous with her words and her mouth in the very place where he had never brought another soul to, Sebastian was still feeling unsettled. That encounter had been replaying in his head like a loop, for more than one reason.

Laila with her wild hair and generous promises, granting him a wish.

Laila, who made it easy to talk about things he'd never talked to another soul about—not even his twin.

Laila with her roving mouth all over his chest.

Laila on her knees looking up at him with those big eyes and those dark cherry-colored lips.

Laila holding his gaze with a tender, possessive hunger as her soft hand stroked him to dizzying heights of pleasure.

Laila who clung to him, trembling, and shaking, hiding none of her vulnerability.

He'd never looked a lover in the eye like that, at the throes of release. Never had been pushed off the edge because of the look in a woman's eye. Never needed to hold the woman after, a little flicker of dread and a host of other emotions rooting him in place.

It was as if Laila was the genie with all the magic and she had sprinkled it all over him, alchemizing sex into something else. For the first time in his life, he'd been left with a niggling sense of loss he'd never known before, even as his body felt fully satiated. Usually, it was all he could do to get away from his partner when he'd satisfied them both. With Laila, he had been glad that she'd clung to him because he hadn't been ready to let go of her, either.

Now he wondered if it was all so different with her because when he saw her, he saw his sons' faces first. Saw Nikos's grin and Zayn's considering stare in her features. Saw the means to the deepest wish he'd indulged in as a child who would never have his father's approval.

With a desperation that kept clawing at him every moment now, he wanted all those reasons to be true. He needed them to be true. He needed Laila to mean nothing but a means to the end.

All of it rang untrue and hollow to his own ears.

Was it the childhood shame he had shared with her? Was that why he suddenly felt raw and vulnerable around her?

He had always told himself that the shame was Konstantin's—to terrify an innocent child, not his. But he had never gone into such detail with anyone else, not even his twin. And Alexandros knew everything. For all he'd never given it voice, raking over it with her had felt cleansing rather than poking a festering wound. Like giving her the blurry, torn map to his soul.

He had spent years developing awareness and control of his roiling emotions, right from adolescence—no one was going to help him with it, and yet, now his chest felt like it was a tangle of knotted wires, pricking and poking at his conscience. Like he'd meant to paint one thing on the canvas and something else was taking shape.

Like his heart wanted, no, needed, things beyond the boundaries he'd drawn around it a long time ago. Like it craved things it didn't know how to feel and give, things it was wholly unworthy of.

There was another strange thing happening to him. But this one he didn't fight. Didn't resist. He'd been spooked enough by what had happened between him and Laila that he had gone back to his art that very night. While it had fought him for almost a month, driving him near feral, suddenly it poured through his fingers with such frenzy that he'd spent every free minute working on his painting. Despite the thing that was emerging on the canvas, it was the one thing still under his control.

But he might as well have not tried to avoid her while he untangled himself, because Laila was doing it all the same. Something about that evening had spooked her. He felt her eyes on him as always, devouring him and seeking something in turn, the easy camaraderie and partnership they had developed over almost three months was gone. There was a wary look in her eyes as if she knew now what he was up to, as if she didn't dare come close again. But desire and heat thrummed between them, arcing over with just one look, one errant touch.

"Sebastian?" Ani said, stretching her hand out to him from the grass. They were all playing in the huge meadow behind the villa that sunny afternoon. The perfect picnic spot Laila had chosen for the boys with a blanket and snacks and toys. Giant, gnarled trees that he'd once hidden behind offered spots of shade to his sons now.

Giving her his hand, Sebastian pulled his sister-in-law up and then steadied her with a laugh as she wobbled on her feet. "Thank you," he whispered and then kissed her cheek, knowing that even in this, Laila had been spot-on.

He hadn't really been angry with Annika—he'd just given the fear inside him that label.

Without meeting his eyes, Ani wrapped her arms around his waist, like she used to when she'd been a little girl, following him across this very meadow, forever dogging his steps, making his days a little lighter.

He wrapped his arms around her, unable to meet her eyes. Now, all these years later, she'd given Laila enough confidence to tell him the truth. He thought he must have done one thing right.

Ani raised those large eyes of hers, shimmering with tears, to his face finally. "Xander won't come out and ask, as he's still upset with you. Or maybe he worries that you won't accept."

"Ask me what?" Sebastian said, frowning.

"Will you be her godfather?" Annika said, putting her palm on her belly.

Awed and ashamed at once, he could only nod.

Ani wiped the tears from her cheeks, gave him a watery smile, grabbed one of the toy water guns and jumped into the fray with the boys. Though Zayn was no less reserved with her than he was with everyone else, he had taken to calling her Ani Auntie, sitting close when she played the cello—clearly it soothed him—and following her around with those big eyes full of curiosity. Used to roughhousing with her own three brothers, Ani knew exactly how to engage the boys' attention.

And now to be godfather to her and Alexandros's daughter... Sebastian felt as if his cup was overflowing with all the good things he'd once desperately wanted. Needed. His wildest dreams as a child come true. Except, nothing of the innocence of that child was left in him. He might not be a monster like Konstantin, but he was beginning to wonder what his real self was under the smoke and mirrors.

His gaze shifted to Laila, who was on her knees, fixing a stuck toy gun for Nikos. The sun caught the golden highlights in her hair, made the smooth skin of her neck and bare arms glimmer like burnished gold. Her sleeveless silk top was wet after the boys had caught her with their sprays and stuck to her skin, outlining her small breasts.

Just the sight of her filled Sebastian with hunger and...something he hadn't known the taste of in years. Or never, even. And it was the newness of this thing inside him, when he'd thought he'd glutted himself on all the riches and excess in the world, that had him so out of balance.

