Page 41 of Twins to Tame Him

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SEBASTIAN LOOKED UP at the tiny third-floor flat in the small coastal village, where he’d been sitting in the car for the last two hours. With the windows rolled down and a storm front coming in, he was freezing.

And he had frozen ever since he’d arrived here, with a note clutched in his hand, disappearing like a coward the moment he knew she was back.

For almost two months now, Laila and he had been engaged in a silent battle of wills when they were in each other’s company. Which had been less than usual since she’d traveled out of country three separate times. With him deep in finishing a few pieces for his next exhibit and Laila traveling back and forth for work and to clear out her father’s house while doing her best to preserve his research, they had crossed each other at the villa no more than for a handful of days.

And he was beginning to hate everything about their life, enmeshed together but not intersecting in any but the shallowest of ways. She didn’t smile at him or argue with him or probe him or touch him. She just looked at him with that steady, relentless emotion in her eyes, whether they were playing with their sons or discussing her career or sleep-mussed from his bed, which she had taken over and he didn’t mind.

Sebastian found himself shrinking, to escape seeing himself through her eyes.

His brother and Ani were baffled by the silent but pregnant stalemate between them. Even his sons, he knew, were beginning to feel the rift between him and Laila and he found himself bereft, on the verge of losing everything he’d gotten a taste of in the past weeks.

His fear of letting her in was nothing compared with the torment of seeing her in his bed and not reaching for her. Of wanting to hear those sweet words from her lips again and depriving himself because he wasn’t sure he could pay the price.

Then he’d seen it, a handwritten note with two lines of address on it, left on his desk. And he’d known instantly that it was from Laila, known that she’d scoured through her father’s research and Guido’s belongings for this. She’d been gone to find this.

For him.

Because she wanted Sebastian to have what he’d looked for most of his life.

But now that he was here, now that Sebastian knew that his mother was in that third-floor flat, all he felt was a strange relief. A freedom. Like he was ready to set down the weight of whatever had been clinging to him.

Laila had gotten him what he’d wanted and that, too, like her love, felt like an unbinding. A releasing. A new beginning for him. For them. For their sons and their lives together.

When he heard a noise from the tiny balcony, Sebastian froze. He could hear the litany of Greek, was almost sure that it was her. But he didn’t need to go up and confront her. He didn’t need to check if she was okay. He didn’t need to ask her how she could have abandoned him and Alexandros.

He didn’t need any answers from her, not anymore. Not when he had an entire life waiting for him. Not when everything he had ever sought was within him. Not when a woman like Laila could see what he was truly and still love him. The reason, the struggle, the culmination of all the battles he’d taken on in his life was in his house, waiting for him. Giving him what he had needed without him asking for it. Seeing him as he was.

So, he started the engine and he bid the woman on that balcony goodbye in his head and he drove off, even as he was still shaking from head to toe.

Laila felt strong arms gently pull Nikos from where he’d been clinging to her like an octopus but felt reluctant to open her eyes. She threw an arm behind her gently, only to find Zayn was gone, too.

Instantly, she turned and blinked, remembering she had carried both boys to her bed and fallen asleep, with their arms and legs wrapped all around her. On the rare occasions that she let them both come to bed, she was usually so stiff so as not to disturb their sleep. But tonight, she hadn’t cared. She’d needed them, after two months of avoiding Sebastian’s gaze, only to find that he wouldn’t look at her at all. Then she’d been gone again with another goal in mind. And this time, she had known he would disappear. But still, it was hard because she wanted to be with him. Because she wanted to hold his hand when his world broke apart, all over again. Because she wanted to love him.

Not even Alexandros knew where his twin had gone off to and Laila kept it to herself. She had no intention of ruining the happiness that Alexandros had found with Annika by bringing up pieces of the past he’d finally made peace with. If Sebastian wanted to tell him, that was his choice.

In Sebastian’s absence, his twin had taken to reassuring Laila that Sebastian was a good man, just...maybe a little broken. Even Thea seemed to think that Laila was just being both stubborn and foolish, playing this waiting game. Sebastian, she kept telling her, would never love her.

If his continued absence hadn’t sowed doubts about the future—how long did it take to drive up to the coast and find that address?—Laila would have found the mighty Alexandros Skalas’s nervous declarations a little funny. Neither did she agree with him or Thea at all.

She didn’t think Sebastian was broken at all. Only a little bent like her, but somehow, they had both managed to retain the best of themselves and found people to love and they had their sons to nurture and...

The door to her vast bedroom that adjoined the boys’ room was closed and footsteps returned to the bed.

She gasped when those very arms lifted her not-so-slender frame and shifted her to the middle of the bed. Instant tears pooled in her eyes when she realized it was him. He was cold and shaking behind her and she shivered at both. She felt his lips against the nape of her neck, cold and chapped. Alarm swept through her at what he’d been up to, what he had discovered at the address she’d found. “Sebastian? You’re shivering. What happened? Is everything—”

“I want to hold you, Laila. I need to...”

She grabbed his corded forearm that gripped her tight under her breasts, smushing her front against his back so hard that her breath came in rough pants, compulsively running her fingers over the soft hair there, wanting to soothe him. His other hand, she brought to her face and kissed the center of his palm. “I missed you,” she said, giving up all pretense of the fight she meant to put up when he returned. “I—”

“Shh...not right now, agapi. Right now, I need you. I need to feel your warmth and your passion and your need for me. Only you would provoke me to this, Laila. Only you could reduce me to this—”

“I’m yours, Sebastian. Take me. Have me. Do what you will with me. I have been yours from the first moment I saw you and you showed me a simple kindness I didn’t know I needed. I had been yours three years ago. I have been yours all these months and I’ll be yours fifty years from now, when you’re not the stud you are now.”

She felt his mouth stretch against her skin in a smile, felt it reach her deep within her being, that empty place waiting for him. She felt a shuddering relief that she hadn’t lost him to the past, that she could make him smile, that she...

“I want to make you promises, give you what you deserve. But I—”

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