Page 20 of Twins to Tame Him

“I will not spend another half of my life trying to prove who I am or what I’m capable of.”

The bitterness in his words, the flyaway tidbits she gathered about his childhood from Annika, his disinterest in anything related to the Skalas name, his refusal to share himself with the world as a renowned painter... She was operating blind on an emotional minefield. But the thing she knew with a sudden clarity was that she wanted a map to him. She wanted to reach him.

“You said we would start over and that can’t be done if you hide parts of your real self from me, and show me the charming mask you put on for the rest of the world. The boys need a father who will not hide away imperfect parts of himself. What do you think that says to them?”

A soft hiss escaped his lips and Laila knew she’d reached him. But there was more and she let it pour out. “I can’t be in a relationship with a man who won’t even give me easy communication in such small things. We might as well call it quits now.”

His gray gaze pinned her to the spot, something dancing there. “Fine. This is my fault a hundred percent and I apologize. But instead of demanding an explanation, you decided to invite your boyfriend here in some twisted revenge?”

“Fahad is not my boyfriend,” she said, suddenly understanding his anger.

“But he would like to be, no?” he retorted, with an unnerving perception.

Laila’s shocked silence said things she didn’t want to say.

He thrust a hand through his hair, a hardness she hated entering his eyes. “I will make other arrangements for you to stay close to the villa while I start custody proceedings. I know you won’t believe it, but I’ll be fair.”

“I don’t want that,” she whispered, grabbing his arm, the resonant truth of her words dawning on her. “I invited him because he’s from my world, Sebastian, and one of the few people who doesn’t treat me like a freak. I needed to find the ground under my feet.”

He stilled, as if her very touch was repellant. “You can’t have it both ways, by holding some unnamed condition over my head then coming to the worst conclusions in your head. You agreed to give this a fair chance.”

“You can’t go off to parties with models without telling me why, either, Sebastian. Or better yet, just don’t go to parties with models,” she burst out, and then cringed at how demanding and possessive that sounded. The words lingered between them, dancing over a line she wished she had the strength to not cross. Laila pressed her forehead to his arm and exhaled. His hand in hers was big, rough, broad, and something about the touch anchored her. Gave her strength to be honest with him and herself, as strange as that sounded to her rational mind. “I...if I’m to give our bet a real consideration, if I am to believe that a marriage between us has a chance of working, you should know I...want fidelity, Sebastian. I want it to be as real as we can make it. I can’t even consider doing it any other way.”

“Noted, Dr. Jaafri,” he said and the serious tone of his voice told her he understood the step she was taking.

“I convinced myself it did not matter if you kissed another woman,” Laila went on. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this become personal between us, wouldn’t let my weakness for you...muddy this.”

“Your weakness for me would blind you to who I am?”

She scoffed, her lips trembling at the dense muscle packed in his arm. “No. It blinds me with my own insecurities. It confirms patterns that I seek to protect myself with, even when they aren’t there,” she admitted with little grace.

“Look at me, Laila.”

She raised her eyes, feeling as if she’d cracked herself open past a door that had always been inaccessible to her.

His eyes searched hers, a steely resolve to them. “Nikos and Zayn adore you. They will believe everything you do. You owe it to me to be careful how you judge me.”

“That’s the thing that sticks in my craw. When it shouldn’t,” she said, with a snort. “You see me as nothing but their mother. I could be any woman from the long list of your lovers and you would offer me the same little package deal.” She pressed a hand to her chest, her heart thundering in there. “Apparently, I’m selfish enough in all this to not want to be a placeholder.”

“You think I invited you into my home, my brother’s home, into our private lives, without knowing what kind of a woman you are? Without considering the fact that you nearly ruined me and yourself out of loyalty for a man who’s not even related to you? Without considering that you’re not only devoted to my sons, but would stand up to me if I wasn’t good enough for them? Without remembering that, amid all the lies you wove and the plans you made, you responded to me with a hunger and need I have relived a thousand times over in three years?”

Laila stared, feeling more than foolish. Fingers of heat trickled through her, banishing every doubt for now.

Sebastian scoffed. “Unlike you and Alexandros, I trust my instinct. As for not seeing you...” He rubbed a hand over his lower lip and she was beginning to see it for the tell it was when he wanted her. “You live under my roof and you follow my every move with those big eyes, just as hungrily as Zayn does. You seduced me and disappeared for three years, leaving me a damn note while I obsessively looked for you. I would plan what I’d do when I caught you so elaborately, dream of the moment I had in you in my hands... I’d see your face in every woman who was tall or had that way of walking or...” His warm breath coated Laila’s lips. “It is already personal between us. It was, even before the boys.”

Laila felt a liquid longing well up within her at his soft words. She felt greedy, grasping, voraciously so, for more from him. Of him. As much as it had been an act, the one night she’d spent in his company had been the most alive she’d ever felt. The most she had lived in her entire life.

It was a dangerous game to want to matter and she had lost before and yet... She felt like Paloma’s yarn when the boys got their hands on it, unspooling away into sensations and feelings, tangling into knots, changed forever.

“What would you have done with me if you had caught me?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE SMILED AND it contained a multitude of promises and invitations. As if she’d asked him to reveal the secrets of the universe only to her and he’d been hoping she would ask. In that smile, Laila thought she could see her entire future, and the absurd thought nearly paralyzed her.

Grabbing her wrist, Sebastian said, “Come.”

She let herself be dragged as if she was made of not bone and flesh, but want and longing. She giggled like she’d have as a normal teenager stealing away with a boy she liked, if that boy hadn’t paid attention to her only because she was gateway to meeting her beautiful older sister, Nadia.

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