As if aware of his perusal, Laila looked up. Emotion he couldn't name flashed through her eyes before she offered him the polite smile of the last week. He felt the overwhelming urge to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder and carry her away and kiss that wariness and doubt out of her. He'd seduce her until she agreed to marry him and this...new furor and uncertainty in his head would die down. Wouldn't it? Once he had her bound to him, what was left to worry about?

Instead, he walked back to where his grandmother was sitting, his muscles burning with the need for action.

Alexandros stood against one of the large trees, his stance rigid, watching his wife. Annika was chasing Nikos, her cheeks reddish brown in the sun, her long braid already half wet.

"Thank you for letting it go," said Alexandros, his jaw tight. Sebastian heard the emotion that his twin rarely let anyone other than his wife see. "I haven't seen her laugh like that in a while. But instead of begging you to forgive her, I've been demanding that she let this grief over you go, demanding that she be well for my sake. Even after three years, I want to control everything around her so that she isn't hurt, so that she is happy." He thrust a rough hand through his hair, a scoff escaping his mouth. "I still haven't learned it enough that to love her means to let her be who she is, and to live with this...discomfort. And I have to do it all over again with a tiny little girl who will...be my responsibility."

So that was at the root of his twin's fear—not that he wouldn't care about his daughter but that he would do it wrong because he loved her so much already.

The angst in his words made shame burn through Sebastian's chest. It had been childish and selfish of him to continue his stubborn silence against Annika.

Only the past few days, with Laila's thoughts in his head, had he been able to understand that Ani had become a convenient target for him to blame for his own actions.

His anger toward her was a shield to avoid facing the fact that he might not have ever known about his sons because of how he had almost ruined an old man. Only now, did he see shades of Konstantin in his own actions—the ruthlessness with which he had gone after Guido. He'd justified luring the old man into gambling debt, betting his little home until he lost it to Sebastian, because he'd spent most of his adult life looking for his mother, another victim of Konstantin.

But the price would have been high if Laila hadn't taken a chance on him, despite his actions. If whatever sense of ethics she possessed hadn't driven her to seek him out. He would have lost this present, this future, by his own actions.

"Laila made me see I was causing too much strife between you both. That I was hard on you the other day."

Alexandros turned, his face slack with surprise. "Your instincts were right about her. You knew about my...feelings for Ani long before I did, too."

"Trust that feeling, Alexandros. When your daughter is here, that feeling will guide you, too."

His brother gave another nod and then a bark of a laugh. "You have always been a better man than I am."

"I fought Konstantin so hard to be myself," Sebastian said, betraying his turmoil.

"And you have succeeded. You're a world-renowned artist. Your earliest paintings are coveted even now, go for millions in auctions. You spat in our father's face for how he mocked your art, you showed him false by becoming a man in your own right without the aid of the Skalas name, without touching your legacy. And I... I've never asked why you don't tell the world who you truly are. I've never asked you to share your art with me. But Sebastian..." Alexandros turned toward him, and until this moment, Sebastian hadn't realized how perceptive his twin could be when it came to him.

After all, they'd been each other's mirror in so many ways and witness to each other's best and worst.

"What?" he demanded, sick of the dread in his stomach.

"You have been a good man, Sebastian. Until now, at least."

"And what does that mean?" he said belligerently, hating that Alexandros was speaking the same doubts he already had himself.

"Being in love with a woman like Ani... It has changed what I can see, Sebastian." His twin gave a nod toward Laila, who was squealing and laughing and running up the meadow with their sons chasing her. "Does she know that you're stalking her like a predator does its prey? That you're not interested in—?"

"She came to me. She told me what her needs are," Sebastian said, cutting off what his twin would recklessly give voice to. "I'm simply showing her what the future could be between us."

"You're just playing along, to seduce her to your way. Making a show of giving her everything."

"I am giving her everything she asks for and it so happens that we agree on most important things. Why is taking advantage of that wrong?"

"It's...duplicitous, because you're doing it with a goal in sight."

"And here I thought you would champion me for making this right."

"Right for whom, though?" Alexandros said, sounding more frustrated on his behalf than Sebastian had ever heard him. "Maybe, finally, I see that some risks or gambles are not just worth it, that some things are sacred. I thought you knew that, Sebastian. I thought you understood better than me that the cost is too high."

"What aren't you saying, Alexandros?"

"Either you're lying to her or to yourself. And all these lies...will crash down on you when it's too late."

Sebastian stood there, long after Alexandros deserted him to join the noisy melee. He laughed when Nikos aimed at his uncle and then took off on his chubby legs and Alexandros made a show of not being able to catch him. He smiled when Zayn followed his twin and his uncle and auntie at an appropriate distance.

He felt his heart thud when Laila slipped and fell, and Alexandros gave her his hand and pulled her up, dusted her shoulder off and kissed her cheek and he could see the twinkle of joy in her eyes from all the way over here.

He froze when Laila's amber gaze sought him across the meadow and she gave him a small nod, and mouthed thank you, for fixing his problem with his brother and sister-in-law.

He fought the instinct to chase her across the meadow and demand that she give him surrender. He fought the pull she had on him but refused to give up his goal.

His twin's warning resonated like a painful gong, especially since it was exactly what he'd been dwelling on. He had never meant to hurt Laila and yet, suddenly it felt like all he was doing was pulling the worst kind of deception over her. But neither could he explore the other option. He could not let himself...feel. Not when, to this day, he hadn't recovered from his mother's leaving, when it felt like a necessary part of him was missing.

Not when he couldn't risk putting himself out there again. Which left him with only one choice.

He would bury this doubt, this new...weakness and continue with his plan to persuade Laila to marry him. Maybe then, all this vague dread would disappear. Maybe when he had her legally bound to him, when he knew that she was his, it would all fall into place.