Page 22 of Twins to Tame Him

“I walk around with my cock at half-mast when you strut around in those shorts, when your T-shirt gets wet during bath time, when you compulsively lick the honey from your lips every single night. When you sound sleepy and husky in the middle of the night when you check on the boys, and your hair is a halo around your face. When you’re so exhausted that you can’t help but lean against me and I can feel your warm, soft, silky skin.” His fingers drew tantalizing trails all over her flesh—up and down, from left to right—as if waking up every nerve ending. As if it was all he’d wanted to do for a long while. “You disappeared on me and I couldn’t get you out of my head. I haven’t felt the faintest interest in another woman in three years. You have become an obsession.” He nudged his hips against hers the same time as his hands pulled down the side zipper of her dress.

Laila groaned as his rough, broad hand completely engulfed her breasts. Her nipples poked at his palm, boldly demanding attention. “Is that enough proof for you, Dr. Jaafri?”

“Yes.” Laila wanted to burrow into him. “I want more, too, Sebastian.”

His long fingers kneaded and cupped her breast without touching her as she needed. “I will not be your stud because you’re horny after three years of celibacy.”

“I don’t know how to prove to you that I’m horny for you,” she said, half sobbing, half delirious with pinpricks of pleasure.

He laughed and it was suddenly imperative that she taste that smile.

Turning her head, sinking her fingers into his hair, she caught his lips with hers. She didn’t have words like him, but she had this...deep, insistent longing to steal something of him for herself, to captivate him as he had done to her three years ago, to leave a small, indelible mark on him as he’d done to her. She traced the seam of his lips with soft, susurrating kisses and when he groaned roughly, she snuck her tongue into his mouth.

He tasted of whiskey and mint and of decadence and pleasure she had rarely allowed herself. Pleasure she had only tasted because of him, wanted because of him.

She sucked the tip of his tongue, bit his lower lip, then licked the hurt. She devoured his mouth as if he was a feast she’d been waiting for, for so long. She pulled and tugged at his hair, raked her nails over the nape of his neck until his mouth was hers to do with as she wished.

He cursed when she let go for breath and then he was devouring her, hard and fast and deep, his erection pressing insistently against her behind.

She’d relived that moment from three years ago in her head for so long and now, she wanted him deep inside her and this time, she would own her pleasure instead of feeling guilt and shame around it. She would demand everything he was and wield everything she was at him without lies and half-truths.

“Is that enough proof for you?” she said, in a breathy voice that told its own tales and gave its own proof.

Clasping her cheek in one broad hand, Sebastian grinned against her mouth. Their rough exhales joined and created a symphony of their own. “Yes.”

“Now, can we please proceed to this pampering thing you planned for me?”

“Yes,” he said, loosening his hold on her.

Laila grabbed his corded arms. “I want it at your hands.”

“At my hands? I might ruin you for anyone else, Dr. Jaafri.”

“I dare you to try,” she said, grinning, and saw his gaze flare with challenge.

Sebastian hadn’t meant to seduce her today, here. Not that his mind was ever not planning how to get Laila under him, or over him, or against the wall.

Over the last three weeks, it had become as natural as wanting to see Nikos’s wide grin, feeling Zayn’s soft gaze land on him like an ever-present buzz. Like breathing and eating and walking and waking and sleeping and thinking of his art.

Wanting Laila had already been an obsession, now it was torment, too.

The more he wanted her, though, the more Sebastian restrained himself, as if warned by some strange instinct whispering in the back of his head. Usually, such control was...not in his nature.

He’d lived most of his life becoming a profligate wastrel, giving in to all kinds of excesses, doing his best to shame the Skalas name, and when the noise in his head got so loud that he couldn’t bury it anymore in his wasted living, he painted.

He’d never set out to be a painter, as much as Konstantin had liked to taunt him that he’d done it for express purpose of pissing on him and the prestigious family name.

In truth, Sebastian had spent a lot of his adolescence fighting the art that seemed to want to get out of him, like some poison that needed to be purged, or skin that needed to be shed. In the last few years, he’d even let his brother and Thea and friends lead him into things he had no vested interest in, for lack of anything more important that engaged his interest.

But all that had changed with his sons’ arrival. With Laila’s spectacular reentry into his life. He had a desire now—as bright and hot like a flame—and he had a plan to fulfill that desire.

Detours and deep dives and self-destructive plays were not allowed. He wished he didn’t have to run away and hide when his migraines hit. That he didn’t need to calm the buildup of that relentless clamor in his head by painting. But those detours were necessary since he didn’t want to expose the pain he had to bear to Laila’s or his sons’ eyes.

Whatever she might say now, he couldn’t let her see him like that, at his worst. Couldn’t let her see the gaping void his mother’s abandonment had left in him, couldn’t let her see that Konstantin had managed to beat out his capacity to care, to be vulnerable, to bare himself to another in all his true tormented glory. Couldn’t let her see that between them, his parents had destroyed his ability to connect like a normal man.

He’d spent so long letting it decay and rot with shallow pursuits and mockery of relationships that he knew he would not make the kind of husband Laila wanted. He doubted he could give her even the conditional happiness she was expecting from their convenient arrangement.

But he’d not let the dark void of his past destroy his future, he would not lose his sons. And that meant making sure Laila could trust him, giving her everything she needed to show her that she mattered in the logical way she understood.

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