Page 15 of Twins to Tame Him

Reaching her, he took them from her hands. The simple contact of his fingers lingering on hers felt so good that she had to pluck hers away. “The staff will pick those up.”

“Good night, Sebastian,” she said and turned away.

Behind her, he said, “Why did you decide to have the babies?”

“Why do you think?” she said, feeling instantly defensive.

“Don’t worry. In all this, there’s one thing that’s very clear. You seek nothing from me that’s not solely for the boys.”

Somehow, that didn’t sound as reassuring as it should have. It felt more like...scorn or mockery.

“You said your mother disapproved of your decision and I can see why, at least partly.” Suddenly, he was standing too close. “How old are you?”

Laila jerked her gaze up from the inviting hollow of his throat. “Twenty-seven.”

He cursed. “So, you were twenty-four when you—”

“I already had tenure at university, a clear path for my career,” she said, cutting his taunt off.

“At that young age?”

“I graduated high school very early, finished my PhD when I was twenty. Academics are easy for me,” she said, expecting his surprise. “Socializing, and saying one thing but meaning another, playing the polite but backstabbing games with colleagues in academia, all the strange dating rituals...not so much.

“Romance wasn’t in the cards for me. Then you and I happened. When I found out I was pregnant, with twins at that... It was terrifying at first. But... I also had Guido and Paloma and the safe space to really think it through.”

“It was that easy to make that decision?”

“When I was a little girl, I used to pray and wish and hope for a fun, boisterous, happy family, with parents who adored one another and siblings who loved each other. I wanted to be...loved and wanted as I was.” She tried to scoff at her naïveté, afraid that he would do it, but couldn’t.

“With the pregnancy, I realized this was my chance to make my wish come true. Even if the boys only had me, I thought...this is it. The logistics and reality were much, much harder than even my rigorous calculations,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, “but the love I see in Nikos’s and Zayn’s eyes when they look at me or reach for me or when they kiss my cheek with grubby mouths... I know I’m living my dream. No fear, or worry or overdue bill can take that away from me.”

Sebastian walked impossibly closer, and her pulse began to race. She could see the deep, disorienting gray of his eyes, could smell his cologne and sweat, could feel the warmth of his lean body graze her muscles in a lazy invitation.

She held his gaze, some wild instinct she’d known only once before egging her on even as her belly took a dizzying dive.

“I’ve always wanted a family like that. Now we can both get what we want, ne?” His words were low, soft, as if he was tempering some great emotion. “You have only convinced me that I’m right, Dr. Jaafri. And soon, you’ll agree.”

Then, in a move that made her heart beat out a wild rhythm, his hands landed on her shoulders, and he pulled her to him.

Laila sank into the hard warmth of his body, trembling like a leaf in a storm. His arms felt like salvation, like a cocoon, like her very own safe place to land. And somehow, that deep sense of security seemed to open the floodgates to all the worries she’d been shouldering alone even before the boys had been born.

Soundless sobs shook her, washing away any embarrassment she should feel for breaking down in front of him. Sebastian didn’t seem even a bit surprised or thrown off at her crying. His arms tightened, his lips whispering soft, sweet words in Greek, wrapping them around her like a safety blanket. His words, his touch, his warmth... It was a glorious gift she hadn’t known she needed.

Relief filled her in soft, overwhelming waves, followed by sudden, thick fingers of sleep and she barely had a memory of sinking into his arms and the vague impression of him carrying her to bed and tucking her in, as if she too were precious to him.

Laila slept like the dead that night, thinking it curious that it was thanks to the same man who had kept her awake for countless nights.

CHAPTER FIVE

SOMEHOW THEY SETTLED into an easy routine over the next few weeks, though it should have been impossible on paper.

Not somehow, Laila acknowledged. It was thanks to Sebastian.

There wasn’t a single thing that the boys or she needed that wasn’t already arranged or sorted for them, before Laila herself could think of it. He’d arranged for Annika and Alexandros to leave the villa for a whole two weeks, so that the four of them could bond as a unit, even as he admitted that Alexandros had been quite put out about moving his very pregnant wife into his penthouse in Athens, even temporarily. Laila had thought it was also because Sebastian wanted to avoid Ani, but she kept that to herself.

She would have liked to have Ani around, to avoid too much one-on-one time with Sebastian. After her near breakdown and his tenderness that first night, Laila felt as if there was no equation or model for her feelings to follow. Unless it was chaos theory, since they went up and down and around, tying her in helpless knots. Apparently, a little kindness from Sebastian could make her as fragile as Nikos’s sandcastle.

He had also forbidden their grandmother Thea from visiting just yet, Alexandros had quipped, expressly for Laila’s sake. Being the traditional matriarch, Thea would apparently bear down on Laila to make her great-grandsons legitimate heirs of the Skalas family ASAP.

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